Page 3 of Love by Design (Club Rapture: Risk Aware #1)

SILAS

B y the time I got home, I was somehow in a worse mood than when I’d left.

I’d spent the whole drive stewing about my father, my brain helpfully playing back Marshall Covington’s smooth voice as he complimented my work over the top of my father’s constant dismissals.

Slamming the front door behind me, I dropped everything just inside the door, then I toed off my oxfords and shuffled into the living room, hoping my roommate Lincoln was there.

He wasn’t, but the steady thump of EDM coming from down the hallway led me straight to him.

I found my roommate—and friend—standing in front of his full-length mirror, wearing nothing more than a pair of tight leather pants.

I flung myself down face-first onto his bed, muffling a frustrated cry into his pillow.

Lincoln turned down the music and sat beside me on the bed, his talented fingers plucking my shirt to untuck it from my pants.

I rolled onto my back and let him finish the job, tugging out the tails before undoing my belt and pulling down my fly.

Without a word, he stripped me of my slacks, then he finished unbuttoning my dress shirt, fingertips drawing a swirl around the base of my throat as I shrugged out of the confining material.

Collapsing back onto his sheets in only my boxer briefs, relief trickled up my body, accelerated by the careful slide of Lincoln’s hand.

“Rough day?” he asked.

I hummed in response.

“Come out with me tonight,” he said, pressing on my hip until I rolled to my side and then back onto my belly.

“I’m not in the mood,” I grumbled.

Lincoln chuckled, kneading the globes of my ass until I groaned and arched up against his grip.

“You’re always in the mood.”

“I’m not.”

He released one side of my ass, only to spank it. Not hard enough to count, but enough to remind me he was right. I was always in the mood.

“Come out with me,” he said again, getting rougher with his handling of my ass. I fought the urge to hump his comforter, even though it wouldn’t have been the first time.

“Linc.”

He lay down beside me, body half on top of mine, the cool press of his leather pants sending a shiver up my spine. He hooked one leg over mine and pushed my thighs apart, grinding against my hip.

“Let me share you tonight,” he whispered, the proposition licking hot as fire against my ear.

The reality was, I wasn’t his to share. Lincoln and I were friends, and we were roommates, and sometimes we kissed and sometimes we played, and even if he used words like let me share you tonight , we both understood he only facilitated something for me that I was too scared to search out for myself.

There were nights that I asked Lincoln to dominate me, and there were nights he asked me to submit to him, just like there were nights we tangled our bodies together on the couch and fell asleep.

More often than not, though, we did none of those things .

Lincoln was my friend, first and foremost.

Above all things.

And it was the closeness of our friendship that helped him understand there were times I needed more than what he could—or would—give to me.

Even if I didn’t always have the words to ask, he still knew.

And it had been so long since I’d had a boyfriend, even longer since I’d had a boyfriend who was dominant and liked to see me submit.

I’d met a guy on an app right after my last birthday, Joe, and we’d lasted a few months, but our relationship was quick to run its course.

I worked too much for his tastes, but I wasn’t in a position to step back from my responsibilities at the firm.

And now I had to work even harder because I needed to make sure my father didn’t run his legacy into the ground before passing it on to me.

I wished he would fucking retire.

But before Joe, there was a slew of men whose names I’d be pressed to remember.

Men who didn’t last more than a date or two for all kinds of reasons.

Some of them weren’t kinky, some of them were too kinky, some were the wrong kind of kinky, some of them weren’t smart, and some of them were jealous of Lincoln.

He’d told me once I was being too picky, but I never agreed.

I knew what I wanted, and I wasn’t going to settle for less.

For as horrible as my father was to me about work, I knew it was only because he’d used every ounce of his love and kindness with my mother.

They’d been together since college, and he doted on her like I’d never seen anyone else do before or since.

It was only after she died that he turned sour to the core, but I still remembered the capacity for kindness that used to live in him, the devotion.

I wanted that.

But until I found it, I’d fuck.

“Share me with who?” I asked .

The leather of Lincoln’s pants was warming up from being exposed to my bare skin, and he rubbed himself against me like a cat.

“Whoever I want,” he whispered. “Let me find a man to take you over his knee and spank all the stress of the week right out of you.”

The idea sounded like heaven, and I lifted my hips off the bed. “Can’t you do it?”

“Not as hard as you need it, and we both know it.”

I sank back down into the sheets. “I don’t want to get dressed,” I complained.

Lincoln snorted and untangled our legs, then he shoved me onto my back.

“What if I get you dressed?”

My cock surged to attention in an embarrassing way that had my hands snaking between my legs to cover the bulge.

He didn’t miss it, because he never did.

That was another problem, I’d realized months before.

Lincoln was so in tune with my moods and my needs, so attentive…

everyone else paled in comparison to him.

And the worst part was, it had all come naturally.

If he’d tried to learn me, he never made it obvious.

He just showed up in the ways that would always count the most, and I loved him for it.

Lincoln—platonically and physically—was everything I wanted, but I’d never felt romantic attachment for him.

I’d told him that once, early in our friendship over a shared box of cheap wine.

I’d cried about it even, wanting to love Lincoln in all the ways I wanted to be loved.

He was just as drunk as me, and he’d brushed my hair out of my face, kissed the corner of my downturned mouth, and told me love was shit anyway.

“Hmn?” he prompted, and I covered my face with his pillow, muttering a muffled curse into the case. “You liked that, and you know it. ”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You like being told what to do, and you like being used. There’s no shame in it.” He kissed the shell of my ear, and my lashes fluttered. “Let me dress you up and take you out, find a nice man with big hands to get you off, then I’ll bring you home safe and tuck you into bed.”

All in all, it sounded like a perfect night…

but I was so raw from the exchange with my father and with Marshall that I wanted to go back to the office, dig the magazine out of the trash, and papercut myself to death with it.

I wanted to bleed all over my father’s desk, all over the proposal bid—which was so fucking lacking—until he understood how much of myself I put into the job and how little of himself he put into everything .

“I don’t want to wear leather,” I conceded.

“I know you don’t.” Lincoln ruffled the hair on the back of my head and climbed off the bed, leaving me to stew in my own thoughts for almost too long. I was seconds away from calling out for him when the bed dipped again with his weight.

I didn’t look up, but helped him maneuver my legs into a pair of tight jeans. He grunted, trying to hike them the rest of the way up my thighs, then collapsed beside me with a laugh.

“You’ll have to get those the rest of the way on,” he announced.

“Yes, Sir,” I teased, forcing myself into a seated position beside him.

“Arms up, lazybones.”

I obliged and he slid a plain black t-shirt down over my arms. I wriggled into it, then stood with a jump to get the pants fully on.

“Those were probably not the best choice if you wanted a spanking tonight,” he said, lips pursed.

“You picked them,” I reminded him. “And besides, if they want me, they’ll have to work for it.”

“And we know how you love that.” Lincoln rolled his eyes at me, and I waited for him to finish getting dressed.

He fingered a leather harness that sat on his dresser, glancing in the mirror to see my thoughts in the reflection.

I shook my head, and he left it be, opting instead for a snug black t-shirt that he tucked into the tight pants.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

“Almost.” He sat down on the foot of the bed and stretched his legs out, wiggling his bare toes.

“Linc,” I groaned, heading for his dresser and then his closet.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” he promised. “I didn’t even know when you were going to be home.”

I grabbed a pair of black socks and his leather boots, then sank down onto my knees at his feet.

“I don’t believe you,” I fake-grumbled, getting each of his feet into the socks before situating the tops underneath the cuffs of his leather pants.

His boots were next, one foot and then the other, and there’d been a time I’d accused him of liking me on my knees better than my back.

He’d protested and scoffed, then pressed the toe of his boot against the bulge between my legs, and we both knew who liked what.

Lacing him up, I patted his calves, then pushed up until I was standing.

“You can kiss them,” he suggested, giving his booted feet a wiggle, kicking one against my bare ankle.

“You’d like that.”

“ You would like that,” he countered.

“We’ll never know.” But the heat surging between my legs and the shared memory between us confirmed we both knew. It was just…a boundary between us.

A limit.

“My turn,” he said quickly, taking my hand and leading me down the short hall that separated our bedrooms. Lincoln gave me a gentle shove onto the bed, and I went willingly, fighting back a tangle of complicated feelings as Lincoln went to his knees in front of me and busied himself with returning the favor.

Instead of boots, he laced me into my sneakers, then helped me to my feet.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“For the shoes?”

I shook my head. “For always knowing what I need.”

He chuckled and slung an arm over my shoulders. “Maybe it’s not as selfless as you think, Silas. Maybe I want to watch.”

Heat burned my cheeks, and I turned away, even though I was certain Lincoln didn’t need to see it to know how much I liked the idea.

Our friendship was an easy thing, a perfect thing, but it was murky sometimes.

I dreaded the day that would become a problem, so instead I tried to pretend like it wasn’t a possibility.

“What is your goal for the night?” I asked him once we reached the door, doubling back to his bedroom to dig my wallet and keys out of the pockets of my discarded slacks.

I stopped in the bathroom to mess up my carefully-styled hair, and Lincoln leaned against the door frame, arms crossed in front of his chest, green eyes sparkling.

“My goal is to hand you off to someone with stronger hands than me, and while you’re getting beaten into the oblivion you’re so desperate for, I’ll be getting a blow job somewhere.”

“I thought you wanted to watch,” I teased, arching a brow.

“Only if a better opportunity doesn’t present itself.”

Flicking off the light switch and plunging us both into shadows, I asked, “Should I be hurt?”

Lincoln smiled and inclined his head toward the front door.

“That’s the plan, Silas. That’s the plan.”