“No,” he answered plainly and then took a step closer to me, his shoes kissing the tips of mine. His gaze drifted over my shoulder and then darkened before swinging right back to me. “Have I mentioned how incredible you look tonight?”
I blinked at him and then looked down at myself. I was still wearing my school uniform, minus the blazer: a button up school shirt, pleaded skirt and my leather jacket. Something he’d seem me in countless times before, though judging by the fire brewing in his eyes, it was like he was seeing me in it for the first time.
“This old thing?” I answered jokingly in an attempt to lighten the mood and maybe even garner a real smile from him.
He took another step forward and pressed his body against mine, leaning me back against the car as his hand came up and brushed my hair over my shoulder. “I need you, angel. Right now.” His lips were on my neck before I could produce an answer, his mouth peppering my neck with violent kisses that reeked of a prelude.
My stomach swirled with heat as he brought his mouth up to my lips and kissed me. There was nothing soft about the kiss, though. It was rough and hot and completely unrestrained.
I had no idea where this sudden intense need was coming from, but I kind of liked it. I pulled back, breathless and wanting for more. “I think you should take me home.”
He gave his head a tiny shake. “I can’t wait that long.” His eyes were as dark as sin as he ripped another kiss from my lips and then kicked my legs apart with his foot. “I have to have you now.” A soft gasp escaped my lips as he slipped his hand under my skirt and began stroking me over my underwear.
Holy shit balls!
“Dominic…” I gripped the top of his shoulders as I tried to summon the mental clarity to tell him to stop—to remind him that we were out in public—but I couldn’t concentrate when he was touching me like that.
“Yes, angel?” He licked and then nipped the delicate skin below my ear as his hand cupped the base of my head.
“We can’t…do this…here…” My fingernails dug into his back as warmth shoot down my legs and weakened them.
“Then tell me to stop.”
“Okay…” His lips came back up to claim my mouth again and I immediately forgot what I was going to say. The way he was kissing me…playing with me—so demanding, so fervid, it was making my head spin with lust and confusion and need. And the bastard knew it too.
“I saw you with him earlier,” he whispered against my lips, his fingers still moving against my core, his body enclosing mine possessively. “I must say, you looked quite cozy together.”
I meant to say something back to him—to halt this conversation altogether, but then he moved my underwear to the side, and everything became fuzzy.
My head dropped back as he picked up his pace, the buildup swelling deliciously in the pit of my belly. Goosebumps prickled over my skin as his teeth scraped over my chin and then my jaw. His fingers never missing a beat as he ran his tongue down the front of my neck and then along my collarbone.
“Does he know that you’re mine?” he asked against my neck and then sunk his teeth into my skin before quickly withdrawing them. I knew right away that his bite had nothing to do with feeding.
He was marking me.
“Dominic, don’t…” I whimpered, but I couldn’t seem to finish the sentence. I was too close to the edge.
“Don’t what, angel?” I felt him smile against my neck as he continued to work my core.
So close. “Don’t…stop.”
A dark chuckle rumbled against my throat when he answered, “I wasn’t planning on it.”
The delicious pressure in my belly exploded as waves of heat rippled out through my center, making my body shudder and my knees crumble like sand. I would have probably hit the ground had it not been for Dominic holding me up in his arms, his fingers still controlling my orgasm as though he wanted to draw it out as long as physically possible.
“He’ll never make you feel the way I do,” he said as I looked up and met his stony eyes, my breaths still coming out in quick, short bursts, my cheeks flushed with heat. “He’ll never make you cum the way I do.”
Nausea sliced through my stomach, abruptly ending the rain of pleasure he’d just poured down on me. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I railed and then shoved him back a step.
He laughed, the menacing sound of it ricocheting around me as he quickly recovered and then pushed me back against the car, hard, his eyes darkening to ink as he knocked the air out of my lungs and pinned me against the door.
It took me a serious minute to process what the hell just happened. “What are you doing?! You’re hurting me!” I cried out, shock and panic throttling my voice.
“Don’t pretend you don’t like it,” he spat, his voice as cold as ice as he gripped my chin and then lowered his face to mine. “We both know you get off on the pain,” he said and then slid his tongue across my lips.
The boney claws of fear reached down into my stomach and yanked it up into my chest. “Dominic, stop it! You’re scaring me!” I tried to pull away from the car, from him, but his body was like a sheet of concrete keeping me in place.
“Funny you should say that,” he said, his voice almost saccharine now. “Because you should be scared.”
Anxiety slashed through my insides as I searched his face for answers, for an explanation, for any sign of the person I knew—the person I loved, but I couldn’t find a damn thing there. His face was blank. Emotionless. Cold. And I instantly knew something very, very fucking bad had happened.
There was nothing in his dark gaze that I recognized; nothing that spoke of the love he had for me. The spark in his eyes was gone. The playful smirk from his lips had disappeared. Even the creases around his eyes when he smiled at me had been abandoned. Everything I loved about him appeared to be gone and a part of me had already jumped ahead and figured out why, but the other part of me, the part of me that had given him my heart, needed to hear it from his own mouth.
“What did she do to you?” Tears stung the corner of my eyes.
“She made me all better.” His lips curled into a beautiful smile, but there was no joy there. It was just a façade, a mask he’d slipped on for show. “That’s the thing about emotions. They have a habit of always getting in the way of what really matters—of sticking their noses where they don’t belong.” He brushed his thumb across my lips and I flinched from his touch. “Take me for example. How many times have I let those pesky emotions get in my way? Hm? And for what? For you?” he asked, speaking to me like I wasn’t worth the gum under his shoe.
Bile sloshed in the pit of my belly, threatening to spew out of me. “This isn’t you.”
“No. That wasn’t me,” he snapped back and then grinned. “Lucky for me, I have the ability to just turn it all off like a light switch. Just like that,” he said and snapped his finger beside my ear, his tone absurdly casual.
“She made you shut off your emotions,” I realized as ice cold dread descended over me.
“Every single one of them.” He flashed a smile that made my stomach heave.
His emotions were shut off. Emotions like love and compassion and concern. The very emotions that made it possible for a Revenant to fall in love with a Slayer in the first place. But they were all gone now, every single one of them, leaving nothing but the cold-hearted demon in its place.
Realizing I was in serious trouble, I rammed my hands into his chest and tried to make a run for it, but he quickly grabbed me by the neck and then slammed me down against the car. My head smacked against the unforgiving steel as he slapped his other hand over my mouth to keep me from screaming out in pain. Little black dots peppered my vision as the starlight sky swirled its wicked intentions above head.
“I wonder what hurts you more?” he asked, his rock-hard body back against mine, slowly smothering the air and hope out of me. “The fact that she erased my feelings for you, or the realization that you’ll never get your cure for Romeo.”
I shook my head, panicked tears streaking down my temples. “Don’t do this, Dominic,” I pleaded, my heart busted wide open and my body overwhelmingly unprepared to fight him. “I love you—you love me. You have to fight this!”
A gut-wrenching laugh ripped out of him as his expression fell, leaving nothing but grim edges and shuttered eyes on his face. Dominic Huntington as I knew him was gone and in his place was something far darker and more dangerous that anything my nightmares could ever conceive of.
Without pause or warning, he snapped his fangs out and then tore into my neck as if to prove a point. Searing hot pain shot out from the wound as I tried to buck him off me, but we both knew it was no use.
The second his saliva reached my bloodstream, my entire body was inundated with mind-numbing pleasure that subdued even the fieriest of wills to fight, and all I could do was hold onto him as he feasted on me until I was nothing more than boneless putty in his punishing hands.
The seconds turned to minutes and then time disappeared altogether.
The last thing I remembered was wondering if this was finally going to be the bite that killed me. That perhaps this time, he wouldn’t even so much as bother to try and stop himself.
And then everything went black.
“Open your eyes,” he commanded, and my eyes fluttered open without my permission. I wasn’t sure how much time had gone by or how much he had drank, but my body was unmistakably spent.
His gaze roamed over my face as his fingers squeezed my jaw, holding my head still as he dissected me with his eyes. A cruel smile spread across his face letting me know that he enjoyed whatever it was that he had seen there.
“I’ll be seeing you, angel,” he sang and then let me go.
My body dropped to the ground like a ton of bricks; my consciousness leaving me just as quickly as he did.
25. IN THE ARMS OF AN ANGEL
I woke up to the sound of thunder rioting in the distance. It only took me a faction of a second to remember what had happened to me and then to realize that I was no longer outside of All Saints where Dominic had callously left me. I was inside. In someone’s bed. A bed I remembered all too well.
Panic gripped my insides as I gasped and then shot up from the bed. Trace immediately jumped up from the corner armchair he’d been slumped in and rushed to the foot of the bed, his palms out to calm me. He hesitated for a moment as though he wanted to come closer but then thought better of it.
“It’s okay, you’re safe,” he said, his voice gentle but reassuring. “You’re in my house.”
Obviously, he didn’t know that I’d already been to his house before and recognized his bedroom the second my eyes had opened. I hadn’t gasped because I didn’t know where I was; I gasped because I did.
“How long have I been here?” I choked out, my voice raw and my throat sore from where Dominic had squeezed it.
“A couple of hours.” His jaw muscle tightened as he looked me over. “Do you remember what happened?”
I nodded that I did, my hand instinctively moving to my neck as if to assess the damage, but there was something covering the wound already. My eyes locked on Trace’s.
“I patched it up as best as I could,” he said, grimacing as his eyes dropped to where my hand had gone. “The bite was pretty bad. It’s probably going to take a while to heal.”
The way he said it, the way he was looking at me, it was as though he were talking about a gaping hole in my neck and not a bite. And then I remembered the way Dominic tore into me and realized there probably was a gaping hole.
I shook my head and looked down at myself, wincing. My head was pounding, my entire body hurt like hell and my shirt was covered in dried blood, completely soaked from the collar to the sleeve. But none of that hurt as much as knowing that it was Dominic who did this to me.
“I washed most of the blood off your skin. I would’ve changed your shirt too but…” His words tapered off into nothingness.
I rotated my arm, gauging how much blood I had lost—how much damage he had done to me. There was so much blood. My throat tightened as a strangled sob begged to escape but I promptly shoved it back down into wherever the hell it had tried to come from. Trace stepped forward, worry lining the corners of his eyes, but I gave him a quick head shake.
I couldn’t be here. Not with him. Not like this.
“I need to go,” I said as I threw the comforter off my legs and jumped out of his bed, searching frantically for my jacket and shoes. Me and Trace alone anywhere was a horrible idea, but alone in his room and vulnerable after being attacked—that was a recipe for all hell to break loose.
“No—you need to lay down,” he said, working the muscle in his jaw as he watched me with frustrated eyes. “Do you have any idea how much blood you lost?”
“I’m fine. I’ve had worst. Where are my shoes?”
He frowned as though unimpressed with my assessment. “They’re by the door,” he finally answered, his eyes trailing me as I rushed across his room. “Can I ask you something?”
“Ask away,” I said and then bent down to untie my shoelaces.
“Did you know the guy that did this to you?” he asked, leaning against his desk with his arms folded across his chest.
I looked up and met his piercing eyes. “Why are you asking me that? What does it matter?” I answered, not following why it remotely mattered.
“Because he was able to stop,” he pointed out, an obvious fact since I wasn’t, you know, dead. “I’m guessing he’s someone you know.” His tone was contrite and gave nothing away.
“Someone I used to know.” My thoughts flew to Dominic and those cruel empty eyes. The way he spoke to me. The way he threw me against the car like I meant nothing to him. Tidbits from the night careened in my mind like clips from a movie reel and suddenly the room was dipping and spinning around me.
I gripped the door jamb to steady myself and catch my breath.
Trace took two giant steps forward and then stopped as if he knew exactly where the line was between us. “Does he know where you live?” he asked, hovering a few feet from me and wearing that familiar unreadable expression on his face.
I nodded regretfully and then dropped my eyes, focusing on my shoes as I willed myself not to pass out.
“Has he ever been inside your house?” he asked, his voice taking on a strange edge.
My blood turned to ice as I realized what he was really asking me—if I’d invited him inside.
Oh, my god.
My stomach heaved as the full scope of the shitstorm I was in hit me. How was I going to be able to go back to my house now? What if he was there waiting for me? What if he came after me while I was asleep? I’d given him free reign to enter the Blackburn Estate, and there was literally nothing I could do to take that back now.
This was all kinds of messed up.
I straightened and then flopped back against the wall next to the door. “My head hurts.”
Something flashed through those gorgeous eyes of his, but I couldn’t tell if it was pity or concern or…something else. I squeezed my eyes shut and flopped my head back against the door, accidently hitting the bruised area and then wincing from the pain.
“Why don’t you lay back down for a bit.” His feet shuffled forward again if he wanted to help usher me to the bed but stopped abruptly as I looked up and met his eyes. “The bed is all yours, Jemma. I can sleep in the other room,” he offered, his voice softer than I’d ever heard it before.
I bite the inside of my cheek and quickly nodded. I didn’t even bother pretending to think about it. “Okay.”
“Okay,” he mirrored, gazing at me for a moment before stalking off to his dresser to pull out a t-shirt and pair of gray jogging pants from the top drawer. “You can change into these—if you want. I’ll go get you some Advil for that headache.”
I nodded again and then watched as he placed the clothes on the edge of his bed and then crossed the room to where I was standing by the door. His eyes were
trained on mine as he approached as though he were waiting for me to stop him or shrink back from his proximity. He opened the door and then paused beside me.
My skin hummed as if he’d reached out and hugged me and for the first time in forever, I didn’t bother fighting it. My body ached something terrible and that—that felt really nice.
“Do you need anything else while I’m down there?” he asked, his deep gravelly voice replaced with something much gentler and disarming. “Something to eat maybe?”
I shook my head at him. “You’ve already done more than enough,” I said, feeling guilty for even being here in the first place. Guilty but also really grateful.
He studied me for a beat and then nodded before leaving the room, making sure to close the door behind himself. As soon as the door shut, the air rushed out of my lungs from a breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding.
As awful as I felt for being in his room and putting him out, I didn’t really have anywhere else to go. I knew I needed some time to sort out what the hell had happened between me and Dominic, and what I was going to do about it, but I couldn’t do that if I had to sleep with one eye open at the Blackburn Estate. I hadn’t even healed from our last encounter and was certain I wouldn’t fair well in another one so soon.
I pushed off the wall and moved to the foot of his bed. I quickly unbuttoned my blouse and peeled it off before slipping on Trace’s t-shirt. It was a band t-shirt—the same band that had sang the song he’d dedicated to me all those months ago.
My heart tumbled into my stomach. I seriously couldn’t catch a break.
Pulling in a deep breath, I unbuttoned my skirt and then let it fall to the ground around my feet before stepping into the gray jogging pants. They were a couple of sizes too big on me, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a quick pull of the drawstrings. Scooping up my clothes from the floor, I placed them in a neat pile beside the nightstand and then climbed back into the bed. Trace’s bed.
Incarnate: A Dark Paranormal Romance (The Marked Saga Book 5) Page 21