Decker (Sidewinders: Generations Book 5), page 13
“I’m sorry you went through that,” he whispered, stroking my hair. “But again, that wasn’t your fault. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
“I know it wasn’t my fault, but now I don’t trust myself, my judgement, or my taste in men. Remember I told you that when we first met?”
“I do remember.” He cleared his throat. “And you know, it’s time for me to tell you some stuff too. So we’re on the same page.”
“All right.” I moved a little so I could look up at his face. He seemed incredibly far away all of a sudden, though his embrace hadn’t loosened.
“Well, I told you I’m not close to my family.”
“Yes.”
“I come from an area in Michigan called the Upper Peninsula. Small, conservative, and in my case, super religious. My family, I mean. My dad is the pastor at our local church, my mom teaches Sunday school, and they’re hardcore evangelical Christians. The things they call values are hypocritical to me. Like no pre-marital sex, no birth control, no nothing. Hell, they consider the fact that I play pro hockey some kind of sin.”
“How is sports a sin?”
“Beats the hell out of me. Anyway, I knew how fucked up it was even as a kid. I’d watch them preach fire and brimstone, thinking they were such hypocrites. Meanwhile, one of my good friends was being molested by her older brother, all the teenagers I knew were having anal sex so the girls would still be ‘virgins’ when they got married, and the whole reason my dad got to be pastor in his early thirties? Because the previous pastor ran away with a constituent’s wife. Yet, that shit got swept under the rug.”
“Yikes.” I grimaced.
“I knew I was going to leave as soon as I could, and hockey was my way out. But I couldn’t just leave my best friend—” He was cut off by a voice shouting from downstairs, making us both jump.
“We’re here to finish up the floors, Mr. Petrov!”
“What the fuck?” Decker got up, grabbed his pants, and hurried into the bathroom. “Stay here,” he called over his shoulder. “I thought they were supposed to call first, but I’ll find out.”
Once he was gone, I hobbled to the bathroom to clean up and get dressed. I was still a little shaky from our lovemaking, but it had felt good to come clean with him. He needed to know my past because it haunted me. I’d loved two men who’d belonged to other women. Both emotionally and legally. And I’d had no clue. Not a hint. What did that say about me?
Even if you excused the first—we were only eighteen, after all, so it never would have occurred to me he’d gotten married—I should have been more suspicious with Lawrence. In two years, I’d never met his family or any friends, and while I put photos of us on social media, he didn’t even have an account. Or so I’d thought.
I’d been such an idiot, and it irked me because I didn’t consider myself stupid or naïve.
Decker and I hadn’t slept together right away, but the connection and desire had been there from the first moment we’d met. His job was the biggest thing slowing us down, along with my inability to get around on my own. Besides that, we’d really moved at lightspeed.
Unless I was being dumb again, and all he’d wanted was to prove he could get me off during sex?
I nearly groaned with frustration.
I couldn’t think that way.
But I had to know.
“Hey, doll.” Decker came back into the bedroom a few minutes later looking frustrated. “Unfortunately, they’re going to be here the rest of the day to finish the floors, and I’m going to have to supervise to a degree.”
“That’s all right,” I said softly. “We’ve already had a shag.”
He laughed. “You think I’m just going to fuck you once a day?”
“There’s always tonight.”
“Yeah, but I was going to go down on you…” His blue eyes darkened.
“We have time.”
“Mr. Reese—can you come down here?”
Decker groaned.
“It’s all right,” I told him. “We’ll chat later. Go do what you need to do.”
He pressed a quick kiss on my lips before hurrying back downstairs.
20
Decker
Her ex had been married.
Fuck fuck fuck.
Her ex had been married and lied to her for two years.
And I’d just conveniently skirted a conversation about Kristy, thanks to the damn flooring guys.
I wasn’t a religious guy, but if there was a hell, I’d just reserved a VIP seat on the bus going in that direction.
I didn’t have time to think about it, though.
The flooring was wrong, the one I wanted was back ordered, and by the time we figured it out, they’d already done half the kitchen. Now they were going to have to start again when the new stuff came in, and they didn’t have a date. Then I spent nearly two hours on the phone trying to adjust the delivery times for the new appliances I’d ordered. I’d made a spontaneous decision the other day to go ahead and do a handful of other updates to the house so by the time we closed it would feel like new.
Anton was paying for the flooring and the new dishwasher, since those had been destroyed in the flood, but the rest was on me, and I didn’t know a lot about renovation. I’d considered hiring an interior decorator but now there was a part of me that wanted to involve Eden in all the decisions. I’d gotten her opinion when I’d been choosing the flooring, and since I wound up cancelling the entire appliance order, maybe we’d go shopping for the new fridge, stove top, and double wall ovens together.
God, that sounded so damn domestic.
We wound up spending the rest of the day dealing with the flooring guys, another plumber to discuss the master bathroom, and looking at appliances online since walking around a big appliance store would be harder on her with her crutches. Then we’d made love and fallen asleep.
In the morning I was up early for practice, and I had to take her home on the way, so there was no time for anything serious. I couldn’t just yell out “I’m married” as I dropped her off at Van and Daisy’s, which meant I had to continue lying by omission just a little longer. Besides, there was something else on my mind.
“Listen,” I said as we got in my SUV. “The All-Star break is coming up, and I wondered if you’d like to go away together. It would give us time alone, away from the chaos of the house and interruptions and everything else. I was originally thinking a beach, maybe Mexico, but with your boot, that’s probably not your first choice.”
She looked thoughtful. “No, a beach would just frustrate me at this point. But going away together sounds heavenly. What about a cabin in the woods somewhere? We could stock up on groceries and not go out the whole time?”
I laughed. “We could, you know, stay home and do that.”
She grinned. “Yes, but there wouldn’t be a romantic snowy backdrop or a roaring fireplace since you don’t have one.”
“I don’t want to cook on our vacation, and I don’t want you to either. How about a compromise? We find a resort with a snowy backdrop and roaring fireplace, but also with a restaurant and spa and other things we could do in between all the lovemaking?”
“You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Reese.”
I cleared my throat. “So, uh, that’s one of the things I wanted to tell you. My legal name isn’t Decker Reese.”
“It’s not?” She looked shocked, and I held up my hand.
“It’s not a huge thing, I just originally wanted to separate myself from my family—and they wanted it too since they said I embarrassed them—so my name is Alan Decker Rickman. Reese is my mother’s maiden name. Decker Reese is a professional name. If you look me up online, you might find an article or two saying, ‘Decker Reese is an American ice hockey player who was born Alan Decker Rickman.’ Then it just moves on. Nothing else. I changed my name in hockey when I was sixteen, so professionally, it’s always been Decker. It’s about privacy, nothing else.”
“Oh. That makes sense.” She smiled. “What do you do when you check into hotels and such?”
“That stuff is all handled by the team, so we just get handed our keys and they tell us the room number. We don’t deal with credit cards and such. When I travel for pleasure, I’m usually alone when I check in, or I do everything online. It’s never been a problem.”
“Do you prefer Reese or Rickman?”
“I’ve been considering legally changing the name, I just haven’t gotten around to it. So for us, personally, Reese is fine but Rickman works if you’re so inclined.”
She shrugged. “I don’t need to use a name that makes you uncomfortable. Mr. Reese it is.”
“Thanks, baby doll.” I wrapped my fingers around hers.
“You can trust me, Decker.”
“I know.” God, I really hoped so.
“Anyway, I accept the terms of your proposal for our holiday. When do we leave?”
I laughed and told her the date.
I was distracted the next few days.
Eden was taking up a lot of space in my head.
And my bed.
I was enjoying the bed part, but not as much the shit in my head.
I didn’t know how to tell her the truth, and there never seemed to be the right time. I was busy with hockey, she was busy helping to get Renee’s new publishing company off the ground, and of course, my house was full of contractors every damn day. And if I was honest, I was scared.
She was going to walk away the minute she found out, even though it wasn’t as black and white as it had been in her other situations. The worst part was I had no one to talk to because no one in my inner circle knew the truth. There was a chance Anton had found out, but he’d never said anything, and I didn’t want to bring it up either. So now I was falling hard and fast for a woman who was going to freak right the fuck out the minute I told her my secret.
At this stage, I was way too invested to risk losing her, but I also had a commitment to Kristy. It wasn’t the romantic kind, but in some ways it was even more important. Kristy, my sister, and I had been best friends growing up. When Kristy’s older brother started sexually abusing her, none of us really understood it. We were young and still somewhat sheltered at that point. It wasn’t until I found my sister, Harper, crying that I figured out what all of that meant. And that one of the youth leaders at our church had been touching her.
Things changed for me that day. They’d changed for all of us. And then Harper ran away when she was sixteen and I was fourteen. I still had no idea where she was or if she was okay. She’d disappeared off the face of the earth and not even the private detective I’d hired had been able to find a trace of her. My gut told me something bad had happened, but I had no proof and no way to start an investigation. So I focused on protecting the person I had left—Kristy.
There was a whole lot on my mind, and nothing I could do about most of it. Eden wasn’t going to be happy when I came clean, Kristy could be impacted emotionally, professionally, and financially, depending on what happened with her grandfather, and I was going to wind up hurting two women I cared about deeply. One was the only family I had left, and the other hadn’t been around long enough for me to know what our future held, but either way I was in deep shit.
A sharp kick to the foot made me realize I’d been so lost in thought I hadn’t been paying attention to Coach’s pre-game talk and I glanced at Anton, who’d been the one to kick me.
“Changing lines,” he murmured under his breath.
Crap.
That was something I needed to know.
I looked at him helplessly, and he shook his head, hopefully indicating he’d tell me later, but this wasn’t good news for me. I played on the first line with Van, Zaan Hagen, Anton, and Tore Brekken. A line change meant I was being moved down, and while I deserved based on my play lately, it was frustrating nonetheless.
“I’m going to try some changes tonight,” Coach was saying. “If I don’t see more production I’ll continue to make changes until do. We clear?”
Everyone nodded and murmured agreement before he turned and walked out.
“What the hell is going on with you?” Anton asked me as we got ready to walk down the tunnel. “This can’t just be because you’ve got a girlfriend.”
“No.” I shrugged. “There’s a lot of shit going on. The renovations and sale of the house, the girlfriend, and my brother’s coming to town after the break.”
“You need to put that out of your mind and focus, man.”
“I know. If we don’t start winning, we’re not going to make the playoffs.”
He was right, and that would suck.
I tried to clear my head as my feet hit the ice.
This was normally my happy place.
From the time I was a little kid I used hockey as an escape. When my parents were driving me crazy with bible study and prayer and the nonstop, cult-like indoctrination that often went on at my house, I’d looked forward to hockey. Somehow, they’d thought it was a healthy outlet for a growing boy, so they hadn’t had a problem with it back then. Once I started to get good, they’d been less inclined to let me play because it meant travel and expanding my horizons beyond our little community, which was always dangerous to people who had things to hide.
Sometimes I wondered if anyone from back home other than John followed me once I’d changed my name. You could still find me if you had any decent skills on the internet, it just took a little effort, and I didn’t know if the members of my father’s congregation cared enough to try. Deep down, I hoped they did, and that at least a few of them talked about me to my dad. Even if my parents weren’t proud of me, maybe other people I’d known growing up were.
When I scored early in the first period I thought of my father for some reason. As a kid around six or seven years old, he’d been my biggest fan. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but in retrospect, he’d changed after the blow-up at our church. Once he’d become the pastor, everything I did was suddenly wrong. I was mostly past the hurt, but almost every time I scored I sent up a mental fuck-you into the ether, hoping he’d somehow know I was succeeding in spite of him.
That probably wasn’t the healthiest way to deal with the current shitstorm of my life, but at least it was working on the ice.
“That’s all it took?” Anton asked as I sank onto the bench. “Coach sending you down to the second line?”
I gave him a look. “Thanks, bro.”
He laughed. “I’m kidding.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I tried to follow the action on the ice, but my head was spinning out. Thank god I’d scored so Coach wouldn’t be riding my ass for the next day or two. I just had to get through tonight. We’d head home after this game, and Eden and I were leaving for Montana the next morning.
I’d booked us at five-star resort. It was rated one of the top adults-only resorts in the world and checked all of our boxes. Snow, high-end room with all the amenities including a fireplace, gourmet dining, and lots of privacy. I hadn’t told her where we were going, only that it was a surprise.
And I couldn’t wait to get there.
Once we were alone, and I had a couple of days to show her how much she meant to me, I’d tell her about Kristy. I had to. The longer I put it off, the worse it was going to be. And now that she wasn’t going back to England I wanted to be with her all the time. Hell, I was ready to have her move in. I knew it was crazy, but I didn’t care. Van and Daisy had fallen in love over the course of a couple of months, so why couldn’t Eden and I?
I’d booked a couple’s massage for Saturday morning and an exotic spirits tasting event on Sunday. We were limited in activities because of her ankle, but there would be plenty to keep us occupied if I had anything to say about it. And once we’d relaxed, had some fun, and I’d fucked her six ways to Sunday, I was going to come clean.
21
Eden
It was twenty degrees when we got to Montana, and I was glad I’d borrowed some clothes from Daisy because I wasn’t used to weather quite this cold. The resort was beautiful, though, and our private cabin was amazing. Comfortable and warm with a massive bed and the fireplace I’d asked for. Decker had spared no expense, and I was almost embarrassed at how decadent this was.
He didn’t give me time to think about it, though, because the moment we’d settled in, he dumped me on the bed.
“Get undressed, baby doll.”
“Too cold,” I teased, pretending to shiver.
“Fireplace.” He pointed. “And body heat.”
“I don’t know,” I murmured, scrambling under the blankets and covering my head.
I heard his chuckle as he dove in after me, tugging me out by my good leg. Even when he was being rough, Decker was gentle, always aware of my booted leg. He yanked at my clothes but made sure he didn’t jostle my leg too much.
“Undress on your own or you might get a spanking.” His eyes met mine questioningly, despite the command in his voice.
I hesitated.
I’d never been spanked as a child and none of my lovers had brought that into the bedroom either. But Decker wouldn’t hurt me, I knew that, and it sounded intriguing. Daisy told me she loved it when Jean-Michel spanked her, and Zoe and Slava had been into all kinds of craziness. So there had to be something to it if both my friends liked those kinds of things. Right?
“No?” Decker asked after a moment. “Too much?”
“I’m hesitant because I don’t know if I’ll like it,” I admitted.
“We’ll keep it fairly tame,” he said softly. “And if you hate it, we won’t do it again. Lots of other stuff we can try. I just have a feeling you’ll get off on it.”
