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.