“You said you’d wanted to for a long time,” Andreas says hoarsely.
“Yeah.” My voice drops even lower. “I loved him. So fucking much. But it didn’t do him any good in the end, did it?”
I pause, and then raise my head to meet Andreas’s gaze.
He looks strangely stricken in that first moment despite his reassuring words, but he appears to yank his reaction under control. “Of course you did. And it makes sense. You thought you were safe. If you cared about him that much—”
All at once, it feels incredibly important to make one thing crystal clear. Griffin took my secret to his grave, but maybe it never should have been a secret to begin with.
Maybe if my guys had known all along how much my world revolved around them, they never could have believed I’d have betrayed them.
“I loved all of you,” I interrupt, with enough force that Andreas’s mouth snaps shut. I rub my hand over my face, wiping away the dampness on my cheeks. “I wanted to kiss all of you. I wanted to have what that old man you saw had with his wife—with all of you, for just as many decades or even more. But nothing could happen while we were in the facility anyway, and I had no idea how you’d all react. Griffin knew, because he always knew how everyone was feeling, but I couldn’t figure out what to say to the rest of you.”
Andreas’s eyes have widened. Whatever discomfort he was struggling with before, I can’t see any trace of it now.
He raises his hand to the side of my face and strokes his thumb over my cheekbone. A little of his usual good humor dances like a spark in his eyes.
“I can’t help noticing you’re using the past tense,” he says. “I guess we haven’t been so loveable lately, huh?”
His tone isn’t exactly playful. There’s too much pain mixed into it too.
I tip my head into his touch, still holding his gaze. “Things have gotten pretty messed up. But I still think we all belong together. We just have to make it back to where we were before—or maybe it’s that we need to figure out something new that works with who we are now. But we’re blood. That’ll always be true. I’ve loved you basically my whole life, Drey. A couple of weeks isn’t going to erase that.”
The relief I tasted before floods me, sweeping through my nerves and washing away the weight I’ve been carrying as if now I could float right into the air.
This is freedom. This is escape. Part of the answer was inside me all along.
Andreas’s jaw works, a less familiar emotion shimmering in his eyes. Then he slides his fingers down to my chin and draws my mouth to his.
I’m not prepared for the maelstrom that hits me with the meeting of our lips. Heat flares between us, and my fingers clutch at the front of his borrowed shirt like I’m holding on to him for dear life.
All the hunger that’s simmered up inside me every time we’ve touched fills my body. It propels me closer, pressing my mouth harder against his with an urgency that burns right down the center of me.
But that heat isn’t enough to sear away the icy jolt of panic that hits me at the same time. Even as I cling on to Andreas, my spine stiffens.
I want to fall right into him, and I want to wrench myself away before some horrific catastrophe crashes down on us.
Andreas tips his head to break the kiss with his forehead resting against mine. He caresses my jaw like he did my cheek moments ago, over and over in a gentle motion as my pulse races with the spike of frantic adrenaline.
“It’s okay,” he says softly. “See? Nothing horrible is happening. You can’t ruin anything with a kiss. It wasn’t your fault then, and you aren’t screwing things up now either. I promise.”
My breath hitches with a strange mix of anguish and affection. He understands, and… he’s right. There’s no blast of gunshots or thunder of footsteps barging into the house.
Nothing about this moment feels like a mistake.
My fingers tighten in his shirt, and I’m yanking him back to me before I have a chance to hesitate in doubt. And if any doubtshadbeen rising up about whether he only kissed me to prove a point, the rough sound that escapes him and urgency with which his mouth claims mine erase them in an instant.
Once we’ve started again, we can’t seem to stop. Our lips collide over and over, every kiss even more addictive than the last. I’m inhaling him, downing him like the sweetest of cocktails, and I can’t get enough.
A heady energy flows through my limbs, as if the smoky stuff that trails out of us when we bleed is reaching from my veins to pull him even closer. As if it’s seeping out of our skin and melding us together, breath to breath and blood to blood, in a way no normal human beings could experience.
Andreas’s fingers delve into the strands of my hair he so recently untangled. His other hand slides down the side of my body, marking a scorching trail all the way to my hip.
Then he lifts me right onto his lap, grasping the skirt of the dress as it pools around my thighs so I can straddle him. He sucks my lower lip between his teeth with the slightest prick of pain that sparks into something so much more delicious.
He could eat me whole, and I wouldn’t mind one bit. I want to be lost in him, completely intermeshed.
“Riva,” he murmurs between kisses. “Wanted you for so long.Lovedyou for so long. You’re ours—and mine. All mine.”