Page 96 of Where Your Scars Meet Mine
He does not flinch.
He does not let go.
His mouth leaves mine by a breath.
Not enough to feel like distance. Just enough that I can pull in air that still tastes like him, enough that I can see what the kiss did to him. His lips are swollen. His breathing is ragged. His hair is wrecked beneath my hands, and his arms are still locked around me, one under my thighs, the other spread hard across my back, like letting go is not an option he trusts himself with.
I am still wrapped around his waist. Still pressed against the hard line of him through his sweats. Every pulse of his breath shifts me against him. Every shift reminds me what almost happened downstairs, what is still happening now, just in a different form. The bathroom door is solid against his back, holding him in place. Somehow that makes this feel even more dangerous, as though the whole world has narrowed down to his body, my body, and the impossible weight of everything between them.
His forehead falls to mine again.
His eyes close for a second. I feel the tremor that passes through him before he gets it under control. His hand at my back spreads wider, fingers flexing once, almost like he needs to check that I’m really here.
Then he opens his eyes and looks at me.
There is no shield left in that look. No sarcasm, no distance, no sharp edges polished up to hide the hurt beneath them. Just him. Raw in the worst, truest way. Wanting...terrified…wrecked open by both.
“If you’re broken,” he whispers, voice rough enough to scrape, “then I’ll spend an eternity trying to put the pieces back together.”
The words don’t just land. They settle into my bones.
I stop breathing for a beat.
My fingers loosen in his hair only to slide down, one hand settling at the back of his neck, the other lifting to his face. Mythumb brushes the line of his cheekbone, then the corner of his mouth, where the heat of the kiss still lives. He doesn’t move away. If anything, he leans into it by the slightest amount.
That tiny surrender somehow wrecks me more than all the hunger did.
He still hasn’t put me down.
The bruises on his chest rise and fall against me with every uneven breath. I can feel how hard he is for me. I can feel the care in the way he holds me. Those two truths side by side, make my chest ache in a place far deeper than want.
My throat tightens. When I speak, my voice barely makes it out.
“You can’t promise me that.”
A flicker moves through his expression, something pained and stubborn all at once. His hand slides up my spine, slower this time, until it cups the back of my neck. His fingers disappear into my hair. He keeps my forehead pressed to his like he’s not ready to lose even that tiny point of contact.
“I know,” he says.
And that is somehow worse. Because he means it anyway.
The room is so quiet I can hear the rough drag of his inhale, the tiny shift of fabric when I move against him, the muted hum of the house around us. Everything else feels far away. The only real thing is him braced against the door, holding me as if I am fragile and necessary at the same time.
My hand slips from his cheek to his jaw. The stubble there scratches lightly at my palm. He watches me with an intensity that feels almost unbearable, not because it is hard, but because it isn’t. Because there is nothing hidden in it now.
I think about all the ways people have touched me in my life. What they took. What they broke. How they made me feel absent from my own body. Then I think about this, about Silas holding me like I am something to be kept safe, even while he is shakingwith hunger, even while he is fighting himself so hard I can feel it.
I swallow against the ache in my throat.
His nose brushes mine when he exhales. “Octavia,” he says, my name sounding wrecked in his mouth, like prayer and pain got tangled together.
I close my eyes for one second, just long enough to feel it.
When I open them again, he is still there. Still looking at me like I am the one thing he doesn’t know how to survive while being the one thing he wants anyway.
So I let my hand rest against his face. I let my legs stay locked around his waist. I let the silence fill with everything neither of us knows how to say next.
And he keeps holding me, like he already meant every word.
