Silas was regretting ever agreeing to taking things slow and being discreet. Why did it even matter? The gossip hound already made shit up about them, it couldn’t get any worse. But then he remembered that Rae had people that could cause backlash in her life. All the people that would do that in Silas’, well, he could handle them. Or him, since most of it came from Brandon.
“Killing me,” he muttered, emphasizing each word as he threw her his best irritated expression. She was not making it any easier with the easy flirting, which yes, he really fucking enjoyed, but it was hard not to escalate things. “Probably about as hard as it is for me,” he replied. “All I want to do right now is touch you.” She could take that exactly like it sounded, because it wouldn’t be a wrong assumption.
His smile was slow, deliberate, and just a little cheeky at her words. “Careful sweetheart,” he said between her words, breaking off at her next sentence. “Things, huh? What kind of things?” And there he was at that line again. He was dangerously close to crossing it like it wasn’t even there. Touching wasn’t harmless either, not really, not for him, not when it came to how much he wanted, and how much it seemed like Rae was giving him a hell of a lot of signals. Only thing keeping him from acting on any of it was the agreement to take things slow, and the fact that he’d never push her further than she was ready to go. “Babe, it’s only dangerous if we ignore the line,” he told her rather than voice any of what he was thinking. No use making things murky or fucking things up. “I’m not gonna bullshit you though, it’s testing every bit of willpower I got not to just …” Just what? There wasn’t any way he could end that sentence without sounding like a caveman. “Just, you gotta know, if it was anyone but you, I wouldn’t think going the slow route was worth it.”
And there she was in touching distance again. “Why are we doing this to ourselves?” he voiced before he thought about it. “Like torture not being able to get my hands on your skin.” So he’d never be accused of pretty words, but it was all honesty behind them. He had shoved both hands into the pockets of his coat as a precautionary measure, even if the action seemed to disrupt his balance a little.
The sigh of relief that escaped was unconscious, and there was barely a beat between her offering her hand and him taking it. “It’d be a damn shame to try and explain a broken tailbone to medical,” he reasoned with a smirk, tugging Rae forward again.
After a couple circuits of the rink, he stopped at where he’d left the sticks propped and looked down at Rae. “Wanna try a couple shots? Think you got your feet under you?” They hadn’t come out here just to torture each other in a public setting, though that seemed to be the way it had been going. He really did want to have some actual fun; fun that wasn’t just imagining what he’d do once they were back behind closed doors.