His voice is dry, almost lazy, though nothing about the way he holds me feels careless. I’m curled between his legs on the floor at the foot of my bed, wrapped in a blanket with my head resting against his chest while his back leans against the frame. One of his arms is looped low around my waist. The other hand stays beneath the blanket, both thumbs rolling slowly over my thighs in a touch so absentmindedly intimate it keeps dragging my attention away from the conversation.
Tilting my head back, I look up at him. “I thought you said you only verbally threatened him.”
A smirk tugs at my mouth when I say it.
Across from us, Maria slaps a hand over her mouth to hide her laugh, which only makes the sound worse. She folds in onherself, shoulders shaking, then points at him like she cannot believe he is still pretending innocence.
“Did you not see him later that day?” she asks. “His friends took pictures of him after he left the weight room. Tell me something. Did you even try to catch the bar?”
That does it. Her laugh spills out full force.
Silas lets out a slow breath through his nose, the picture of irritation. “Catch?” he says. “More like he caught his own stupidity. I leaned on it. He panicked. Same difference.”
The way he says it sends a pulse of heat through me that has nothing to do with the blanket. That same cold confidence is what keeps ruining me for normal boys, the certainty in him, the complete lack of shame about being exactly as dangerous as he looks.
“So he’s avoiding your wrath?” I ask softly.
His thumbs drag once more over my thighs, slower this time, as if he knows exactly how distracting the motion is becoming.
“If he’s smart,” he says, “yes.”
Cheyenne rolls her eyes and tosses another piece of popcorn at us, this one bouncing off the blanket near my knee. “You all are insane. Truly. Also, there is no chance in hell Steph and Jacob haven’t caught on to…” Her hand waves vaguely between me and Silas. “This.”
The word hangs there.
This.
Not just the sex. Not just the tension. The whole twisted, impossible thing between us that somehow stopped feeling impossible the second we both admitted it out loud.
“Jacob knows enough,” Silas says after a pause. There is something quieter in his tone when he says my father’s name, a caution I still do not fully understand because whatever passed between the two of them remains mostly his to keep. “Steph has enough to worry about.”
Maria’s eyes widen with delight, because she hears the same thing Cheyenne does and immediately chooses the worst possible interpretation. “Enough?” she whispers dramatically. “So basically that means free rein to fuck whenever you want?”
I groan, dropping my face against Silas’s chest for half a second. “That is not what my dad meant.”
“No,” Maria says, far too pleased with herself. “But it is what you’re doing.”
Her finger points straight at Silas. “Also, I can still see her nail marks on your shoulder, bud.”
My head lifts at once.
His shirt is crooked enough that she’s right. The collar has slipped just low enough to reveal one angry red crescent near the slope of his shoulder, one of several little pieces of evidence I left on him the night before. Heat floods my face immediately. In hindsight, sneaking into his room at three in the morning has never once ended in anything resembling restraint.
Silas glances down at me, catching the flush climbing up my neck, the slow smile that spreads across his mouth enough to make my whole body go weak in a way I hate.
“Watching her try to stay quiet?” he says, shrugging one shoulder with infuriating ease. “Better than any drug.”
Twisting, I swat him on instinct, scandalized despite the fact that half of me is reliving it already. His laugh is brief, but, real, the sound melting something in me instantly.
“God,” Cheyenne says, gawking at both of us, “is it bad that I kind of love how fucked up this is?”
“You’re supposed to be helping me find a dress, asshole,” I shoot back, nudging her with my foot from under the blanket.
“So are both of you,” she says, pointing accusingly at Maria and me. “Spokehaven’s formal is a huge deal. You cannot both show up looking like emotionally unstable Victorian widows.”
Maria gasps in offense. “I could absolutely pull that off.”
Cheyenne ignores her, swinging her attention to Silas next. “Also, do you even know what a suit is, or do we need to drag you into civilization one fitting at a time?”
