pads of his fingers inside me pressing against that most sensitive place.
"Silas...you...should...stop."
He paused. "Do you want me to stop?" he asked. "Be damned sure about that."
No. That wasn't what I wanted.
What did I want again? I pressed against his hand.
"That's a no, then," he said. "You want me to keep going."
"Yes," I said.
But he didn't move. Instead, he ran his tongue over my earlobe, breathed heat against me. "Say it, then."
"Yes. Keep going," I said, my voice nearly a whine.
He made a clucking sound with his tongue. "You really need to learn manners and courtesy," he said. "Ask me nicely."
I laughed, turned my face to meet him, my lips grazing his. "You're joking."
He rolled his thumb over my clit. "Hardly," he said. "What do you want, Tempest? If you want me to keep going, you should say it - please, Silas, bring me to the edge, make me come right here, on your fingers."
I opened my mouth, my head clouded by desire. God, it would be so easy, so incredibly easy, to just say please. To beg Silas, the way he wanted me to.
But fuck that arrogant son of a bitch.
"No," I said, my eyes trained on his. "You know I'm not that kind of a girl."
"The kind who says please?" he asked.
"The kind who begs," I said, coming to my senses. Who the hell did Silas think he was, waltzing back into my life, grabbing me by the scruff of the neck, and telling me what to do? Telling me he was going to fuck me senseless if I just asked him politely?
The corners of Silas' mouth turned up. His fingers still lodged firmly inside me, he leaned close to me, kissed me on the lips, this time gently, taking my lower lip between his teeth and tugging at it before letting it go.
Then he slid his fingers from between my legs, and brought his hand to his mouth. Slowly, he ran his tongue from the base of his fingers to the tips. "You taste exactly the same."
I flushed, a mixture of sexual frustration and irritation at Silas for his arrogance. For his damn game playing. And irritation at myself, for the way that, when he said the word taste, the image of him naked, lying back as I took him in my mouth, flashed in my mind.
I couldn't help but wonder if he tasted the same.
And the fact that I was wondering pissed me off.
"I should let you get back to your friends," I said. Meanwhile I needed to go take a cold shower. I winced at the throbbing between my legs.
Something that looked like surprise flitted across his face, and I felt a sense of smug satisfaction. Did he think I was really going to cave and beg him to do me right here? Now that his touch wasn’t distracting me anymore, the idea seemed stupid. Silas had always been cocky.
"Yeah," he said. "It's been an...interesting...reunion."
He stepped back, and I remembered something. I reached for my purse on the nearby table "Wait."
Silas paused. "What?"
"Here." I pulled out the medal, the decision impulsive, before I had the chance to reconsider. It had served its purpose - it was a reminder of what had been between us, a long time ago. But it wasn't lucky.
We hadn't been lucky together. We’d been exactly the opposite.
Silas turned it over in his hand, his brow furrowed. "My state championship medal," he said.
I nodded. "I figured you knew I'd taken it."
He looked up at me. "You kept it."
I laughed. "Did you think I pawned it or something?"
He stood still, unmoving. "No. Yeah. Hell, you took my savings. Why wouldn’t you pawn it?”
"First of all,” I said, “It’s a wrestling medal. It’s not made of gold. Second, what are you talking about? I never took your savings."
"When you left," he said. "You ran off with the money I'd saved up to get out of West Bend. Taking the state championship medal, that was just the icing on the cake."
I shook my head slowly. "No," I said. "The medal was the only thing I took. I felt badly enough about that. And about the leaving. I wanted to tell you in person, but I left the note instead. Your mother -"
Silas interrupted me. "What note?"
"I left a note in your room the day my parents and I left town."
"No," Silas said. "There was no note. Stuff was just gone."
"Didn't your mother tell you?" I asked reflexively before I realized. "No. Of course she didn't. She wouldn't have."
Silas looked at the medal in his hands, then back up at me, his expression hard to read. "All this time," he said. "I thought you'd just taken off."
"You thought I’d taken off without saying anything?" I asked. "And stealing your savings? I knew what that money was for. It was to get out of West Bend, to get away from your father."
He looked at me. "Us," he said. "It was supposed to be for us."
I swallowed, my throat suddenly tight. "Yes," I said. "And for us."
"We were going to get married," he said, turning the medal over and over in his hand.
"You don’t have to remind me,” I snapped. “It’s not like I forgot.”
I couldn't forget. Even if it had been a lifetime ago.
"I hated you," Silas said. "For a long time, I hated you."
I nodded, blinking, biting my lower lip to distract myself from the tears that threatened to well up in my eyes. "I know."
"Why did you keep it?" he asked, stepping forward again, closer to me.
"Luck," I said. It was the automatic response I gave when Iver and Emir and Oscar had asked me about it, immediately followed by the honest answer. "I needed a reminder. Of you. Of us."
Silas looked at me for a long moment, his gaze steady. For a moment, it was like he was that same boy again, the one I had loved before. "Okay," he said. "A reminder of us…”
But his words weren’t wistful. They held all the promise of what he wanted to do to me, and I shivered. Standing on my tip-toes in my high heels, I brushed my cheek against his. "Take me somewhere," I whispered. "Somewhere that's not here."
"Ask me nicely," he said.
"Please."
He made the same sound again, that low growl that suggested he was about to bend me over and take me right here. "Let's go," he said, his hand on the small of my back.
We walked back inside, through the bar, Silas' friends staring at us as we passed. "Lucky son of a bitch," one of them said, whistling low under his breath.
Turning my head, I winked over my shoulder as we passed them.
"Excuse me." The maitre'd stopped us as we left. "Ms. Jameson."
"Yes?" I was distracted by thoughts of Silas and what I wanted him to do to me.
"The gentlemen who were with you earlier?"
I glanced across the restaurant at the empty table. "Yes?" I asked. "They left?"
He nodded. "They said that you would be taking care of everything.”
I laughed. "Of course they did," I said. "Add the bill to the room, if you would, please."
"Of course," he said. "And, Ms. Jameson, they said to tell you goodbye."
"I see," I said.
Silas' hand was on my arm as we left the restaurant. "Is everything okay?"
If you leave a group of grifters alone for thirty minutes, they'll find a way to stick you with the bill, even if you're one of them. "Everything is just fine," I said. "I believe we have a suite to ourselves."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SILAS
We paused outside Tempest’s hotel room door, and I wondered if she was going to reconsider and tell me to get lost. But she didn’t. Instead, she looked up at me, her eyes wide, and did that thing with her tongue again, the thing where she ran it over her bottom lip. And all I could think about was bruising her lips with mine.
I remembered the way her tongue felt on my skin, how her sweet mouth felt wrapped around my cock. The thought sent warmth flowing through my body, rendered my dick immediately hard.
"Here it is," Tempest said, her voice breathy. That breathy voice
was a flashback to being seventeen again, when she straddled me as we sat on a rock down by the creek, her breath warm against my ear while she rode me, her moans echoing through the outdoor space.
I reached for her waist and pulled her to me, pressing my hardness against her. When she inhaled, her chest rose, and I looked down at the dress, cut so low on her cleavage that it gave me more than a hint of what was underneath.
Hint, hell.
I remembered everything that was underneath that dress like it was yesterday. My hands had her body memorized- every curve, every angle.
Except, of course, that was when we were seventeen. Everything about her had changed. She wasn't the same girl I fell in love with back then. No, the Tempest I was holding now was all grown up.
And she'd kept that goddamned medal all this time.
I didn’t know what the hell to think about her. I hated her back then for leaving the way she did. I hated her for doing what she'd done, helping her parents with the scam that ripped off the same people in town who already despised my family even before I was associated with her.
She had made things worse for me. She didn't understand that. Or didn't care.
But here she was, in my arms again, all curves and tattoos and sass. And I wanted her.
My hands traveled down the sides of her hips, following the length of her dress until it ended. I took the edge of the material in my hands, then slid my hands underneath it and up around her hips, cupping her curvy ass. When Tempest laughed, it was a sound that was more familiar than anything else in the world. She batted at my hands. "Silas, my dress is up over my ass," she said.
"Oh, is it?" I groped her ass harder. "That's not decent at all."
"Let go of me, before someone comes down this hall."
"Who's coming down this hall?" I asked. "I like this ass. I used to love this ass."
"Well, the entire world doesn't need to see it," she said. But she was grinning.
"Then you'd better hurry up with that key card," I said. "Because I’m sure as hell not going to stop touching it."
Tempest laughed again, and the sound made her impossible to resist. Seeing her did something to me. It awakened things in me I thought I'd buried a long time ago.
Her lips parted slightly, and I didn't wait for whatever she was about to say in response. I let go of her ass with one hand and slid the same hand behind her head, pulling her against my mouth. She opened for me, her tongue pressing against mine, moaning into my mouth as she kissed me.
Then, as quickly as the kiss had started, she put her hands on my chest and pushed me away, her lipstick smudged on the edges of her lips, now plumped from the kiss.
“Hold on,” she said. “I have the key card right here.” She fumbled with the clasp on her purse, and I slid my hands back to where they had been, caressing her ass. “Hands off, Silas.”
I grabbed the key card from her fingers and waved it near the door handle, swinging it open. Squatting down beside her, right there in the hallway, I pulled the skirt up over her ass, my arms wrapped around her thighs, holding her in place.
Tempest squealed. “What the hell are you doing, Silas?”
“I’m not sure I remember your ass,” I said. “It’s been a long time. I need a closer view.”
“Not here,” she said.
“You’re right.” Before she could protest again, I leaned into her, standing up with her draped over my shoulder, her rear near my head, skirt bunched up to her waist.
“Silas Saint,” she said. “Put me down.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I have a better view now.”
“Put me down.”
But I didn’t. Instead, I smacked her ass cheek as I walked inside the room, then grabbed a handful of flesh. “You used to like it when I touched you like that.”
“We were kids,” she said.
“I’m sure that's all it was,” I said. "We were just horny teenagers, right?" I ran my hand down her curvy cheek, still on my shoulder, then touched my finger between her legs, feeling her wetness. She squirmed at my touch.
“Silas, put me the fuck down now,” Tempest said.
But I ignored her as I walked through the suite, past the sitting room and the grand piano, noting the ridiculous opulence. “Jesus, Tempest. You're living large, aren't you? Who the hell stays in a hotel suite with a grand piano?”
“It’s a business expense,” she said.
“Business expense,” I said. The words came out bitter, even though I didn't mean them to sound that way. Put it out of your head, I told myself. You don’t need to ask about however the hell Tempest gets her money. This is just a fling. This is revisiting the past, getting beyond it, and letting go.
When I reached the bedroom, I deposited her onto the bed. “At your service, my lady,” I said, in the best butler voice I could muster. I added a gesture and a bow, just for the hell of it.
I was trying to lighten my mood, but failing. It just made the moment more awkward.
“At my service?” she asked. She turned onto her side and propped up her head with her hand. A piece of hair fell across her face and she tucked it behind her ear. “If that’s the case, you’d better get to work.”
"Is that right?" I asked, standing beside the bed, drinking her in with my eyes. She lay with one leg crossed over the other, the fabric of her dress riding up on her thigh, covering the ass I'd just smacked. I wondered if I'd left a handprint on her flesh, and my cock stirred at the thought.
I crossed to the other side of the room and tugged at the sides of my shirt, intending to toss my clothes on the overstuffed chair in the corner. But I stopped at the sight of the chair.
Shit. That fucking chair probably cost more than the purse from my fight.
I sighed. I needed to put those kinds of thoughts out of my head. I had a girl lying here on the bed - not a girl, the girl, the girl I would have given everything in the fucking world to hold on to back when we were kids, the girl I'd have done anything for - and here she was, soon-to-be naked, lying on a bed in a fancier hotel than I'd ever been in in my whole damn life.
And all I could think about was how she'd made the money that paid for the damn room.
Shit, Silas, what the hell is wrong with you?
Trigg and Abel would kick me in the nuts for what was going through my head right now.
Behind me, I heard music come on, soft over the speakers, and I turned to see Tempest leaning over to replace a remote on the table beside the bed.
"What?" she asked, sitting up on the bed. "You have a look."
"I don't have a look."
"You have a look, and it's not the same look you had a minute ago, the one that said you were about to pounce on me."
I shook my head. "It’s the whole place, Tempest," I said. "You have a damn piano in your hotel room. Is it always like this?"
Tempest looked down, her hair slipping forward and shielding
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