Gifting that kind of jewelry to someone was practically a declaration of love, or at the very leastinterest.
“As an apology for breaking the first one,” he amended.
Holy… fuck.
My mouth had no way to form a single sentence to reply to that. All I could do was swallow tightly and nod, having no idea how serious he was being, given how little his expression moved. Outside of his pupils slowly dilating, Silas was as calm as ever—calculated in the way his hand shifted from my hip and then plunged down to the hem of my pants.
“A matching set, perhaps.” He was speaking slowly, deliberately matching how measured his fingers were in working the button at the front of my jeans apart.
I was rapidly growing hard, had been the second he’d helped me out of the car, with no way to brush it off as anything outside of being turned on with us being so close together like this. He grabbed one half of my jeans and yanked on them, splitting the zipper down to reveal what I had on underneath it.
Today, I’d gone with something silky—a dark green that complimented my olive skin tone. There was a small, diamond-like gem that dangled from the pantyline, stitched there with a thin amount of thread that made it able to move around with a subtle shift of my hips.
He pulled in a sharp breath through his nose, sitting back on his leg as he took his hands off me. Just the barest hint of my panties were peeking out from my jeans, but it was enough to know they weren’t some kind of fancy style boxer briefs that were worn by half of the male population.
There was no mistaking the feminine flare to what I wore.
His expression switched in a dizzying array of emotions—surprise, confusion, and then finally settling on the half-hooded look of lust.
At least, that’s what I hoped it was. He was so damn hard to read.
My heart hammered hard in my chest, my words feeling thick in my mouth.
“Like what you see?”
Instead of answering me right away, Silas hooked two fingers each on the sides of my jeans and ripped them down my thighs, completely freeing me and my hard on from the confines of the stiff material.
My thighs fell apart instantly, parting enough to let him get a good view of me in the hiphuggers I wore, the back of them riding up just enough from the motion of him stripping me to reveal a slight sliver of my left cheek if I leaned farther on my side.
He cursed softly under his breath, one hand coming up to ghost along the inside of my thigh. “You like these things?”
Disgust?
Acceptance?
I was desperate to know what was going on in his head. “You want to take a look in my top drawer and find out?”
His eyes snapped to mine again, nostrils flaring slightly with every controlled breath coming in and out of him. He seemed consumed with something, fighting against its magnetic intensity that was drawing me in the longer we sat here in silence.
Everything was amplified, coiled like a spring ready to pop the moment one of us moved and broke the tension.
Who would be the first one?
The first to shatter the spell of whatever this was?
“Or maybe….” The piercing intensity was almost too hard to focus as I spoke. “You’d like to take a look in my closet.”
His gaze darted over to it immediately.
Without warning, he rose from my bed, steps measured while approaching the twin double doors folded neatly closed. He paused in front of them, lifting his hands to brush along the brass handles, not yet pulling them apart like I thought he would the moment the suggestion left my mouth.
If he thought I wasn’t being serious, he was in for a rude awakening. My collection had been growing since I’d discovered the beauty of lingerie at the young age of sixteen. My pieces were carefully chosen and never cheap. I favored the expensive investments, much like my body jewelry, over something cheap and easy to get from a chain store that charged too much for their quality of products to justify the costs.
Artisans were my favorite to buy from and almost exclusively all I owned. There were a few that weren’t custom, though still just as beautiful.
“Left. In the back,” I instructed.
He grabbed on to both handles and yanked the panels apart, the doors creaking from the motion.
