Silas Read online

  But she smelled so good I just had to taste her. Fruity. Niamh always smelled flowery, of lily of the valley. Cerys was an incense girl through and through. Neither did anything for me. Grace? She smells of vanilla and berries, marshmallows and woman. Tangy and sweet. She smells right. I just wanted to see if she’d taste the same.

  And I love that spot just behind a woman’s ear.

  The skin is so delicate there, the scent of the person so pure. While I stare at the patch of skin I just licked, suppressing the desire to taste her again, taste all of her, I watch her control her breathing and, after a while, she drifts off.

  I wish I could. But that moan still sits in my eardrum, like an itch. That moan! The unashamed request for more. I shiver at the memory and my hard-on twitches, sending contractions up my spine.

  She’s like every fantasy come true. I keep staring at the side of her neck, rising and falling with her breaths, until I can’t lie on this side any longer. It hurts too much.

  Arlo really pounded my front at some point last night. Got me in a tie up and just went to town. I’m pissed off something chronic about that. With myself. He should never ever have got close enough to get me in a clinch in the first place. I was sloppy. If he was any better, he could have had me on the floor. Lucky for me, he is still nowhere good enough.

  I roll onto my back and Grace whimpers in her sleep. She shuffles backwards until her arse rests against my hips. As if we were already lovers, as if we had been lovers for a long, long time. It would be so easy to roll over again, pull her pants down and explore her just a little. Run my hand down her crack, upwards, through her slit, finger her from behind until she bucks in my hand and then let my dick follow.

  I know she wouldn’t protest. I bet she’s slick as fuck already.

  But she’s too good for that.

  Too good for the shit show that is my life.

  The thought is a sobering one. But not sobering enough for my cock. If I ever want to get to sleep, I need to get him off. It’s risky, I know, but I’m too tired to get up again and I can make myself come without a sound. And without ejaculating. A neat trick I learned from sharing a room. From before I needed to be on my own with the door and windows locked.

  Curiosity grips me. I wonder if I can get there with her next to me or if I’ll clam up.

  I turn on my other side, away from her, and slip my hand under the elastic of my jogging bottoms. I’m commando in there and I grip the shaft of my dick. I let the pad of my thumb run over the slit. It’s slick with precum and I spread it around the head, pretending it’s her, me entering her.

  Then I squeeze myself even harder and pump my fist rapidly a few times. I’m already at the cusp when I hear her.

  She is moaning in her sleep. A good moan.

  The sound makes me go over the edge before I can grip the base of my dick to make the spunk go inwards and I spill all over my hand.

  And it feels good.

  Healthy.

  Normal.

  While I come down from the high, I hear her breath hitching and she starts shuddering next to me.

  The good kind of shuddering.

  She is having an orgasm in her sleep.

  Grace

  I sleep all through the day and when I wake up, I’m alone in bed.

  As the memory of the night, morning, hits me, I feel mildly ashamed of myself. I’d never done that. Got myself off while someone was sleeping next to me. I’ve never done that masturbating-while-being-watched thing either. Not the kind of show the kind of guys I’ve been with were into. Now I wonder what it would feel like, not just getting off lying next to him, but to have him watch. The idea at least feels interesting, very interesting. But before I can explore the thought a bit further, maybe in the shower, I need a pee and food.

  I’m starving. I realize I haven’t eaten since last night and that was almost a whole day ago. It’s a repetitive theme since I got here. I forget to eat unless Silas feeds me. I get up, slip into my yoga pants, make a pit stop in the bathroom and then pad quietly down the stairs. There are voices coming from the kitchen. Sheena and Silas. It must be very late, or she’s come home from work early.

  “I tell you she is wrong,” I hear her say.

  She sounds exasperated. Like somebody who is telling the truth but isn’t being believed. Silas says something, but it’s too quiet for me to understand.

  “She can’t have seen it because it didn’t happen,” Sheena says, raising her voice, her tone annoyed now. “I did crack my head against the wall, but that was entirely my fault.”

  I stop dead in my tracks a few steps before I reach the bottom of the stairs. I don’t think this is a conversation I want to walk in on. I hear Silas laugh at her words. A sarcastic, joyless sound that makes me realize I have never heard him laugh. Neither like this, nor genuinely.

  “No, really, hear me out,” Sheena carries on.

  She’s gone from annoyed to pleading.

  “He stormed out when I told him that he couldn’t move back in right now. You know, in a huff, like he does. I grabbed his shirt because I didn’t want him to leave. I haven’t seen him in so long and he looked, you know, remorseful. So I thought...anyway, he ripped loose and I fell back against the wall. He didn’t lay a finger on me, Silas, I promise.”

  Silas says something that, again, I can’t hear, but it feels like it’s the end of the conversation. In any case, I decide to carry on walking. They must have heard the toilet flush, so they shouldn’t be that surprised if I appear in the kitchen.

  When a minute later I do, Silas is standing by the kettle, in the process of brewing tea. It’s odd because to my knowledge he avoids caffeine. He’s a bit of a health and fitness freak. No caffeine, no sugar, gym every day. I frown at that thought because my gaze falls onto the clock on the wall and normally that’s exactly where he’d be at this time. Four until six, training. Home for dinner. Out for work. Back sometime between six and seven in the morning.

  He turns and smiles at me standing in the doorway and indicates one of the two mugs of tea he’s been making.

  “Earl Grey?” he asks while he takes the other one and puts it in front of Sheena. “Here you go, Mum.”

  “No, it’s okay. You have your tea, I’ll make my own,” I say.

  He looks at the mug, confused, then at me.

  “This is for you. I don’t drink tea.”

  He picks it up and holds it out for me.

  I smile and come towards him to receive my gift.

  Silas

  Grace comes towards me and takes the mug off me, smiling.

  I have started living for that smile. It’s the best feeling if I can make it happen somehow.

  “Thank you,” she says, and briefly, gently lays her hand on my abdomen in gratitude.

  I try desperately not to but I still flinch in pain when she touches me. I wasn’t half wrong with my prediction. Under my t-shirt there is an artwork of purple bruises crisscrossing my body and even the lightest pressure hurts like hell. My heart stops when I realise she’s noticed. For a moment, her gaze flicks to her hand on my body, and then, as she withdraws it, her eyes find mine. I plead with her silently not to mention anything in front of Mum and somehow, thank fuck, she gets it. She nods ever so slightly then leaves me to take her tea over to the table and sit down opposite Mum.

  “Hi, Sheena,” she says with a big smile. “How come you’re home?”

  “Hi, sleepyhead,” Mum answers, smiling back. “Half day today. I get one of those every so often.”

  Mum blows on her tea and examines Grace thoroughly. I’m not sure if it’s because of what I told her Grace said about what happened or if it’s because she can put two and two together and knows we slept in the same bed, at the same time. Either way, she doesn’t seem to hold it against her because she puts out her hand and strokes once over Grace’s cheek with the back of her fingers. Oddly intimate, I think. I’ve never seen her do anything like that to Kalina. Or any of the other students for that
matter.

  “How are you, ducky? I haven’t really seen you since you took me to the Grand. How’s your stay?”

  Grace blows at her tea and looks at Mum over the rim of her mug.

  “I’m good, thank you. Enjoying myself.”

  “How’s your list coming along?” Mum asks with a smile.

  “Haven’t ticked anything else off yet, but if the weather is nice, I’m aiming for Bramber Castle tomorrow. I just haven’t figured out how to get there. There doesn’t seem to be any public transport?”

  “Ah,” Mum coos. “You’re right, there isn’t any. Silas,” she says to me with a smirk, “why don’t you take Grace in my car?”

  She couldn’t be more obvious if she tried, and I just laugh at her amiably.

  “Go have a bath, Mum,” I tell her, and she gets up from the chair.

  “That’s me told,” she says to Grace, collects her mug and leaves the kitchen.

  Grace

  We wait until Sheena has shut the bathroom door noisily and we can hear her running the bath above our heads. Only then do we look at each other. All the light-heartedness Sheena brought to the table evaporates in an instant.

  Silas is still standing by the kettle and I haven’t forgotten the flinch I felt when I touched his abs.

  It wasn’t a good flinch. It wasn’t a ‘get off, you’re too close’ flinch either.

  It was a flinch of pain.

  I get up slowly from the chair, maintaining eye contact as I approach as if he were a wild animal. Not that I know anything about approaching wild animals. The wildest thing we have in DC are eastern gray squirrels. But it feels like that. Like I can’t look away or he’ll bolt. When I stand in front of him, I can sense his impulse to retreat, but he has nowhere to go, the counter is at his back.

  I grab the hem of his t-shirt and start carefully pulling it up.

  “Grace,” he hisses as his hands shoot down to hold mine still and stop me in my tracks.

  “Show me,” I say quietly. “Or I’ll tell.”

  He throws his head back, shuts his eyes, takes his hands off mine and lets me continue. I lift the shirt as gently as I can, and what I reveal makes me gasp.

  His torso is one big bruise, there is barely any normal colored skin between the purple smears. It’s worrisome but there is also something oddly fascinating about it at the same time. I’ve never seen anything like it.

  While my left hand still holds up the fabric, I can’t help but touch the fingers of my right to the marks. Lightly, so as not to hurt him. He shivers as I run them down, past his navel, and then swipe sideways across his v-cut. I’m lost in my exploration when suddenly he snatches my hand up, holding it firmly in his, bunching up my fingers.

  It’s only now that I see his knuckles are also discolored. I look up and see that he’s opened his eyes and is looking down at me, his copper-brown irises burning with intensity. I can barely look at them, and it’s when I avoid them for a second that I spot another dark patch of hemorrhage. The red mark I saw the night before has turned into a purple smudge along his jaw. He hasn’t shaved, clever man, so it’s well hidden amid tawny stubble. But it’s there alright. I want to reach up and touch that mark also, but he’s holding on to my hand.

  “Does it hurt when I touch you?” I ask, and he almost imperceptibly shakes his head before he lightly presses his lips to my fingertips as he keeps holding my gaze, fast this time.

  I’m not allowed to skip out and it gives me a sudden rush like no other.

  His eyes are hungry, devouring mine, but in a different way from before. The longer he looks the quicker the current of electricity that courses through my veins pulsates.

  My heart starts pounding in my chest so wildly, I wonder why I can’t hear it on the outside.

  This is different from before.

  Before this, smelling him, watching him, lying next to him went straight to my sex.

  This is deeper, more, everywhere.

  Right now, every nerve ending in my body is on high alert.

  I’m alive. So alive I can barely handle it.

  I need to say something to take some of the heat off or I think I’ll die.

  “What happened?” I ask and get another barely there shake of the head.

  Then his other hand comes up and wraps itself gently around the back of my head. His fingers are warm. He cradles me there while his thumb on my cheek takes leisurely swipes across the skin just in front of my ear.

  It’s the kind of stuff you see in movies but that never happens in real life. Not in my life anyway. My past boyfriends might all have been nice guys. Held my hand, kissed for hours, waited for me to climax before them. Or at least until they thought I’d climaxed. But not one of them ever touched me like this. With reverence. As if I were truly something special. I find myself quivering at the thought, and a smile touches his lips. His gorgeous, kissable lips.

  He leans down and touches his forehead to mine. I can feel his breath fanning my face, and I realize he is shaking just as much as I am. Then he does something so sexy, my knees want to buckle. He runs his nose slowly up and then down along the side of mine. There is something so animalistic yet so loving about it that I can’t help but reach up to him and lay my hands on the side of his throat, his pulse. I want to pin him to me, never to stop what he’s doing right now.

  But he does.

  He stops.

  To slant his head and ghost his lips over mine.

  “This is a terrible idea,” he mumbles against them, and I can feel how part of him is willing himself to retract.

  But I can also sense the other part, the one that is making us both shiver deliciously with the nearness of the other, with the knowledge of what is about to happen. Because there is no way on earth I’m letting him out of this now. I don’t know what his deal is, but right now I don’t give a damn. I need him to carry on or I’ll spontaneously combust. So I let my hands slip around to the back of his neck and he knows he’s lost.

  He kisses me again. And again. Just as softly as before. Until we increase the pressure, simultaneously, no pushing one way or the other. And then, suddenly our mouths are open, our tongues playfully testing each other out. Again, there are no bosses here. Just play.

  Until he takes the lead.

  And then his tongue is everywhere, fucking my mouth, all slick and big, sometimes leisurely, sometimes hard, while one of his hands is still on my neck, steadying me, massaging the base of my skull and the other is on my shoulder, his thumb sweeping over the side of my throat.

  I half come up for air and moan deeply, but he barely lets me breathe before a new onslaught. My insides turn to mush, my pussy keeps clenching around nothing each time his tongue dips in and out of my mouth. Instinctively, I press up against him, my body wanting to feel his erection between us.

  He winces as my stomach pushes into his abs. Shit. I forgot.

  I shuffle away again, and he breaks the kiss, only to whisper against my mouth.

  “Careful,” he mumbles.

  I want to say sorry, but his tongue is wrapped around mine again in an instant.

  I want him so much it hurts. Everywhere. I can feel a climax building. I’ve never come this close to an orgasm just from kissing. I didn’t even think that was possible. I just need a little more.

  As if he’d heard me, the hand that was at the base of my throat starts to travel down, his little finger flicking beneath the neckline of my vest, touching just the top of my breast. I let out a groan and it spurns him on. His tongue goes even wilder, fucking into my throat, deeper than before, more urgent, and then his whole hand cusps my breast. His fingers in my neck hold me still as he flicks the pad of his thumb back and forth over my stiff nipple.

  Again and again.

  Until I break apart.

  Silas

  I feel like the fucking king of the castle.

  I just made her come.

  With a kiss.

  She is still shuddering, and I draw back to watch her
, reluctantly sliding my hand out of her vest and off her boob. Her face is flushed and there is an almost embarrassed smile on it as she opens her eyes and looks around my mum’s kitchen in wonder. Her gaze travels back to me as she bites her bottom lip.

  “Hmm,” she murmurs.

  I lean forward and whisper in her ear.

  “You are amazing.”

  Because she is.

  It makes her smile up at me properly when I lean back again, and then her eyes wander to my hard-as-iron dick between us. I had the decency to sling some briefs on this morning, along with a fresh pair of jogging bottoms, so he’s constrained against my body, but the head has snuck up behind the elastic and I can tell the exact moment she realises it’s peeking out. Her eyes are downcast, fixed on it, and she licks her lips.

  She reaches out but I catch her hand before she can get close and gently bend it away.

  “No. Not now. Not here,” I state hoarsely.

  She frowns at that but accepts my words.

  “When?” she asks simply, her green eyes tearing away from my indecent exposure and boring into mine.

  I pull my jogging bottoms higher to hide him away while I think about my answer. It’s a good question. I don’t know. I’m not sure I can handle this. She is like purgatory and I’m not sure I’m ready for ascension.

  And there is more stuff going on I don’t want her mixed up with. At least not till I know what it is.

  “I’ve got to go to work,” is all I say.

  She cocks her head at that and squints at me doubtfully.

  “You never leave this early.”

  She’s right, I don’t.

  But then I don’t normally get phone calls from Diego in the middle of the day either.

  Grace

  After he leaves the house, I’m lost.

  There was this awkward moment when he came back to the kitchen after he’d changed, just before he went out of the door, and we looked at each other, both thinking we should hug and kiss goodbye. Like a couple. But we didn’t. Because we’re not. We’re...heaven knows what we are. A holiday fling, I guess. All I know is I want more of it.