Page 155 of Where Your Scars Meet Mine
Because he’s right.
Kadin wants chaos. Wants us frayed and off-balance and reacting from wounds instead of strategy. Wants Silas to lookviolent and me to look unstable. He wants all of it to become the kind of story people retell badly until it no longer resembles the truth.
My breathing is still too fast. My fists are still clenched. Silas sees all of it.
His gaze drops briefly then, his hold on my chin softening just enough that the shift feels almost like tenderness.
My knuckles are bruised already.
The skin across them is pink and swelling where Kadin’s face met my fist.
Something changes in Silas’s expression when he sees them. The hard edge in him doesn’t disappear, but it parts around something warmer. Taking my hand from where it’s curled uselessly at my side, he lifts it carefully between us.
“Do you have any idea,” he says quietly, “what it did to me to watch you do that for me?”
The question steals what little air I had left.
Before I can answer, he turns my hand, pressing his mouth to my bruised knuckles.
Once.
Then again, slower.
The kiss is gentle enough to break me…reverent enough to make my stomach flip in a completely different direction than rage.
“Silas,” I breathe, because that’s all I have for a second.
His eyes lift to mine over my hand, dark and intent, still carrying the echo of everything he didn’t do to Kadin because he had to drag me away first.
“You stood in front of everyone and let them see whose side you were on,” he says. “You hit him for me.”
My throat tightens.
“He had it coming.”
“He did,” Silas says. “That’s not the point.”
Brushing his thumb on the inside of my wrist, slow and steady, I can feel the shift in the room beginning already, the anger between us changing temperature, becoming something that makes my heart skip a beat.
The fury in my body doesn’t disappear. It melts.
Into heat.
Into the ache of still being too full of him from last night, from the bathroom, from the couch, from every moment since where he has looked at me like I matter more than the world knows what to do with.
“Silas, don’t distract me,” I whisper, even though my voice lacks any real conviction. He knows it. His answering smirk shapes into something darker, hungrier. Taking both my wrists, he guides me backward until the edge of the worktable digs into the backs of my thighs.
“That,” he murmurs, leaning in so close his breath warms my lips, “is exactly what I’m going to do.”
Before I can argue, his mouth crushes mine with a desire sharpened by what just happened in the hallway. Anger he didn’t spend on Kadin pours into the kiss, focused and possessive. He doesn’t break it as his hands slide down my arms, wrap my waist, and lift me onto the table in one smooth motion. My skirt rides up immediately. The room is dead quiet except for the hum of lights and our ragged breathing. Locked door. No witnesses. Just him and the fury he’s determined to kiss out of me.
He palms my thigh, pushing higher, fingers dragging my skirt to my hips. My panties cling damp against heat. Groaning into the kiss, his thumb traces my pulse. “You know what he saw?” he mutters, lips skimming my jaw. “His own damn nightmare. A girl who won’t flinch. Looked like he’d piss himself.” Biting my neck, he sucks hard enough to bruise. “That’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”
My legs fall open before I tell them to, his hand sliding between them; fingers pressing against my wet lace, stroking painfully slow. Gasping, he grins against my throat. “Do you know what it did to me? Watching you stare him down? I nearly came just seeing you own him.” Peeling my panties aside, he slips two fingers inside me, knuckle-deep in one thrust, my head hitting the wall as the table creaks. “Fuck, you’re soaked,” he says, voice reverent. “You were thinking of this while you scared him shitless.”
He curls those fingers, rubbing my clit with his thumb, dragging me toward climax with long, relentless pumps. “Silas,” I gasp, nails digging into his shoulders. “Please.”
“Yeah?” He bites my ear, voice filthy. “You want to know what happens to girls who make cowards tremble?”
