Silas

  in front of me.

  Moving my hands up his thighs, I paused, my mouth an inch away from him, and looked up. "Is this what you wanted?"

  "Shit, Tempest," he said, his voice gravely as he threaded his hands through my hair. "You know I do. You need to stop fucking talking."

  I laughed. "You're bossier than you used to be."

  Silas gripped my hair, and my body responded immediately, the throbbing between my legs more insistent now. "You're mouthier than I remembered," he said.

  "You have no idea," I said, wrapping my hand around the base of his dick and guiding it toward my mouth. I touched his tip to my tongue, tasting the saltiness of his pre-cum where it dripped from his head.

  Silas groaned. "Fuck, Tempest."

  "I haven't even gotten started," I said, licking the length of him before I took him in my mouth. Moving my hand up and down his cock, I began to suck him, harder as I worked.

  He was silent, his eyes half-closed, until I cupped his balls in my hand and rubbed the sensitive area under them. Then, they fluttered open and he looked at me with hooded eyes. "You keep doing what you're doing, bright eyes, and you're going to make me come right in that sassy little mouth of yours."

  I paused at the use of his nickname for me.

  No one had called me that in years.

  Suddenly overwhelmed with emotions I couldn’t explain, I pulled back from him.

  Silas looked down at me. “Fuck, you think I didn’t remember?”

  “I don’t know.” I thought I’d forgotten. Or I’d tried to put it out of my head, the same way I’d half-heartedly tried to forget everything else about him.

  He pulled me to my feet and drew me against him. "I couldn’t forget,” he said, then softly hummed a few bars of the song, the words I’d memorized a long time ago, this song about seeing someone for the first time. It was playing in this coffee shop where we’d gone on our first official date - First Day of My Life. Sitting across from him, nervous in the awkward silence, I'd said I liked the words; the band was Bright Eyes, and the nickname had stuck, just between us.

  I touched my hand to my mouth, shook my head. Why the hell did a silly little nickname make me feel so damn...nostalgic?

  Silas’ hand came up to mine, and he pulled my fingers away from my mouth, then drew the inside of my wrist against his lips before he dragged them up the inside of my forearm. The act made me shiver. Moving both palms up my arms to my shoulders, he hesitated at the straps on my dress, then slid his hands around my back, finding the zipper. When it stuck, he stopped, spinning me around so that my back faced him, and tugged harder. “Is this some trick chastity dress or what?” he asked.

  He kissed my neck, distracting me to no end while he tried the zipper again. “I’m going to rip this goddamned dress right off you in the next two seconds if it doesn't come undone,” he said, before the zipper finally gave way and the dress dropped to the floor.

  And then Silas’ hands were on me, covering me, traveling up the sides of my hips, over the flesh of my ass he’d playfully smacked before, and across my back. I couldn’t help but let out a moan at his touch.

  With him standing behind me and my eyes closed, I was transported to being seventeen again, back when his touch was the most familiar thing in the world. It was like returning to the one place I’d lived that felt like a home to me. Being touched by the only person who’d ever felt like home.

  “Please, Silas,” I whispered.

  He slid his hands around me, cupped my breasts, his erection pressed firmly against the flesh of my ass. “I knew you could say please.”

  I groaned. The shithead had been waiting for me to beg him. “Stop screwing around and just fuck me already,” I said.

  He made a sound that was something between a laugh and a roar. Gripping my wrists, he yanked them down to the small of my back and pushed me closer toward one of the windows that overlooked the city. He pulled my arms up roughly, pinning my palms against the window above my head.

  Then he ran his hands down my arms from my fingertips to my shoulder, kissing my ear and then my neck, the roughness of his five o' clock shadow against my skin making every movement even more delicious. He reached between my legs, then drew back his fingers. “Shit, you’re wet,” he said, his voice guttural.

  “Of course I am,” I said. “I’m begging you to fuck me over here.”

  “Well, I’ll have mercy on you then. You won’t have to beg anymore.” He pressed his erect cock against my entrance, and then stopped. “Shit. Hang on. Condom.”

  I turned to look at him over my shoulder. “I don’t have any. You have some, right?”

  “I don’t - I mean...” He stopped, shaking his head. “Jesus Christ, Tempest, I’m not exactly having a lot of sex, all right?”

  He sounded exasperated, and I couldn’t help but hide a smile. It’s not like I had sex lately. Lately meaning the last seven years since I’d last seen Silas.

  I was aware that was fucking ridiculous. Ludicrous. I was a grown woman.

  But it was complicated. I didn't intend to not have sex with anyone else. I just never found anyone else. I was Silas’ first, and he had ended up being my only.

  It was like coming full circle.

  But I didn’t tell him there’d been no one else.

  “I’m on the pill, and I’m clean,” I said. “Are you?”

  “I’m clean, Tempest,” he said. “And it’s been a while since I’ve had sex.”

  Not as long as it had been for me.

  “Well,” I said, returning my hands to where he’d put them on the window. “What are we waiting for, then?”

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  I arched my ass out toward him. “Stop asking questions and put your cock in me, before I shut your mouth up another way.”

  “Are you threatening to shut me up by sitting on my face?" he whispered, his mouth close to my ear. I felt him tease my entrance with his cock. "I think I might like that way of shutting me up."

  “Another time,” I said. “Right now, I want you inside me.”

  He stopped at my entrance, taunting me with his hardness. “Tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Tell me how you want me, Tempest.”

  My body responded with a gush of wetness at the thought. “I want to feel you,” I said.

  “Like this?” he asked, sliding himself inside me inch by inch, at an excruciatingly slow pace. “You want to feel my hard cock inside you?”

  I moaned at the welcome intrusion and then again when he started moving, slowly at first, then gaining momentum. He kneaded my breasts, his thumbs circling around my nipples, the sensitivity heightening my arousal. I moaned his name over and over as he built up a rhythm, plunging his bare cock inside me as deep as it could go.

  We'd never done this, completely unprotected, skin against skin, even as teenagers. So I guess this was another first time with him.

  “Oh God, Silas,” I called out, my body responding to his touch. I felt like he was taking me higher and higher.

  He grasped a handful of hair, pulling my head back and holding me tight against him as he thrust inside me and kissed my ear. When he spoke, the warmth of his breath on my ear had me so far gone I couldn’t think about anything except being melded to him.

  His touch.

  His lips.

  His cock.

  Everything was a blur of sensation.

  “You are so tight, Tempest,” he said, thrusting into me harder. Letting go of my hair, he gripped the sides of my waist, my ass pressed so tightly against him that I couldn't think about being apart from him.

  "Silas," I cried out. Every cell in my body was on fire with his touch. My palms against the cool window, I closed my eyes, shutting out everything else except him and me.

  Silas' touch, his breath, the heat of his body... those were the only things that mattered.

  I rode the wave of pleasure higher and higher, until it flowed through my body to the tips of my
fingers and toes.

  Close to my ear, Silas' voice cut through everything. "Come with me, bright eyes," he said, his voice gravelly. "I want to feel you come on me."

  I was already so close, but his words pushed me over the edge, and from somewhere outside myself, I heard my voice crying out his name over and over as I came, the explosion of pleasure so intense I thought I would lose my breath. Silas thrust inside me once, twice, three times, each time deeper than the last, and then crashed against me, flooding me with his seed.

  Afterward, he clung to my breasts, his face nuzzled against the side of my neck, murmuring my name. We stood there like that for what seemed like forever, my heart thumping wildly. Silas' chest was pressed up against my back, rising and falling quickly as he regained his breath. After a while, he smoothed away strands of hair on the back of my neck and kissed me, the gesture sending a ripple of pleasure through my body that was almost too much to bear.

  "Tempest," he said, his voice soft.

  "Yeah." There was nothing else to say.

  It was awkward as we padded around the bathroom, cleaning ourselves up, no longer distracted by the haze of desire. It shouldn't be awkward, I thought, feeling strangely disappointed. Had I thought things were going to magically fall into place, just because we'd had sex?

  Walking past me in the bedroom, Silas smacked my ass, the gesture jolting me out of my thoughts. He grabbed my arm and pulled me against him, his lips brushing mine lightly, not kissing me. Regina Spektor played Samson on the stereo, and I began to hum the song, as Silas nuzzled his face against mine and swayed softly to the music. He didn't say anything, and I let him hold me as we danced naked in the hotel room.

  Dancing with him felt sad. I should feel happy, I thought.

  But being with him didn't feel like hello.

  It felt like goodbye.

  Lying in bed, I ran my hands through Tempest's hair, my thoughts all over the place. I didn't know what the fuck to think about what was happening between us. She was a ghost from my past I never thought I'd see again. And now, not only seeing her again, but touching her, fucking her...lying here, holding her.

  My brain couldn't begin to process that shit.

  I didn't know what the hell to say to her. There was so much that had gone between us.

  She stirred beside me. "How have you been, Silas?"

  I exhaled heavily. It was the kind of question you get asked at a high school reunion and answer with some bullshit about all the things you're doing, brag about your promotion and your leggy blonde wife and three gorgeous kids.

  I didn't have an impressive response.

  How did I explain what she'd done to me when she left?

  "I'm good," I said.

  "Good," she said. "That's good."

  I was silent.

  "I wasn't good," she said. "For a while. Things weren't good."

  No, I thought. They were shit when you left.

  "Your parents?" I asked. "Are they around?"

  She laughed, the sound bitter. "Somewhere."

  "You don't know?"

  Tempest shrugged. "We had a falling out, after we ran from West Bend," she said. "They needed to lay low. I wanted to stay somewhere, finish senior year. I didn't want to grift anymore. I threatened to turn them in to the cops and they kicked me out."

  "Jesus, Tempest," I said, my hand paused.

  She took my palm, turned her face into it. "I know," she said. "I shouldn't have done something like that."

  "Something like what?"

  "Threatened to turn them in," she said. "It was the ultimate betrayal."

  I slid up to a sitting position, pulled her up against me on the pile of pillows stacked at the head of the bed. "They were the ones dragging you all over the country and raising you like a criminal," I said. "You were seventeen. They were the ones who kicked you out."

  I couldn't fucking understand the way her parents used her. How the hell was she supposed to do grow up to be anything except a criminal, if they'd raised her that way?

  Tempest turned to face me on the bed and tucked her legs underneath her. "It's a grifter thing," she said. "You don't turn someone else in. And family..."

  "But you didn't turn them in," I said.

  "I threatened to," she said. "And I was serious. I would have. I think I would have turned them in and watched them go to prison. It was wrong. I was angry and hateful and I wanted to hurt them for taking me away from West Bend."

  Away from me. I knew that's what she meant.

  "So what happened?"

  "They left," she said. "Hit the road. Disappeared."

  "Without you."

  Tempest nodded. "Poof," she said. "Gone. I've put out feelers, tracked them here and there, just to keep tabs on them. I wanted to make sure they were okay. My mother sent me postcards a few times. I don't know how she found me. I guess she's keeping tabs on me just the same as I am on her.”

  I reached out and cupped her face with my hand, my palm resting on her cheek. Running my thumb along her chin, I said, "Why the hell didn't you just come back to West Bend?"

  Why the hell didn't you come back to me?

  Tempest bit her lower lip, and I ran the pad of my thumb over her lip where she'd pulled it between her teeth. "Back to you?" she asked. "You hated me. And your mother had a point. You were going to wind up getting a college scholarship. You had everything going for you to get the hell out of West Bend. You didn't need me holding you back, getting you in trouble when I stole stuff from someplace or conned the wrong person."

  "Tempest," I began.

  "No," she said. "Don't give me some bullshit about that not being true. It's exactly what would have happened. I would have ruined you." She shrugged away from my hand and looked down at the bed. "I would have, and you know it."

  I wanted to tell her that she ruined me anyway. When she was gone, I had nothing left. For years, that's how I lived. As if I had nothing to live for.

  I was angry at the goddamned world.

  But she silenced me before I could say anything, climbing onto my lap and pressing her lips against mine.

  We didn't speak after that. Instead, she slid onto my cock and we found a gentle rhythm as she wrapped her legs around my waist and rode me until we finally came together in a blinding explosion.

  When she came, I didn't take my eyes off her. I tried to memorize her expression, to etch it onto my brain, save it in my memory so that I could retrieve it in the future.

  I knew what was happening between us couldn't last.

  This moment was fleeting.

  Everything was.

  When I woke, sunlight was streaming through the windows and bathing the room in its golden light. Beside me, Silas pressed his body against mine. When I moved, he murmured something and pulled me tighter against him.

  Lying in bed like this with him was a first. When we were teenagers, it was frantic coupling in an abandoned hunting cabin or outside on a blanket under the stars. Never like this.

  It was nice. But at the same time, the bitter sweetness of it broke my fucking heart.

  Silas slid his hand down the side of my hip, nuzzled his face against my neck. "Good morning."

  "Good morning."

  Silas ran his hand over my hip, his erection pressed into me. My body immediately responded, my nipples hardening as he brushed his hands over my breasts. "Tempest," he said, his hand moving back