Page 39 of Love By Design

“You said to just ask.” The words came out sounding sowhiny I wished I could catch them in my hands and shove them back into my mouth.

“Your ass is a kaleidoscope of all my favorite colors, Silas. I don’t want to overdo it.”

“I can take it.”

“I knowyoucan, but there’s two of us here, right?”

He wrapped me in his arms again, rested his cheek against the side of my head, and I melted into him with a content little purr.

“Right,” I agreed.

“So let me wrap you up in the softest, warmest towel I can find, let me take you back to bed so I can kiss every single one of the bruises you let me give you.”

He was already walking me backward out of the shower, only breaking away from me long enough to source a towel to wrap around my shoulders. “And we can talk about what we want to do together next time, and the time after that, and?—”

“Can I still stay?” I asked, cutting him off.

“You can stay.”

“In bed with you?”

Marshall huffed out an amused breath. “Where else would you stay if not with me?”

“I don’t know, like a guest room or something.”

“If you’re with me, you’re with me.” He walked me back into the bedroom and sat me down on the edge of the bed. The cuffs were strewn across the floor, the spreader bar discarded near the condom wrapper. The sheets were sweaty and twisted into knots.

Marshall surveyed the mess we’d made, the corner of his mouth tipped up into a curious look that might have been a satisfied smile, but I was too tired to be sure. He’d been right with the decision in the bathroom. Even though I wanted him to spank me again, even though I wanted to come. I wasbeyond exhausted, already crashing from the high of our scene.

“I’m going to go get your cell phone so you can check in with Lincoln, then I’m going to get fresh bedding so you can tuck in under the covers. Is that all right, or do you want me to stay?”

I squinted, shocked at the choice, even more floored at my answer.

“Maybe stay for another minute,” I said quietly, and then Marshall was beside me on the bed, and I was curled safely again in his arms.

CHAPTER 14

MARSHALL

Silas spent the night in my arms. He slept like a log, unmoving beyond the swell of his chest on every inhale. When he woke up the next morning, the sleepy way he smiled at me before dropping a kiss against the center of my chest was enough to ruin me for other men entirely. As if the night before hadn’t already done the job. He hadn’t argued when I brought him coffee and a bagel, and then he was gone before ten. My house sat achingly empty like it had forgotten that until the night before, I’d been more than enough of a presence to fill it.

It was Saturday and was meant to be a slow day for me. No work at all. I wasn’t even supposed to open my laptop up to check my email. At least that was what Finn had said when he’d told me to come over in the afternoon to help him paint his office. My brother could afford to hire it out, but I was relatively certain he was trying to send me to an early grave, and his refusal and subsequent ask for help was just another tool in his plot.

Either way, he was my brother, so after I drank my own coffee and had my own toast, I put on an old pair of basketball shorts and a weathered college t-shirt and drove across town toFinn’s place. He was in the driveway when I got there, on his hands and knees with his ass sticking out of the open car door. I parked next to him then came around to the driver’s side of his car and smacked him hard enough across the top of his ass for it to hurt. He yelped, and fell backward onto the concrete, his cell phone clutched in his hand.

“Is this a new way to cruise that I’m too old to understand?” I asked.

“I dropped my phone between the seat and the console,” he said, dusting off the screen and standing up.

Finn was tall, but still a few inches shy of my six-foot-two frame. We were similar in the way cousins were similar, features that looked reminiscent of each other without being carbon copies. Our father’s DNA was clearly too weak to make a stand across all four of our mothers.

“If you say so.” I gave him a shove toward his front door. “What color are we painting your office, and why aren’t you paying someone to do it?”

“I don’t remember the name, but it’s some pink they use at MoMA,” he said. “Pouting room or something.”

“Do you often have tantrums in your office?”

“It’s supposed to be a calm neutral,” he said, stepping over the threshold and into his house. It was an old ranch house that he’d done enough work on for the insides to look brand new and the outside to look like it was fresh in the fifties. I personally hated Finn’s maximalist style, but after he’d closed on the property, he managed to forget I was a designer until it was too late for me to walk back the monstrosity that had already become his living room.