Chapter 22 #2
My stomach was both light and heavy, toppling and turning over, the same as the emotion did in my chest as I reached for something inside me that had been missing for so long.
Only flickers of apprehension tickled in the periphery. Muted by whatever power Silas held over me.
He shocked me by suddenly shifting and rolling me onto my back. He climbed up to hover over me, his big body pinning me to the bed.
His vicious, beautiful face suddenly filled my vision.
Every carved, slashed angle was inscribed with ferocity.
The gold flecks in his eyes ignited in a fit of need and something that looked decidedly close to dread.
“I’m not playing games, Brinley, but clearly, I am playing with fire. Barely even touching you, and I’ve crossed so many lines. Committed a thousand crimes.”
He had both hands planted on either side of my head, and I became painfully aware that he’d wound himself between my thighs. The weight of his cock pressed to that spot that had begun to ache and glow.
A fool, I arched toward him, and both my hands fisted in the sheet below like it could keep me from reaching out.
A skirmish between what I wanted and what I knew would destroy me clashed in the middle.
“Yet it’s me who’s going to get burned, isn’t it?” I choked out what I hoped sounded like an accusation. “You who’s going to toy with me? You who’s going to use me until you get what you want?”
He’d fully admitted it last night. I was a means. A tool. A pawn.
Nothing more.
I needed to remember it.
His chuckle was rough. Filled with biting disbelief. “Nah, baby, it’s you who can bring me to my knees. You who has me crawling with a flick of your fingers. You could ask anything of me, and I’d be helpless but to give it to you.”
He rocked against me once.
Fire lancinated up my spine.
On instinct, my hands shot out, and I gripped onto his waist. “Answers. Then give me answers.”
Darkness gathered, furrowing his brow into a stark, slashing V.
Both of us were stuck in that position.
Teetering on the edge of a bottomless chasm that churned below us. Threatening to set us off balance and toss us into its abyss.
“I just need you to trust me, Brinley,” he finally said.
“What if that’s not good enough for me?”
“It’s going to have to be. My only objective here is keeping you safe, and I won’t jeopardize that.” The words ground off his tongue.
A soft scoff ripped free. “Isn’t that what I’m in? Jeopardy?”
“Not with me standing in front of you.”
Another one of those gritted promises.
Stone toppling from his mouth as if it could build a new foundation.
Did I believe him? Trust him? How could I?
But there was something in the roil of his expression that made me see his truth.
“I don’t like being left in the dark.” It was close to a plea.
He almost smirked. But it was soft. “That’s because you’re always in control. Fighting for yourself. For your brother. The fierce lioness that you are. Going it alone because there’s no one there to have your back. But this time, you’re giving that fight to me.”
Fear and hope clattered around in my spirit. How could he know that about me? My throat was nearly closed off when I whispered, “And what if you fail me?”
That darkness flashed a hundredfold, and he curled his hands around my wrists and pressed them to the bed. He dipped down so close that I tasted the words.
“I won’t.”
The little thumps low on the door startled us, and Silas pushed off, rolling over so he was sitting up in the bed just as the door clattered open.
While I lay there panting toward the ceiling, trying to gather my bearings enough to sit up, too.
I did just in time to see Kai toddle through, only wearing a diaper.
Adorable dimples denting his cheeks and his eyes that were the same color as Silas’s shining in the glinting rays of morning light.
“Siwas!” He pointed a chubby finger at the man who roughed a tattooed hand through the mess of his hair, and my brow pinched, realizing it was the first time I’d ever heard Kai call him anything.
Silas.
Not Dad or Daddy.
But that confusion was getting batted away by a surge of affection when Kai turned that sweetness on me. Basically dancing as he shifted to point a little finger at me. “Bwinwey! You stay Kai’s house?”
I gathered the sheet and brought it to my chest. It wasn’t like I was naked or anything, but I still felt like I’d been caught in a scandal.
Bare and vulnerable.
That didn’t seem to keep the smile from tweaking at the edge of my mouth, though. “I did.”
“You got sweet dweams? I got sweet dweams.” He patted his chest as he kept coming right up to the end of the bed.
Without reservation, Silas shifted so he could reach for him.
The man only wore his underwear. The length of his broad back bare, though completely covered in twisting, black ink.
Two winged creatures sat in the middle facing each other, their foreheads touching in a clear standoff.
One angelic and one demonic.
Black tendrils wisped out from their fingers and chests to duel and twine. As if their spirits were battling not to be tied together.
Silas plucked Kai from the floor and pulled him into those arms he’d just had around me.
Arms I was having trouble imagining as anything other than refuge right then.
“That’s because I wished them on you when I tucked you into bed last night, remember?” Silas snuggled him close, tickling him and making him howl with laughter.
Kai grappled for his face, clutching onto his cheeks as he leaned in close and ferociously shook his head as if he were trying to convey something super important. “I no scawed nigh-night.”
Silas’s flinch was almost imperceptible. A wince that seemed to come from the deepest recesses of his soul. If I hadn’t been watching so closely, I would have missed it.
But maybe I would have felt it, anyway. Sensed the way he pulled the child a fraction closer, breathing in as he buried his nose in Kai’s golden-brown locks.
Every word gravel as he pushed it from his throat. “That’s right. You don’t have to be afraid to go to sleep. Not anymore. You’re safe. You’re safe.”
My stomach clenched and something just as deep inside me began to ache.
In question, I cut my eye toward Silas.
God, I wished there was a way I could see inside him the way he seemed to be able to see inside of me.
Without separating from Kai an inch, Silas still managed to glance at me from the corner of his eye.
In that brief, fleeting moment, I swore he was flayed open wide.
Love. Pain. Hate. Determination.
A maelstrom that raged inside him.
Immune to the intensity, Kai wiggled his way free, his grin so big it took up the entirety of his precious face. “Kai eat?”
“Yeah, buddy, I bet Meems is whipping up something delicious downstairs,” Silas told him.
“My Meems?” He patted his chest again, though he seemed to be asking Silas for confirmation.
“That’s right, your Meems, too.”
“My Siwas?” Insecurity filled that question, and I felt myself breaking apart a little as I watched the interaction.
As I watched Silas tremble with undeniable grief.
He took Kai’s little hand and spread it over his chest so Kai could feel the beat of his heart. “Your Silas. Always, Kai. Always.”
Kai nodded, back to grinning as he scrambled off Silas’s lap and turned onto his belly so he could slide off the end of the bed, shouting, “I get Wena,” as he raced through the door.
He left a swath of emotion in his wake.
Anguish.
Love.
Despair.
Affliction.
Silas sat far enough forward that I was basically looking at his back, but I could still feel every single one of those things writhe in his being.
“I thought he was your son,” I finally whispered into the stagnant silence.
His head barely shook. “No. He’s our baby brother.”
My throat closed off, and my chest felt like it might cave. It was a horribly dangerous reaction to have to him.
Because I didn’t just want his touch to give me some imprudent pleasure that I was pretty sure would only cause another scar.
No.
I wanted to climb to my knees so I could wrap myself around him and soothe his pain.
I wondered if I would ever learn my lesson.
But reservations meant little when someone was bleeding this way.
“And…you’re raising him?” My voice barely broke the disordered hush.
A heaving sigh worked out of him, and he roughed a hand down his face. “I didn’t know he existed until two months ago.”
Surprise shot from my nose, but I didn’t have time to respond before Silas continued.
“Had hoped my father was dead. Turned out he was just destroying the innocent again.”
“Silas.” His name was a crushed breath, and I reached for him, my hand fluttering out between us in uncertainty.
Silas pressed on. “I got a call from one of my friends in the middle of the night. Cash,” he said by way of explanation.
“He told me he’d gotten a report about a little boy in the emergency room with my same last name.
Blood type was a match. He figured he needed to give me a call to make sure we weren’t somehow related. ”
A boatload of questions arose from that statement alone. I wasn’t fool enough to assume this Cash guy was a first responder or medical professional. And I seriously doubted Silas had cop friends unless they were of the dirty kind.
There was something there, hidden in the confession, something I was sure was an intrinsic, concealed part of him. One that was likely another blight.
But those things seemed to matter none in the moment. When I could feel the fractures segmenting Silas in two.
Like he didn’t know if he wanted to weep or rave.
His head dropped lower between his shoulders, and regret gushed from him like a ruptured well. “Kid clearly neglected and abused.”
Weeping sounded really good right about then. A clog of it balled at the base of my throat.
That time, I did reach for him, my fingertips tracing over the sharp edges of the creatures warring on his back.
Silas shivered, his spine curving as he wrapped both arms around the back of his neck.