Brightly Burning Bridges: A Bully Romance (Kings of Capital)

by Ivy Wild

  “I know, Trev. And thank you. I just think I struggle against fate so much sometimes and honestly? It’s exhausting. I’ve never been one to go with the flow or pay attention to the signs I’m being given. It’s why I ended up in New York and it’s why I ended up back home with nothing but debt to show for it. So when Silas offered me the job, I dunno, I guess I just decided that maybe for once in my life, I would just try and go with it, ya know? I mean, what is this life but a series of accidents anyways. I think maybe I’m done playing the victim.”

  The concept crystallized in my head as I said the words. It’d been something I’d felt for a while now but hadn’t been able to articulate it until just now. I didn’t think Trevor would understand. After all, I was 99% sure he hadn’t read the Sirens of Titan. No, the only person who might understand was somewhere across the street, probably feeling smug that I’d finally accepted his way of thinking.

  “Okay, Sky. If you’re sure. Because if it’s money or something that you need,” he started to say, but I shook my head.

  “No way, Trev. You’ve got the shop and your own issues. And I’m not doing this only for the money. Like I said, I think this was something put in my path for a reason and I’m just not going to fight this one.”

  He smiled, apparently satisfied by my answer. “Okay then,” he said. He got up and wrapped his arms around me like he always did, squeezing me in a big hug. I loved Trevor’s hugs. When I’d landed back in the city alone and had wandered into his tattoo shop, looking to do something I’d always been too frightened of my entire life, it’s how he’d greeted me and every time since. It made me feel wanted and loved. Other than Silas, he was the only person who had seen me before I’d splashed color on my skin and not treated me like I was some sort of porcelain doll.

  He pressed a kiss to my neck for old time’s sake and I laughed before we separated.

  “Alright, well, you’ve had three glasses of wine and are probably exhausted so I’m going to head out and let you get some rest,” he said.

  I smiled and yawned against the back of my hand. “Thanks for coming over, Trev. And for bringing Sophie. It really means a lot.”

  He smiled back at me as we pressed the button for the elevator, waiting together in silence.

  The doors opened and my eyes widened in shock as an extremely pissed off Silas stepped out.

  “Silas? What are you doing here?” I asked with a bit of an attitude, genuinely upset that he’d decided to barge into my apartment.

  His deep brown eyes looked between me and Trevor and I could see the wheels in his mind turning. Somehow I just knew the bastard had been spying on me.

  “Work emergency,” he said through clenched teeth.

  I rolled my eyes before giving Trevor a reassuring look. “No worries, Trevor. You can still head home.”

  Silas turned around, his fists clenching and unclenching. I couldn’t understand his behavior; it was so at odds with his normally calm and laid back demeanor. Besides that, I’d never seen him lose control like this before.

  “Yeah. Feel free to leave, Trevor,” he spat.

  Trevor gave me a worried glance but I smiled and shook my head, trying to express to him that everything was fine. I was confident that I knew Silas better than anyone and I knew that, while he might have bullied me in the past, he’d never actually hurt me.

  “If you need anything, just call, Sky,” he said carefully. “And I’ll come right over.”

  “I’m fine. Good night, Trev,” I said, holding my smile as I let the doors close on him.

  The moment Silas and I were alone in the room together I dropped the act and spun on my heel. “What the hell, Silas? What are you doing here?”

  “I told you,” he said in an eerily even tone. “Work emergency.”

  I put my hand on my hip and glared daggers at him. “Oh yeah? So what’s the emergency?”

  His lips pressed into a thin line and he crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Really?” I said with mock laughter. “Nothing to say?”

  “I need you to draft an email,” Silas finally said.

  “Bullshit,” I spat back. “Tell me what this is really about, Silas!”

  He strode toward me and I backed up. My hands pressed against the somewhat glossy paint of the walls as I tried to distance myself from him, but he wasn’t having it. He invaded my space in a way only he could. His cologne swirled around me, his musky scent seeping into my lungs, poisoning me with every breath.

  “You want to know what this is about?” he asked, his voice a hushed whisper.

  “Yes,” I replied in an equally soft voice.

  “This is about the fact that you continue to deny me, but you let someone like him have you. You’re not for him. You never were. You were always for me.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in it. My heart was too busy squealing like the teenage girl it apparently still was around Silas.

  His body moved in closer to mine and everything in my head screamed to push him away, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. He trailed his fingers slowly up my body, starting at my hip bone and up the curves of my breasts. I felt weak, helpless and entirely turned on by just the simple movement. His fingers landed on my chin, pinching it roughly just as he had the night of our first kiss.

  I wondered if he realized how similar this scene was to our first. If it was something he’d planned. If it was something he’d felt bad about and wanted to fix. But, as I forced myself to look into his deep brown eyes, I could tell for the first time, Silas was not operating based on logic. His eyes told me everything I needed to know.

  “You weren’t supposed to be anyone else’s. You were mine from the moment you broke that vase.”

  “You should treat your belongings better,” I replied breathlessly. “Otherwise they’ll run away from you.”

  His fingers were still firm on my chin, squeezing my cheeks just the slightest bit. The tension increased between us to the point where I felt like I could barely breathe.

  “How many guys, Skyler . . . How many guys have you given away what’s rightfully mine to?”

  My eyes widened in shock at his question. “You don’t get to ask me that, Silas.”

  His fingers moved off my chin, caressing my lips and my neck and I couldn’t stop the shivers that coursed through my body.

  “I’m asking because I need to know how thoroughly I’ll need to fuck them out of your system.”

  “You’re the only one that I haven’t been able to get out of my system, Silas.”

  “See?” he said quietly, his voice full of hidden promise. “You were always mine.”

  His lips brushed against mine and I whimpered. He’d always had the fullest lips. They were made for kissing and I’d caught myself looking at them all through our senior year, longing for the feeling of them and at the same time, denying myself their promise.

  His leg moved to press between my thighs as he pressed his body against mine. He was scorching hot, but he’d always been hot around the edges. I just hadn’t been able to figure out whether his center was still as frigid as it had been all those years ago.

  “Say you want this,” he whispered against my ear to the mounting shivers of my body. “Don’t deny us any longer, Skyler.”

  His body blocked the light from the hallway, plunging me into darkness. Silas always cast long shadows. The black that spread from his soul reached out to me like serpents, intent on bringing me down with their venom. Since our split in high school, I’d always tried to run from them, convinced that they meant to do me harm or darken what I thought was my clear sky.

  And I was right.

  This wasn’t some love story of redemption.

  He wasn’t going to be some transformed hero.

  Standing beneath him, locked in the darkness that was Silas, I understood that now. But, I also understood that maybe I wasn’t meant to run. Maybe, all this time, I’d been running from the one thing I needed: a rain clo
ud.

  “I’m not yours,” I said and his jaw clicked in irritation. I could see the absolute need for me in his eyes and it wiped out every bit of common sense I had left as I said these words. “But I do want you.”

  His lips were on mine in an instant and they were just as I remembered them. They moved against mine and the slightly chapped skin tugged at my smooth counterpart. He bit down harshly on my lower lip and I gasped as he entered my mouth with his tongue. There was no fighting the poison that was seeping into my body now. I only hoped his venom brought on a slow and painless death.

  His body pressed against me firmly and I could feel his desire for me clear through his trousers. I moaned and he pulled back slightly. “You will be mine,” he husked and I shuddered but shook my head as he sucked hickeys down the side of my neck.

  “Never,” I said, but my words only seemed to spur him on. His hands roamed my body over my clothes before dipping below my shirt to play with my breasts. My breath hitched as his thumb grazed a nipple.

  I threw my head back as the sensations coursed through my body. It had been quite some time since I’d been intimate with anyone and everything he did lit a fire in me in a way I’d never experienced before.

  He pulled back and pressed his lips to my ear. “You were always mine.” His fingers pinched my nipples and I moaned. “Admit it,” he said in a sinister voice.

  His other hand unzipped my pants before pushing roughly into my panties. I gasped but he held me against the wall with his body to the point where even if my strength gave out, I’d still remain upright. Strong, slightly callused fingers, ghosted against my lower lips and I squeezed my eyes shut at the thought of Silas touching me—really touching me.

  “Tell me you didn’t finger fuck yourself to completion every night we were apart, imagining it was my cock between your legs,” he ground out.

  “Fuck,” was the only thing I managed to respond.

  I was so wet for him now. I could feel how easily his fingers slid through my folds as he began to play with me.

  “Please,” I begged, wanting so desperately for his fingers to enter me, to fill me up like I knew only he could.

  “Say it, Skyler. Say you’re mine.” His voice was dark, insistent, but still I refused.

  “No,” I said breathlessly with a shake of my head.

  One finger rimmed my entrance and my mouth fell open. Silas’ lips landed back on mine as he swirled his tongue against mine sensually, in time with the movements of his finger. Finally, he dipped inside me, first with one finger, then with a second. My head pressed harshly against the wall as he sucked my lower lip, all while pulsing his fingers up and down inside of me.

  I reached down to try and rub his cock through his pants. “Don’t,” he said sharply. “You don’t get that until you admit what you’ve always known is true.”

  “No,” I said as he continued to finger fuck me.

  Is this what the girl in the gold dress had experienced all those years ago? The feeling of Silas’ scorching edges pushing her against the wall as he finger fucked her? Even after all these years, even though he was doing the same thing to me tonight, a wave of jealousy crashed over me. The realization hit me that I didn’t want Silas dipping his fingers in anyone else but me and I didn’t know how to process it.

  His hand not currently between my thighs left my breast to push my top up. My breasts spilled out and he ran his tongue along each hardened peak, his rhythm below not stopping. I could feel the tension in my body increase as he worked me to a higher and higher high. My body heat up so fast, stealing some of the heat from his hot exterior.

  “Silas,” I moaned, my eyes still closed, refusing to look at him, refusing to admit that this was happening right now.

  “Say it,” he whispered again. “Say you’re mine.”

  “No!” I exclaimed as my entire body began to shudder.

  His fingers curled, pressing into a spot no one but myself had ever touched and every nerve ending seemed to catch fire. My release was so close I could taste it. I was falling into him willingly.

  And then, everything went cold. The movement between my legs stopped as his fingers left me. My shirt was pulled down and his body moved away from me, taking its heat with it.

  “You are mine, Skyler. Looks like I’ll just have to prove it to you.”

  I watched him suck both fingers into his mouth casually, that irritating smirk of his back on his face as I looked at him with a mix of shock and disbelief. He pressed the button for the elevator and disappeared, leaving me standing there, unable to catch my breath.

  I couldn’t sleep that night. And despite finishing what Silas had so rudely left undone, I was still very much on edge. For a few moments, I wondered if I’d imagined the entire thing. But, the throbbing between my legs and evidence on my panties told me that it was, in fact, quite real.

  I looked out the large kitchen windows to the other side of the street. Silas’ condo was pitch black, as always. The quartz countertops felt cold as I leaned against them, trying and failing to calm myself down.

  Taking a deep breath, I decided I would try and distract myself by finishing my latest design. It’d been several weeks since I’d posted anything and I knew that was slightly Silas’ fault. I’d been so wrapped up in the new job and all the drama that came with it that I hadn’t made time for the things that usually kept me sane.

  Which was why I was probably going insane.

  I grabbed my MacBook and got in bed, flipping it open and pulling up the remnants of my last design. I laughed as I realized the central image was the coffee cup with Silas’ business card dunked inside. Life had such a weird irony about it.

  I searched through my photos, picking out some others that spoke to me. Raindrops on a window, a sunset during Fall and a close up of the iron wrought bannisters that lined the staircase up to the courthouse I’d snapped while waiting for Silas earlier that afternoon.

  I blended and swirled them together, giving physical form to how they moved and affected my own emotions. When I’d finished, I realized the photo looked rather sad. But, maybe that was just a reflection of how I was feeling at the moment. I threw it up on Instagram with a #mood caption and finally felt myself drift off to sleep.

  When I awoke the next morning, a comment was waiting for me.

  @dontaskmyname: “I hate this.”

  * * *

  Past

  “Miss Skyler,” a voice with a thick accent called to me from across the hallway. No one had ever called out to me before at school. I looked towards the other end of the corridor to see none other than Vartan Santos jogging toward me.

  He transferred to the school a few weeks ago, apparently moving to the states from Brazil with his mother. Something like that might have been a big deal for other high schools, but the students at Kings Academy were sort of used to it. With all the foreign dignitaries that were in and out of D.C., a good deal of students from various countries appeared and disappeared throughout the semester.

  But, no one could quite pinpoint why Vartan had moved here. He didn’t seem to have connections or status. But that didn’t stop him from quickly becoming the newest hot commodity. And for good reason. His tanned skin, dark hair and sharp features made him stunningly gorgeous, even at a distance. But up close, he had the most intense green eyes I’d seen in a while.

  And if his good looks and suave attitude weren’t enough to put him in the rankings for a crown at King’s, his obvious attempts to dethrone Silas were. It shocked even me the first day I’d experienced it. I’d heard heated whispers throughout the school about an exchange between the two men during a class they had together, but I didn’t really think much of it.

  Silas’ position, as far as I was concerned, was pretty much untouchable. I’d proven that to myself the more I’d tried to embarrass him. Sure, it worked for a while. But he eventually got wise to my game and must have started checking his answers. Classmates quickly forgot any embarrassing moments and he was st
ill on top.

  “Miss Skyler,” Vartan repeated and I looked up to see his clear green eyes staring down at me. I brushed a piece of my colorless hair away from my face out of habit. I didn’t say anything, but I looked at him so he knew I was listening.

  “I heard you are very close with Silas. Is that true?”

  I furrowed my brow a bit, not really understanding why he would ask me something like that—or care.

  “Um, I wouldn’t say that we’re close,” I replied back in a small voice. I didn’t know what we were, to be honest. That’s the funny thing about hating someone. They take up so much of your headspace that you find yourself thinking about them all the time. I paid attention to Silas more than I paid attention to anyone or anything that I liked. And I was pretty sure it was the same for him. Where that left us, I had no clue.

  “It’s just that I did not see him in school these past days and thought maybe I scared him off?” His English was slightly broken and he phrased it as a question, prompting my response.

  “Sorry,” I said with a shrug. “I don’t know.”

  “So then he is not your boyfriend?”

  I could feel the blush creep up on my cheeks and I suddenly became aware of the number of people passing by in the hallway, listening in on our conversation. I shook my head, hugging the textbook I was holding to my chest and looked down at my feet. A strong finger lifted my chin back up and I gasped as I met Vartan’s gaze.

  “Maybe you and me then sometime?”

  I felt like I’d swallowed a ball of glue. Was Vartan Santos really asking me out? I hated that my mind immediately jumped to the thought that he was just trying to use me to get to Silas.

  “Maybe,” I said softly and his green eyes sparkled as he pressed his thumb to my lips.