Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
SILAS
“What do you think you’re doing? Silas, put me down.”
Brinley squirmed as I stormed with her out into the babbling night. My boots ate up the ground as I hooked a quick left to carry her into the dense cover of trees that separated the club from my house.
Some speck of my conscience screamed to set her onto her feet and send her on her way.
But something else was screaming so much louder. “No.”
Her body jostled and bounced as I stalked through the shadows, a cataclysm of greed and stupidity rushing my steps.
“I’m not some little girl you need to lock up and hide away behind a closed door.” Coarse, jagged words rushed from Brinley.
“No, you aren’t, are you?”
Her ass was in the air, that short, flowy skirt blowing up in the breeze and exposing the perfect round globes of her butt cheeks.
So ripe and juicy and right at the side of my face that it took everything I had not to turn my head and take a bite.
Instead, I sank the fingers of my free hand into one curvy mound.
Palming and kneading.
A gasp rocked from her. In an instant, I could scent her arousal soaking her through, a shockwave of her blistering through my body and ratcheting the lust gripping my guts.
“This what you want, Brinley? You want a little of what I have to give?” I growled it.
“I…what are you doing? Silas.” It was confusion spiked with need.
“Say it,” I demanded. “Do you want it?”
“Yes.”
That was all I needed to hear.
I increased my pace, boots a thunder as I carried her through the woods.
Her little breaths hitting the air and driving the madness higher.
Each step amping the anticipation as I hauled her toward the house.
I didn’t pause or set her down when I climbed the porch steps, and there was no wavering or faltering as I ferried her through the wispy darkness of the living room and up the stairs to my room.
I just marched forward on a full-scale suicide mission.
Her rasps and pants spurring me forward.
I clicked the door shut behind us before I edged through the shadows that crawled the walls of my room.
I didn’t take her to my bed.
I set her down on the black leather sofa under the window.
A goddess sitting in the silvered, fluttery rays of moonlight that filtered in through the thin drapes.
Her chest jacking with each strained breath and eyes doing avid, feral things.
A thrill bolted from her being in shocks of electricity that blasted through the room.
Dressed in black, that flimsy, silken skirt hiked up high around her thighs.
Long, toned legs draped out in front of her, bent at the knees with those heels planted on my floor.
Knees just spread.
Trembles rocked through her with the furor of an earthquake.
This goddess? I was pretty sure she would prove lethal. Touching her condemnation and blame. But there I was, sinking to my knees in front of her.
Nothing but a beggar at her feet.
But it was Brinley who was going to be doing the begging tonight.
My palms landed on her knees.
Flames flashed.
In a surge of desire, she arched from the couch. Body bowing in a petition.
“Silas…”
My name wisped out into the night and curled around me like a lucid dream.
There was something deeper and more profound in that single word coming from her mouth than any other that had ever touched my ears before it.
Like it might mean something.
Like I might mean something to her.
Guilt tried to rise to the surface. To force me back into the order where I knew I should stay.
But there was something about Brinley Webber that had me pinned.
I couldn’t help but think maybe I might have a little more to offer. Giving her this.
Dominance and control capped off in a blitz of pleasure.
“You want this, Brinley?” My voice was low and raw. Cutting through the charged air in the slice of a warning. “You want me to wipe away that flash of terror you were feeling today? Replace it with everything that I am?”
Her gaze darkened, toiled with old wounds and debilitating horrors and sheer, absolute want.
She knew I wasn’t referring to the fuckwit who tried to drag her off but rather whatever’d had her recoiling at my touch.
Referring to the ancient fear that would glint at the farthest recesses of her fierce, ferocious gaze.
Something she guarded like family jewels that had been tarnished.
And somehow, I was able to see it.
Maybe it was sick that I wanted to be the one to hold it.
Sick that I wanted to be the one to have the honor of sending her soaring. The one who would cause her to give in and let go.
Realizing in it, she was the one who held all the power. Because I knew I couldn’t erase it or be the one to fix her, but maybe through me she’d see how fucking strong she was. See she could rise above the brutalities that had been committed to her.
“Yes, I want to feel you. I want to feel everything,” she rasped, squirming on that leather cushion.
“You’re going to let me give you this? The little that I have?”
Fire flamed in those harvest eyes, and Brinley kept flipping between innocent and vixen. “And what’s that, Silas? What is it you have to give?”
“Pleasure and the promise that you’re in control while I’m giving it to you. Just for a little while. While you’re here and under my roof. Then, when you walk out of here, safe and whole, you’ll realize the sick fuck who hurt you no longer has any control over you.”
I gritted my teeth at the mention of the faceless degenerate. I’d try to get her to give me the name later. But not right then.
Not when I was trying to inject her full of belief.
“He has no say in the way you live or the things you want. Has no control over your fantasies or desires.”
A wave of that desire flooded from her body, and Brinley’s lips parted on a breath of passion and yearning.
Trust filtering out into the fervency that carved the room in lust and something far bigger.
Something I knew should send me running.
Instead, my hands clamped down tighter on her knees as I tried to force myself into a cool that had been obliterated the second this woman had stepped onto my land.
“Don’t know what you’ve done to me, Brinley. Don’t know how you have me so spun up. The way you have me ignoring every rule that I’ve ever made for myself and this club.”
She huffed a disconcerted laugh. “It’s you, Silas. You who has me so twisted up that I don’t recognize myself. I shouldn’t be letting you touch me like this. I don’t…”
Her eyes squeezed shut as her words trailed off.
My heart took that time to be reckless, stretching out for hers, wanting to assuage the flash of pain that struck through her being.
“You don’t let men touch you?” Maybe I was the twisted one since it crawled out like possession.
She gave a little frantic shake of her head, that armor dropping. “No.”
“Do you want me to?”
“Yes.”
My hands shook where I had them locked on her knees. I didn’t know if it was originating from her or me.
“How long has it been? How long has it been since you felt safe with a man?”
A quiver rolled her delicate throat, and she attempted to swallow the heaviness. “Five years.”
A growl rolled in my chest, and I splayed my hands wide as I slowly glided them up the tops of her thighs. Attention fixed to her face, searching for any discomfort or fear.
She arched back, and her shoulders hit the backrest of the sofa as the rest of her bowed toward me.
She released a raspy, frenzied breath, and in it, her admission slipped free. “I’m not so sure I feel safe with you.”
I froze, a stake to my fucking heart. “Would never hurt you. Not like that.”
Her hands were suddenly over mine, urging them farther up her legs, her body arching more with each inch.
“Maybe I’m a total fool for believing it, but I do. It’s the rest of you that terrifies me. The way you make me feel every time you come into the room. The way you seem to understand me. See me. I think you could crush me, Silas.”
My chest tightened.
“Be clear, Brinley, I’m not worth any of that. There’s nothing left inside me that makes me worthy of whatever you think you’re feeling. Nothing decent or good. I ruin everyone that gets close.”
Something flared in her gaze that made me certain she was going to argue with me, so I ducked down, lips hitting the soft flesh at the top of her right thigh.
A feverish exhalation puffed out of her, and she murmured, “Yes.”
A clear invitation.
I slowly kissed over the delicious skin that could compete with the taste of Meems’s apple pie, though I’d never dare tell my grandmother.
This woman nothing but a perfect fantasy.
A perfect, torturous dream.
My cock screamed at my zipper.
I beat the lust back and forced myself to focus on what this was all about.
“Tell me where he hurt you, baby, and I’ll mark myself right over the top of it. Mark myself so deep that I’ll be the only thing you can feel. The only thing you can remember.”
I mumbled it as I kept kissing over the golden flesh of her legs.
Fingers wound in my hair, and Brinley arched higher as she yanked at the locks. “Everywhere.”
It was pain.
A plea.
Desperation.
Hunger battled with the rage that thrashed at my insides. Both were so stark, I didn’t know which was most critical.
Doubted she could never truly forget, but fuck, I was going to try.
A balm for the scars that had never fully healed.
Show her she no longer had to be a prisoner.
She was fucking free.
Free in me.
Those fingers curled tighter in my hair, right on time as I kissed higher.
I barely recognized my own voice as I spread her knees and murmured my lips up the inside of her thigh. “I’m going to make you feel so good, Brinley. Write myself all over you. Sink so deep that you’re going to forget what it was like before I met you.”
Claim you.
Put a property patch on her back so the whole fucking world would know who she belonged to.
I knew a whole hell of a lot better than that. Knew what it would cause.
Not to mention I was tangling with the club’s collateral.
But right then I couldn’t seem to convince myself otherwise.