Page 49 of Love by Design (Club Rapture: Risk Aware #1)

MARSHALL

I spent the entire weekend making love with Silas.

Before dinner on Saturday, I hogtied him in the middle of my living room and fucked him until he couldn’t breathe.

After, I paid close attention to the rug burn on his knees and elbows in the shower, making sure to kiss every inch of skin I’d marked, bruised, or otherwise abraded.

Sunday morning, I’d brought him coffee in bed, then I sucked his cock until my jaw couldn’t take the girth of him anymore.

He hadn’t finished, so I let him jerk off on my feet while I had my coffee, then I kissed him long and hard after he licked my toes clean.

Silas was perfection in all ways. I told him often how much I loved him, how grateful I was to call him mine, but I didn’t ask him to move in again.

Occasionally, I found myself aware of the power imbalance between us: the wealth gap, the age gap, the experience gap.

It took conscious work to ensure I wasn’t exploiting it.

Hell, it was the deciding factor in why I shoved Silas at Cory instead of hiring him myself.

The living situation needed to be treated with the same care.

Silas knew where I stood. If he wanted to meet me there, I’d be happy for it.

Until then, I was content to keep him in my bed—often tied and trussed—until he told me he needed to go home to check on Lincoln and get clean clothes. Apparently there was something wrong with my washer and dryer, even though it cleaned his cum off my sheets just fine.

Nevertheless, the week crawled toward Friday, and if Silas had any nerves over the impending meeting of the brothers, he wasn’t showing them. He was focused on two things, work and me, and I had no complaints about either of them.

On Wednesday afternoon, he called me to get my opinion on something he was thinking about for a bid Cory had him drafting up for a job in New York, but our call was interrupted by an unexpected visitor stepping out of the elevators.

“Let me call you later, sweetheart,” I said, waiting for him to answer back before hanging up the phone. I kept it in my hand, watching an older and far more miserable version of Silas make his way through my office.

“Do you have five minutes?” Stanley Ayres asked me, looking worse for wear from the last time I’d seen him.

“Depends.”

“I want to talk about Silas,” he said.

I stood up, frowning and shaking my head. “Then no. I don’t.”

“Covington,” he protested.

I waved him off, coming around the front of my desk with the full intention of ushering him to the elevator and back to wherever he’d come from.

“I’m not going to talk about Silas with you,” I said.

“Because you’re fucking my son?”

I snorted, biting back the truth of the matter. I was doing far more than fucking him.

“I’m not going to talk about Silas with you,” I repeated, stabbing the down button on the elevator.

“Does he talk about me with you?”

“Ask him,” I suggested .

“He’s not answering my calls.”

The elevator doors slid open, and Stanley begrudgingly stepped inside, turning to face me with his arms limp at his sides.

Silas hadn’t even mentioned his father since the lunch interruption had come up.

I wondered if he’d blocked his dad or chosen to willfully ignore the calls.

Either way, it made me appreciate my father’s concern for me and my brothers was in name and reputation only, not anything that actually mattered.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Stanley.”

Regret flashed across his face as the doors closed on him, and with a sigh, I turned and leaned against the wall. Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I sent a quick message to Silas.

Your dad just showed up here asking about you.

Silas

Jesus. I’m sorry.

Are you ignoring his calls?

Yes.

Did he seem upset?

Defeated.

Sorry he bothered you.

Not a bother. Just wanted to let you know and make sure you’re okay.

Always.

It was an overstatement, but nothing worth arguing about.

The elevator doors slid open, and I was ready to rebuff Stanley again but instead found Smith, tie loose around his neck and exhaustion marring his features.

“Hey,” I said, nose scrunched .

Smith stepped out of the elevator and headed for my office without an invitation. I went behind him, closing the door after he collapsed into one of the leather chairs opposite my desk.

“You good, baby brother?”

Instead of sitting behind my desk, I took the seat next to Smith, waiting for him to tell me what was on his mind.

“I want a new job,” he blurted, frowning.

“Okay.” I rubbed my hands together, immediately running through the rolodex of contacts in my mind who would be able to help Smith get out of his current firm and into something new. “Bored of the history or what’s going on?”

“No. Yes. I mean…I want a new career.”

Biting my tongue, I waited until it hurt so the pain would stop me from saying something regrettable to my still very impressionable youngest brother.

“What brought this on?” I finally asked.

“I’m bored.”

“Of work specifically?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Smith.” I groaned, shifting my weight around and propping one ankle up on my knee. My slacks hiked up and I wrapped my hand around my ankle bone, tapping my fingers against my shin. “We argued about this after you graduated high school, and you were adamant it was what you wanted.”

“Can’t people change their minds?” he snapped.

“Of course they can,” I said carefully. “But I want to understand why you’re having this change of heart.”

“I don’t need to explain myself to you, Marshall.”

“Then why are you here?”

“This was a mistake.” Smith stood to go, and I grabbed his wrist to stop him. He let me, so I tugged him back down into the chair.

“What’s really going on, Smith?” Leaning forward, I kept my fingers curled around his wrist, both our hands resting on top of his leg.

Of all my brothers, Smith was the most like me, which meant I should know how to handle him and his moods like they were my own.

The outburst sounded rash and unprovoked, though.

I expected it was a knee-jerk response to finding out about the existence of Andrew, shaking Smith’s foundation in more ways than one.

“What’s the point of it?” he asked, frowning at a spot on the wall behind me.

“You preserve history, Smith. You repair and restore it for others to enjoy.”

“I’m preserving someone’s idea of history,” he shot back. “How do I know I’m recreating an honest truth and not something made up?”

This was definitely about Andrew.

Exhaling a long breath, I squeezed his wrist before letting it go. He didn’t jump up again, so I wagered he was no longer a flight risk.

“I think,” I started slowly, needing to play into his comparison without being heavy-handed about it. “I think sometimes it’s a bit of both. We have our own preconceptions?—”

“Misconceptions.”

“Both of those,” I conceded. “But regardless of the meaning of the filigree or the conversation around the choices made when we weren’t in the room, the core of it all remains unchanged. Don’t you think?”

I was talking about us. The foundation and lives the four of us had built.

“And you know, Smith, sometimes when you dig deeper into the history of a thing, you find more support than you started with and that’s only good news for everyone. Right? It doesn’t change the shape of a thing, just the strength of it.”

My brother narrowed his eyes at me, fully aware that I wasn’t talking about building preservation anymore. But then again, he never had been.

“It still feels like a lie,” he muttered.

“Do you think we felt that way?” I asked, giving him a small half-smile. “When you showed up?”

“You should have.”

I winked. “Finn, maybe a little, but not Hunter and never me.”

In a decidedly me move, Smith dragged his tongue across the front of his teeth. His jaw was set like he’d been carved out of stone, and I wanted so badly to shake him out of whatever headspace he’d thrown himself into.

“By definition, additions are more not less,” I explained. “I have to see that as a good thing until it’s not.”

“Design can be overdone.”

“It can,” I agreed. “But in this case, it’s not.”

Smith grumbled and groaned, but I could tell by the sag in his shoulders he knew I was right. Relief washed over me, and I straightened up, checking my watch and then clapping my hands together.

“Are you on your lunch?” I asked.

“I left early.”

My first instinct was to chastise him for letting his emotions own him so completely, but I was also relatively lost when it came to my emotions about Silas, so I probably would have done the same thing. Smith glanced at me nervously like he knew exactly where my mind had gone at his confession.

“Let’s get out of here then,” I said, standing up and gesturing for him to join me.

“I didn’t want to interrupt your whole day, Marsh.”

“A welcome distraction. Let me pack up and we can go.”

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“To get lunch, as a start.” I walked around to the other side of my desk, powering down my laptop and gathering up my things. “And then we’ll just see where the day takes us, alright?”

“When does Silas get home?”

“Silas doesn’t live with me,” I said. “But if he gets to my house, it’s whenever he wants.”

“He has a key?”

“Of course,” I said. “But he still lives with Lincoln.”

Smith stood, fidgeting with the knot on his tie. “Why?”

I swallowed back any argument I would have had about why Silas chose to keep his apartment instead of moving in with me because just like I didn’t want to answer Stanley’s questions about Silas, I wasn’t keen to answer Smith’s either.

“Because he wants to.”

My brother followed me out of my office, close on my heels and flicking off lights as we went.

“Doesn’t that bother you?” he asked.

“Not at all.”

I pressed the button for the elevator, half expecting another one of my brothers to be there when it opened. It was blessedly empty, and Smith and I stepped inside and turned our backs to the wall.

“A little bit,” I admitted, glancing at his reflection.

The corner of his mouth quirked up into a smile, and I exhaled a shaky laugh. “It’s his choice though,” I said. “Just like it’s your choice if you want to walk away from restoration.”

“I don’t,” he said.

“I know.”

The doors slid open on the ground floor, and we stepped out together.

“Did you drive?” I asked.

“I walked.”

“Of course you did.” I jerked my head toward the parking garage entrance, and Smith again followed after me.

“I like the air,” he said. “It helps me think. ”

“I wasn’t arguing about it.”

We reached my car and sank down into the seats.

I tossed my bag into the back and pressed the ignition switch.

The car roared to life, echoing loudly in the cavernous garage.

Backing out of the spot, I braced my hand against the passenger headrest, giving Smith’s hair a ruffle before putting the car into drive.

“What are you hungry for?” I asked.

“Whatever you want.”

“Wrong.”

“Sushi,” he muttered, turning his attention to the corner of the windshield.

He was apparently not entirely done with being petulant about Andrew, and that was fine. I had patience, and I could wait him out.

“Nobu?”

“Too bougie.” Smith swallowed hard, thumping his head against the headrest. “Maybe that place in the valley?”

I scrunched my nose, checking the rearview mirror before changing lanes so I could get on the 110.

“The one in Studio City?”

“Yeah.”

“Anything you want, Smith.”

I reached over and gave his leg a squeeze, shaking until he rolled his eyes and smiled. I wasn’t sure how to talk him through whatever was going on in his head, but I definitely wasn’t going to give up until I figured it out.

Everything else would have to wait.