Page 80 of Love By Design

The coffee pot was full, two empty mugs sitting beside it, and I poured one for myself. I’d fill his after he was ready for it so it didn’t get cold. In the fridge, I found eggs and bacon. Bread in the pantry. In the other room, the shower turned on, and I flipped the gas on the front burner to medium-high.

The monotony of scrambling eggs and frying bacon was the perfect thing to follow the wake-up sex, and by the time Marshall appeared in the dining room, barefoot in a pair of navy slacks and a white button-up, with damp hair and a freshly shaven jawline, I wasn’t terrified of what was going to come next.

He sat down at the table, same seat as the night before, and didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. Warmth rolled through me as I poured him a hot cup of coffee then served it to him.

“Cream or sugar?” I murmured.

He answered with a small shake of his head. “No, Silas. Thank you.”

I went back to the kitchen, mentally trying to fight back the arousal that had started to once again burn between my legs. I made up two plates of eggs, bacon, and toast, then brought it all back to the table and slid into the seat beside him. He didn’ttell me to wait, but I found my hands folded neatly in my lap until he took the first bite of eggs. Only then did I pick up my fork and start to eat.

Marshall noticed, of course, raising an eyebrow at me without calling it out, and I blinked at him before looking down at my bacon. The strips were juicy and fatty, and I huffed out an exhale, thinking about Lincoln and his apology bacon.

“Is the bacon funny?” Marshall asked, taking a drink of his coffee.

“It just reminded me of Lincoln.”

His mouth turned up into an amused smirk. “Tell me more.”

“The morning after…the morning after you and I saw each other at Rapture that first time?—”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “The morning after you were assaulted.”

I sighed, nodding. “That morning, he made me apology bacon. We were eating it when you called. It’s nothing. It just made me think of him.”

Marshall picked up a slice of bacon and bit into it, chewing and swallowing before responding. “What does Lincoln do for work?”

The butter on my toast melted slowly, sinking into the grain of the bread the same way I wanted to sink into the floor. It wasn’t that I worried Marshall would care about Lincoln’s job, I just didn’t want it to complicate things.

“He makes movies,” I answered, biting into the crust of my toast. “Adult movies.”

“He makes porn.”

I shoved another bite of toast into my mouth. “Yeah.”

“Have you ever?”

“I told you our relationship isn’t like that,” I said.

Marshall used his toast to slide the last bit of his eggs onto his fork. “I meant in general, not with him.”

“No,” I whispered, shaking my head. “I haven’t.”

“I wouldn’t care if you had,” he said. “Are you finished eating?”

The questions were so conversational, so far from what I expected.

There were two bites of egg left on my plate and half a strip of bacon. We both looked down at the leftover food, then I glanced up at him with my fork still in hand. “Am I?”

He licked his lips and smiled at me. “If you want to be.”

I dropped my fork onto the plate. “Then, yes. Thank you.”

He shook his head and stacked my plate on top of his, folding the last bit of my bacon into his mouth. “No, sweetheart. Thank you.”

“I can take those,” I protested, reaching for him as he stood to carry the plates into the kitchen. I hadn’t cleaned up from preparing breakfast yet, and I didn’t want him to see the mess I’d left.

“You’re my submissive, not my servant,” he said, turning on the water. I eyed him nervously, my coffee still in hand, while he rinsed the plates and the pans before arranging it all into the dishwasher and closing the door. “Do you want to stay here today, or do you want to go home?”