Chapter 39 #2
His fingertips skim the edge of the open back of my dress, following the line where fabric ends and skin begins. The motion is small, yet, it sends a much larger reaction through me than it has any right to.
“Silas,” I breathe.
He tilts his head, eyes darkening at the sound of his name in my mouth.
“What?”
The question is almost mocking, but the tenderness in it ruins the effect.
A slow turn carries us deeper into the music, the rest of the dance floor fading farther from me with each step.
The heat of his hand moves again, this time drifting from my waist to the slope of my hip, lingering there.
His thumb presses once, slow enough to make it obvious he is thinking about more than just the music.
The breath that leaves me is embarrassingly soft.
“There she is,” he says under his breath. “That look.”
I know exactly what look he means.
The one I get when he starts peeling composure off me in pieces.
He bends his head again, his lips nearly brushing the place just beneath my ear without quite kissing it. The almost is worse than contact. The almost keeps every nerve in me waiting.
“You look at me like you want me to ruin you right here,” he whispers.
I swallow hard.
“You say that like you wouldn’t enjoy it.”
Tightening his hand at my hip, his eyes close briefly, as if the sentence costs him more than it should.
“Beautiful,” he says, so low I almost miss it. “You have no idea how much I would enjoy it.”
The music shifts, the beat softening even more, the movement between us turning less into dancing and more into swaying, my whole body aware of his in sharp, aching detail.
The line of his chest. The strength in his arms. The heat where our thighs keep brushing.
The way he keeps finding excuses to touch me more without making it obvious to anyone except me.
His hand slides higher again, fingertips tracing the edge of my shoulder, then down my arm, then back to my waist like he is mapping me in little private circuits. Each pass is subtle. Each one leaves a fresh trail of heat behind.
“I’ve wanted this all day,” he says.
“What?”
“This.” His gaze drops briefly to where our bodies meet, then lifts back to my face. “You under my hands with everyone forced to see I’m the one touching you.”
My breath catches, the movement between us faltering for a second before he steadies it with a small shift of his hold. The room around us continues to spin politely in candlelight and conversation while something much less polite unfolds in the space between our bodies.
His thumb drags once over the bare skin at my side.
“Say stop,” he murmurs, “and I’ll behave.”
It is almost laughable, the idea of him behaving while he is looking at me like this.
Tipping my head closer, my lips brush the edge of his jaw just enough to feel the roughness there. “I think we both know I’m not going to do that.”
The sound he makes in response is wrecked enough to send a tremor through me.
One more turn. One more drag of the music. One more impossible second of pretending this is just dancing when his hands are slowly unmaking me in public and I am letting him.
Then he stops moving.
Not abruptly. Gently. Like he has reached the edge of what he can survive while pretending this is still innocent.
My pulse is pounding everywhere.
His gaze locks to mine, then drops to my mouth with such naked hunger that for one suspended second I forget where we are entirely. The hand at my back spreads wider, pulling me fully into him.
“Tell me to take you home,” he whispers.
The question is a plea disguised as a command. A last thread of control.
My lips part. The answer dies the second I see his face.
Because he is trying so hard. Trying to give me the choice. Trying not to just take the kiss he has been starving for since the moment I stepped into the room.
Instead of answering, I rise onto my toes.
That is all it takes.
His mouth crashes into mine.
The kiss is hungry, yet, controlled for the first half-second, as if he is still trying to remember we are standing in the middle of Spokehaven’s formal. Kissing him back with all the heat he has been pulling out of me one whisper at a time, whatever remains of his restraint tears cleanly.
His hand leaves my hip only to cup my jaw, angling my face exactly where he wants it.
The kiss deepens instantly, his mouth moving over mine with the kind of starving intensity that makes the room disappear.
Slipping my fingers into his hair, his mouth opens mine, the low sound that leaves him swallowed between us.
There is nothing polished about it.
Nothing careful.
It feels like all the want of the past week condensed into one brutal, perfect collision.
When we finally break, both of us breathing too hard, his forehead drops to mine again.
“One more song,” he says, voice wrecked, “or I’m taking you out of here.”
The answer is already on my mouth.
It is there in the way my body is still tilted toward his, in the way my hands are still caught in his hair, in the heat rushing through me hard enough that the rest of the room has not fully come back into focus.
One more breath and I would have told him yes.
One more second and I would have let him drag me out of that ballroom, out of the lights, music, and the watching eyes, somewhere private enough for the look on his face to finish what that kiss started.
Then I see him.
Kadin.
He is not close enough to interrupt, not close enough to hear us, but he is there in the background all the same, half-shadowed near the back of the room where the light goes dimmer.
His face is angled toward us with that same ugly, smug little interest he always wears when he thinks he has found the exact right moment to poison.
He takes in the sight of us standing there too close, my mouth swollen from Silas’s kiss, his hands still on me, the whole school only a few feet away from seeing what we no longer care enough to hide.
My blood goes cold so fast it hurts.
Silas feels the change before I say anything. His gaze sharpens on my face first, then follows mine over my shoulder.
The second he sees Kadin, every part of him stills.
Not in confusion. Not in surprise.
In recognition.
Kadin cocks his head.
It is such a small gesture, but the contempt in it is immediate.
Then, lifting two fingers toward me, he points once, dragging one finger slowly across the air in front of his own throat before letting his hand fall.
Not theatrical enough for the room to notice.
More than clear enough for us to understand.
My stomach drops.
Kadin’s mouth curves, pleased with himself, pleased with the fact that he got the message across, pleased with whatever fear he thinks that gesture should put in me.
Turning, he walks away, slipping toward one of the back exits with the same casual arrogance he always wears when he thinks he has already won the moment.
“Silas,” I say instantly.
Too late.
He is already moving.
The warmth of him disappears so abruptly it feels like the floor is shifting under me. One second his forehead is against mine, the next his hands are gone. His whole body has turned toward the back of the room with a purpose so dark, it sends a fresh pulse of panic through me.
Catching his arm hard, he barely slows.
“Silas, don’t-"
“That little shit stain pays for good tonight,” he snaps.
The sentence comes out lethal, every word stripped of anything soft. It's not loud enough for the dancers nearest us to hear... that only makes it more frightening.
My grip tightens. “You cannot do this here.”
I can already feel the answer in his body.
There is no stopping him.
His arm is iron under my hands, all that controlled violence I know too well now suddenly pointed in one clean direction.
He doesn’t shove me off. That would be easier.
Worse, he turns his head just enough for me to see his face, the look in his eyes enough to tell me that whatever Kadin meant with that gesture, it did exactly what he wanted.
It made this personal in a way the rest of the night had not yet managed.
“Silas,” I say again, my voice thinner now, sharpened by fear. “Please.”
For one awful second, I think that word might be enough.
Tightening his jaw, whatever brief hesitation might have lived in him burns away.
“He threatened you,” he says.
The words are furious.
He pulls free, not violently, just decisively, starting after Kadin toward the back doors with the kind of focus that makes the space around him feel dangerous to enter.
My heart is pounding too hard now, every beat full of the same terrible certainty.
Kadin wanted this. Maybe not all of it, but enough.
Enough to lure. Enough to provoke. Enough to make Silas choose movement over restraint.
I go after him anyway.
There is no version of this where I stay on the dance floor and let the two of them disappear behind closed doors while the music keeps playing and everyone else keeps pretending the night is still beautiful.
My heels catch awkwardly on the edge of my dress as I move, breath already gone shallow, the room around us blurring into startled faces and confused glances.
Behind me, I hear Cheyenne say my name.
Maria too.
Neither of them matters right now.
Only the back door does. The one Kadin slipped through. The one Silas is heading for with murder in his spine and no room left in him for anything except the image of Kadin pointing at me and promising harm.
The music keeps going.
The dance floor keeps turning.
The whole formal keeps pretending it is still elegant and safe while I chase the most dangerous man I know toward a door that suddenly feels like the mouth of something much worse.