Page 178 of Shadowblood Souls
“Why would you say that?” I ask, frowning.
His lips curl into a grimace. “The other night—after I healed you…”
The memory clicks into place before he needs to finish, and guilt squeezes my gut. “I’m sorry I pulled away. It wasn’t?—”
“I understand,” Dominic says quickly. “With how I am—whatI am now—I’d never expect?—”
“Dom!” I break in, and wait until he meets my eyes. “It had nothing to do with how you look. It had nothing to do with you at all.”
My voice wobbles. It’s my turn to lower my gaze.
“Everything got so messed up after I broke you all out, it’s hard to know how to come back from that. I don’t know if I evenwantto with the others. And even with you… I guess I’m just scared.”
A moment of silence stretches between us. Then Dominic steps forward and wraps his hand around mine.
I’m starkly aware of his thigh just inches from my knee. Of his presence right in front of me, his pensive gaze searching my face and trailing heat over my skin in its wake.
“If you really— Whatever you need, Riva. However long it takes. Even if you never decide to try again at all. I’ll be right here.”
I look up again, my heart skipping a beat. “I matter that much to you?”
His fingers tighten around mine. “You always did; you always will. From the first moment I was old enough to think about you as more than just a friend, I’ve been in love with you.”
He jerks his head toward the lump beneath his coat on his left shoulder. “You know what I thought when Rollick talked about seeing if we could take these things off? No. No fucking way. Even if it could be permanent. Even though I hate them. Because they saved your life, and maybe they will again someday, and nothing could be more important than that.”
More love than I knew I was still capable of feeling swells in my chest. My lips part, but saying those three words doesn’t seem half as good as showing them.
“Can I see them?” I ask quietly.
Dominic’s gaze stutters, startled and maybe a little disturbed. “You want…”
“To see them. Properly. To seeyou, all of you, the way you are now.”
I haven’t really before. The only times he’s brought out his tentacles, I was either too wrecked or too distracted by a fight to really take him in.
Dom hesitates and then reaches for his trench coat. He eases it off carefully and lays it on the end of the bed.
Then he stands there with his profile to me, tensed for my appraisal.
He’s taken to wearing T-shirts with a broad necklines, this one with notches cut in the back as well to offer more room for the tentacles. They protrude on either side about an inch down his back, each halfway between his neck and the peaks of his shoulders.
I lean forward and trace my fingers across the bare skin above his shirt collar. There is no clear line that separates Dominic’s flesh from the new appendages.
It’s as if they’re not poking out of his skin but a fully integrated part of it. After the first inch or so of his normal light brown skin tone, their mottled surface takes on an orange hue, but it’s a gradual transition.
Two rows of small suckers dapple the undersides, from about half a foot down all the way to the tips. They’re about twice as long as his arms now, though thin enough that he can coil them against his back.
They aren’t frightening or horrifying. Like I said, they’re just different.
They’re a part of this boy—this man—who I loved and maybe still can.
I glide my fingertips right around the base of the closer tentacle. Dominic inhales with a hitch, and I jerk back my hand.
“I’m sorry. Does it hurt?”
A hint of red blooms in his cheeks. “No. The opposite.”
A flush sweeps through me in turn, its heat pooling between my thighs. I can’t resist extending my fingers again and stroking the base of the tentacle lightly.
