The lamp beside the bed throws a low amber haze over everything, turning the edges of the room soft and warm, but there is nothing soft about what that first kiss does to me. It is slow, yes. Patient in the way only Silas can manage when he is trying not to overwhelm me with the full force of how much he feels. But beneath that patience there is hunger, a pull that makes my body answer before my mind catches up.
Shifting closer instinctively, the mattress dips, the sheet tangling at our legs. His hand, broad and warm at my waist, tightens just enough to draw me flush against him. The pressure of his chest to mine is immediately grounding. His other hand slips under my shirt, rough fingertips gliding over the bare skin of my stomach with reverent slowness. That touch alone makes me shiver. He feels it.
He always feels everything.
His mouth deepens over mine, tongue brushing mine in a kiss that is somehow both sweet and devastating. I make a small sound into him before I can stop it. He swallows it like he wantsevery piece of me, even the quiet ones. My fingers catch at his shoulders, then slide up into his hair, threading there, holding him close while he kisses me like there is nowhere else in the world either of us could possibly belong.
The fear from earlier still exists somewhere beyond this bed, beyond these walls, but in here it feels stripped of its teeth. In here there is just Silas, just his careful hands, his heartbeat and the way he touches me like my body is not something to survive but something to cherish.
He leaves my mouth only long enough to kiss my jaw, then the hinge of it, then the soft place beneath my ear. I feel his breath there before I feel his lips. That anticipation alone makes my stomach tighten. He trails lower, to my throat, lingering in the places he knows unravel me fastest. Every kiss is unhurried. Intentional. His thumb brushes the line of my waist under my shirt while his mouth maps my skin as if he is learning scripture by touch.
My breath catches when his hand glides higher, spanning my ribs, then easing back down in no rush at all. He is not grabbing, not taking. He is feeling. Discovering. Savoring. That almost undoes me more than urgency would.
Dragging my fingertips down his back beneath the sheet, I feel muscle, heat, old scars...that familiar tension still buried in him even now. It never fully leaves. Neither does my need to soothe it when I can. Flattening my palm where he needs me most, he makes a low sound into my skin, something rough and pleased all at once.
“Come here,” he murmurs, voice thick against my throat, as if I have not already folded myself around him as far as I can.
Then his hand closes around my thigh.
The grip is tight enough to make my breath hitch, but careful too, every bit of pressure calculated. He slides his palm higher along the back of my leg, then hikes it over his hip. Themovement opens me to him immediately. Feeling the length of him, hard and straining beneath thin fabric, my whole body flushes with heat. He does not stop there. He hooks under my other thigh and slings both my legs over him, drawing my hips across his lap until my chest presses fully to his.
The position leaves me draped over him, tangled, close enough that every breath we take belongs to both of us.
“There,” he whispers, kissing me again, softer this time, almost like praise. “That’s where I want you.”
I melt against him.
My shirt has ridden up around my ribs now. His hand slips over my side, over the small of my back, then down to the curve of my ass beneath the hem of my sleep shorts. Feeling the way his fingers spread there, holding me, anchoring me, the friction of his body beneath mine makes me press down without meaning to. He groans into my mouth, deep and low.
The sound goes right through me.
I kiss him harder, wanting to swallow it, wanting to hear more. My hand moves between us almost on instinct, sliding down his stomach, finding the hard line of him trapped under the waistband. He tenses under my palm, not in resistance but in anticipation so sharp it feels electric.
His forehead touches mine for a second.
“Baby,” he breathes.
There is something so wrecked and tender in it that my heart turns over.
My fingers work carefully, slipping beneath the fabric, freeing him inch by inch. He sucks in a breath when I wrap my hand around him, heavy, hot and already aching. I stroke once, slow, just enough to feel him pulse as his eyes shut.
“Octavia,” he groans, my name in his mouth sounding like half prayer, half warning.
Kissing him again before he can say anything else, I keep my hand moving. Slow. Wet from the slick heat already gathering between my thighs when I reach down to touch myself, then back to him. The drag of my hand over him makes his whole body tense beneath me. His head tips back into the pillow. The line of his throat is exposed, gorgeous and vulnerable in a way he never is with anyone else.
I kiss the hollow there.
“You’re shaking,” I whisper.
He lets out a breath that almost passes for a laugh. “You do that to me.”
There is no arrogance in it. Just truth.
Shifting my hips, he grips them immediately, helping guide the movement, his hands broad and steady on my thighs. The head of him brushes me through my shorts first, then along the damp fabric when I push it aside. The contact makes us both gasp.
“Tell me,” he murmurs, eyes opening to meet mine, dark and so unbearably gentle despite all that force in him. “Tell me what you want.”
"You,” I say, because anything else would be a lie.
