Chapter 304: Beware of Women... In a Good Way *

The banquet ended on a good note, and many had already started leaving. Silas and Chloe were among them, mainly because, despite their status, they were still introverts to the core. The applause, the handshakes, the hundred faces turning toward them every time a name was called- it all left the same hollow buzz behind Silas’s ribs, the one that only quiet rooms could cure.

The hotel tower rose above the city’s glittering grid, all glass and soft gold light, reserved for academy guests. Silas shared a suite with Alpha, who had vanished somewhere between the last course and the after-party, leaving a single text: old contacts, don’t wait up. Silas read it twice, shrugged, and traded his formal jacket for the empty room. He knew the guy was out with his girlfriend, Alicia.

Silas needed to cool down. His nerves were still singing from the night. One conversation in particular kept circling back: Kelvina’s sharp smile and sharper questions, the way she’d studied him across the table like a blueprint she was deciding whether to build or burn. He stripped, stepped into the shower, and let the hot water hammer the tension out of his shoulders. He didn’t hear the door open.

Chloe had waited until the hallway light went dark before she slipped through the door on feet that made no sound, and turned the lock with a soft, deliberate click. Alpha’s empty bed greeted her. She smiled at it and began to undress after sensing Silas in the bathroom.

She left her dress scattered across the floor like a trail, leading to the bathroom door. Steam curled beneath it, and the shower ran loud enough to swallow her footsteps.

Silas stood with his back to her, one hand braced against the tile, head bowed under the spray. His shoulders were tight, his mind still chewing on Kelvina’s words, and he didn’t notice the temperature shift, the way the room’s humidity changed when she stepped in naked behind him. Her hand found his shoulder blade.

He spun, water flying, and there she was. Pale skin slick with condensation, blue eyes bright and heavy-lidded, white hair plastered to her shoulders and spine. Water droplets clung to her collarbones, her nipples, and the pale curve of her hips. She looked like something the water had made just for him. "Chloe..."

"Shh." Her finger pressed to his lips. "You’re thinking too loud. I could hear it from the hallway." He opened his mouth to argue, but she pushed him back against the tile before he could, and dropped to her knees in the running water.

The sight of her there, the most stubborn person he knew, kneeling on a wet floor, looking up at him with adoration and hunger braided together in her eyes, did things to him that no speech at any banquet could. He was already half-hard from the shock of her. He watched himself thicken in her grip as her fingers wrapped around his cock, watched her watch it happen, her thumb dragging slowly across the head.

She leaned in and pressed her lips to the tip. A kiss, soft as the ones she gave him in the dark, when she thought he was asleep. Then she went lower.

Her fingers curled around the base of his cock, tilting it up, and her mouth found his balls. The first touch of her tongue made his breath catch, a warm, careful lick along the sensitive skin, testing and learning.

Then she took one into her mouth, and the weight of it settled on her tongue, and she sucked, gentle at first, like she was tasting something precious. "Oh, god," he breathed. She hummed around him, and the vibration traveled up through his whole body.

Then she took the other one too. Her mouth stretched around both of them, full, hot, and perfect, and she began to suck in earnest, a slow, rhythmic pull that drew a sound out of him he didn’t recognize, something between a groan and a prayer. His hand flew down, fingers knotting in her wet hair and gripping it hard. He was afraid to move or breathe, and afraid that any shift would break whatever spell she was casting on him.

"You’re going to kill me," he managed to blurt out.

Her eyes glinted up at him through the steam. She pulled off just enough to speak, her lips slick, her breath scorching against his skin. "This is your punishment."

Her tongue traced a slow circle around the base of his cock. "I’ve been wanting these in my mouth since the first toast. Every time you smiled at someone else, I thought about getting you alone and doing exactly this."

"Chloe..."

"Quiet. I’m not done with them yet." She went back down, and this time there was nothing gentle about it.

Her tongue worked him hard, laving and circling, dragging across the sensitive skin with a hunger that buckled his knees. She sucked harder, cheeks hollowing, throat working, and Silas felt the pressure building, a deep electric ache in his gut, a pleasure that had no right to be this intense. His hips twitched, while his hand tightened in her hair. The tile pressed cold against his back, and she was scalding hot between his legs, and he was going to...

He was scared- genuinely scared she would keep going until there was nothing left of him.

"Chloe... Chloe, I’m going to come..."

She didn’t stop. She looked up at him, her blue eyes dark and hungry, and sucked harder, her nose pressing into his belly, her throat opening as she took him deeper, her lips brushing the base of his cock while her tongue kept working his balls, relentless, unbroken.

He came with a shudder that ripped through his whole body, his head falling back against the tile, a sound torn out of him that the water nearly swallowed. She held him through it and swallowed everything. She kept working him until he was trembling and spent, leaning against the wall as if the world had tilted sideways.

When she finally let him go, his balls ached, a deep, hollowed-out ache, claimed and emptied. He looked down at her, breathless, and she was smiling up at him, chin slick, eyes bright with satisfaction.

"There," she said softly. "Now you’re mine again." He hauled her up by the shoulders and kissed her; the water ran over them both, warm and clean and full of promises.