Page 246 of Shadowblood Souls
He brought me back the severed hands of our enemies. He would have cut off his own arm in retribution if I’d let him.
I hate what he did to me… but I have no doubts anymore that he hates his past cruelty just as much. That he is trying, in every way this damaged man knows how, to save me from any further pain.
To give me something better.
I lift my gaze from Jacob’s fallen hand to his uncertain face. It takes another moment before I can push the words from my throat—but they feel right when I do.
“If you want to make up for how brutal you were before, why don’t you show me how gentle you can be now?”
Jacob’s eyes flicker with a momentary widening. Then he eases across the bed and ever so carefully tucks his hand around mine.
He skims his thumb over the back of my hand, feather light. Just his increased closeness and that simple touch wakes up a sharper quiver of need through the shadows in my blood.
I don’t have to act on the sudden awakening. I can take the comfort he wants to offer without it having to turn into anything else.
A faint whiff of pheromones suggests that Jacob is grappling with the same desires, but he restrains himself, sticking to my request for gentleness. His thumb skims back and forth over my skin in several slow strokes.
He turns my hand over against his palm and glides the fingers of his other hand over my wrist. A fresh burst of tingles shoots over my skin.
My skin heats, but I sit still and silent, watching him.
He traces the bones of my forearm up to my elbow and back again with the same care. His lips slant into a bittersweet smile.
“You’ve always looked so delicate. Quite the trick when you’re the strongest one out of all of us.”
The corner of my mouth quirks upward. “I think Zian might object to that assessment.”
Jacob lets out a soft huff. “I’m counting powersandphysical strength. Zian can’t tear someone apart without even touching them.”
Somehow he makes my ability sound admirable rather than horrifying. I suddenly remember the way he talked about the massacre in Ursula Engel’s house after we’d first escaped.
He said it was “fucking amazing.” Called me a superhero.
I was too scarred and incapable of trusting him then for the knowledge to sink in, but he really did mean it, didn’t he?
He doesn’t think my power is something wrong with me. He thinks I’m amazing, mistakes and all.
Why else would he be here right now, trying so hard to make me believe the same thing?
Jacob twines my fingers with his and raises his other hand to slide his fingertips across my shoulders.
“Even before,” he goes on, “I always thought Griffin’s nickname for you was silly.Moonbeam. Like you were something fleeting, fragile. You were a wildcat all the way through, fierce and unshakable.”
My smile tightens. “I don’t know about the unshakable part.”
Jacob circles his thumb against the crook of my neck in a soothing massage that makes me want to purr. “Look at all theshit everyone’s thrown at you, including me, and you’re still standing. I say that counts.”
I reply with a noncommittal sound, resisting the urge to press into his touch.
Jacob traces his fingers down my spine and up again, with just enough pressure to be soothing. There isn’t a trace of his usual rigidity in the caress.
His voice lowers again. “I did understand it better after a while, though. There was this one day at the facility—a few years before we tried to escape; we must have been around thirteen—when we were doing some training thing outside, and the sunlight caught on you just as you turned around and smiled at the rest of us. And I’d swear you fucking glowed.”
“Like a moonbeam?” I joke, with a bit of a wobble.
“More than that. And not only your hair.Allof you just shone.”
His hand pauses against the middle of my back, resting there. “You’re a hell of a lot more than a moonbeam, Riva. You’re our whole goddamned sun. Wherever you go, you bring that warmth with you. You tether us so we don’t spiral out into the abyss. How many times have you pulled each of us back from the edge just in the past few weeks?”
