Page 92 of Illusory

“I do. You know I do.” My head rolled back against the wall. “Oh, god. Please…just don’t stop.”

“Say it, Jemma,” he demanded, his tongue circling my nipple as my hands flattened against the wall on either side of me, desperate for some sort of leverage. “I need to hear you say it.”

“I love you. I fucking love you,” I said breathlessly between pants. “I love you so much it hurts.”

He growled, his tongue gliding from my chest to my collarbone as he simultaneously unbuttoned my jeans. “Say it again. Say it until your throat is raw for me.”

My lips parted on the words he needed to hear as a smooth honeyed voice slithered into my mind and halted me.

Please, angel, answer the damn phone.

I blinked, my blood running cold as everything slammed to a dead stop. All I could feel were those pleas rattling around in my head and the stinging vibration of my phone in my pocket.

Trace’s mouth slowed, his knowing eyes shuttered as our grinding and kissing and rubbing stilled. He pulled back, his head dropping slightly.

“We can’t do this,” I said, my words breathless and clunky and filled with remorse and loss because as much as I wanted this, it wasn’t right. Not here. Not like this. “I can’t do this.”

He released his grip on my legs, letting them drop slowly to the ground.

“Because of him.” It wasn’t a question. It was never a question. I think a part of him had known since the very beginning that my heart had always been split in two. He just never wanted to look at the pieces.

“They’re waiting for us and they’re probably worried sick.”

The air dragged from his lungs as he brought my bra straps back up to my shoulders and then picked up the shredded fabric of my shirt as though it could somehow be salvaged before deciding that it couldn’t and releasing it,letting the torn pieces fall back to my waist.

“I’ll go find you a shirt to wear,” he said, his face devoid of any expression.

But I didn’t need to see a look on his face to know that I had hurt him again.

“I’m—”

“Don’t,” he said and then turned his back to me as he traversed the hallway and disappeared into his bedroom.

Crossing my arms over my chest, I dropped my head and tried to fight back the mess of tears that were clogging up the back of my throat. I wouldn’t let them fall, though. I wasn’t the victim in this, and I needed to remember that.

Feeling like the world’s biggest asshole, I blew out a breath and reached into my back pocket for my phone.

There were several missed calls from both Dominic and Gabriel along with twenty-seven text messages, mostly from Dominic. I opened up our chat window and scanned the last few messages:

ANSWER ME.

WHERE. DID. HE. TAKE. YOU?

Angel, please. Answer me.

I swear to all that is holy, if he so much as harms a single strand of hair on your head, I will gut him from the inside with my bare hands and feed him his entails.

Horrified and ashamed, I quickly thumbed a message back to him:

We’re at his family cabin. I’m fine. We’ll be back in a few.

I closed the screen and slipped my phone back into my jeans as Trace reappeared carrying a white T-shirt in his hand.

“This should fit. It’s from my freshman year,” he said as he handed the shirt to me and then pushed his hands through hisdark hair. “It’s the smallest one I have.”

“It’s fine—thank you,” I said, eying him as I peeled away the remaining shreds of fabric from around my waist and then let it fall to the ground.

His gaze dropped briefly before he shoved his fingers through his hair again, stepping away and then turning around, even though he’d already seen me far more undressed than I currently was. “I can take you back when you’re ready,” he said, his expression forlorn and despondent. “I got what I came for anyway,” he added, mostly to himself.

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