Shattered Promises 02 - Fractured Souls (30 page)

“Is my father that Foreseer?” I ask, shocking her and everyone else, although it’s not that ridiculous of a question. She mentioned him back in The Underworld and I could hear the loathing in her tone.

My mother leaps from her chair and it topples to the ground. “No, it’s not your father!” she screams, crouching over and savagely moving toward me. “Shut your mouth this instant!”

I hover back in the chair, realizing how temperamental she really is. “I’m sorry.”

She glances at all of us and the rage in her eyes diminishes as she tips the chair back up and lowers down in it. “I’m so sorry, Gemma. I have no idea why I yelled at you like that.” She smoothes her hands over her hair, trying to comb it back into place, however the braid is slipping loose and strands of her brown hair are sticking up. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I say numbly, shutting myself down by choice because I don’t want to feel the pain from knowing that the mother I have now is not the mother I had—she’ll probably never be the same. None of us will. There are things in life that happen that change who we are, things that are hard to come back from, and in the end we never really are the same.

Aislin jumps to her feet. “I think I need to go lie down. This is a lot to take in.” She’s on the verge of crying as she hurries into the house before anyone can say anything.

Laylen sighs and gets to his feet. “I’ll go check on her.” He follows after her, leaving the door open.

A moment of silence passes between us and all I can hear are the waves and Aislin’s sobs from inside the house.

My mother’s blue irises drift back and forth between Alex and me. “I really want to understand, why he separated the star and why he detached Gemma’s soul and raised you to be unemotional. I know what he told all the other Keepers, but I want to find out the real reason.”

“Maybe it’s the opposite reason of when we thought he was protecting the world,” I suggest with a shrug. “Maybe he needs to preserve the power inside me… and Alex so it would be useful for the portal. Maybe if we… if we felt too much the star’s power would die.”

“You might be right,” my mom says, her forehead creasing as she deliberates. “But we need to find out for sure.” She slumps back in her chair. “We need to find out a lot of things.”

“Like why he created Aislin and Laylen,” I say, biting my lip as I gaze out at the waves. “Why not just find a Vampire and Witch who are also Keepers?”

“Because their kind are not easy to find,” my mother answers. “I think it was also so he could keep an eye on them and make sure everything turned out the way that he wanted.”

Unexpectedly, the electricity surges to a nearly unbearable temperature, putting more power in me than it ever has, to the point that it’s suffocating.

“Alex, are you okay?” I lean over in the chair and put a hand on his knee, hoping to calm him down.

He looks at me and I mean really looks at me, with fire in his eyes. Then he stands to his feet, throws the chair over the deck, and storms inside the house, slamming the door behind him. The glass shatters and scatters all over the cracks in the deck.

I start to get up, but then sit back down, not wanting to leave my mom alone just yet.

“I’ll be fine,” she assures me, motioning at me to go after him. “Now go check on him.”

“Are you sure?” I ask hesitantly.

She nods, cracking a smile. “Gemma, I’ve been surrounded by screams and torture for the last fourteen years. I’d love a little break from the noise and drama. Maybe just a few minutes of peace and quiet.”

I nod and leave her alone on the deck, wondering what I’m leaving behind and what I’m about to walk into.

As well as whether or not I can handle any of it.

Chapter 32

I find Alex out on the front steps, the porch light shining down on his back. He doesn’t look up at me when I walk out the door, but I know that he knows I’m behind him, thanks to the electricity. The connection feels different now that I know why it’s there. It’s almost painful, the sparks now feeling more like prickly needles, yet somehow it still feels so damn good.

The salty sea air kisses my cheeks and my hair as I shut the screen door. I sit down on the cement step beside Alex, pull my legs up, and rest my arms on my knees. He rolls his tongue in his mouth as he taps his foot against the step with his arms on his knees. His hair is disheveled, a sign that he’s been raking his fingers through it, a stressful habit of his.

“How are you feeling?” I ask and then shake my head at the absurdity of my ridiculous question. “Sorry, dumb question.”

His expression softens, his muscles slightly unraveling. “No, it’s not a dumb question. I just…” He blows out a breath. “I don’t know how to answer it because I don’t know how I feel. I really don’t.” He kicks a rock on the step and it shoots across the grass. “I feel like I don’t know anything anymore—I never really knew anything.”

“It’s insane, isn’t it?” I say. “How all of us fit into this—how we were all created.”

“Gemma.” His voice holds uncertainty as he angles his face toward me, staring at me remorsefully. “I’m sorry for everything. I really am.”

“It’s fine,” I tell him, shrugging it off the best that I can. “It’s not your fault. Besides,” I stare down at my hands. “I think we’re past needing to say we’re sorry.”

He turns to the side to face me, takes my hands, and pulls them to him. “No, we’re not,” he says in a low, meaningful tone and I look up at him. “I think you’re letting me off a little because of the electricity—or the
star
anyway.”

“It’s fine,” I repeat, thinking about how he was beaten by his father. I may have been abused by neglect and demeaning words, but Alex had been physically abused. “I’m not the only one who’s suffered.” I pause as he grazes the scar on my palm. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah, go ahead.” There’s an edge in his voice.

“What does
Forem
mean?”

He sighs heavy heartedly and looks up from my hand. “I had a feeling you were going to ask that.” He pauses, deliberating as he searches my eyes. “You remember how Nicholas told you about the Blood Promise the Fey made to Malefiscus?” he asks, sketching his finger along the scar on my palm.

I nod, shivering from his touch as my skin tingles. “Yeah, I remember, though he never did explain to me what it was.”

He slips his hand over mine, presses our palms together and his hand nearly swallows mine. “Remember in the vision how I cut our hands?”

It clicks like a lock unlatching. “Did we make a Blood Promise?”

He nods. “We did.”

Forem
. “What kind of promise exactly?”

“Forem or...” His exhale is shaky, conveying his insecurity. “Forever.”

I’m a little lost still. “So Forem means Forever, but I still don’t get what exactly a Blood Promises is.”

“It’s an unbreakable promise,” he says quietly. “And it means we’re bonded together… forever.”

Forever.
Forever
. What the hell? How is that even possible? We were…were so…

“But we were so young,” I finally manage to say through my racing thoughts and heart. “Why the hell would we do that?”

He closes his hand around mine, brings my hand to his mouth, and grazes my knuckles with his lips. “Because we were really weird kids,” he states amusedly. “And honestly, I didn’t really know what I was getting into when I did it. I think I said it more as a lets-be-best friends-forever kind of thing.”

I explore his face for what’s hidden inside him. Did he mean what he said in The Underworld? Does he really love me? “And what does it mean now to you?”

“I’m not sure yet,” he says, staring out at the road.

“Me, neither,” I utter softly and then the silence drowns us.

I want to ask him so many things. Like what he’s thinking and feeling. Does he think it’s the electricity that’s pulling us toward each other? Does he really love me?

In the end I keep my lips sealed because I’m afraid to find out the truth. Then I’ll have to admit what I’m really feeling and I’m not sure I’m ready for that.

“Gemma, I…” he starts, struggling to keep his voice balanced.

I can tell by the way that he looks that he’s either going to crush my heart or send me running, so I cut him off, rapidly leaning in and silencing him with my lips.

I gasp from the spark of our lips and then moan at the warmth of his tongue as he urges my lips open and kisses me ardently. I readily liquefy into the kisses, opening up and letting him completely in. He meticulously explores every inch of my mouth as he grips at my waist, his hands just under the hem of my shirt; flesh burning flesh.

At first the kiss is innocent, simply two confused people making out on a porch, however the longer it goes on, the more intense it becomes until something snaps in both of us and the faint sparks blaze into a scorching fire. Before I can even acknowledge what he’s doing, he scoops me up in his arms and carries me into the house. Passion and heat take over and we no longer have control, but we never really did anyway. We’ve both been helpless against our emotions, without them and with them. The drives of our lives and our decisions have solely been based on what we didn’t and did feel.

I secure my arms and legs around him as he maneuvers through the screen door and into the living room, his lips staying fastened to mine the entire time. He trips over the threshold and my back slams against the wall as his weight crashes against me. He leaves me pressed up to it for a moment, his tongue slipping deeply into my mouth, and then he moves us away. He manages to find his way to the hall without breaking the kiss and starts to head to the room we’ve been sleeping in.

“Not in there,” I murmur against his lips as I thread my fingers through his soft hair. “My mom’s in there.”

Groaning, he turns the other way and stumbles into the vacant spare room across the hall. It’s smaller than the one we’re staying in and doesn’t have a view of the ocean, but I could care less at the moment what the hell the room looks like as long as it has a bed.

He continues to kiss me as he moves for the bed and then he turns around at the last second so we collapses onto the mattress with me on top of him. I straddle him as he presses his hands to my back, enfolding me against him. We kiss recklessly through our pain and confusion and the longer our lips remain sealed together, the easier it is to forget that this all might be an deception based on stars and misguided emotions.

Alex ultimately breaks the kiss, but only to remove my shirt. It’s tight fitting, though, and has a ribbon up the front that makes it complex to get off. Finally he threads his fingers through the laces and rips the fabric in half. Then he tosses the pieces aside on the floor, his green eyes blazing with uncontrollable hunger as he reaches around my back and unclasps my bra. My breasts spring free as he discards it to the floor beside my ruined shirt, then I reach forward and grab the bottom of his shirt. He helps me take it off him, roughly tugging it over his head, and throwing it aside. I leisurely glide my fingers up his chest and defined abs before I groan at the mouthwatering hardness of his lean muscles, his skin making my skin burn. When I reach the top of his chest, I slip my hands around to his shoulders blades while his travel up my back.

Halfway up my back, he presses his hand inward, forcing my back to bow up and my breasts to move closer to him. With neediness in his eyes, he lowers his mouth to devour my nipple, sucking hard while his tongue traces eager circles. I allow my head fall back as I moan in ecstasy and my thighs tingle as my stomach coils. He keeps sucking and sucking, moving back and forth between my breasts and right when I can’t take anymore, my body about to combust from emotional overload, he pulls back.

I start to stammer a protest when he lifts me up with one hand and jerks my shorts and panties off. I fumble to undo the button of his jeans and then he slips them off and kicks them aside. When I sit back down on his lap with a leg on each side of him, his hardness presses between my legs. I wait for him to slip inside me, raggedly breathing in anticipation, but his fingers wind around the back of my neck and he entices my lips to his while his finger slips up between my legs and slides into me.

He starts moving his fingers, harder and harder, feeling me thoroughly and pushing me toward blissful elation. His tongue and fingers move rhythmically and then he sucks my bottom lip into his mouth and grazes his teeth along it. His fingers push me higher until I’m drifting away from reality, lost in the sweltering feelings I barely recognize. I finally scream out, completely letting go as I grasp forcefully onto his shoulders. I’m barely coming back down when he slips his fingers out of me and with one final kiss, he thrusts himself into me.

I cry out again as a thousand different emotions soar through me and speed up my heart rate. My pulse throbs and my body pulsates more erratically with each of his thrusts. I start to move with him, wanting more, needing him to be as close as possible so we’re linked together. My skin beads with sweat as he pushes harder, his hips meeting mine as he sinks into me, driving me farther into blissfulness. He grabs my arms, guides them behind my back, and secures my wrists together with one hand, forcing my chest outward. With each penetrating movement of his hips, my chest presses against his and it makes my nipples go hard. His lips find my neck where he kisses and licks a path down to my collarbone while his other hand grips at the flesh on my waist.

He lifts his hips higher as he holds my wrists together and leaves me vulnerable and trapped in the most insanely good way. I want to hold onto him, dig my nails in and feel his skin split open, letting out some of the overpowering passion inside me. But I can’t do anything except let the feeling build as he pushes me closer the edge of reality. I get more lost with each connection of our bodies until I feel like I’m going to explode. I scream out as I lose it completely and it feels like I’m breaking apart on the inside, crumpling, falling into the dark.

Seconds later, Alex movements slow down. He gives one last deep press into me and we both cry out in unison. His fingers press against my wrist to the point where I wonder if they’ll bruise and he pulls my waist forward so our bodies align perfectly together.