Page 317 of Shadowblood Souls
There’s a soft splash and a shift in the water’s gentle currents. I glance up to see Riva has joined me, leaving on her tee and sweats like I did.
Her silvery braid trails behind her head in the water. She grins at me and paddles around the pool.
I can’t help following her movements, unwilling to return to the meditative state of my float.
Her slim arms dart through the water with both strength and grace. The water darkens her eyelashes, bringing out her bright brown eyes.
It’s only about a minute before she paddles back over to the bank where she was sitting before. She scrambles out and gives herself a quick rubdown with one of the towels from the basket before hunkering down at the edge of the water again. “That’s enough of that.”
Her damp top clings to her curves. My gaze traces them before I jerk it away, with heat flaring through my veins.
In my pants, my dick rises.
There’s a part of me that wants to swim right over to her, yank her back into the water, and press my body against every bit of hers. Kiss her until our lips are on fire.
But I know that if I tried, I’d be recoiling in another jarring smack of panic before I did much more than graze my fingers over her leg. I’m not sure I could touch her at all right now, no matter how carefully, without setting off the instinctive jolt of horror that Clancy provoked so badly with his experiment.
Riva cocks her head, catching me staring. I turn, glad that the flush staining my cheeks won’t show in the twilight.
How the hell is she ever going to understand why I keep pushing her away?
Andreas’s voice travels up from my memories.You’ve got to tell her, you know.
Every particle of my being balks at the idea, still. But maybe he was right, because she’s already gotten the wrong idea.
She pulls her legs up in front of her to hug her knees. “It’s okay, you know. I’dneverwant you to do anything more than you’d want to. I love you, Zee, as you are, without you needing todo anything else. What we already have is enough for me. That’s not going to change.”
My throat closes up at the raw affection in her words. For a second, I’m afraid to speak, but I know I have to say at least one thing.
The statement seems to yank at my heart as I push my voice from my mouth. “I love you too.”
The smile that springs to her lips could kill me.
She does need to know the rest. Shedeservesto know.
I don’t want to be treading water while I’m doing it. I clamber out of the pool a safe distance from Riva and wrap the other towel around my bulky shoulders.
When I sit down with the picnic basket between us like before, my thoughts jumble together. I don’t know where to start.
No, maybe that’s not really true. My dick is still half-hard—it’s taking conscious effort not to let my eyes trail over her body again.
I fix my attention on the water instead. “The worst thing is that I do want more. A lot more. Even now. I just don’t think I’ll ever be able to act on wanting it.”
Riva gives me a moment and then ventures into my silence. “I heard from the other guys about what the guardians did after I left—how they brought in that woman… and something went really badly.”
Should I be glad there’s one part I don’t need to explain? All I feel is the weight of the story pressing down on me.
“She took Andreas first,” I say. “He said he told you about that. I could see afterward how sick he felt about the whole thing, and then she came to me. She was leaning into me and touching me to encourage me to come to the other room, and I?—”
I stop, gathering myself, my gaze still glued to the water.
Riva’s voice comes out painfully gentle. “It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it if?—”
I shake my head. “No. I do. You need to know…”
I inhale sharply and force myself to go on. “I’ve never wanted anyone other than you, Riva. And my head was a mess right then because she wasn’t you, and that wasn’t right, but the guardians had told us all that shit about you turning on us, so I didn’t know how to feel about you anymore. And I was just so angry about everything.”
“Anyone would have been.”
