9. Ophelia
Igasp when a light switches on in the far corner, illuminating Silas sitting in the armchair watching me.
“Jesus!” I clutch the towel tighter around myself as he stands.
“Didn’t mean to startle you.” He comes toward me.
“No? Is that why you’re sitting here in the near dark like some creep? Get out.”
He smiles, studying me and, just like every other time he so much as looks at me, I feel it in the pit of my stomach. I want to say it’s unease, but it’s not. It’s a fluttering of anticipation. A near electric alertness. Something my body does only for him, has only ever done for him.
“No.” He brushes a lock of hair that’s fallen out of my hurried up-do over my shoulder.
“I counted six doors up here. Choose a room that’s not mine.”
“Yours?” he asks, an eyebrow rising, a smile playing along his lips.
“Mine,” I say, standing taller on my bare feet, refusing to back away even though it will be better for me if I do because even as my mind forbids it, my body remembers the last time Silas touched me. How it felt. How he felt.
And then there’s what he said at the chapel. That one word.
Love.
No. No, that was just to get me to go along with the plan. Although I would have anyway. As soon as he told me what happened to my father, I would have done whatever I needed to do to get to him.
“I have something for you,” he says. I feel his fingers against mine. He holds my hand between us. I keep my right hand firmly on the knot holding the towel in place. “It should have been my mother’s, but she never did marry,” he starts, his voice drifting.
I know I hit my head hard in the car crash, but I’m struggling to process what he’s doing, what is happening. I stand mute, staring as he slides what is probably the prettiest ring I have ever seen onto my finger.
“It’s yours now,” he finishes.
I shift my gaze up to his and realize I missed whatever he said between those two bracketing statements. Confused, I study the ring on my finger. I’ve seen it before. Esmerelda had shown it to me a long time ago, telling me it would be for Silas’s wife one day. In fact, I’d even tried it on. I remember very clearly how fifteen-year-old me had daydreamed it might be mine because I would be Silas’s wife.
The irony is striking.
“I don’t want this,” I say, trying to pull the ring off, my heart racing, blood pounding against my ears.
He captures my hands to stop me. “It’s my ring, Ophelia. Your ring now. You’ll wear it.”
“This isn’t real, Silas. It’s a means to an end. I don’t want your lies and I don’t want your ring!” I manage to pull free and tug the ring off at the same time. I throw it at him, clutching my towel that is nearly slipping off me.
He captures the ring mid-air, and, glaring, closes the little bit of space I’d managed to put between us. He takes hold of me roughly, his hand swallowing mine as he tries to pry my fingers open.
“You’ll fucking wear it.”
“I fucking will not!”
His turquoise eyes, eerily bright in this dim light, lock on mine. He sets one hand against my stomach and walks me backward until my back hits the wall. He slaps the ring down onto the writing desk beside us. I jump. I’m barely hanging on to the towel and a moment later, that’s gone. I’m naked and trapped by this man, my husband. My fucking husband.
“You are my wife. You will wear my ring. Period. The end.” He leans closer, eyebrows furrowed together. “And as far as this being real, let me show you once and for all just how real it is.”
I open my mouth to protest, but before I can get a word out, he smashes his lips over mine, kissing me hard. His hand comes to the top of my head, and I feel the tug of hair caught in the teeth of the clip he breaks off. He draws back, and we both gasp for breath before he weaves his fingers into my hair and grips tight, tugging my head backward for better access to my mouth.
I kiss him, too, my teeth cutting. He moans into my mouth as he slides his free hand to cup my ass and squeeze. When I taste the metallic tang of his blood, he draws back, hand still fisted in my hair, panting against my mouth.
“Real yet?” he asks and spins me around, bending me over the desk, the ring digging into my pelvic bone. He keeps me pinned, my cheek against the cool expanse of wood.
“Not real!” I spit as I try to get my hands around his forearm to force him off.
From the corner of my eye, I watch as he undoes the top buttons of his shirt. I hear the rest pop as he rips it off, pulling it over his head and tossing it aside.
“No?” he asks, kicking my legs apart and shifting his grip to my ass. He crouches down behind me and splays me open. I grip the edges of the desk and arch my back when he closes the whole of his mouth over my pussy. The tip of his tongue tickles my clit before dipping inside me. Before sliding the length of me up to my asshole and circling the tight ring.
I suck in a ragged breath.
“Because you taste pretty fucking real to me,” he says, then draws back and bites a butt cheek. Hard.
“Ow! Fuck you!”
He straightens, slaps my ass with a chuckle. “And you feel pretty damn real.” He spanks again, pressing the flat of his hand into my lower back and forcing me to arch up. “You have an ass made to be spanked, you know that?” He proceeds to do just that.
“You fucking asshole!” I wriggle to get away, but he leans over me, digs his nails into my ass cheeks and brings his mouth to the curve of my neck. He bites again. It’s not hard this time, and it’s not painful. It’s worse than that because it feels good and the involuntary sound I make lets him know it.
“Be still, wife,” he says, tongue licking the shell of my ear. “So I can bury my face in your pussy and properly eat what is mine.”
I’m panting for breath, and I want to say it’s his hands on my ass that have me trapped, that have my legs spread wide, and me up on tiptoe arching back into his face because fuck. Fuck. It feels so good. His mouth, his tongue, his hot breath as he devours me, it feels too fucking good, and I hate him for it.
I tell him as much, digging my nails into my palms to stop myself from coming because I’m close. I’m so close.
“Now now,” he says, stopping seconds before I climax. I groan and he straightens, air cold where his warm tongue was. He spanks me again. “Don’t come just yet, wife, not until my cock is deep inside your cunt.”
He takes me by my hair and pulls me upright, turning me to face him and kissing me hard on the mouth, his face wet with me. I taste myself on him, and I find myself kissing him back.
Silas grins down at me, and fuck, he’s so beautiful. He’s always been so fucking beautiful.
“Take me out,” he commands.
I glare at him.
“Do it. Take me out. It’s the only way you get to come.”
“I hate you.”
“That so?”
He chuckles as I fumble with his belt, the button and zipper of his slacks. Once they’re undone, I slide my hand into his briefs and hear his moan as I cup his cock. My pussy throbs, need dripping down my thighs.
“Good little wife. Now,” he says, and with one hand, he rips the covers off the bed. “Get on your hands and knees and show me how bad you want me to fuck that dripping little pussy of yours.”
He releases me, and I tell him how much I hate him as I climb up onto the bed and do exactly as he says, my knees wide, my ass in the air. I watch him watch me as he strips off the last of his clothes, eyes locked on what I’m offering. Once he’s fully naked, he climbs up behind me, nudging my knees wider with his and settles himself there, splaying my ass cheeks open.
“I’m going to take my fill of you, and only when you beg me will I allow you to come.”
“I will never beg you.”
“Careful, sweetheart. Never say never because I’m going to enjoy watching you swallow those words.”
He thrusts into me, forcing the air from my lungs. I cry out, clutching the ornate wooden rungs of the headboard. Silas fucks me deep and hard from behind, pulling out all the way and thrusting in again and again, never seeming to tire while forcing a grunt from me with each stroke. He slides one hand around to play with my clit, taunting me, pulling away just when I’m on the edge of orgasm.
“Beg me to let you come.”
“I hate you.”
“Beg.” He sets a finger against my asshole. “Get down on your elbows, face in the pillows and beg me,” he says, pushing that finger inside me.
“I. Hate. Oh. Fuck.” I do exactly as he says, panting, arching my back to offer him more of me, all of me. “Please!”
“That’s it, sweetheart. You like this? You like me playing with your ass as I fuck your cunt?”
“I hate?—“
“Again. Beg me again,” he taunts, playing with me, every part of me full of him.
“Please! Let me come!”
“Good girl,” he says and slams into me, not holding back this time, taking me over the edge, the pillow muffling my scream as I come so hard, I can’t breathe. I can’t fucking breathe.
When the world rights itself again, blood throbs against my ears and my breath comes in pants. Silas is saying something, sounding self-satisfied while massaging my scalp. I blink my eyes open to find him looming over me as I lay flat on my stomach, utterly spent.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it? Begging me like that?” he asks, watching me. He kisses my cheek. “I have to say, I liked it.” He grins and I realize something. He’s still hard. He’s still hard inside me. “Tell me something, is it real yet?” And as he says it, he pulls out of my pussy and draws my hips up a little, shoving a pillow beneath them.
“Silas…”
I watch his bent head, see how his hair flops over his eyes like it used to when he was younger. See the sheen of sweat on his forehead and watch as a drop splatters onto my back. He pushes his finger into my ass again and I gasp for breath.
“I can’t… No more.”
“No?” He draws his finger out only to press his cock against that tight hole. He meets my eyes and one corner of his mouth lifts. “But I haven’t come yet.”
“Silas, no. I can’t take you there. I?—”
“First time?” he asks.
I nod fast, thinking he’ll back off, but he doesn’t.
“Good.” He grins instead and pushes past my resistance, moaning as he eases into me, stretching me.
I grip the headboard and squeeze my eyes shut, whimpering. It burns, and I’m too sensitive, and he’s too big.
“Relax. O. Easy. You’re going to take it, and it’s going to feel so fucking good you won’t know your own name when I’m finished with you.”
I try to breathe, to manage all the sensations colliding together, but when he slides the fingers of one hand to my clit and begins to manipulate the already sensitive nub, I make a sound I don’t think I’ve ever made before, a moan from deep inside my chest.
“Fuck, O, you feel so fucking tight. So fucking good.”
“I’m going to come again.”
“Tell me something first,” he says, drawing out of me and flipping me onto my back. He pushes my knees up and eases every inch of himself back into my ass with a low, deep moan.
My eyes roll to the back of my head, and I bite my lower lip so hard I taste blood.
“Tell me, is this real enough for you?” He flicks my nipple.
I don’t think I can form words, though. “I want…”
He pumps in and out and in and out, weaving his fingers with mine and drawing my arms over my head. He kisses me as he moves inside me, fucking me like I’ve never been fucked before, every nerve ending on fire. Making me feel like I’ve never felt before.
“Is it real or do you need more to believe it?”
“More,” I say, opening my eyes to look into his, to see his eyes darken with lust as he thrusts in hard, sweat dripping from his forehead onto my face.
I am pure sensation, electricity, a live wire.
“Tell me it’s real, and I’ll make you come. Tell me it’s real, O,” he says.
“It’s real. It’s real.”
“Swear it.”
“I swear it. It’s real. Please. God. Please. I need to come… Oh…”
Silas’s teeth close over the curve of my throat, and he fucks me deeper than I have ever thought possible. When I hear his moan of pleasure, hear him call out my name, I squeeze my fingers around his, nails digging into flesh, and we come together and I feel every throbbing second of his release knowing that right now, in this moment, he is as far gone as me. As lost as me. And as I take his come inside me, I know it is real. It is more real than anything else in this world.