A Whisper of Eternity - By Amanda Ashley Page 0,25
danced over her skin, raising the hair along her arms and at her nape.
"Now," hesaid, his voice smooth and silky. "Now do you believe?"
A wordless cry erupted from her lips, and then she fainted.
When she came to, she was lying on the sofa. Dominic stood at the window, looking out at the night. She noted that he was wearing black again, and that it suited him perfectly. She wondered if he owned a long ebony cloak, or if that was just aHollywood affectation. Her heart pounded in her ears as she stared at his broad back. She had asked for proof, and she'd gotten it, in spades!
As though sensing she had regained consciousness, he turned slowly to face her. "Now," herepeated, his voice low and mesmerizing. "Now do you believe?"
She did, but she refused to admit it, even to herself. If she accepted the fact that he was a vampire, she would have to accept all of it, and she just couldn't. To do so would shake the foundations of everything she believed in. There had to be some other explanation. If there wasn't, if he was indeed a vampire, as he said, then everything else he had told her was probably true, as well. She had been a queen, a slave, a dancer, a teacher, a doctor, and all the other things he had said. Her dreams were not really dreams at all, but actual memories of past lives. Her past lives. She had been Jocelyn and Kiya and Annie Williams and Nysa and who knew how many others. If she accepted it, if she admitted it was true, it would change her whole life, change everything she believed in.
Dominic took a step toward her, paused when she recoiled.
"Are you afraid of me now?" he asked quietly.
"Yes. No. I don't know."
"I will not hurt you, my best beloved one. I have searched for you, followed you, throughout time."
"Why, when I've rejected you at every turn?"
"Do you not know that we are destined to be together, querida ? Our souls were mated long ago."
"You want to make me a vampire."
"Only if it is your wish.Many times in the past I have offered you the Dark Gift to save your life."
"And I've always refused." That much was obvious, she thought, since she was still mortal.
"Yes."
"And still you persist."
"I will have you for my own, my best beloved one, if I have to follow you into eternity."
"I don't want to be a vampire."
"Then I will love you as you are. We will be together in this life, as we have been together in your past lives. I will be at your side when death claims you, and I will find you when your soul is born again."
Talking of her own death sent a shiver downTracy 's spine. She had always been afraid of dying. Was it because she had experienced it so many times?Or because so many of her deaths had been violent or premature?
"How long have you been a vampire?"
"Two thousand and twenty-three years."
She stared at him in amazement. What would it be like to live for more than two thousand years?Never to grow old?Never to be sick? Never to see the sun... to watch your friends grow old and die while you stayed forever the same.
"It must be a lonely life," she remarked.
"It can be."
"Have you been lonely?"
His gaze rested gently on her face."Only when I could not find you."
His words, low and from the heart, obliterated whatever fear of him remained, though she was still wary. He was, after all, a vampire, and whatever memories of him she might have from past lives, she was no longer Nysa or Kiya or any of the others. She was Tracy Warner now, a twenty-first-century woman with a life and a career of her own. If, as he said, she had loved him in the past, it seemed she would have to learn to love him all over again in the present. And what if she didn't? She stared up at him, thinking he looked like an immense dark cloud looming over her. He didn't seem like the type of man who would just let her go if she decided she didn't want him around.
"Do we start over every time we meet?" It was one of a thousand questions churning in her mind.