Page 69 of Love By Design

I shook my head quicker.

“Don’t?”

“No,” I rasped.

“The only safe word is red?” he asked.

“Or whatever you tell me to do if I can’t speak,” I whispered.

“So gags are a yes.”

“Yes,” I croaked.

Marshall inhaled deeply, dragging his hands over my legs, up my stomach, and toward my chest. “I can’t decide if you’re a dream come true or an absolute nightmare.”

A nervous laugh bubbled out of my throat. “Probably both.”

He smiled, laughing in a much less obnoxious way. “You’re probably right about that.”

He kept his hands moving all over my body, drawing lines andcircles up my ribs and down my stomach when he wasn’t busy cradling my cock and balls in his hand. The attention was simple and too much all at the same time. It all felt like a precursor to something more, but nothing more ever came. It was mindless soft touches, careless swirls that felt like they had no real direction. I closed my eyes and imagined him a cartographer, committing the lines and peaks of my body to memory for future exploration.

After a while, the anticipation died down, my nerves with it. I was no longer waiting for him to do something more severe, something more sexual. His exploration and attention had turned me into a pool of Jello on his bed, content and malleable under his touch. The shapes and lines were foreplay on their own, and though I was sure none of his touches were drawn with the intent to arouse, they still did.

By the time his hands made it back between my legs, my cock was achingly hard, thick and leaking against my stomach. With the flat underside of his middle finger, he drew a line from my balls to my crown, then retracted it back down. Over and over again, until the muscles on my legs quaked.

“You’re trembling, sweetheart,” he said softly, turning his hand so my dick slid across the heel of it. It was the most contact he’d given me since he’d stopped talking, and I was only seconds away from crying about it. The weight of his hand was slight, but the relief was more than welcome.

I hadn’t even realized he’d been walking me toward another orgasm until it was there, hot and heavy in my balls. I didn’t even have to warn him about it. My breathing hitched, and Marshall finally made a fist around the base of my cock, squeezing, squeezing,squeezing, until he’d guided me back from the cliff. Sucking in a sharp breath, I blinked hard, tears fighting to break free against the backs of my eyelids. The sheets were wet in my fists, and I’d gone from trembling to vibrating. His touch was no longer gentle, my body was on fire,and everything was torture, and when the realization inside of me shifted, Marshall saw it.

Of course he did.

He stroked my cock from root to tip, bending down over me. I opened my eyes in time to see him spit on his fingers, to feel the heat of his saliva slick my shaft.

“There you are,” he murmured, and there was no way he could have been talking about me because I’d never felt more lost.

“Hmn?” I blinked hard, tears sliding free from the corners of my eyes. If he saw them, at first he paid them no mind, so neither did I.

“Now that you’re properly mine, now that you’re properly ready.” His fingers were thorns around my dick, even with the spit, especially with the spit. “Now, Silas…we can begin.”

CHAPTER 22

MARSHALL

Cleary, I had died and gone to heaven.

A thousand things I wanted to do to Silas and now that I had the opportunity, choosing where to start was beyond comprehension. He looked like a dream on my bed, naked and flushed and so very horny for me.

So very submissive.

His pupils were so dilated I could barely make out the golden amber of his irises, and the way he stared up at me like I hung the moon was intoxicating. He licked his lips, pulling them between his teeth to stifle a moan, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with him. I rocked backward and climbed off the bed, holding up a finger and gesturing for him to stay still. Silas wiggled down deeper into the sheets, his hooded gaze tracking me from the bed to the closet and back again.

I produced a leather blindfold and beckoned him closer with the crook of my finger. For someone who was as strung out on lust as he was, he moved quickly, flipping onto all fours and crawling toward the foot of the bed before easing off and making his way toward me. His ass swung in the air like he knew exactly what he was doing, the purples and greens of thebruises I’d left for him still the most brilliant kaleidoscope I’d ever seen.

Instead of bringing him to his feet, I bent down to his level and fastened the blindfold around his eyes. It wasn’t one of those flimsy strips of fabric meant for casual playtime. No, it was a sturdy cutout of leather with raised pads around the outer rim effectively sealing the wearer's vision off entirely. After checking the Velcro at the back of his head, I stroked my fingers through his hair and down the front of his face.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

Silas exhaled loudly. “If you weren’t touching me, I wouldn’t even know where you were.”