Page 177 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Griffin and I scoot over to make more room. I guess I have one reason to thank Balthazar for the nice beds.

I peel back the covers so Jake can slide under them, and he tips his head close to mine. His voice comes out rough. “Already all warmed up, Wildcat?”

A gentler smile tugs at my lips. “Just a little. I was hoping for more.”

“I can help with that.”

He lowers his mouth to meet mine, searing hot from the moment we meld together. My pulse thrums faster as I twine my fingers into his smooth hair.

From behind, Griffin nuzzles the back of my neck. His thumb strokes a giddy arc over my belly.

Now I really am on fire.

I kiss Jacob hard, with all the longing in me that’s driven both by my love for these men and the essence in my blood always hungry to join with theirs. He deepens the kiss, offering my first taste of the passion I know he can bring like a thunderstorm.

But his touch stays careful. He traces my jaw and the slope of my shoulder, my side down to where Griffin’s arm is wrapped around me and then back up to the curve of my breasts, tender rather than demanding in his affection.

I curl my fingers into his hair hard enough to tug at his scalp, but all he does is groan, muffled against my lips.

Is he ever going to forgive himself for how he hurt me in the past—which he only did because of how much he was hurting? I have.

I don’t know how else to convince him of that.

And right now the tension bottled up inside me wants the whole fucking storm. I want to feel just how fierce he can be, enough to rival the enemies we’ve found ourselves imprisoned by.

As he rolls my nipple between his fingers, I press into his hand, and his grasp tightens into a pinch. I gasp at the bolt of pleasure—and Jacob releases my breast in an instant.

“I’m fine,” I murmur quickly, stealing a hasty peck between reassurances. “It was good .”

Jacob palms my breast again, tension radiating off him. He’s pulled taut as a bowstring but refusing to give in to the pressure.

Griffin grazes his fingers down over the waistband of my sweatpants and speaks in a soft but steady murmur. “Jake, do you really think she’d lie to you about what she wants? She isn’t afraid. She’s burning up with how much she wants you.”

His brother makes a strangled noise low in his throat. He caresses my breast again, more forcefully this time.

I press into his touch and into Griffin’s hand where it’s curled between my legs. A needy growl reverberates from my lungs.

Hell, yes. I’ve been restraining myself too, for way too long.

I need these men. They’re my blood, and I’m theirs, and nothing any captor can do will change that.

Jacob dips his head to nip at the most sensitive strip of my neck. The scrape of his teeth sends a quiver of delight through me.

I yank on his hair a little harder, and he outright bites me, not quite but on the verge of breaking the skin. My whole body shudders with eagerness.

Jacob exhales raggedly, his breath rushing over my skin. As I undulate between him and his twin, my hip brushes the bulge that’s protruding against his pajama pants. But he still holds himself back, resting his forehead firmly against mine.

When he speaks again, it’s not to me. “Tell her, like you told me. Tell her how much I love her. I don’t know—I don’t have the words for all of it—but you—maybe you can say everything.”

Griffin’s hand slows in its blissful massage between my thighs. He brands my shoulder with a lingering kiss before answering.

“It’s always there, Riva. Even when you’re not in the same room.

Like an ember smoldering through everything else he’s feeling.

Wanting to protect and help you. Wanting you .

And when you’re there—when you smile at him or touch him—it flares into a forest fire, blazing through everything else, capturing every part of him.

He’d do anything for you, and then he’d do it all over again, and the only thing that would matter is that it made you happy. ”

Jacob takes another shaky breath. The press of his forehead and his hand still cupping my breast, the relentless thump of his pulse reverberating into me from his body—all of it gives life to Griffin’s words and tells the truth of his story.

A lump rises in my throat. I pull Jake’s lips back to mine and kiss him with everything I have in me before I answer.

“I know. I know, and I love you too, so much. You don’t need to prove anything to me.”

Jake grabs me in another kiss, so scorching it sends tingles all the way to my toes. Then he glances over my shoulder at Griffin. “Thank you.”

His gaze drops to meet mine again, and I’d swear I can see that forest fire flickering in the back of his sky-blue eyes. “What do you want, Wildcat? Ask, and you’ve got it.”

I wet my lips, the depth of my longing momentarily drowning my words. “Take me as hard as you can—so hard it could almost break us free.”

A startled chuckle tumbles from his lips, and then they’re crashing into mine.

Jacob wrenches at my shirt, releasing me from his kiss only long enough to yank it over my head. The force of his eagerness is so thrilling I’m not even distracted by the sleeve’s momentary snag on one of my manacles.

Jake reaches for my pants next. Griffin hooks his fingers around the waistband to help his twin tug them down my legs.

As Griffin dapples kisses across my shoulder blades, the strange sensation rises up inside me that this coming together isn’t just about me being with each of them but a conversation between the brothers as well. A negotiation or a peace-making or I don’t know what else.

And I’m okay with that. I want both of them, and I want them to recover all of the understanding they once had that the guardians ripped to pieces.

I manage to peel Jacob’s tee off his sculpted chest, and then he’s pulling back on the bed, dragging me with him to the edge. Somehow he manages to fling aside my panties and drop his pants in the same string of motion.

Standing next to the bed, he hefts me up by my ass. My legs brace against his chest, my heels just below his shoulders.

He rubs the head of his cock over my slick folds with one hand while the other digs into my ass. “I’d fuck you to the ends of the earth,” he rasps, “and keep going right over the edge.”

Through the rush of giddy anticipation, all I can manage is a mewling of encouragement. My fingers clamp around his wrist just below his manacle, and he tightens his grip on my ass.

Jacob plunges into me so swift and hard he’s fully sheathed in the space of a heartbeat. I clamp my teeth against a cry that would have rung right through the villa. Pleasure sears through my body as if he’s passed the flames burning inside him into me.

He stops just for a second, and my pulse stutters with the thought that he might shy away from my request after all. But then Griffin kneels by my shoulder, stroking my hair back from my face and flicking his thumb over the peak of my breast.

“She wants more,” he tells his brother. “Just like that. She’s loving it.”

When I first cuddled up to him tonight, I thought I might mark him and be marked in turn like I already have with Jacob. A twinge of guilt filters through the roar of bliss.

But as Jacob growls and drives into me, harder and faster with every stroke, my head tips back with the rising waves of furious ecstasy. I glimpse Griffin’s face over me as he offers his own brand of worship.

He’s smiling, bright with joy and maybe a little relief. And I can feel, almost as if I’ve borrowed his talent for an instant, that this is how he’d want our interlude to be.

Seeing his brother and me forge our own understanding with each other makes him happier than any collision between his body and mine could have.

Having me to himself isn’t enough for Jacob, though. He slams into me again and again, massaging my ass, gripping my knee, and watches my free hand drift to caress his brother’s arm.

“Can you take him too?” he says between grunts of exertion. “Can you bring Griffin with us?”

It’s a challenge I can’t resist as soon as it’s out in the air. My fingers curl into the fabric of the boxers Griffin was sleeping in, and I urge him closer.

Griffin might not have been looking for more attention, but it’s not as if he’s unaffected. His chest hitches as my hand curls around his straining erection.

I rock with Jacob’s thrusts and delve my fingers right inside Griffin’s boxers to pump him at the same time. Griffin lets out a choked groan and bows over to kiss me nearly as hard as his brother did before.

As if in reward, a new pressure flows over my body. Jacob’s invisible touch, propelled by the powers I can’t see like extra hands exploring every inch of me.

His talent coils around my breasts to clamp on my nipples and tangles in my hair to tug it from my scalp with pinpricks of painful delight. He lowers one actual hand to pulse his thumb against my clit as fiercely as he’s pounding into me.

I whimper and nudge Griffin a little farther back. Then I lean over to muffle a sharper cry around his cock.

My tongue laps around the head, and Griffin jerks into my hold, his breath fragmenting.

“Fucking hell, Moonbeam,” he mutters, need fragmenting his voice. “That feels so fucking good.”

I work my hand up and down his length as I suck his softly musky flavor into my mouth. My head is spinning with bliss, and every nerve is on fire.

When Griffin’s body quivers and he moves to pull away, I lock my fingers tighter around him and propel his release into my waiting mouth. He sags toward me, mumbling curses and praise in a jumbled chorus.

Jacob lets out a groan of his own. I clutch his wrist, my claws slipping out to nick his skin, and he rakes his fingernails across my ass with a hiss.

His power tweaks my breasts and scalp with even more force, his thumb swivels over my clit, and the dam inside me bursts with his next slam home. I bite my lip hard enough to draw blood, muffling my moan of release.

“Love you, love you, love you,” Jake says in a breathless chant, bucking into me through the deluge of pleasure. He leans over me as he spills himself inside me, claiming my mouth, bleeding lip and all.

My muscles sag, my body wrung out. Jacob gazes down at me, a flicker of worry passing through his expression as the haze of desire clears from his eyes.

“I didn’t mean to—it wasn’t too much for?—”

I drag him down onto the bed with me before he can finish the question. “It was perfect. Fucking perfect .”

As his expression relaxes, I think he might finally totally believe me.

But in the wake of the flood of bliss, it turns out the frustrations that gnawed at me before weren’t washed away. While I lie there between two of the men I love, my worries sprout up like weeds after a rainfall.

I don’t want this kind of escape to be the closest thing we have to freedom. I don’t want every moment of intimacy to exist under Balthazar’s watch.

There has to be a way to fight him.