Chapter 11 #2
My fingers tighten in his hair. The hand on his cheek slides to his shoulder because I need something solid before my knees collapse. Every inch he’s touched feels lit from within, the thin line of my underwear suddenly feeling like the cruelest barrier in the world.
His hand traces it again. Not crossing. Just following. The damp fabric clings to my skin, his thumb dragging along the edge with patience that borders on vicious. My whole body reacts. My stomach clenches. My thighs twitch as if to close around him, another shaky breath tumbling out.
He feels that too.
God help me.
“Silas,” I whisper, but it doesn’t sound like a warning anymore.
Something in him tightens at the way his name falls from my mouth. Some final thread of restraint cracks. His lips return to my skin, lower, slower, every kiss leaving heat burning in their wake while his hand stays poised at the edge, forcing us both to feel the anticipation stretching thin.
It becomes unbearable. It becomes why I don’t stop.
Water still drips from our clothes. My shirt clings damp and transparent to my ribs.
We’re both a mess from the night and from each other, yet he kneels there as if the world has shrunk down to my scars and the way my body keeps betraying me.
When his mouth presses right above the line of my underwear again, my head tips back, another rough exhale escaping me.
Another small, humiliating sound escapes, his hands clamping harder around my thighs as if the reaction alone is enough to push him over a cliff.
He mouths at that narrow strip of skin again, lips slick with rain and my own heat, kissing so close to the edge that his upper lip brushes the top seam of my underwear.
The fabric is saturated, clinging to me, the heat rolling off my body enough to make his mouth go wet with my moisture.
When he drags his lips along that damp barrier, his breath hits the soaked cotton, and I feel the faint press of his tongue through it, a barely-there tease that steals my breath and leaves my knees buckling.
Wet spreads across his mouth, my own arousal seeping through, slicking his lips.
The knowledge of that alone makes me whimper.
His grip turns vicious, anchoring me as he absorbs every shudder, every desperate tremor.
He stays there, breathing me in, tasting me through that thin, damp line, and when he inhales, it’s like he’s pulling the heat straight out of me, letting it soak his lips until he glistens with the proof of how badly I want him.
“Fucking perfect,” he groans into me, voice frayed, the helpless whimper ripping out of my throat proving he’s undoing every defense I’ve ever built.
His tongue slowly drags across the soaked cotton clinging to me, the sight slamming through me harder than the feel.
My pulse stutters so violently I think I might pass out.
My hips jerk toward his face on instinct, chasing the heat of his mouth, chasing the drag of his tongue even through the barrier I keep promising myself I won’t let him cross.
But he doesn’t need to cross it to devastate me, he just keeps licking, keeps breathing against me, as the wet warmth of him spreads across the thin fabric until his tongue glistens with proof of how wet I already am for him.
I force myself to step back, wrenching my body out of the heat of him even though every nerve screams to stay pressed to his mouth.
The space I create feels thin, barely more than an inch, but it might as well be a chasm.
He notices immediately. His gaze lifts, darker now.
The moment our eyes meet a shift ripples through him.
No anger. No frustration. Just raw, wired hunger that makes my skin prickle and my mouth go dry.
My stomach still burns where his lips had been, each slow kiss lingering like he branded my scars with something molten instead of shame.
Then he drags his tongue across his mouth.
It’s such a small, ruined motion, a simple sweep from one corner to the other, but watching him collect the last traces of me from his lips detonates whatever composure I managed to salvage.
I can see the sheen of my arousal on him even in the dim light, see the way his tongue catches it, pulling the lingering wetness into his mouth as if it belongs there.
He savors it, slow, the sight hitting me harder than any touch.
The knowledge that he is tasting me, savoring me, even as I retreat makes my knees wobble all over again.
“Silas,” I whisper, because his name is the only thing I can think to hold onto. “You’re drunk.”
“I know,” he whispers, his voice scraped raw. “But your taste is addictive.”
The words move through me in a slow, dangerous wave.
Heat climbs up my throat so fast I have to press my palm flat to the center of his chest just to steady myself.
His shirt is soaked through, cold under my hand.
The practicality of that keeps me from tipping completely into whatever this is becoming.
“Take these off,” I murmur, forcing my voice to stay level. “Your clothes are drenched. You need rest.”
His jaw flexes as his gaze drags over me with enough weight that I feel it everywhere.
My wet shirt clings to my stomach. My bare legs are cold.
I am standing in his room half-dressed and trembling while he looks at me like he could devour the sight if I gave him one inch more permission than I already have.
“Please,” I say, quieter now.
Something in him relents.
I reach for the flannel first, fingers fumbling a little as I ease the soaked fabric from his shoulders. He does not help me, but he does not stop me either. He only watches, his eyes fixed on my face as the heavy shirt slides down his arms and falls in a wet heap at our feet.
Then his hands catch the hem of the shirt beneath it.
He peels it off in one rough motion, my breath leaving me in a gasp before I can stop it.
For a second, I don’t know how to process what I’m seeing.
His body is beautiful in the most unfair, unwanted way. Hard planes. Broad chest. The kind of shape that would have been easy to notice even if he didn’t carry himself like a threat. But the beauty of it is broken by the scars.
So many scars.
They cut across him in pale, angry lines, some thin enough to miss at first glance, others thicker, raised, impossible to ignore.
They mark his chest and stomach in ways that do not feel accidental.
Not one or two. Not something isolated. A history.
A map. Proof of repeated damage. Proof that pain was not an event in his life but a condition of it.
“Who did this?” I ask, my voice sounding smaller than I want it to.
He sways slightly then, the alcohol finally catching up to him, his hands landing on my waist to steady himself. His fingers spread there, hot through the damp fabric clinging to me, but the touch feels less possessive now, more necessary, like he is trying not to fall apart in front of me.
Then he lowers his head until his forehead barely brushes mine.
“The man that made me a killer,” he says.
The sentence lands so hard it almost takes my knees out from under me.
I bite down on the inside of my cheek to stop whatever ache is rising too fast in my chest. He is drunk enough to say things he would never say sober.
Drunk enough to let pieces of himself slip that he probably hates me for seeing.
The room feels too small for it. For his scars.
For mine. For the heat that still lives between us despite the wreckage of the night.
Guiding him backward until the backs of his knees hit the bed, he gives in with a kind of reluctant heaviness.
Bracing myself against him to keep us balanced as he sinks onto the mattress, I push at his shoulders gently until he lets me drag him farther up, his head resting on the pillow, the sheets immediately darkening beneath his damp skin.
“You need sleep,” I tell him softly, more for myself than for him. “In the morning, this will all feel different.”
It is a stupid thing to say. A lie, maybe. But I need the lie.
“You’re drunk and lonely,” I add, sharper now because I need to put some kind of edge back between us. “You don’t even know what you’re doing.”
His eyes are heavy, but the answer comes fast enough to sting.
“Yes, I do.”
He rolls onto his side, turning partly away from me. His voice goes lower, quieter, but no less certain.
“I don’t let anyone touch me.”
The confession stops me cold.
There are questions lined up in my throat, all of them jagged. About the money Lacey held in her hand. About what he was trying to prove tonight. About why he paid another girl not to touch him, only to come home and put his mouth on the parts of me I hide from everyone.
Every one of those questions dies when he shifts a little farther, and I finally see the tattoo that stretches across his back.
Medusa.
For a moment, all I can do is stare.
The ink is striking even in the dimness, dark, intricate and impossible to separate from the body carrying it.
Snakes coil where hair should be, twisting in layered detail across the span of his back.
Her face is fierce, beautiful, unsparing.
Not monstrous in the cheap, vulgar way men like to call women monstrous when they become too dangerous to control. She looks powerful.
This is not some random image he thought looked good on skin.
A man wearing Medusa does not do it by accident.