Incipient: A Dark Paranormal Romance (The Marked Book 6) Read online

  I knew he would, and I knew he wasn’t doing it on purpose. I just needed to make sure he’d make the extra effort, especially when I was caught in this kind of pants-down position. It was hard enough to keep Dominic’s compulsion out of my head without trying to filter my thoughts for Trace’s benefit.

  “As soon as I get you out of here, I’m going to figure out a way to break this fucking hold he has on you, and then I’m going to break him,” he said, and while his voice was soft and tempered, there was nothing gentle about the look in his eyes. He meant the threat right down to his soul.

  “It doesn’t work that way, Trace,” I answered, trying not to sound so hopeless and dejected, but failing miserably at it. “We’re bloodbonded.”

  “Yeah, well, nothing is unbreakable. Not even a bloodsucker,” he said firmly, his eyes filled with conviction. “You just have to find the right weapon.”

  “It’s a lot more complicated than that,” I said, but failed to finish the thought.

  My mind drifted back to the last time Trace had said something similar to me. All those months ago, after Taylor’s accident. When we were still together and happy. The way he’d spoken then, it was as though he’d figured out a way to break the bond. Unfortunately, whatever his plan had been, it had long-since disappeared by the wayside right along with all of his other memories.

  But all of that was beside the point. Because Dominic didn’t matter to me back then the way he did now. “I don’t want to break him,” I admitted quietly, unable to meet his eyes. “Not the way you want to break him.”

  His knowing gaze bore into me. “Because you still have feelings for him.”

  A terse nod was all I could muster in response.

  “We could always wait for you to fall out of love with him,” he suggested dryly, a sinister gleam in his otherwise magnificent blue eyes. “Then we could put the stake in his heart together.”

  “Very funny,” I said, even though I knew he probably wasn’t kidding about that. “If it were that simple, I wouldn’t be in this position in the first place.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” he said, his gaze dropping away from mine briefly as he reexamined the chains. “It might have to come to that if we don’t figure out a way to get him out of your head tonight, though.”

  I frowned at that, mostly because he was right. We couldn’t stay like this all night.

  “Not that I mind this,” he went on, his eyes meeting mine again, a hint of flirtation in them now. “But one of us is going to need to use the bathroom sooner or later.”

  I laughed again and then beamed up at him, feeling grateful that he was here to take my mind off the horrible predicament I was in. “Thank you for coming,” I said, my heart pattering in my chest as I met those soulful, ever-haunted eyes of his. “I don’t think I would’ve survived the hour if it wasn’t for you.”

  “I’ll always come for you, Jemma,” he said, the admission a quiet whisper between the two of us. “Always.”

  My heart reacted to his words, as though it wanted to reach out and trap the promise within its walls. He was saying that now, but would he always feel that way? Would he still mean it once he found out the truth about what happened?

  “Maybe one day you’ll even trust me enough to call me first,” he mused.

  My stomach sank at his words, at the hurt that was seeping into his expression. “I didn’t not call you because I don’t trust you, Trace. It was never about trust.” I pressed my lips together and looked away because I really couldn’t explain it more than that.

  He ducked down to catch my gaze again. “Do you, though? Trust me?”

  “With my life,” I answered automatically, not even bothering to think about it.

  He stared back at me, long enough for me to grow self-conscious under his thoughtful gaze, and then he nodded, satisfied with my answer. “How’s your head feeling?” he asked as he brought his hand back up to my face, stroking my cheek gently.

  “It hurts, but it’s bearable now.” I smiled at him as the charge between us vibrated from under his palm.

  There was no doubt it was better with Trace here. Without him, I was certain I wouldn’t have lasted another twenty minutes, let alone the rest of the night. As awesome as that was, we still weren’t any closer to getting me out of this compromising situation than when we’d started, and we couldn’t exactly stand here in Ben’s cellar for the rest of our lives.

  Something needed to give.

  “What if it doesn’t stop soon? What if there’s no way to stop it on its own?” I asked, fear gripping my insides and twisted them like a knife. “What if the only way to stop it is to…obey?”

  His jaw clenched and unclenched as he thought about it. “Do you think you can handle it if I take my hand away?”

  “Why?” I croaked out, not wanting to test it out.

  “It’ll just be a minute, I promise,” he said as he slowly withdrew his hand from my face, watching for any signs of distress, before he lowered it into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone.

  I watched nervously as he opened his contacts list and sifted through the names, wondering what he was up to.

  “We’re going to need some reinforcements,” he said pointedly and then met my eyes. “I’m calling Gabriel.”

  16. THE A TEAM

  After a brief phone call with Gabriel and a slightly longer and more detailed conversation with Ben, Gabriel arrived at Ben’s house twenty minutes later, invitation and all, and then joined us downstairs in the cellar. Frankly, between all the eye-candy standing around me and the plethora of chains and cuffs, it was starting to look like a kinky scene from some BDSM book. Sadly, I was in no condition to appreciate the irony of it.

  Gabriel came to a screeching halt as his heavy gaze landed on mine. “Dammit, Jemma.”

  “This is not my fault. What else was I supposed to do?” I defended against his unspoken accusation. He of all people should’ve understood how impossible it was to withstand the power of compulsion.

  “You do realize you can’t just wait this thing out, right? The compulsion will not just disappear because some time has gone by,” he lectured, clearly not impressed with my handling of the situation.

  Also, that was exactly what I didn’t want to hear. Leave it to Gabriel, the bringer of all bad news, to hit me with the bad news right when I needed it the least.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do then?” I cried out, trying hard to keep the anguish from my voice. “I can’t just walk into the lion’s pit and hand my throat over to him, if you get what I’m saying.”

  “Clearly.” He crossed his arms over his chest and thought about it, the apprehension pinching his brows together. “We need to vanquish him.”

  “Agreed,” said Trace, his shoulder pressed against the concrete walls and his arms still wrapped snugly around my waist, keeping the agony at bay.

  “No!” I snapped, shaking my head as a rush of panic hit me. “That’s not an option, Gabriel, and you know it. Come up with something else,” I demanded through gritted teeth.

  Pinching the bridge of his nose, he muttered something under his breath and then looked up to meet my eyes again. “There is something else that may work, but it’s unproven and I’m reluctant to even attempt it.”

  “What is it?” asked Trace, his hold on me tenser since I screamed out my refusal to vanquish Dominic.

  Gabriel ran a hand down his face, as though he were regretting even mentioning it. “It’s been said that you could theoretically weaken a bloodbond by…” He glanced at Trace nervously before continuing. “Establishing a new one.”

  “You have to be shitting me,” snapped Trace.

  My eyes bounced from him to Gabriel as I slowly caught up. “You’re not saying what I think you’re saying, are you?”

  “I’m not recommending it,” defended Gabriel, looking wholly uncomfortable with the conversation. “I’m saying there’s a small possibility that doing so might break the compulsion.”

  Ben
shifted forward from the corner he’d been standing in. “Am I the only one confused here?” He turned to Trace like a deer caught in someone’s headlights. “What’s he talking about?”

  “He’s talking about bonding Jemma to another Rev.” Trace’s angry eyes flew back to Gabriel. “I’m presuming you’re nominating yourself, right?”

  “Not particularly,” gritted Gabriel, clearly offended. “If you have a better suggestion, I am all ears.”

  No one said a word. Because there wasn’t a better suggestion. In fact, up until Gabriel showed up, we had a total of zero ideas combined.

  “I think it’s worth a try,” I said, having had enough of these chains, this cellar, and this entire situation. At this point, I’d probably drink a vat of virgin blood if it meant I could get the heck out of there and go home.

  “You’re not seriously considering this, are you?” asked Trace, pulling back from me to read my expression. “You’ll be swapping one vampire bond for another.”

  “What other choice do I have?” I asked him, giving him yet another opportunity to come up with an alternative. Any alternative at all. “At least I know Gabriel won’t hurt me or try to use the bond against me.” Heck, if I’d known this was an option, I probably would’ve done it months ago.

  “Technically, we would not be fully bloodbonded,” interjected Gabriel as though that made much of a difference to any of us. “The purpose of this is not to solidify a new bloodbond, but to simply weaken an existing one.”

  “Exactly.” I nodded my head as if to prove to myself that I actually had the slightest idea of what I was getting myself into. “So, how do we do this?” I asked, turning back to Gabriel.

  Trace ran his hands through his hair and circled away from me, consequently sending a handful of searing knives shooting through my brain. Whatever I had felt at the beginning of the night was nothing compared to the riot I had thrashing through my mind just then. Apparently, the longer you resisted a compulsion, the more painful it became.

  “Trace!” I cried out in anguish.

  “Shit, I’m sorry,” he said as he rushed back to my side, making sure to keep his body as close to mine as the laws of physics would allow. “Gabriel?” he prompted, having a sudden change of heart.

  “Right. Yes.” Gabriel nodded, though there wasn’t a semblance of confidence to be found anywhere on his person. He looked nervous and unsure, and frankly, afraid. I imagined it had a lot to do with the bloodsharing aspect since Gabriel was pretty much a virgin when it came to that. “I’m going to have to draw some blood from you this time,” he informed, his eyes brimming with regret.

  “This time?” asked Trace, bouncing glances between the two of us. “You’ve done this with him before?” He looked at me like I’d just announced that I’d been sleeping with three thousand Revenants for the fun of it.

  “Just once…after the Veil. I needed to get back on my feet. He was doing me a favor,” I explained, doing my best to keep Trace’s fury focused on me and not on Gabriel. “Very reluctantly I might add.”

  At my mention of the Veil, Trace backed down. He knew how horrible I’d come out of there and that I probably wouldn’t even be here had it not been for my regular infusions of vampire blood from Dominic.

  “Alright,” he said, his hold strengthening around me. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  Gabriel bowed his head in a nod and then took a small step toward me before hesitating. He looked unsure of where he needed to be standing. At this rate, we were never going to get out of here tonight.

  “Should we give you guys some privacy?” asked Ben, already hovering awkwardly by the door, his laptop tucked under his arm. He looked wholly uncomfortable with the whole thing, but I couldn’t really blame him. He was a Shifter and not at all familiar with the Revenant world, and certainly not this aspect of it.

  I was the lone Anakim star in that regard.

  “You can wait upstairs,” said Trace, purposely not including himself, which was good since I couldn’t stand to be separated from him at that moment anyway. “We’ll call you when we’re done.”

  Relief flooded his face as he started to leave.

  “We’re going to need the keys though,” I called out and then gave my shackled hands a noisy shake.

  “Right. Obviously,” said Ben, looking bashful as he dug several keys out of his pocket. “Good luck, Jem. I really hope this works,” he added, tossing the keys to Trace as he left the room.

  Trace caught the shower of keys easily and began to unchain my hands as Gabriel once again attempted to approach me. Attempted being the operative word. I’d never seen him so hesitant and unsure of himself. So awkward and dodgy.

  He was really coming all the way out of his comfort zone for me, and I was going to have to find some way to repay him for it when this was all over.

  Wanting to make this a little easier on him, I extended my arm to him as soon as Trace had cut me loose and offered him my wrist. Mostly because I knew Gabriel would never attempt a bite on my neck as that was far too intimate of a place and he was far too modest of a man. “Ready when you are.”

  He stared at my wrist for a long moment. “I think perhaps it might be a better idea to bloodlet instead of a direct bite,” suggested Gabriel, still hovering away from me and not making the slightest attempt to take my extended wrist.

  “What do mean bloodlet?” asked Trace, his eyes narrowed on Gabriel.

  “It’s simple, really. We make a small incision on her wrist, extract some of the blood into a cup or some other instrument and then I take the sample from there,” answered Gabriel, sounding very cold and detached from the whole thing. “This avoids direct contact and any of the risks associated with that.”

  “Risks?” asked Trace, but I quickly spoke over him.

  “We don’t need all these extra steps,” I blurted shrilly, both my arms fastened around Trace’s waist. “We’re just wasting more time and I want to go home.”

  Trace’s gaze shot down to mine and softened.

  “I really have to insist,” continued Gabriel, his forehead wrinkled with apprehension. “Frankly, I’ve never done this before and I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to take to it.”

  Take to it? He was making it sound like we were transplanting my lung into him. “It’s just blood, Gabriel. I’m sure you can stand it for thirty seconds.”

  “Standing it is not the problem, Jemma,” he answered gruffly. “Being able to stop is my concern.”

  Ooh…well, shit. Duh. I glanced back at Trace who looked horrified and then back to Gabriel who looked even more horrified than Trace. Between the two of them, my confidence had just been shot to shit. “So, about that cup?”

  17. YOUNGBLOOD

  After acquiring a small glass and a sterilized knife from Ben, I proceeded to make a tiny incision in the palm of my hand and then squeezed my fist to let the blood drip into the glass. When I was done, I peered up at Gabriel and Trace, who was still holding me closely in his arms, and wrinkled my nose. One looked like he was disgusted with the whole thing while the other one looked like he was regretting ever picking up the phone in the first place.

  Doubt flitted through me.

  “We don’t have to do this, you know,” I said to Gabriel as I watched him white-knuckle the glass filled with my blood. “We can come up with another way around this.”

  “Such as what?” he answered, his eyes filled with enough thundering emotion to sink an entire ship.

  The more I looked at him—at his perturbed eyes, at the sweat on his forehead, the tight jaw, the rigid arms—the more I felt like I was doing something really, really bad to my friend. Like I was putting his well-being far behind my own by making him do something he wasn’t comfortable with. The thought alone made me feel gross inside.

  “Such as going after Dominic—incapacitating him until we can figure out what to do about his emotional problems,” I suggested off the top of my head, though after hearing the words come out of my mouth,
I really liked the way they sounded. It was a viable short-term solution. “The incapacitation will break the compulsion he has on me while also giving us time to figure out how to turn his emotions back on.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a half bad idea,” noted Trace, his jaw working from side to side.

  Gabriel shook his head decidedly. “You’re not ready to go up against him, Jemma.”

  I knew he wasn’t referring to my physical abilities. We both knew that was never the issue. “Do you really think that when push comes to shove, I can’t do what I need to do? I think you’re forgetting who I am, Gabriel and what I’ve already done,” I answered, trying to gently remind him of what happened with the last boy I loved without having to say it aloud.

  “Yes, but this is different. You’re bloodbonded with Dominic. You will not be able to get within two feet of him without tipping him off. Furthermore, how are you going to launch an attack against him in this state? Do you plan on waltzing in there holding hands with Trace the entire time? Because you might find it hard to yield your weapon.”

  “Very funny,” I deadpanned. But he had a point there. I wasn’t exactly at my shining best right now. Frankly, I wasn’t even able to hold a conversation without physically hanging on to Trace and his good vibrations. I’d be useless against Dominic like this. “Point taken. But…it is a good idea, right?”

  It may not have been a long-term solution, but it was something. We couldn’t just continue to leave Dominic to his own device, stalking the streets of Hollow Hills and draining god knows how many humans. Not to mention torturing me. He needed to be put on ice, at least until we could figure out how to bring back his humanity.

  Gabriel gave a circular nod, absorbing it. “Let’s take care of one thing at a time,” he said and then swirled the blood around in the glass as though trying to work up the courage to drink it—to abandon all his morals and do the one thing he’d promised himself he’d never do.

  His expression changed into one of scorn, his fangs clicking out abruptly as his pupils dilated. His body was reacting to my blood despite the stringent control he had constantly maintained over himself.