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

by Ivy Wild

  “Here what is?” he asked, looking it over.

  “This letter was sent on IRS letterhead,” I tried to explain.

  “Yeah, and?” he asked, clearly not catching on.

  “Well, you said he wasn’t following company protocol. You’re the lawyer. Doesn’t that like taint evidence or something? Wouldn’t this be proof of it?”

  Silas’ eyes narrowed for a moment as he thought about what I was saying. He stayed quiet and I didn’t interrupt him as he thought. “I’d say a well-timed inquiry into a nameless letter might go a long way to getting someone reprimanded or worse. And if it’s uncovered that he’s been misappropriating government resources to resolve say, a personal vendetta, against a family member no less, well, that might be very damning indeed.”

  I watched as Silas pulled together the strings to form his web until a genuine smile rested on his lips. He looked up at me and I smiled. “Well, Ms. Jackson. I’d say you more than earned your paycheck for the year.”

  I blushed. “You think it will work?”

  He nodded his head. “Yeah. Stay right there,” he said. “I need to call someone back.”

  He picked up his phone and placed it to his ear. “Bob. Yeah, it’s me. Go ahead and send an inquiry over to the Service. Attach the letter we received from them and let them know we’re confused as to why we weren’t assigned an agent from the start and that we have concerns over a conflict of interest considering the assigned agent is a familial relation. . . . Don’t worry about that, Bob. . . . Yes, it’s true. I’m a lot of things but a liar isn’t one of them.” I watched as Silas chuckled, the sound bouncing off the walls of the room, filling me up. “Touché. Get it done today, will you? Copy me on it? . . . Thanks.”

  He hung up the phone and turned back to me, grinning. It was so beautiful to see him this way and I knew it was only for me.

  * * *

  “So, what did you have planned for today?” she asked, stretching her arms over her head, her top lifting up to reveal her creamy white skin. God, I wanted to run my tongue across it and it wasn’t even ten in the morning.

  I made my way over to where she was sitting and lifted her up. She gasped as I placed her on the stone of the kitchen island and I pushed between her legs. Her lilac and vanilla scent overwhelmed me and I had to hold myself back from fucking her right where I stood.

  “I thought, since you were so instrumental in getting our little problem out of the way, that we could spend the day doing something I’ve always wanted to do with you.”

  She gave me a sideways smile and laughed. “Oh, yeah? And what’s that?”

  “Take you on a date,” I said against her ear.

  I pulled back and my lips lifted into a smirk at the surprise on her features.

  “Really?” she asked.

  “You seem surprised. Why?” I asked her. I genuinely wanted to know why she thought I wouldn’t want to take her out.

  “I, uhh,” she started to say, talking small again. I hated when she curled in on herself. Skyler had a fire that raged inside her brighter and hotter than the one that almost tore through our friendship on that bridge. I loved it. I loved basking in its warmth. Her blaze made me feel alive and I hated that she felt like she needed to smother it to fit in with the world.

  “Hey,” I said, nudging her knee as she looked down. Her face lifted and she looked at me. “Stop talking small,” I chided her and she smiled softly.

  “You’re the only one that’s ever noticed that I do that. Or, at least, the only one that’s ever told me not to.”

  “That’s cause no one’s ever loved you the way I do,” I said. The words left my mouth and I hoped to God I wasn’t going to scare her off with my emotional word-vomit.

  A blush bloomed across her face. She was so damn beautiful. It was going to be royally difficult not to fuck her until this evening. But I owed this to her. I owed taking her out properly. We’d never had a chance at a public relationship. Hell, we’d never even had a chance at a relationship, period. I wanted to give her everything I should have over the past decade, with interest.

  Not only that, I seriously wanted to get her mind off the whole Vartan thing. Truth be told, I wasn’t entirely convinced that our scheme would work, but at the moment, it was better than any other option.

  A lot of it working was going to rely on people at the Service doing the right thing and well, I generally didn’t trust people on principle. I trusted them to do the right thing about as much as I trusted a cat to babysit a toddler.

  If the worst came true, I had an exit plan set up for both of us. Of course, I’d need to convince Skyler to come with me and I knew that wasn’t going to be easy. As much as she complained about her life here, she wasn’t going to want to leave her mom. If we had to take mom withs, then so be it. But the first whiff of trouble I got from Vartan, I was putting the private jet on the tarmac with her ass in it and flying it to somewhere tropical with no extradition policy.

  “So,” I said, pulling us both back to the present moment. “Tell me why you’re surprised, without,” I added, “talking small.”

  She looked at me and I held back the urge to kiss her. As much as I wanted to shove my tongue down her throat, I wanted to hear her talk more. And I was fairly certain the two were mutually exclusive, although more experiments could be done.

  “I guess I just was surprised you were okay being seen publicly together,” she explained. “It’s one thing to be together here, in private,” she said, waving to the air around us. “But, it’s another thing to go outside.” She hesitated. I could tell she wanted to say more and I pressed a gentle kiss to her cheek.

  “What else?” I asked, trying to encourage her without pushing her over the edge.

  “I’ve never had someone take me on a date before,” she admitted aloud and my newly beating heart sunk. “Well, I guess other than Vartan,” she added and I fucking winced. “But, I’m not sure that counts.”

  “No, it doesn’t fucking count,” I said almost with a growl. “What about that Trevor guy, though?”

  She shook her head. “Our relationship wasn’t really like that, ya know? We were just two broken people who found comfort in each other’s company from time to time. We didn’t date or do date-like things,” she explained.

  “Well,” I said, wrapping my palms around the back of her ass, squeezing gently. She giggled and I pressed a kiss to her neck. “I guess I’m the lucky bastard that gets to steal another of your firsts.”

  “It’s not stealing if I choose to give it to you,” she said softly and the fucking flesh ball in my chest clenched so hard I thought I was having another heart attack. I leaned over again a bit and she reached for me.

  “Si?”

  “Angel, you gotta stop doing things like that,” I said with a chuckle.

  “What things?”

  “My heart’s just learning how to beat again,” I laughed. “Go easy on it.”

  She pulled me into a crushing hug, wrapping her legs around me and I just stood there, letting her warmth seep into my cold center.

  I finally forced myself to pull back and I smiled at her. “So, why don’t you run across the street and get ready. And I’ll plan to pick you up in an hour.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked, jumping down from the table.

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes at me but smiled nonetheless before grabbing her coat and heading towards the elevator. I followed her and pressed the button. The little car chimed and I forced myself to push her through the doors. She turned around and gave me a smile that made me so hard for her.

  “See you in an hour,” she said.

  I nodded and the doors closed.

  I groaned as I leaned my head against the cool metal. My whole body ached for her and I knew there was no way I was getting through the next eight hours without rubbing one out first. God, this woman made me feel like a teenage boy again, and I was fairly certain she
didn’t even realize it.

  I walked into my apartment and took a moment to stand over the kitchen island. It was the first time I’d been away from Silas for the last few days and my head was swimming. Our life story had my head in circles. We’d gone from friends, to enemies, to—what were we now? Lovers?

  I looked across the room and something caught my eye. I walked up to the little picture frame I had leaning against the counter, the one that said “You are the victim of a series of accidents.”

  The word “victim” had been crossed out and on top, in a handwriting that matched the original note, it said “victor.”

  I smiled and bit my lower lip in realization.

  There was no escaping Silas.

  There never had been.

  And the truth of the matter was, I wanted it that way.

  An hour went by faster than I anticipated and before I knew it, Silas was stepping into the threshold of my apartment, freshly showered and looking as jaw-droppingly gorgeous as always. I still couldn’t believe that he legitimately wanted to take me on a date, in D.C., in public, where people could see us together.

  Papers always swirled with rumors about who Silas was dating. He was considered one of the city’s most eligible bachelors and I hated admitting that I looked through the tabloids every now and then to see him. He was always sporting a different woman on his arm, sometimes on each arm.

  He’d never, never, been seen with the same woman twice, at least not in a personal way. He was basically the George Clooney of Washington, D.C. and I was trying to figure out if I was Amal Alamuddin or one of the others only Wikipedia remembers.

  Dark jeans hugged his lithe frame and he sported a black button up beneath a stylish sports jacket. “You ready?” he asked.

  I could feel him eyeing me up and down and I hoped I looked as good as he did, at least in his eyes. I didn’t know what to wear and considering he was rather vague on the details, that left me even more anxious.

  I’d ultimately settled on maroon skinny jeans, a pair of flat over-the-knee boots and the warmest patterned sweater I had with me, given that my winter coat was still tucked away at my old loft.

  “Yeah,” I said with a small smile and he reached a hand out for mine.

  I took it and as soon as our fingers touched, he tugged me hard and I went tumbling into him. His hands roamed my body and I shivered against his touch. His lips were against my ear and I felt my knees shake in anticipation.

  “Those boots make me want to bend you over this counter and fuck you till you’re screaming my name.”

  “Silas,” I gasped at his crude words.

  He moaned against my ear, his hands moving down to the apex of my thighs. His lips were hovering over mine so that the only air I could breathe was his. “Tell me you want it,” he said.

  “You know I do,” I said back to him, trying to press my lips against his. But he pulled away just the slightest, his hand leaving my sex to cup my chin.

  “Good,” he said, before placing a kiss to my cheek. “Just checking.”

  I was quite certain my mouth hung open as he walked toward the elevator. He turned around and chuckled. “What’s wrong, angel?”

  I closed my mouth and shook my head and bounded over to him. “Gonna get you back for that,” I said, as we stepped inside the little car.

  “Oh, my angel has claws. And don’t I love it,” he said as we began to descend.

  The entire afternoon was fabulous and frustrating all at the same time. Silas took me around the city, got us a private tour at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and let me pick where we got dinner. I picked a hole in the wall Himalayan restaurant that had the most amazing hot chai I’d drank in quite some time.

  All of that was fabulous.

  What was frustrating was that he used every opportunity he could to get me hot and bothered. Every time we slipped into a cab, his hands slipped somewhere they shouldn’t have and every time I walked just two steps ahead of him, his hand found my ass. He leaned down to whisper the filthiest things in my ear when no one was looking so that by the time we made it to the movie theater, I was beyond hot for him and heavily bothered.

  It was the early evening on a Tuesday, so the place was pretty dead. We walked past a family bathroom and I looked left and right before I tugged at Silas’ hand. He looked over at me and narrowed his eyes slightly before a smile lifted his lips.

  I let my back push the door open and I fell through, with him very much on top of me. The door closed behind us and he reached back to lock it quickly.

  “I was wondering when my angel was going to break,” he husked as he pushed me against the white tile wall.

  His lips pressed against mine as his body pressed me further into the wall. I could feel his desire for me through his pants already and I pushed back on him slightly.

  “You planned this?” I asked in disbelief.

  A bit of laughter moved his chest as his hands rested against my hips. “Not planned, angel. Experimented. I wanted to see how long it took to break you. It’s only fair, considering you break me every time you look at me with those gorgeous eyes of yours.”

  He swallowed my gasp by pressing his lips to mine and biting down hard on my lower lip. His tongue moved back and forth across the swollen skin and I groaned into his mouth at the sensations.

  The fact that we were in a movie theater bathroom, the fact that there might be people outside that could hear us, all of it just melted away as Silas pushed me up against that wall. His edges burned me so wonderfully and I was starting to wonder whether his center was as cold as it had been when he’d pushed me against the shelves in the freezer what already seemed like a lifetime ago.

  “I want you to fuck me, Si,” I husked out, surprised at my own words.

  His lips descended onto my neck and he pulled skin into his mouth to nip and suck at. I threw my head back at the feeling of it, my arousal for him at a complete fever pitch.

  “Si,” I moaned.

  “Slow down, angel. We’ll get there,” he said.

  But I was so already there. He’d been getting me there all afternoon and I needed this train to arrive right flipping now.

  But Silas was like the D.C. Metro—definitely not on my schedule. His hands began to move from my hips to slip underneath my shirt. I never wore bras. I wasn’t really busty enough to require them. So his hands moved right up to brush against the underside of my breasts.

  “Fuck, Si,” I gasped as his fingers grazed a nipple.

  “Easy, angel,” he breathed against my skin, but he wasn’t fooling me. I reached down to press my hand against his firm erection and it was his turn to throw his head back.

  I dropped to my knees and started to fumble with the buckle to his belt, but his hands pressed against mine to stop me. “Sky, you sure you want to do this, here?”

  I smiled up at him. He was looking down at me with such incredible lust and desire. I knew he wanted it as much as me, and that he was saying what he was saying to try and take care of me the best way he knew how.

  “Yes,” I said, meeting his dark gaze. “Please,” I begged and I felt his hand loosen against mine.

  He smiled down at me as I freed him from his boxers and his eyes closed as I began to pump him in my hand. His body leaned forward, using the wall for support and his shadow cast over me like it had so many times in my life. But this time, I didn’t feel like it was putting me in the dark. This time, it felt different.

  It felt like protection.

  It felt like comfort.

  It felt like love.

  It was a pretty weird emotion to feel given the circumstances. I’d always loved Silas. Since the first time I said it to him on that bridge, I knew it was true. Even before. But that didn’t mean that I’d always felt our love.

  But I did now.

  And it was invigorating.

  Silas heavy cock was in my hand and I pumped it to the soundtrack of his moans. Like the rest of him, it was perfect on the outside an
d I slipped my lips around it because I wanted to feel his heat in my mouth more than anything at the moment.

  He groaned and his fingers came down to twist into my hair, pulling it out of the messy bun I’d thrown it up in earlier during the day.

  “Fuck, yes, Sky, my fucking slutty angel,” he moaned. I reached down and started to press my fingers against my clit, teasing myself through my jeans to try and relieve some of the pressure that was building inside of me.

  I’d realized it the first time he’d taken me against the kitchen counter. Silas had a dirty mouth and it was scorching hot, just like his edges.

  I continued to move against him and filthy words continued to fall out of his mouth. “Fuck your mouth feels good, Sky,” he grunted. “But not as good as your pussy,” he said before he pulled himself out of me, his cock leaving my lips with a pop. I looked up at him in surprise, his fingers still twisted against my scalp. “Which by the looks of it, is dripping wet and ready for a Grade-A fucking.”

  He pulled me up to my feet and kissed me hard. My lips moaned as his tongue tangled with mine. His hands pushed my sweater off my body before my shirt was pushed up to reveal my breasts. His fingers slipped down and deftly undid the button to my jeans before pushing into my lace panties.

  “You’re so fucking wet for me, Sky and it turns me the fuck on,” he growled in my ear and I shivered before he bit my lobe. His fingers entered me and I moaned but he drank down the sounds with his lips. “Tell me you like this,” he husked against my lips. “Tell me you like the idea of being fucked by me in this bathroom. That you are so fucking wet for me that you can’t keep your cunt away from my cock for one entire day. Say it, Skyler. Say it and I’ll make this pussy drip with my cum into next week.”

  “Fuck, Si,” I gasped.

  “Say it,” he said, before curling his fingers against my walls. Stars burst in my vision and my diaphragm lifted before I was moaning his name, pulsing out my release all over his fingers. His tongue darted out, licking my lips in sensual patterns, drawing out the pleasure as I came down from my high.