Past Kadin before he can get up fully. Past Maria’s immediate alarm. Past Cheyenne’s confused, “Octavia?” that follows me into the hallway. Somewhere behind me I can feel the shift in the room, the attention pulling after me in one collective, worried turn.
I don’t look back to see who stands first.
My body already knows where it’s going before my mind catches up. Straight down the hall. Past the framed family photos. Past the closed doors. Past the stupid, clean quiet of this house that has never once known how loud my past still is inside me.
I make my break for the bathroom.
The one Silas and I share by accident of architecture and bad timing. The one place with a lock close enough to reach before my legs start shaking too hard to trust. My hand slips once on the knob because my fingers have gone numb around the phone. Wrenching the door open anyway, I stumble inside, slamming it shut behind me with more force than I mean to.
Leaning back against it, my hand is still over my mouth, chest pulling in breaths that don’t feel like enough air, beforefinally letting the full weight of the message land where it was always meant to.
Not gone.
Not over.
Not paid.
And all at once, the last few years of healing feel terrifyingly fragile.
CHAPTER 22
Octavia
Swinging the bathroom door shut with a soft click, Silas jolts the fan to life, the roar of it filling the air, that mechanical hiss swallowing every other sound in the house. I’m still knotted on the tile with my back against the cabinet, phone strangled in my fist, heart hammering from the message that ripped the floor out from under me. My throat is raw, eyes gritty. For a second, we just stare at each other, me on the floor, him filling the doorway like a storm.
He crouches down. Not a trace of sarcasm, no distance. His mouth presses into a tight line. “What happened?” he asks. The question buzzes in the air. Shaking my head, I can’t stand to say that word: corpse. I can’t go back there. I can still smell that room, the stale sweat, the rotting breath of men who bought hours with me while my mother pretended they were doing us a favor.
Silas watches another beat, then stands.
Panic slams through me...don’t leave...but he moves only to reach above me, flipping the fan to its highest setting. The hum groans overhead, louder than the squeak of my pulse. He turns back, eyes focused, jaw sharp.
“I told your friends something happened with your parents,” he says. “That I’d handle it.”
Something violent breaks loose in my chest. The panic grinds down into need, bloody-edged and unstoppable. I can’t talk this out. I need something real to drag me out of my head.
“I need you to touch me,” I say, voice wrecked, every word choked with the urgency I can’t swallow. “I need you.”
His whole body goes still. He takes in the way I’m kneeling, the phone falling from my hand, the way I reach for him without hesitation. A low curse slips between his teeth. “Octavia…I can't be gentle with you right now-”
“If I wanted gentle, I wouldn’t have asked,” I murmur, fingers tracing up his thigh, “and I sure as hell wouldn’t be on my knees for you.”
Smoothing my palms up his thighs, I let the rough denim drag across my knuckles, hovering over the thick bulge caged beneath his fly. He’s already hard, straining meanly against the fabric, the zipper biting into the swell like it’s one breath from busting open. Closing my mouth over him, he’s still covered, my tongue tracing the shape of his cock from base to tip while heat bleeds through the cloth. The low noise he makes, not quite a moan, not quite a swear, vibrates against my lips. He fists his fingers in the countertop to keep from shoving forward
“Feel how desperate you are?” I murmur, lips drifting along the length even now, letting him soak up the teasing heat. My hand gropes up and presses through the denim, sliding along the ridge, applying just enough pressure to make him groan. He hunches, muscles flexing under my touch. Sucking lightly through the fabric, he curses louder, hips twitching as the friction builds.
Dragging my teeth gently along the outline, I curl my fingers into the waistband, peeling the denim down by inches. I want his restraint ghosting across his expression, the anticipation tearingat his composure. Each inch exposes more skin, hot and flushed with blood, until finally his cock springs free, beautiful and ready for me.
Closing my fingers around the base, I marvel at the length of him. He’s already leaking at the tip. Smearing that slick over him with my thumb while staring up, I let him watch my mouth part in open hunger. “Look at how hard you get when you know I’m going to taste you,” I breathe, voice wrecked. His throat bobs. His chest rises faster.
Before he can answer I flatten my tongue and lick the length, slow, dragging saliva along the vein that makes him hiss. Taking him into my mouth, the pressure builds as I swallow him inch by inch, his hand slamming into my hair, gentle and possessive.
When I finally swallow him fully, it’s slow enough that he feels every stretch. Opening wide, I take my time, letting the weight of him settle on my tongue before easing him deeper. My hand grips the base, guiding, squeezing gently as I sink farther until my nose is pressed against the sharp ridge of his abdomen, my throat fluttering around him. He swears, a raw whisper of my name punched out of him, his knees flexing like he nearly loses balance.
Pulling back slowly, spit trails down his cock as I lick to the tip and back. Bobbing forward again, I pump him with my hand while I work the rest of the shaft with my lips and tongue. The rhythm is intoxicating, each drag smoother, wetter than the last. Rolling my tongue along the underside, I pin him against the roof of my mouth, humming lightly to send vibrations all the way to the base. He gasps, breath harsh and uneven, hips fighting not to thrust.
By the time I’m deep-throating him in earnest, letting the head bump the back of my throat while I swallow around him, he’s shaking. I feel it in his thighs, in the desperate flex of tendons beneath my palms, in the way his voice cracks whenhe mutters something incoherent. Hollowing my cheeks, I suck harder, twisting my wrist, tipping him straight toward the edge.
He’s close already. I can feel the pounding pulse at the base of his cock, the tremble turning his knees weak. Tightening my grip, I stroke him from base to tip, my mouth working the top half with steady suction as his breathing disintegrates into ragged, broken gasps.
