Page 41 of Irreverent (The Marked Saga #7)

I woke up to the sun beating against my bare back through an opening in the curtains and absolutely no recollection of how I’d ended up back in my own bed. Memories of Dominic’s hands all over my body, of his lips on mine, of his body inside mine swirled around my brain like a hazy summer day and I sat up, frantically trying to piece the rest of the night together. For a brief petrifying moment, I wondered if I had dreamed up the whole thing—if any of it had even happened at all.

My hands rushed up to my neck, searching for the proof that would convince me that it hadn’t been a dream. That it had happened. Wincing as I brushed my fingers over the puncture wounds—the many puncture wounds he’d marked me with—I let out a sigh of relief and then lowered my hand.

It wasn’t a dream. It had happened.

Something had clearly shifted inside of him last night—cracked, splintered, and opened up wide for me. And even though I wasn’t entirely convinced that the real Dominic was back just yet, or worse, that he wasn’t playing some sick new game with me, I couldn’t help but feel like something good had happened between us.

Something real.

For one, he hadn’t tried to kill me last night even though he’d had ample opportunity to do just that. He could have taken complete advantage of my sloppy state, but he didn’t.

Not even close.

That had to mean something, didn’t it? But what if—

The sound of someone clearing their throat startled me, drawing my eyes to the corner of the room. Realizing I wasn’t alone and that I was wearing nothing but a see-through, half-torn bra, I grabbed the sheet around my waist and yanked it up to my chin, narrowing my eyes as I looked back at the shadowy corner.

Gabriel’s unsettled gaze burned out at me from across the dark room.

“Jesus, Gabriel! What the hell are you doing just sitting there in the corner?”

I snapped, my heart beating chaotically against my chest as I pulled the sheet in closer to my body. “Were you watching me sleep?” My face contorted at my last question. Because that would be creepy as fuck.

“I wasn’t watching you sleep. I was waiting for you to wake up,”

he clarified, looking offended by my accusation, as though the thought of it disturbed him just as much as it did me.

Thank goodness for that.

“Okay, well, I’m up now.”

I covered a yawn and then wiped the sleep from my eyes as I held up the sheet with my free hand. “What time is it?”

“It’s almost noon.”

My eyes bulged. “Seriously?”

What the hell had happened last night? And how the hell had I gotten into my bed? I inwardly cringed at the thought of Gabriel having had anything to do with it. Hopefully, I’d managed to make it back up to my room on my own and long before he got home. “So, when did you get here? In my room, I mean. Was I, uh…already sleeping when you came in?” I tested, trying to be slick about but failing miserably.

His brows drew together in suspicion. “You don’t remember what happened last night?”

“Of course, I do,”

I lied and then slumped at the look of doubt he threw at me. “Okay. Not exactly.”

“Well, for starters,”

he began, his voice so low and measured, it hardly matched his face. “You were not sleeping when I came home. At least not in here.”

Oh, sweet baby vampires. Say it isn’t so.

“I had to carry you up to bed.”

“You carried me up to bed.”

Dread poked at my subconscious, desperate to get inside and really take my humiliation to the next level. “Did I fall asleep on the couch or something?” I asked innocently, praying to the freaking Angels of Mercy that his answer would be YES.

He cleared his throat again. “Or something.”

I outwardly and inwardly cringed. I was fairly certain that by the third or fourth round with Dominic last night, all of my clothing had been removed or torn to shreds, which meant that Gabriel had to carry my naked ass up to bed in my birthday suit. There wasn’t even a word for the level of mortification I was feeling at that moment.

“I’m not even sure where to begin, Jemma, or whether I should even begin at all—”

“The last one,”

I interrupted, barely able to hold his gaze. “Definitely the last one.”

“I know I don’t need to tell you that you have to be careful. That what you’re doing is dangerous.”

“You don’t,”

I said, hoping that would be enough to halt whatever talk he was trying to have.

“You’re playing with fire,”

he said, still eyeing me cautiously. “What you and Dominic did—”

I covered my ears and shook my head. “I can’t talk about this with you, Gabriel. It’s too freaking weird,”

I said as I climbed off my bed, dragging my sheet right along with me.

He rose from the chair, his eyes lingering on mine as though he wanted to say something more. As though he had a million things he wanted to say to me but couldn’t manage to spit a single one out.

My phone vibrated on the nightstand behind me and I all but launched myself at it, desperate to break up the awkward moment burrowing in between us.

Pulling up my messages, I quickly scanned the newest message from William, the Senior Magister requesting that I come to Temple as soon as possible. He didn’t bother saying what the meeting was about, stating only that it was urgent.

My heart jackhammered in my chest as a wave of nausea rolled through me.

Was this meeting about Trace? Had they finally found something to help him? And more importantly, was I going to be able to keep William alive long enough for him to actually tell me?

“Jemma? Is everything okay?”

asked Gabriel, snapping me back to the present.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Everything’s fine,”

I lied, deciding to keep my little meeting with William a secret from him. As much as I hated lying to Gabriel, if this meeting was about something else—something like the deal I had made with him—then I didn’t want Gabriel anywhere near that building while we had our chat. “I need to get dressed,” I said quietly, my polite cue that it was time for him to leave my room. “Can we finish this up later?”

He nodded and then stepped forward to leave before pausing and turning back to me. “There are things I need to say to you, Jemma. When you’re ready to talk, come find me.”

“Yup. Of course. Definitely,”

I said, though I pretty much intended on avoiding him for the rest of my life now.

Satisfied with my answer, Gabriel turned and left the room, shutting the door behind himself.

Exhaling a long shaky breath, I made a beeline for the washroom and hopped into the shower. Ten minutes later, I was washed and dressed and tiptoeing my way across the hallway to check in on Trace before I headed out to Temple, making sure not to alert any lurking vampires that I was on the move again.

Shutting the door quietly behind myself, I crossed the guestroom over to the bed to make sure he was okay, and then startled at the sound of someone clearing their throat from behind my back. With my heart in my throat, I spun around on my heel and then gasped as I took in the person smiling back at me from across the way.

Gasped because, well, the person staring back at me was me.