47. Silas #2
Ramiel came back several minutes later with four drinks, a meat pastry he was already eating, and a man named Brek who apparently owned three of the farmlands west of the city and had very strong opinions about the purple team’s defensive formation.
Dez carefully traced eight lines down his small notebook.
I drank whatever Ramiel had brought back, which turned out to be something considerably stronger than the whiskey, and watched the Silverbolts score twice in quick succession while Ramiel argued good-naturedly with Brek about a play from the first half.
The game was fine.
Everything was fine.
Syneca was back at the house and the evening was loud and the whiskey was gone and I was going to stop thinking about her any moment now.
Any fucking moment.
The hallway was longer than it had been this morning.
I was fairly certain of that. I’d walked it a hundred times and it had never once taken this long, nor had it spun. Also new. I gripped the wall to keep from slamming into it.
“Shh,” Dez whispered in the volume of a yell, grabbing my collar.
“If Pip finds out we went out without her, she’s going to cry and you know I can’t handle that.
I’ll have to steal a grimmie for her or something.
” He paused, eyes widening. “I have a really good idea that just came to me.” He spun.
“Calder, I need to go back to the Underworld real quick.”
Calder’s accent was somehow thicker. “Go to bed, demon.”
Dez’s smile was all kinds of sloppy. “Maybe I should check on Ramiel’s bed. See how soft it is.”
I grabbed the back of his collar, which took two tries because he was moving, or I was or something. “Absolutely not. The last time you were in his bed, I had to send Lore to get you.”
He gasped. “Lore? Oh, I love Lore. I have another really good idea, Calder. Let’s go see Lore.”
The charidryn grabbed Dez. “Only if it shuts you up.”
And then they were gone.
I stopped outside her door.
The light was still on. That narrow line of gold beneath the wood that meant she was awake.
I could knock, which I was absolutely not going to do because I had come down this hallway for no reason that I could currently justify and the smart thing, the obvious thing, the thing a man with any remaining self-preservation would do was turn around and go back to his room.
I knocked. My head was swimming with whiskey and lust, and I knew this was a bad idea. The worst idea. But my dick didn’t give a fuck about logic.
Silence. Then, “Come in.”
I pushed the door open and leaned against the frame, my knees threatening to buckle under the sight of her. She was in bed with the journal open in her lap, hair loose, and she looked up at me with those blue eyes and the world tipped approximately four degrees to the left.
Fuck.
“You’re drunk,” she said.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re holding the doorframe.”
“I’m leaning.” I was absolutely holding the doorframe. “You’re still awake.”
She closed the journal, her eyes narrowing as she studied me like she could see every filthy thought rattling around my skull. “I was… it doesn’t matter. How was the game?”
“Ramiel made a friend.”
She smiled that fucking smile. The one I dreamed about. The one I wanted to taste and hear and drown in. “Of course he did.”
I should’ve looked away. The window, the floor, the fucking ceiling, but I couldn’t. She was sitting there in the lamplight, her shoulders bare, her chest rising and falling with every breath, the silk nightgown doing nothing to hide the curve of her breasts or the swell of her hips.
“Silas.”
“Give me a second.”
“You’re staring.”
“I’m aware.” The lamplight caught the line of her legs and I was drunk and she was beautiful and that hallway had been a catastrophic error from the moment I’d turned down it.
She pulled the blanket up with a look that was half amused and half dangerous.
She was dangerous, sitting there being exactly what she was, while I stood in her doorway, my tongue heavy, my cock harder than it had any right to be, and a thousand damn confessions pressing against the back of my teeth.
“Did you need something?” she asked.
Yes. “No.”
She was looking at me the way she sometimes did when she forgot to stop, and I was four drinks past making good decisions.
But she deserved someone who could actually have her.
Someone uncomplicated. Someone who didn’t hold two bargains over her head and lie awake memorizing the sound of her laugh, knowing they could never truly deserve it.
I knew the cadence of her breathing when she finally let herself sleep.
I knew which silences meant she was thinking and which meant she was hurting and trying to hide it.
I knew her better than I’d ever known anything, and I’d traded every chance of having her for the privilege of keeping her alive.
I’d do it again. That was the worst part. I’d do it again every damn time.
“I can feel you drifting away, Si. What’s wrong?”