The room did not answer.
Another body did.
I turned too quickly and walked straight into him.
Not hard enough to lose balance. Hard enough that the collision was all heat and shock and the clean brutal fact of another person suddenly inside the space my body had believed was empty.
Silas caught my elbow with one hand before instinct could make the rest of me sway.
He was closer than he had ever been.
Dangerously close.
The front of his shirt brushed my shoulder. Cedar reached me first, clean and dry and dark at the edges, and beneath it the unmistakable warmth of him. For a man who looked made of discipline and winter glass, his body gave off too much heat.
I could feel it through cashmere.
Through air.
Through whatever self-preserving logic should have made me step back immediat
