Page 124 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Nine

Riva

I ’ve kissed Jacob before. More than once.

There was the time I used a kiss to snap him out of a frenzy he was caught up in, thinking he still needed to protect me from attackers.

And the time we started making out and I bawled all over him.

Not the greatest track record. But then, maybe that’s to be expected when our entire reunion has been so messy.

I can feel the tension in him as he kisses me back. Part of it is hunger I know must be flaring in his veins just like it is within mine, our shadows straining toward each other.

And part is him battling that hunger.

His fingers flex where he’s raised his hand to cup my cheek. A quiver runs through his body, every muscle taut.

I haven’t wanted everything he could give me before. I’ve asked him to be gentle.

Just like every other moment since the one when he called me away from the train hurtling toward me, he’s doing whatever he can to make me happy. Whatever he can to make sure he doesn’t damage that happiness again.

But the only ache left inside me is the best sort of pain.

I break the kiss to draw back just a few inches, holding his face between my hands as I do. The words feel like they well up from the very center of me. “I love you too.”

Jacob lets out a choked sound and dips his head for another kiss. It’s all tenderness and giddy release, but I can still taste the restraint in it.

I need more.

I push him downward, and he moves easily at my prodding. As he sinks down to sit against the inner wall of the van, I straddle his lap like I have before.

Maintaining control. Taking the reins.

But that doesn’t mean I’m going to be calling all the shots.

I tug at his shirt to pull the blood-dappled fabric off him and slide my hands down his sculpted torso.

Jacob’s voice has gone rough. “Riva?”

My tongue darts out to wet my lips. I can taste how much he wants me in the desire that laces the air.

The shadows in my blood thrum with eager anticipation.

I look at him, straight into his blue eyes that smolder like pale flames. “I’m not afraid of you anymore. Let it all out. Show me what you’d do with me if you knew I wanted all of it. Because I do.”

The flames flare into a full-out bonfire. Jacob trails his fingers under my chin to pull my mouth back to his.

His hesitation doesn’t vanish in an instant. The heat of this kiss could melt me, fierce and demanding, but his hands stay careful as they travel over my body.

I kiss him back hard and splay my fingers over his bare chest, tracing every ridge of muscle, thumbing his nipples, caressing all the way down to the solid planes of his stomach. Taking in every part of him without any hesitation of my own.

With each stroke of my hands, Jacob’s touch becomes firmer too. He curls his fingers around the back of my neck as he tilts his head, his tongue delving past my lips, scorching hot.

Then he traces my spine all the way down my back before returning to yank at my bra. I raise my arms so he can peel the stretchy sports bra off me, watching how he lifts it around my necklace so the fabric doesn’t catch on the pendant.

The gesture brings his forearm near my face where I can’t help tracing the scar just below the elbow with my gaze.

There’s nothing I wouldn’t do.

An echo of the anguish that hit me when he brought the knife to his arm all those weeks ago rises up through my chest. I grip his wrist and bring my lips to the pink line of the scar.

Jacob holds perfectly still as I chart the evidence of his attempted sacrifice with soft kisses. I hear him swallow.

I lift my head to meet his eyes again. “No matter what you feel like you have to do, don’t hurt yourself again. Not even for me. I want you here, every part of you.”

Jake brushes a stray strand of hair back behind my ear, his gaze fathomless. “You’ve got me. Every part. I’m yours, whatever you want to do to me, whatever you want me to do.”

I dip my head close to his. My voice comes out in a whisper. “I just want you to love me.”

He raises his chin to fulfill that request. As his mouth crashes into mine, he cups my bared breasts.

My curves are just large enough to fill his hands. He swivels his palms against my nipples, cautiously and then with more force at my encouraging whimper.

Every increasingly urgent rotation sends a rush of pleasure through my chest. I can’t stop myself from nipping at his lip and drinking in his groan.

The essence inside me is rioting now, clamoring for the connection it’s already gotten to solidify with two of my other men. My claws tingle behind my fingertips; my hips rock against Jake’s.

He grasps my ass, pressing me tighter against him as I grind. Even through multiple layers of clothing, the friction of my pussy against his stiffening erection makes us both growl.

We’ve gotten this close before, and I didn’t let it go any further. But I’m burning up, and the man beneath me is both fueling the flames and absorbing them with his touch.

I want him. I want Jacob in all his fucked-up, damaged, obsessively devoted glory.

It’s because of his damage that he understands the deepest wounds I try to hide.

I don’t want to lose him again, not any of the ways it could happen. And when the shadows between us meld and merge, I’ll always know where he is.

I’ll always be able to find him… and I’ll know he can always find me.

My hands drop to his athletic pants, yanking at the waistband. Jake’s breath hitches, and he shifts his weight to help me drag them off him.

When I stroke my fingers over his rigid cock through his boxers, he groans—and the first aid kit in the corner of the van goes pinging off one of the walls.

Jacob winces in embarrassment and catches my gaze. “Sorry. I can keep better control.”

I’m not sure if that’s true, but it won’t be his fault. My first times with both Andreas and Dominic, our powers came flaring to the surface of their own accord.

I give him a smile that I suspect looks a little wicked. “Just don’t give either of us a concussion, and you can go as wild as you want.”

Jacob’s gaze turns blazing, and he yanks me back into his embrace.

Our kisses become hungrier, hastier, as he strips my sweatpants off me. The pulsing need between my thighs has me grinding against him again with a gasp at the surge of heady sensation.

Jake echoes the sound, his lips branding my neck, my shoulder. He lifts one breast to clamp his mouth around the peak and flicks his tongue over my nipple until I’m bucking in his arms.

He trails his fingers up and down my bare legs, torturously close to my panties, but he pauses to linger over the metal band around my ankle. He looks up at me with a ragged breath.

“Are you sure?—”

Resolve burns in my chest alongside my raging desire. “If they can figure out what we’re doing, let them. There’s nothing wrong about this.”

Those words bring a smile to Jacob’s face that’s so bright I swear my heart almost leaps right out of my chest.

He pulls me into another kiss, tender as the first ones but with scorching passion simmering underneath. My pussy throbs, and the shadows inside me stretch toward the man I’ve rediscovered my love for.

My pulse kicks up a notch with renewed urgency. I wrench at Jacob’s boxers, and he helps me wriggle out of my panties.

But as I lower myself over his jutting cock, he catches me by my hips before I’ve quite reached him and exhales in a rush.

“I want you so badly. Once we get started?—”

I brush my lips against his. “It’ll be fine. It’s how it’s supposed to be. We’re meant for this.”

He kisses me hard, and I sink the rest of the way onto him. Jacob jerks upward to meet me, plunging deep enough to send a jolt of bliss all the way to my throat.

I cry out and kiss him fiercely so he knows the sound is all happiness. Our hips roll together, propelling him deeper, in and out, with the giddy swell of heat that rises to fill my whole body.

Another loose object smacks into a wall somewhere behind me. Jacob hisses, his fingers digging into my thigh.

When he adjusts the angle at which we fit together, his cock drives home so perfectly I can’t suppress a moan. His grasp urges me on while his other hand traces across my scalp where my hair has loosened from my braid.

I know exactly where he’s touching me. His fingers sear against my skin. But moments later, an impression of contact reaches other parts of my body, as if more hands have reached for me.

A careful pressure caresses my breasts. A similar sensation runs down my back and across my belly.

My breath stutters in surprise, and Jacob teases his teeth against the crook of my jaw.

“I want to make this as good for you as it possibly can be,” he says in a rasp. “I know where it should feel good, but I can’t tell— You’ve got to show me when I get it right.”

He’s caressing me with his power as well as his body. I’m too lost in the growing whirlwind of pleasure to fully comprehend what he means by “showing” him until the pressure condenses around one nipple as if in a pinch.

My nerves spark, and I sway faster with the rhythm of his thrusts. A needy sound slips from my lips.

“You like that?” Jacob murmurs in a wash of heat across my neck.

I whimper in answer, and he repeats the gesture, tweaking both of my nipples with his telekinetic talent simultaneously. The rush of bliss makes me buck faster.

My voice comes out in a mumble. “So good. More.”

Jake chuckles, raw and jerky. “You feel so fucking good too, Wildcat. Never going to let you down again. Never going to stop making you feel fantastic.”

The invisible touch massages my ass and strokes my hair, toys with my nipples and wraps around my torso. I spur on his attentions with gasps and moans as he discovers every spot that sets me on fire.

Then the pressure dips right down to the place where we’re joined to strum my clit.

Pleasure crackles through me in a rampant blaze. A louder moan of approval careens from my lungs.

Jacob growls and plunges up into me harder, faster.

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 shadows want to 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 telling me that 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 him more than I need you, Jake. I don’t love him more. I wanted you .”

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.