He stalked forward and cupped my cheeks, pulling my mouth to his as though he had been starving for it. Heat skirted over my skin as he parted my lips and deepened the kiss, my stomach clenching deliciously as he brushed and swirled his wet tongue against mine.
My hands slid down from his chest and then circled his waist, my nails digging into his back as I pulled him closer to me. The music and prater from outside the door had long since faded into the background, leaving only the sound of his beating heart competing for supremacy against mine.
A low rumble sounded in his chest as he winched me into his arms—slowly dragging me up his body, his mouth never leaving mine. Moaning against his lips, I wrapped my legs around his waist and locked them at my ankles. He spun left, then right, not quite sure where to take our party as he continued searing me with his mouth, and then finally walked me backward until my back hit the wall.
My head tilted back as he worked his hand under my shirt, his mouth dropping to my neck, blazing a trail of kisses and then sucking on the delicate skin above my collarbone. Every inch of my body prickled with heat.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought I heard someone knock on the door, but I was too far removed from reality for it to fully register. His mouth and hands were doing things to me that made me want to scream and laugh and cry all at the same time.
Two seconds later, a harder thump against the door sounded. This time, Trace heard it too.
“Go away,” growled Trace as he kneaded my breast and continued to bless my neck with his kisses.
“Dude, it’s me,” shouted Ben, his voice muffled from the other side of the door. “Open up.”
“No. Go the fuck away,” said Trace, his focus never drifting away from his mission.
“It’s Nikki, man. You’re going to want to see this.” He paused. “Jemma too.”
My eyes widened as Trace slowly drew his head back and then met my gaze.
“Nikki’s here?” I asked, my eyes on Trace as I shouted to Ben through the door.
“No,” he answered, his voice sounding stranger than ever. “But she sent out a video message. And it’s bad.”
39. RIVER OF DECEIT
I had no idea what to expect or what Ben meant by a video message, but I immediately unlocked my legs from Trace’s waist and slid down his body before rushing to the door. Trace hung back and adjusted himself as I opened the door and took in Ben’s pale expression. My stomach dropped to the ground like a pile of bricks
“What is it? What happened?” I asked, trying to keep the panic from hitching up my voice. I hadn’t seen Ben looking this shaken up since the night we lost Taylor.
“Nikki just sent Trace a message through her social media,” he answered nervously, his gaze skirting away from mine as though he were having trouble meeting my eyes. “Everyone in school got a copy forwarded to them.”
“What?” I could hardly comprehend what he was telling me. Why would Nikki put a private message she sent to Trace on blast like that?
Trace moved up behind me and held out his hand. “Let me see it.”
Ben dropped his phone into Trace’s hand as I took a step back so that I could get a clear look at the screen. The video was paused on Nikki’s face. She was sitting, as though giving an interview, though the whole thing looked staged based on the white screen behind her head and the ample amount of soft light beaming down on her face. She was so vain like that.
Trace hit the play button as we both craned our heads to listen in.
“This is not the way I wanted to do this, Trace,” said Nikki, her voice fluttering out from the phone speaker. “But you won’t listen to reason and you’ve left me no other choice. I love you so much and I won’t sit by and watch you throw away everything we had for a slut like Jemma Blackburn.”
Having heard enough, Trace tried to shut the video off and hand the phone back to Ben, but I quickly snatched it back and hit the play icon again, refusing to look away from the train wreck that was coming at me full speed ahead.
“I want you to know that this is what you’re abandoning me and our child for. This is what you’re in love with.”
The video cut from the up close and personal shot of Nikki to an amateur video taken in the woods somewhere. Leaves crunched and rustled as the cinematographer crept forward, the camera shaking in their rookie hands before zooming in on two people laying on the ground. I blinked into the video and realized that it was me and Dominic. It was a video of the night he attacked me in the woods. Of the night he almost raped me.
Except, it didn’t look that way on film.
On film it looked like we were just making out. Like I was a willing participant, caught under the loving embrace of the man I loved. Even as he pushed my skirt up and stroked my thigh, there was no sign of me fighting against it. No sign of a struggle. Because I had been too out of it—too deep inside his poisonous bite to do anything but lay there. But that part wasn’t being shown in the video. Nor were Dominic’s fangs, or the blood I had gushing all over my ripped shirt, or the petrified expression on my face.
There was only one angle, and that was the angle that told the story Nikki wanted to tell.
My jaw squeezed shut as tears stung the corners of my eyes.
“In case you’re wondering. That was Wednesday night,” she went on, the video cutting back to her. “Open your eyes, Trace. She’s been playing you since day one.”
My hands closed around the phone as the video cut, almost crushing it in the palm of my hand. The pain of what happened that night in the woods still beating over my bruised skin long after the video ended.
This was a new low, even for Nikki.
As if waking from a trance, my gaze flew toward the corridor and the living room. There was no more music playing. No more dancing. Everyone had been looking down at their phones, watching the video and then passing it around the room.
Soft chatter and cruel whispers wafted around the room like an airborne sickness.
“…Nikki’s pregnant...”
“…so, that’s what she’s been…”
“…Jemma cheated on him…
“…such a slut…”
“…can’t believe she did that…”
Unable to block them out, my gaze veered back to Trace. The air left my lungs as I took in the gutted look on his face, like he had just had his still-beating heart ripped right out of his chest. Silence fell on the entire house as everyone waited to see how this was going to play out.
“It’s not what it looks like,” I said, muddling through my words as though I had tar on my tongue. “I don’t even know how she got that video in the first place but it’s—”
He stalked off mid-sentence, leaving me standing there like an idiot.
“Trace, wait a minute.” I rushed down the corridor after him and then grabbed his hand to keep him from walking away from me. “I can explain,” I said but he pulled his wrist free and spun on me.
“I’m not doing this here,” he said, his voice as sharp as broken glass.
My gaze shifted over his shoulder to the growing crowd. They were hungry for a show. As if what Nikki did wasn’t bad enough, she’d managed to make sure it happened in front of the entire school, knowing how private of a person Trace was. She wanted to make sure the sting of humiliation stayed with him for years to come.
Without saying anything, he turned to leave again, and I followed, hoping he would let me explain this to him once we were alone outside. Unfortunately, three quarters of the party proceeded to follow us, spilling out onto the walkway as I trailed after Trace. I stopped suddenly, searching for a friendly face amongst the rabid onlookers before spotting Ben.
I gave him a desperate, pleading look.
Understanding me, he nodded and then whirled on the crowd, holding his arms out. “Alright, nothing to see here. Everyone back inside or you forfeit your entry to the party,” he said, babbling on as he slowly herded the mess of partygoers back toward the front door of the house.
>
As soon as I was sure Ben had a handle on it, I took off running down the steps and onto the street after Trace who had already reached his car by the time I caught up to him.
“Trace, wait! Please let me explain,” I said, breathing heavily as I skidded to a stop behind him at the driver’s side door.
He kept his back to me. His head hung low and his shoulders rising and falling rapidly, as though he were trying to control a tsunami of emotions from breaking through to the surface.
“It’s not what it looks like. I wasn’t—”
“You weren’t what?” he asked, turning on me, his nostrils flared, and his jaw set in a hard, angry line. “Letting him feed on you, or fucking him behind my back?”
I tried not to flinch at his words, because I knew he didn’t have the whole story, but they gave me whiplash anyway. “Neither. I wasn’t doing neither. He…attacked me.”
“Like last time?” he asked, his words laced with accusation because we both knew that what happened at the Blackburn estate was consensual. But this wasn’t like that time.
Hot tears sprang from my eyes and coasted down my cheeks as the chill from the night bit against the wet tracks they’d left. “He ran me off the road and then dragged me into the woods. He tried to….” My voice trembled as I met his haunted eyes and shook my head. I couldn’t seem to say the word out loud. It made it too…real. Too painful.
His eyebrows knitted together as he took a careful step toward me, his eyes softening some. “He tried to what?” he asked, working his jaw muscle to control whatever was going on inside of him.
I shook my head again, apparently having lost all ability to speak.
“Did he…hurt you?”
I opened my mouth to answer him and then closed it as headlights from an oncoming car bled onto us. I squinted away from the abrasive lights, waiting for the car to pass us by so we could finish our conversation, only it didn’t.
The car came to a stop behind me, though it took me several tries of blinking through my glassy gaze to realize it was Gabriel.
“What’s going on?” asked Trace, his voice carrying the same alarm that was rolling through my own stomach.
Gabriel’s eyes fell on me and I nearly toppled over from their weight. “Dominic has Tessa, Jemma. We need to go.”
A suffocating cloud of anxiety slammed into my body as I stood there and stared at him, my legs unmoving and entirely numb. I heard Trace whistle toward Caleb’s house and then mindlessly watched as Ben starting jogging toward us, but everything seemed to be far away, as though I were watching it happen to someone else on a television screen instead of living it myself.
Dominic had Tessa.
Tessa was with Dominic.
Bile crept up my throat as reality slowly closed in on me. This was bad, so unbelievably bad, and every part of my body, heart, and mind knew it.
“Jemma,” called Gabriel, drawing my attention back to him. “We need to go. Now.”
40. HIGHWAY TO HELL
By the time we had all piled into Gabriel’s SUV, the numbness in my extremities had somewhat subsided, though it was quickly being replaced with racing, disorganized thoughts that were storming through my head like a hurricane. Gabriel was speaking with Trace and Ben, who were both sitting in the back seat, explaining what had happened, but none of his words were making sense to me.
How had Dominic gotten a hold of Tessa in the first place? She would have never put herself in that position. She would have never been stupid enough to go see him alone. That was something I would have done—not Tessa.
“I don’t understand,” I blurted out in the middle of their discussion. “I need you to start at the beginning.”
Gabriel gave me a sympathetic look, his brows pulled down over his concern-riddled eyes. “Of course.”
“How did this happen? Did she go after him? And why now? What triggered this?” I asked, unable to focus on a single question.
“She found out what he did to you in the woods the other night and went after him—”
“You told her?” I asked, appalled that he would be so careless as to arm a ticking time bomb like my sister. “Dammit, Gabriel. You had no right to tell her.”
“Well, somebody had to,” he answered angrily, as though he had been the one attacked that night. “She needed to know how bad things have gotten, Jemma. How dangerous he’s become.”
“I told you I was going to take care of him.”
“You weren’t in a position to do that,” he said, glancing over at me regretfully and then returning his focus to the road. “I thought that if your sister knew, the two of us could do something about him together.”
“So, what the hell happened? She just decided to ride off into the sunset and take care of it on her own?”
“In short, yes.”
“And you actually let her do that?!” I asked, aghast. Way to have her back, Gabriel.
“Of course not,” he answered, his hands white knuckling the steering wheel. “She told me she was going out to the store. I had no reason not to believe her. I’m guessing she wanted to take care of him immediately and felt that I was not in any condition to help.” The sting of her assumption was audible in his tone.
I let out a breath of frustration because that definitely sounded like my sister. “So, what happened after that? I’m assuming Dominic called you to boast about his acquisition?”
He nodded.
Typical smug asshole. And then something occurred to me. “Why didn’t he call me?”
“I’m not sure,” he said and shook his head. “My guess is that he wanted me in your ear.”
“Meaning what?” That didn’t make a lick of sense. I narrowed my eyes at him. “What did he say exactly?”
Gabriel swallowed roughly and I knew it was going to be bad. “He told me that he had Tessa bound and infused with Revenant blood at that Manor and that he was going to snap her neck if I didn’t convince you to…”
My face blanched. “Convince me to do what?”
He looked at me again, his expression wrought with distress. “If I didn’t convince you to give him the Amulet.”
The Amulet?! I sank back in my seat as a rush of air left my lungs. My mind twisted and turned as I tried to put the pieces together and understand his motivation, but none of this was making any sense.
“Why would he do this? He doesn’t care about the Amulet.” He hadn’t cared about acquiring it for a long time, nor did it coincide with what his current plans seemed to be, which was torturing me.
“I’m not sure,” said Gabriel, looking just as perplexed as I felt.
“Isn’t it obvious?” asked Trace, his expression tempered even though his eyes were raging a bloody war. “He doesn’t want the Amulet. He just wants it off you because he knows it’s protecting you.”
“Meaning what? He wants to kill me?” I asked, the words scratching their way out of my throat like knees on concrete.
“That, or he wants to fucking Turn you,” he said, his voice low and filled with fury.
An icy shiver cut its way down my back as his words settled in.
“So, what are we going to do?” asked Ben, the uncertainty heavy in his tone. “We can’t let him have that Amulet.”
“Do you suggest we give up Tessa instead?” snapped Gabriel, his eyes hard on Ben in the rearview.
“No, but…”
Silence descended over us as we all realized the horrible position we were in. A position Dominic had undoubtably planned to the tee. Because he knew me. And he knew my weakness had always been my heart—my love for my family and my friends and the lengths I would go to try to save them.
“We’re not going to give up either,” I said as I stared out my window and acquainted myself with my new reality. Unlike the others, I knew exactly what we were going to do. What I had to do. “I’m going to put him down.”
Gabriel’s gaze snapped in my direction. “Are you sure you’re up for that?”
“It’s time
,” I said and then looked at each of them pointedly. “No Cinderdust. I just want him incapacitated.”
“And then what?” asked Trace, though I had no idea how to answer that for him. The only thing I knew was that I refused to voluntarily kill Dominic. Not if there was another way to stop him. “I’ll let you know when I figure that out.”
41. YOU BROKE ME FIRST
We arrived at the Huntington Manor with no real plan and no backup in the event that the shit decided to really hit the fan. It wasn’t as though we could plan this out anyway. Not until we got inside and gauged the situation. At this point, it was a simple trade. My sister for the Amulet, though I intended on leaving there tonight with both of them in hand.
The only thing I had to do was make sure he didn’t sink his teeth into me otherwise any hope of incapacitating him would be thrown by the wayside as long as he had my blood in him.
Gabriel and Trace walked up ahead as I hung back with Ben. “It’s not too late to get out of this.”
“I know,” he said and smiled.
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did. It’s not your fight.”
“You’re my friend, Jem. Your fights will always be my fights.”
I reached my arm around his neck and mashed him into a side hug. “If it gets dicey in there, I want you to get out and get help, you hear me?”
“You got it.”
Gabriel didn’t bother ringing the doorbell and just barged into the house with Trace right behind him. I paused at the door, rolling my neck as I tried to shake away the awful feeling flitting all over my skin. Realizing it wasn’t going anywhere, I sucked in a deep breath and then walked inside.
“Come in, come in,” called Dominic from somewhere in the house, his tone filled with jubilee as though this were a get together of old friends and not the end of the line for him.
I followed the boys down the hallway and into the den, where I knew Dominic would be. And just like I’d imagined him, he was standing by the mantel, a lively fire blazing behind him and a drink in his hand. What I hadn’t pictured was Pricilla flanking his side or the two vampire-twins that were keeping guard over my bound and gagged sister.
Incipient: A Dark Paranormal Romance (The Marked Book 6) Page 27