Page 77 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Our mouths collide with a surge of heat and a longing that clamors through my veins. All I can do is emit an encouraging murmur and kiss him even harder.

Dominic loops his arm around my back and pushes closer, nudging my knees apart to give him access. While one hand holds me close, the other strokes down my side and along my thigh.

His breath wavers against my mouth. I tug him into another kiss, drinking it down.

I want him. I need him. The feral darkness winding through my blood propels me onward.

More. More. More.

Just like it demanded when I was with Andreas.

My muscles clench up despite the peal of hunger inside me.

Dominic freezes. When he starts to pull away, I grab his tee in my hands.

“No,” I mumble, my mouth still just inches from his. “I?—”

Words escape me. I tip my head forward, and he catches it against his shoulder, his arms coming around me again.

A tremor runs through his body. The same desire that’s baying for release inside me must be reverberating through him as well.

But he holds himself still, waiting for me.

My voice spills out haltingly against his shirt. “The only other two times I’ve gotten close with anyone, things ended really badly. The first time with the boy I kissed dying. The second time with me almost dying, because of everything that happened after.”

Dominic squeezes me close.

“I can’t promise anything about what the guardians might have up their sleeves,” he says roughly, “but I’ve got no secrets left. You know everything there is to know about me, Riva. Things I’ve never even told the other guys.”

I let his words sink in. I believe them.

I’m scared. So fucking scared, more scared than I’ve been the entire time since that night with the train.

Am I going to let the fears own me, or am I going to take what I actually want? What every particle in my body knows I deserve?

Resolve twines with the longing in my heart. But one more thing holds me back—a concern that’s not for me but for the man who’s wrapped me in his embrace.

Andreas’s words when he checked with me about the risks of our hookup rise in the back of my mind.

The guardians arranged it. I think they figured we needed some kind of outlet. It… didn’t go so well.

I don’t want to do this if it’s going to stir up horrors from Dominic’s past too.

“Dom,” I venture. “Andreas told me that the guardians—that after I was gone, they brought a woman…”

That’s all I need to say for him to know what I mean. I can feel his understanding in the tensing of his body against mine.

“It was sick. But I guess they figured that out too pretty quickly.”

I nestle my head deeper into the crook of his neck, grappling with the clamoring of my desire. I didn’t check with Andreas before— I didn’t know it mattered. I need to be sure.

“You’re not—Doing this isn’t bringing up any bad memories?”

Dominic lets out a shaky sigh. “There isn’t much to remember about that part. She took Andreas into another room, and then after…”

He stops, awkward around the thing Andreas didn’t want to talk about either.

Something awful happened that day. But I’m not going to demand it from him if he isn’t ready to talk about it.

“She never got to me,” he goes on finally. “So I never had to… do anything. After that, they stuck to broadcasting porn onto the screens in our cells for a half hour a day to encourage us to get any hormones out of our system or something.”

I wince. “That sounds incredibly horribly uncomfortable.”

Dom manages a laugh that’s only mildly strained, light enough to soothe my worries. “Better than their original plan. At least it might have given me some basic idea of what I’m doing.”

He eases back just enough to meet my eyes. “Not that I’m assuming we’re going to— I’d never want you to do anything you’re unsure about.”

I wet my lips, renewed longing flaring beneath my skin at the hunger in his gaze and the way it tracks the movement of my tongue. “Do you want to?”

He tips his forehead against mine. “Riva, right now I don’t think there’s anything I’ve wanted more in my entire life.”

My heart hitches with exhilaration. Maybe, just maybe… we could both be okay.

Maybe it could be something as beautiful as making love is meant to be.

I tip my head and nudge myself upward, and he meets the kiss I’m offering. The hunger thrums through my veins again, melding our lips together with our kindling passion.

I grip him tighter, my fingers sliding into his soft hair. The elastic holding his short ponytail dislodges so the strands slide free across my knuckles, but he gives no sign of minding.

His mouth sears into mine. Our lips part, our tongues dancing against each other with a giddy thrill.

My hands drift down the front of Dominic’s shirt to grasp the hem. Without speaking, he raises his arms—and adjusts his tentacles—so I can peel the fabric off him.

A starker heat washes over me at the sight of his slimly toned torso laid bare in front of me. Then one of Dominic’s tentacles traces along my waist, and my skin turns outright scorching.

Would other girls run screaming in terror? Let the idiots flee.

This man has two extra limbs to caress me with. To love me with.

A lump rises in my throat. I haven’t said it yet.

I raise my head and gaze straight into Dominic’s smoldering eyes. “I love you.”

Something like awe flickers across his expression, and then his mouth is crashing into mine again.

I press against him, the heat of his body coursing into mine. The caress of my hands over his bare chest brings a groan to his lips.

More, more, more.

He yanks up my tank top, our lips breaking apart for just long enough to toss it aside. As his fingers fumble with the clasp of my bra, both of his tentacles tease over my ribs and across my belly.

I shiver with need. It isn’t even close to enough.

I thought the desperate wildness that came over me with Andreas had to do with it being my first time. But it seems it was because it was my first time with him , and the shadows inside me crave the new connection with Dom just as much.

Or maybe it’ll always be this intense with any of the guys, no matter how many times we’ve already been together. All I know is the haze coursing through my veins alongside my blood is straining toward Dominic.

The hunger has become a keening echoing in the back of my ears. My fingers dig into Dominic’s naked back, and I have to will my claws to stay in.

Some part of me wants to split him right open and mingle our essence in that way too.

The deepest ache pulses between my legs. As Dom cups my freed breasts, swiveling his palms against my nipples, I whimper, both at the sparks of sensation and the yearning for connection not yet fulfilled.

I want to savor this moment, but my body is crying out in agony to completely unite. I arch into his caresses—and cant my hips toward the bulge behind his jeans.

Dominic groans against my mouth. He kisses me with even more force, applying the same principle to my breasts with a sharp tweak of my nipples that leaves me gasping.

Before I can even think about it, my hands have leapt to his fly.

“I want…” he mumbles. “I need… Oh, God, Riva.”

I nod my head in little jerks, my fingers yanking at the button. “Yes. Please.”

Neither of us has much idea what we’re doing. I’ve only collided with someone like this once before, lost in the passion of the moment, and he’s never been with anyone for real.

But the shadows rippling through us know what they want. Every movement comes to me without needing to think. Like it’s meant to be.

Shove Dominic’s pants down his thighs. Pump his rigid shaft through his boxers. Inhale his moan into my lungs.

He hooks his fingers around the elastic waist of my cargo pants and yanks them down. They skip over the ledge I’m perched on and tumble off my legs.

His hand delves between my legs, somehow both satisfying some of my desperate hunger and sending my desire spiking even higher.

“You are perfect,” he insists in a low voice as he wrenches my drenched panties off me. “Fucking perfect. Every part of you. Everything you can do.”

I don’t argue—I can’t. I’m soaring too high on the heady sensations, tangled up too much in the writhing of my blood.

I grip his ass and tilt forward, and he plunges into me like he was always meant to be there.

Yes. Yes. This is what I needed most.

This is how we become complete.

We rock over the drawer unit, Dominic bucking deeper and deeper into me. His breath has gone ragged, but so has mine.

His tentacles trail up and down the sides of my body, drawing even more pleasure from my flesh. I kiss him wildly, lost in the same sense of merging I felt with Andreas.

Our essence is flowing together. Our breaths are mingling.

We move together as one being, bliss blazing through both of us in tandem.

My claws pop out. Dominic’s tentacles shudder.

He sweeps them right over my breasts and grips my hips to pull me even tighter against him. His cock sinks so deep it hits a spot inside me that makes my thoughts spin, and then fragment, and then?—

Ecstasy roars through my body, overwhelming every other sensation. The shadows in my blood dance.

The words tumble out of me like a plea. “Come. Come with me. Stay with me.”

Dominic lets out a raw cry and slams into me one more time. His hips jerk as he follows me into release.

He sways in and out of me a few more times before coming to a stop. His head bows over mine, his body braced against me where I’m still balanced on the ledge.

The intensity of our joining thrums through me. I should have expected this too—this electric sensation like all my feelings have risen up to the surface of my flesh.

Just like it was with Andreas.

I lift my head, seeking out one more kiss. For comfort, for confirmation, for—something.

Dominic meets me halfway. His body trembles with the expended energy of our collision, but the kiss is so sweet I want to drown in it.

When we ease apart, my gaze drops to his chest. I touch the dark dab that’s formed on his skin at the top of his sternum.

“I marked you too,” I mumble in my surprise.

Dominic’s thumb sweeps along my collarbone. “You had one on this side already, but now you have another to match.”

He pauses. “Was that—was that because we—does it do anything?”

“I don’t know how it works or why it happens,” I admit. “But I—I always know where Andreas is, if I concentrate on it. It’ll probably be the same with you now.”

A smile crosses Dom’s face, bright enough to melt any momentary insecurities about whether he’ll mind being permanently branded.

“That’s perfect too,” he says in the softest voice I’ve ever heard from him. “Then I’ll always be able to find you if you need me.”

Unexpected tears spring up behind my eyes. I sling my arms around his shoulders and hug him to me.

Without warning, Dominic lifts me off the ledge. He spins us together and carries me onto the bed.

He lies down with me nestled against him and brushes a kiss to my forehead.

“You asked me to stay. I’m staying until you decide it’s time to leave.”

An ache radiates through my chest, but it’s the most delightful kind of pain. Choked up, I tuck myself closer against him and let my eyes drift shut.

I have one of my guys, finally, properly. And the possessive hunger inside me will just have to accept that one might be all I end up taking.