Chapter Nineteen – Silus
I do my best to watch Thea and her brother after Roark arrives with him in tow, but Roark makes it difficult by pulling out glasses and a bottle to share from behind the counter. He pours us both a glass, and he gulps it down in an instant. Me? I take my time sipping it, shifting my stare past my brother to the back of Thea’s head.
They’re far enough away that I can only hear a few words here and there. It doesn’t help when they start to whisper amongst themselves. I admit, I am curious as to what Thea and Max will talk about tonight.
“So, how’s it going with her?” Roark asks, his dark eyebrows risen, as if he already has the answer. He pours himself another glass—though this one he does not chug down in two giant gulps.
“It’s… going.” It is the lamest possible answer I could give my brother, but I honestly don’t know how else to reply. Thea is… the same as she’s always been. Addicting, beautiful, and intriguing. I thought I would eventually grow used to her, become accustomed to the way I feel when I’m with her, but I haven’t, and I don’t know if I ever will.
Roark chuckles darkly. “That sounds pretty fucking boring. Tell me you’ve at least fucked her, Silus. If you haven’t, what the fuck are you waiting for?” He sips from his glass, black eyes on me, and he doesn’t bother to hide his concern.
I don’t say a word, but it must be written on my face, because my brother barks out another laugh, sounding like a madman, and he says, “Good, good. You have. I bet she was fucking tight.” He glances over his shoulder at Thea and Max, though his gaze is probably on Thea alone. “You know, I did you a favor by bringing that kid here. You could pay me back by letting me have a go at her.”
“No.” The word leaves me immediately, with no hesitation whatsoever. Roark might get off on sharing—and sometimes it can be hot—but when it comes to Thea, I alone will know what that pussy feels like.
“No?” Roark echoes. “Come on. Just once. I’m dying to know what kind of power her pussy has to get you all worked up like this.” His stare meets mine again, and the slight amusement he wore seconds ago already fell off his face, his typical serious expression in its place.
Again, I say, “No.” And I follow it up with, “She’s mine.”
He chuckles again, though it’s less like he’s chuckling at a joke and more like he’s chuckling incredulously. “Wow. I’ve never seen you like this. She must be something special that you won’t even let me have a taste.” He shrugs and takes another sip from his glass. “It was worth a shot, anyway. You can’t blame me. She’s a sexy little spitfire.”
It’s my turn to chuckle as I drink. “You could have her brother.”
That only makes him glare at me. “You know anything with a dick is off the table for me. You just can’t beat a wet pussy.” The sigh he lets out then is explosive. “I am getting old, though. If dad was still alive he’d be on both our cases to settle down.”
Roark is thirty-seven, two years older than me. When our father was our age, he’d already had us. We are running a little late, timeline wise, but I’ve never found a woman I could ever imagine spending the rest of my life with. Our father was many things: a criminal, a smooth-talker, a savvy businessman, but above all that he was faithful. I’d only want to settle down with someone I know for a fact I could live with until the end.
For some strange reason, with that thought comes an image of a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, out west in the great plains. Surrounded by nothing but gentle, rolling hills, it’s not an impressive house at all, but once the image pops up in my head, it refuses to disappear.
It’s not my house. It’s Thea’s, the one she wants. Odd I’d think of it now, isn’t it?
My brother must sense I’m drifting off, because he asks, “What’s on your mind?”
I force myself back to reality. “It’s nothing.”
“Nothing? You looked like you were in space. Where’d you go?” Roark is inquisitive, curious, and reasonably so; we share everything together. We’re the only family we have left, truly. There are no secrets between us.
“I was thinking of a house in the plains out west. No house in particular, just… somewhere far away from this city and everything it entails.” I sigh as I refill my glass and take a small sip. “Thea told me she’d want a house somewhere out there.”
“Ah, did she? What else did she tell you?” There’s an edge to my brother’s question, and it makes me glare at him.
My jaw grinds. “What are you getting at?”
“Nothing at all.” Roark’s mouth thins. “It’s just… it seems like you two are close. Very close.” When I only give him an annoyed look, he explains himself further: “First you won’t entertain the idea of sharing her with me, and now you’re thinking of some little house in the middle of nowhere because she wants a house like it?”
“Actually,” I correct him, “she wants to go to the moon. The house is a secondary desire.”
“Oh, well, in that case—” Roark leans closer to me, inspecting me like I’m some new discovery and not his brother that he’s known his entire life. “What’s with you? You’ve been acting different for a while. At first I thought it was because of what happened—almost being sold to fucking Cormac—but now I’m wondering if that’s not all of it.”
My brother knows nothing, and yet somehow he finds himself under my skin. I huff, “Get to the point.”
“My point is you’re different.”
“Different how?”
“Different all around. Just different. Thinking of a house in the middle of nowhere, far away from the city? I’ve never heard you talk about leaving the city, not until that girl showed up in your life.”
I glare at him. “I didn’t say I was thinking about leaving the city.”
Roark shakes his head and glances at the table where Thea and her brother sit. “It’s her, isn’t it? Something about her has you in a fucking chokehold.” He scoffs. “I knew something was fishy when you wanted her for yourself in the beginning, I just didn’t think it’d be because—”
“Because what?” I cut in with a deep frown.
The way my brother looks at me after that tells me enough, but Roark still says it aloud: “You’re in love with her.” At least he has the wherewithal to say it quietly and not shout it for everyone in the building to hear.
The denial comes from me easily: “I am not.” But no sooner do the words leave me that they really hit me as a possibility. Do I love her? Have I fallen for her somehow in these past few weeks? I’ve enjoyed having her close, yes, but not simply for the sex.
I mean, yes, the sex is indescribable, but there’s more to it. I’ve enjoyed getting to know her. Eating meals with her. Watching her fall asleep after a wild bout of fucking. Being on the receiving end of her glares, her laughter, and her eye-rolling.
All I can do is whisper, “Fucking hell.”
Roark laughs. “See? I told you. I fucking knew it. I’ve never seen you like this before. You have an extra twinkle in your eye—”
I barely resist my urge to shove him. “I do not.”
“You do, at least when you’re talking about her.” He shrugs his shoulders. “Besides, when you kept refusing to share her? It’s obvious. I can’t believe I realized it before you did. The question is, does she know? And if she knows, what’ll she do about it? She’s still your prisoner, same with her brother. You can’t let ‘em go just because you fell for her.”
“I never said I was.”
“Then what’s your endgame?” Roark questions me, his wide frame leaning on the bar. “I thought I knew what it was, but obviously things have changed.”
It’s a while before I mutter, “I don’t know.” There haven’t been many times in my life when I haven’t known how to proceed, but this… this is one of them. I can’t believe it took my brother pushing me for me to realize just how much things have changed.
This thing with Thea isn’t just retribution. In the beginning, I was simply making her pay for her involvement with her brother’s stupid plan to kidnap and sell me, but now…
“You could marry her.”
My gaze snaps to my brother’s face, and for a quick moment I don’t know whether he’s joking or not. But as I study his expression, I realize he’s not kidding. He really is suggesting I marry Thea.
The only thing I can say to that is, “What makes you think I want to marry her?”
“Well, besides the fact she’s still alive after her little stunt, let’s start with the reason you’re keeping that tiny man alive—and in decent living conditions, go figure. Add onto that how grouchy you get when I ask you to share her, like you’d rather punch me in the face than let me have a go at her—”
Okay, Roark isn’t wrong there. I would rather punch him in the face than let him have a go at her. When you’re messing around, sure, sharing can be fun, but with Thea…
Shit. I guess it is more serious.
“You don’t think it’s a little soon?” I ask offhandedly, glancing at the back of Thea’s head.
“Dad proposed to Mom the first time he saw her, so no, I don’t think it’s a little soon. Besides, you have to start thinking about what you’re going to do with her long-term. I guess you can keep her forever, but…”
I take a small sip of my drink. “The plan was never to keep her forever.”
“Right, right. It was always to have her pay you back for the time she stole.” Roark groans, as if he finds it all ridiculous. “Seems to me you were just looking for an excuse to take her because you wanted her. I don’t think you really took her because she owes you time, Silus.”
As much as I want to tell my brother he’s wrong, I can’t. My first instinct is to correct him, tell him that, yes, I did take Thea for retribution, and that the plan was to always let her go once her time with me was up, but now that my brother suggested it was for a different reason, I can’t help but wonder if he’s right.
Did I take Thea for myself because I wanted her? Because, just from our quick interaction at the club, I knew I needed to learn more about her?
I decide to turn the conversation around on Roark and say, “What about you? You’re practically an old man. When are you going to find a woman?” Get the topic off Thea for the time being, to give myself some time to think.
He frowns at the wall across from us, behind the bar. “Yeah, yeah. I know. I’m getting up there, but you’re right behind me.” He runs a hand through his black hair. “If our parents were still alive, they’d be on our case about getting hitched, for sure. Mom would demand grandkids every time we’d talk. Hell, you and I would probably live very different lives if they were still around.”
Again, Roark isn’t wrong. Normally the man doesn’t spend too much time thinking, so I don’t know what makes today so special. I don’t like it. His comments are making me face things I don’t know whether I’m ready to face.
“I don’t even know how I’d go about it,” Roark goes on. “I mean, sure, it wouldn’t be hard to find a woman who’ll say yes. The problem lies with me finding a woman I’d want to ask the question to in the first place. Thea doesn’t have a sister somewhere, does she?”
I chuckle as I shake my head. “No, sorry. Just Max.”
“Pass,” my brother mutters. “Hard pass on that.”
Roark and I spend the next hour talking about nothing in particular, basically just chatting to pass the time while Thea spends some one-on-one time with her brother. It’s late by the time we leave the club, and as we drive home, I can’t help but replay everything Roark said to me. One word in particular bounces around more than the others.
Marriage.
I find myself glancing at Thea when she’s not paying attention to me, when her head is leaning against the window and she’s staring out into the neon lights that illuminate the city streets after dark. I don’t know where her mind is at, what she’s thinking about, or how she’d even feel about it.
No, that’s not totally true. She’d laugh at me, say I’m crazy. If I pop the question and put a ring on her finger…
Men like my brother and I don’t get married for love. We do it because of obligation, because it’s expected. We do it to pass on our bloodline so we can have true heirs that we train from birth to take over the family businesses. We don’t date for years before getting engaged. Things tend to happen fast for us.
Just look at my parents. Our father was an insane son of a bitch, but he was a good dad, a great husband. He may have asked our mother to marry him the day they first met, and everyone around him told him how crazy he was. In the end, though, it wasn’t a crazy decision. They fell in love, and they had Roark and me.
I must stare at Thea a bit too long, because she notices my gaze and whips her head in my direction. “What?”
I could tell her the truth, but I think it’s a conversation we best have privately. Maybe the idea wasn’t as wild as I originally thought, because the more I think about it, the more right it sounds. I need to get a ring.
But I don’t tell her the truth, not yet. I simply say, “Nothing.”
Thea doesn’t turn away after that. Her blue gaze lingers on me in a way that makes me think perhaps she and her brother had their own chat about us. I doubt their talk involved a suggestion of marriage, though.
In the end, she says, “Thank you for letting me see Max. It was good to see him in person and not on a TV screen.” Thea gets quieter. “You didn’t have to arrange this, so thank you.”
“I said I would.”
“Yeah, but… you still didn’t have to.”
We sit in the backseat of my car, so it’s easy for me to reach for her hand. My fingers curl around her tiny palm like they’ve found their home. “I said I would.” This time I say it softer, gentler, and I hope she takes it to mean I’m a man of my word and not someone who lies. I would never feed Thea lies.
The way Thea looks at me after that, how her heart-shaped face is lit up only by the streetlights we pass, how her lips part ever so slightly, a gesture some may not notice but I definitely do; it all draws the same reaction out of me.
I’ve never felt this before. I’ve never been so consumed with desire, caught in such a chokehold that all I can think about is her. These feelings are new to me, and they’re more addicting than any other substance could possibly be.
Fuck. I need to get a ring.
Something unspoken passes between us, and the silence in the vehicle stretches on for way too long. I don’t tear my eyes off Thea when I tell my driver, “Take us somewhere private, now.” It’s spoken as an order, one he better know not to ignore.
All this talk of falling in love and marriage, and instead of wanting space, I need another taste.
Less than five minutes later, we pull into a parking lot beside a building that has long been closed down. I don’t even remember what it used to be, but its brick outer shell is covered in vines that grow up the three-story building like it was always meant to be there.
No sooner does my driver put the car in park when I bark another order at him: “Take a walk.” Just because I’m suddenly overwhelmed with the need to have another taste of this girl does not mean I want an audience. I’m not my brother. I want Thea all to myself.
The driver says not a word as he gets out and goes for a walk, leaving Thea and I alone in the car.
I let go of her hand only so I can get a good hold on her and pull her onto my lap. One leg on either side of me, she straddles my lap with a face that looks far too innocent for her own good. My hands find her waist, gripping her tightly, and I labor to keep an even breath. Beneath her, my cock stirs.
Thea acts as if she has no idea what’s going on. She tilts her head slowly and bites her bottom lip, and I respond by yanking her top half against my chest so hard she gasps. “You,” I whisper, “make all logical thought cease in my brain, Thea. When I look at you all I can think is how badly I want to bury myself between those legs and fuck you until you scream my name.”
Thea’s breath catches, and her eyelids flutter shut. Her hands tentatively touch my neck, hesitating for only a moment or two before she curls her arms around me. “Then maybe that’s exactly what you should do,” she whispers, a challenge I will gladly accept.
It’s a sprint to get her clothes off after that. I focus on her because she can throw on her clothing quickly after we’re done. I would take entirely too long to get dressed inside a car, so I’ll settle with my belt. Once my pants are unzipped, it’s easy for me to pull out my hard cock and position it beneath Thea’s spread thighs as she hovers over my lap.
The shadows of the dark car hide the lusciousness of the curves on her body, but my eyes are accustomed to the darkness, so I see enough. The smooth curve of her tits. The way her collarbone reveals itself each time she takes a heavy breath. How her nipples are two puckered honing beacons pointed directly at me.
My hands once more find her hips, and I yank her body down, simultaneously slamming my cock into her core. I groan once I fill her up, and Thea stifles a cry of surprise, as if she forgot what it feels like to be filled to the brim.
It’s only because she’s on my lap that I can kiss her while I’m inside of her. Normally the height difference makes it impossible, but here and now it is very possible, so that’s what I do. I lift a hand to her neck and pull her mouth to mine, crashing my mouth upon hers and swallowing up whatever sound she makes.
It’s fire and ice, explosive, the unification of two opposing forces that make something beautiful. I can’t get enough. My tongue pushes past her lips as my other hand helps guide her movement on my cock.
Being inside her… fuck, there really is nowhere else I’d rather be. And just like that, everything my brother said couldn’t be wrong. He had to be right. He had to be. There’s no other explanation that could describe how consumed I am by this girl.
We met by a twist of fate, a dirty scheme to sell me off to my enemy. I never could have imagined it would lead to this. This is right where I’m meant to be. Thea’s my girl. There’s no doubt about it.
It’s settled. I need to get a ring.
My tongue dances with hers, and she moans into my mouth while I guide her hips, piercing her from below. I’m not a man that likes having a woman on top, but in this situation, it’s a dire need. The way her pussy clenches around my length, how her back arches when I fill her to the brim… it’s fucking spectacular. There’s no other feeling in the world that could possibly come close.
I only pull my tongue out of her mouth so I can murmur, “You feel so good, Thea. You’re like my personal heaven. I never want to let you go.” The words slip out of me before I can stop them, before I can even think about how she’ll take them. I told her that if she paid me what she owes me, I’d let her go, and I meant it, but now…
Now things have changed.
“Then don’t,” Thea urgently whispers as she increases her pace on my cock. Maybe it’s the heat of the moment, or maybe it’s how she really feels. Either way, she couldn’t have said anything sexier, and I wrap my arms around her tightly in response.
“You’re mine,” I say as I spear her from below, knowing I’m about to lose it any second. “You’re fucking mine. Every part of you, every goddamned inch. Heart, body, and soul. You’re mine, Thea.”
“I’m yours,” she whispers as her head falls back and she cries out. Her body trembles atop mine, her inner core clenching around my cock as she comes on my length.
I’m so close to my own orgasm, so as she loses herself to hers, I bring both hands to her thighs and start to rock my hips below her as best I can. My cock slams into her from below, her pussy taking every inch as it tightens and spasms.
The moment my release arrives, I don’t tear my eyes off her. I make sure to hold eye contact when I jerk my cock deep into her pussy and fill her with my cum. My hands squeeze her thighs to the point where they might bruise, but I can’t help it. A muffled moan escapes me, filling the air of the car. My cock empties itself inside her, coating her pussy with my cum and marking her as mine.
I wrap my arms around her once the high from the orgasm fades, and I bury my face in the crook of her neck, breathing her in. Her body fits so perfectly on mine, my cock still nestled in that tight, wet cunt.
Honestly, I don’t want to pull out of her. I never do.
I know I said I would let her go once she gives me the time she owes me. I said I’d let her walk, along with her brother, but now I’m forced to reckon with the fact that letting her go is the last thing I want.
Alas, I’m also one of those men who doesn’t want their woman to be with them because they have to. I want Thea to be with me because she wants to. I want her to choose me. I’ll get a ring, and I’ll give her a choice.
Pick me or walk away forever.