Unfortunately, I made it all but seven steps before Dominic grabbed me by my hair and jerked me backward. In one swift move he had whirled me around and then tackled me to the ground, knocking the air out of my lungs yet again. Laughter bubbled out of him as he sat on my waist and straddled my hips, his eyes flaring with vicious excitement.
My stomach churned as I realized that this was fun for him.
I was making it goddamn fun for him. “Get the hell off me, Dominic!” I yelled, anger pushing itself to the forefront of my emotions as I tried to shove him away.
“Aw. Don’t play hard to get now,” he cooed as he caught my wrist and slammed them onto the ground above my head. “We both remember how easy it was to get you the first time around,” he said and then dropped his voice to a deriding snarl. “If memory serves me, Romeo was barely in the ground before I was inside you, wasn’t he?”
Another strangled cry escaped me as I tried to buck against him. His concrete body barely budged.
“You’re hurting me,” I growled as I continued to fight against his hold.
Lowering his face to mine, he smiled. “Isn’t that the way you like it, angel?”
My cheeks burned hot with shame and resentment.
Bringing my wrists together, he clamped his long fingers around both my hands, mashing them together in a vice-grip, and then brought his other hand to my face. I winced as he ran the back of his knuckles against my cheek.
“Don’t touch me!” I gritted out, thrusting my hips upward in a pathetic attempt to throw him off me.
“What’s the matter, angel lips?” He slipped his hand under my shirt, his thumb grazing against my abdomen as he climbed up to my bra. “Don’t you like it rough anymore?” he asked and then painfully squeezed my breast.
Seething, I ripped one of my hands free and slapped him across the face. A rush of vindication surged into me as a small plume of blood blossomed on his bottom lip.
Blinking at me, he swiped his thumb across his bloodied lip and then licked the blood off his finger. “Well, that wasn’t very nice, was it?” Winding his arm back, he cracked me across the cheek so hard I thought my jaw had dislocated.
My hand rushed up to my stinging cheek and my vision bled red. With my one free hand, I balled a fist and started wailing on him, hammering down hit after hit like a possessed machine gun that had zero aim. I wasn’t even sure if I was landing any of the hits, but that didn’t stop me from pounding my fist against his body.
“Fuck you!” I bellowed, my anger and disgust for this empty monster in front of me broiling to the surface. This wasn’t the Dominic I knew. I didn’t know who this person was anymore, but I hated him with everything inside me.
He grabbed my wrist again and slammed it back onto the ground beside my ear. “Fuck me?” he asked, his eyes darkening into coal as he loomed over me. “I bet that’s precisely what you want to do, isn’t it?”
Frenzied laughter burst out of me as though I’d completely lost touch with reality. “You think I want you?” I scoffed, refusing to let him know that the pain he was causing me was anything more than skin deep. “You think I spend even a second of the day thinking about you?”
“Has Romeo managed to fuck me out of you already?” He clicked his tongue in disappointment.
“You make me sick,” I said and then spit in his face.
Stone-cold eyes pierced my soul. “Well, that’s unfortunate,” he purred and then licked my spit from around his mouth, slow and deliberate, like he was enjoying the taste. “I suppose we’ll just have to see what we can do about fixing that then, won’t we?” he said and then released my hands.
For a second, I was confused thinking that maybe he was going to let me go; that maybe he’d had enough fun for the night. Instead, he brought his hands to my chest, grabbed the seam of my blouse and then ripped it wide open.
Ice-cold realization hit me as I watched the buttons scatter all over the forest floor.
“Dominic, please—don’t do this,” I begged, my voice bordering around hysterical as I pushed at his chest and dug my heels into the ground, trying to dislodge myself from his weight. “You’re going to regret this. This isn’t you. You love me!” I cried out in desperation, trying to remind him of who he was; of what we were.
He froze for a moment and then shook his head as though he were dispersing a haze of smoke from his mind. “You’re right.”
“What?” My chin quivered as I looked up at his through glassy eyes.
“I do love you, and my goodness, this isn’t me.”
My heart came to a complete stop. Was he remembering? Were his emotions slowly coming back to him? Had I finally breached that impossible wall that had been erected around the heart of the man I had loved and craved so vigorously?
An evil grin spread across his face. “You’re as gullible as you are tasty.”
“Dominic!” My scream echoed through the deserted forest as he bared his teeth and then drove his face down into my neck, his teeth ripping into my flesh without the faintest semblance of mercy.
A throbbing, searing pain exploded from my neck and then radiated outward, touching every part of my body as though I had invited it to. Within seconds, his venom was in my system, burning through my bloodstream like a wildfire as my panic and will to fight hopelessly melted away from me, my treacherous body betraying me once again.
I vaguely remembered thinking he was probably going to rape me, or drain me, or possibly worse, but even those thoughts slipped away as I lay there motionless and placid, his pretty poison racing its way through my system and once again filling me with that unappeasable darkness that I both loved and hated in equal parts.
29. NOTHING BREAKS LIKE A HEART
It hadn’t taken very long for my will to fight him off to completely evaporate. Even as I listened to the sounds of blood oozing and fabric ripping, both were just fleeting thoughts that passed through my brain as quickly as they had entered. The bite was doing exactly what it was designed to do—what it always did—but inside, I was screaming out for help.
Inside, I was slowly dying at the hands of the man I once loved.
My gaze focused in on a sliver of moonlight peeking out from between the towering trees, silently wishing that my consciousness would leave me soon enough. I didn’t want to face what he was doing to me—what he was going to do. I wanted to disappear inward to that place I so often hid and feel nothing but the ecstasy of his numbing prison.
The faint sound of rustling branches caught my attention as swells of poisonous pleasure rolled over my body in paralyzing waves. I imagined a little forest critter watching the scene unfold from the bushes before scurrying to safety—far away from the dangerous predator that was now hunting these grounds.
A vague feeling of my skirt being bunched up around my hips had gently tapped against my subconscious, asking me to look; to acknowledge the monster before me, but I firmly slammed the door shut.
Blackness peppered my vision as my eyes rolled back, the world around me slowly fading into nonsentience. I welcomed it, as I had so many times before, but this time for a completely different reason. I didn’t want to sink into Dominic, to fade into his secret place where nothing hurt, and nothing mattered.
This time, I wanted to fade away from him.
Another rustle sounded from the bushes, followed by the sound of shoes slapping against the packed forest floor. The cold air brushed against my naked chest, jolting my eyes open to the sky and outline of trees. Dominic was nowhere in sight. A strange commotion of noise and grunts drew my attention from the sky. Weak and disoriented, I rolled my head to the left and squinted through the watery blur.
Two forms were hurling over each other in the mess of dirt and crunchy leaves, arms flailing and fists swinging, though I couldn’t make out anything more than that. The only thing that registered in that moment was that someone had come—someone had knocked Dominic off of me and was now fighting to subdue him.
Digging deep inside, I pulle
d together every last morsel of my strength I had left and somehow managed to drag my semi-paralyzed body backward until I was resting against a tree. Wiping the tears from my eyes, I peered harder at the two forms until my eyes could make sense of what I was seeing.
Gabriel.
A strange whimper of relief passed from my lips and Gabriel snapped his head in my direction. The brief distraction had given Dominic an opening to wrap his forearm around Gabriel’s neck and then body slam him into the ground. Dominic scrambled backward, putting some distance between the two as his biting laughter rang out around us.
“Fancy seeing you out here, brother,” panted Dominic as he wiped my blood from the corner of his mouth. “Let me guess. You were out hunting your dinner?”
Gabriel slowly lifted himself from the ground and then straightened to his full height. His sharp, lethal gaze never moving from Dominic.
“Give it up, brother. You’re not strong enough to stop me and certainly not with a diet of rabbit blood,” he mocked, looking at him with a mixture of amusement and disgust.
Gabriel kicked off the ground and charged him, bowling him down as though he were made entirely of straw. Dominic flew backward and landed on his ass, though he quickly jumped up and regained his footing. The look of shock in Dominic’s eyes was priceless, though it quickly faded away as he narrowed his eyes at his brother and then grinned.
“You’ve been feeding off humans,” said Dominic, and it wasn’t a question. His gaze swung to me and I immediately recoiled against the tree. “Or perhaps something more than human,” he added, facing his brother again.
The accusation on Dominic’s face was as clear as the guilt that was splattered all over Gabriel’s face.
“Oh, how far you have fallen.”
“Not as far as you, Dominic.”
“Perhaps,” he agreed easily, as though it had no effect on him whatsoever. “But I think you will come to find that it’s a far greater drop from the top, dear brother.”
“Save the sermon for someone else, Dominic. You’ve gone too far this time,” gritted Dominic as he reached into the back of his jacket and took a small step toward my attacker. My heart leapt up into my throat because I knew exactly what he was doing. He was closing his fingers around the handle of his stake and preparing to turn it on his brother. “You’re not going to get away with this anymore.”
“And who’s going to stop me?” asked Dominic, his eyes trailing Gabriel’s every movement. “You?”
“Yes, Dominic. Me.”
“Perhaps,” he said and then laughed again. “But, not today, brother,” he said and then threw what looked like a handful of dirt into Gabriel’s face.
Caught off guard, Gabriel’s hands rushed to clear the dirt from his eyes as Dominic spun on his heel and bolted into the shadowed brushwood, melting into the blackness as though he had never been there in the first place.
Cursing, Gabriel kicked off the ground and tried to go after him, but then halted at the sound of my petrified cry. The last thing I wanted was to be left alone in the woods; not with Dominic or god knows what else lurking around in the shadows, waiting for another opportunity to strike.
Gabriel turned his head and looked down at me, his jaw tensing as he studied me. It took me a moment to realize he was gazing at the smeared blood dripping all over my neck and upper body.
A different, but equally terrifying level of fear returned as I watched him stare at me as though remembering the taste of my blood. As though contemplating whether he might finish the job or not.
Wondering if anyone would hear my cries if he did…
I choked down a whimper and tucked my legs against my body, knowing I would not be able to withstand another feeding. And certainly not from Gabriel who still had zero control over his bloodlust. Gabriel’s head snapped in a different direction, as though hearing something in the distance, and then he sprang, disappearing into the same thick brush his brother had faded into.
The noisy sounds of insect mating calls filled up my head as my focus drifted from the bordering trees to my semi-nude, blood-soaked body. I was alone and hurt and scared out of my damn mind.
Patting my pockets and sides, I searched for my phone to call for help only to realize I had left it in my car—along with my purse and keys and jacket and weapon. How very prepared of me.
I sat there for a moment, weak and shell-shocked, wondering how the hell I had gotten myself into this mess in the first place. An eerie wail sounded from the shadows and I sat up a little straighter.
What if Dominic was coming back?
What if Gabriel came back?
At this point, I wasn’t sure which one I was more afraid of. The only thing I was certain of was that I needed to get back to the safety of my car and its locked doors. Not that locked doors would be able to stop a Revenant.
Rolling my bunched-up skirt back down my waist and then over my underwear (which was thankfully still there and untouched), I looked around for something I could clean the blood with. The last thing I wanted to do was stroll injured through the woods with a bloody hole in my neck. And certainly not in wolf country.
After attempting to use some dried-out leaves and getting nowhere, I picked up the bottom of my ripped blouse and used it to wipe off some of the excess blood. My neck stung as I rubbed the fabric against the open wound. I hadn’t even had a chance to heal from the last bite before he was right back at it, making holes in my body like I was his own personal pin cushion. Damn heartless bastard.
Pushing my back against the tree to steady myself, I slowly attempted to get back on me feet, only making it about halfway when Gabriel suddenly reappeared in front of me, his mouth and jaw completely covered in blood.
My heart stuttered to a stop, and in my rush to get up faster, I lost my footing and hit the ground with my ass.
30. LONG WAY FROM HOME
The moment my heart regained normal function, it decided to jump right out of my rib cage and lodge itself somewhere in the back of my throat. Every part of my body was shaking, trembling uncontrollably as I looked up and met Gabriel’s eyes. His very dark, very dilated eyes.
Raising his palms out to me, he carefully stepped closer. “I’m not going to hurt you, Jemma. I just fed,” he said, nodding into the woods as if to reassure me. Showing me the front and back of his hands to prove he was unarmed, he cautiously brought his hands up to his black leather jacket and then chucked it off his body.
I stared at him, my gaze unflinching, my heart not yet fully trusting, and watched as he took another small step forward and then offered me his jacket.
My instinct was to refuse the offering, to refuse anything and everything that came from a fanged creature of the night, but then I remembered that I was practically naked from the waist up.
I snatched the jacket from him and then quickly put it on, my eyes never leaving his in case he decided to pounce on me while I was distracted. Bracing my hands against the tree behind me, I clumsily lifted myself to my feet and then tightened the jacket around myself, holding it closed with one hand.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice as soft and unarming as it had been the first night I’d met him.
“No, I’m not,” I admitted, my voice quivering just as badly as my legs were. “I just want to get back to my car. I need to get back in my car and I’ll be okay.”
Eyebrows drawn together, he stared at me for a long moment and then nodded. “Come on. This way.”
I stood back for a few seconds to make sure that he was leading me the right way and not trying to take me further into the forest. When I was sure that he was heading in the direction of the main road, I pushed off the tree and followed.
Neither one of us said anything as we walked through the dense forest, crunching leaves beneath our feet as unknown animals called out to each other in the not-too-far distance. Afraid of what else was out there, I shuffled forward and fell into step with Gabriel. Apparently, my nerves and balls were completely frayed.
> He gave me a sideways glance but didn’t say anything. Nothing at all. In fact, I wasn’t even sure he was breathing with how quiet he was being. I looked over at him again and tried to gauge whether his chest was rising and falling.
His jaw was clamped down rigidly and his body was perfectly still, save for his moving legs. He wasn’t breathing—probably to avoid taking in my scent. I guessed that whatever creature he’d fed on when he came back from the brushwood covered in blood was not enough to fully quench his thirst for Slayer blood.
I wasn’t sure there was anything that could do that.
As unnerving as the thought was, I could only feel gratitude that he had showed up when he did, afraid to know what would’ve happened if he hadn’t. His timing was truly kismet.
Or was it?
“How did you know where we were?” I asked him quietly, the thought having just occurred to me. A part of me already knew the answer but the other part needed to know for sure.
“I was close by,” he answered vaguely and without meeting my eyes.
“Were you following Dominic…or me?”
He didn’t bother supplying an answer. That or he couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud.
“Me,” I realized and then lowered my head, unsure how to feel about that. There were so many thoughts and emotions rocketing through me, it was making my head spin a hundred different ways. “Should I be afraid of you now, Gabriel?”
He stopped walking and turned to face me, his eyes filled with so much sadness and regret that it almost hurt to look at them. “I don’t want you to be, Jemma.”
I nodded sadly, because I didn’t want to be afraid of him either, but also because he hadn’t really answered my question.
We continued the rest of the way in silence, neither one of us engaging the each other until we reached the edge of the forest. I could see the faint glimmer of a streetlight in the distance and I knew we were close.
Incipient: A Dark Paranormal Romance (The Marked Book 6) Page 21