Page 67 of Silas

I rest my forearms on his chest, lifting up to gaze down at him.

“Please don’t apologize for making me feel…good…for the first time in my whole life.”

His fingers stab into my hair at the back of my head, his other hand resting at my waist, on bare skin.

He lets out a rough sigh. “Naomi, I…”

He doesn’t finish.

“What, Silas?”

“You’re fucking gorgeous. That’s what.”

Heat billows through me. I don’t know what to say, how to react, how to feel.

He takes my silence as disagreement, it seems. “Youare, Naomi. You’re beautiful. You’re fuckingstunning.” He swallows hard, growling a sigh. “I can’t take my eyes off of you. I can’t…I can’t get enough of you.”

“Thank you,” I gasp, choking on embarrassment, overwhelmed, overcome. I can only think one thing, and I can’t stop myself from saying it. “Will you kiss me again? Please?”

It’s hard to ask for anything. Even as I ask it, a frisson of fear bolts through me, fear that he’ll say no. That I’ll wake up and this will all have been a dream, and I’ll be back in the hole, or locked in my room in Jerry’s house.

I’m desperate to feel, to be reminded that this is real. Thathe’sreal. That I’m free, that Silas is here with me, that I’m not alone in the world. That something so beautiful and glorious as the feel of his lips on mine, his hands so gently and reverently caressing my body could be real, and can be mine.

“Ah god, Naomi.”

“What?” I breathe.

“I just…I don’t deserve you.”

“Why not?”

He shakes his head. “Just don’t. I told you, I’m not good.”

“Who is?” I whisper. I run my hands across his jaw. “Please, Silas.Pleasekiss me again. I need to feel…” I shake my head, at a loss for words. “I need to feel.”

“Fuck me,” he growls. “How can I say no when you’re begging like that?”

He takes my mouth again, softly, slowly, gently. Delicately. His mouth soars against mine, and I open to him willingly, desperately.

In the space of a heartbeat, the inferno blazes to life in my belly. I close my eyes and taste his tongue on mine, and the heat slithers down and expands between my thighs and I clutch his hips with my legs…and yet I need something else, something more.

I don’t know what.

My nipples are hard inside my bra, rubbing against the fabric, straining. The heat boils within me.

Silas kisses me slowly—too slowly. Too gently, too chastely.

My hips tilt, pushing down against him, against the hard ridge of him. He growls into my mouth when I do that, and the friction of the movement is… debilitating and delicious and divine. So, I do it again.

The sea of heat roiling in my center responds, pulsating. Thrills shoot through me, down into my toes and out to my fingertips and up into my scalp, causing me to tingle all over.

More.

I need more.

I’m empty inside. The heat, the pressure, the driving urge to move, to seek him, to seek friction, to seek more more moremoremoremore…it feels like insanity.

“Silas,” I plead in a whisper. “Please.”