Decker's Wood (17 page)

“Yeah, Mom, I’m going.” I was conflicted about the meeting now. There was definitely a part of me that had been tired of the lifestyle I had been living. I knew I needed a change, but for some reason, the thought of giving it up for good made me nervous. The loss of something that had been so integral to my life scared me a little.

“Good. Well, I’ll see you Saturday. Bring dessert.”

I smiled. I sure as hell was bringing dessert. Andi cake, best served hot with a dash of cream. The thought had me rock hard, again. Man, I had missed my erection, I thought with a grin.

“Not a problem. See you Saturday.”

“Okay, honey. See you then.”

I hung up the phone and grinned as Donovan spurted a fist full of cum over Leah’s open, expectant mouth. Beautiful, even if it had taken the wanker twenty minutes of fist pumping to get that shot.

ANDI

“What are you going to get?” Casey asked as his eyes perused the packages. “Ohhhh, we should get the silk supreme eastern indulgence package. We can use the couple’s wet room and do it together.”

I scrunched up my nose and gave him a WTF look. “What the heck is a wet room?”

Casey laughed.
“Don’t get all excited, Cinderella, it’s simply a room where you can, as a couple, have a full body exfoliation, followed by a gentle massage and full body polish.”

I looked over the packages without the same enthusiasm Casey was investing. I wasn’t a day spa kind of girl, but this was Casey’s welcome to New York gift to me, and he had been so excited about it, I simply couldn’t refuse him. I was also distracted by the image of Decker standing behind the counter back at the book store. Before I had left, he had leaned down to my ear and whispered a wicked promise he planned to deliver on my return. I now found myself wanting to wrap up this spa crap and get back to his naughty proposal.

“I think I want the sugar pie,” I murmured, seeing it contained something that smelled like cinnamon, knowing Decker’s unusual attraction to that scent. Casey’s eyes searched quickly for the package I was referring to.

“Strangely enough, a lemon sugar polish with a pumpkin cinnamon wrap sounds ever so country, like you. I think I’m going to surprise Lionel with a Brazilian.”

I smiled when I noted he was serious. “Go on. I dare you.”

Casey grinned at me. “Dare you
back.”

I shook my head. “Nope, I have no doubt Decker has seen enough shaved vayjays in his life. I’m going to keep my neatly trimmed triangle and have a sugar pie.”

“You know you can tinker with the triangle. Dye it pink and add some vajazzle. I guarantee you, Decker will flip out!”

“What the hell is vajazzle?”

“Sparkles for your whisker biscuit,” the woman painting my toenails answered.

“Whisker biscuit?”

“Dazzle for your vagina,” Casey clarified for me, though dazzle for one’s vagina still had me puzzled.

“We do a little landscaping then add some stick on sparkles. Very elegant,” my beautician explained.

“Oh, that sounds cute. But what if one of the sparkles falls off and gets lost somewhere?” I pondered aloud.

Casey snorted. “Okay, okay, take a chillaxative, my little grasshopper. No vajazzle for you.”

“You know, Casey, for someone who prefers a cock over a vayjay, you seem awfully interested in mine.”

Casey rolled his eyes this time. “I’m just trying to help with a little muffscaping advice, sweet pea. Don’t get your tuff in a tangle.” The women giving us our pedicures were trying hard not to laugh. “So, after your night of pleasure, I assume you and he have moved your relationship into exclusive town?” I shrugged as my eyes sought out something other than Casey’s curious gaze. “Please tell me you didn’t keep Lionel and me up all night with your praise the lord exploits for nothing?”

“Casey!” I hissed, my eyes darting to the women at our feet.

“Andi, they are professionals! They would never listen and tell. Right girls?” The woman working on my toenails glanced up and pretended to zip her lips shut. The one working on Casey’s massive foot winked at me.

“Think of us as your therapists and this is your safe place.”

Casey grinned like he had just won some sort of milestone argument. “Spill, Cinderella, what’s going on in that head of yours?”

Wow, having a friend like Casey was tough, or maybe it was just friends in general. I had never really been a share your feelings kind of girl. I was much better at bottling them up and burying them.

“Well, since you already know about his profession—”

“Ex-profession,” Casey inserted quickly.

“Ex-
profession,” I agreed. “I’m still not sure how I feel about it.”

“What sort of profession?” asked my pedicure lady, and I balked at her self-inclusion into our conversation.

“Let’s just say Mr. Winky has made it to film once or twice.”

I almost gasped with outrage as Casey easily gave up the information I would have preferred to keep private.

“And he no longer swings on film?” asked my pedicurist.

“No, he’s retired,” answered Casey.

I groaned as my personal life became the center of attention.

“Who cares then? I know several members of this day spa who have been immortalized in a little camera action. It’s done, in the past. Now he’s all yours.” She gave me a smile that matched Casey’s.

“Yeah, but you aren’t dating them. I would hate the idea of my boyfriend being on film like that. I don’t mind a few past conquests sharing those intimate memories of my man, but I sure as hell wouldn’t want to share those moments with the entire world. And once it’s on the net, it’s there forever!” She had echoed Lionel’s words, and I had to agree. It did bother me that Decker’s Mr. Winky could be found at the click of a mouse.

“You can’t help who you fall in love with. My uncle Bruno met a woman, they fell in love, and had three kids. Turns out, she chopped her former husband’s head off with an axe.” We all stared at the day spa employee like her own head had just fallen off. “Oh, don’t worry,” she said when she realized we had all become silent, “it was a long time ago and her husband was an A-hole anyway. She and my uncle are still madly in love and his head is quite intact.”

Casey shuddered before turning his attention back to me. “If you really do care about him, his past won’t matter, because you’re his future.” Casey’s honest words wormed their way into my heart. That was the truth. I had told Decker I didn’t care about what he did for a living, and the fact that he didn’t even do it anymore was all the more reason why it shouldn’t stop me. “Wow, that was really prophetic. The spa fumes must be going to my head,” Casey laughed.

I gave him a grateful smile, and he leaned across to take my hand in his. In doing so, he noticed my chipped finger nails. He made a tsking sound. “You ladies have a hell of a lot of work ahead of you.”

*

By the time I made it back to The Book Shelter, I expected the place to be locked up tight and Decker nowhere in sight. The door was definitely locked, but Decker’s car was still parked on the curb. After a dramatic air kiss, Casey ran off to his front door, his enthusiasm at sharing his Brazilian with Lionel both amusing and a little TMI. When I stepped into my apartment, I stopped dead in my tracks. Decker
was standing in my kitchen, wearing nothing but a pair of cargo shorts resting low on his hips. He was stirring something in a pot on the stove.

“Good timing,” he exclaimed as he took the pot off the heat. “Have a seat, dinner’s ready.” Had I died and gone to domestic heaven? The muscles in Decker’s back shifted and rolled as he dished up the plates and carried them to the table. “Country, stop eye fucking me and get over here,” Decker murmured. That got my feet moving. I sat down across from him, and he gave me a warm smile.

“How’d it go today?” I asked, taking a mouthful of what looked beef stir-fry. As soon as that forkful of awesomeness hit my tongue, any thoughts of Decker or the bookstore vanished. I should have been embarrassed about the long, throaty groan that reverberated from my chest, but I was too hungry to care. Decker watched with an amused smile on his face.

“The store, as I’m sure you noticed on your way up, is intact. I even used the coffee machine.” Even though I had given Decker a crash course in the art of making a good cup of coffee, he was pretty adamant he was going to avoid the thing altogether. In fact, when I had suggested he might need to use it, he had looked down right ill.

“Lionel did it, didn’t he?” I thought out loud.

Decker scoffed with what could have passed for exasperation if it hadn’t disappeared so quickly under a cheeky smile. “Yup, but I started it up.” I rolled my eyes.

Flicking the switch on the side didn’t really constitute a great feat in barista excellence.

“Bradley called.” The food that had been on its way to my mouth froze.

“He phoned the store?” I said, a little surprised.

“He couldn’t reach you on your cell.”

Damn, I had turned my phone to silent at the spa and hadn’t returned it to normal mode. I waited for Decker to continue, perhaps elaborate on what Bradley wanted. When he went back to eating his dinner like the conversation didn’t exist, I gave him a kick under the table with my foot.

“Ouch, what was that for?” His confusion was clearly evident.

Seriously? It just snapped my garters that a man could fade out of a conversation so easily. “Bradley? What did he want?”

“He didn’t say.” Decker shrugged. That exasperating male silence filled the room again.

“So, he just called, asked for me, and you said I was out and then he hung up?” Decker’s brow arched and I realized he was playing with me. Asshole, two could play at that game. “Did you tell him how awesome I was in bed?”

Decker just about spat his food across the table. He choked back a laugh
, and when he finally found his composure again, he stared at me seriously. “Do you want me to die a slow and painful death?”

“You’re scared of Bradley?”

“Do you always answer a question with a question?”

“Do you?”

We grinned at each other. I watched Decker take a long drink from his bottle of water and I watched, my head falling into a haze of Decker lust. He was so ruggedly beautiful, so strong, so confident. Damn, he even made drinking into an art of erotic perfection.

“We didn’t talk long. He was more than a little surprised that I answered your phone. I told him you had an appointment and didn’t want to close the shop
, so I offered to watch things for you. That had him speechless for a little while. Then he asked me if I was fucking you…” It was my turn to pause.

“Are you serious?” I said through my full mouth, completely outraged. It was none of Bradley’s damn business who I was sleeping with.

“I asked him what he thought, and he laughed. He said you knew I was a player and you wouldn’t touch me with a ten foot pole.”

Harsh! I actually winced. Bradley had always been a guy who told it how it was, which earned him both respect and haters. The silence that engulfed us this time was awkward.

Decker didn’t seem pissed off at Bradley’s insensitive remark, but that might have been because there was a lot of truth to it. Perhaps I shouldn’t have touched Decker, but I couldn’t help myself. He had a charm and energy that was magnetic. Decker leaned back in the chair and laced his hands behind his head. “I watched the book store so you could go to the spa, and you look,” he tilted his head to one side as he took in my appearance, “the same as when you left. Aren’t you supposed to come back from a spa different or something?” My gaze darted away from his nervously. When I braved up enough to look at him again, his eyes had widened with excitement. “Unless the changes are covered up.” His eyes followed a heated trail down to my breasts, unable to go any further with the table blocking their path. Suddenly the subtle shaping and daring addition of those frightening sparkles had me feeling incredibly nervous. “Stand up, Country,” Decker growled. I shook my head. My mouth was dry with apprehension. Decker stood and grabbed my hand, pulling me to my feet, pressing my back against the wall behind me. “Damn, you smell so good I could eat you,” he whispered in my ear. Then he pulled my dress up over my head and cast it over his shoulder where it settled on the floor somewhere behind him.

“What is it with you and throwing clothes around? Do you have any idea how long it took me to locate my bra the other morning?”

Decker ignored me as he flicked the front clasp of my bra open. “I love the ones that do up at the front.” I would have responded except his lips closed over my nipple and all rational thought fled the building. Decker Steele had officially turned Andi Jennings’ brain to dirt in less than a minute. I went to kick my boots off, but Decker stopped me. “No, keep them on.” He slowly sunk to his knees before me, his lips caressing my skin with a reverence that made my heart beat so loud it echoed in my ears. “I love these. I’m gonna be careful not to fling them too far,” he whispered, his fingers tracing my expensive soft pink, lace panties that fell into the shape of a butterfly at the front. Carefully, he pulled them down my legs, his eyes still on mine. Once I had stepped out of them, his gaze dropped. My usually neat triangle was shaped into a heart and around the top were some strategically placed, pink stick-on diamantes. After a short while, any traces of lust were quickly quelled under Decker’s long silence.

“Casey made me do it,” I murmured. “I wouldn’t let them go any lower with the vajazzle ‘
cause, to be honest, the thought of one of those sparkles disappearing into my nether regions isn’t sexy at all, it’s downright awkward. Imagine my next visit to my gyno: ‘Oh, Andi, you wore glitter, for me?’.” I was rambling as Decker’s eyes returned to mine.

“I’ll be sure to do a thorough inspection to make sure you don’t lose any bling in your ding-ding,” he winked wickedly. “Remind me to kiss Casey next time I see him.”

“You like it?” I wondered out loud.

“Country, I hope you’re not hungry, ‘
cause there isn’t a chance in hell I’m letting you get back to that kitchen ‘til I’ve had my fill.” His gaze dropped to my newly muffscaped territory. In the spirit of love and all, it had been sculpted into a cute love heart. Decker moved forward and inhaled deeply. Oh wow, that was hot. “You smell good, like Andi, but more.” Then he took the lips of my nether region, parted them and licked me. I whimpered, loudly, and my knees immediately grew weak. Thankfully, Decker’s big hands gripped my waist and held me upright. My head fell back against the wall as Decker’s skillful tongue milked another long groan from my mouth. As the wet heat from his mouth stroked me toward an orgasm, my hands had grown bold and were now teasing my nipples into hard peaks. When I glanced down, Decker’s cheeks were hollowed as he drew my clit into his mouth, his eyes on my hands at my breasts. As my breathing grew rapid and my body began to shake, Decker’s gaze moved to mine. I held that intimate stare as he drove me into a powerful orgasm. With my legs somewhere between jelly and noodles, Decker picked me up and carried me to the bed. There was no hasty throw down this time. Oh no, gentle Decker had come out to play as he tenderly placed me down. He now drew my boots off, then he shoved his shorts down with much less finesse and climbed over me. His lips stopped to kiss my hip, the tender spot right above my new heart, followed by my belly button, both nipples, my neck, and finally, he kissed my lips, his tongue spearing deep. While Decker continued to make love to my mouth, I heard the crinkling of a wrapper. When he pulled away to roll on the condom, I wondered where in the hell it had appeared from. When he laid back over my body, he winked.