He drags it upward, collecting every bit of it, eyes fixed on my face the whole time.
Then, without breaking eye contact, he lifts his thumb to his mouth, licking it clean.
The gesture is devastating.
Kadin is saying something, I can hear the shape of his voice, hear concern starting to sharpen it, but I don’t process a single word because Silas is still holding my breast, still breathing against my throat, still looking at me like he wants to know exactly how far I’ll let this go before I fall apart.
His thumb returns, this time tracing the damp path he left behind. The pad of it presses lightly into the valley between my breasts, then drags down again with infuriating slowness, as if he’s chasing any remaining sweetness from my skin. My nipples tighten instantly under the fabric. He feels it. The corner of his mouth twitches.
“He's still talking,” he murmurs against my neck, voice low enough that only I can hear it.
The words send a pulse of heat through me so sharp it borders on pain.
Swallowing hard, I force out, “Yeah. I’m listening.”
It is a lie. A pathetic one.
Silas’s mouth curves against my skin like he knows it too. He kisses just below my jaw, soft this time, then opens his handmore fully over my breast, weighing it through the thin fabric of the tank top, thumb rolling once in a small, devastating circle over my nipple that makes my breath snag audibly.
Kadin stops talking.
Silas hears it too.
He leans in closer, lips brushing my ear again, one hand still at my chest, the other resting warm at the back of my neck. “Tell me,” he whispers, “how much longer you think you can keep pretending.”
His thumb slides over the damp cotton, teasing the peaked shape beneath it, my knees locking to stay upright. The kitchen feels too bright, too exposed, every surface suddenly sharp with the fact that this is happening here, now, after two weeks of him avoiding me like distance might undo what happened between us.
It doesn’t.
If anything, it makes this worse.
Because there is nothing careless in the way he touches me now. Nothing accidental. Every movement is measured. Chosen. He’s not grabbing. He’s proving. Reminding. Tasting the edges of my control just to see where they break.
My fingers curl tighter around the phone. The ice cream is melting against my skin. Silas drags his mouth one last time up the side of my neck, lingering just beneath my ear, his hand at my breast tightening by a fraction, enough to make a sound rise in my throat that I barely manage to swallow.
On the other end of the line, Kadin says my name again.
Silas’s thumb strokes once more over the cold, damp fabric of my tank top, his eyes lifting to mine, dark and steady, full of a dare he has not spoken aloud.
Kadin says my name again, sharper now, but I barely hear it.
Silas’s hand is still spread over my chest, heat bleeding through thin cotton, his mouth hovering near my ear like heknows exactly how close I am to dropping the phone. His eyes stay on mine another beat, dark and unreadable except for the hunger he isn’t even pretending to hide anymore.
Then his thumb gives one last, slow drag over the damp fabric stretched across my breast.
His mouth brushes the shell of my ear.
“Still mine,” he murmurs, so low I almost think I imagined it.
The words hit like a fist closing low in my stomach.
Then he steps back.
Just like that.
He lets me go with infuriating ease, hand slipping away from my body as if it had not just been there, as if he had not spent the last two minutes unmaking me in the middle of a phone call. He takes the water bottle from the counter, twists the cap back on, before moving toward the stairs with the same calm, calculated rhythm he walked in with.
No rush. No glance over his shoulder.
