Page 7 of Love by Design (Club Rapture: Risk Aware #1)

SILAS

I did not go to bed with Lincoln when we got home from Rapture.

He barely said another word to me, save to check if I was okay, before walking me straight to my own bed and tucking me in.

I tossed and turned for an hour before kicking off the blankets and stalking down the hallway to his room.

He was also awake, and he lifted the covers for me without argument.

Sleep came quickly after that for the both of us, Lincoln’s arm wrapped protectively around my chest.

I woke hours later, still in his bed, but alone.

Closing my eyes, I covered my face with both of my hands, annoyed at how prevalent Marshall Covington’s face was on the backs of my eyelids.

Last night when he’d asked me if I was okay and I said yes, it was a lie. But in the morning light, it felt a little more true. Partially thanks to the way he’d sat with me and comforted me after doing whatever he’d done with?—

Shit.

I’d never even gotten that other man’s name, and I was about to let him strap me to a bench with my pants around my ankles.

God, I was a fucking idiot .

A fucking idiot who needed a whole pot of coffee to recover from the embarrassment of the night before. It was one thing to make a bad call with a prospective sexual partner in the privacy of your own home. It was another entirely to do it in public…in front of my father’s business rival.

“I hear you rustling!” Lincoln shouted from the kitchen, which meant there was coffee ready for me and maybe even breakfast.

I climbed out of bed and shuffled down the hallway, rubbing sleep out of my eyes as I stumbled into the kitchen. Lincoln shoved a mug of coffee across the counter and into my waiting hands.

“I’m glad you’re speaking to me again,” I said, raising the mug to my mouth.

He gave me an unamused look. “I don’t even know why you’re speaking to me .”

“Because you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I found him,” Lincoln protested.

“I don’t want to do this with you again.” I sighed, taking my coffee to the couch. “I smell the bacon, so bring some with you.”

Lincoln grumbled under his breath but joined me on the couch with his own coffee and a plate of bacon that he dropped unceremoniously onto my thigh. I picked a strip up and chomped down on a fatty end piece.

“Is this apology bacon?” I asked with my mouthful.

“Is it working?”

“No, because I don’t want an apology. I’m an adult. I can make bad decisions too, and this time I did. That’s all. Okay?” I grabbed Lincoln’s face, pinching his cheeks in so he looked like a cranky wall-mounted fish.

“Who was that other guy last night?” he asked.

I picked up another slice of bacon and folded it into his mouth. He chewed it, one eyebrow arched .

“Someone from work,” I said.

Lincoln swallowed. “Tell me more.”

Lincoln was no stranger to the pain points of my job or the long hours I worked with my father. He knew almost as much about architectural design as I did, learned purely through osmosis, so as soon as I told him it was Marshall, realization dawned across his face like a sunrise.

“Please don’t,” I begged.

“Marshall Covington like the Marshall Covington, like the man your father would send into space with nothing more than his birthday suit Marshall Covington?”

“That’s him.” I reached for my coffee and another piece of bacon so I would have something to do with my hands.

“You didn’t tell me he was kinky.”

“I didn’t know! Jesus. How was I supposed to know that? That’s not really the kind of thing that comes up over our usual business meetings, you know.”

There wasn’t enough coffee in the world.

“He’s hot,” Lincoln said.

“He’s…”

My cheeks burned, remembering the way his arms had felt around me, the way his fingers felt against my cheek, the way he breathed with me until I wasn’t scared of dying any longer.

“Hot,” Lincoln said again.

As if my guardian angel sensed I needed a reprieve, my cell phone started to ring from somewhere in my bedroom.

“I’ve got to get that,” I said, clambering to my feet.

“Literally saved by the bell,” Lincoln grumbled, grabbing for the plate of bacon before it fell onto the couch. I ran down the hallway, chasing after the ringtone and finding my phone properly plugged in on the nightstand where it belonged. At least I’d managed that much before going to bed.

My finger swiped to accept the call—a force of habit from work—before my brain had time to register the name. By the time I put two and two together, it was too late, the phone was pressed against my ear and my mouth was moving.

“Hello?”

“Silas,” Marshall rumbled, and I screwed my eyes closed, sinking down onto the floor. “Good morning.”

“Is it?”

A pause. “Isn’t it?”

“I slept like shit,” I admitted.

He made a sound so displeased I felt it down to my marrow, and again I found myself wanting to burrow into the ground and die. But now for entirely different reasons.

“Have you had coffee?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And breakfast?”

“Two slices of bacon.”

Another sound, this one more of a pained grunt. “That’s hardly breakfast.”

“Did you call to criticize my eating habits, Marshall?”

“No,” he said quietly. “I didn’t. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Why did you call?” I asked, finally letting the floor take me. I splayed out in the middle of my room like a sad little starfish, phone clutched against my ear like a thingamabobber.

“I wanted to check on you. See how you were doing.”

“Why?”

“Because I was worried about you after last night.”

“Why?” I pressed.

“Because you were nearly assaulted,” he said.

“Nearly.”

“Silas.”

Marshall said my name like my correction had disappointed him, and I didn’t know what was worse. That he sounded like that or the way his disappointment made me feel.

“I’m fine,” I told him. “Same as last night.”

“You said you didn’t sleep well. ”

“Maybe I never sleep well,” I countered.

Marshall sighed heavily into my ear and then, “Silas.”

But it sounded different that time, tired and unsure. Weary. Hopeful.

“I promise I’m okay,” I said.

He was silent for long enough that I picked up on the cadence of his breathing, accidentally matching mine to his because it felt good to be in sync with him again. Because it reminded me of being in his arms the night before.

“You don’t believe me,” I whispered.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I was you, I wouldn’t be okay,” he said.

“Well, you’re not.” I swallowed hard. “How can I convince you so we can go back to pretending this never happened?”

Marshall made a dismissive noise in the back of his throat. “I can’t go back, Silas.”

“Good thing we’re going to lose the bid then. We’ll be out of business and not your?—”

He interrupted with a rushed, “Meet me for lunch.”

“—problem. I’m sorry. What did you say?”

“I said meet me for lunch,” he repeated, not a question.

“Marshall.” I sighed.

“Prove to me that you’re good, and I’ll leave you alone.”

“I’m not sure you will,” I grumbled.

He laughed like we both knew I was right.

“I’ll text you an address. Do you want me to call you a car?”

“I’m shocked you’re asking.”

He was quiet for two seconds too long, and I worried I’d said the wrong thing. My palm sweated against the case of my phone, and I was so close to opening my mouth and telling him I’d been teasing when he spoke first and cut me off at the pass.

“All things with consent, Silas,” he said quietly .

“You told me to have lunch with you,” I reminded him.

“Tell me you don’t want to.”

This time, the silence was mine because we both knew I did.

“I don’t need a car,” I said instead.

“Do you want one?”

“Marshall, please,” I begged, slamming my eyes closed and stabbing my fingertips into my eye sockets until my vision sparked around the edges.

“I’ll text you an address, Silas,” he said, then he hung up.

We hadn’t agreed on a time, but in my gut I knew we didn’t need to. The expectation was heavy and silent between us that I would get off the phone, make myself presentable, and then plug the results of his next text message into my GPS and hit the road.

The text came through before I’d even managed to lower the phone away from my face, but I didn’t bother checking in.

I slid my phone across the room and rolled onto my hands and knees, dragging my cheek back and forth the carpet until the skin was tender.

I needed to shave, but the short hairs were another abrasion that kept my feet and my brain firmly rooted in the present moment

“You’re fine,” I told myself. “It’s just lunch. It’s just Marshall.”

Knowing it was Marshall somehow made it worse, but I swallowed down as much trepidation as I could manage and pushed myself up to standing.

Lincoln was still in the living room, but I knew him well enough to know he was on the couch with his neck craned backward, ears straining to eavesdrop on my conversation.

“It was Marshall,” I called out from the hallway. “Meeting him for lunch.”

I didn’t wait for Lincoln to say anything else.

The bathroom was close, and I made sure to lock the door behind me to make sure I maintained privacy.

Shoving my pajamas down to my ankles, I ignored the way my cock caught on the waistband, already thick and half-hard from…

from what, I wasn’t sure. It couldn’t have been the phone conversation with Marshall because…

It just couldn’t.

Under the spray of the shower, I continued to pay my cock no attention, but it only got harder, and it got harder aggressively, if that was even a thing.

By the time I’d washed my face and my hair, precum had pooled on the tip of my dick, and it was on account of the way my brain wouldn’t stop thinking about Marshall and the way his arms had felt around me the night before.

I’d been so safe there on the couch with him.

“Fine,” I conceded to myself, making a tight fist around my shaft with one hand and bracing myself against the wall of the shower with the other.

Dropping my forehead against my forearm, I made quick work of the orgasm my body was so insistent about receiving.

It came hard and rough, the release violently shooting against the tiled wall before being rinsed straight down the drain.

My knees knocked together as I stroked myself to empty, and I shivered from the peace of it.

If there was a way to be fulfilled from an orgasm, I found it there in the shower, Marshall’s hands at the forefront of my brain.

The only thing that would have made the release more perfect was if I could have shuffled naked across the hallway and climbed back into bed for another two hours.

I debated texting Marshall and telling him never mind, but I was dry and I was dressed, and my fingers were already keying the address he’d provided into my phone. Lincoln eyed me warily from his perch on the couch, the last slice of bacon hanging out of his mouth like a cigarette .

“You good, Si?” he asked, watching me like a hawk as I sat down beside him to put on socks and lace up my sneakers.

I nodded.

I wasn’t okay five minutes later when I got into my car and stuck my phone up onto the magnet mount, though. Because the address Marshall had texted me was very definitely residential, not commercial.

Letting out a nervous breath, I swiped open to my text messaging and typed one out to him, my car still in park.

Is this your house?

Marshall

Yes

Simple and straightforward, just like him, just like everything between us had been for the entirety of our relationship.

Marshall was the same at work as he’d been at Rapture—astute, aware, and alert.

He carried himself with the air of a man who never argued because he never had to defend himself.

He always knew the right things to say, the simple collections of syllables that could so readily disarm a man.

He did it in the boardroom, and he undoubtedly carried that energy into the bedroom.

Things between us hadn’t gone that far, but with the hint of cum still fresh on the tips of my fingers, I realized I might not care if they did, and that was really, really fucked up.