Page 96 of White Noise

“No. I’m clear.”

“About what?”

His eyes lock onto mine.

“What’s mine.”

The words land between us with enough weight that I actually feel my stomach tighten.

I cover it with a scoff. “Here we fucking go again.” I shove away from the nightstand and put a little distance between us. “I’m going to stream whenever the fuck I want. People are going to watch, they’re going to pay, and you don’t get to throw a supernatural tantrum every time somebody looks at me.”

Silas follows without hurrying.

“You think I won’t fucking take that away from you too?”

“I think you need to get the fuck over yourself.”

His expression doesn't just harden; it goes cold, a dead, predatory stillness that makes the air in the room feel heavy, like the pressure before a storm.

“No, little echo,” he says, his voice dropping to a guttural, menacing crawl. “You need to get over the delusion that VioletHex still belongs to you. Nothing belongs to you. You are a ghost in your own fucking life, and everything you touch is mine the moment I decide I want it.”

“There it is.” I wave vaguely toward him, though my hand is shaking. “That giant fucking supernatural ego.”

Silas doesn't walk; he fucking glides, closing the distance with a sudden, suffocating speed.

He stops so close that I can feel the unnatural heat radiating off him, forcing me to tip my chin up just to keep his gaze in sight.

He towers over me, all solid menace and low static, filling the space until there’s nowhere else to look.

“You still think this is a negotiation,” he sneers, his voice vibrating in my chest. “You still think you have a voice in how this ends.”

“And you still think I care what you think.”

The low electrical hum starts beneath his skin—a hungry, jagged sound.

My body betrays me instantly. It doesn't just react, it wholly fucking submits.

A violent shiver rips across my arms and cascades down my spine, leaving a trail of unwanted heat that settles deep in my gut.

It’s a conditioned response, a biological surrender to the monster standing in front of me. Frustration flares, but it's drowned out by the sudden, desperate slickness between my thighs.

Silas hasn’t even touched me.

He hasn’t even increased the current enough to make the lights flicker, yet my breathing has already fractured into shallow, needy gasps.

Fuck.

I am a piece of hardware reacting to its master's signal.

His eyes move over my face, tracking the dilation of my pupils and the flush of my skin with a clinical, sadistic hunger.

The bastard knows.

He knows that no matter how much I spit in his face, my nerves are wired to crave the very thing that's destroying me.

He doesn’t want my love or my permission.

He wants the certainty that I belong to him completely, something he can use, ruin, and break however he wants.