Page 104 of Love By Design

I blinked hard, shaking my head. “It was just a thought.”

“Are you not happy with me, Silas? Not fulfilled?”

“It’s not like that, Sir,” I whispered. “That’s not how I meant it.”

He hummed, pressing his foot down slightly on my cock, just until I gasped and leaned toward him…somehow asking for more and less at the same time.

“One of the things I admire about you is how you always look to the future.” He stroked his thumb across the hollow of my cheek. “But with me, you don’t have to.”

Spit knotted into something hard to swallow in the back of my throat.

“Why not?” I managed to ask. “Why not, Sir? Mr. Covington?”

“You’re here now,” he answered. “I’m here now.”

Squeezing my eyes closed, I blinked back an uninvited onslaught of burning hot tears. Was that all this was? A series of moments with no hope for anything beyond the present?

“Hey.” Marshall tapped my cheek, took his foot off my cock. “Where are you right now?”

“Are you going to be here then?” I asked. “Am I? In the future?”

“Oh, Silas.” Marshall slid off the bed, hauled me onto his lap and kissed the top of my head. “Now is every moment, in the moment. We’re already in the future, and it’s our now. The now is where we live and it’s where I’ll always find you.”

“Please don’t make me cry,” I muttered into his shoulder.

Marshall chuckled, kissed the top of my head, and lifted me to my feet. He sat me down on the bed, brought my shoes between us, and slipped my feet into them, the same way I’d already done for him more than once. After tying up the laces, he prostrated himself and pressed soft kisses against the toes of my shoes, then rocked back onto his heels.

We were almost eye level, almost equal.

“I am in love with you, Silas,” he said, words carefully chosen and strong in their delivery. Each one landed between us, stacking together to build a foundation I never understood I’d wanted until Marshall had offered it to me. “Before. Then. But most importantly now.”

“You…”

“I love you,” he said again. “It might be too soon. My brother would most certainly think so, but I know how I feel when I’m with you, when I’mnotwith you.”

“I…” I looked up toward the ceiling to stop the earlier tears from falling.

“This doesn’t need to be tit for tat. You don’t have to feel the same way I feel.”

“Sir.”

With a groan, Marshall pushed up onto his feet and held his hand out for me. I let him help me up, then I stared down at our feet, at our fancy shoes that neither of us had managed to get into on our own.

“I love you,” he said again, barely louder than a whisper. Brushing his fingers across my cheek, he tipped my head back and pressed our mouths together.

The kiss was gentle at first, unsure, and then he dragged his tongue across the seam of my lips in question, and I opened for him. Marshall groaned into me, a sound so deep it rattled my bones, and he cradled the back of my head with his hand so he had enough leverage to deepen the kiss. Weakly, with trembling fingers, I grabbed him by the hips to steady myself, and then I gave myself over to him entirely.

I knew he’d cut me off because he thought I didn’t love him back, but such a thing couldn’t have been further from the truth. I hardly knew Marshall, and I was violently in love with him. So much so, I didn’t even have the words to tell him in a way that made sense. To make up for it, I tried to move my tongue around his in a way that made sense, a way that would let him know the feelings he’d shared with me were so much more than mutual. It must have worked because after he ended the kiss, he traced his fingertips across my kiss-swollen lips with stars in his eyes.

Marshall took my hand in his, kissed my knuckles.

“We have a celebration to get to.”

“Sir.”

He was one step toward the door, his body still turned toward me like he wasn’t quite ready to put the required space between us to facilitate us getting to this celebration dinner he’d promised me.

“Silas.”