Page 76 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Fifteen

Riva

A s Andreas steers the RV out of the parking garage, I flop onto one of the narrow sofas. The cat-and-yarn pendant slides across my chest with the movement.

I curl my fingers around it. But even though Cinder said she’d fused the metal bit I snapped fully back together, I’m too nervous to test it by clicking it apart and back together on its joint in my old fidgety habit.

Jacob watches me in his intense way that’s somehow amplified in the past week. “It should be fine now. Exactly the way it was before.”

I don’t know how to reply to that statement. The necklace is never going to be exactly the way it was before, because I will always have broken it once, no matter how well it’s fixed.

Just one small object out of the many things I’ve broken when I lost my self-control, but the one that matters the most.

And I was losing control because of him. Because of the cruel words he was hurling at me.

“Do you think there’s really any point to this?” I ask instead. “Talking with Rollick, doing his ‘homework’?”

Zian glances around us. “He did hook us up with this nice ride. It’s a lot better than driving around squished into cars and staying in dingy motels.”

He does have a point there. I sigh and rub my hand over my face.

“What else would we be doing?” Andreas asks from the driver’s area. “If we’re going to escape the guardians or take them down—and rescue the other shadowbloods they’ve made—we need better control over our powers.”

“I already have excellent control,” Jacob mutters.

I can hear the roll of Andreas’s eyes in his dry tone. “You have excellent control until you get so wrapped up in it that your brain short-circuits.”

Jacob grunts, unable to argue against this point.

Zian looks down at his hands, flexing his thick fingers. “I feel like practicing with the smaller shifts helped me get a handle on it. But it’s hard to tell when we’re not in the middle of a battle anyway.”

I glance at Dominic, who’s sunk onto one of the benches by the dining table. He must have given our situation plenty of thought—that’s what he does.

And I have no idea how today’s experiment went for him. He hasn’t said anything about it.

He still hasn’t said much of anything, period. Not since he threw off his disguise to leap to my rescue.

My stomach twists.

When I was wounded and refused to say anything, he insisted on helping. Just now he rushed to my defense, regardless of the consequences.

I want him to know that I’m here for him just as much. That I believe he’s on my side enough that I can be on his side too.

I push to my feet. In these small living quarters, there’s no way to do this without being obvious about it, so the other guys will just have to deal with being excluded.

“Dom,” I say gently. “Could I talk to you for a minute?”

His head jerks up. He blinks at me, looking a tad dazed.

Has he been considering Rollick’s offer—wondering whether he should cut the monstrous part of himself right off, possible consequences be damned?

Jacob and Zian watch us too, puzzled and maybe even a little wary. I ignore them.

Something firms in Dominic’s eyes. He gets up with a determined energy to his stance. “Of course.”

I motion for him to follow me.

There’s really nowhere we can go that’s at all private—and has space for both of us to comfortably fit—except the main bedroom at the back of the RV that the guys have declared mine. As I step inside, seeing the bed right there, my pulse wobbles.

I don’t want to sit on that while I’m in here with him. It reminds me too much of the things I’ve spent so much time longing to do with all of my guys—of the things I did with Andreas in memories that are now soured.

I glance around and hop up to perch on the ledge beneath the TV. My legs dangle against the drawers built into the wall there.

Dominic slides the door shut and stands a couple of feet away from me, looking me over. Concern darkens his eyes.

“Did you get hurt when those pricks attacked you? What do you need?”

Oh. That’s why he came so easily—he thinks this is about me again.

It never even occurred to him that I’d notice he needs help.

I swallow thickly. “I’m fine, Dom. But you’re obviously not.”

His stance stiffens. “I’m totally okay. They didn’t even touch me.”

I hold his gaze. “Not with fists or blades. I know it couldn’t have been fun hearing the way they talked about you.”

Dominic’s head droops. He shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. It was nothing I didn’t already know.”

I make a rough sound. “It isn’t true. There’s nothing wrong with you—just because you look different , doesn’t mean you’re horrifying.”

He lifts his eyes just enough to study my expression. “The tentacles bother you too, though, don’t they?”

“Why would you say that?” I ask, frowning.

His lips curl into a grimace. “The other night—after I healed you…”

The memory clicks into place before he needs to finish, and guilt squeezes my gut. “I’m sorry I pulled away. It wasn’t?—”

“I understand,” Dominic says quickly. “With how I am— what I am now—I’d never expect?—”

“Dom!” I break in, and wait until he meets my eyes. “It had nothing to do with how you look. It had nothing to do with you at all.”

My voice wobbles. It’s my turn to lower my gaze.

“Everything got so messed up after I broke you all out, it’s hard to know how to come back from that. I don’t know if I even want to with the others. And even with you… I guess I’m just scared.”

A moment of silence stretches between us. Then Dominic steps forward and wraps his hand around mine.

I’m starkly aware of his thigh just inches from my knee. Of his presence right in front of me, his pensive gaze searching my face and trailing heat over my skin in its wake.

“If you really— Whatever you need, Riva. However long it takes. Even if you never decide to try again at all. I’ll be right here.”

I look up again, my heart skipping a beat. “I matter that much to you?”

His fingers tighten around mine. “You always did; you always will. From the first moment I was old enough to think about you as more than just a friend, I’ve been in love with you.”

He jerks his head toward the lump beneath his coat on his left shoulder.

“You know what I thought when Rollick talked about seeing if we could take these things off? No. No fucking way. Even if it could be permanent. Even though I hate them. Because they saved your life, and maybe they will again someday, and nothing could be more important than that.”

More love than I knew I was still capable of feeling swells in my chest. My lips part, but saying those three words doesn’t seem half as good as showing them.

“Can I see them?” I ask quietly.

Dominic’s gaze stutters, startled and maybe a little disturbed. “You want…”

“To see them. Properly. To see you , all of you, the way you are now.”

I haven’t really before. The only times he’s brought out his tentacles, I was either too wrecked or too distracted by a fight to really take him in.

Dom hesitates and then reaches for his trench coat. He eases it off carefully and lays it on the end of the bed.

Then he stands there with his profile to me, tensed for my appraisal.

He’s taken to wearing T-shirts with a broad necklines, this one with notches cut in the back as well to offer more room for the tentacles. They protrude on either side about an inch down his back, each halfway between his neck and the peaks of his shoulders.

I lean forward and trace my fingers across the bare skin above his shirt collar. There is no clear line that separates Dominic’s flesh from the new appendages.

It’s as if they’re not poking out of his skin but a fully integrated part of it. After the first inch or so of his normal light brown skin tone, their mottled surface takes on an orange hue, but it’s a gradual transition.

Two rows of small suckers dapple the undersides, from about half a foot down all the way to the tips. They’re about twice as long as his arms now, though thin enough that he can coil them against his back.

They aren’t frightening or horrifying. Like I said, they’re just different.

They’re a part of this boy—this man—who I loved and maybe still can.

I glide my fingertips right around the base of the closer tentacle. Dominic inhales with a hitch, and I jerk back my hand.

“I’m sorry. Does it hurt?”

A hint of red blooms in his cheeks. “No. The opposite.”

A flush sweeps through me in turn, its heat pooling between my thighs. I can’t resist extending my fingers again and stroking the base of the tentacle lightly.

Dominic closes his eyes. The whiff of pheromones drifting through the air gives proof to his statement.

My nerves quivering in anticipation, I slide my fingers farther along the tentacle.

Its flesh is softer than the skin of his back, almost satiny. And when I dip my thumb cautiously right into the cup of one sucker, I find that surface has the texture of velvet.

My pulse thrums through my veins. An impulse grips me, and I can’t think of a single reason not to chase it.

What better way is there to show him how fully I embrace everything he’s become?

I curl my fingers around the tentacle and guide it toward me. Then I dip my head down to press a kiss against one pair of suckers.

Dominic shivers, but the thickening of the desire lacing the air tells me it’s not with discomfort.

“Riva,” he murmurs in an unusually husky voice.

The suckers are pliant against my mouth, embracing it gently in return as if they’re kissing me back. The crisp tang of Dom’s scent wafts over me, and my pulse thumps even faster.

I part my lips and flick my tongue over the hollow of one sucker.

A strangled sound escapes Dominic, and then he’s twisting toward me, grasping my shoulder. He buries his face in the crook of my neck, matching my kiss with the emphatic press of his lips against the sensitive skin there.

Heat sears across my chest. I wrench my head around at the same time Dom does.