CHAPTER 18
Octavia
Steam fogs the mirror almost immediately, softening the edges of everything except him.
Backing into the bathroom door on instinct, my pulse slams against my throat as Silas follows. The shower is already running, water hammering against tile in a steady, violent hiss. He’s only in sweats now. No hoodie. No shirt. Just bruised skin, hard muscle and old scars laid bare under the yellow bathroom light, his chest rising and falling too fast, his ribs still marked from sparring, his hair a mess from my hands.
He looks at me like he’s starving.
Not in a way that feels careless. Worse than that. Like he knows exactly what he wants and hates that it’s me and can’t stop anyway.
I barely have time to breathe before he’s on me again.
His mouth crashes into mine, hot and rough, full of all the things neither of us knows how to say without hurting each other. I kiss him back just as hard. There’s no softness in it at first, only hunger mixed with weeks of silence burning off in the heat between our mouths. Dragging my fingers down his barechest, he makes a low sound into the kiss, something wrecked and needy that goes straight through me.
His hands find my waist.
Then my ribs.
Then the hem of my tank top.
He doesn’t pause to ask. He doesn’t even slow down. His fingers knot in the fabric and rip it upward in one sharp motion, tearing cotton, dragging the whole thing off me with enough force to make me stumble. The sound of the fabric splitting cuts through the bathroom.
I’m bare from the waist up, standing in steam and fluorescent light with his eyes on my breasts.
The look on his face almost undoes me more than the tearing did.
His gaze drops and stays there, painfully intent, taking me in like this is something he’s imagined too many times to count. My nipples tighten instantly in the warm damp air.
“Silas,” I whisper, but it comes out helpless.
His mouth finds my breast before I can say anything else.
The first pull of his lips around my nipple makes my whole body jolt. One of my hands flies to his shoulder, the other into his hair, feeling the rough exhale he gives against my skin before he sucks harder. His tongue flicks over the tightened peak, slow at first, then flatter, wetter, making my knees threaten to fold. Arching into him without meaning to, he takes that as invitation, not accident.
His hand cups my other breast, thumb rolling over the nipple there until I’m gasping against the side of his head. He mouths lower, kissing across the soft underside, then comes back up, sucking again, harder this time, enough to make a broken sound catch in my throat.
The shower keeps pounding. Steam thickens around us. I can barely think.
He shifts downward without warning, kisses trailing over my sternum, over my ribs, over my stomach, every place his mouth lands feeling branded. Keeping my hands buried in his hair, I can’t make them let go.
I don’t want to.
When he reaches the waistband of my underwear, he looks up at me.
That is what nearly kills me.
Silas on his knees in front of me, bare chest bruised and damp with steam, dark sweats hanging low on his hips, one hand spread over my thigh while his mouth hovers just above the elastic of my panties. His eyes are wild in a way I’ve only seen once before. Not drunk exactly. Not gone. Just stripped down to need.
Hooking his fingers into the sides of my underwear, he drags them down.
Slowly at first, making me feel every inch of cool air that follows. The fabric catches at my hips, then slides over my thighs, his gaze on me the whole time, watching my face. Watching the way my breathing stutters. Watching the way my legs instinctively part wider for him before I can stop myself.
By the time the underwear drops to the floor around my ankles, I’m trembling.
He presses a kiss to the inside of one thigh.
Then the other.
