I didn’t like it. Didn’t mean I didn’t believe it. Lex was a long way off from giving her up and I was starting to doubt he ever would.
I saw the appeal.
There was something about Sage that drew me in, too. Made me feel like a damn star falling into her orbit. And it wasn’t her doey brown eyes or that cute sexy thing she had going on with her slim curves and natural beauty. I’d never had trouble getting a beautiful woman into my bed and out of my head.
With Sage, it was less definable and a hell of a lot more perplexing.
If Lex was even vaguely right about me compelling her excessively so I wouldn’t have to deal with her, then it would be because of this.
When it came to Sage, my actions—my reactions—were always too damn unpredictable. Like when she’d bungled my order at the Shadow Grill. I’d been entertained when I should have been annoyed.
And when she’d challenged me on driving under the influence the other night. I should have let it run off my back, but it still left me faintly disgruntled, that she’d think I’d ever do anything that fucking irresponsible.
And now.
I could feel my iron resolve melting, unravelling all the cold logic I’d committed to only minutes ago.
Sage set down her mug and dipped her head. “I’m ready.”
I sat forward, leaning in. “Look at me.”
“I’d rather not,” she mumbled. “I thought you didn’t need to look into my eyes to do it.”
“I do for this,” I said softly and waited, waited until she finally blew out a labored breath and looked up again.
I cupped her jaw with one hand and anchored my other hand at the base of her skull.
“I can’t promise to never compel you,” I said. I was no saint, but I preferred my promises to at least start on the premise that I’d keep them. “But I can give you this.”
She blinked, swallowed, and then I had her. I let the magic flow through me and into the intensity of the stare that trapped her gaze.
I heard the swish of the doors behind me. Lex. That alone should have been enough to stop me. He was conflicted enough with me adding to the confusion.
But I guess I was stubborn that way. I was going with my gut here, some base instinct that hadn’t led me astray before. I’d worry about the consequences tomorrow.
I stilled my thoughts and concentrated on Sage, pulling for the power required to command this kind of magic.
“When the pathways of your mind open to me
For now and always
Burn the reflection at the closing trail”
I could feel the pressure of Lex’s silence at my back, disbelief and anger and everything in between. I didn’t blame him. The gift I’d just given Sage was deeply personal. Many considered it intimate.
“What have you done?” he said, his voice thin and scratchy, raked over coals.
I released Sage and fell back in my chair, not bothering to turn around to confront his feelings. “Relax, Lex, I did it for you, not me.”
“I’m not fucking jealous.” He came around the table to stand behind Sage, his hand on her shoulder with a possessive grip despite his colorful assertion. “I don’t understand.”
My mouth twisted around a sardonic smile. I didn’t fully understand either. But it was done now and couldn’t be undone.
This particular gift was non-refundable.
Irreversible.
16
SAGE
Something had just happened and I didn’t have a clue what. I tipped my head back, but all I got from Lex was the underside of his jaw.
Gideon pushed up from the table.
Panic flustered me. “Where are you going? We’re not finished here.”
Were we? He had compelled me. I was sure about that. Something inside me recognized the command in his voice even if I didn’t understand the spoken words.
Gideon ignored me, but he wasn’t leaving. He only went as far as the expresso machine.
I rubbed the beginnings of a throbbing ache at my temple as I ran through a mental check of my memories. If Gideon had compelled some of them away, he’d left me with all the wrong ones.
Which made perfect sense, now that I thought about it. He knew exactly which memories would destroy me and Lex. He knew, because I’d been foolish enough to tell him.
I turned my shoulder out of Lex’s grip and shot out of my chair. “You bastard.”
Lex grabbed my arm before I could bolt across the room and physically attack Gideon. “Sage, it’s okay.”
“No it’s not okay!” I seethed, a furious glare spearing Gideon’s back. “I swear, if he doesn’t make me forget I’ll—” He turned from the expresso machine to look at me with a smug expression that said, You’ll what? You’ll kill me? Good luck with that.
I had something better and it was a valid threat. Even if no one took me seriously, the Eclipse Warlocks wouldn’t want this kind of attention. “I’ll broadcast everything I know. I’ll drown social media in it. I’ll go to the newspapers. So you may as well just do it. Make me forget.”
“He can’t,” Lex said. “He can’t make you forget anymore.”
My eyes stayed on Gideon, narrowing into the smug bastard, but the challenge—why the hell not?— died halfway up my throat. He had compelled me. Something about burning the reflection, for now and always.
“What did you do to me?” I ripped away from Lex’s hold, inadvertently propping my bottom on the table as I scrambled for the words to define my suspicions. “You burnt the memory onto my brain?” For now and always. “You made sure I couldn’t ever forget who you are and what you’re capable of?”
He arched a brow, his gaze sliding to Lex. “Do you want to explain or should I?”
Lex reached for my hand. “Sage…”
“Don’t Sage me.” I snatched my hand away with a scathing look, wrapping my arms tightly around my waist. “He branded me with his damn voice.”
With memories I didn’t want. Memories that were now burnt into my skull along with a fucking echo of Gideon.
My heart thumped so wildly, I don’t know how my chest didn’t explode. “Branded me, Lex.”
“That’s one way of putting it, though not the one I’d use,” Gideon observed from the sidelines.
“He branded me,” I emphasized again, just to be crystal clear, “with the one set of memories that reminds me, will always remind me, how vulnerable I am to him.”
“He didn’t brand you,” Lex said, and I’d been so wrapped up in myself I only now noticed how tight his face was, as if every muscle had gone into lockdown. “He left an imprint on your mind.”
“How is that any different?”
Lex grimaced. “We call it a gift. The gift of awareness. Gideon made you less vulnerable to him, not more. He can’t make you forget anymore. He can’t ever make you forget anything.”
He said it like it was a good thing. But the tension that pulled at his jaw said otherwise.
I glanced at Gideon, thoroughly confused. “You can’t compel me anymore?”
“He can,” Lex answered. “But once you’re released from it, a reflection of the compelling command is burnt into your mind and you’ll remember what and how you were compelled.”
“So he can compel me to forget?” I ground out in frustration.
Lex shook his head. “As soon as you’ve forgotten, you’d be released from the compulsion and remember everything you’d just forgotten. The mind is complex; it will reject that kind of compulsion. The same goes for remembering anything false.”
I chewed on my lip, staring at Lex, trying to process that in the proper order. It felt a little like trying to fit the entire universe into a small box. And Lex wasn’t helping. He still wore that tight, grim expression that suggested this gift of awareness wasn’t nearly as good as it looked on paper.
“You don’t seem happy about it,” I said to him.
Gideon answered in a lazy drawl, “He’s not happy about the fact that the words I gave
you make up a part of our traditional wedding vow.”
Dear Lord. My eyes flashed to him. “Please tell me we’re not married now under some stupid ancient druid law.”
His mouth twitched. “You have a vivid imagination, but no, I don’t recall us getting married.”
Relief caved a hole inside my chest. Because seriously, anything was possible in this new world.
I looked at Lex and repeated, “So what aren’t you happy about?”
I refused to add, What aren’t you telling me? Because that, too, was just another part of my new reality.
Lex shoved a hand through his hair. “He left a permanent touch on your mind. I don’t like it.” His gaze clashed with Gideon as he brought his coffee and took a chair at the far end of the table. “But it does protect you from him to a certain extent. That’s always a good thing.”
So Gideon could no longer delete parts of me and rewrite them with his own story. If I ignored the whole branded-by-Gideon thing, I could live with it.
Which begged the question.
I looked at Gideon. “Why?”
He sipped on his coffee, watching me over the rim of the mug. “Forgetting I could compel you seemed to distress you. Remembering I could compel you seemed to distress you.” His brows shrugged, as if it were all arbitrary nonsense. “I chose the middle road.”
I tried to unpack that and didn’t get very far. It’s not like Gideon cared a fig about my distress levels.
“So how does this gift—” the term tasted off, like a grapefruit disguised as an orange, but brand tasted worse on my tongue “—work? What exactly happens when I’m released from compulsion?”
He smiled his Gideon smile. A cruel twist of his lips. “A demonstration is always the most efficient.”
“Gideon,” Lex said in warning.
“The Claimed is neutralized,” Gideon said. “It’s time for our little bird to fly the nest.”
I looked between them. “What’s going on?”
“The exterminator has given the all clear,” Gideon told me. “Your house is bug-free.”
A memory I couldn’t place came at me like a swell on an ocean, a whisper rising from my deep subconscious to the surface in the low baritone of Gideon’s commanding voice.
“Your house is infested with bugs and Lex invited you to stay with us until the exterminator gives the all clear. You think it’s a marvelous idea.”
The memories rolled in after. Not lost memories. I remembered everything I’d done, I just…I just seemed to be remembering them with a different brush. I could pick through the list and point at where they’d gone wrong.
Me asking Gideon, “You’re okay with me staying over?” Wrong response. When had I discovered the infestation? Who had called the exterminator? Why hadn’t I followed through to find out what was happening with my house?
Another swell brought another compelled command to me.
“While you’re staying here, do not leave the house unless Lex or I go with you.”
With that came the flood, all those times I’d been so damn co-dependent on Lex. Haley had called me out on it, but I’d never questioned it.
A breath that felt like putty caught in my windpipe.
This gift was a goddamn curse.
It was supposed to make me less vulnerable, but I’d never felt more vulnerable as I realized how easily, how extensively, I’d been manipulated. The last few days had been one long series of me adjusting and compensating to fit my life into Gideon’s command.
Who watched with mild curiosity as this all unfolded.
Lex had taken a step back and the way he was looking at me, he understood. He knew exactly how bad this was.
“Take me home.” I scooped my phone off the table and marched out the kitchen without another glance at either of them. “Now.”
It didn’t take long to gather my things and clear the bedroom of all traces of me. My phone vibrated as I was shoving my laptop into the small suitcase.
A text from Haley: Sandy is freaking out. I’m worried.
I sat on the edge of the bed and thumbed back a quick reply: Sorry. Tell him I’m not feeling well? All well. Speak later.
Oh shit. I shot off a second reply and re-sent it to Grant and Kenzie as well: Callie back home. All well.
I didn’t get up immediately. My fingers dug into the bedcovers with an ache that spread to my heart. I’d lost my virginity on this bed. I’d given my heart, body and soul to Lex on this bed. That wasn’t something I could pack into a suitcase and carry home with me. There were some traces of me that would always remain here, in this bedroom, in this house.
I loved Lex.
I’d made a pact with myself to trust and commit, to accept everything I could about his world.
I’d gone into an unseen battle with Gideon and won.
And yet somehow this still felt very much like a goodbye.
@hawk
Compulsion is like a cancer. It invades your mind. Jerks you around like a string puppet. Eats away at the foundation of your character.
I feel dirty.
I feel sick to my stomach.
How am I supposed to be okay with this?
When we pulled up outside my house, Lex climbed out the truck and hauled my suitcase from the backseat before I could.
“I’ve got it,” I said, wrestling it from him. I dropped the suitcase to the ground and extended the handle.
“Hit me.”
“What?” My gaze scrunched up to him.
He was leaning a hip against the body of the truck, one hand pulling through his hair. He looked tossed about and broody—a dreamy mess. “Punch me. Scream. Kick.”
I saw where this was going and yes, I was angry, but not at him, not really. And I wasn’t just angry. I was defeated. I was tired. “Thanks for the ride.”
He stamped a foot on top of the suitcase. “I’ll be anything you need me to be except for this. Don’t ask me to stand here and watch you walk away.”
“I’m not walking away.” I couldn’t meet his eyes. My gaze drifted lower. “I just need time.”
“Bullshit.” He shoved the suitcase with his foot, out from under my hand, and grabbed my arm.
“Lex,” I gasped, shocked at the rough-handling. Before I could recover, he’d taken it a step further, yanking me to him. “Stoppit.”
“No.” Keeping a firm grip on my arm, his other hand fisted into the hair at the base of my skull. There was a gritty look in his eyes I didn’t recognize.
His fist twisted, pulling my head up, tugging at the fine hairs by my nape.
The forceful aggression lit me like a bolt of white-hot lightning. He wasn’t hurting me, but he had me trapped and he wasn’t listening.
I had no voice.
I had no will.
“Don’t you dare!” I slammed a palm to his chest. It wasn’t enough. My other hand came up and suddenly I was hammering his chest. “Take your hands off me!”
My head roared, my heart thundering with fury and a useless ache, my fists pounding out the heat that was boiling my blood. “Let. Go. Let. Me. Go.”
His mouth came crushing down, hard, relentless, swallowing my cries. I no longer had the space to pack the punch my rage demanded. The heels of my palms shoved against his chest. I twisted—tried to twist away, but then I registered the press of his lips on mine.
Instead of punching and shoving, my fingers bunched into his t-shirt and his fist uncurled from my nape to spread gently into my hair.
My mouth softened around the kiss as the solid warmth of his body and touch and taste slowly melted through to the rattled ends of my angry outburst.
“Sorry,” he murmured, pulling back. “I didn’t know how else to reach you.”
He’d deliberately provoked me.
I should be mad, but I felt oddly lighter, and it wasn’t just the kiss. I laughed at myself. “Maybe I should invest in a punching bag.”
His hands settled on my hips, his gaze drinking me in. “What do you need
from me? How do I make this something you can live with?”
“Just keep doing what you do,” I said, the God’s honest truth. He had this way of giving me exactly what I needed before either of us knew I needed it. It had been this way from the moment we met, as if his soul had opened me like a book and read me from cover to cover.
He was the keeper of my darker truths.
He saw me.
He gave me a temper tantrum when I thought I needed time and space. He let me go when I couldn’t stay, but he never let me run and he never let me hide.
He was the home I hadn’t had in a very long time.
I took one of his hands from my hip to hold and my gaze fell, landing on his forearm.
“Angel blood,” he said. “I heal quickly.”
Not just quickly, but without the memory of a scar. That thought led to another and my lungs constricted. I stared at the missing scar, proof that he was no mere mortal. “Have you ever compelled me?”
“That’s a gray area,” he said. “No, I haven’t. But I didn’t stop Gideon either.”
My eyes flicked up to him. From what he’d told me, his own magic lay practically dormant while Gideon was all powerful. “Could you have stopped him?”
His fingers thread through mine, weaving our hands together as he looked at me with undisguised regret, his jaw hollowed with grim shadows. “I should have tried harder.”
At the very least, he could have warned me what was happening.
“Lex, I love you.” The words slipped from my heart and now that they were out there, I had no wish to take them back. I loved Lex. This was real. Not unflinching, and yet somehow also constant. “But I agree, you should have tried harder.”
“Say that again,” he said gruffly, the hand on my hip guiding me a little closer.
“I agree.” My lips twitched as I looked into his eyes, as my free arm wrapped around him. “You should have tried harder.”
“Not that.” His dragged a breathless kiss over my teasing lips. “The other thing.”
“I love you,” I whispered, and again as I recaptured his mouth. “I love you.”
My heart opened wide, taking him in completely. It was both beautiful and terrifying. Safe and vulnerable. Anchored in a harbor while the storm raged around us. The only way through was to hold steadfast while Lex’s world battered from the sides.
Torment: Dark Paranormal Romance (Eclipse Warlocks Book 1) Page 18