Chapter 32
Octavia
By the time Silas gets me to the Creative Arts building, my pulse is still running too hard to settle into anything even close to reason.
The whole ride there is one long, furious unraveling.
Kadin’s words keep replaying in my head in sharp, ugly loops, each one finding a fresh place to cut.
I keep talking anyway, because if I stop, I might start shaking again, and I am too angry to let myself fall apart in front of him.
Silas says very little. He just drives with both hands tight on the wheel, jaw set, every now and then glancing at me with that dark, controlled intensity that only makes me feel more combustible.
When we get to Creative Arts, the hallway outside the room is empty.
A paper sign is taped crookedly to the door.
CLASS CANCELLED.
We should have been late. The confrontation, the drive, the fact that neither of us was in any state to walk into a classroom and pretend to be ordinary students for an hour should have cost us at least that much.
Instead, the universe has handed us an empty room, a locked hallway, and too much adrenaline still burning under our skin.
I barely have time to process that before Silas catches my wrist and pulls me inside.
The room is dimmer than the hall, morning light slanting through the windows in pale bars over paint-splattered tables and stools. The scent of acrylic and charcoal hangs faintly in the air. Behind us, the door shuts with a hard click, the lock snapping shut shortly after.
That sound makes me spin toward him.
“Let me back at him, Silas.”
The words leave me before I even know exactly what I mean. Back into the hallway. Back to Kadin. Back into the fight still clawing inside my chest like it has unfinished business.
Silas turns fully toward me. Whatever answer I expect, it isn’t the one in his face. There’s anger there, yes, but not at me. Never quite at me, even when he ought to be furious that I nearly broke my hand on someone else’s jaw in a crowded hallway.
“No,” he says.
The word is not loud, but it lands like a wall.
Opening my mouth to argue, he closes the distance between us in two strides. His hand comes up and catches my chin, fingers firm enough to stop me from looking away, firm enough to make sure every bit of my attention is his.
“Stop,” he growls.
His eyes are blazing now, not with the blind kind of rage Kadin brought out in the hall, but with something more dangerous in its control.
“You’re giving him exactly what he wants.”
The sentence hits somewhere deeper than the anger.
Because he’s right.
Kadin wants chaos. Wants us frayed and off-balance and reacting from wounds instead of strategy. Wants Silas to look violent and me to look unstable. He wants all of it to become the kind of story people retell badly until it no longer resembles the truth.
My breathing is still too fast. My fists are still clenched. Silas sees all of it.
His gaze drops briefly then, his hold on my chin softening just enough that the shift feels almost like tenderness.
My knuckles are bruised already.
The skin across them is pink and swelling where Kadin’s face met my fist.
Something changes in Silas’s expression when he sees them. The hard edge in him doesn’t disappear, but it parts around something warmer. Taking my hand from where it’s curled uselessly at my side, he lifts it carefully between us.
“Do you have any idea,” he says quietly, “what it did to me to watch you do that for me?”
The question steals what little air I had left.
Before I can answer, he turns my hand, pressing his mouth to my bruised knuckles.
Once.
Then again, slower.
The kiss is gentle enough to break me…reverent enough to make my stomach flip in a completely different direction than rage.
“Silas,” I breathe, because that’s all I have for a second.
His eyes lift to mine over my hand, dark and intent, still carrying the echo of everything he didn’t do to Kadin because he had to drag me away first.
“You stood in front of everyone and let them see whose side you were on,” he says. “You hit him for me.”
My throat tightens.
“He had it coming.”
“He did,” Silas says. “That’s not the point.”
Brushing his thumb on the inside of my wrist, slow and steady, I can feel the shift in the room beginning already, the anger between us changing temperature, becoming something that makes my heart skip a beat.
The fury in my body doesn’t disappear. It melts.
Into heat.
Into the ache of still being too full of him from last night, from the bathroom, from the couch, from every moment since where he has looked at me like I matter more than the world knows what to do with.
“Silas, don’t distract me,” I whisper, even though my voice lacks any real conviction. He knows it. His answering smirk shapes into something darker, hungrier. Taking both my wrists, he guides me backward until the edge of the worktable digs into the backs of my thighs.
“That,” he murmurs, leaning in so close his breath warms my lips, “is exactly what I’m going to do.”
Before I can argue, his mouth crushes mine with a desire sharpened by what just happened in the hallway.
Anger he didn’t spend on Kadin pours into the kiss, focused and possessive.
He doesn’t break it as his hands slide down my arms, wrap my waist, and lift me onto the table in one smooth motion.
My skirt rides up immediately. The room is dead quiet except for the hum of lights and our ragged breathing.
Locked door. No witnesses. Just him and the fury he’s determined to kiss out of me.
He palms my thigh, pushing higher, fingers dragging my skirt to my hips.
My panties cling damp against heat. Groaning into the kiss, his thumb traces my pulse.
“You know what he saw?” he mutters, lips skimming my jaw.
“His own damn nightmare. A girl who won’t flinch.
Looked like he’d piss himself.” Biting my neck, he sucks hard enough to bruise.
“That’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. ”
My legs fall open before I tell them to, his hand sliding between them; fingers pressing against my wet lace, stroking painfully slow.
Gasping, he grins against my throat. “Do you know what it did to me? Watching you stare him down? I nearly came just seeing you own him.” Peeling my panties aside, he slips two fingers inside me, knuckle-deep in one thrust, my head hitting the wall as the table creaks.
“Fuck, you’re soaked,” he says, voice reverent.
“You were thinking of this while you scared him shitless.”
He curls those fingers, rubbing my clit with his thumb, dragging me toward climax with long, relentless pumps. “Silas,” I gasp, nails digging into his shoulders. “Please.”
“Yeah?” He bites my ear, voice filthy. “You want to know what happens to girls who make cowards tremble?”
I moan, shivering for release, the table slick under my palms.
“They get worshipped,” he snarls, yanking his fingers out and sucking them clean, eyes locked on mine.
“They get fucking devoured.” Dropping to his knees, grabbing my hips, he drags me to the edge.
His tongue finds my clit with ruthless precision, sucking like he needs the taste to survive.
I arch, the moan escaping me echoing off empty walls.
He groans into me, rolling his shoulders as he licks.
“Take it,” he pants between strokes. “Let me taste what power feels like.”
Silas drags his tongue over me in slow, deliberate strokes, the kind of worship that lingers in the marrow.
Flattening his mouth against my slit, he presses his nose into my clit, inhaling before sucking hard enough to curl my toes.
His hands pin my thighs wide, thumbs spreading me until I’m bare to every greedy ounce of his hunger.
Each lap is slow and punishing, like he’s tasting the field of battle he just defended in my name.
The empty classroom echoes with the wet, obscene sounds of my hips rolling against his face.
Lacing my fingers into his hair, I pull, riding the rhythm he draws out with lips and tongue.
He groans into me, the vibration so intense my vision goes soft at the edges.
Every time I pulse around nothing, he groans, licking deeper, dragging the tip of his tongue across my entrance before stabbing inside, fucking me with his mouth while his hand rubs soft circles over my clit.
Lifting his head just enough to grin up at me, lips shining, his eyes are dark with need. “I could make you scream like this all day,” he says, voice wrecked. “But you earned something more. I need to feel you melt around me.”
I’m shaking, my orgasm so close the muscles in my thighs quiver uncontrollably.
He sees it, hears it, feels it. Just when I’m about to explode, he pulls back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, standing, dragging me upright by my collar.
“Not yet,” he growls, words shaking. “You cum on my cock.”
Stepping between my legs, he grabs my ankle, lifting it to rest on his shoulder, the stretch forcing my body wide open for him.
Tugging his zipper down, his cock slaps against my thigh, thick and ready to be ruined.
Stroking himself once, twice, before pressing the fat head to my soaked entrance, my breath catches.
Watching my face as he pushes in slowly, groaning when the tight heat swallows him up to the hilt, the stretch steals my voice.
Holding my hip with one hand, the other fists in my hair, yanking my head back so he can look directly into my eyes when he draws his hips back and drives forward in a single savage thrust that rattles the table against the wall.