Chapter 13 Silas #2
“I remember how you clung to me like you needed me to breathe.”
“Stop.”
I tilt her face up, thumbs wiping at tears. “Kiss me and I’ll stop.”
“Why? So you can call me a whore again and feel better about yourself? I’m engaged to Ethan, Silas. It’s too late.”
“It’s not too late.” She tries to break free but I hold on. “I lied to you, too, Ophelia. Just now.” That makes her stop. “Because that night, it didn’t just mean something. It meant everything to me.”
She looks confused like this is not what she was expecting and this time, when I kiss her, she doesn’t just take the kiss. She kisses me back, and I think we can fix this. Maybe we can fix this. At least, I think that momentarily before she closes her teeth over my lower lip, hard.
I break free, touch my thumb to my bloody lip.
“I’ll only ever kiss Ethan that way. Not you. Never again you,” she says, and I’m not sure what she intends but the mention of Ethan Fox, the thought of him with his hands on her uncoils something dark inside me.
“Careful,” I warn.
“What? Don’t you like the idea of Ethan kissing me? Touching me? His hands on me?”
I slam my fist against the wall by her head and she jumps, the look in her eyes shifting as she realizes she didn’t just wound me.
She woke the beast.
I grip a handful of hair and tug her head backward. It hurts, I can tell from her whimper as she tries to pry my hand off.
“I don’t like it,” I say, walking her toward the dining room table, swiping the papers lying there to the floor and bending her over it.
I grip her wrists with one hand at her lower back and kick her legs apart, settling myself between them.
I press my erection against her jean-clad ass.
“Tell me something. Tell me what you feel when he touches you.”
“Let me go.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Fine. I’ll tell you. Nothing. You feel nothing with him. You can’t.”
“You’re wrong, Silas.”
I bend to kiss the beating pulse at her neck. “Because it’s me that makes your pulse race. It’s my touch that does it.”
“It’s not.”
“I should strip you naked. Take you here and now. Make you mine and finish this.”
“Silas—”
“Tell me something. How wet is your pussy now?”
“It’s not. Let me go.”
“No? Because your eyes tell a different story.” I draw her up to stand, wrap my arm around her, and hold her back to my front. I set the flat of my hand over her chest, feeling the wild beating of her heart. “As does your heart.”
“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“You’re wrong on both counts.” I draw my nose up along her neck, close my teeth over the shell of her ear. I hold her, listen to her uneven breathing. “I made a mistake that night. I should have fucked you.”
She swallows. Is she aware her body is leaning into mine?
“Do you know when I stripped you naked when you were passed out, do you know what I wanted to do? I wanted to spread your legs and bury my face in your sweet pussy and eat you until you fucking screamed.”
“Silas—”
“I wanted to spread your ass cheeks and get a good look at you, all of you, before sinking my cock deep inside you. And when you came into the shower and knelt before me, when I took your mouth, fuck me, O, it took all I had to be careful with you.”
“Stop. Please.”
“Tell me the fucking truth. Tell me you want me.”
“I can’t.”
“Tell me. Say it.”’
“I hate you!” A tear slides down one cheek and I lick it, tasting the salt of it.
“Say my name. Tell me you want me.”
She shakes her head.
“Say. My. Fucking. Name.”
“There was a time I wanted nothing but you, all right? Is that what you want to hear?”
I let her turn to face me, keeping her trapped between the table and myself, and watch tears dampen her cheeks.
“But that time is gone! What that was, it’s gone. It’s hate now, Silas. I fucking hate you.” Her voice breaks on the word hate.
“I don’t accept that,” I say through clenched teeth.
“I don’t care what you accept.”
“It’s a lie. Let’s not lie to each other, O. Not you and me.”
“For the last time, there is no you and me!”
“Promise me that, at least. Promise not to lie to me.”
“It’s too late, Silas. Don’t you get it?”
I hear the words, but I refuse them. “You didn’t answer my question. Does Ethan make your heart beat so madly? Does Ethan make you forget everything but him? Because I doubt it.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“So you’ve said.”
“I love him!” she says, stunning me into silence for the second time this night. She pushes away, and I let her because I’m processing her words.
“You don’t. You can’t.”
She walks toward the elevator, which is gone, so she has to call it again. “I don’t know why I came here. I have no fucking idea.”
“Because you know you’re making a mistake marrying him.”
She pushes the button, cursing when the elevator doors still don’t open.
“The other night, I felt sorry for you, you know that?” she asks.
“No need, sweetheart.”
“I thought how sad you were all alone in the world,” she says, realizing her purse is lying on the floor near me and stalking across the room to get it.
I slide my hands into my pockets, so she doesn’t see the fists I make.
“But you know what?” she asks, stepping up to me as the elevator dings and the doors slide open. “Maybe there’s a reason you’re alone, Silas. Maybe you deserve to be alone.”
She stalks toward the elevator. The doors are already starting to close, and she has to hurry.
“You’re not marrying him,” I tell her.
“As if you get a say!”
“What just happened, you think that’s normal? You think you can feel that with one man and marry another?”
“Feel what?” she asks, whirling on me. “I feel nothing for you but contempt.”
“Lie.”
“Whatever you think about the Foxes, they have been nothing but good to me. Throughout it all, they’ve treated me like their own.”
“Don’t you wonder why?”
She gestures around the penthouse. “For a man who so hates money and those who have it, you sure have plenty of it around you, don’t you, Silas? Look at this place. Look at the Rolex on your wrist. Hypocrite much?”
I tense my jaw.
“I’m going to save my father’s legacy. What you said Sullivan will do to the company? I made a deal with him. So, you’re wrong, yet again. He’s not the devil you try to make him out to be.”
“Is that right? You finagled a deal out of that man?” Because the only way Sly Fox would make a deal with anyone is when it benefits him.
“Yeah. And if they didn’t think of me as their own daughter, given all that’s happened, what my father admitted, don’t you think Ethan would have walked away from me by now considering I have no money, nothing to offer them to raise their status since that’s all you think they want or care about?
He has nothing to gain by marrying me. Nothing.
And I have everything to gain by the union. ”
“You’d only marry for love, O. I know you. And you don’t love him. You just want to hurt me by saying it.”
“How can I hurt you? You’re a solid wall. You’re bitter and resentful and—”
“You do not fucking love him!” I stalk toward her and she backs away so quickly, I force myself to stop, to keep some distance between us.
“It’s none of your business,” she says. “I’m none of your business.”
I scrub my face, think. She’s lying. She doesn’t love him. I know it. I know it deep in my fucking gut.
“He refused to let me sign a prenup. A show of trust. That’s who he is, Silas.
Who they are. So, as you sit here all alone in your penthouse and think about how much you hate the Foxes and how much you hate me, and how much everyone falls short of your high and mighty bullshit standards, think about that. Think about who the true hypocrite is.”
“No. No, you—”
“I’m going to marry Ethan Fox.”
“You’re not.”
“And there is nothing you can do about it. Nothing!”
“If you think that’s true, then you don’t know me.”
“I used to think you were some kind of hero growing up, you know that?” she says, voice sad, tears streaming. “But heroes break. And you’re broken, Silas. You’re so broken that you’ve become the villain of your own story.”
We stand like that for a minute until she finally makes a move and disappears into the elevator. The doors slide closed.
She’s lying. She doesn’t love him. She can’t. And maybe she’s right about me. Maybe I have become the villain of my own story. But if that’s true, it’s Sullivan Fox who made me that.
I turn away from the elevator, pour myself another whiskey. I shake my head as I drink it down, because she has no idea. I don’t speak empty words. I don’t say shit just to say shit like her pretty boy does. She’s not marrying him. Period. The end.
Her perfume lingers and her words filter into my brain. And as I process, I focus on just one thing. Just one part of what she said.
No prenup.
He doesn’t want a prenup.
And I know I’m right.
Ophelia Hart needs saving, once again. And I’m the one who always saves her. She said so herself. I won’t fuck up twice. I won’t let her walk away twice.