Page 379 of Shadowblood Souls
My essence screams out for him—and my release crashes over me. I quake in Griffin’s embrace, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood.
Griffin lets out a growl low in his throat, his hips still bucking. Then his shoulders stiffen.
A final groan reverberates from his lungs. He clutches me to him, mumbling a litany of devotion by my ear.
“Riva. Love you. Love you. Moonbeam.”
We stay clasped together for a few minutes, simply breathing in tandem. I don’t want to let him go.
But Griffin draws back with an embarrassed glance at the wet splotch that’s formed on his pants. “Well, that’s… a bit of a mess.”
His uncertainty only intensifies the love humming through my chest. I smile up at him. “Good thing we have this handy river to wash off in, huh?”
His gaze catches mine. He leans in again to bring our foreheads together.
“It is good. It’s all good. Everything you give me.”
My throat tightens, but there’s a glow of hope in my chest that wasn’t there before.
Thirty
Griffin
Ididn’t remember how much feeling my body was capable of containing. Or maybe it never held so much emotion before, when our existence was so strictly regimented, when I’d never shared anything more with Riva than smiles and the occasional hug.
Now my adoration radiates through every pore, like I’m shining with it right down to my soul.
It’s incredible and also overwhelming. I don’t want to let go of her, even just to walk down the path to the river.
The slide of my arms around her bare back sends fresh shivers of sensation through my body. Slivers of pain lance through the joy here and there, punishing me for the indulgence, but the eager thunder of my pulse drowns those out enough that I can ignore them.
I can’t keep all this happiness in.
“I love you,” I murmur, kissing her forehead, her cheek. “I love you. I love you.”
Can I say it enough times to make up for the years when I wasn’t there to say it at all? For all the time I’ve been aware of her and then around her in the last few months when I couldn’t even feel it?
My mind slips back to images from our shared past—to a younger Riva tucking herself next to me on the sofa in the facility’s lounge area, trusting me not to betray the eagerness only I could sense to the others. To the spirited arguments with Jacob that neither of them took too seriously back then. To the strength that flowed through her body when she pushed herself through a challenge.
But with each of those memories, sharper shocks of pain jolt through my nerves. My stomach starts to cramp.
I have to clamp my jaw against the other memories that try to rise up, that the guardians seared into my brain in tandem with every image they could find that provoked the slightest emotional reaction in me.
But every memory since we came to the island is safe. I can revel in the hunger that winds through my veins at the touch of her, not satisfied even after the intimacy we just shared.
I can think of the compassion in her gaze and the tenderness of her kiss after I first told her what her touch was doing for me. Of the flash in her eyes when she told off Clancy for profiting off us.
I don’t think there’s any part of her I don’t love.
A matching emotion shines from her into me. She was right that I don’t need her to say it for me to know her heart, but my pulse still skips when the words pass from her lips again.
“I love you too, Griffin. I know… I know now that all six of us are back together—reallytogether—we can figure this out eventually.”
I capture her lips, losing myself in their softness and heat—but not totally. Her last comment echoes through my mind.
Eventually isn’t good enough. I screwed this up—it’s because of me that she and the others ended up under Clancy’s thumb to begin with.
I will make this right. I was willing to end Celine’s life to make sure I was in a position to save us, as sick asthatmemory makes me feel.
