Page 21 of Love by Design (Club Rapture: Risk Aware #1)

MARSHALL

S ilas arrived later than I’d expected. I wasn’t more than ten minutes away from texting to check on him when he showed up on my porch in a pair of low-slung gray sweats and a threadbare USC t-shirt, messenger bag looped around his neck like usual.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said with half of a shrug.

“We never settled on a time.”

I stepped out of the way to let him in, knowing his first stop would be getting his shoes off and kicking them into a neat pile by the door. Next, he slipped off his messenger bag, ready to set it on the floor, but I took it from him before the leather could hit the tile.

“I’ll go put this in my room.”

His cheeks pinked and he nodded.

“Why don’t you head into the dining room? I poured us some wine.”

“Thank you,” he said quietly, padding off in the opposite direction of my bedroom.

I carried Silas’s bag into my room and set it in the closet, then I found him perched on a stool with the wine in hand. He spun the glass around in a circle, aerating the bubbles, but not taking a drink.

“Is this all I get for the night?” he asked.

“That depends.”

“On if we fuck?”

I sucked in a silent breath and sat down beside him, not sure where his defensiveness was coming from but more than ready to find out.

“On if we fuck the way we both like.”

Silas cocked his head to the side and asked, “Do you think you wouldn’t like fucking me normally?”

“I’m sure I’ll like fucking you every way I can.”

He finally raised the glass to his lips, taking the smallest sip imaginable. “If you’re my boyfriend and my Dom, doesn’t that make everything a scene?”

The question made me wish I’d poured us both a whole bottle and not two ounces.

Instead of answering his question, I made an observation. “You seem uneasy, Silas. Did something happen at dinner?”

He frowned, taking another swallow of wine. He set the glass down and started to spin it again, making me wonder if the movement was a nervous habit, giving me the idea of tying him down and forcing him to be still and face whatever was eating at him.

“I want to talk to you about my relationship with Lincoln.” Silas turned his stool so our knees knocked together, and I made room for him to notch himself between my thighs.

“Talk.”

He was a bundle of nerves trapped in the body of a man, twitchy and unsure in a way I’d never seen from him before.

Not that my experience with Silas’s moods was vast. The time we’d spent together was minimal in comparison to the time I’d spent with my brothers or the time he’d spent with Lincoln.

I settled my hands on the tops of his thighs, hoping the weight would in some way calm him.

“He’s my best friend.” Silas looked at me, looked away, looked at me again.

“I know.”

“We…our friendship…” He grimaced, turning his face downward.

He traced his thumbs across the tops of my knuckles, and I was very worried he was about to tell me something that was going to break whatever this deal between us was.

I didn’t know what the confession would be, but Silas’s body language had me prepared for the worst.

“You can tell me,” I said, even though part of the answer felt like a lie. “Whatever it is, I want to know. Do the two of you fuck? Is that it?”

Silas exhaled with a laugh, his shoulders caving inward, and he curled his fingers around the sides of my hands, tucking them up against my palm. Apparently I’d said the right thing—which I didn’t quite understand—because the earlier tension that had locked his spine straight had vanished.

“God, no.” He made an almost disgusted noise. “We’ve never slept together. We scene sometimes, rarely. But, no…we’re…we do sleep together, but not for sex. Just for sleep. We’re…God, this is so weird to say. We’re physical with each other, but not sexual.”

I worried the inside of my cheek, giving myself a minute to think before I reacted. Silas pressed his fingertips against my palms, one at a time, almost like he was tapping out a beat.

“Do you hold hands?”

“Sometimes.”

“And you share a bed?”

Another grimace. “Sometimes. Not always.”

“You hold each other while you sleep?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes. ”

“What else?” I prompted, seeing something lingering in the backs of his eyes that wasn’t yet in the space between us.

“We kiss,” he blurted, “and I understand that you?—”

I groaned, taking one of my hands out of his grasp and covering his mouth before he could manage another word.

“Stop,” I warned him. “Don’t assume a single thing about whatever you think my response to this is going to be.”

He pursed his lips, the slightest pucker against my palm. Eyes wide over the side of my hand, he nodded, and I let my hand fall away.

“You and Lincoln have a platonic relationship, yes?”

“Yes. Yeah. We’re not…we’re not interested in each other. I don’t want him the way I want you.”

“And that’s mutual?”

Silas nodded, brows knit together in worry.

“Are you certain?” I asked.

“It’s been this way for years,” he said. “We talked about it a long time ago, and we’re definitely on the same page.”

“If the two of you are only friends, why do you kiss each other?”

“Because it feels good?” He phrased it like a question, adding a shrug. “Not good like it turns either of us on, good in like…I don’t know how to explain it. It’s more than a hug. It’s just…I don’t know, Marshall. I can stop. We can stop. That’s what I wanted to talk to you?—”

I covered his mouth again, giving him a weary look to remind him of what I’d just said.

“And you’re here now, asking me if you have to lose those things with him to have me?”

He nodded.

In another life, the answer would have been a quick and resounding yes.

With any other partner, it would have been a yes.

But there was something so inherently different about Silas, different about my feelings for him, that made the prospect of telling him it had to stop feel like a cruel and unusual punishment.

“I want you to feel loved at all times, sweetheart.” I pulled my hand away from his mouth and slid it around his cheek, my fingers stretching around the side of his neck and into his hair. Silas leaned into me like our bodies were made to fit together, mold together this way and all ways.

“I don’t want you to scene with anyone besides me, but the rest…” I paused. Thought. “I have more questions about the kissing.”

“Ask me,” he rasped.

“Does it make you hard to kiss him?”

“No.” He shook his head. “It’s more of… like a warmth in my chest. Like a hug.”

“A mouth hug,” I murmured, chuckling under my breath.

“We don’t do it a lot. Just…sometimes it happens or, no. It doesn’t just happen.”

Anyone else would have been a no. Anyone else wasn’t Silas.

“I understand what you mean,” I said. And, somehow, I did. “No more scenes. Lincoln is not to be dominant to you in any way.”

“Yes,” he agreed, breathy, still pressing his cheek into my palm. He reached out, grabbing both of my thighs with his hands for balance as he swayed closer to me.

“No one is dominant to you except me.”

“Yes, Marshall.”

He used my name again like an honorific, and it was embarrassing to admit how badly it made me want to melt into the floor.

“The rest is…fine.”

His entire face changed, morphing from worry to shock to a relief that had his eyes filling with tears. Silas blinked hard, forcing them down, and he practically crawled across the space between us until he was balanced in my lap on a barstool that was definitely not rated for both of our weights.

“Do you mean it?” he asked, our noses brushing together, lips inches apart.

I’d only kissed him once.

I wrapped one arm around his waist to hold his balance, pressed my fingers into the back of his head with the other.

“I’m always your Dom, Silas, but I won’t always tell you what to do,” I said. “Does that make sense? I don’t want to dictate every facet of your life, but when I give an order?—”

“I’ll follow it,” he said.

“In or out of the bedroom.”

“Yes.”

“I meant what I said before, that I won’t ever do anything to jeopardize any of your relationships. I won’t ever ask you to do anything that will hurt you—or anyone else, for that matter. I won’t put you in danger, even though sometimes it might feel like it.”

Silas moaned, hips rocking against mine.

“Give me some limits,” I said. “Tell me how far I can go.”

We were almost too close together for the conversation to be as balanced as I needed it to be, but it was impossible to keep my hands off of him.

I’d already shown so much restraint, and Silas tested my resolve at every turn.

With his bravery, with his honesty, his talent, his unbridled passion for his work… for me.

“No marks that will show at work,” he bit the words out like every one of them was a fight. “Don’t ignore me as a punishment.”

“I would never.”

“I’m not a huge fan of canes, but I would like to be.”

My dick surged to full-mast. “I love canes.”

“Good.” Silas chewed his lip between his teeth. “What about you? ”

“I won’t abide a brat, Silas.”

“Understood,” he said, nodding quickly. “Anything else?”

“I’ll use red if anything needs to stop, same as I expect from you. Also, aftercare is a non-negotiable. I’ll always make sure we have time for it. That I have time for you.”

Precum leaked against my underwear.

I’d always enjoyed the discussion and the negotiation of a scene, the way talking about what I was about to do was like foreplay in and of itself.

The hint of arousal with it all, the tease and the promise.

But this, like all things with Silas, was so much more than that.

The man in my lap was dangerously close to consuming me, and he didn’t even know.

Could he tell how affected I was by the sight of him? The proximity of him?

“Yes,” he said, and I shuddered, realizing he was agreeing to my limits, not commenting on a thought he’d never heard. “Does this mean you want me to call you Sir now?”

Very back in the present moment, I trailed my hand down his cheek, over his arm, down his side to his waist. I held him hard, held him steady, encouraging him to grind down into my lap to chase the friction he was after.

“Have I earned it?”

Silas exhaled against my mouth, breath quivering as it ghosted across my lips.

“I think so,” he whispered.

Something burned and expanded in the middle of my chest, pressing against my sternum and my ribs. I swallowed hard to keep whatever it was inside of me, unsure about the repercussions of letting it out.

“Then, yes.”

“When?” he asked.

“Whenever you want, Silas. Or whenever I tell you. But it doesn’t have to be all the time.” I dug my thumbs into his hips. “I do very much love the way you say my name too.”

He let loose a sound that was half-groan, half-sigh .

“What do you want from me, Marshall?”

Anything.

Everything.

“I want to kiss you,” I admitted.

“What are you wa?—”

I didn’t bother letting him finish the sentence.

I no longer needed permission. Our mutual consent was a band wrapped around the both of us that we’d always wear.

I’d check the tension on it often, make sure it was still comfortable and right, safe in the ways that mattered, but we had our understanding now.

I slanted my mouth against his and gave him exactly what we both wanted.