No wonder Dad can’t let it go.
In his mind, Silas is the fairy-tale monster Blake paid some unethical fuck to create in a lab.
“Blake wanted to create a creature so violent it barely counted as human.”
“Blake failed.”
“Oh, he succeeded,” Sy says without any affect. He tips his head to the side, thoughtful. “But Ant and Erik, along with Edison, helped me give meaning to the monster.”
“And how do you live with this?” I ask, seized by the need to wrap him in my arms and never let go. “How do you manage your impulses?”
He sways on his feet.
“Sweat and meditation.” He gives me a sort of sideways grin. “I really love those old-school exercise videos. The ones where they yell at you like a drill sergeant. ‘No excuses, maggot.’”
My brain, unhelpful in the extreme, supplies a thought. And my mouth, equally useless, follows it over the cliff.
“Kind of like the way a titan of industry needs a Dominatrix to put him on his knees.”
Silas stills.
He doesn’t just stop moving.
He’s a statue, glitched. Eyes the color of lava rock.
Flat.
Predatory.
I start to panic, wondering if what I’d just said triggered him.
“I apologize. That was way off base.”
His eyes swirl back to blue.
“No.” Soft. Light. “It’s fine.”
Silas’s mouth moves as if he’s practicing the thing to say next.
I shut my big trap and wait for the words to unstick.
“I’ve wanted that for a long time.” Rare emotion sits right behind his admission. He’s speaking without looking me in the eye. “But I don’t trust easily.”
“No, I guess you wouldn’t.”
He blinks, and the shift goes up my spine.
“I trust you.”
13
SILAS
“You trust me?”Oakley asks as though he doesn’t know he is a mountain. Deliberate, powerful, kind.
As though he didn’t come down here with sex in his eyes.
“Of course I trust you. You would never hurt me in a way I would not want to be hurt, and you would never laugh at me. You would respect my boundaries.”
