Dearly Beloved Read Online Free PDF Page B

was beyond his experience. His spinning slowed, widening to access the available space. If he still had a soul, it was singing. Something was filling his ears with orchestral sound.
    “Listen, Dominick. No way did you get paid to do this. Even in Shawn Elliot’s Pranks-Gone-Wild reality shows, there has to be some semblance of reality. Know what I mean? Who’s going to believe you go from over-bearing asshole with one sentence lines to a lover with superman powers who…flies? Did you put something in my drink? Because that’s patently unfair. It’s cheating. And you can add that to your video, Shawn-You-Jerk! How the heck did we get this high?”
    She’d turned her head to yell something into the air about him, before becoming a quivering mass of female that latched onto him, her legs encircling his upper thighs while her arms looped around his torso. That was too much contact. Dominick fell, slamming to the floor beside his panel door, and the next moment he had her within the enclave of his sanctuary. To a vampire, it was easy to see and easier to navigate. To the woman in his arms, it must be terrifying. Pitch black and quiet, unless one listened carefully and fully while holding their breath. Then the slightest sound of lapping waves could be heard from his grotto, eighty feet below.
    That could be what she was doing, since she’d decided to cease breathing. She wasn’t controlling her heart-rate. That muscle was pumping her life fluid with rapidity, making her infinitely more desirable. Dominick hovered in the center of his rotunda, working to control urges and cravings that hadn’t much hope of containment. He’d never dealt with such massive need. His arms tightened, and then trembled, and then went to all-out shudder as she struggled for control.
    He was losing.
    She called to him with every continued moment of their existence, and he hadn’t any weapon to fight it. He couldn’t. The denied feeding last night was a factor, but he didn’t need fluid every night. He could go weeks without feeding. He couldn’t go much longer without her. Everything on him knew it.
    Stone stairs were carved into the sides of the rotunda. Two turns took him to each level and each complete arrangement of living quarters. Seven stories in all. As if he’d need the rooms. Carved wooden banisters encased the steps. He’d embossed silver atop the railing. It caught any light, looking like a fine-tipped pen had been put to use if he looked down. He didn’t. The stair angle wasn’t steep, nor was the spiral. Eighty feet separated the dimensions between where they were and the bottom step. He’d designed it that way on purpose. For efficiency, aesthetics, and speed.
    Dominick ignored the steps to swoop down, the ascent causing strands of her hair to slide across his face where they caressed. Faster. Swifter. He was at the ledge leading to the fourth floor. The next instant, he was through the arch and within his rooms, where no living or dead thing had ever been, other than him.
    The bed was another canopy, settled dead center in his room, elevated on a pedestal, as were all his beds. The maroon and black color scheme of his bedding nicely set off the dark Spanish oak construction. He placed her on his mattress, leaving her long enough to illuminate everything he could find. He didn’t need the light source, but he was about to mate – with
her
- and he wanted to see every little nuance of it. He’d have been quicker but trembling gave him trouble. He couldn’t even light a candle? Dominick looked at his own fingers in surprise after his third failure to keep a match lit.
    “Ok, Dominick. Listen. I’m going to just pretend that little episode didn’t happen. I am not here in some secret cavern with you, well away from any hidden cameras and sound feeds. I did not just go flying through the air, drop like a rock, and then end up in yet another massive bed. No. Didn’t happen. And I am not in a setting resembling