Anaïs jumped back, startled, when the front door burst open. Dominic was in the back room dusting the sculptures for her while she inspected the Gallery’s newest acquisitions. She was completely stunned when she saw Ryder rushing toward her; she hadn’t thought he knew where she worked.
Ryder grabbed onto her arms and asked her if she was okay before she could open her mouth to greet him. Her confusion had her standing there in silence like an idiot.
“Well?” he asked, “are you okay or not?”
“I… how did you get here?”
She knew it was a stupid question. She hadn’t meant to ask that.
“Taxi, but I hardly see why that’s important. I had a vision so I headed straight over. Has anything strange happened yet?”
So I didn’t imagine all that, she thought.
“Anaïs? Are you listening? I saw him looking in on you.”
“The stalker?” she asked.
Her voice trembled, her whole body started to shake, and she started to get flashbacks to the incident. If Ryder had seen it then there was no way she could have made it all up; the shaking door, the feeling of being watched, it wasn’t only in her mind. It had happened…
“Well…” Ryder hesitated.
He didn’t know how to explain to her that it had been the same man but with a different
body?
“What? Was it him or not?”
“Can vampires shape-shift?” Ryder asked.
It sounded ridiculous when he said it out loud and he immediately regretted mentioning it.
“Well yeah,” Anaïs answered, much to his surprise, “but so can some humans. Shape-shifting isn’t determined by species.”
Ryder didn’t like the idea of a shape-shifting stalker. How was he supposed to locate a man who never looked the same? What if he wasn’t even a man? There were so many possibilities, so many variables, such a large margin for error he was starting to doubt that he could locate the stalker all on his own.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” he murmured, unaware that Dominic had overheard their conversation.
The vampire walked out from the back room with a frown on his face.
“He was here? I didn’t anyone outside,” he said.
Ryder looked suddenly to him with suspicion. He hadn’t been aware that there was anyone else here and it seemed to him a bit too convenient that this man had appeared moments after the stalker had left. He wasn’t the exact man he had seen in his vision but changing forms spontaneously wouldn’t be very difficult for a shape-shifter would it?
“You are?”
“Dominic, Dominic Fontaine, I assume you’re a friend of Anaïs?”
“I suppose you could say that. I’m Ryder.”
“No last name?”
“I have one, of course, but I don’t find it necessary to give it in an informal introduction. What is your relationship to Anaïs?”
Ryder didn’t know why he was suddenly on the defensive. He had heard of Fontaine; who hadn’t? The man owned a large portion of the worlds diamonds and made a living off of his paintings. This was definitely the type of man Anaïs would go for, he thought. Perhaps it was rude of him to assume that she was attracted to any man that could use a paintbrush aptly, especially after she had given herself to him, but he couldn’t help feeling somewhat bitter; he certainly didn’t have any skill in the arts and that could very well have been why she rejected him.
“I suppose I’m under the friend category as well,” Dominic answered with a smile towards Anaïs.
She felt like she could cut the tension in the air with a butter knife. Dominic was being his usual lighthearted, throw it all to the wind self while Ryder acted entirely unlike himself; he was being unnecessarily sarcastic and pretty damn defensive.
Anaïs decided she would need to cut in on their conversation before they ended up throwing fists as men were apt to do.
“Look guys, we’ve established who we are and now I think each of you should go to wherever it is you need to be; anywhere but here. It’s almost 8 and I open in half an hour. I don’t need any distractions while I tend to the customers.”
“But we haven’t-” Ryder and Dominic both said at once and once they realized they had spoken in unison, they both frowned.
“Well,” Anaïs chuckled, “seems like you have a lot more in common than it would appear.”
She didn’t understand the look that Ryder gave her nor did she understand why he suddenly decided to leave without a word. He merely nodded at her and turned his back to them. Obviously he was upset… but why?
****
Dominic hated coming home to an empty mansion. He knew it sounded like he was some overindulged, unsympathetic idiot who didn’t appreciate what he had but he was tired of spending eternity alone. Courtesans, strippers, one-night stands, the occasional virgin- they were all good and well but none of them were permanent. He had never come across a woman he could spend forever with till he met Anaïs but he was coming to realize that he no longer desired her for that role. Anaïs, though interested in many of the things he was, was entirely the wrong woman for him. He needed feisty, energetic, and fun- he wouldn’t know how to deal with Anaïs’ sensitive heart. She had been hurting for so long he didn’t even know if her heart would ever mend. Dominic had seen something in her eyes today though that he hadn’t seen in a very long time; when she looked at that Ryder fellow, her eyes lit up with a fire he hadn’t been aware she had inside her. He knew he would convince her to sit for him eventually and when she finally caved, he would capture that fire and then she would be able to see that she was more than what she thought of herself. She was a true goddess, Dominic thought, a Venus in her own right.
****
He’d had her so close. He’d seen the way she trembled, the way she ran and hid as if she could possibly escape him. She didn’t realize that there was no stopping him. He would return time and time again till he found the perfect time to do the job. The perfect time would come… soon, very soon, he thought.
YOU ARE READING
Amour éternel
VampireAnais lost her dear Jacque a very long time ago because she didnt believe in his love. Now, hundreds of years later, in a chance meeting, she comes across a man who looks exactly the same as her beloved. His name is Ryder and he says he has had a vi...
