Page 13 of Savage Hearts

Silas pushed my long hair off to the side, and he helped me wash. The act was strangely intimate from such a brute of a man, and I fucking hated it.

I didn’t want to be lulled into a false sense of security. Not again.

I didn’t want to look at this man as anything other than what he was.

A fucking monster who took away my choices.

I took the cloth back when he got to my front.

“I can manage,” I said, staring ahead at the glass door.

He didn’t fight me.

I felt him washing up behind me, just before he drew me back to the warm spray of water to rinse the soap off my body.

After we were clean, Silas opened the door.

I shivered a little from the cool air that entered, and he quickly grabbed a fluffy white towel nearby and wrapped it around my body.

It nearly engulfed me.

He wrapped another towel around his waist, and this one didn’t look nearly as huge on him.

He handed me a new toothbrush, still in its package. It was as if they’d known I was going to be in this hotel room tonight, and they had come prepared. He winked at me.

We brushed our teeth at the double sink in silence.

Silas, the shameless bastard that he was, kept his eyes on me the entire time.

I avoided him, and once we were done, he took me back out to the room.

I stuttered in my steps at the sight of the huge king-sized bed in the center.

“Where am I supposed to sleep tonight?” I asked.

He looked sideways at me. “With me.”

“I don’t want to sleep with you. You told me you would never lie to me, and nothing was happening tonight.”

“And nothing will. We’re just going to sleep. Come on, angel, get into bed. It’s been a long day and I’m tired.”

I looked down at my towel-clad body. “I don’t have any clothes with me. Where’s my bag?”

He ignored my question and instead, grinned mischievously at me. “You can always sleep naked. I’ll sleep naked, too.”

I shot him a scathing look, not that it seemed to have any effect on him. He threw his head back and laughed in a way that made me want to punch him in the throat, before he walked over to one of the drawers and pulled out a huge T-shirt.

He threw it at me, and I quickly grabbed it and waited.

He cocked his head to the side, as if he didn’t know what I was waiting for, but the glimmer in his eyes gave him away.

He was only going to give me this shirt to wear to bed.

Somehow, that felt much more intimate than sleeping naked.

I turned without saying anything and walked back to the bathroom, closing the door behind me.

I went for the lock, only to stop when I realized there wasn’t one.

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