“Just keep talking. I’ll shut you up when I’ve heard enough.”
My spent dick liked that idea, but the gravity of the conversation kept it in check. “It would be super convenient for our Italian friends if they could draw us into a conflict while they have such powerful allies. So they’ll do everything they can to make that happen.”
“And it’s your job to stop them?”
“Pretty much.”
Decoy skimmed his fingers over my hip again. “Can you? Stop them, I mean?”
“Not with drive-bys and backstreet brawls. But that’s the point—to chip away at the club until Cam has to act to save face. And then he’s fucked. The club can’t fight the Albanian cartels on top of the old rivalry with Sambini. We don’t have the manpower.”
“What about Viktor?”
“He doesn’t have the manpower either. And Cam already said no to fighting for him, so why would he fight for us?”
Conflict raged in Decoy’s eyes and it hurt my heart. Like so many of my brothers, old and new, he just wanted it all to end. “He fought for us before. What was his motivation then?”
At that, I shook my head. “Alexei, maybe. But I don’t know enough about mob politics to understand their relationship.”
“But you speak Russian?”
“I had to. There’s FSB all over the Middle East.”
“They were in Kosovo too. When I was deployed there to settle Afghan refugees.”
“Someday we’ll have to figure out where we’ve both been for the last decade. See if we crossed paths anywhere else and didn’t know it.”
Decoy blew out a soft sigh. “I’m scared we’re going to lose people.”
I couldn’t promise him that we wouldn’t.
So I didn’t. Which left me at the mercy of his tormented gaze, and I couldn’t handle it.
I dug deeper to call time on a conversation we shouldn’t have had and tugged him upright. “Come shower with me. I’ve got unfinished business too.”
* * *
I could’ve stayed in the shower with Decoy for the rest of my life. Water had always grounded me, and with Decoy’s hot skin and low moans for company, leaving was tough.
So were the next few days. I wasn’t around much, and when I was, Decoy was gone too—away on the HGVs, hauling timber and paving slabs.
God, I missed him. And I had no right to. We’d spent a few days in domestic bliss. A fewhoursin each other’s naked embrace. I didn’t get to miss him. He wasn’t mine.
A week had passed by the time we regrouped. Ivy was home. We took her back to the house and spent three days in a bubble. Eating. Sleeping.Swimming. Then she left again and I didn’t think twice about waiting for Decoy to come home.
We didn’t fuck. But that was the only claim I could make with a straight face as I became intimately versed in every inch of his body.
His tattooed skin and coiled muscles.
His shy smile, and the quiet way he gasped when he came.
I began to live for those moments, until the days and days of this routine turned into weeks and I realised the innocent hours we spent together were doing me more good than sex ever could.
Time began to move faster.
Before I knew it, a month had passed, and we rode back to the compound together beneath the lightening sky, chasing the dawn.
Or maybe it was chasing us. I felt bad that Decoy hadn’t slept. Relieved that I hadn’t either. Pushing my limits was a thrill I needed right now, even if it did make me feel a hundred years old.
