Chapter 171: Even Ice can feel Heat *

Ever since Chloe went through her comprehension and enlightenment, she’d become a bit distant. Silas was a very observant guy, although most of the time, that part of him was... nonexistent.

It had been a week since the advertisement. A lot had happened during that time. Silas, Chloe, and Alpha were among the students who were chosen to participate in the Inter-Academy Selection Tournament. But the official report was yet to be released.

Chloe was lying on the sofa in their room, playing a shooting game on her phone, her face expressionless, as though the game was boring. But the glint in her eyes told otherwise. A small kitten lay on her head, watching the screen curiously.

Everyone knew of it, or rather her, already. Chloe never bothered hiding Skadi. That was what she’d named the kitten. After all, it was given to her by her predecessor. This even made her wonder if she was also an ice jotun, since she inherited her power from one of them.

The door to the room opened, and Silas walked in. The door clicked shut behind him.

Silas stood in the entryway, still catching his breath from the chaos downstairs, Kassie’s shrieks, Fred’s relentless tackle attempts, the tiny tornado of noise and limbs that left him grinning like an idiot. His hair was a disaster.

And Chloe hadn’t looked up.

She lay sprawled across the sofa, one leg draped over the armrest, the other bent lazily at the knee. She was in a loose black shirt. His shirt. The hem rode high on her thighs, exposing the pale curve of her hips and the thin band of blue cotton stretched across them. Panties. Nothing else.

Skadi perched on her head like a tiny white crown, blue eyes tracking the screen of Chloe’s phone. The game’s tinny sound effects filled the silence.

Silas licked his lips.

She hadn’t acknowledged him, but he knew her body, knew the way her breathing had shifted half a beat, the way her thumb hesitated on the screen before resuming its rhythm. She knew he was there.

He let the grin fade, and kept his breathing shallow. His weight shifted, slow and deliberate, and the air around him stilled. Silent Steps.

The floorboards made no sound. The air itself seemed to part around him. He crossed the room like a ghost, like a thought she hadn’t finished thinking, until he stood directly behind the sofa.

Her scent drifted up, clean skin, the faint salt of a morning without movement, and something else, something warmer. He’d know it anywhere.

The phone screen reflected in her eyes. He crouched.

Her thighs were parted just enough. The blue cotton curved snug between them, a thin line of fabric that hid nothing from this angle. He could see the shape of her beneath it, and the faint damp spot darkening the cotton.

His fingers found the edge of the fabric. She didn’t move. He pulled it aside.

The elastic stretched, gave, and her pussy came into view, pink and soft and already glistening. Her lips parted slightly with the shift of fabric, and he watched her clench, once, an involuntary pulse that told him everything.

Still, she played her game.

Skadi vanished, dismissed by a thought Chloe didn’t need to speak. That was confirmation. She knew. She’d always known.

Silas exhaled, his breath ghosting across her inner thigh. Her leg twitched. He leaned in.

The first touch of his tongue was impossibly soft—a whisper of wet heat against her outer lips, tracing the seam of her without parting it. Chloe’s thumb stopped moving, just for a heartbeat. Then resumed.

He licked again, slower, flicking the tip of his tongue where her folds began to bloom. Her breathing changed, deeper and slower, a deliberate control.

His hands found her thighs, thumbs stroking the soft skin where leg met hip, and he settled into her like a man with no place else to be. His tongue parted her now, a long, flat stroke from bottom to top, gathering her taste, spreading her slickness.

The phone wobbled in her grip. He found her clit; a soft circle. Then another. His tongue traced the shape of her, learning the rhythm that made her hips shift ever so slightly toward his mouth.

She missed a shot on screen.

His lips closed around her clit and sucked, gentle and insistent, and Chloe’s jaw clenched. Her free hand moved, not to push him away, but to press her own knuckles against her mouth.

The phone slipped.

It tumbled onto the cushion beside her, screen still flashing with a respawn timer she wasn’t watching. Her hips rose into his mouth, and a sound escaped her, a broken, desperate thing swallowed by her own fist.

He groaned against her. The vibration traveled through her clit, through her spine, through the bones of her, and her back arched off the sofa.

"Silas~."

He answered with his tongue. Deep strokes now, plunging inside her, drinking the slick heat that pooled at her entrance. His nose pressed against her clit with every thrust, and her thighs began to tremble, a fine, helpless tremor she couldn’t control.

Her fingers tangled in his hair.

He sucked her clit again, harder, a rhythm that built like a staircase, each step higher, each pulse tighter. Her fist stuffed against her mouth, knuckles white, teeth pressing crescents into her own skin. A moan leaked through anyway, thin and keening.

He didn’t stop.

His tongue traced her entrance, dipped inside, and curled. His thumb found her clit while his mouth worked lower, and she bucked against his face, her hips rolling in desperate waves.

She was close. He could taste it, the way her slickness thickened, the way her muscles fluttered under his tongue.

"Don’t stop~." Barely a whisper. She bit down on her hand hard enough to draw blood.

He didn’t.

His mouth returned to her clit, soft then firm then relentless, and he pushed two fingers inside her, curling forward, finding that rough patch that made her whole body seize.

Chloe’s phone clattered to the floor.

Her hips lifted. Her thighs clamped around his head. Her fist came away from her mouth, and she cried out, a raw, shattered sound that she smothered too late, her palm slapping over her lips as her orgasm ripped through her.

He felt every pulse. Every wave. Every desperate squeeze of her body around his fingers as she came against his tongue.

He didn’t pull away until she went slack.

Slowly, gently, he withdrew his fingers and pressed a kiss to the inside of her thigh. Then her hip. Then her stomach, where the black shirt had ridden up, revealing the dip of her navel.

She was breathing hard. Her arm lay draped across her eyes. The faint metallic tang of blood lingered on her lower lip.

Silas crawled up her body, his weight settling between her thighs, his face hovering above hers. He reached up and took her hand, the one she’d bitten, and pressed his lips to the red crescents blooming across her knuckles.

"Hi," he said.

She lowered her arm. Her blue eyes were glassy, still riding the aftershock, but the corners crinkled.

"You’re an asshole."

"Mm." He kissed her palm. "You unsummoned the cat."

"Skadi doesn’t need to see that."

"See what?"

Her lips twitched. "You know what."

He kissed her forehead. "You’ve been distant."

"I’ve been thinking."

"About?"

She didn’t answer. Her gaze drifted toward the window, where afternoon light slanted through the blinds.

"Chloe."

"I’m figuring things out," she said quietly. "The enlightenment. The tournament. What I’m supposed to be now." Her voice was softer than he’d heard it in days. "I don’t want to lose myself in it."

"You won’t."

"You don’t know that."

He touched her chin, turned her face back toward his. "I know you. You’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever met. If anyone can carry power without it carrying them, it’s you."

She stared at him. Then she laughed, a quiet, surprised thing that crinkled the bridge of her nose.

"That was almost romantic."

"Almost?"

"Don’t push it."

He kissed her, soft and tender. The taste of her still on his lips, mingling with the salt of her skin and the copper trace of blood.

"Take all the time you need," he murmured against her mouth. "Just don’t shut me out. Deal?"

She was quiet for a long moment.

Then her arms wrapped around his neck, pulling him down against her, his weight pressing her into the cushions like an anchor.

"Deal."