Page 20 of Love by Design (Club Rapture: Risk Aware #1)

SILAS

M uch to my father’s disapproval, I left work early.

He kept hounding me about an updated version of the bid, and I kept pushing him off.

The fact he thought I could whip it together in a handful of days spoke volumes to how unimportant he thought my ideas really were.

There was deliberation and care and understanding that had to go into designing plans that would incorporate the kind of innovation required to stay at the forefront of our industry.

It wasn’t as simple as drawing up new schematics and adding greenery.

Resigned to ignore him, I texted Lincoln so he could order ahead for dinner, then I headed home. Our apartment smelled like olives and hummus when I arrived, and Lincoln was bent over the dining room table, spreading containers out so we could both reach them from our usual seats.

“Honey, I’m home,” I called out from the door, adding a Ricky Ricardo kind of inflection to my voice.

Kicking the door closed, I dropped my laptop bag by the door and toed off my shoes, and then I let my nose carry me to the table.

Lincoln sat down and grinned up at me when I got there.

I kissed the top of his head and collapsed into my own chair with a groan .

“Long day?” he asked.

“Long week.”

“It’s Tuesday.”

I snorted and stared up at the ceiling. “My dad is being the worst again.”

“I don’t know how you work with him.” Lincoln leaned toward the center of the table and picked up a clear container of hummus. He set it between us, and I passed him a pita chip.

“At the time, I didn’t have much of a choice,” I grumbled, and it was true.

When I was in school, I didn’t get any internships after graduation, so taking a job with my dad had felt like the only option. In hindsight, it had just been the easiest, and now it wasn’t anything more than a trap filled with quicksand.

“Do you now?”

“I could look for other work, but I don’t have a lot of experience on my resume.”

“Just because dad is dated doesn’t mean you don’t have experience,” he countered, pointing at me with a half-eaten pita chip. “You got that article published, and you’re working on another one, so they’ll see you’re not stuck in the past just because your boss is.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, even though my heart wasn’t in it.

“I’m sure you don’t want to talk about work. Shawarma or gyro?”

“Shawarma,” I said.

Lincoln passed me a white Styrofoam container overflowing with rice and shawarma. I opened it up and breathed in the smell of all the herbs, then shoved a forkful of meat into my mouth.

“Let’s talk about your boyfriend,” Lincoln said right as I swallowed.

The shreds of chicken roped together in my throat, and I choked. Pounding my chest to get the bite down, I narrowed my eyes and glared at my best friend.

“What do you mean?”

Lincoln arched a brow. “Isn’t he?”

“Who?”

“Marshall.”

“He’s not—” I stopped, catching myself in the lie.

Marshall was my boyfriend, technically, I guess. He was also my Dom, even though we were still figuring out the logistics of how those two things would work together.

“Exactly.” Lincoln grinned at me. “You sounded like you’d been to heaven and back the first night you went over there and emergency-called me to check in, but you haven’t said anything to me about him since, beyond assuring me all those pretty bruises on your ass were consensual.”

He wasn’t wrong.

It wasn’t that I’d been avoiding Lincoln, I just didn’t have the words to explain how I felt about Marshall or what our relationship was. It was fresh to me and very fresh to him, and there was no way to articulate that to a third party.

“It’s new,” I settled on.

“Obviously.” He reached over and scooped up some of my shawarma with a plastic fork and then said the next part with his mouth full of food. “Is he a good Dom?”

The flush on my cheeks should have been the only answer Lincoln needed, but I nodded. “Yes.”

“A good boyfriend?”

“We’re still figuring it all out.”

“Is it a 24/7 thing?” he asked.

“Figuring it out,” I repeated, pushing the container of gyro toward him so he would stop talking and start eating, but Lincoln was nothing if not dedicated, and he was solely focused on me and Marshall.

“Does your dad know? ”

“Definitely not.”

“Are you going to tell him?” he asked.

“I’d love to not.”

Lincoln made an unimpressed sound. “You can’t hide forever.”

“Can’t we?” I asked.

He shook his head, the hint of a knowing frown on his face. “No.”

“Hey.” I poked him in the arm, and he made a dramatic show of rocking his whole body from the touch. “What’s that about?”

“Nothing,” he lied.

I poked him harder, and he rolled his eyes. “It’s Riot.”

Snorting, I grinned at my best friend. “That can’t be his real name. I don’t care what he says.”

“It is.” Lincoln frowned harder, smearing hummus onto his fork and using the dip to pick up some shavings of gyro. He filled his mouth and chewed, ignoring my stare.

“Alright.”

I worked on assembling something for myself to eat.

It was probably more food than would be advisable, considering my plans for the rest of the night, so I took one more bite of shawarma then searched out the container full of salad.

Lincoln gave me a slow and sarcastic blink but didn’t say anything.

We were on the verge of him either calling out the change in my eating habits and what that meant for the rest of my night or him being honest with me about whatever was going on with him and Riot.

I hoped for the latter, but there was no telling how things would go.

He ate a couple more bites of his meal in silence, then sighed. “He’s not out.”

I squinted, laughing out loud before swallowing it all back down when I saw the serious expression on Lincoln’s face. “Wait. Are you serious? ”

He nodded.

That night at Rapture was mostly a blur…

by design. Not that I’d tried to black out any of the things that happened to me, but because Marshall saving the day overshadowed all of it.

Sitting on the couch with him after it was all done, breathing with him, and feeling how steady his heart beat… nothing else mattered.

“He seemed pretty out to me, Linc,” I finally said when it was clear my best friend was not going to pick up the conversation again.

“On Friday nights at a sex club, maybe. But not in real life.”

“And that’s a dealbreaker?”

He cocked his head to the side and pursed his lips. “Isn’t it?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Like, I’m out and I think Marshall is too, but our relationship isn’t out.”

“I don’t want to talk about Riot,” he muttered.

“You really like him,” I said.

“I really don’t want to talk about him.” Lincoln cleared his throat and turned his attention on me, eyes laser focused. “I want to know if our relationship has to change now that you have a boyfriend and a Dom.”

“What do you mean?”

He rolled his eyes and dropped his fork.

It seemed neither of us had much of an appetite anymore.

“The way we’ve always been, Si. We’re not…normal friends.”

“We’re very normal,” I protested. “There’s nothing wrong with us.”

“I love you,” he said, and I answered him without missing a beat.

“I love you.”

“I’ve never wanted to have sex with you. ”

I snorted. “Should my feelings be hurt?”

“No, dumbass. I’m saying that everything between us is platonic. It always has been, and it always will be. But we share a bed sometimes, and we kiss sometimes. We cuddle a lot , and we used to scene?—”

I cut him off, grimacing. “We can’t scene anymore.”

“What about the rest?”

It was almost an absurd question, because why should anything in my relationship with Lincoln have to change just because I was now involved with Marshall?

Lincoln was my best friend, and that was the only thing he would ever be.

But would Marshall see it that way? Would he be okay with the knowledge that sometimes on the nights I wasn’t with him, I’d be in bed with Lincoln?

Our physicality was such an important part of our friendship, something both of us needed… I didn’t want to lose that.

“I’ll have to talk to Marshall,” I said.

It was all I had in the moment.

“What if he hates it?” Lincoln worried his canine tooth with the tip of his tongue. It was a nervous habit he’d had for as long as I’d known him, and even with his mouth closed tight, I recognized the movement of it. “What if he says no?”

The prospect of losing my relationship with Lincoln made me sick, but the thought of giving up Marshall didn’t make me feel much different.

“He won’t say no.”

“He doesn’t seem like the type to share.”

“It’s not sharing,” I said. “My relationship with you isn’t the same as my relationship with him.”

“You kiss us both.”

“I’ve kissed him once,” I said, smirking before covering my face with my hands.

Lincoln reached over and smacked my hands out the way. His eyes were wide, and his mouth parted in shock. “Once? ”

The bomb about that piece of our intimacy had landed just as I’d hoped. Not that I was deliberately trying to distract him, but I didn’t have the answers either of us needed. I’d have to talk to Marshall about it after dinner when I went over to his house.

There was apparently a lot for us to talk about after dinner.

“Once,” I confirmed. “And it was just last night.”

“Please tell me how that happened.”

“We just…he’s really big on negotiating what happens in a scene and not changing it up. We never talked about a kiss until last night.”

He scrunched his nose and leaned away from me, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “Is that weird of him? To be so strict?”

I shook my head. “It’s not…it’s not bad. It’s actually really fucking hot. The way we talk through things before we do them, but I think now that we’ve agreed we’re together , he’ll be more willing to change within a scene.”

“Is every time you have sex a scene?”

I opened my mouth to answer but fell short. I wanted to say no, but the answer—so far—was yes. And if Marshall was meant to be my boyfriend and my Dom, then I imagined yes…every time it would be a scene. Or maybe none of the times would be a scene, it would just be us.

“So far,” I answered. “But I don’t think that will be forever. I have plans to see him later tonight, and we were supposed to talk about all of that.”

“What do you want from him?”

“Everything.”

Lincoln worked his jaw back and forth, stare hazy, like he was looking through me instead of at me.

“That’s serious, Silas.”

“I know.”

“So serious you only had two bites of your favorite dinner.” He pulled the shawarma away from me and closer to him, repeating his same hummus as glue trick with the chicken before shoving a forkful of meat into his mouth.

“Trying to be courteous,” I said. “All things considered.”

He made a thoughtful sound as he swallowed, and I was just glad his appetite had returned.

The course of our conversation had given me whiplash. From work to Riot to Marshall to us. I hadn’t realized until this conversation just how much of my life was currently in flux. It was like standing on a cliff and being ready to jump, even though I had no idea what I’d find at the bottom.

It was easy to feel safe when I was with Marshall. His dominant nature and easy kind of caretaking style were enough to make sure I never doubted my security with him. It was the days without him where everything was called into question.

“He’s good to you, then?” Lincoln asked, tone completely different from before.

“He’s amazing.”

“I’m happy for you. You deserve that.”

“Hey.”

He glanced up at me, and I scooted my chair closer, knocking our shoulders together before resting my head on his.

The closeness to Lincoln felt as right as it ever had.

So much so, I wasn’t sure how I would react if Marshall took issue with it.

Lincoln’s and my physical affection was as important to our friendship as our conversation.

“Hey.”

“You deserve it too.”

Lincoln snorted, sighing heavily and dropping his head against mine.

“Let’s worry about you for now. We can deal with me later. ”

I pretended to dry heave, the attention too much. “Thanks, I hate it.”

“Too bad.”

We sat in silence for a minute, the spread in front of us quickly getting cold. I tapped my fingers against Lincoln’s thigh, and he offered me his hand. Threading our fingers together, I lifted his hand to my mouth and kissed his knuckles.

“I love you,” I whispered, dropping our joined hands down to the small gap between our thighs.

“I know,” he said. “I love you too, Si.”

“Should I be worried about you?”

He squeezed my hand. “Not yet.”

“You’ll tell me?”

On top of my head, I felt him nod.

“Promise?” I asked.

“I promise.” Lincoln cleared his throat and untangled himself from me fully. “Now help me pack this all into the fridge. Sounds like you have a hot date.”