I move one hand down, tracing over the softness of my belly, down under the waist of my panties until I feel the heat pulsing there.
The kind of heat that only comes from thinking of Silas Hart.
My eyes flutter shut as my fingers push between my lips, sliding wetly across my seam and rolling electrically across my clit. And I think of his hands, because I’ve never been able to forget them.
There’s a saying that you “never forget your first.”
Forget? Hell, I can still feel Silas’s hands on me. Eight years later, I can remember every touch, every kiss, every lick, every caress.
Every thrust.
The moan catches in my throat as I sink a finger inside of me, curling it as I push my hand deeper beneath the cotton of my panties. My breath comes quicker as I stroke that place just inside, letting my thumb brush across the throbbing clit aching for attention.
I force my eyes open, seeing how flushed and how red I am, which only make me blush even deeper of course. My eyes flit to the tattoo, and then move to the ring again, warm against my breast on its little chain.
I step back until I feel the bed behind me. The panties slide down my legs into a heap at my feet before I kick them off and fall back into the bed.
I can remember our first time in this bed.
After months in the cab or the back of his truck, or out on the sand by the breakers on low tide the night we went skinny dipping, we finally had the house to ourselves. My parents were at a conference in Worchester, Stella at college in Boston, Rowan also in Boston doing God knows what he was up to for the three years he spent there. Sierra and Kyle were both at friends’ houses for sleepovers.
The whole house to ourselves.
I remember feeling so nervous, almost more so than the first time. Doing that here in my childhood bedroom felt almost sacrilegious, even if it was in the most sinfully wonderful way. I remember the strange mix of childhood stuffed animals still on the shelves and teenage music posters on the wall, mixed with the very adult feeling of sitting astride Silas Hart riding his perfect cock until I screamed out my climax.
So wrong, so dirty, and so fucking good.
Here in that room again, I can feel my body beginning to clench as I replay the memories. My fingers stroke in and out, my thumb tracing lazy circles around my clit as my breath and my blood pumps higher, hotter, faster.
I remember him spreading my legs and taking me for a second time here in this bed that night - holding me, kissing me, claiming me.
Making me his.
All it takes is one more stroke of my fingers and one more rolling thumb across my clit after that before I’m rocking my hips off the bed and turning my head to bury my scream into the pillow. The memories sizzle through me, the ink on my ribs throbs, and the ring burns like a hot little coal between my breasts a I come.
I lay there after, chewing on my lip and toying with the ring pendant again.
And as hot as it just was reliving my past with Silas, all I can think about is how silly it is that I’ve kept it.
Because again, I’m sure he hasn’t. And again, I’m sure there have been so many women after me that he’s forgotten the memories I still relive as fantasy like some sort of silly girl.
The thought makes me furious, and then even madder that it has that affect on me at all, and I suddenly slide from the bed and skulk across the room to the dresser. I yank on an old softball t-shirt and sleep shorts.
I don’t give a shit what Silas’s done since us. Because that all ended when he left. Let him chase skanky townie girls in townie bars all night, exactly like he was always meant to.
Budweiser and Red Sox games, that stupid vintage pickup truck.
It was a lie I was chasing before, and I’m done doing that.
I’ve grown up.
I slump back into the bed.
Right?
Chapter Twelve
Silas
The jangling ring of my phone wakes me up in the morning, jarring me half off my cot in the back storeroom of O’Donnell’s.
I groan at the aching stiffness in my back as I turn over, only to be immediately confronted with the roaring of the hangover lancing through my head. Gingerly, I swing my legs out of the cot and sit up, wrinkling my face at the half-empty bottle of Irish whiskey sitting on the floor.
For a moment, I’m thrown back to those first few days after leaving Shelter Harbor. In my head, I’m back in the belly of the cargo ship owned by one of Declan’s Irish associates that I crossed the Atlantic to Ireland in all those years ago. Cold, wet, hopped up on whiskey and cigarettes with the rest of the pirates, mobsters, and general low lifes on board.
Missing the fuck out of the girl I’d left behind and trying to drown the screaming inside. Trying to drown the memory of walking away from the one thing I ever cared about and knowing I was doing it for her and that she’d never know.