Incipient A Dark Paranormal Romance - Bianca Scardoni Page 0,45

several keys out of his pocket. “Good luck, Jem. I really hope this works,” he added, tossing the keys to Trace as he left the room.

Trace caught the shower of keys easily and began to unchain my hands as Gabriel once again attempted to approach me. Attempted being the operative word. I’d never seen him so hesitant and unsure of himself. So awkward and dodgy.

He was really coming all the way out of his comfort zone for me, and I was going to have to find some way to repay him for it when this was all over.

Wanting to make this a little easier on him, I extended my arm to him as soon as Trace had cut me loose and offered him my wrist. Mostly because I knew Gabriel would never attempt a bite on my neck as that was far too intimate of a place and he was far too modest of a man. “Ready when you are.”

He stared at my wrist for a long moment. “I think perhaps it might be a better idea to bloodlet instead of a direct bite,” suggested Gabriel, still hovering away from me and not making the slightest attempt to take my extended wrist.

“What do mean bloodlet?” asked Trace, his eyes narrowed on Gabriel.

“It’s simple, really. We make a small incision on her wrist, extract some of the blood into a cup or some other instrument and then I take the sample from there,” answered Gabriel, sounding very cold and detached from the whole thing. “This avoids direct contact and any of the risks associated with that.”

“Risks?” asked Trace, but I quickly spoke over him.

“We don’t need all these extra steps,” I blurted shrilly, both my arms fastened around Trace’s waist. “We’re just wasting more time and I want to go home.”

Trace’s gaze shot down to mine and softened.

“I really have to insist,” continued Gabriel, his forehead wrinkled with apprehension. “Frankly, I’ve never done this before and I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to take to it.”

Take to it? He was making it sound like we were transplanting my lung into him. “It’s just blood, Gabriel. I’m sure you can stand it for thirty seconds.”

“Standing it is not the problem, Jemma,” he answered gruffly. “Being able to stop is my concern.”

Ooh…well, shit. Duh. I glanced back at Trace who looked horrified and then back to Gabriel who looked even more horrified than Trace. Between the two of them, my confidence had just been shot to shit. “So, about that cup?”

17. YOUNGBLOOD

After acquiring a small glass and a sterilized knife from Ben, I proceeded to make a tiny incision in the palm of my hand and then squeezed my fist to let the blood drip into the glass. When I was done, I peered up at Gabriel and Trace, who was still holding me closely in his arms, and wrinkled my nose. One looked like he was disgusted with the whole thing while the other one looked like he was regretting ever picking up the phone in the first place.

Doubt flitted through me.

“We don’t have to do this, you know,” I said to Gabriel as I watched him white-knuckle the glass filled with my blood. “We can come up with another way around this.”

“Such as what?” he answered, his eyes filled with enough thundering emotion to sink an entire ship.

The more I looked at him—at his perturbed eyes, at the sweat on his forehead, the tight jaw, the rigid arms—the more I felt like I was doing something really, really bad to my friend. Like I was putting his well-being far behind my own by making him do something he wasn’t comfortable with. The thought alone made me feel gross inside.

“Such as going after Dominic—incapacitating him until we can figure out what to do about his emotional problems,” I suggested off the top of my head, though after hearing the words come out of my mouth, I really liked the way they sounded. It was a viable short-term solution. “The incapacitation will break the compulsion he has on me while also giving us time to figure out how to turn his emotions back on.”

“That doesn’t sound like a half bad idea,” noted Trace, his jaw working from side to side.

Gabriel shook his head decidedly. “You’re not ready to go up against him, Jemma.”

I knew he wasn’t referring to my physical abilities. We both knew that was never the issue. “Do you really think that when push comes to shove, I can’t do