Page 9 of Love by Design (Club Rapture: Risk Aware #1)

SILAS

O n Friday afternoon, my phone rang. I was sitting across the conference table from my father, both our laptops flipped open. He cursed under his breath when my phone vibration startled him, so I snatched it up and again—without looking at the screen—answered the call.

“Hello?”

My father glared at me from his seat, so I pushed my chair back and walked out of the room, pulling the door closed behind me.

“Is this Silas Ayres?”

I checked the screen, but the number wasn’t saved in my phone.

“Yes. Who is calling?”

“Silas, hi. This is Landon Miller, I’m one of the owners of Rapture in Pasadena.”

“Oh.” My breath caught in my throat. “Hi.”

“Is now a good time?”

“Uhm. Hold on,” I mumbled.

I glanced toward the closed conference room door, then headed to my small office in the far corner of the workspace. I locked the door behind me and leaned against it for good measure.

“Now is fine,” I said.

“I hope I’m not being forward here, and you can tell me the topic is off the table, but I was made aware of an issue that happened on Friday night at my club, and I want to address it with you.

I mean, I want to make sure you’re okay and I want to let you know what we’re doing to make sure it doesn’t happen again. ”

My knees gave out, and I slid down the wall until my ass hit the shitty office carpet. Propping my elbows on my knees, I closed my eyes.

“What do you think happened?” I asked.

“Without mincing words, Silas, it sounds like it was very close to assault.”

I made an unhappy sound. If Marshall had anything to do with this phone call, I was going to be so beyond angry. The words Landon fed me could have come straight out of Marshall’s mouth.

“Did Marshall put you up to this?”

“What?” Landon laughed. “No, quite the opposite. He told me to leave it be.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Because Marshall Covington doesn’t own my club, and it’s not up to him how I choose to run my business.”

I would have loved to see the conversation between the two of them play out because I knew when it came to talking with Marshall it was very much either his way or the highway.

Though, I supposed that wasn’t entirely true.

He’d not rebuffed me when I expressed interest in him on Saturday…

something I’d been embarrassed about ever since.

I’d held him and I’d kissed his hand, and I’d practically begged him to dominate me.

None of it had turned him off, and the promise I’d made him to revisit everything later …

It hung heavy around my shoulders.

I meant what I told him, that I wanted to be safe for him.

I understood power exchange was a two-way street, and I somehow knew I wasn’t in a place to offer him the same things he offered me, but making good on the bargain meant I’d have to have this conversation with Landon.

That I’d have to admit what happened to me.

“It wasn’t assault,” I told Landon, something I would stand firm on.

“How would you classify it? The way I understand it, you were cuffed to a bench, expressed a desire to stop, and that desire was ignored.”

“In some cases, that’s a great start to a weekend,” I said.

“In your case?”

I sighed, banging my head against the door.

“I told him to stop and he didn’t, that’s true. But he’s—what’s his name by the way?”

Landon made a noncommittal sound. “His name is Barrett, which he’s told me I can tell you. If you asked.”

“You talked to him?” My knees trembled again, and I straightened my legs out in front of me.

“Of course.”

“And what did he say happened?”

“I want to know what you say happened,” Landon countered.

“He…Barrett…he did cuff me to the bench, and I did tell him to stop, and he didn’t. If Marshall hadn’t…” I cleared my throat. “It wasn’t assault. It was…under-negotiated, at best.”

“And at worst?”

“Thankfully we’ll never know,” I said.

Landon exhaled, and the slow cadence of it matched my own breath. I chewed at the inside of my cheek while I waited for whatever he had to say next, moderately annoyed that my mind kept drifting back to Marshall and the way it felt to be in his arms…in his space .

“The point I’m trying to make is he wasn’t entirely at fault.”

“No,” Landon agreed, “but the dominant does carry more of a burden when it comes to these things.”

“Debatable.”

“I’m not saying you’re without fault. I hear you taking accountability and that makes me confident that you won’t find yourself in that sort of situation again. I want to let you know as well that Barrett’s membership has been suspended.”

“Oh.”

“It won’t be reinstated unless he agrees to a mentorship,” Landon said.

“A what? How?”

“I’m not going to air out his personal life, but if Barrett wants to return to Rapture in any capacity, he needs to understand the expectations that come with engaging in that sort of play.”

“I thought you had a pretty thorough screening process,” I said, biting my lips between my teeth.

“Financially and socially. There’s not much we can do about the rest.” Landon cleared his throat, tone turning more business-like.

“Either way, Barrett knows what he has to do if he wants to come back. We’re also installing monitors in the loft and the downstairs playroom to act as a second set of eyes for our guests. ”

“That’s good.” I swallowed hard. My right foot was asleep, and I would have rather chopped it off than let the next question come out of my mouth, but I didn’t have a saw in my office. “And what about me?”

“Hmn?”

“What do I have to do to come back? Is my membership also suspended? ”

“You’re not suspended, and it seems to me you already know what you need to do,” he said.

“Negotiate more clearly on the front end.”

“A partner can only hold a safe space for you if you’re an active participant in creating it,” he said. “I’m confident that you know that better now.”

The light bulb went on over my head, and I groaned.

“I do. Thank you.”

“Feel free to save this number, Silas,” Landon told me. “If anything else comes up or you have other concerns about the safety measures in place at the club, please let me know.”

“I will,” I croaked. “Thank you.”

I hung up the phone without saying goodbye, not intentionally, but because my hands were shaking so badly I fumbled the whole thing and disconnected the call on accident.

“Fuck.” I crawled onto my hands and knees, letting my head hang low, the weight heavy between my shoulders. I bowed my back and arched it, repeating a pose I used to do in yoga but hadn’t thought about in years.

I hadn’t heard from Marshall since I’d left his house on Saturday afternoon, but I’d thought about him every day since.

At the time, I hadn’t understood what to do to make myself safe for him.

I hadn’t even understood why I said it, why I wanted to.

Marshall, on paper, was not a good road for me to walk down.

He was closer to my dad’s age than he was to mine, and he was our biggest competition.

My dad would disown me if he ever found out, but… was it worth it?

I stretched my arms and legs until I starfished myself on the floor, then I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling.

It was shitty pressboard panels and annoying overhead fluorescents that I never bothered to turn on.

Everything in the office was dated and old, and I didn’t want to drown in the past the way my father was.

Marshall wasn’t a way out, but he was a breath of fresh air, and I didn’t realize how much I needed to breathe until I’d been with him… breathing.

Picking up my phone, I opened the notes app and started typing out a message I wanted to send to Marshall.

I knew better than to do it in the messages app because my fingers weren’t steady enough to trust. Some of the things I wrote him felt silly, childish even, but they needed to be said so I wrote them anyway, and instead of sending the message, I slid my phone across the room.

The words would keep, and it was barely three in the afternoon.

I had at least two and a half more hours of work to finish before I could head home for the day.

Forcing myself onto my feet, I headed back into the conference room, finding my dad still poring over whatever he’d been tangled up in on his computer.

I’d been multitasking, splitting my attention between the bid and another article the editor of LA Design Digest had asked me to write.

“I can’t look at these numbers for one more second,” my dad said, closing his laptop and pushing it toward the center of the table.

I glanced up at him, brow raised.

“Maybe a change of scenery,” I suggested. “Go work at a Panera or something.”

He snorted. “What do you think I am, Silas? A millennial?”

I rolled my eyes and tabbed my own screen around until the outline of my next article took up the prime real estate of my screen.

“Go take a walk then,” I suggested. “Get some fresh air and come back to it with better eyes.”

“Why don’t we just call it a day?” he proposed.

“Excuse me?”

“I own the place,” he reminded me, as if I could ever forget. “The work will be here next week. I know the deadline is pretty close, but I think we’re giving Marshall a real run for it.”

I was too beaten down from my call with Landon to argue. I took one last look at my outline then closed my laptop. “Calling it a day sounds good.”

My dad stood up from the table and picked up his computer, tucking it under his arm. “Bright and early Monday?”

“Bright and early,” I agreed. “I’ll lock up.”

I didn’t move an inch while I listened to my father busy himself around the office, packing his computer away and getting his coat from the rack. His routine was predictable, his early departure was not. Once he was safely out of the building, I dropped my forehead against the table and groaned.

Eventually, I peeled myself out of the chair.

I knew when I got back to my office the note would still be on my phone, waiting to be sent.

It was admittedly more than he asked for, but it was the only way to answer my end of our weekend agreement.

And all complications aside, I was interested in Marshall.

He was handsome, he was competent, he was clearly dominant, but beyond that… . I liked the way I felt around him.

Marshall’s arms were like a weighted blanket, a warm and welcome kind of restraint. When he’d touched me, it was with nothing less than tenderness, consent…want. And fuck, how he wanted. The things he’d said had my brain hazy from the promise of it all.

I’d only ever known him as my father’s biggest competition, the threat to our livelihoods, but all of that had shifted now. He was so much more than the box I’d helped my father push him into, and little pieces of him unfurled with every conversation or exchange we shared.

Lincoln and I had played for so many years, wondering about the ideal kind of man for each of us.

We both knew I needed a dominant man who wasn’t scared of a challenge, but I’d spent years settling on boys playing pretend.

I realized, much to my horror, that if I could have crafted a partner for myself from scratch, he would have looked a lot like Marshall Covington.

Maybe he would have been a little closer to my age, but the gap in our years did the opposite of turn me off.

At the end of the day, Marshall had been there when I needed him, and he was ready to be there now that I wanted him.

In my office, I slid my laptop into my bag and grabbed my things.

The office felt safe without my dad haunting the halls, but I needed fresh air.

Getting out of work early meant there wasn’t any traffic, so I made it home in record time.

Once I was inside, I dropped my bags and went straight into a shower.

Marshall showed no signs of leaving my brain, so after I dried off and got dressed, I dug my phone out of my back pocket and carried it to the couch.

Swiping open to the notes app, I reread the paragraphs I’d put into it earlier, then I copied it, pasted it into a text message, and hit send.

For the first time in my life, the direction of my future was in my own hands.

There was no going back, and even if there was, I didn’t want to.