Chapter 39
Octavia
The formal feels like another world.
Champagne catches the light in long crystal flutes.
Professors stand in little polished circles, smiling too tightly while students drift between them in satin, velvet, black suits, expensive perfume, and nervous laughter.
Everything gleams. Gold light spills over the room in soft pools, making the polished floors look almost liquid.
Somewhere near the back, a string arrangement hums through the speakers, elegant enough to make the whole thing feel older than it is.
My group has barely made it through the entrance before one of the wait staff stepped toward me, hand already lifting toward the clasp of my coat with the sort of smooth, practiced confidence that assumes girls in dresses are part of the evening’s décor.
He stops the second he sees Silas.
Not because Silas says anything.
Because he doesn’t have to.
The waiter’s hand halts midair, his eyes flicking once to Silas’s face, then away again.
Whatever he reads there is enough to make him step back without a word.
Silas doesn’t even look at him. He just reaches for my coat himself, fingers brushing my shoulders as he eases it down my arms with far more care than a stranger ever would.
The coat leaves my body in a slow slide of fabric.
The look on his face while he takes me in properly almost makes the noise of the room disappear.
He hands the coat over to the stunned waiter like the whole interaction was always going to end this way.
It only takes seconds before he’s beside me again.
Maria and Cheyenne are already chattering at my shoulders, both of them drinking the room in with obvious delight, while I try to guide Silas through the crowd by quietly pointing people out.
A professor from Intro Psych. The girl from my Lit seminar who cries every time we read Sylvia Plath.
The student body president pretending not to stare at us while very obviously staring at us.
My voice keeps moving, naming faces and affiliations, filling the space because it feels easier than acknowledging the way Silas hasn’t really looked at anyone but me since we walked in.
Every time I glance over, he is watching me.
Not in a creepy way. Not even in a possessive way. Worse than that.
Like he still can’t quite believe I’m real.
Like he’s standing in a crowded room full of beautiful people and somehow still thinks I’m the most dangerous thing in it.
“What?” I murmur at last, nudging him lightly when his mouth curves again for no apparent reason.
His smile deepens, slow enough to make my stomach tighten.
“You look so fucking beautiful.”
The words land, my cheeks warming before I can stop them. To cover it, I reach up and adjust his collar, fingers smoothing the edge of it with more confidence than I actually feel.
“You clean up very well yourself, Corvin.”
His hand comes instinctively to my hip then, settling there like it belongs, only to pause a beat later as if he’s remembered where we are. The pressure eases as he starts to pull it away.
“No,” I whisper, catching his wrist before he can retreat. Guiding his hand back into place, I hold it there. “I don’t feel like hiding it anymore.”
Something in his face softens so suddenly it almost hurts to look at.
Not weakness. Not relief exactly. Something deeper. As if all day he’s been waiting for the room to demand I step back from him, and instead I’m standing here in front of half the school and choosing the opposite.
Before either of us can say more, a waiter appears at our elbows with a silver tray.
“Champagne?”
Maria takes one immediately. So does Cheyenne, both of them with the shameless enthusiasm of girls who have decided tonight is for bad choices dressed elegantly. The waiter turns to Silas next, offering him a glass with the same polite little nod.
Silas doesn’t take it.
His gaze has already shifted past the tray, past the little clusters of talking people, all the way to the dance floor where the music has softened into something slower. The lights there are dimmer, the couples moving in quiet little circles that make the whole thing look easy from a distance.
“Not tonight,” he says absently.
Tightening his arm around my waist, he yanks me with him before I can ask what he’s doing.
A laugh escapes me on instinct, half startled, half delighted, my arms wrapping around his neck as he moves us through the edge of the crowd.
People part for him automatically. A few of them stare.
A few more pretend not to. I catch questioning looks from girls I know, from boys I don’t, from one professor who looks mildly scandalized.
Silas either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care enough to pretend he does.
He stops with us at the edge of the dance floor, where the music is loud enough to settle into the body instead of just the ears.
“What are you doing?” I whisper, my voice caught between laughter and panic. “I can’t dance.”
“Neither can I,” he says with a grin. “I’m not missing an opportunity to at least try to give you a perfect date.”
The word catches me off guard badly enough that I blink.
“Date?” I repeat, softer now.
He sets me properly in front of him, both hands finding my waist with an ease that suggests they were always meant to live there.
My smile grows despite myself. “Silas Corvin, is this your way of asking me on a date?”
His mouth quirks, the look in his eyes a little too pleased with himself. He leans in just enough that his answer brushes warm against my cheek.
“Well,” he murmurs, glancing briefly at the room around us, at the school already watching, “the whole school sees us now. What do I have to lose?”
The joke is light, but the truth of it still glows underneath.
Nothing is hidden anymore.
Not really.
“Noted,” I say, smiling as my arms settle more comfortably around his neck. “It’s about time you asked me out.”
That earns me a real laugh, devastating for how rare it still is. One of his hands shifts slightly at my waist, drawing me closer until the space between us disappears. Around us, the formal continues to murmur.
At the center of all of it, Silas looks down at me like this might actually be a date. Like the lights, music and the room full of staring people don’t matter nearly as much as the fact that for once, we are not hiding.
When he starts to move with me, awkward and sure at the same time, I realize I don’t care whether either of us knows how to dance.
The point is that he asked.
His first step is terrible.
So terrible that I laugh into the space between us before I can stop myself, the sound slipping out warm and breathy.
Silas’s mouth curves immediately, the hand at my waist tightening just enough to let me know he heard it, that he likes it, that if humiliating himself on a dance floor is what it takes to keep that sound coming out of me, he might actually do it all night.
“Told you,” I murmur. “You can’t dance.”
“Neither can you,” he says, not even pretending to be offended.
The truth of it softens the whole thing.
Neither of us is graceful. Neither of us belongs in the neat, polished little circles turning around us.
We move too close, even when we’re trying not to be.
But somehow that only makes it feel more personal.
Less like dancing for the room, more like swaying inside our own private gravity.
One of his hands stays firm at my waist. The other slides slowly up my back, palm flattening between my shoulder blades as if he needs to keep me close enough that I can’t slip out of his reach.
The music is slow enough to hide the way we barely know what we’re doing.
All that really matters is the rhythm, the heat of him, and the slow drag of his body against mine every time he turns us another inch.
Leaning down slightly as we move, his mouth is close enough to my ear that the next words brush my skin before they fully become sound.
“You have any idea,” he says, voice low, “what you’re doing to me in this dress?”
The question sends a pulse straight through me.
My fingers tighten where they’re laced loosely at the back of his neck. “I’m sure I could take a guess.”
He exhales a quiet laugh against my temple, though there is nothing light about the way his hand slips lower at my waist for half a second before returning to something more respectable. The touch is subtle enough that no one watching would notice. I notice. My whole body notices.
“Cruel girl,” he murmurs.
The room keeps turning around us, gold light, slow music and glinting glasses blurring at the edges while he moves me. Every time the slit in my dress parts, my thigh brushes his leg, his grip shifting. Every time I glance up and catch his eyes on my mouth, the pace of my breathing changes.
His mouth finds the shell of my ear again.
“Been trying all night not to think about your lipstick on me,” he says softly. “Doing a really bad job.”
Heat floods my cheeks, then drops lower.
The hand at my back begins to travel, not hurried, not crude, just slow.
It glides up over the bare skin left exposed by my dress, then back down again in a path that feels almost innocent until the weight of his palm settles at the curve of my waist and stays there.
His thumb traces once, lightly enough to make me shiver.
“You’re shaking,” he whispers.
“You’re distracting.”
“That’s the point.”
The answer is so immediate it nearly makes me lose the beat entirely.
My body presses closer on instinct, chest to chest now, my arms drawing him in with less restraint than I should probably be showing in a room this public.
If anyone notices, I do not care enough to stop.
Let them wonder. Let them look. He is touching me like he already knows exactly where my control starts to loosen.