Page 100 of Where Your Scars Meet Mine
The one who somehow became this man standing over me, bruised, bare, and shaking from what we just did.
“Silas,” I say, but his name comes out stunned, almost broken.
He reaches down then, not to stop me, not to pull away. His fingers brush my cheek with an almost unbearable gentleness as he gives me the smallest, saddest smile I’ve ever seen on his face.
Steam wraps around us in thick, white sheets, turning the bathroom into something unreal. The shower beats hard against tile, loud enough to swallow the sound of my breathing, though not loud enough to drown out the way my heart is trying to break through my ribs.
I’m still on my knees when I pull his sweats down farther.
This time I don’t rush past it. I can’t.
I stop.
My fingers stay curled in the damp waistband while I stare, heat blooming low in my stomach. He’s bigger than I let myselfimagine. Thick, heavy, flushed with want, the length of him standing hard under the steam. For a long moment all I can do is look. My pulse stammers. My mouth goes dry. The shower hisses behind him, water streaking over the tile. He stands there bare and bruised, chest rising and falling as he watches my face change.
Feeling his gaze on me, I can’t stop staring.
The moth tattoo at his hip only makes it worse somehow. That soft, private ink. That confession. That history. All of it right there beside the hard, raw proof of what I do to him. It hits all at once, the memory, the desire… the shock, until my breath leaves me in a shallow little exhale I don’t mean to make.
His thumb rubs my cheek.
“Octavia,” he says quietly, strain in it now, a thread pulled too tight.
Blinking up at him, still kneeling, I hold his sweats, the expression on his face enough to make my stomach tighten even more. He looks wrecked by the way I’m looking at him, like my silence is touching him just as much as my hands have.
So I lean in, gently kissing the moth.
My lips press to the ink like I’m honoring something sacred, the reaction in him immediate. Catching his breath sharply, his fingers flex against my face, his stomach tightening under my mouth.
Then I kiss lower.
Not all at once. Not greedily. I let the moment drag, pressing my mouth to the hard line of his lower stomach, before moving just beside it, then finally to the thick length of him, tasting nothing but the heat of his skin and the steam collecting there. The kiss is slow enough to feel private in a way that almost embarrasses me. Hearing the sound that leaves him, low and rough, it goes straight through me.
His hand slides into my hair.
Not pushing. Just there. Holding, while shaking a little.
Kissing him again, more firmly this time, his other hand slams against the wet tile behind him, his head tipping back for a second. The sight of that, Silas trying and failing to hold himself together while I kneel in front of him, sends a fresh rush of heat through me.
Then he moves.
Fast.
He kicks the sweats the rest of the way off, shoving them aside, catching me under the arms before I can even brace. In one swift motion he drags me up to standing, backing us both under the spray. Warm water crashes over us instantly, soaking me, turning his dark hair nearly black as it slicks back from his face. He doesn’t give me time to adjust. He’s already kissing me again, mouth hot and desperate under the water, hands roaming bare skin like he can’t decide where to touch first.
Feeling him against me now with nothing in the way, the full, hot weight of him presses to my stomach as he pins me lightly against the tile. My breath catches hard enough that he feels it. One of his hands slides down my spine, fingers spreading at my hip as his mouth tears from mine, dragging along my jaw.
He is about to say something.
Or do something.
I don’t know which, because a knock cracks through the bathroom door.
It hits the room like a gunshot.
We both freeze.
The water keeps pouring over us. My hands are still on his shoulders. His body is still pressed hard against mine, slick with steam and heat. For one suspended second neither of us breathes.
