He took my hand and I’d have gone with him anywhere, but I was still weary enough to be grateful he only meant the garden.
Decoy steered me outside, to the sun spot where we’d so often lounged in the evenings when Ivy had gone to bed.
He eased me onto the step and sat behind me, pressing his body to mine, one arm an anchor around my waist, his free hand kneading the base of my neck.
I hummed a low moan. “That’s so good.”
“Yeah?” Decoy slid his hand down my arm. “What about this?”
He massaged my palm and my aching wrist, and I just about died from the pleasure of it. If I hadn’t known how sinfully good he was at blowjobs, this would’ve been it for me. Game over. “Where’ve you been all my life?”
Decoy chuckled. “Bumbling through my own. Maybe fate knew I wasn’t ready for you until now.”
“You were ready for me that night in Paphos. I was the weak link.”
“There’s nothing weak about you.”
“Of course there is.”
“Nope.” Decoy bit my neck, shyly, if such a thing was possible. “You’re vulnerable because you’re fucking human. Nothing weak about that.”
I let him have that one and concentrated on not floating away while he rubbed the soreness from my battered joints. That I felt his toucheverywherelet me know I was in a better place than when he’d left the house a few hours ago. “Did it go okay with the feds?”
“Think so.”
“They tell you anything important?”
“Not really. It’s just a waiting game now until it goes to trial, and that could take years.”
Good. Let her rot while she waits.But I didn’t say it. Decoy didn’t need more hate in his life. “Does your shoulder hurt?”
“Not now. It throbbed while you were gone, but it went away the second I saw you again.”
I wanted to tell him that it might come back when he had less on his mind, but his fingers were still doing magic things to me, turning my brain to mush. I closed my eyes, leaning into it, until I felt his gaze on me.
His warm eyes held enough concern to draw me out of dreamland. “What about you, Folk? How areyoufeeling?”
Decoy deserved so many things, but perhaps more than anything, he deserved the truth. “I’m feeling like you did a while ago, when you needed that rage fucked out of you. Except it’s not rage, it’s something else.”
His brows ticked up. “You want me to fuck you?”
“Yeah... I mean, not now. I think I’d die, but soon.”
Decoy’s rough hand cupped my jaw. He turned my head; then he kissed me, slow and sweet, just once, but with enough heat that I knew when he did fuck me, I’d be lucky to survive it.
He drew back with a thoughtful haze in his eyes. “We had a big conversation planned for when you came home. While you were missing, I kept thinking it was fate’s way of telling me I couldn’t have you and Ivy both. That if you didn’t come back, it was a punishment for manipulating what happened with Lauren.”
“You didn’t coerce her into pointing her car at you. She is who she is, and she hurt you because she wanted to.”
“I know it, but it was hard to be that logical when I thought you might be dead.”
“I’m sorry you went through that.”
“Don’t be sorry. Be alive. That’s all I need.”
“Is it?” I shifted so I could see him better. “I want to give you more than that.”
“Like what?”
