Placing the glass on the counter behind me, I tried to move around him and leave, but he shadowed my step and blocked me. My heart kicked up another notch, and he smiled because he knew.
“Why must you be so stubborn all the time?" He placed his hands on the counter behind me, closing me in. “We both know what you want. Why are you denying it?”
My eyes instinctively shifted to the entrance, worried that Trace would walk in and see this.
“Because of him?” He chuckled as though it were funny, as though I were just fooling myself in the worst possible way. He leaned in and whispered near my ear, “He’s sound asleep, love. No one has to know but us.”
Something inside of me was splintering; pulling away from me and moving towards him, drawing me into the darkness it so desperately craved.
“No.” I shook my head, fighting against my own desire. My own body. “I have to go to bed.”
“He can’t give you what you need anymore, angel. He won’t fill the void or steady your hand the way I can. The sooner you realize that, the happier you will be.”
The heaviness in my heart immediately put out the fire that had been raging under my skin. “Don’t you dare talk about him,” I said, jabbing my finger in his face. “Don’t even say his name or I swear to God I’ll stake you myself.”
“We both know you wouldn’t do anything of the sort,” he said, pushing my hand down and then blinking lazily as though growing bored with this conversation. “I’m only trying to help you, angel, because the longer you fight this, the harder you’re going to fall in the end.”
My stomach twisted. I didn’t want to listen to this.
“And I promise you, angel. You will fall.”
“Goodnight, Dominic.” I tried to walk away, but he refused to drop his arm. “Move.”
“You should know, I don’t take kindly to being denied what’s mine.” There was desperation in his voice, an ache that was birthed from fear—fear of losing control, of losing me. I honestly wasn’t sure.
“I’m not yours.” I pushed his arms down and then walked out of the den.
“You aren’t his either,” he called out after me, but I didn’t bother to look back at him—to give him the satisfaction of knowing his words had hit a nerve with me.
He was playing my own fears against me, pitting me against my heart, and I couldn’t let him win. I refused to give up hope for me and Trace until there wasn’t an ounce of hope left to hold onto. Somewhere, somebody had to have the answers and I was going to find them if it was the last thing I ever did.
Quietly, I made my way back upstairs and then tiptoed back down the hallway, the same way I’d come, though this time I stopped in front of the second guest bedroom. I knew Trace was sleeping behind that door—I could feel my body humming just from his presence. My hand came up beside me as though it were seeking to touch him, seeking his refuge, but something held me back from knocking. I couldn’t keep running to him every time I needed to escape Dominic.
He would see it when he touched me, feel it when he kissed me. It wasn’t fair to him. I couldn’t keep pulling him to me with one hand and then crushing his heart with the other.
Lowering my hand, I turned around to go back to my room, though I didn’t make it very far. A cool hand came down over my mouth as my feet lifted off the ground, and suddenly, I was being dragged back into Dominic’s room.
With his hand still over my mouth, he pushed me back against his closed bedroom door and leaned all the way into me, sending my heart into an unrelenting panic.
“Do not scream. Do not move,” he commanded me in the voice that stole my free will.
And I knew I was in trouble.
31. TRUTH BE TOLD
I could feel my heart thwacking hard against my chest as Dominic barricaded me against his bedroom door with his body. The room was pitch black save for a sliver of moonlight coming in from the open bedroom window. I could hear the rain pattering against the world around us, hitting its mark almost as fast as my heart was.
He lowered his hand from my mouth, but his body remained pressed against mine. I wanted to scream at him, to punch him in the balls, but my ability to do anything more than stand there had been compelled away from me.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he whispered, though his eyes were swirling with wickedness.
“Then why are you compelling me not to move?”
“Because I can,” he answered simply.
I glared at him. “Thanks. That really eased my worries.”
“I didn’t say you shouldn’t be worried, angel. Only that I wouldn’t hurt you.” A sinful smile curved across his smooth face. “Do you know how easily I could make you mine? How few words it would take to make you forget he exists?”
My pulse quickened. “You wouldn’t.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he picked up a strand of my hair and twirled it around his finger. “How long has it been since we’ve been alone like this?”
“Not long enough.” I felt him press harder against me and I gasped.
“Answer my questions truthfully,” he said in his special will-stealing voice.
“Twenty-seven hours.” The words tumbled through my lips with shame. I’d been counting the hours.
He smiled, pleased by my telling answer. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“No. What is this, twenty-one questions?”
“Do you want it to be?” A sinister look passed through his eyes.
“No.” I couldn’t stop answering his questions and I detested him for it. “You’re going to be sorry for this tomorrow.”
He smiled again. “I don’t think that I will, angel.”
My heart pounded wildly in my chest as my blood roared through my veins at a dangerous pace. And he knew it too. He knew my body was panicking—he could see it, taste it, hear it—and he was reveling in it.
“Intoxicating.” He closed his eyes for a brief moment as if to breath in the fumes before meeting my terrified gaze again. Craning his head to the side, he caressed my cheek with the back of his knuckles. “Have you missed this?”
“Yes,” I answered speedily and then inwardly kicked myself in the gut. I couldn’t stop myself from telling the truth—my tongue was literally barred from spewing lies. “Dominic, please take away the compulsion. You don’t have to do this.”
“Don’t I?”
“No,” I said, though I wasn’t even sure why he was doing this. “This isn’t you.”
“Regrettably, you appear to be hell-bent on denying yourself any and all pleasure from me, which consequently means that I too am denied.” His eyes blackened into two onyx stones. “And believe me, angel, I am not in the business of denying myself anything, most of all, pleasure.”
“Then don’t.” I swallowed the tangled knot in my throat. “Go out and find yourself all the pleasure you can stand. Just leave me out of it!”
“Is that what you really want?”
“No.” I squeezed my eyes shut. Goddamn my stupid mouth.
“What do you insist on lying to yourself?”
“Because I’m good at it and it’s how I cope with things I’m too afraid to face.” I seriously couldn’t stop.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asked, suddenly curious.
“Sometimes.”
His eyes narrowed as he tried to decipher my answer. “Elaborate.”
“I’m afraid of the way you make me feel.”
He shifted his body closer. “How do I—”
“Dominic, please! Don’t do this,” I pleaded, but I knew there was no use. He had carte blanche to ask me anything he wanted and lacked the moral fiber needed to deny himself of it.
“How do I make you feel?” he asked, speaking softly against my lips.
My insides clenched. “Uncaged.”
His cheek slowly climbed up on one side. “And that scares you?”
“Yes.”
“Because you like it,” he realized.
“Yes.” I felt
naked and completely exposed. I bit down on my lip to keep from crying.
His gaze dropped down to my mouth as a low-sounding growl escaped his throat. “Then why do you deny yourself of it? Why do you deny me?”
That answer was easy. “Because I love Trace. Because it kills me to think of hurting him.”
His expression hardened as annoyance flashed through his eyes. “Yes, unfortunately, I’m well aware of that. The bloodbond goes both ways,” he reminded, his tone flat and resentful. “And that leaves me with a direct funnel to your stifled desires and ceaseless anxiety over Romeo’s feelings.”
“Oh, you poor baby,” I bit back, glaring at him. “Maybe you should have thought of that before you tricked me into a permanent bloodbond.”
His fangs clicked out like a warning and my breath hitched.
“Dominic…” I wanted to shake my head, to reach out and calm him before he did something he would regret, but my body was as useless as a marble statue.
“Yes, angel?” His tone was innocent, but his eyes were anything but. He licked his lips purposefully, drawing my attention down to his mouth.
Flashes of his euphoric bite invaded my mind and my knees immediately weakened. My heart didn’t want any part of this, but my body—my body was betraying me entirely as it did exactly what the bloodbond intended it to do. And he knew it too. He knew my body and my mind craved him like an addict craved their drug.
“Please.” I wasn’t sure if I was begging him not to bite me, or begging him to do it.
His hand moved down to my neck, fingers trailing against my pulsing veins as his eyes darkened with desire. “I’ll tell you what, angel.” His sultry voice sent a shiver down my back. “If you truly want me to stop—if you aren’t craving me the way I am you, then all you have to do is tell me so. Tell me you don’t want this and I will let you go.”
My mind was screaming at me to say the damn words, but my mouth refused to tell the lie. My body wanted him the way the desert wanted rain, the way a lonely heart ached for love. Every inch of me hungered for him to devour me.
“I didn’t think so.” He smiled victoriously.
“I hate you right now.”
“And soon you will love me again.” His fingers weaved into my hair, cupping the back of my head as he lowered his mouth to my neck and parted his lips against my skin.
My breathing staled as I basked in the sensation of his teeth grazing against the sensitive spot below my ear.
The minute his fangs broke through, my body clenched up and then released like a burning comet exploding in the sky. Ecstasy surged through my blood as pangs of need hit me, each wave begging and crying out for more. I wanted to wrap my arms around his neck and pull him in closer to me so that he couldn’t stop—to make sure he never stopped, but I was unable to move an inch, even in the direction that my body ached to go.
Panting and breathless, I cried out as my body grew slack in his arms.
He tightened his hold on me and my eyes rolled back in my head. There was no more worry in my mind, no fear plaguing my heart. Nothing existed and nobody mattered. It was just me and Dominic and the impenetrable bliss that had taken over my body—my entire existence.
The more blood he drew, the less aware of reality I became until I had detached from myself entirely. My legs weakened beneath me until I could barely stand, and when they finally gave out on me, Dominic held me steady in his arms before gently folding to the ground with me.
My lids fluttered as I struggled to keep them open. I wanted to tell him that I was fine—that he could take more, but my tongue was sealed to the roof of my mouth.
He picked up my chin and pulled my face up so that I was looking at him. Remnants of blood colored the corner of his lips as my eyes slowly crawled from his mouth to his eyes.
“My…blood,” I sputtered unevenly, unable to say any of the words I wanted to say.
He wiped the corner of his mouth and his expression fell. There was something pushing through his hooded eyes, something revealing I’d never seen in him before. It looked so much like remorse, but I was too out of it to be sure.
I closed my eyes, ready for the darkness to take me in its arms.
“Look at me, angel” he said as he ran his thumb across my cheeks. He wasn’t done with me.
Forcing my eyes open, I looked back at him.
“You were right the first time.”
I tried to focus on his eyes, on his words, but I couldn’t steady the room or clear the happy fog from my brain.
“I am a monster first and foremost, and that will never change” He bit down on his wrist and pierced a small hole. Blood bloomed from his snowy skin as he brought it to my lips.
I drew in his healing blood without further prompt.
“I have never had any qualms about what I am, about taking what I wanted and leaving nothing but devastation in my wake. And I must say, I rather enjoyed it.” His eyes were focused on my lips pressed against his wrist, but they were distant; here, yet someplace else. “But I find myself conflicted when it comes to you.”
In the thin veil of my awareness, his words registered. I didn’t know what to do with them or how to process them, but they felt important somehow—sacred. He carefully drew his wrist from my mouth and then wiped the smear of blood from my lips with his thumb.
“Why?” I asked breathlessly as I pressed my head back against the wall. The room was spinning so beautifully that for a moment, I thought I had orbited into the cosmos, but his words quickly yanked me back to earth.
“Because I am ruinously in love with you.”
Everything stopped. The spinning room, my beating heart, the earth’s rotation around the sun…
What the hell did he just say to me?
“And I fear it may very well be the end of me—something I cannot allow to be.” He swallowed down hard as if trying to entomb his words, his truth. “But I could not lay it to rest until I said it out loud, just once, where you could hear the words and know that I am not just a monster, but a man telling a woman that he loves her.”
My brain felt as though it had short-circuited. “You…love me.”
He caressed my cheek with his hand as his eyes softened in a way I had never seen from him before. Adoration. Desire. Helplessness. They all stared back at me through his eyes, and then just like that, they were gone.
“Forgive me, angel,” he pleaded as he shuttered himself off from me. “You mustn’t remember any of this.”
Panic knotted my stomach. “Please…don’t,” I begged, knowing what was coming next.
I didn’t want to forget this. I didn’t want him to take my memory away. He had shown me his true colors tonight and they had come in all shades of red and black and all of the darkness in between. And then for the rarest and faintest of seconds, he allowed me to glimpse into his heart, to see him as he was, and now he was going to take it all away.
“You can’t…do this,” I sputtered, fighting hard against the weakness. “You don’t have the right.”
“You will not remember any of this when you leave this room. You slept peacefully through the night and dreamt of wonderful things that freed your heart of pain…” His words crawled through my mind like soldiers overtaking their enemies as I drifted further and further away from this moment.
And just like that, victory was claimed.
32. PUSHBACK
I woke up the next morning feeling incredibly rested. I’d slept right through the night, and for the first time in, well, as long as I could remember, I hadn’t been plagued by nightmares. After grabbing a quick shower, I changed into a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt that Dominic had graciously stocked the guest dresser with, and then headed downstairs.
Trace, Dominic and Gabriel were all seated in the kitchen talking, though the quiet chatter immediately stopped as soon as I walked in the room. I wasn’t so much surprised as I was irritated by it.
“Don’t stop on my account,” I said, crossing my arms as I watched the t
hree of them from the entrance. “I’m sure you have plenty more important details about my life to share with each other.”
“Are we still on this?” grumbled Dominic as he took of a sip of his drink—something way too dark to be apple juice. He was gazing out the window, his eyes aimed in the direction of his mother’s garden, and consequently, away from me, which was both unnerving and strange.
Trace pushed his bowl of cereal away as Gabriel set the newspaper down on the table. Obviously, they knew it was about to get as sticky as molasses in here.
“Oh, I’m sorry, am I boring you with the whole five minutes I’ve had to process this?”
“Yes.”
“Dominic.” Gabriel reproached his brother and then shook his head at him, a silent warning to tread carefully.
Too late.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You are utterly heartless, you know that?”
He mumbled something under his breath, but I didn’t waste time trying to decipher it. His hardened expression told me everything I needed to know. At least Gabriel and Trace had remorse in their eyes, at least they cared that they’d hurt me by not giving me the entire story about my mother. But not Dominic. Nope. He was entirely unapologetic and unfeeling about everything he’d ever done to me and this time was no different. And I was sick and tired of it.
I stepped into the room, my arms still folded rigidly against my chest. “It must be nice going through life not giving a damn about anything or anyone else but yourself.”
“It has it perks,” he answered offhandedly.
“Like screwing over your friends and not giving a single crap about it?”
His eyes snapped to mine. “I don’t have a single friend in this world and that’s precisely the way I like it.”
I flinched at his words, at his disregard of me and everything we’d gone through together. Not wanting him to see the hurt he’d inflicted on me, I quickly steeled myself. “Thank you for reminding me of what you are, Dominic.”
Iniquitous: A Dark Paranormal Romance (The Marked Book 3) Page 22
