Page 118 of Love By Design

“The only thing you have to do is remember the rule.”

He slid his hands around my waist and pulled our bodies flush. Then both hands dipped lower, and he cupped my ass, fingers pressing gently at the seam of my pants.

How could I forget the rule?

“I remember, Sir,” I rasped.

“If you’re here more than one day in a row, you should just make a habit of it after you get home for the day. If that’s inconvenient or if I have you otherwise entangled, we’ll work something else out. Understand?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Marshall smiled and tilted his head down, slanting our mouths together in a very chaste kiss—all things considered.

“I have to get to work.” A peck against the corner of my mouth. “I’ll talk with you soon. Do you want to celebrate tonight?”

“We celebrated last week.”

Marshall took a step back, mouth twisted into a moderately disappointed frown. “Do you not deserve more than one?”

My cheeks burned hot at the call-out, and I wanted to shake my head and tell him no, I didn’t deserve more than one. What had I done besides get fired from my job and take a handout from a man I barely knew but had somehow fallen in love with? Reducing the chain of the events of the past couple weeks felt unfair to everyone involved, but it was the truth of the matter.

“Whatever you want,” I said instead, blinking up at him and hoping my face conveyed the submission I meant it to.

He studied me quietly, head cocked to the side in the way I imagined he looked when he was forty percent of the way through a design and struggling to tie the ideas together to reach the middle.

“Do you remember the night you came over crying, and I made you write a copy of yourDesign Digestarticle?” he asked.

I swallowed hard and nodded. “And annotate it,” I muttered.

Marshall dragged his tongue across the front of his teeth and nodded back at me.

“Alright. Just wanted to make sure.”

I groaned inwardly at the embarrassment of that night as a whole, which stretched far beyond the forced attention to my design ideas.

“I love you,” I said, reaching for the key in my pocket. The sharp, freshly cut teeth bit into my palm, and the pain was grounding.

“I love you,” he said back, kissing me once more. “Don’t be late for your first day.”

“I won’t, Sir.”

He left in a rush of cologne and soft touches that promised more later. Once the door locked, I sat down on the edge of the bed and put on my own shoes—sneakers, again at Cory’s suggestion—then stared at the wall for a solid five minutes before heading for the kitchen.

I’d made Marshall coffee after getting out of the shower, and now with him gone, I prepared a mug for myself. He was still strict about the meals, which went without mention, so I grabbed a yogurt from the fridge and ate it while leaning against the kitchen counter.

When I’d come over the first time, Marshall hadn’t had yogurt in the fridge. It had come up in conversation that it was what I normally ate, and after that, it appeared…and stayed stocked. Same, I realized, with the other snacks I tended to favor. Without request or fanfare, Marshall had stocked his house with the things I liked to eat, then he’d given me a key and asked me to make his home mine.

To make his homeours.

That level of commitment should have made me nervous, but instead, scooping the last bites of yogurt and fruit from the bottom of the container, I found myself comfortable with the idea of building a future with him. There were maybe a handful of reasons it was a bad idea, the age difference between us being one, my dad’s never-ending hate for the man being another, but the pros definitely outweighed the cons.

Should it have been scary to think about packing up my bedroom and moving into his house? Probably. Where would my things go? What would happen to my bed? It all seemed trivial, which made Lincoln my biggest concern in the whole situation. There were some months where he could afford allthe rent on his own, but not all of them, and I didn’t want to leave him hanging.

I’d have to talk to him about it on Friday.

I finished the yogurt and tossed the empty container into the trash, then washed the spoon and my empty mug. I washed Marshall’s mug too, then turned off all the lights in the house and locked the door behind me with my new key. On the porch, I leaned against the wall to dig out my key ring, sliding his right alongside my apartment key and car key. Shocked that the chain didn’t somehow weigh a hundred more pounds from the addition, I gave the door one last check and headed to my first day of work.

The drive to Cory’s from Marshall’s took about as long as it took to get anywhere, but the typical traffic gave me more time to think. Not just about the invitation or about the changes it would bring, but also about the biggest change that I’d done a good job of ignoring up until that very moment.