Page 21 of Love By Design

“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.

“Youtoldme 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 tomake 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.