“I know there’s ibuprofen in the bathroom, and I’ll be fine in the morning.” He barely slurred, and I twisted my mouth into a sympathetic half-frown. “Do you want to talk about this sober?”
“I don’t want to talk about this at all.” Smith tossed his phone onto the nightstand and flung himself onto the bed.
“I haven’t seen you this upset since you showed up on the porch the first day we met.”
He grimaced, and I felt bad for hurting him with the barb, but I truly couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him act so childish about his emotions.
“I’ve never done this before,” he said so quietly I almost didn’t hear him. Smith scrubbed a wary hand down his face and then looked at me with desperate and imploring eyes. “What if he doesn’t like me?”
“Shit.”
I’d been looking at Smith’s behavior all wrong. I’d incorrectly assumed his reactions had come from a place of jealousy. He’d never introduced a new brother to the fold before, he was worried about the dynamic changing, or so I’d thought. Pushing off the door frame, I went into the room and sat down on the bed, close enough to touch his leg and let him know I was close to him, not just emotionally but also physically.
“Is that what this is about?” I asked, squeezing his knee.
“What else would it be about?”
I huffed out a dying laugh. “I don’t know, Smith. I didn’t realize. But if he doesn’t like you, he’ll be the one missing out, not the other way around.”
My brother eyed me doubtfully, then blinked at me so slowly I wondered if he was about to fall asleep mid-conversation. With a long exhale, I pulled the blankets up to his chest and tucked him in.
Something else I hadn’t done in years.
“Do you remember?” he whispered, rolling onto his side and curling up in the fetal position.
I smoothed my hand over the knobs of his spine, steady up and down and up and down until he settled.
“Of course,” I told him.
Of course I remembered the times he’d woken up from night terrors, sometimes screaming and sometimes crying. Sometimes terrified, but never alone. I didn’t know if Finn or Hunter had paid Smith any mind at night when I wasn’t at the house, but whenever I was, he never had to struggle through a sleepless night alone.
I sat with Smith until the cadence of his breathing changed, and I was certain he’d finally fallen asleep. Turning the light off on my way out, I pulled the door closed behind me and found my way to the primary bedroom where I knew Silas would be waiting.
I closed that door behind me too—and locked it.
“Is he okay?” Silas asked. He was on the foot of the bed, still dressed in jeans and my t-shirt, his feet bare.
“He’ll be fine,” I said. “Did you get Lincoln into bed?”
“I did.” He sighed, then tilted his chin toward his chest and gazed up at me through the fan of his lashes. “Mr. Covington.”
A sharp heat exploded low in my belly, and I shot him a warning glance. “It’s Sir, and you know it.”
“Sir,” he practically purred it at me, and the heat sank lower, thickening my cock in a dangerous way.
“Strip.”
I reached behind my head and tugged my shirt over and off while Silas scrambled out of his clothes. I loved the look of him there in front of me, limbs a few inches shy of being lanky, hair an inch or so too long to consider kept up. Silas was awkward and messy when he let himself come apart, and that was when I enjoyed him the most.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
His cock bobbed.
“I’m tired, Silas.” I took a step toward him, then another and another. He backed up until his knees hit the bed, then he sat down because he had nowhere else to go. I crawled onto him, used my body to slide us both up until his head was on the pillows. He made the happiest sound, and my dick leaked against my sweats.
Reaching between our bodies, I pulled my erection out and tucked my dick between the tight slide of his thighs.
