Page 31 of Love by Design (Club Rapture: Risk Aware #1)

MARSHALL

S mith ate all the pasta Silas had dished up for him, and Lincoln sat beside him at the counter, expression wary.

“Sorry about that,” I said, coming into the kitchen to pour my brother and me both a glass of wine.

One thing that was nice about having a brother who idolized you was I never had to guess about his likes or dislikes.

They very nearly copied my own. I poured a glass for each of us, and before I could return the bottle to its shelf, Lincoln cleared his throat and grinned at me.

I poured a third, then a smaller pour for Silas who’d slid back onto his barstool doing everything he could to hide his erection.

“You’re fine,” Smith said with a sigh. “Now that I’m here, it’s all feeling very dramatic.”

“You’re allowed to have feelings,” Lincoln said.

I found myself curious what the two of them had discussed while Silas and I were in the bedroom, but I wasn’t going to pry.

“More dinner?” I offered.

Smith clanked his fork against the side of the bowl but shook his head. “Wine is good.”

“Wine is better with something in your stomach. ”

“I ate.” As if to prove his point, he shoved the bowl toward me.

“Have some more,” Lincoln suggested gently, and I was suddenly even more curious about their conversation than I’d been before.

“Tell me about your day, Lincoln,” I said, picking the pot up from the stove and seeing Silas had made more than enough pasta to feed all four of us. Heat expanded in the middle of my chest at the forethought, and I dumped some noodles into Smith’s bowl before shoving it back at him.

“I enjoyed the amenities,” he said with a smile that definitely had the power to take lesser men down. I quickly understood why Silas loved him, and I found myself grateful he had such a kindhearted and reliable friend.

“Did you eat me out of house and home?”

“I’m a gracious guest, Mr. Covington. I would never.”

To his left, Smith groaned.

Lincoln laughed. “Did I hit a nerve?”

“A time and a place for all things,” I said, topping off all of our wine glasses in lieu of recorking the bottle. There wasn’t much left anyway; there’d be no harm in it.

“I’ll put a pin in that.”

“No one calls me Mr. Covington in my own home, Lincoln.”

“Okay.” He made doe eyes at me, and I hoped he couldn’t see through me, straight to the part that did enjoy being called Mr. Covington—in the bedroom. Lincoln turned toward Silas. “Did you put a pin in that?”

“Linc,” he warned.

Thankfully, Lincoln received the message. “Is that one of those ‘Mr. Covington is my father, please call me Marshall’ kind of things?”

Scratching the back of my neck, I leaned against the far counter so I had a clean line of sight on all three of my houseguests. “Something like that,” I murmured.

Dejectedly, Smith finished his pasta, then made quick work of his wine and leaned back as much as the barstool would allow, which wasn’t much.

“Do you want to sit on the couch? Get comfortable?” I asked my brother, again looking at Lincoln. “Are you spending the night?”

He perked up. “Is that an option?”

Sighing, I carried my wine into the living room, grateful I’d had the foresight to get a conversation-sized couch, not something smaller. Not anything built for only one man.

“I have a guest room.” I sat down in my usual spot on the couch, and Silas tucked in beside me, getting close without climbing on top of me the way we both clearly wanted.

“What about your brother?” he asked.

“I’m not staying,” Smith answered for himself, but he was already in the kitchen opening another bottle of wine.

“Yes, you are.”

“Fine,” he grumbled, hints of the preteen version of himself bleeding out through his tired and frayed edges.

Smith brought his wine to the living room and set it down on the coffee table with an unhappy noise. “I’m going to change, then.”

“You know your way around,” I said. “You can take your usual room, and show Lincoln the other one, if you don’t mind.”

I watched over Silas’s shoulder as the two of them trotted off together down the hall, and once they were out of earshot, I slid my hand between Silas’s legs and squeezed.

“Please, don’t,” he whined, arching into my hold.

“Don’t?”

“You’re going to make me harder than I already am, and these pants don’t hide anything,” he whispered. “If it was just Lincoln, I wouldn’t care.”

“But my brother.”

He nodded, lashes fluttering as I made a loose fist around what I could reach of his shaft.

“I don’t like you telling me no,” I said, giving him a stroke.

Silas gasped, crawling half onto my lap and burying his face into the crook of my neck. “I never did. I never would.”

“Never is a dangerous promise, sweetheart.”

“You know what I mean,” he murmured.

I looked quickly down the hall and realized Lincoln must be waiting for Smith to change because neither of them had reappeared. Taking advantage of the time with Silas, I held him against me, enjoying the warmth and flexibility of his body.

“If it wasn’t my brother. If it was just Lincoln, or if it was just a stranger, would you like that?”

“Marshall,” he groaned my name like a curse, and then there was nothing more to say because the conversation between Lincoln and Smith grew louder as they returned to the couch. Smith collapsed comfortably onto the sectional side, scooping his wine off the table with one fluid and practiced motion.

As the night dragged on, the question about putting Silas on display stayed in the forefront of my mind.

I mindlessly played with Silas’s hair while Smith alternated between watching whatever show Lincoln had put on and talking about how three brothers was plenty, but four was excessive.

The whole time, debating if I was too possessive or not possessive enough to let another man put his eyes on what was mine.

There was something to be said for the trust required for a scenario that involved exhibitionism or free use, and I meant that from both ways.

Silas would have to trust me to make good decisions on his behalf, to keep him safe in all ways.

And on the other hand, I would have to trust not just him, but also myself.

To put us both into a situation like that and let it send me into a spiral of doubt would be absolutely unforgivable.

We’d talked about free use during our initial negotiations, and it was something that sounded extremely enticing…in theory. In practice? I couldn’t say. I’d never been in the kind of relationship where something like that was on the table. I didn’t know if I ever would be again.

If I wanted to be.

Just shy of midnight, Smith stood up and grumbled something about being tired, then took his wine to bed with him.

He was so much like me sometimes I worried for him.

The way he preferred to process internally, the way he would be alone forever if someone didn’t force him to share company.

Smith was a monolith, while also still being my angry, petulant, and sometimes scared-beyond-words baby brother.

“Do you want to check on him?” Silas asked quietly, untangling himself from my lap and immediately looking over his shoulder to search out Lincoln who’d fallen asleep in the corner of the couch, tucked into himself like a hermit crab.

“Just real quick, yes.”

We both stood, and we both ignored the way both of my knees cracked.

“I’ll get Lincoln to bed,” Silas said.

I brushed a kiss against the side of his head, then counted the steps from the living room to Smith’s guest room.

The light was still on, the door not yet closed.

He sat on the edge of the bed, elbows braced on his knees and phone in his hand.

I knocked on the door jamb and he looked up, his eyes bloodshot and tired.

“You got into a fight with that wine bottle and lost,” I said, jerking my chin toward the almost empty glass he’d been holding all night like a security blanket. “You’re not going to feel great about this in the morning. ”

“I know there’s ibuprofen in the bathroom, and I’ll be fine in the morning.” He barely slurred, and I twisted my mouth into a sympathetic half-frown. “Do you want to talk about this sober?”

“I don’t want to talk about this at all.” Smith tossed his phone onto the nightstand and flung himself onto the bed.

“I haven’t seen you this upset since you showed up on the porch the first day we met.”

He grimaced, and I felt bad for hurting him with the barb, but I truly couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him act so childish about his emotions.

“I’ve never done this before,” he said so quietly I almost didn’t hear him. Smith scrubbed a wary hand down his face and then looked at me with desperate and imploring eyes. “What if he doesn’t like me?”

“Shit.”

I’d been looking at Smith’s behavior all wrong.

I’d incorrectly assumed his reactions had come from a place of jealousy.

He’d never introduced a new brother to the fold before, he was worried about the dynamic changing, or so I’d thought.

Pushing off the door frame, I went into the room and sat down on the bed, close enough to touch his leg and let him know I was close to him, not just emotionally but also physically.

“Is that what this is about?” I asked, squeezing his knee.

“What else would it be about?”

I huffed out a dying laugh. “I don’t know, Smith. I didn’t realize. But if he doesn’t like you, he’ll be the one missing out, not the other way around.”

My brother eyed me doubtfully, then blinked at me so slowly I wondered if he was about to fall asleep mid-conversation. With a long exhale, I pulled the blankets up to his chest and tucked him in.

Something else I hadn’t done in years .

“Do you remember?” he whispered, rolling onto his side and curling up in the fetal position.

I smoothed my hand over the knobs of his spine, steady up and down and up and down until he settled.

“Of course,” I told him.

Of course I remembered the times he’d woken up from night terrors, sometimes screaming and sometimes crying.

Sometimes terrified, but never alone. I didn’t know if Finn or Hunter had paid Smith any mind at night when I wasn’t at the house, but whenever I was, he never had to struggle through a sleepless night alone.

I sat with Smith until the cadence of his breathing changed, and I was certain he’d finally fallen asleep. Turning the light off on my way out, I pulled the door closed behind me and found my way to the primary bedroom where I knew Silas would be waiting.

I closed that door behind me too—and locked it.

“Is he okay?” Silas asked. He was on the foot of the bed, still dressed in jeans and my t-shirt, his feet bare.

“He’ll be fine,” I said. “Did you get Lincoln into bed?”

“I did.” He sighed, then tilted his chin toward his chest and gazed up at me through the fan of his lashes. “Mr. Covington.”

A sharp heat exploded low in my belly, and I shot him a warning glance. “It’s Sir, and you know it.”

“Sir,” he practically purred it at me, and the heat sank lower, thickening my cock in a dangerous way.

“Strip.”

I reached behind my head and tugged my shirt over and off while Silas scrambled out of his clothes.

I loved the look of him there in front of me, limbs a few inches shy of being lanky, hair an inch or so too long to consider kept up.

Silas was awkward and messy when he let himself come apart, and that was when I enjoyed him the most.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes. ”

“Thank you, Sir.”

His cock bobbed.

“I’m tired, Silas.” I took a step toward him, then another and another.

He backed up until his knees hit the bed, then he sat down because he had nowhere else to go.

I crawled onto him, used my body to slide us both up until his head was on the pillows.

He made the happiest sound, and my dick leaked against my sweats.

Reaching between our bodies, I pulled my erection out and tucked my dick between the tight slide of his thighs.

“Fuck, you’re tight,” I groaned, shifting my hips to fuck the sliver of space between his legs.

Silas whimpered and arched against me, murmuring my name when I curled my hand around his dick again and stroked.

It was rough and disjointed, but I brought him off with my hand at the same time I used the tight grip of his thighs to get myself off.

It was nowhere near the worst I’d done to him, but in the tired and vulnerable moments at the end of the night, there was a quiet kind of intimacy in the moment that took my breath away.

With one last trembling groan, I sank my teeth into Silas’s pouty lower lip and went still.

“Go to sleep,” I whispered, kissing the place I’d just bitten.

Silas murmured something I couldn’t hear, but when I rolled off of him and onto my back, he chased after me.

Flinging a leg over my hip and arranging his head on my chest, Silas was asleep before I even finished getting myself settled beneath him.

With cum on my cock and my hand, I kissed the tangle of his hair and let sleep take me too.