Book 3 Teaser: Dream Scene

24 Jan Book 3 Teaser: Dream Scene

TEASER FROM BOOK 3 OF THE MARKED SERIES

* This is not the final edit and may be different in the final version *

In my dreams I was always free. I was happy, and I was with him. Rays of warm sunlight poured over my body like a sweet, comforting lie as his mouth found mine under the powder blue sky of a better world. Blades of grass tickled my skin as I reached up and pulled him in closer to me. Closer, but never close enough.

His dimples blinked at me as he moved his lips from my mouth to my ear and then down the hill of my neck. It was always heaven like this with Trace. My own piece of paradise within the burning inferno.

He pulled away from me suddenly, propping himself up on his elbow beside me. “It’s time to wake up, Jemma.”

“No!” I clutched his waist like a madwomen hanging on to her sanity. “Please,” I begged. “Don’t leave me again.”

“You have to go back.”

“I don’t want to.” I shook my head as tears began to build behind my lids, blurring away the blue sky around us. “It’s always dark there, Trace. I can’t take the darkness anymore.”

“You have to find your way inside the light.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I answered as tears slid down my cheeks in despair.

His beautifully shaped lips continued to move with speech, but there wasn’t any sound now. He was slipping away from me again, going back into the light where he belonged. I wanted to be there in the light with him, but I didn’t know how to get there.

Wake up, he mouthed and then snapped his fingers. The sound of it echoed through my head like a gunshot.

My lids snapped open and the darkness of the dungeon quickly enveloped me once again.

Pulling my knees up to my chest, I parted my lips and swiveled my tongue around my arid mouth, searching for a drop of moisture to quell the overbearing thirst. There was none to be found. My stomach roared back at me beneath my filthy dress, urging me for nourishment—threatening me with a total system shut down if I didn’t comply with its demands. It was turning on me too, I imagined, just like everyone else in my life.

Click. Click. Click.

My head shot up at the distant sound. I crawled away from my cell door and stared at it, listening more intently.

Click. Click. Click.

Footsteps.

Someone was coming.