Page 130 of Illusory

Tessa had barely been conscious during most of the drive home, but the moment we stepped inside the Blackburn Estate, she bounced back to life like a light switch had been flipped, looking disheveled and uncoordinated as she stumbled into the console table and sent an old, Victorian vase crashing to the floor.

Seeing as she was clearly still very drunk and very much in need of sleep, Gabriel and I attempted to steer her toward her bedroom to sleep off the buzz, but she stubbornly shrugged off every one of our attempts with surprising force. Her movements wild and erratic and impossible to control as she doggedly stumbled to the liquor cart in the living room, fully intent on filling herself up a fresh glass of alcohol.

Clearly, she hadn’t been able to keep up with me back at the tavern and probably should have stopped six or seven shooters earlier. Unfortunately, that memo hadn’t yet reached her intoxicated brain.

“Would you get your paws off me? I said I’m fine,” she snapped, shoving Gabriel back a step as he tried to wrestle her away from the booze.

“Goddammit, Tessa, you’ve had enough! It’s time for you to go to bed,” he growled, struggling to rein her in.

“Says who?” she sneered as she tried to spin around to face him but nearly faceplanted onto the wood floor instead. Gabriel caught her arm and steadied her before she could make full contact with the ground and further embarrass herself. “You’re not my Keeper, Bucko. When are you going toget that through your thick skull?”

He ran a hand over his face and circled away from her, as though he was working very hard to restrain himself.

Cringing at my sister’s unbecoming behavior, I tried to give Gabriel a hand, hoping that perhaps she’d take it better if she heard it from me. “He’s right, Tess. You’ve had too much to drink tonight. You need to sleep it off.”

“Too much to drink?” she roared back as though I had called her out of her name. “You’re joking, right? Do you have eyes? I’m fucking aces!” she bellowed and then stumbled forward, but Gabriel was right there to keep her upright.

Not that she appreciated the gesture, evidenced by the way she jerked her arm away from him.

I had no idea what had gotten into my sister, but she was definitely going to regret this fiasco in the morning. “Oh yeah,sure, Tess. Totally aces,” I said with an exaggerated roll of my eyes. “Look at you. You’re as sober as a judge. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Someone snorted behind me. Probably Dominic.

Tessa’s eyes turned to ice as she glared at the guys over my shoulder. “What the hell are you laughing at? Do you think this is funny or something?” I wasn’t sure which one she was talking to and judging by the way her eyes couldn’t seem to focus on anything, I wasn’t sure she knew either.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” answered Dominic, not even bothering to hide his shit-eating grin while Trace stood beside him, licking his healing lip wound with his arms crossed over his chest. “This new sloppy, apathetic version of you is entertaining to say the least. Theveryleast.”

“What did you just call me?”

“Which part of my statement confused you? I could rephrase it if you’d like,” he offered her sweetly.

Tessa lunged, her shoulder knocking into mine as shetried to torpedo across the room at him with Gabriel hot on her tail. Strong hands gripped my waist and yanked me away from the line of fire as Tessa swung out at Dominic, her arms lashing out with zero control or coordination, like she wanted to claw his eyes out of his head.

“ENOUGH!”roared Gabriel as he finally managed to restrain her for long enough to pull her back to her side of the room. “Get a hold of yourself, woman!”

Dominic swiped away a small streak of blood from his cheek, the smile still present, as though my sister hadn’t just tried to disfigure him. “Sloppy indeed.”

A hysterical shriek tore from my sister as she tried to lunge at him again, except this time, Gabriel was already there to stop her. Having apparently reached his limit for the day, he grabbed a hold of her arm and her thigh and then hoisted her up over his shoulder so quickly that my eyes had barely been able to track the movement.

“We’ll see you in the morning,” he announced evenly as he turned on his heel and then carried my drunk sister out of the room as she cursed and thrashed against him.

Embarrassment crept into my cheeks as her vulgar words gradually faded into the walls of the house. I couldn’t help but feel responsible for this mess. At least partially. I was wrong to have challenged her at the Tavern. She clearly couldn’t handle her liquor, nor could she resist a challenge.

I should have known better.

“She’s a grown woman, Jemma. You’re not responsible for anyone’s behavior but your own,” rumbled a deep voice beside my ear.

In all the chaos, I’d forgotten about the arms that had snatched me out from the air. Trace hadn’t bothered to let me go, even after Tessa and Gabriel were long gone, and I hadn’t bothered to step away either because everything was alwaysbetter when I was in his arms.

His hold on me tightened as our soulmate bond thrummed between our bodies. My gaze lifted to Dominic who was watching us intently, his eyes flicking back and forth between us with a hint of curiosity. The heat in my cheeks from before intensified, but for a completely different reason.

Chasing away the haze from my mind, I cleared my throat and stepped out of Trace’s arms, immediately feeling the loss as he let his hands slip away from my waist. Both their gazes were still trained on me, weighing me down like an ocean’s worth of water rushing over my chest to keep me buried in the sand.

It was making it hard for me to catch my breath.

“Crazy night, huh?” I said through nervous laughter as I ran the palm of my hand over my hair, attempting to smooth it out as though it might help me get my head back on straight. “Must be something in the water.”

Dominic adorned me with one of his slanted smiles, his dark eyes shimmering with trouble. “Must be,” he agreed, his gaze traveling down from my hair to my dress and then to my thighs that were barely covered by thetinypiece of material I was wearing. Miniscule really.

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