The night began to draw in on us. I wasn’t cold, but Rocco’s ghost brought goosebumps to my skin.
Decoy clocked it and tugged me to my feet. “Do you need to check the locks on the doors too?”
I did. But it could wait. Decoy was a soldier. A brother. Afather. I found it hard to believe the house wasn’t already as safe as it needed to be. “Tomorrow. I could murder a shower, though.”
A cold one, if my joints could handle it.
“Come on.” Still holding my hand, Decoy towed me inside, not letting go until he shut the door behind us and locked it.
The stairs were right in front of us. I sensed Decoy’s hesitation like an incoming storm, but he surprised me by blowing through it and jogging right up them.
I followed and discovered my bag on his bed. On the side furthest from the door.Guess that’s my side.
“There’s towels on the shelf.”
I dug through my bag for clean underwear and sweats. “I remember from last time.”
“You got everything you need?”
“Think so.”
He backed up and retreated downstairs. It gifted me a moment to acclimatise to being in his bedroom. To flex my hands and gauge if I could handle an icy shower right now, a conundrum that never occurred to me before I dunked myself in the frigid ocean.You’ll be fine.Of course I would. My hands were sore, but I knew it was in my head because they never hurt after I’d been in the sea. Only in moments like this when I had wound myself too tight over something that would figure itself out on its own.
I took a lukewarm shower and brushed my teeth.
When I got out, Decoy was back and dressed in MC joggers.
He was also shirtless, and it tripped me up. Like it had the first time I’d seen his bare back and only the despair in his face had stopped me crushing him against the lockers in the bunkhouse.
That despair was absent now and his naked torso was everything. Chiselled, strong, and dusted with dark body hair. To keep my gaze from following it all the way to his waistband, I zeroed in on the heart of thorns tattooed on his chest. Lots of bikers had ink. At the club, it was only me and Alexei who didn’t, and the men on the council of the Rebel Kings had some of the best I’d ever seen. But this one... it drew me closer to him, my fingertips tracing it before I caught myself. “This is beautiful.”
Decoy shivered and dropped his hands on my shoulders. “It’s pretty new. Liliana had it in her sketchbook and she wanted to see what it would look like as a tattoo.”
“Her dad didn’t want it?”
“She had other ideas for him. Embry too. I was the only one with enough space left.”
The dark ink covered his skin from his collarbone to his abs. I skated my palms down his ribcage, forcing myself to stop before I travelled too far south. Pretending I didn’t notice the bulge at his crotch in the hope that he wouldn’t notice mine. Common sense screamed at me to stop touching him before Icouldn’tstop, but I tuned it out and raised my gaze.
His lips were right there. An inch away. Two at most.
Don’t kiss him.
Another plea my brain chose not to hear, but it turned out not to matter.
Because he kissed me.
14
FOLK
His lips were as sweet as they’d been the first time.
The second.
The third.
Decoy brought his warm hands to my face and cupped my jaw, and all the awkward unknowns between us faded away.
