Page 3 of Irreverent (The Marked Saga #7)

Hearing the steady, incessant thrum of the proverbial clock ticking in my ears, I decided it was time to move this theoretical conversation between Gabriel and me into practice. Truth be told, I could spend hours talking to Gabriel like this. He was probably the closest thing I had to a real best friend since losing Taylor, and that made being with him as easy and natural as breathing. But alas, I still had miles and miles to go.

“How do you feel about starting the, um, process tonight?”

My cheeks reddened at my abrupt question. I wasn’t sure how to phrase that and hearing it back made me feel embarrassed. Probably because, if I was being honest with myself, there was a teeny tiny part of me that was excited at the prospect of bloodsharing with him. At starting this ‘process’. There was no thrill or high as pure and divine as a Revenants bite and no pick-me-up as powerful and healing as a taste of their blood. I’d be a bold-faced liar if I denied the appeal.

Even with Gabriel.

His eyes appeared torn as they bounced from my face to my neck and then back again. “I assumed you’d want to talk to Trace first,”

he said, sounding as though he had been hoping for the postponement.

I didn’t get a chance to analyze the change in his tone, though. I was far too busy wincing from the sudden drop in my stomach at the mention of Trace’s name. I didn’t need Seer blood to know that he was going to be completely against this plan in every way that mattered. Bonding myself to yet another vampire and doing so in order to save the other man I happened to be in love with would surely not fly well with him even under the best of circumstances.

“I haven’t decided if I’m even going to tell him about this,”

I said as I traced a deep fissure in the wood grain of the table with the tip of my index finger.

Gabriel grimaced at my admission.

“Don’t look at me like that,”

I said and then straightened in my chair. “I can’t even get him to answer my phone calls or text messages at this point. I really don’t think dumping this on him is the best way to open up the lines of communication. Besides, he already has enough on his plate dealing with what he just found out,” I said, rambling out excuse after excuse. I may not have had any contact with Trace in the last couple of days, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t have eyes and ears on him. I knew he was struggling to cope, and I couldn’t even blame him for it. Finding out you were Lucifer’s vessel and died at the hands of your girlfriend was enough to put even the strongest of people on a time-out.

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

“Both,”

I admitted freely, not even bothering to deny it.

“Don’t give him another reason not to trust you, Jemma.”

“I’m pretty sure we’re already way past that point, Gabriel,”

I snapped, as though any of this were his fault. But it wasn’t his fault, and I knew that. The blame rested squarely on my own shoulders.

My stomach churned as I thought about the sad state of my relationship with Trace. Still, I highly doubted that telling him about this would be enough to salvage the trust I’d already broken, and even if it did, at what cost? Wouldn’t I just be adding yet another cross for him to bear? Another worry for him to stress over? Another fear to burden his heart and mind with? I didn’t want to do any of those things. Not to Trace. Not after everything he’d already been through.

He was already teetering on the edge. I wasn’t about to push him over it.

“Can I ask you something personal?”

asked Gabriel, the sound of his somber voice pulling my attention back outward.

A swarm of nervous butterflies immediately formed in the pit of my belly. “I guess so.”

“What are you going to do if this works?”

I blinked at him, confused by his question. “What do you mean?”

He stared at me for a moment, the intensity of it making the back of my neck prickle. “Best case scenario, everything works according to plan. We form a bloodbond, break the one you have with Dominic, and you’re somehow able to get him to turn his emotions back on.”

Yes, please! “From your mouth to god’s ears.”

He nodded. “But then what?”

I continued blinking at him, still unable to understand what he was actually asking me.

He pushed back in his chair and furrowed his brows as though searching for the words that might properly convey what he was getting at. “Trace is in love with you.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that.”

“And if Dominic turns his emotions back on, then naturally, he will once again be in love with you as well.”

“Right.”

An anxious flutter spasmed through me, as though someone had reached into my chest and squeezed my heart with an iron fist.

“So, you will have two men in love with you at the same time and place.”

“Well, ye-yeah,”

I stuttered, finally having caught up to him. I should’ve known he had a point somewhere in there. Gabriel seldom said anything without having a reason. “I guess I will.”

His gaze softened with sympathy. “You know you’re going to have to pick one eventually, don’t you?”

Pick one?!

His words felt like a bucket of ice water against my face, and suddenly, I had the urge to eat his whole head. I mean, yeah, of course, I was going to have to pick one. I couldn’t keep both of them, right? And I certainly couldn’t continue stringing them along for the rest of our lives. Obviously, I had to pick one, and I knew that…in theory.

But how could I ever possibly choose between the two great loves of my life when I was so completely and wholly in love with both of them, albeit in completely different ways? The thought of walking away from either one of them was too much to bear let alone to properly consider.

This entire conversation was making me feel sick to my stomach. I obviously hadn’t thought that far out. Theory was one thing, but reality was entirely different monster altogether. It was too much to consider—too much to process all the way to the end. All that mattered right now was making them whole again, bringing them back to me, and so that was what I was choosing to focus on.

“I can’t think about that right now,”

I said decidedly, pushing away the horrible predicament from my consciousness. “None of that matters at this point anyway. Not until they’re both okay.”

“But ultimately, you will have to, and if this works, it’s going to be much sooner than later. Don’t you think you should be preparing yourself for that?”

I shook my head. Nope. Not doing it. “We don’t even know if this is going to work or what Dominic’s feelings for me will be afterwards. And Trace—he’s not even talking to me right now. Maybe what happened with Lucifer was the final straw for him. Maybe this is whole conversation is a moot point. Maybe I won’t ever have to choose between them because they’ll make the decision for me.”

“Neither one of them is going to willingly walk away from you,”

he pointed out.

“You don’t know that—and you’re not helping!”

“I’m just asking you the questions you should be asking yourself.”

“Well, clearly I’m not asking those questions, Gabriel! Clearly, I’m still living in denial, and clearly, I’m finding it quite pleasant to live here at the moment. Now can you please stop talking about this and just bite me already?”

“Jemma,”

he reproached, his cheeks darkening at my vulgarity.

Sorry, not sorry. This discussion had veered into a no-fly zone and I wasn’t about to let him land there. “You’re just trying to stall,”

I accused, trying to take myself out of the hot seat and throw him into it instead. “And we’re wasting precious time right now. None of this will even matter if we don’t figure out how to help them in the first place.”

He exhaled for a beat, his gaze still heavy and probing, and then finally nodded.

Apparently, in my rambling mess of duck and blame, I’d somehow managed to make some sense and get him to see it my way. I inwardly gave myself props.

“Thank you. Now can we please get this over with?”

I pleaded as I removed the elastic band from my wrist and then quickly pulled my hair up into a messy bun to get it out of the way. I was done with this conversation and done with waiting. I had a plan, and I was sticking to it come hell or high water. “Do you want to do this in the kitchen or the living room?” I asked as I stood up from my chair and peered down at him, my shadow looming over him like a sentinel.

His gaze travelled up to meet my eyes and then he cleared his throat. “Wherever you prefer.”

I glanced around at my surroundings and thought about it for a second. Bloodsharing with Dominic had always been private, and intimate…erotic even. Not wanting to trigger any of those feelings or memories, I decided that sticking close to the pots and pans and kitchen sink was probably our best bet. “Here’s good.”

Nodding, he rose from his chair to meet me where I stood. Suddenly, it was his shadow looming over me, and I fought the urge to cower away from him. This was Gabriel for crying out loud. He was my Handler and one of my best friends, and I trusted him wholly. So what if his pupils were dilating again. So what if he was clenching and unclenching his hands at his sides like a nervous tic. He was readying himself for the task at hand, that was all.

“Jemma?”

I swallowed noisily and met his eyes. “Yeah?”

“Are you having second thoughts?”

His eyes were tracking something in my expression I couldn’t see.

I swallowed past the cement ball at the back of my throat and shook my head. “No,”

I replied as firmly as I could. Even if I had been having second thoughts, I wasn’t going to admit that to him. He was already sitting precariously on the fence about this. The last thing he needed to hear was that I was just as nervous about doing this as he was. “No more stalling, remember?”

He nodded curtly and then stared back at me for a few beats, his eyes a tumultuous mixture of all the usual emotions. Worry, apprehension. Even hunger. But there was something else there too. Something that looked a whole lot like sadness. It was not the look I expected from a vampire that was just about to be given an unlimited supply of Slayer blood.

My head tilted to the side as I examined him. “Why do you look like I just killed your puppy?”

“Why do you think?”

he answered hoarsely.

I thought about it for a moment and then felt my shoulders sag. “You don’t want to do this,”

I guessed and didn’t bother waiting for confirmation. It was written all over his face for anyone to see. “Look, I know I laid it on pretty thick before and I guess I didn’t leave you much of a choice, but this isn’t the way I wanted to do this, Gabriel. I feel like I’m forcing this on you and that’s not what I—”

“That’s not the reason,”

he quietly interjected, halting me.

“Oh.”

Relief settled in my chest as I studied him further. “Then what is it?”

His gaze skirted away, as though he were too ashamed to meet my eyes. But what did he have to be ashamed of? I was the one that asked him to do this for me, not the other way around.

And then it hit me.

“Is it because a part of you…wants to do this?”

I asked softly, cautiously. “Feed from me, I mean?”

His jaw muscle flexed as his gaze drifted to the throbbing pulse on my neck and then stayed there. “More than I care to admit.”

“Oh.”

My cheeks heated, though I wasn’t sure why.

His gaze climbed back up to my eyes. “I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about that.”

It took me a few seconds to realize he was waiting for an answer from me. For some kind of pardon. “I mean, I think that’s, you know, normal,”

I answered choppily with a shrug of my shoulder, unsure of how else to respond to his admission.

At the end of the day, he was still a Revenant first and foremost. Of course, it was natural for him to want to bloodshare—to feed. To enjoy it even. But Gabriel had gotten so good at repressing that side of himself that he could feel nothing but guilt and shame over it. The whole thing was kind of sad.

“You don’t have to feel bad about this, Gabriel. Not with me. Besides, I want it too.”

Hearing how bad that sounded, I quickly added, “I mean, I’m pretty sure it was designed to make us feel that way otherwise no one would do it.” Not willingly anyway.

He stared back at me for a long, harrowing moment, his jaw clenching rigidly as I cleared my throat and tried to change the topic before we both got cold feet and ran for the hills.

“Don’t even worry about it,”

I said, waving it off as I forced out a small smile. “There’s nothing wrong with what we’re doing, and definitely not for the reasons we’re doing it.”

“Right,”

he agreed, though he didn’t look remotely convinced of it.

Frankly, neither was I.

Nevertheless, I raised my chin and trudged forward. “So…what’ll it be? Wrist or neck?”

He grimaced as his gaze veered to my neck again and then darted away in a hurry. “Wrist,”

he grumbled.

“Yes. Good idea.”

Best to keep this thing as platonic and business-like as possible. Ignoring the strange sensation of shame pooling in my stomach, I busied myself rolling up the sleeve of my hoodie until it was all the way to my elbow.

“I think I should feed again before we do this,”

said Gabriel abruptly. His voice sounded strained, as though he were talking through gritted teeth.

“What for?”

I asked, my face scrunched up in question.

“Just to be on the safe side. In case I can’t—”

“Stop yourself?”

I finished for him when he couldn’t. “You already had a full donor bag downstairs,” I reminded, which was more than enough to tie him over until tomorrow night. Considering he was already well fed and satiated, the risk of not being able to stop was low as fuck. “You’re worrying for nothing, Gabriel. You’ll be fine. Besides, we’ve done this before. It’s just like riding a bike,” I said, though I was pretty much just making stuff up at that point.

“This is nothing like riding a bike,”

he answered tartly.

“Yeah, it’s a thousand times better.”

His gaze snapped to mine.

For the love of all things holy. “Did I say that out loud?”

I asked, my cheeks burning up beneath my skin. I didn’t bother giving him a chance to answer. “Never mind. Just relax, okay? You got this. You can totally control yourself now,” I said, almost as though I were willing it to be true. Heck, we both could’ve used a little encouragement at that point.

He blew out a readying breath and then raked his fingers through his hair as I brought my arm up between us. His eyes dropped down to my wrist and remained there, almost as though he could see or hear the trilling of my pulse beneath my skin and had become mesmerized by it.

And then his teeth clicked out and my heart all but jumped up into my throat.

This was it, I realized.

There was no going back now. Gabriel’s vampire was coming out to play, whether I was ready for him or not, and all I could do was pray I wouldn’t go to my death regretting this harebrained idea of mine.