Page 163 of Relapse

“Don’t move,” I cautioned, before attacking his mouth with mine once more.

Silas grunted, arms falling to his sides as I continued to have my way with his lips. I kept my hands firmly on his shoulders, preventing him from repositioning—preventing him from seeing how badly I was trembling.

I broke from the kiss suddenly, watching with amusement as Silas sighed with displeasure.

“See?” I smirked, though inside, I felt like I was coming apart at the seams. I dragged the back of my hand over my lips, wiping away the traces of saliva, trying to erase the evidence of how desperately I’d kissed him.“I’ve proven my point. I feel nothing.”

His eyes skimmed over my body like he was going to devour me.

“Nothing?” he asked softly, but the determination in his voice made the air surrounding us grow thick with everything I was trying to deny.

“Nothing,” I repeated.

Silas nodded, as if thinking to himself. “Alright then. My turn.”

I swallowed nervously, remembering very distinctly the last time he had used that phrase, and what position I had been in. “What?”

Silas looped his arm around my waist, tugging me flush against him. I felt his muscles through his shirt, his hair dangling down against my face, and even the subtle strain in his pants. It nearly sent me into a mindless frenzy.

“What are you doing?” I asked, breathlessly.

“You said you felt nothing when you kissed me.” Silas’s free hand came to rest on my cheek. “Now, it’s my turn to kiss you. You can let me be the judge of that.”

With his hands steadying my face, I remained motionless as Silas proceeded to kiss me again—slowly, intimately. It was nothing like the frantic way I’d attacked him moments before. He was taking his time, letting the sensual act sink into my skin like ink. He was testing me too. Seeing how long I could pretend before I cracked.

I wanted to pull away. I needed to pull away. But my body betrayed me, staying rooted in place as his lips moved against mine with deliberate patience. Every slow brush of his mouth was a challenge to the lies I’d been spewing. My heart pounded like a war drum within me.

He felt my anxiousness, and pulled back for air.

“Easy,” he whispered. “I don’t want to rush this.”

It was becoming hard not to kiss him back. The movement of his lips on mine excited that part of me that urged me to duplicate the action—that part that had been impaled into my brain, pleaded with me to repeat, to satisfy, to give in to my desires. That same part craved Silas’s attention with a hunger that terrified me. I was at war with myself, caught between the need to surrender and the need to run.

Silas continued, slow and devastating, as if he had all the time in the world to unravel me.

I pressed gently back into him, telling myself I was just maintaining position, just playing along. But the truth was I starved for this. My knees felt weak despite my best efforts to lock them, and the need for more coiled inside of me, alive and impossible to ignore.

I didn’t want him to stop.

His tongue stroked my bottom lip, asking for entrance. Mechanically, my mouth opened, allowing him full access to whatever he desired—because I was weak, because I was addicted, because I wanted this more than anything I’d wanted in the last month of resisting everything.

I watched his face: eyes closed, serene and unwavering in his mission to destroy me.

And suddenly those eyes flew open, snaring me with merciless precision and pulling me under. Averting my gaze was impossible. In his eyes I could see the bounty of depraved desires, a mirror of my own feelings, shooting into me from that one glance like high-powered bullets.

We broke without reason, gasping. Silas’s hand tightened around the nape of my neck.

“Tell me,” he panted. “Tell me that you felt nothing.”

I couldn’t answer. In fact, somehow, my hands had managed to find their way onto his shirt collar, gripping him with a force I hadn’t even realized I used.

“I thought so,” Silas confirmed. “You’ll feel exactly what I do.”

“I—” my voice broke.

His eyes flared. “So stop denying it.”

I hated him for being correct. I hated that my feelings exposed me, and so quickly. I was so scared of what this meant. Because being around him felt dangerously close to a craving. And if I couldn’t resist Silas, I wasn’t sure I trusted myself not to fall back into old habits with drugs.