Page 95 of Illusory

“And yet she still leaves your arms to come find comfort in mine.”

“Because of the bloodbond,” growled Trace.

Dominic chuckled darkly. “We both know she’s been coming to melongbefore we ever sealed that bond.”

“Alright, that’s quite enough,” said Gabriel, but Dominic just ignored him.

“Perhaps if you had actually been capable of fulfilling her, she wouldn’t have felt the need to come to me in the first place.”

Trace’s expression fell, his eyes darkening with fury as he shoved forward again, as though he wanted to go another round with him, but Gabriel was right there to stop him.

“I said that’s enough!” he snapped, his gaze alternating between Trace and his brother, his brows running together into a tight, irritated line. “Both of you need to take a step back and cool off.”

“I’m already as cool as a cucumber, brother.” Dominic’s gaze slid back to mine as a cocky half-grin tilted his mouth up. “Care for a drink, angel? I’m sure you need one after the ordeal he put you through this morning.”

My breath caught in my throat as my guilty eyes met Trace’s. All sorts of damaging memories of his mouth on my breasts flashed through my mind and my cheeks immediatelyburned red.

“I could use a drink myself,” announced Trace, knowing full well that Dominic hadn’t been talking to him. “What do you say?” he asked me, his gaze rolling down my body as he licked his lips like he was remembering my taste. Like he was getting off on what we had done at the cabin all over again. Right there in my kitchen.

Tiny beads of sweat trickled down my back, because I knew something was coming and whatever it was, it was about to make everythingso muchworse.

His glimmering blue eyes climbed back to meet mine. “Or did you want to changeagainfirst?”

Sirens blared in my ears as all the blood rushed up to my head at once. “Stop.”

“Not that you need to,” he went on, a devious smile pulling at his lips and making both his dimples pop off in tandem. “You always did look better in my clothes than I did.”

Please kill me now. Just strike me fucking dead.

Swallowing the bile at the back of my throat, I turned just in time to catch Dominic’s gaze raking over the white T-shirt I had on, as though he had only just noticed it. He knew it wasn’t what I had been wearing when I came downstairs this morning, and I knew heknew.

He knew and I wanted to die. I wanted the heavens to split open right then and there and smite me where I stood. No. better yet, I wanted to jump to the future and learn how to port just so that I could send myself back to the past and make sure I was never even born to begin with.

What the hell had I done? Why did I keep doing this? Why couldn’t Ijuststop hurting them?

I forced myself to meet Dominic’s eyes, to face the consequences of what I had done as I waited for him to say something to me, to cut me with his words and tell me whata traitorous bitch I was, but what he did was so much worse than any name he could have called me.

He just looked at me, saying nothing at all with the most gutted look in his eyes that I had ever seen. It was a million words of heartbreak and a thousand paintings of sorrow all wrapped up in the most tragic moment I’d ever experienced. No. Not experienced.Caused. I’d caused him that pain.

My traitorous heart clenched and stuttered in my chest as I took a small step toward him and then winced as his jaw line and dark eyes hardened at my uninvited proximity.

I wanted so badly to tell him that it wasn’t true. That it wasn’t what he thought. That it was all taken out of context. I wanted to tell him every pretty lie I could think of that would make that look disappear from his face.

But I couldn’t.

There was no more running. No hiding from the mirror that chased me relentlessly, throwing itself up to my face so that I could see myself and all the ugly things I had become.

I shook my head at him, at myself, at my inability to stop hurting them both, horrified that I’d once again trampled over all the lines in the sand and made an absolute mess out of everything.

“I…I’m sorry,” I rasped, the insignificant words coming out like the uselessnothingthat they were.

“You don’t need to apologize to him,” said Trace and I really wanted to tell him to shut the hell up then. I wouldn’t, of course, because this wasn’t his fault.

I did this all on my own.

Dominic’s broken eyes never left mine. “It appears my work here is nearly done.”

Hiswork. The reason he came back here at all. To help Trace acclimate. To me. For me. To do the ‘right thing’ by me in an impossible situation.

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