Page 247 of Shadowblood Souls
The burn comes back to my eyes, hotter than before. “We all had each other’s backs.”
“But without you there during those four years, the rest of us got lost.”
“Without me and Griffin,” I feel the need to say.
Jacob starts rubbing my back with his slow, careful rhythm again. “I don’t know that it really would have been better if he’d still been there without you.”
He falls silent for a stretch, and I don’t know what to say.
The brush of his fingers is siphoning off my ability to speak. More heat kindles under my skin with every stroke, but the ache winding around my heart holds the sting of loss.
My losses. His. All of ours.
Jacob drags in a breath. “That moment in the field was when I realized how much I wanted you. But I also knew I wasn’t going to act on that feeling. Griffin loved you too, so much—he might have been the one who could read people’s feelings, but he was mytwin, so I sure as hell could read him—and I could see how you were with him… I never would have thought there was even a chance you’d fall for more than one of us.”
My throat constricts. “Jake?—”
He shakes his head. “It’s okay. That’s what I’m trying to say. It was okay then, and it’s okay now. You don’t ever have to want me the way you want Dominic and Andreas. I never expected to have it anyway. I just hope, so much, that we can get to the point that you believe I’ll be standing with you through whatever comes at us. Having that would be enough. I’d be happy—hell, I’d be fucking ecstatic with that.”
The emotion swelling in my chest bursts through the crack that’d opened, and I don’t know how to do anything but turn toward him and tug his mouth to mine.
Jacob’s chest hitches beneath my hand, and then he’s kissing me back. There’s so much tenderness and heat mingled in the press of his lips that I could melt with it.
Nothing about him is icy now. He cups one hand against my cheek and rests the other on my waist.
The shadowy essence inside me flares, clamoring for more.
My fingers slide into the smooth strands of his hair to grasp them and yank him closer. A groan reverberates from Jacob’s lungs.
We fall into each other farther, our kisses deepening, our tongues dancing. Every nerve in my body shivers with anticipation.
When my hand creeps up under the hem of Jacob’s shirt to trace the ridges of muscle across his abdomen, he groans again and slides his arm farther around my torso. Then he tips us over, pulling me with him so I’m bowed over his body, straddling him.
His voice comes out in murmurs between the collisions of our mouths. “I’m yours. Whatever you want with me, you can have it. This is your show, Wildcat.”
His palm grazes my breast, and a whimper tumbles out of me. I know this feeling, this rush of overwhelming hunger that can only be sated one way, and for a moment, I’m lost in it.
Then I turn my head to give Jacob access to my neck. As his lips sear against my skin, my gaze falls across his forearm raised toward me.
This close, I can’t miss the faint pock marks where his toxic spines can emerge.
Something flips over in my gut. The remembered sting and the rippling pain flash from the depths of my mind—and break loose a deluge of other memories.
The frigid blue of his eyes when he hurled his accusations at me. The cutting edge to his voice when he chose the best remarks to flay me open from the inside out.
All the thorns he jabbed in my side, over and over,hopingto tear me down.
I gasp for air, and a sob comes out instead. A different sort of crack splits me down the middle with a flood of tears.
Jacob jerks back from the kiss as I sag over him. His hands hitch against my body as if he doesn’t know what to do with them.
I can’t stop the tears from streaming out. They’re streaking down my cheeks and pattering across Jake’s shirt, and moreseem to breach the walls I’ve held so firm inside me with every choked breath.
All the anguish and confusion I bottled up, all the pain I tried to bear unflinchingly—it never left. It’s been stewing inside me all these weeks, and now it’s boiling over.
“Riva,” Jacob says raggedly, framing my damp face with tentative hands. “Riva, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”
I tip my head right against his shoulder, and his arms finally come around me, catching me against him in their solid embrace.
