He doesn’t need to.
Patting his cheek once mockingly, I step away from the bench.
“Stay afraid,” I whisper, before turning away, leaving him there there under the fluorescent lights, shaking too hard to pretend otherwise.
CHAPTER 34
Octavia
By the time we turn onto our street, the whole day has settled into my body in the strangest way.
The anger from the hallway should still be the loudest thing in me. The humiliation, the sting in my knuckles, the ugly echo of Kadin’s voice, all of it should still be winning. Instead, every glance at Silas keeps turning those feelings into something warmer, something far less daunting. Every time I look at his mouth, I remember the classroom. Every time I catch the line of his jaw tightening around thoughts he won’t share, I think about what happened after he walked away from me. A sane girl would press him for answers. A sane girl would worry first.
All I can think about is how frighteningly good it feels to be the reason his control frays.
By the time he parks in the driveway, my pulse is already moving in that traitorous, anticipatory way it has started doing far too often around him. The air changes the second we step out of the car. It always does now. Ordinary space starts feeling charged the moment we are close enough to touch.
He falls into step beside me as we head toward the house, the heat of him still close enough to make my thoughts soften before he even reaches for me.
I should care that my parents might be home. I should care that my mom could glance out the front window, or my dad could come to the door, or one of the neighbors could happen to look over and see far too much. None of that lands the way it should. Something about Silas strips the caution out of me too fast. One look from him, one shift in the set of his shoulders, one little drop in his voice, and the sensible parts of my mind start dissolving into heat.
So when I catch that familiar darkness in his eyes, the words leave me before reason can.
“Maybe we can pick up where we left off in that classroom tonight.”
The effect is immediate.
Not dramatic. More dangerous than that. His eyes darken in that subtle way I am learning too well, the kind of look that always makes something low in my stomach tighten. He closes the distance between us without hesitation until my back is nearly against the side of the car. His hands find my hips like they have been there all day in his mind, firm enough to make my breath catch, certain enough to make my knees feel weaker than they should from something so simple.
“God,” he murmurs, his voice already rougher, carrying that half-contained hunger I can never think clearly through. “You really just want to be stumbling to class, don’t you?”
A laugh tries to come out, but it thins into something softer the second he bends and kisses just below my jaw.
The contact is brief. Devastating for exactly that reason.
His mouth is gentle, the kind of kiss that feels less like affection than a promise about what happens if he keeps going. My head tips without permission, giving him more room, givinghim everything far too easily. One kiss, one grip at my hips, one sentence in that wrecked voice of his, and my whole body starts answering before my mind can keep up.
He feels it.
He always feels it.
His fingers tighten just enough to tell me he knows exactly what he is doing. The heat that had been simmering all through the drive flares instantly. For one reckless second, the house stops mattering. The windows stop mattering. The possibility of being seen stops mattering. The whole world narrows to his mouth near my throat and the dangerous promise in the way his thumbs press into my hips, like he is already deciding whether he can get me inside before he loses patience entirely.
Then he stops.
Not slowly. Not reluctantly. Completely.
The kiss does not deepen. His hands go still. The whole moment snaps off so sharply it leaves me disoriented as my eyes open fully.
That is when I see what he has seen.
The Warden’s car is parked in our driveway.
Every bit of heat in me goes cold. His hands fall from my hips at the exact same second, the silence that opens between us full of fear.
“W-why is he here?”
The question leaves me in a whisper, all the heat that had been burning through me seconds ago gone so completely it feels as if somebody dumped ice water straight into my veins. My eyes stay fixed on the car because looking away somehow feels like it might make the whole thing worse. The Warden’s presence never means anything small. Men like him do not appear in driveways without a reason. They arrive already carrying trouble in both hands.
