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

  His face twisted at my admission as though I’d just burned him, but he quickly looked away, hiding the pain of my searing words as he ran a hand through his ebony hair. It felt like an entire lifetime before he composed himself enough to meet my eyes again. Expression tempered. Mouth silenced.

  In that moment, I wished with everything that I had that I could read minds the way he did so that I could know what he was thinking. So I could know his true feelings and be done with it. Was it anger? Disappointment? Disgust? Did he pity me? Not knowing was making my head spin.

  “Please say something,” I begged, wishing he would just come out and say it. Put me out of my misery already.

  His jaw tensed. “What do you want me to say, Jemma? It’s none of my business.”

  For some strange reason, his answer felt like a slap against my scarlet-lettered cheek. The truth was, he’d already seen way too much to have the luxury of not having an opinion. “I want to know what you’re thinking.”

  “Why do you care what I think?”

  “Because you’re my friend, right? That is what you said before, isn’t it?” I asked, my voice taking on an angry edge.

  He ran his hand along his jaw, and I could see the muscle flexing now. “Yeah, that’s what I said.”

  “So, let’s hear it. What say you friend?” I honestly wasn’t sure why I was poking him or pushing him to give commentary on something so personal and embarrassing.

  Like I said, glutton for punishment.

  He sank back in the chair and met my eyes. “I say it’s pretty fucked up that you let him treat you like that. He doesn’t deserve to know you let alone touch you.” His jaw tensed but his eyes never strayed from mine.

  “And why’s that, huh?” I tossed the covers off me and climbed out of the bed onto shaky legs, remarking my blood-stained top and giving zero fucks about it. Trace immediately popped out of his seat as though he were going to rush over to steady me, but then thought better of it.

  He knew where that line was.

  It was always there no matter where we went.

  “Why doesn’t he deserve me, Trace? Because I’m special?” I asked mockingly as I spit the word out at him. “Because I’m your soulmate? Because I’m supposed to be pure?” I laughed, but there was no humor behind it. “Take a look at me,” I said, gesturing to my bandaged neck and bloody clothes. “There’s nothing pure or virginal about me so you can just forget the fantasy.”

  His eyes raked over me as he took a small step toward me. “The fantasies I have about you have nothing to do with you being a virgin,” he answered, his voice taking on a gravelly edge.

  I could feel my face flushing again and for some reason, it incited rage within me. “Fuck you and fuck your fantasies.”

  He flinched at my words.

  God help my mouth and my wrath. I knew I was taking it out on the wrong person, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. He was a reminder of everything I was, and everything I’d lost, and I hated remembering. I hated feeling sorry for myself and I hated realizing just how far I’d fallen. But most of all, I hated the fact that he was making it so easy to let my walls down again. To want for him. To wish for him. I didn’t want to feel those things because I was no good for him anymore, and the sooner he figured that out and left me alone, the better off he would be.

  Whatever ideal he'd imagined, whatever dream he'd made up about who I was and who we might become was just a figment of his imagination. The person I used to be was long gone. She didn't exist anymore. She'd been broken apart and put back together so many times that the edges no longer lined up. Not even a semblance of her remained, and I didn't want to be that girl anymore anyway.

  But I didn't really want to be this person either.

  This person was cold and cruel and messed up, and that wasn’t who I wanted to be either. Dammit!

  “Look, I’m sorry,” I said, backpedaling out of the hole I’d thrown myself in. “I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” I shook my head and immediately regretted it as my headache slammed back and forth inside my head.

  His gaze remained fixed on me, his jaw muscles ticking profusely, as though trying to decipher a complex puzzle with missing pieces, but he still wasn’t saying anything, and it only made me feel worse about myself.

  What the hell was I doing here anyway? What was I doing to him? He didn't need this crap in his life right now. He had enough problems of his own without my added drama in the mix.

  Mortified of my behavior, I tried to do the thing I did best. Run.

  “I need to go," I said as I searched the room for the duffel bag I’d packed right before I decided to screw everything up and throw myself to the wolf again. I needed to get as far away from here as physically possible. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. But I shouldn’t be here.”

  “No. This is exactly where you should be.” His unwavering eyes all but pierced my heart with their veracity.

  I shook my head again. “You don’t know what you’re saying, Trace. You don’t have all the pieces,” I said, spotting my bag by the bedroom door and rushing over to it. If he knew the whole truth, the truth about what I had done to him and how easily I’d moved on, he wouldn’t be asking me to stay. He probably wouldn’t be talking to me at all.

  “Then fill in the pieces,” he challenged, shadowing me from a distance.

  I wished I could. I really did, but the past was too ugly to fess up to. I wasn’t strong enough to do it and he wasn’t strong enough to hear it. Not yet anyway.

  “I have to go,” I said again as I yanked open the bag and pulled out my hoodie.

  “And where exactly are you going to go in the middle of the night?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest as he watched me like a sentinel manning his post.

  “I don't know yet, probably a motel or something.” I threw the hoodie on, not even bothering to take off my bloody shirt first. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll figure something out.”

  “Jemma—”

  “I’m not your problem,” I cut in, stopping him from saying anything else. “I can take care of myself. Thank you very much for everything, but I’ve taken up enough of your time,” I said and grabbed the door handle.

  Trace materialized beside me in an instant, his hand over mine, stilling it as I tried to pull open the door. My aching, humiliated body immediately caught fire as the rushing current between us all but electrified me where I stood.

  Exactly what I didn’t need.

  Sucking in a breath, I looked up and met his eyes—those mesmerizing azure eyes that were once again filled with pain and anguish. My heart sank right to the floor as it became apparent that this was the only thing I was capable of doing to this man. Hurting him. Eviscerating him. I didn't deserve to be standing beside him let alone making him feel even an ounce of pain. And that was all I had ever done to him from the moment I came into his life.

  “No, it’s not,” he answered roughly, having heard my thoughts from our touching hands.

  But it was. He just couldn’t remember it. “Let me go, Trace. I'm not who you think I am. I’m not. I'll only bring you heartache.” I tried again to turn the door handle, but his hand remained steadfast in stopping me.

  “Then bring me heartache,” he said, moving in front of me and then lowering his face to mine to catch my gaze. “I'm not going anywhere, Jemma. And neither are you.”

  The sheer conviction in his words made me falter, but I couldn’t hold on to the sentiment for very long. “Why would you want me around when all I've done is hurt you and lie to you? I’m a fucking mess—inside and out.” Why couldn’t he see that? It was plain to see from the stains of humiliation on my cheeks to the dried blood crusted all over my body. I mean, I literally just told him to fuck off and there he was, still standing beside me. Not fucking off.

  “You’re hurt and mad and you need someone to take it out on,” he answered calmly, as though it were as simple as that. “I’m a big boy. I can take it.”


  “Why the hell should you have to?” I asked completely dumbfounded as I tried to snap some sense into him.

  “Because,” he said, looking at me as though I were an idiot for not knowing it. “You’re my mate, Jemma. It’s what we do.” The way he said it, the way he was looking at me, so fiercely and intensely, there wasn’t a single doubt in his mind that we were soulmates. “I already know I'm meant to be with you. I can feel it, and I know somewhere deep inside, you know this is where you’re supposed to be too,” he said as he slowly pulled my hand away from the door handle.

  And this time, for reasons that had yet to make sense to me, I let him.

  “Stay with me,” he said, his demand a soft murmur that reached out and caressed my skin.

  Flashbacks of the past came rushing back to me. Of the last time he asked me to stay with him. Of how in love we were with each other. How happy we were. And now look at us. He couldn’t remember who the hell I was, and I couldn’t stop hurting him. What a pair.

  “I don't give a shit about any of that,” he said, taking my duffle bag from me and then towing me back into his room and away from the door. “I don't care about what we were or what you think you've become. I don't care about your fuckface ex or your virginity or what you did in the past. I just want to be where you are, Jemma. That’s it.” His words were soft and disarming and I felt utterly unworthy of them. “I want to know who you are now.”

  I dug my feet in and stopped moving. “And what if you don’t like what you find?” I asked, my fear mounting as I felt my guard gradually evaporate. “What if you’re wrong about me? About us? What if I did something so horrible and unforgivable that it changes everything?”

  “Nothing’s going to change the way I feel about you,” he said and took a step closer to me.

  “You say that now, but you don’t know.” I shook my head at the hopelessness of it all as a single, rogue tear escaped its prison. “You don't want to know about all the ugly parts, Trace, the broken parts, the parts that make me look like a monster. Nobody wants those parts. We all want the fantasy and none of the nightmare.”

  “So, give me all the ugly, Jemma. Give me the nightmare,” he said as he wiped my tear and closed the remaining space between us. There was something so real and disarming about him that it almost made me want to pour out my heart and soul to him right then and there.

  But I knew I couldn't do that.

  The parts of me that were battered and bruised, ugly and sinful, also happened to be tied directly to his memories. Memories I wasn't sure he was capable of handling yet.

  A part of me knew it was a bad idea to stay. To let him get this close to me. To allow him to be the one to take away the heaviness in my heart tonight.

  I knew all of that…but I stayed anyway.

  8. A CASE OF YOU

  I’d spent the better part of Sunday in bed, my body lapsing in and out of sleep as though it were working overtime to heal itself from Dominic’s surprise visit last night. Without a dose of his pick-me-up blood, I was having to heal the plain old way. Granted it was still much faster than your average human might heal, but not fast enough.

  The throbbing ache in my heart, however, was going to take a lot more time to heal than just a full day’s rest. That wound was wide open and showed no signs of closing any time soon.

  To my surprise, Trace had taken the day off work and came around to check on me every so often, offering food and hovering around the door with his dark brows knitted with unease, but he didn’t dare try to coax me out of bed to join the world of the living.

  It was as though he knew I needed time to heal, inside and out.

  By the time the sun had begun to set behind the tangle of ashen clouds, I had had just about all the sleep I could tolerate. My body tensed as the memory of last night materialized behind my eyes. Apart from using my body like a bag of blood, Dominic had also compelled me to meet him at the Manor tomorrow night, though I had no idea why he had chosen that night specifically.

  Did he need time to work out the details of whatever he was planning to do to me?

  Did he want to make sure that Trace had his guard down?

  Or did he just want to torture me while I waited for the day to come, fruitlessly trying to come up with a plan of action to counter something I knew could not be resisted?

  My pulse pounded hard in my throat as I sat there feeling weaker and more hopeless than I had ever felt in my entire existence. How was I going to find a way out of this, to wrangle myself a stay of execution when I couldn’t even talk to anyone about it?

  A gentle knock rapped at the door as Trace poked his head inside the room, this time carrying a takeout bag from All Saints. “You hungry yet?” he asked, peering down at me, his expression half concern, and half hope, like this was the last trick he had up his sleeve to get me to eat. He held the bag up. “Chili cheese fries, wings, and mac and cheese.”

  My stomach growled at the sight, sound and smell of it.

  “You brought me comfort food?” I cooed, my eyes trailing the bag as he crossed the room and then set it down in front of me on the bed.

  “There wasn’t anything edible in the house. I figured this was the next best thing.” He shrugged like it was nothing and then flopped down onto the bed in front of me, a gentle charge humming between us.

  With my bottom lip between my teeth, I tore into the bag, pulling out each individually wrapped Styrofoam dish and setting them neatly in front of myself. I could almost taste the food on my tongue as I peeled back each lid and shoved the discarded coverings back into the takeout bag.

  “Would you like to do the honors?” I asked as I held out the plastic fork to him.

  Smiling, he shook his head. “I already ate.”

  “Oh. Okay.” More for me then. I swooped my fork down into the dish and stabbed around at the chili cheese fries until I had an offensive amount on the end of my fork and then shoved it all into my mouth, sans etiquette.

  Damn, that’s good! Peering up to thank him, I paused my chewing as I noticed he was just sitting there, staring at me with a slight smile playing on his lips.

  “What?” I glanced down at myself. Had I dropped some on my shirt in my rush to get the food into my mouth?

  “Nothing,” he said and then gave me a strange look. It was the kind of look you might give a lost puppy that you found abandoned in the cold, wet rain. “You’re hair…it’s cute.”

  My free hand rushed up to my head as I smoothed my palm over my hair to verify the alleged ‘cuteness’ and then cringed as I felt a huge bird’s nest type situation at the back of my head. Great. I had bed hair. Just perfect.

  My cheeks flushed with heat as I combed my fingers through it without meeting his eyes. His quiet, husky laugh swept through the room, making me blush even harder.

  Avoiding his eyes, I swapped my fork for the spoon and then dug into the mac and cheese.

  “You want to talk about what happened yesterday?” he asked, his baritone voice taking on a serious edge.

  I gave my head a quick shake and then took another bite, still not looking at him.

  “How long are you going to keep letting him do this to you?”

  Shame and guilt melded inside of me, turning my stomach around and eviscerating my appetite. I dropped my spoon into the dish and then pushed my plate away. “I don’t want to talk about this, Trace.”

  “You mean you don’t want to talk about it with me,” he guessed as he pushed the plate back in front of me.

  “I mean I can’t talk about it.” I met his eyes and faltered. “I wish I could, but I can’t. Not yet.”

  His eyes searched mine. “Because you don’t trust me?”

  I ignored that particular question on purpose. “Because it’s…too much. I wouldn’t know where to start even if I wanted to, which I don’t.” The last thing I wanted to do was talk about Dominic with Trace. I pushed the plate away again as the familiar sting of sorrow burned the corners of my eyes.

&nb
sp; “Alright,” he said simply as he skimmed a French-fry from my plate. “I guess I’ll wait then.”

  I looked up at him. “You’ll wait? You know I’m not going to change my mind tonight, right?”

  “Then I’ll wait longer,” he said with a wink. “Tomorrow morning good or do you need a little more time?”

  “Tomorrow mor—” I burst out laughing. “Wow. Thanks…I really needed that,” I said as the tears that had been getting ready to fall retreated.

  “I know.” He grinned triumphantly as he grabbed another French-fry and then met my eyes.

  I shook my head. “You think you have me all figured out, huh?”

  “Nah,” he said as he picked up my spoon and took a bite of my mac and cheese. “But I will.” The look of determination in his eyes made my stomach do a dropkick.

  I snatched the spoon from him and scooped up some mac and cheese as he attacked the chicken wings. “How can you be so confident about us when you don’t even remember what happened between us in the first place?” Disappointment crept into his eyes and I instantly regretted my words. “Shit. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  “I know you didn’t mean anything by it.” He pushed his hands through his hair and let out a frustrated breath. “Look, I wish I could remember everything that happened before my accident, but I can’t change what is. The only thing I can tell you is that I don’t need to know where I came from to know where I’m going. The past doesn’t matter to me even half as much as the future does, and I know you’re my future, Jemma. I’ve already seen it, and it doesn’t matter what—”

  “Wait a minute,” I interjected, stopping him as he tried to bite into another chicken wing. “Did you just say you’ve seen it? Like you saw us together in the future?” I know I didn’t hear that right.

  His jaw muscle pulsed, as though he hadn’t realized what he’d said, and then a single, curt nod.

  I stared back at him for a beat, waiting for him to tell me he was kidding. Only he never did. “How is that possible? Did you pick up some Seer abilities along with that amnesia of yours?” I asked semi-teasingly, wanting to lighten the mood but also in desperate need of more information.