Page 299 of Shadowblood Souls
I want to bury myself in him and swallow him up, all at the same time.
He thrusts up inside me just as his power seems to set off every point of pleasure in the rest of my body, and I hurtle into my release. My nerves sizzle with the smoky essence reaching to twine with his.
The wave of bliss hazes my vision. My claws spring from my fingertips.
Jacob grates out a curse with a twitch of his arms to angle the poison spines that’ve just shot from his skin away from me.
He slams home once more with a groan that reverberates through the van. The sound tosses me even higher.
I cling to him, riding the wave, shivering with the intensity of the moment. Feeling his heart thump in time with mine, our breaths mingling at the same panting pace.
We are one. Forever.
The tingling races all through my body, but I know it’ll condense on my upper chest. This time, when I start to sag over him and glance down between us, I’m not at all startled to see the mark like a thumbprint-sized bruise that’s formed at the top of his sternum.
A matching spot has bloomed on my left clavicle, next to the one that formed when I first hooked up with Andreas.
Jacob’s chest is still heaving, but he touches the mark with absolute gentleness, his expression full of awe.
“I marked you. Like Drey and Dom did.”
“Of course you did. We’re blood. Our shadowswantto meld together.” I beam at him. “And now we’ll always know how to make our way back to each other, no matter what comes between us.”
He lets out a shaky chuckle. “I wasn’t totally sure, after everything…”
“You’re mine,” I inform him, in case he wasn’t already aware of that. As if he hasn’t been tellingmethat over and over for the last few weeks. A pang of emotion cuts off my voice for a second before I can add, “And I’m yours.”
Still inside me, Jake hugs me to him, tipping his head against my shoulder. “For as long as you want to be, Riva.”
A quiver passes through his frame, but it feels different from the tremors that shook him before. More energized, less tense.
He tilts my head to claim another kiss. Then his attention falls to my chest again, but not to the marks on my pale skin.
Jacob curls his fingers cautiously around the cat-and-yarn charm dangling from my neck. The one his twin gave me all those years ago.
He lifts his gaze to meet mine. “We’re going to fix this too. There has to be a way, and I’ll find it.”
He got one of the shadowkind to fix the charm itself already, but I know that’s not what he’s talking about. He means Griffin himself.
The memories of the times he’s talked about his feelings for me and his recognition of his brother’s send a tightness around my heart. Jacob thought he couldn’t have me at all because he didn’t want to get between me and Griffin.
I touch the side of his face, grazing my thumb over his cheek. “I know if there is one, you will. But I don’t need himmorethan I need you, Jake. I don’t love him more. I wantedyou.”
The corner of Jacob’s mouth twitches into a hint of a smile. He hugs me again, and I nestle into his embrace for the short time we have before we need to return our minds to the end of our mission.
Before we need to head back into our new cage, gilded as it is.
Ten
Dominic
Istretch out my legs in the back of the van, then tuck them into a cross-legged pose, and pretend I don’t notice our local contact shooting uneasy glances my way. He’s sitting sideways in the driver’s seat so he can alternate between looking out through the windows and over toward me.
I know I’m not much to lookatright now. Clancy outfitted me with a track jacket even lighter weight than the trench coats I used to use to hide my tentacles.
It only falls to my hips, so I have to keep my unusual appendages coiled a couple of times over. But he must have had the jacket custom made, because the inner lining holds loops of soft fabric to help support them.
I hadn’t realized that spreading out the weight across my body would make them feel like less of a burden.
