Chapter 16 #2
His gaze falls first to the spoon, then the open ice cream tub, then the wet spot spreading through the fabric over my breast where the rocky road has soaked in. It isn’t a hurried glance. It isn’t exaggerated either. It’s slower than it should be, and because it is, every inch of it registers.
By the time his eyes lift back to mine, my whole body has gone still.
On the phone, Kadin is still talking. I can hear his voice faintly, but it has gone strange, like water in my ears, reduced to fragments.
“...Octavia?”
I don’t answer.
I can’t.
Silas hasn’t said a word. He hasn’t moved beyond stopping in that doorway with the flask hanging from his fingers, his bruises half-hidden in shadow.
But the silence between us feels dangerous, loaded with everything from the last two weeks that never got named.
His absence. My waiting. The questions that have been multiplying in the dark.
“Octavia?” Kadin says again, sharper now.
Still, I just stand there.
The spoon is growing slick in my hand. The ice cream is melting faster than I can keep up with it. Cold sugar clings to my skin beneath my shirt. Somehow that only makes the heat rising through me feel humiliating.
Silas’s eyes hold on mine with an unreadable steadiness that unsettles me far more than anger would have.
Suddenly the kitchen feels much too small for all three of us.
Silas is the first one to move.
The spell of the moment breaks not because the tension eases, but because he decides to act like it doesn’t matter.
He crosses the kitchen with that same quiet, deliberate way he does everything now, opening the fridge as if walking in on me half-dressed in the middle of a phone call is the most ordinary thing in the world.
“Don’t leave pretty boy hanging,” he says, the words low enough that Kadin can’t hear them, but not low enough that I can pretend I imagined them.
The comment lands like a spark against oil.
He pulls out a bottle of water, twists the cap off, drinking half of it in one go.
His throat works with each swallow. Water spills at the corner of his mouth and runs down over the bruised side of his ribs where the hoodie hangs open.
He doesn’t bother wiping it away. He just keeps his eyes on me over the mouth of the bottle, watching with an intensity that makes every inch of exposed skin feel suddenly overexposed.
Kadin says my name again through the phone. This time I force my voice to work.
“Yeah, Kadin, I’m still here,” I say, though the words come out thinner than I mean them to.
Silas lowers the bottle slowly.
His gaze drifts over me, not hurried, not crude, but uncomfortably thorough.
He takes in the tank top, the bare legs, the fact that I am standing in my parents’ kitchen at midnight in little enough clothing that I suddenly wish I had grabbed a blanket or a robe or literally anything before coming downstairs.
The awareness of it burns under my skin.
Not because he’s seeing something new, exactly.
Because he’s seeing it now, like this, after two weeks of distance sharp enough to feel intentional.
Stepping toward the counter, I try to reclaim some control over my own body, my own breath, my own kitchen. My shoulder nearly brushes his as I move past him.
Then he takes the spoon out of my hand.
The motion is so smooth I barely register it until he’s already doing it, lifting the spoon to his mouth and taking a bite of my ice cream without asking. He doesn’t look down at the tub. He looks at me while he does it.
The casual theft of it sends a hot, ridiculous pulse through my chest.
On the phone, Kadin has noticed the silence again.
“Do you need to go?” he asks.
The concern in his voice should be grounding. Instead it only makes me more aware of the fact that Silas is standing close enough for me to feel the cold from the water bottle and the heat coming off his skin at the same time.
“No, I can keep talking.” The words rush out in a whisper meant for Kadin, yet the moment they leave me Silas moves.
His fingers snare a loose coil of my hair, tugging just enough to tip my head his way.
Hoodie unzipped, chest bruised from sparring, sweatpants hanging low, he looks like he just crawled out of bed and straight into temptation.
He drags the strand between his fingers, knuckles grazing the side of my neck slowly, eyes locked on every flinch.
He isn’t touching my hair so much as taking inventory of every reaction.
It sends a shiver through me. I tighten my grip on the melting ice cream, cold dripping over my knuckles. The kitchen lights hum. The only sound aside from that is Kadin asking, “Octavia?” voice thinly wound with confusion.
Silas keeps playing, twirling the strand, then curling his fingers around it, guiding me closer by degrees. The motion is subtle, the effect isn’t.
He leans in until his lips brush the rim of my ear. “How long,” he murmurs, each word hot against my skin, “can you keep talking?”
My breath catches so hard it almost hurts.
He stays close enough that the air around me changes, charged with cold water, clean sweat, and the faint bite of whatever he’s been drinking.
His fingers are still wound in that loose strand of my hair, holding me at the exact angle he wants, not forcing, just deciding.
Kadin says my name again through the phone, softer this time, but it feels far away now, muffled behind the rush of blood in my ears.
Silas doesn’t answer the question he asked. He just lets the silence do the work.
Then his mouth touches the side of my neck.
Not a kiss at first. Just the warm brush of his lips below my ear, barely there, enough to make every muscle in my body lock.
My hand tightens around the phone. The ice cream tub slips colder against my palm.
He takes his time, dragging his mouth down the side of my throat with a patience that feels almost cruel.
His breath follows, hot and damp. Then his tongue flicks out, slow and deliberate, tasting the place his lips just brushed.
A sharp inhale catches in my chest.
“Octavia?” Kadin says.
“I’m here,” I manage, though the words come out frayed.
Silas hums under his breath like he knows exactly how thin my voice sounds.
The hand in my hair loosens only to slide down, skimming the back of my neck, following the line of my shoulder until it settles at my upper arm.
The touch is warm, but impossible to ignore.
He licks that same place again, longer this time, my knees nearly giving out.
He should not be doing this.
I should be stopping him.
Instead I stand there half-dressed in my parents’ kitchen with Kadin on the phone, letting Silas ruin my ability to breathe.
His mouth drifts lower. He noses along the strap of my tank top, then pauses, gaze flicking down. I follow it before I can stop myself.
The thin ribbon of melted rocky road that had slipped down from the edge of the spoon left a cold, sticky trail between my breasts.
Silas notices.
Shit.
His eyes darken in a way that makes heat pool low and fast in my stomach.
He lifts one hand, slow enough that I could stop him if I wanted to, and cups my breast through the thin cotton of my tank top.
The weight of his palm is enough to make my whole body jerk.
His fingers spread, broad and possessive, thumb dragging once over the curve before sliding inward.
I bite the inside of my cheek so hard I taste blood.
His thumb catches the melting line of ice cream between my breasts.
He drags it upward, collecting every bit of it, eyes fixed on my face the whole time.
Then, without breaking eye contact, he lifts his thumb to his mouth, licking it clean.
The gesture is devastating.
Kadin is saying something, I can hear the shape of his voice, hear concern starting to sharpen it, but I don’t process a single word because Silas is still holding my breast, still breathing against my throat, still looking at me like he wants to know exactly how far I’ll let this go before I fall apart.
His thumb returns, this time tracing the damp path he left behind.
The pad of it presses lightly into the valley between my breasts, then drags down again with infuriating slowness, as if he’s chasing any remaining sweetness from my skin.
My nipples tighten instantly under the fabric.
He feels it. The corner of his mouth twitches.
“He's still talking,” he murmurs against my neck, voice low enough that only I can hear it.
The words send a pulse of heat through me so sharp it borders on pain.
Swallowing hard, I force out, “Yeah. I’m listening.”
It is a lie. A pathetic one.
Silas’s mouth curves against my skin like he knows it too.
He kisses just below my jaw, soft this time, then opens his hand more fully over my breast, weighing it through the thin fabric of the tank top, thumb rolling once in a small, devastating circle over my nipple that makes my breath snag audibly.
Kadin stops talking.
Silas hears it too.
He leans in closer, lips brushing my ear again, one hand still at my chest, the other resting warm at the back of my neck. “Tell me,” he whispers, “how much longer you think you can keep pretending.”
His thumb slides over the damp cotton, teasing the peaked shape beneath it, my knees locking to stay upright.
The kitchen feels too bright, too exposed, every surface suddenly sharp with the fact that this is happening here, now, after two weeks of him avoiding me like distance might undo what happened between us.
It doesn’t.
If anything, it makes this worse.
Because there is nothing careless in the way he touches me now. Nothing accidental. Every movement is measured. Chosen. He’s not grabbing. He’s proving. Reminding. Tasting the edges of my control just to see where they break.
My fingers curl tighter around the phone. The ice cream is melting against my skin. Silas drags his mouth one last time up the side of my neck, lingering just beneath my ear, his hand at my breast tightening by a fraction, enough to make a sound rise in my throat that I barely manage to swallow.
On the other end of the line, Kadin says my name again.
Silas’s thumb strokes once more over the cold, damp fabric of my tank top, his eyes lifting to mine, dark and steady, full of a dare he has not spoken aloud.
Kadin says my name again, sharper now, but I barely hear it.
Silas’s hand is still spread over my chest, heat bleeding through thin cotton, his mouth hovering near my ear like he knows exactly how close I am to dropping the phone. His eyes stay on mine another beat, dark and unreadable except for the hunger he isn’t even pretending to hide anymore.
Then his thumb gives one last, slow drag over the damp fabric stretched across my breast.
His mouth brushes the shell of my ear.
“Still mine,” he murmurs, so low I almost think I imagined it.
The words hit like a fist closing low in my stomach.
Then he steps back.
Just like that.
He lets me go with infuriating ease, hand slipping away from my body as if it had not just been there, as if he had not spent the last two minutes unmaking me in the middle of a phone call.
He takes the water bottle from the counter, twists the cap back on, before moving toward the stairs with the same calm, calculated rhythm he walked in with.
No rush. No glance over his shoulder.
Nothing in him betrays what just happened except the slight flush still high on his throat and the fact that I know exactly how his mouth felt against my skin a second ago.
I stand frozen in the kitchen, phone pressed to my ear, ice cream carton sweating in my hand, while he walks away like he has all the time in the world.
The wood creaks softly under his weight as he climbs the stairs.
Halfway up, he rolls his shoulders once, hoodie hanging open, then, keeps going without looking back.
At the top landing, he disappears into the dark hall.
A second later, his bedroom door shuts.
Not loud. Not dramatic.
Just a quiet click that somehow wrecks me more than if he had slammed it.
“Octavia?” Kadin says, the sound of my own name jerking me back into my body.
I swallow, hard. My throat feels scraped raw. “Yeah,” I say, but my voice comes out thin and breathless.
Because downstairs I am still standing in the exact spot where he touched me and upstairs he has already gone to bed like he didn’t just mark me with two words, leaving me shaking in my parents’ kitchen.