Page 92 of Love By Design

“What about your brother?” he asked.

“I’m not staying,” Smith answered for himself, but he was already in the kitchen opening another bottle of wine.

“Yes, you are.”

“Fine,” he grumbled, hints of the preteen version of himself bleeding out through his tired and frayed edges.

Smith brought his wine to the living room and set it down on the coffee table with an unhappy noise. “I’m going to change, then.”

“You know your way around,” I said. “You can take your usual room, and show Lincoln the other one, if you don’t mind.”

I watched over Silas’s shoulder as the two of them trotted off together down the hall, and once they were out of earshot, I slid my hand between Silas’s legs and squeezed.

“Please, don’t,” he whined, arching into my hold.

“Don’t?”

“You’re going to make me harder than I already am, andthese pants don’t hide anything,” he whispered. “If it was just Lincoln, I wouldn’t care.”

“But my brother.”

He nodded, lashes fluttering as I made a loose fist around what I could reach of his shaft.

“I don’t like you telling me no,” I said, giving him a stroke.

Silas gasped, crawling half onto my lap and burying his face into the crook of my neck. “I never did. I never would.”

“Never is a dangerous promise, sweetheart.”

“You know what I mean,” he murmured.

I looked quickly down the hall and realized Lincoln must be waiting for Smith to change because neither of them had reappeared. Taking advantage of the time with Silas, I held him against me, enjoying the warmth and flexibility of his body.

“If it wasn’t my brother. If it was just Lincoln, or if it was just a stranger, would you like that?”

“Marshall,” he groaned my name like a curse, and then there was nothing more to say because the conversation between Lincoln and Smith grew louder as they returned to the couch. Smith collapsed comfortably onto the sectional side, scooping his wine off the table with one fluid and practiced motion.

As the night dragged on, the question about putting Silas on display stayed in the forefront of my mind. I mindlessly played with Silas’s hair while Smith alternated between watching whatever show Lincoln had put on and talking about how three brothers was plenty, but four was excessive. The whole time, debating if I was too possessive or not possessive enough to let another man put his eyes on what was mine.

There was something to be said for the trust required for a scenario that involved exhibitionism or free use, and I meant that from both ways. Silas would have to trust me to make good decisions on his behalf, to keep him safe in all ways. Andon the other hand, I would have to trust not just him, but also myself. To put us both into a situation like that and let it send me into a spiral of doubt would be absolutely unforgivable.

We’d talked about free use during our initial negotiations, and it was something that sounded extremely enticing…in theory. In practice? I couldn’t say. I’d never been in the kind of relationship where something like that was on the table. I didn’t know if I ever would be again.

If I wanted to be.

Just shy of midnight, Smith stood up and grumbled something about being tired, then took his wine to bed with him. He was so much like me sometimes I worried for him. The way he preferred to process internally, the way he would be alone forever if someone didn’t force him to share company. Smith was a monolith, while also still being my angry, petulant, and sometimes scared-beyond-words baby brother.

“Do you want to check on him?” Silas asked quietly, untangling himself from my lap and immediately looking over his shoulder to search out Lincoln who’d fallen asleep in the corner of the couch, tucked into himself like a hermit crab.

“Just real quick, yes.”

We both stood, and we both ignored the way both of my knees cracked.

“I’ll get Lincoln to bed,” Silas said.

I brushed a kiss against the side of his head, then counted the steps from the living room to Smith’s guest room. The light was still on, the door not yet closed. He sat on the edge of the bed, elbows braced on his knees and phone in his hand. I knocked on the door jamb and he looked up, his eyes bloodshot and tired.

“You got into a fight with that wine bottle and lost,” I said, jerking my chin toward the almost empty glass he’d been holding all night like a security blanket. “You’re not going to feel great about this in the morning.”