Page 65 of Silas

“I’m not afraid of you,” she repeats. She touches her forehead to mine. “I feel safe with you.”

Her hair is coming loose from the braid she keeps it in, wisps drifting across her cheek and forehead and draping across her eyes. I touch my middle finger to her cheekbone, tracing an arc up over her temple and behind her ear. When I go to remove my hand, she wraps her thin, strong, cool fingers around my wrist, keeping my hand at her face, palm to her cheek. I see her tongue slide over her lips, her chest and shoulders lift and fall with a slow, deep breath. I feel movement ghosting over the blanket between our bodies—her hand slipping upward. I hold my breath. I shouldn’t be nervous, my heart shouldn’t be slamming in my chest like I’ve just sprinted a mile.

Her fingertips brush my stubble at the corner of my jaw just beneath my earlobe, then travel along my jawline to my chin. My lungs seize, my heart skips a beat. My skin feels like it’s stretched too tightly over my bones, tingling and prickling as electricity sizzles through me at her touch.

I close my eyes and exhale slowly, shakily. Her touch is so tender it almost hurts. So hesitant. She touches my cheekbone, traces the arch of my eyebrow. The length of my nose. She brushes the pad of her thumb across my lips. I can’t explain what impulse rules me at that moment: my lips part, and I seize the end of her thumb in my teeth, ever so gently, just for an instant.

She sucks in a sharp, shocked breath.

I release her thumb, but only to press an infinitesimally soft kiss to the pad.

This is the most intimate moment I’ve ever shared with anyone in my life. The sliver of moonlight lancing through the parted curtain is silver, like her eyes. The light illuminates her porcelain skin, burnishing her auburn hair with a glinting sheen.

Fuck, I want to kiss her.

Don’t.

Don’t.

I feel my hand acting on its own, slowly freeing her hair from the braid and combing my fingers through it till it’s loose. I cup the back of her head, keeping our foreheads pressed together. Our faces are so close her eyes seem almost like one, yet I can’t look away, can’t close my eyes, can’t breathe.

Don’t kiss her, you fool.

I’m a fool, and I kiss her.

la petite mort

Naomi

His lips are soft and warm and wet, barely touching mine. My whole body shakes, trembling like a dead leaf in a long fall wind. Yet I don’t pull away.

He’s kissing me. Silas is kissing me.

Jerry never kissed me. He used me to satiate his needs, but there was never even the slightest hint of affection or tenderness or passion. Only possession.

I don’t know what to do. My heart is racing, pounding in my chest. I can’t breathe, but his breath is in my lungs, on my lips, against my teeth. His hand is gentle and strong at the back of my head, fingertips pressing into my scalp, cupping me to him. He tilts his head slightly, changing the angle, and our mouths fuse more closely together; the warmth and the wetness of his mouth send a thrill rocketing through my entire being, potent and wild, expanding inside me until kissing Silas is all there is in this world. His mouth, mine. His breath, mine.

I scrape my palm over his jaw, across the rough, golden-red stubble. My lungs scream in protest, forcing me to suck in a shaky, whimpering breath.

“Shit, Naomi, I…” Silas whispers.

Before I know what I’m doing, I dive back in, returning to the kiss, to his mouth, to the damp heat of his lips on mine. I splay my fingers, touching his jawline and earlobe and the shell of his ear. I tilt and press in, deepening the kiss.

A deep, leonine growl rumbles through him from deep in his chest, and his arm, the one pinned beneath him and between our bodies, snakes under my neck and curls around me, and then he rolls to his back, taking me with him.

Oh god, oh god, I’m pressed all along his big hard body, every inch of me against him. His chest rises as he sucks in a breath, pausing the kiss without removing his lips from mine, and his belly is against mine and my hips press into his and I feel the thick length of him at my center.

Oh god, oh god. My skin is on fire, and I whimper another breath, overwhelmed and overcome. I’ve never felt this before. Nothing like this. Nothing.

His arms cradle me, shelter me. One of his hands buries into my hair at my nape, clutching gently yet firmly, and his other arm is slanted down across my back where his hand cups my hip. His touch is at once strong and unbreakable yet infinitely gentle. I feel safe, held by him like this.

I pant a quick pair of breaths, and then his mouth delves down onto mine and now his lips part and the kiss deepens, and I’m drowning in the kiss, soaring in it. In him. In this beautiful, unexpected, amazing experience.

I feel…wanted.

Treasured.

Safe.