But neither had my feelings for Trace.
There was no denying that my heart was torn. It belonged to two completely different guys whom I loved in two completely different ways. Doing or saying anything came with consequences because no matter what I did, someone was bound to get hurt. Someone would be betrayed and get left behind.
It was an awful position to be in, but I didn’t know how to get out of it. I wasn’t even sure how I’d gotten into it in the first place. I’d never set out to fall in love with two people at the same time and I sure as hell didn’t know how to stop loving either one of them now.
“It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” I whispered, though mostly to myself. My back was still turned to him as I watched the water streak its way down the glass, blurring out the outside world as it had done so many times before.
“No, I suppose not.”
Even though my feelings for Dominic had started long before the summer, I would not have made that move towards him if Trace had still been alive. If for no other reason than my loyalty to Trace. But then he died, and everything was different. Left with no other choice, I’d found a way to move on—I had found a way to survive without him.
And now he was back.
And everything was a mess.
I turned to face Dominic; my arms folded tightly across my chest. “What am I going to do now?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “I can’t answer that for you, angel.”
He couldn’t, and it wasn’t fair to ask him. I knew that, but I’d ask anyway. “What if he never remembers who I am? What we were?” A heaviness pressed against my chest. “What if he does?”
What would Trace think of me if he realized that I was the one who took his life and that I’d ran right into Dominic’s arms the moment he was out of the picture? He would think I was a monster, that’s what. A total heartless bitch.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said as though he could read my mind—my face, my feelings.
“I’m not sure I did anything right either.”
A flicker of pain flashed across his face as though my words were a loaded weapon aimed directly at him.
“That’s not what I meant,” I quickly defended myself, my feelings for him, but I wasn’t even sure if I believed it myself anymore. Had I done the right thing? And if so, why did it all feel so wrong now?
“Don’t placate me, angel.” He lifted his chin and met my eyes again head-on. “I think you said precisely what you meant to say,” he charged, and this time I didn’t deny it.
He pushed off the wall and straightened his back as if to steel himself. His eyes darkened into unreadable pools of black and I instantly felt the void in them. “If it’s any consolation, I already know how this ends. You don’t have to dance around it.”
I couldn’t help but flinch at his words. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He stared across the room at me for a long moment as though he needed to get one final look at me, and then he shuffled off to the wet bar. I already knew he was going to arm himself with liquid courage, and that was never a good sign.
With his back still turned to me, he finally answered. “I’m not so naive as to think that I’m going to ride off into the sunset with you. You are a Descendant—human for the most part. And I am not,” he continued flatly.
“Okay…” I dragged the word out slowly, staring at his back as he poured his drink. “And your point is?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “None of that is news, Dominic. I’m already well aware of what we are and what we aren’t.”
He turned to face me with his glass in hand and no semblance of emotion on his face. “Then you know as much as I do that this thing between us, whatever you choose to define it as, will come to an inevitable end. With or without Romeo in the picture.”
My bottom lip dropped at his words. At the frosty temperature in which he delivered them. What the hell just happened? “Are you breaking up with me?” I finally managed to ask.
He laughed outright. “You’d have to first allow me to be your boyfriend in order for me to break up with you,” he answered tartly.
“You know what I mean.” I started towards him, though my steps were cautious in a way that they hadn’t been with hum for a very long time. “Are you saying you don’t want to see me anymore?”
His hard façade faltered for a moment and I swore I could see grief there. Shaking his head, he said, “You know those words would never pass through my lips.”
“Then what are you saying to me?” I asked, my tone harder now, angrier.
“I’m saying I’m a Revenant, angel.”
I threw my hands in the air. “Again, we’ve already established that.”
“Granted, but have you established what that means for your life?” he challenged.
I opened my mouth to answer him, but nothing came out.
“It means I cannot marry you. I cannot give you children. I cannot give you the life you want nor the life you deserve,” he said sharply. “That is a fact, angel, no matter how much it pains me to admit it. Romeo could give you all of that, and if not him, someone else. But not me. It could never be me.” His voice broke off as though the admission were too painful to utter. “I will lose you in the end. It is as inevitable as the changing seasons.”
“So, what, you’re a Seer now, too?” I snapped. My throat was bone-dry. I could barely swallow.
“It doesn’t take a Seer to know how this will end,” he said as he polished off his glass and slammed it down hard against the counter. “Anyone with eyes can see that.”
My chest tightened as I took in the defeat circling his eyes. He had already mapped out the entire course of our relationship and decided it was a dead end. No matter which way he looked at it, we were doomed. I could see it in his expression; hear it in his voice. Because Dominic was a Revenant and that meant he couldn’t give me all the things I’d dreamed of as a little girl. Things he believed I deserved to have. And while he may have been a lot of things—bad things even—I knew he loved me with the entirety of his heart. I knew he wanted me to have everything I’d always dreamed of and even the things I had yet to conceive of, even if that meant he had to let me go.
He’d done it before—just like he did over the summer—and I knew he’d do it again in a heartbeat. But I’d be damned if I let him make that decision for me. I wasn’t that little girl anymore, and my dreams had long since changed.
“Well, I don’t accept that.” I looked up and met his eyes unflinchingly, my heart almost as steady as my hands were.
“Yes, well, you frequently have a difficult time accepting reality,” he answered bitingly, but I didn’t let it affect me. He was trying to distance himself, to push me away and protect his heart from what he saw as an inevitable end.
And I could take it.
“That may be so, but you’re still forgetting one very important detail,” I pointed out as I made my way over to him.
“And what might that be?” His gaze was fixed on me with all the fire and intensity of a solar storm.
“You’re assuming you know what I want,” I said and then closed the remaining space between us. “That I want a marriage and children. That I want to ride off into the sunset with prince charming.”
“Don’t you?” he challenged; his eyebrows raised in doubt.
“I don’t know what I want anymore,” I admitted, standing so close to him that I could smell his delicious cologne as though it were on my own skin. “I used to want that—the big wedding, the kids, the white picket fence, the whole nine yards. But now…” I shook my head, thinking about it. “Everything’s different now.”
The truth was, I had no idea what the future looked like for me. The thought of raising children in this world, of dooming them to the same fate that I was doomed to terrified me to no ends. So, I didn’t often think about it. Instead, I focused on the here and now. On what I was and the job I was expected to perform. And I was completely okay with that b
ecause anything beyond that was too scary and muddled for me to make sense of at this particular point in my life.
“I don’t know if I want that life anymore,” I finally finished, and it was as close to the truth as I could get. “And if I don’t know what I want, then you couldn’t possibly know either.”
He slipped his hands into his front pockets and furrowed his brows. “Then you’ve changed your mind.” He said it as though it were a bad thing—as though it was exactly what he’d been afraid of.
“As of right now, I’m undecided.”
“Because of me?”
I shrugged. “Yes…and no.”
He arched his brow at me. “It’s one or the other, angel.”
But it wasn’t. It was both. “I’m not the same person I was when I first came here, Dominic, and being with you contributed to that, but so did a shit tone of other things.”
He dropped his head at my admission. “The last thing I ever wanted was for you to have to give anything up.” His voice was raw and drenched with the kind of emotion I rarely ever heard from him. “That was never my intention, angel. You must know that.”
“I do.” I touched my palm to his cheek, momentarily basking in the silky smoothness of his skin. “If I give anything up, it won’t be because of you, or Trace, or anyone else for that matter,” I said, trying my best not to make my words sound so harsh and uncaring. This wasn’t his cross to bear and I needed to make sure he understood that. “It’ll be because I decided it was best for me.”
He thought about it for a long moment and then asked, “Is that a promise?” His eyes searched mine for the answer—for the truth of the matter.
I titled my head to the side and smiled. “Do you need it to be?”
“I believe I do.”
“Then it’s a promise,” I agreed even though I was fairly certain I’d never have to reach that fork in the road. “At this point, I don’t even know if I’ll make it to my eighteenth birthday,” I admitted, my own voice a little softer now. “And I’m okay with that.” I knew what being a Slayer meant and I’d come to terms with it. With all of it.
His expression pinched at my words and I laughed softly. I knew he didn’t like hearing me talk that way, but I couldn’t help it. It was the unavoidable truth, and I’d fully grasped that now.
What I couldn’t grasp was the idea of bringing innocent children into this world—into this life—and then leaving them to face it on their own the way my mother was forced to leave me. I’d grown a hell of a lot stronger over the last few months, and I could take a whole lot of pain and suffering. I could even take death and total abandonment.
But I couldn’t take that.
I’d never be okay with that.
“I’m tired of talking about this,” I said, letting my hand fall from his face to his shoulder.
“Forgive me. I’m sure you’re exhausted,” he said and then stepped back to cut the lights at the bar, leaving us draped in the light of the flickering flames from the fireplace. “Let’s get you to bed.”
He held his arm out to allow me to go first but I didn’t move an inch towards the hallway. Instead, I stepped closer to him, splaying my hands against his abdomen and pressing my body against his, softly but with intention.
I may have been tired of the conversation, but I wasn’t ready to go to sleep just yet. “I’m not tired yet.”
He slipped his hands into his pockets and swallowed hard. “Angel—”
“Don’t angel me, Dominic.” I pulled his hands from his pockets and gently wrapped them around my waist. “You have promises to keep.”
“Yes, but under the circumstances, I don’t think—”
“How long are you going to keep turning me down before I stop asking?” I cut in, my tone warning yet seductive all at once, though I wasn’t sure how I’d accomplished the feat. “Haven’t you run out of excuses yet?”
He slammed his eyes shut. “I’m trying to be a better man for you.”
In that instant, everything became impossibly clear to me and suddenly, I knew exactly what he had been doing: He’d been turning me down to protect me, and he’d been doing it since before I left for the summer. First, it was from my grief, and then it was because he knew that Trace was back from the dead.
He didn’t want me to do anything he thought I might regret later on, and while I appreciated the sentiment, I was so far beyond that point now that I couldn’t even see it from where I was standing.
“You already are a better man,” I said and then smiled as he met my eyes.
Trace may have been back from the dead, but me and him could never be. I knew that now. As heartbreaking as the realization was, it didn’t change what I felt for Dominic. If anything, it just pushed me further into his arms.
Licking my lips, I pressed myself all the way against him and made sure there was no confusion about what I wanted. “I want to be with you, Dominic. I don’t care what happens tomorrow or next year. I want you right now, and I’m not moving an inch until you give me what I know we both want.”
10. KISS IT BETTER
Dominic stood across from me in the den, the light from the fireplace dancing languidly around his silhouette as I gazed up into his onyx eyes. My body prickled with heat just looking at him. It never mattered how hard I had tried to resist the alluring darkness of his eyes, or how badly the world was disintegrating around me. I could always hear it calling out me—calling out to my own darkness and drawing me in like a demon to the underworld.
For that reason, and so many others, I had long since stopped resisting the call altogether.
My hands moved slowly up the length of his torso, basking in the feel of the hard edges and lean muscles I knew loomed just beneath the fabric of his thin black shirt. My fingers twitched, aching to feel his skin against my own again. To feel his body pressed against mine as I let him enter the most sacred part of my being.
My focus remained fixed on the task at hand as my fingers eagerly moved to the top button of his shirt, popping it out of its loop and then moving down to the next one until every last button was unfastened. I looked up at him and felt my pulse quicken as I met his sultry eyes.
He was watching me, savoring me like a fine wine that he longed for but never allowed himself to fully indulge in. It was the same way he always looked at me. Like I was the last drink of water in a barren desert of tumbleweed and sand.
Wetting my lips, I pulled the bottom of his shirt out of his slacks and then moved my hands to his shoulders, dragging the shirt down his arms and letting it fall silently to the floor as if to bear witness to all of the things I was about to do to him.
Heat pooled in my belly as I grazed my hands over the grooves of his chest and then the ripples of his abdomen before stopping at the hem of his pants. My eyes flicked up to his again as I grasped the small button between my fingers and pushed it through the loop.
His hands caught mine before I could finish bringing down the zipper. “Are you sure this is what you want, angel?” he asked hoarsely, as though it were taking every ounce of his strength to stop me. “There’s no going back after this.”
Without taking my eyes off his, I pulled one of my hands free and then slid it into his pants. “I know.”
He tipped his head back slightly and clenched his jaw as I let my hand run over the length of him. Pushing up on my toes, I caught his bottom lip between my teeth and sucked it into my mouth, drawing his head back down to me as I kissed him with the force of an all-consuming hurricane.
A deep, primal growl sounded at the back of his throat as he grabbed my ass and hoisted me into his arms, wrapping both my legs around his torso as he walked me backwards and then pushed me up against the bar counter. I bite down on my lip to keep from crying out, afraid that the slightest wrong move or sound might send him running.
Instead, I entwined my arms around his neck and deepened the kiss, parting his lips as I slipped my tongue inside his mouth and tasted him. My body took on a life of its own
, desperate and starving for relief as I grinded myself against his hips, pushing as hard against him as I could manage.
There was no real way around it. I needed to be with him—right here and right now and in every sense of the word. In that moment, I needed it more than I needed blood or life or even the air I was breathing.
His hands moved from my butt to the edges of my tank top as I tightened my legs around his waist and held myself up. Without even so much as a warning, his hands fisted into the bottom of my shirt and then ripped it wide open as though it were made of nothing more than tissue paper. The fact that it was my favorite tank top barely even registered.
His mouth came down against the swell of my breast as his hands slid around my waist and then up to my back. With what felt like a single flick of his finger, my bra had come undone, falling forward between us like the boundary that no longer existed. His mouth covered the delicate part of my breast, licking and sucking the way only he knew how to do. My head dropped back as heat rippled through my veins, picking up strength as it spread through me like a fast-moving storm.
This was everything; Everything I had wanted and the only thing I needed right now.
I sucked in a breath of air as he caught my nipple between his teeth and looked up at me. His eyes were glowing with fire and dangerous intentions, and it only made the heat burn hotter.
He let it go and then buried his face in my chest again, ravishing me like I was the air to his desiccated lungs.
“Tell me how much you want me,” he commanded, his voice low and silky as he ran his tongue from my breast to my neckline, scorching my skin as he moved.
I could barely speak. My lips were trembling with need. Everything in me was trembling with need, and he knew it too. He always knew it. “Please, Dominic. Don’t make me beg,” I whimpered. “I need you…”
Incarnate: A Dark Paranormal Romance (The Marked Saga Book 5) Page 9