Page 36 of Illusory (The Marked Saga #8)

I spent the following day hiding inside my room, avoiding everything and everyone, including my training with Gabriel. I told myself it was for their own good, but I knew my avoidance was about me just as much as it was them. Everything had gotten completely out of hand yesterday and I’d barely been able to stay in control of myself around them, but I was as determined as ever not to let the setback deter me.

In fact, it only made me realize that the more I teetered that line with them, the harder I was making this on all of us. How could I expect them to take my decision seriously if I wasn’t even taking it seriously myself? I needed to be cold and completely ruthless to all of our hearts no matter how badly I wanted to fall into their arms.

It was the only way.

Still, I couldn’t stay couped up in my room forever. I was still only human ish and needed things to survive besides the tap water I had been drinking from the bathroom sink. By evening, the hunger pangs in my stomach refused to be ignored for a second longer, especially when Isa was downstairs cooking my favorite fucking foods.

As embarrassing as it was to admit, it was the smell of roasted chicken and garlic potatoes that finally lured me out of my room. With my nerves frayed and my stomach in an all-out revolt, I tiptoed my way downstairs, desperately trying to avoid alerting Trace and Dominic to the fact that I had finally left my lair, though it was really a pointless move seeing that they were vampires and would surely hear me long before I heard them.

That fact was perfectly illustrated when I rounded the corner and heard their distinct voices floating out of the living room. For some strange reason, the conversation between the two of them sounded relaxed and casual, almost friendly even, and my ears instantly perked up.

I may or may not have intended to eavesdrop on what they were discussing, but that plan was quickly foiled when the muffled conversation came to an abrupt stop. Before I could even attempt to wind myself out of the sneaky stance I was in, Dominic appeared in the doorway with his eyebrows raised and a knowing smirk on his face.

“Hello, angel.”

Trace stepped up beside him a short second later. “Hey, Jemma.” His dimples pressed in as his gaze raked over me appreciatively, like his eyes had been about as starved for me as my stomach had been for a meal.

“H-hey.”

“Is everything okay?” asked Trace, noting my strange posture.

Resisting the urge to drop dead of embarrassment, I straightened my back and gave a quick nod, trying to come up with some casual but plausible reason for why I was creeping around in the hallway.

“I thought I heard something—a noise,” I blurted out and then inwardly kicked myself for not staying in my room and dying of starvation like I had originally planned. “I thought maybe Jackie had come back.”

Trace’s gaze shifted over my shoulder to the front door while Dominic just continued to smirk at me.

He knew I was lying.

He always knew when I was lying, especially when I was doing it badly.

“It was probably just the wind outside. So…” I glanced down at my hands, unable to think of anything else to add to the terrible cover story. “Yeah.” I pivoted and then barreled for the kitchen, avoiding each of their gazes as I skittered by them even though I knew their eyes were on me, tracking my every step.

Of course, I didn’t make it very far.

I gasped as Dominic blurred in front of me, blocking my path and stopping me from progressing any further down the narrow corridor that led to the kitchen.

The lopsided grin was gone from his face. “How much longer are we going to play this game, angel?”

My breath hitched and then sped up, making my chest rise and fall faster than I could temper. “What game?” I asked, trying to keep the thread of fear from my voice even though my heart was pounding madly in my chest.

He took a slow, deliberate step toward me, to which I instantly matched with one in the opposite direction.

His features darkened. “ That game.”

I glanced over my shoulder, noting that Trace was standing just a couple of feet behind me, watching us intently.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dominic. I’m not playing any games,” I said and tried to walk around him, but he shadowed my movements, stopping me from getting anywhere.

“Then you haven’t been playing hide-and-seek with us all day again?” he asked sardonically, knowing full well that I was.

“No.” I straightened. “I’ve been doing my homework and just came down to get a snack,” I said and then turned on my heel, deciding that I’d just go back the same way I’d come.

Screw the food. Screw this .

I wasn’t even almost at the required level of cold ruthlessness needed to deal with the two of them on me like this.

Trace advanced before I could get anywhere, crowding the small space so that I couldn’t escape that way either. I was basically cornered and pinned between the two of them.

My eyes went wide. “What are you doing? What is this ?” I snapped, gesturing to the two of them blocking me from both sides as though they were suddenly working together. As though they were on the same fucking team.

“We just want to talk to you,” answered Trace, his voice low and pleading, his eyes haunted. It made me feel as though someone had reached into my chest and squeezed the air from my lungs.

“Talk to me about what?” I shook my head, not seeing the point of it. We were only dragging out the pain at this point and I wanted no part of the carnage. “I think we’ve already said everything that needed to be said.”

“And what about last night?” he asked, edging closer. I didn’t bother retreating that time, knowing that I would only end up on top of Dominic anyway.

“That was a mistake. A minor setback.”

“It wasn’t a mistake,” he said and then picked up my hand, slipping his fingers through mine. Sparks ignited under my skin, soaring out all over my body through our bond. My lips parted as his gaze dropped down to my mouth, his own pupils dilating like it felt just as good to him as it did for me.

“It doesn’t change anything,” I rasped, trying to shake myself out of the haze that was building in me. I needed to keep a level head before my body decided to jump to the forefront and take the wheel again. “There’s still no future. I know it’s hard right now, but it won’t always feel like this. You’ll get over me—”

“I won’t.”

“—and you’ll meet someone better—”

“You’re my soulmate, Jemma.”

“—and she’ll...” My heart sank, halting me. “Okay, she won’t be your soulmate, but she’ll be able to give you everything you deserve, Trace. Everything I can’t give you,” I said and pressed my hand to my chest, afraid that he would be able to hear the literal sounds of my heart breaking inside of me.

“I don’t give a shit what she can give me, Jemma. I want you. Only you ,” he said, his tenor dropping so low I could feel it rumbling in my bones. “Don’t you get that?”

My throat tightened as tears pricked the corners of my eyes. I got it more than he could ever know. More than I would ever admit to him. “I get that it’s hard now, I do, but it won’t always be like this.” It couldn’t be. I had to believe that time would eventually heal the wounds I’d caused them, and they’d be better off because of it. “And yeah, I know I fucked up last night and got carried away in the moment, but it’s not going to happen again.”

“What if I want it to happen again?” He paused tentatively. “What if we both do?”

“ What?” I hissed; certain I’d misunderstood him. I quickly shook away his words and what I’d thought I’d heard and pressed on. “Someday you’ll both understand why I did this and you’ll—”

“And we’ll what ?” cut in Dominic, halting me in my tracks again as he flattened his hand against my waist, making my brain momentarily short-circuit. “We’ll thank you for it?” His chest brushed up against my back as he leaned in beside my ear and whispered. “Is that what you were going to say, angel?”

My gaze stayed pinned on Trace as I tried not to pay attention to the way Dominic’s fingers were digging into my flesh, marking me like he owned me. Heat spread low in my body, and I nodded.

At least I thought I had.

I could barely think straight, what with my heart trying to punch a hole out of my chest and his intoxicatingly sweet cologne wrapping itself around me like a love that would never set me free.

Dominic huffed, as though offended and then dropped his voice impossibly low. “You act as though you are giving us some sort of gift, and I must say, I don’t think I appreciate it in the least.”

“It is a gift,” I whispered softly.

“Well, in that case,” he murmured, his lips grazing my ear as he spoke, “we respectfully decline your gift.”

“You can’t just—” My protest died in my throat as Trace sidled closer, his eyes pooling with desire, or hunger, or something . Something that had my hand moving up to his chest and fisting his shirt.

I wasn’t sure if I’d meant to stop him from coming closer or to pull him into me as though it were my life mission to tend to every one of his needs. As though the three of us were going to reenact my latest inappropriate dream right there in the middle of the hallway.

What in Satan’s Lair was going on here?

“Stop,” I rasped, my breath coming in labored as I yanked my hand back like I’d scorched it on an open flame. “Both of you.” I had no idea what they were doing but it was making my knees, and my resolve, go weak.

“Stop what, angel?” asked Dominic, his breath fluttering against the shell of my ear. “We haven’t even done anything yet.”

Yet? Did he say yet? As in, something more was coming?

“No.” Nope. Not even entertaining that. “I need to get back to my homework,” I stated, pushing Dominic’s hand down from my waist and stepping forward so that he wasn’t pressed up against my back anymore. Unfortunately, that brought me almost chest to chest with Trace. I wasn’t sure which of the two positions was worse for that inferno heating me up from the neck down. All the way down.

“Can you please move?” I asked Trace, flustered beyond my wildest imagination.

“Don’t you want to get your snack first?” he asked, looking like he was the damn snack being offered. I suddenly felt starved, positively ravenous and it had nothing to do with food anymore.

And why was it so fucking hot in here ?

“Of course, she does,” answered Dominic, and I could practically hear the smirk on his face even though I didn’t turn around to look at him. “Don’t you, angel?”

Were they messing with me? Were they trying to fuck with me on purpose? Fogging up my head and confusing my body for some kind of revenge game? Was this payback for breaking things off with them?

It had to be that. Nothing else made sense.

“We’re not messing with you,” said Trace, answering my thoughts. “I promise it’ll make sense if you just sit down and talk to us for a minute.”

How did he—? I looked down and noted his hand splayed against my hip. My skin had been vibrating so intensely that I hadn’t even felt him touch me again. Mostly because I already felt like I was being touched everywhere by both of them and all at once. I couldn’t seem to make heads or tails out of anything.

“Do you think you could do that for us, angel?”

I’d meant to shake my head, to scrounge up the proper words that would make this vampire menage come to an end before I spontaneously combusted on the spot, but that wasn’t what I did.

It wasn’t what I did at all.

“That’s my good girl,” purred Dominic as I nodded my head despite having meant to do something else entirely.

There was obviously something very, very wrong with me.