Page 33 of Illusory (The Marked Saga #8)

Dominic and Trace spent most of the night camped outside my bedroom door despite my refusal to answer any of their calls or respond to the dozen or so times they had knocked at my door during the course of the night.

I thought I had been more than clear that I was ending things with both of them, but apparently the message hadn’t gotten completely through to them. They seemed to think the conversation wasn’t over, though I honestly had no idea what more I could say to either one that would make it any clearer to them. It was over. There was no future for either one of them with me and nothing they could say was going to change that.

I fully understood that now, but it seemed that they were going to need more time to see it too. Unfortunately for me, I was going to have to suffer through the waiting period and the agonizing torment of still having them around me—where I could see, hear, and feel them—until they did.

Even curled up on the complete opposite side of my room, far away from their muffled voices and the pacing footfalls that were practically begging for me to end their misery, I still felt them all night long. The incessant pull inside my chest never wavered, pleading with me at every tick of the clock to throw away my plan and what little remained of my morals and open the door for them instead.

I didn’t, of course, but so much of me really wanted to.

Being that close to them without being able to be with them was torture of the highest order. It was dangling a homemade, still-warm apple pie in front of a starving child and telling them not to touch it.

It was cruel and painful and the worst kind of punishment imaginable.

When I finally did accept the fact that they weren’t going to be leaving my bedroom door anytime soon, I let my eyes close and allowed my exhaustion to take me. But not even sleep brought me peace as they callously haunted my dreams—dreams about opening the door and dragging them inside my room as the three of us reenacted various versions of what happened in the basement the other night. Except in my dream, neither one of us stopped it. In my dream, I felt no guilt or shame or regret. I just felt and took and loved.

I was ashamed to admit that it was one of the best dreams I’d had in a long time, but it only made me feel worse when I woke up early the next morning, sweaty and alone on the cold, hard floor as my daunting reality crept back in to torture me.

I hadn’t been so na?ve as to think any of this was going to be easy, but I at least thought I’d have some solidarity within my own damned self. That my heart, mind, and body would all be standing on the same side of the line.

I’d been very, very wrong.

As much as my heart and mind fully stood by everything I had said to them last night, my body and my subconscious wanted no part of it. In fact, they wanted to do something else entirely. Something that didn’t involve ever letting either one of them go. And as hard as dreaming about them had been, I knew seeing them in the flesh was going to be a far greater agony to deal with.

Determined to make it through the day, I decided to skip breakfast altogether and instead asked Gabriel to spar with me in the hopes that it would help keep my mind off Trace and Dominic and that growing hole in my chest.

What I needed to do was to burn off my pent-up energy and distract myself in my work. And I needed to hit something. A lot. Unfortunately, my crafty little plan went to hell in a handbasket when Trace and Dominic filed into the dining room shortly after Gabriel and I began training, looking as though they had a serious bone to pick with me.

Gabriel must have noticed it too because he immediately spoke up before either one had a chance to say a single word. “If you’re here to start up nonsense again, you can both show yourselves out. My patience is at an all-time low today.”

I blinked at Gabriel, my brows knitting together as I looked him over. He was definitely a lot frostier as of late.

“Untwist your knickers, brother. We’re here for support.”

“ Support ?” repeated Gabriel as though he’d never heard the word before in his life.

I had to admit, though, that wasn’t exactly the word I’d expected to come out of his mouth either. Especially not with the disgruntled looks they’d had on their faces when they first walked in here.

“We just want to help,” added Trace, looking offended by Gabriel’s assumption as he crossed his arms along his chest and leaned his back against the wall. “Whatever Jemma needs.”

Gabriel’s expression clouded with a mixture of doubt and then suspicion, and frankly, it matched my own perfectly. This was not the way I expected things to go today. In fact, I kind of anticipated they wouldn’t want to be anywhere near me after what I’d done last night. Had they not taken my speech seriously? Did they think I was going to change my mind? That I’d say screw it and decide to just keep butchering their hearts instead?

Gabriel eyed Trace before asking him, “Have you fed?”

Trace dipped his chin in a nod.

A long pause stretched across the room. “Fine, but if either of you so much as twitch an eye in the wrong direction, you’re both out of here,” warned Gabriel, his hard eyes scanning them both.

Trace nodded again while Dominic worked his jaw, his dark eyes thinning as though he were working hard not to snap back at his brother like he undoubtedly wanted to.

“Is that clear?” pushed Gabriel, his eyes on Dominic when he failed to answer.

“Crystal,” gritted Dominic, having managed to shove down whatever had wanted to come out just a second ago.

My curious gaze volleyed between Trace and Dominic, though I tried not to let it linger on either one for too long. No good would come of letting my eyes stay with them.

Still…what the heck were they up to, and why did it seem like they were on better terms today? Had they commiserated over being shut out last night and suddenly decided to stop fighting each other?

And if so…to what end?

* * *

Nearly an hour later, beads of sweat were trickling down my back as I threw yet another erratic punch that failed to connect with any part of Gabriel, just as the previous twenty had done before that one. He’d easily slapped my arm out of the way and sidestepped the hit like I’d announced that I was going to be throwing it.

Training with a Rev was always exponentially harder than a Descendant, even if they were supercharged like my sister and me. We just couldn’t move with the same kind of speed as them no matter how hard we tried. But that wasn’t the only reason I was throwing hits like a headless chicken. I owed that one entirely to them .

Trace and Dominic.

It was virtually impossible to concentrate with the two of them in the room, standing so close to me and watching me so intensely like I was their absolute favorite thing in the world to look at. Like I hadn’t plundered their hearts like a damned wench less than twenty-four hours ago. I honestly wasn’t sure how they could even stand to look at me at all, let alone look at me the way they were.

Every time I so much as glanced in their direction, their eyes immediately lit up, engorged with all kinds of distracting emotions like hope and longing and desire. It made the answering heat in my belly spread so ferociously that I was practically fantasizing about them with my eyes open. It was wildly inappropriate and made no sense considering the decision I had made, and yet it seemed to be out of my control entirely.

Shaking away the lusty fog, I focused back on Gabriel and threw another sloppy, ill-fated punch that he easily dodged.

“Are you even trying to land your hits?” he snapped, irritation riding his tone as he ran his hand through his dark hair. It fell right back into a place like a curtain dropping over his eyebrows.

“Obviously.” I threw my hands out so that he could see the sweat-soaked evidence all over me.

“Your form is weak and you’re throwing your body around too much,” he criticized, clearly unimpressed with everything I was doing. “You might as well be broadcasting what you’re about to do. You need to do better . This isn’t the way I taught you to fight.”

Anger flared up my neck and swept into my cheeks, and I happily welcomed it. I needed more of that . More taunts. More reasons to be mad instead of all lusty and distracted.

Lucky for me, I’d been throwing like a toddler all morning and knew he’d have more than enough ammo to fire me right up.

“Maybe you’re just a bad teacher,” I offered innocently and swung my left foot out and around, attempting to knock his feet out from under him, but he sidestepped that too.

His expression darkened. “Maybe you need to stop playing house and remember who you are and what you were born to do.” He blurred around me, stepping up behind me as he coiled his arm around my neck, pressing the inside of his elbow against my windpipe and then squeezing. “Seems you’ve forgotten all about that lately.”

Scowling, I pushed my ass back against him and tried to slide my fingers up to where he was crushing my neck.

From my periphery, I could see Trace moving along the edge of the room, prowling like a wild animal that just spotted its cornered prey. I wasn’t sure if he wanted to jump in to save me or attack me.

Before giving him a chance to decide, I rammed my elbow into Gabriel’s gut and then spun in his hold to face him, taking the pressure off my windpipe. I smiled again and then railed my knee into his balls so forcefully that I was sure I would have ended any chance he had of procreating had he not already lost that option when he Turned.

I could have sworn I saw Trace and Dominic grinning from the corner of my eyes, but I refused to meet their gazes to confirm it.

“Who’s the one that needs to focus now?” I taunted because he should have seen that coming from a mile away.

“Apologies,” he grumbled. “I wasn’t aware we were taking cheap shots today.”

I shrugged. “All is fair in love and war.” Without giving him a second to recover, I lunged forward again with a right hook, but faked him out and spun around him instead, ramming my knee into his kidney.

He stammered back a step but quickly caught himself.

A smug smirk curled my lips. “Was that shot a cheap one too?” I smarted.

His jaw muscle jumped and then he blurred past me, the back of his foot cracking against my spine and folding me forward onto my knees. Somebody made a snarling noise somewhere off to the side, but I wasn’t sure if it was Dominic or Trace.

The momentary distraction of meeting their fiery gazes was enough for Gabriel to finish me off with a hit to the back of my neck that flattened me to the ground like a squashed bug. More guttural growls thundered in the room as the air swooshed out of my body.

Okay, it was definitely both of them.

“If the two of you are incapable of restraining yourselves, you’re more than welcome to find another room to entertain yourself in,” gritted Gabriel as he held out his hand and helped me back to my feet.

“I, for one, think I am doing a fine job of restraining myself seeing as I haven’t put your head through the wall yet,” answered Dominic in an impossibly calm voice that didn’t remotely match the fury in his eyes.

“Dominic!” I reproached, my eyes wide with alarm.

His dark gaze softened as it slid back to me, an innocent look shifted into place. “Yes, angel?”

Just hearing him call me that made my empty heart pound against my ribcage.

“Is there something you wish to say to me?” he tacked on when I didn’t produce any other words.

There were a million things I wanted to say to him but none that I could utter right then. “You should go. Both of you should go. You…you’re distracting me.”

Trace’s expression fell into a chasm of despair as Gabriel crossed his arms and glared at his brother.

“Distracting you? How so?” asked Dominic, cocking his head to the side as if he didn’t know exactly what he was doing to me. What he had always done to me.

“You know exactly how,” I answered softly. “This is hard enough without you…”

“Without me what?” He took a step forward, his gaze locked on mine, but Trace quickly grabbed his elbow and pulled him back.

“We’ll leave,” said Trace and then nudged Dominic with his forearm when he continued to just stand there and stare at me with a visceral intensity that made my legs tremble.

Trace shook his head, cursing under his breath and then backed away before leaving the room completely. He wanted no part of this…whatever this standoff was.

“That means you too,” informed Gabriel, still standing shoulder to shoulder with me with his arms folded across his chest.

Dominic blinked a few times, as though snapping out of some kind of trance and then turned to glare at his brother. He looked like he wanted to say something to him but then decided against it. He bounced one more look at me and then turned and left the room as well.

Neither Gabriel nor I moved for a long while, both of our gazes still fixed on the now empty corridor. “Do I even want to know what that was about?”

I shook my head that he didn’t, because frankly, I wasn’t even sure of it myself.