Page 28 of Illusory (The Marked Saga #8)

The sound of screeching chairs and frantic shouts left me so quickly that I hadn’t even been sure I’d heard them in the first place. Everything around us disintegrated and all I could think about was the bone-chilling cold cycling over my skin and through my body as Trace held me against himself and ported us away.

Away from the safety of my home and the watchful eyes of Gabriel and Dominic and back to the Macarthur family cabin he had taken me to all those months ago.

A cabin that also happened to be dozens of miles away from even a hint of civilization.

Panic exploded in my chest as the room slowly solidified around us. The second I was sure my feet were back on solid ground, I pushed his arms off me and reared back, my heart slamming thunderously against my ribcage at the knowledge that I was in a very precarious situation with a very new vampire that only had a very mild grasp on his humanity at the moment.

What the hell was he thinking doing this?

I wanted to ask him just that—to scream at him for bringing us here and not asking my permission, to demand that he take me back to the Blackburn Estate right now , but there were too many thoughts churning around in my head at once. Too many questions I couldn’t fully organize. Too much panic seizing everything at the same time.

“Don’t be scared,” he said as I shook my head back and forth, retreating further and further away from him even though I knew I had nowhere to run and no place to hide. “I won’t hurt you.”

Except that that was precisely the kind of thing that people who hurt people said right before they hurt them. Not that I thought Trace would want to purposely hurt me, but he wasn’t exactly in full control of all his faculties yet and I really didn’t want to stick around to find out just how much he was or wasn’t.

“Please take me back to my house, Trace. I want to go back,” I said, the tremble in my words distorting my voice almost beyond recognition.

“You’re scared,” he realized, sounding incredibly hurt by it.

“I’m not scared,” I lied, crossing and uncrossing my arms like a nervous tick. Like I suddenly had no idea what to do with my own arms. “I’m fine. Really. I just…I want to go back home now, okay?”

His brows knitted as he studied my features for a beat. “If you’re not scared of me then why do you want to leave?” he challenged, evidently not buying my story in the least.

“Because this…this isn’t a good idea. All of this is still really new for you, and anything could happen. You know that. We shouldn’t be alone like this without—”

“We’re never fucking alone,” he cut in and took a step toward me which I instantly matched with a backwards step of my own. His expression dropped at the telling dance.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my heart dipping with regret.

His gaze tightened. “For what?”

For retreating just then. For Turning him. For loving him but also being in love with someone else and not having enough sense to leave either one alone. For being scared out of my mind.

I shook my head and swallowed a sob, unable to produce even a single response for him. There were too many thoughts in my head, too much fear sloshing through my veins. I couldn’t think straight.

His expression turned pensive, almost curious, as though he were trying to solve a riddle. “Do you think I brought you here to hurt you?” he asked, his baritone voice so deep and low that it scraped against my nerve endings.

“No.” I shook my head, telling the truth. “I know you’d never hurt me on purpose, Trace.”

“You do?” A muscle jumped in his jaw as he examined me. “Even now?”

“Of course,” I whispered. “But we still shouldn’t—”

“I’m just so sick and tired of seeing them everywhere I turn. I just wanted five minutes alone with you, Jemma. Five fucking minutes without them breathing down my neck,” he said, his eyes ransacking mine for some form of understanding.

My phone vibrated in the back pocket of my jeans, and I knew that it was Dominic or Gabriel trying to track me down. “I know. I get it. I do,” I said, nodding into it in the hopes of reassuring him that we were on the same side. “Can I…can I maybe just call them and let them know that I’m safe?”

His frown deepened and I knew I’d said the wrong thing.

“If you feel like you can’t go five minutes without checking in with them then go ahead. Do whatever you need to do, Jemma. This isn’t a hostage situation—I’m not fucking kidnapping you.”

“You’re right. I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that you were,” I said, forcing myself to keep smiling despite being frightened at the tinge of hostility in his words. “It’s actually totally fine. I don’t need to call them at all.” My chest seized with panic as though it had reached inside me and put my heart in a chokehold.

“For fuck’s sake,” he snapped, his voice thickening with annoyance. “Will you please just look at me?”

I did—I was. I thought I had been.

“It’s me , Jemma,” he said, his eyes rapt and his tone low and steady as he raised his palms and took an impossibly small step toward me. “I’m not going to hurt you, okay? I promise you’re safe. Just look at me.”

I stared back at him for a few beats, taking in his relaxed jaw and the deep blue of his eyes and the way he held his shoulders, high and squared, like a god ready to conquer battlefields and new worlds. He was completely at ease and seemingly in total control of himself.

And then I felt it, the peaceful, thrumming current of our soulmate bond reaching out between us as if to cradle me in the safety of its embrace and draw us back together again. Always drawing us back together again.

My heartbeat slowed to a steady rhythm as I latched onto the hum and his eyes and the promise that I was safe. Because I was safe with him. I could feel it like a truth etched into my bones, and the panic instantly lifted.

I smiled at him, a true, genuine smile, for the first time today and suddenly he was all I could see. Everything around us—the threats of harm and chaos and distractions—faded away into the background until nothing else existed but me and him. He was the picture again, and everything else was just white noise just like it always was with him.

“Hi,” I said softly, my head tilting in appreciation as I took him in.

That earned me a faint smile in response, but it was enough to set off both his dimples, and then he was moving again, taking another careful step toward me, and then another until all the distance between us had been chewed up and spit out. All I could feel was the burning heat in his eyes and the way our soulmate bond bucked and buzzed under my skin in delight, pleading for me to get closer to him still.

“Hey,” he said in a low husky voice that made my skin tingle all over the place.

Despite his wild, rapturous gaze, his hand came up at a slow and measured pace as if to show me that he was in perfect control of himself. As if to test it out against any resistance. But he wouldn’t find any from me.

I flattened my palm against the back of his hand, pressing it against my cheek as I closed my eyes and sank deeper into the bond, promising to give myself only a few moments before I reigned us back in.

I knew that I was playing with fire being this close to Trace, unsupervised and so soon after he Turned, and I had every intention of diffusing the situation…just as soon as I finished nuzzling into his hand.

Which would surely be any second now.

God, how I’d missed being this close to him. The way my body hummed in appreciation whenever he was touching me. The way his skin felt like home when it was pressed against mine.

“Fuck, I missed this, too,” he said, his deep cadence rumbling over my body and coaxing my eyes back open so that I can once again worship him like the god he was. “I missed you .”

The air crackled with energy around us as our gazes locked onto each other. My heart was thumping in my chest and my fingers were digging into his flesh, clutching onto him for something else. For something more. And then we were moving—flying, his hands sinking into my hair as he drove my mouth to his so quickly and fervently that I wouldn’t have had time to fight him off even if I had intended to. Which I hadn’t.

There was nothing soft about the kiss or the way his demanding lips moved against mine, kissing, and tasting and sucking like he needed to consume me. His hands fisted into my hair, tugging deliciously at the roots as if to anchor me to his mouth, to bring us so close together that we could never separate again. Desire unfurled low in my belly and stretched all the way to my center, screaming out for more.

His mouth opened against mine, his plush, full lips forcing mine to part for him as he slid his tongue into my mouth and groaned, a deep gravelly noise at the back of his throat.

My own needy hands shot up feverishly, coasting over his chest and his shoulders, feeling all the grooves and edges of his body that made my own sizzle and pulse with desire and then I locked them together behind his neck, trapping him between my arms where I needed him to stay.

“Trace. Please,” I whimpered, barely able to get the word out. To tell him what I needed from him. What my body was starving for.

“Please what?” he asked against my lips, his voice deep and raw and strained.

“Please don’t fucking stop.”

Another rough growl thundered past his lips as his hands moved to my cheeks and then my jaw, his grip almost bruising as he tipped my head back and deepened the kiss. Sparks crackled over my skin as he invaded my mouth again, his tongue plunging deeper and rougher as it danced against mine like a man possessed. And then his hands were moving again, blazing trails of fire as they ran down my neck and over my breast and around my stomach and then my hips and ass, squeezing and kneading and claiming every inch of me before hoisting me up into his arms.

My back slammed against a wall as he pressed himself between my legs, his hardness rocking into my center as he palmed my ass, pulling me closer than I was sure I had ever been. I could feel every inch of him, feel his unbidden desire for me, and it only made my core pulse harder.

“Fuck, I need you, Jemma,” he said roughly, his body shuddering as he pushed and pulled my hips against himself. “I need to feel you around me.”

My body combusted as I tightened my hold on him and squeezed my thighs together, grinding against him, because lord knew I needed him too. Somewhere in the peripheral of my sanity, I knew this probably wasn’t the best idea for extremely valid reasons that I only vaguely remembered then, but I couldn’t seem to bring the thought to the forefront of my mind.

All I could think about was the throbbing, aching need overwhelming my body, the sweet desperation of his soft lips claiming mine, and his hard everything else rocking against my body and begging for entry.

“I think I might be going crazy,” he said suddenly, pausing my movements as a tendril of fear whipped through my stomach. My eyes locked on his, searching frantically for that fraying string of unravelment.

But all I saw was fire dancing in his eyes.

“Your smell, the way you taste. How fucking soft your skin is. You’re the only thing I think about,” he went on hoarsely, like his voice had been scraping against searing coals all night. “I can’t close my eyes without seeing your face. I don’t dream unless it’s about you. Feeding from you. Fucking you.” His tongue slipped into my mouth again and I moaned as he spun us around and started walking us down the corridor that led to the bedrooms.

His bedroom.

“Sometimes I’m doing both at the same time,” he murmured near my ear, half kissing my neck, half licking me as my body crackled with heat. “I can’t think straight when you walk into a room anymore…but it’s worse when you’re not there,” he said and then twisted abruptly, crushing me back against another wall as he flattened himself between my thighs and rocked his hips again. “You’re in my head all the time, Jemma. All the fucking time, but it still never feels like it’s enough.”

I knew he was saying important things; things I needed to pay attention to, but I couldn’t get the haze out of my head for long enough to stop grinding my hips against his. I needed this to happen more than I needed air, and I was pretty damn sure that I was going to keel over and die if it didn’t get it.

“Tell me you want me like that too,” he said, his husky voice thrumming against my lips again. “Tell me you still love me, Jemma, that you still want me as much as I do.”

I was certain my heart was nearing cardiac arrest territory. “I want you, Trace. I fucking want you.”

As if I could ever stop wanting him. As if that were even remotely within the realm of my capabilities.

He shifted forward again, his hands sliding between us to grip my thighs and push them further apart, pinning me between his chest and the wall. His lips claimed mine again and then his hands were moving, over my stomach and up my shirt, touching, exploring, feeling, but it still wasn’t enough.

I needed his skin on my skin.

“Off. Take it off.”

The sound of ripping fabric barely registered as his mouth came down against the swell of my breast, his tongue gliding over my cleavage as his hooded eyes watched me pant and jerk with need in his arms.

“Tell me you still love me,” he murmured as he plucked my bra straps and dragged them down my arms. The cold air brushed against my exposed breasts for just a second before he covered them both with his hands and mouth.

“I do. You know I do.” My head rolled back against the wall. “Oh, god. Please…just don’t stop.”

“Say it, Jemma,” he demanded, his tongue circling my nipple as my hands flattened against the wall on either side of me, desperate for some sort of leverage. “I need to hear you say it.”

“I love you. I fucking love you,” I said breathlessly between pants. “I love you so much it hurts.”

He growled, his tongue gliding from my chest to my collarbone as he simultaneously unbuttoned my jeans. “Say it again. Say it until your throat is raw for me.”

My lips parted on the words he needed to hear as a smooth honeyed voice slithered into my mind and halted me.

Please, angel, answer the damn phone .

I blinked, my blood running cold as everything slammed to a dead stop. All I could feel were those pleas rattling around in my head and the stinging vibration of my phone in my pocket.

Trace’s mouth slowed, his knowing eyes shuttered as our grinding and kissing and rubbing stilled. He pulled back, his head dropping slightly.

“We can’t do this,” I said, my words breathless and clunky and filled with remorse and loss because as much as I wanted this, it wasn’t right. Not here. Not like this. “I can’t do this.”

He released his grip on my legs, letting them drop slowly to the ground.

“Because of him.” It wasn’t a question. It was never a question. I think a part of him had known since the very beginning that my heart had always been split in two. He just never wanted to look at the pieces.

“They’re waiting for us and they’re probably worried sick.”

The air dragged from his lungs as he brought my bra straps back up to my shoulders and then picked up the shredded fabric of my shirt as though it could somehow be salvaged before deciding that it couldn’t and releasing it, letting the torn pieces fall back to my waist.

“I’ll go find you a shirt to wear,” he said, his face devoid of any expression.

But I didn’t need to see a look on his face to know that I had hurt him again.

“I’m—”

“Don’t,” he said and then turned his back to me as he traversed the hallway and disappeared into his bedroom.

Crossing my arms over my chest, I dropped my head and tried to fight back the mess of tears that were clogging up the back of my throat. I wouldn’t let them fall, though. I wasn’t the victim in this, and I needed to remember that.

Feeling like the world’s biggest asshole, I blew out a breath and reached into my back pocket for my phone.

There were several missed calls from both Dominic and Gabriel along with twenty-seven text messages, mostly from Dominic. I opened up our chat window and scanned the last few messages:

ANSWER ME.

WHERE. DID. HE. TAKE. YOU?

Angel, please. Answer me.

I swear to all that is holy, if he so much as harms a single strand of hair on your head, I will gut him from the inside with my bare hands and feed him his entails.

Horrified and ashamed, I quickly thumbed a message back to him:

We’re at his family cabin. I’m fine. We’ll be back in a few .

I closed the screen and slipped my phone back into my jeans as Trace reappeared carrying a white T-shirt in his hand.

“This should fit. It’s from my freshman year,” he said as he handed the shirt to me and then pushed his hands through his dark hair. “It’s the smallest one I have.”

“It’s fine—thank you,” I said, eying him as I peeled away the remaining shreds of fabric from around my waist and then let it fall to the ground.

His gaze dropped briefly before he shoved his fingers through his hair again, stepping away and then turning around, even though he’d already seen me far more undressed than I currently was. “I can take you back when you’re ready,” he said, his expression forlorn and despondent. “I got what I came for anyway,” he added, mostly to himself.

I crinkled my nose at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He chanced a peek and then turned to face me when he saw that I was fully clothed. “There was something I needed to get in my room here,” he said as he pulled a strange rope-like trinket from his pocket. “For that thing you still haven’t asked me to help you with.”

“Oh. Right.” For obvious reasons, I’d completely forgotten about the whole porting thing.

“I didn’t bring you here to do that, you know,” he said, gesturing with his chin to the spot against the wall that we had been pressed up against mere minutes ago. “It wasn’t some ploy to fuck you.”

I tucked my hair behind my ears, feeling my cheeks warm. “I know that.”

He eyed me for a minute, his gaze lancing over mine as though he were trying to figure something out.

“What?” I asked as I fought the urge to squirm under his intense stare.

“Do you love him more than you love me?” he asked suddenly, making my stomach drop and my heart feel as though it had been put in a meat grinder.

My breathing stalled as I looked back at him and somberly shook my head. “No.”

He thought about it for a second. “But you don’t love me more than him either,” he guessed.

“No,” I said again.

He nodded, not looking surprised by that for some reason. “This isn’t going to end well for me, is it?”

Something dark and sad and foreboding clawed into my heart and settled in as though it had no intention of ever leaving me for the rest of my life. “I don’t think it’s going to end well for any of us.”