Page 455 of Shadowblood Souls
Her voice comes out strained. “I’m sorry—we wanted you back with us. I didn’t even think about the downsides of you being awake.”
My own throat chokes up. I hug her back just as tightly. “It’s okay. I’d rather be going through this and here with you and the guys the rest of the time than half-dead and used as a threat.”
“I just wish there was more… I wish there was a better option.”
“I think you made the best choice you could have, considering the situation we’re all in,” I say honestly. “I promise you, there isn’t a single particle of me that’s upset about being revived.”
“Okay.” Riva manages to snuggle even closer to me. “I missed you so much. You guys have always said it wasn’t the same when I was gone… It wasn’t the same without you either, Dom.”
I doubt my absence had quite the same impact on our group as hers did, but a burn of tears forms in the back of my eyes anyway. Because I can hear how much it mattered to her.
We stay like that for a long stretch, our bodies gradually relaxing together, Riva’s presence melting the worst of my lingering distress. Gradually, other impulses wake up beneath my skin.
With her breaths, her breasts shift against my chest. One of my tentacles has fallen across her thigh.
The sharply sweet smell of her floods my lungs when I inhale. I can almost taste her on my lips, but I’m weirdly afraid to move to make it real, as if this could be a dream—as if I could be lost in a coma still, only imagining her.
Riva’s enhanced senses must pick up the signs of my desire. She lifts her head and lets her lips graze my neck, my jaw.
My pulse jumps. When she raises her head higher, it would have taken an iron will I sure as hell don’t have not to claim her mouth with mine.
Riva nudges me onto my back and straddles me. The feel of my dick settling between her legs has me stiffening even with the layers of clothing between us.
She leans over me, kissing me again and again, as I slide my hands beneath her shirt. As my tentacles circle her waist and dip right between her thighs to conjure more pleasure for her.
The hem of her shirt catches on the slim bracelets wrapped around my wrists—the silver bands the others have called “manacles.” Just for a second, I hesitate.
Back in the island facility, Riva would never have taken things this far. Not while she suspected the guardians were listening in.
I don’t think she enjoys the thought of Balthazar and his people monitoring us any more than she did with our previous captors. But she’s decided… that she doesn’t care?
It could be rebellion. Or it could be desperation—the fraught uncertainty of whether we’ll ever get to do this again if not now.
Riva draws back and gazes down at me with her bright eyes. “Are you okay?”
The longing in her gaze is more than just hunger. And I’d be lying if I didn’t want her just as much.
Fuck this house. Fuck the people who are keeping us here.
Whatever her reasons, we can confirm our bond and still kick their asses when we get the chance later.
I nod and tug her back down over me.
As she starts to rock against me, Riva doesn’t make any move to strip off my clothes. Maybe that’s her concession to privacy, as little as we have.
I follow her lead, stroking all the bliss I can into her body working around her outfit.
My breaths go hoarse as hers turn ragged. She unzips my jeans and frees my cock, then wriggles her leggings and panties down as far as she needs to.
When she sinks over me, taking me into the slick heat of her pussy, every thought flees my mind but the heady joy of joining together with her like this again.
I thrust up to meet her, electric quivers racing through my veins. I’m not going to last long, but I’ll be damned if I don’t bring her with me.
With one tentacle’s suckers, I massage at her clit. The other applies its cups to the curve of her breast while I work over the other with swivels of my thumb.
Riva moans and pumps faster over me. My jaw clenches as I hold myself back against the swell of release. I clamp down on the sizzling need until she shudders over me, and my control snaps in a blaze of ecstasy.
We sway against each other a few more times before settling into a slack embrace. I feel like I can’t hug Riva close enough.
