Page 87 of Soulbound Shadows: Part 1

I stared down at the woman in my arms, slightly baffled. “I’m happy to help you process.” It came out sounding like more of a question than I had intended. “I thought that was somewhat obvious.”

“I just don’t want to, like, overstep or whatever,” she said, digging her thumbnail into a streak of soot marring her cuticle.

“You’re not,” I said gently. “I’m here for you, Evangeline. If there’s anything I can do to help, you simply have to say the word.”

“Yeah, but it’s… Ugh. Okay. Thank you.” Evangeline sighed, shaking her head a little. Her curls rustled against my chest, and I smoothed them back toward the base of her ponytail.

“I feel like I’m doing it wrong,” she admitted.

“Doing what wrong?”

“Grieving. I’ve never really… I mean, both of my parents—my adoptive parents—are still alive, and one of my grandmothers died when I was pretty young, but we weren’t, like, close or anything. I’ve never had… I’ve lost people in a way that made me go, shit, I’m really gonna miss them, but never in a way where I’ve been fucking wrecked by it if that makes sense.”

“It does,” I said softly.

“And I didn’t really…” Evangeline groaned, scrubbing a hand over her eyes. “I guess I never thought that much about my birth parents. I did when I was a kid, but it wasn’t like I was secretly longing for them to come back and sweep me away or anything. By the time I was, like, twelve, I was pretty cavalier about the whole thing. Like, if they’d decided they didn’t want me, that was their problem, because I’m fucking cool as hell. I had two great parents already; I didn’t need them.”

“You are… ‘fucking cool as hell’,” I said, making it sound as clinical as possible to make her laugh.

She huffed out a quiet chuckle. “Goddamn right,” she said. “God. I feel like I should be more messed up about this. I mean, I am kinda messed up about it, I guess, because I wouldn’t be on the verge of fucking tears if I wasn’t, but it’s just too big to fit in my head right now, I think.”

“I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to react to something like this,” I said. “Although, admittedly, grief tends to be different for immortal beings. Sooner or later, we start trying to avoid getting too attached to people who will age and die.”

“How’s that going for you?” Evangeline asked dryly, tangling our fingers together.

I shrugged. “Well, I’ve been doing some reading, and apparently powerful witches tend not to grow old,” I said, then frowned at myself. “Because they can control their own aging, not because they die young,” I added.

Evangeline snorted. “You’re so bad at pep talks. Truly the worst.”

“And this is what I’m like after several decades of public-speaking training,” I told her. She let out a low, disbelieving whistle. “Are you worried about feeling disloyal?”

“Hm?”

“To your adoptive parents,” I said. “Do you think that letting yourself mourn your birth parents will make you feel disloyal to them?”

“Ugggghhh.” Evangeline covered her face with her free hand. “God. Yeah, I think so. They did everything they could for me. Honestly, they’re great, it’s just…” she trailed off.

“Do you think they would want you to feel guilty about it?”

Evangeline was quiet for a moment. “No,” she said finally. “No, they’d absolutely get it. They offered to help me look for my birth parents.” She untangled our hands and turned to kiss me sweetly. “You kinda pulled the pep talk back around.”

“My tutors would be so proud.” I deadpanned, and she smiled against my mouth.

I meant what I told Evangeline earlier. I would do anything I could to help her, no matter how big or small. If she needed me to, I would put my life on the line for her over and over again. Even worse, I realized, I would make my life better for her, turn it into something I truly enjoyed just so that I might have the privilege of sharing it with her.

I thought of all the moments when I’d first met her, where the smooth line of her neck or the quirk of her smile had practically made me lose my mind. Had I really been foolish enough to believe that was just lust?

I took Evangeline’s face in my hands and kissed her softly. “Grief isn’t a case you can solve, unfortunately, but if you think it would make you feel better, we can make a murder board about it.”

Evangeline laughed, her eyes scrunching up into happy crescents, and then she kissed me again. She shifted until she straddled me, and we settled back against the cushions. The kisses started out lazy and slow, but when I nipped lightly at her lower lip, she moaned and licked into my mouth in retaliation.

How had I lived without this for so long? This sweet, fond version of sex, where we pulled back at the same time to strip off our clothing and Evangeline managed a trick shot to land my T-shirt in the hamper was oddly intoxicating. When Evangeline nailed the shot, she cheered, and the bounce of her breasts hypnotized me.

I leaned forward and pressed my mouth to the pale underside of one, letting my fangs dig in just enough for her to feel it without breaking the skin, and her laughter broke into a moan. The sweet scent of her magic was dizzying. I kissed my way up to the peak of a nipple, sucking the little pink nub into my mouth and feeling it stiffen under my tongue.

When I pulled away, Evangeline was looking down at me with blown-dark eyes, playing lazily with her other nipple.

“What do you need?” I murmured, running a hand up her outer thigh to watch goosebumps spring up in my wake.

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