I had not found my oasis. I had not found a home.
I’d stumbled into Heaven on earth where miracles could happen.
I knew this because I’d sensed this in Chace. In Deacon.
But I felt it in me.
“Justice,” Deke rumbled.
I started, shifting my eyes to him.
Then, slowly, I walked to him.
When I got close, Deke, so damned Deke, curved an arm around my waist and pulled me tight, my front to his side, his bearded chin buried in his neck to hold my eyes.
His held concern.
“You okay, baby?” he whispered gently.
“I bought champagne glasses,” I whispered back.
Deke said nothing.
“And red wineglasses,” I carried on. “White wineglasses. Martini glasses. Bourbon glasses—”
Deke cut me off. “I’m catching your drift.”
I nodded.
“Talk to me,” he ordered.
I did not talk to him.
Oh no.
A moment like that was not for words.
It was for song.
So I didn’t talk to him.
I sang to him.
“Wither to dust, crumble like rust, only by your side.”
His arm got tighter and I felt it before I heard the noise that reverberated from his gut, through his chest and out between his lips.
But I kept singing.
“Fresh air, cold beer. Root myself in you.”
“Stop it, gypsy,” he growled.
I didn’t stop.
Couldn’t.
He knew the words were for him.
But I’d never given them to him, straight from me.
“Consider my life, you’re all that’s right, breathless to bring on the night.”
Deke shuffled us around the corner of the island, clear of the glasses and bottle of champagne.
And I kept singing.
“Wither to dust, baby, crumble like rust, only at your side. Just what I need when I have everything.”
I stopped to gasp as his big hands spanned my hips and I was up, ass to the counter, Deke pushing his hips between my knees, those knees spreading so he was pressed to the heart of me.
Then I was staring at nothing but hazel when his mouth came to mine.
“Chain links, worn jeans,” I crooned there. “I could search ‘til I’m done, ‘til moon becomes sun.”
His hand slid up in my hair, bunching it at the back of my skull, his other arm banding across my back, the pads of his fingers digging into the sides of my ribs.
“Chain links, white tee. Wither to dust, crumble like rust, all I need is to be at your side.”
I stopped singing.
“You done?” he asked, his voice thick, his hold on me fierce, his eyes burning.
“Thank you for my house, honey.”
“You’re done,” he muttered.
I was done.
But we were not since he kissed me.
While he did, he pushed me so my back was to the counter, his tongue in my mouth a sensual assault, an intimate branding, more potent than his mark, the one he often found times to renew on my shoulder.
Through it, he yanked at my belt, jerked down my zipper, pulled at my jeans. As I felt wet flood between my legs, I also felt cold marble hit my ass. But even cold, it heated me as Deke angled away. He lifted one of my feet, yanking off my boot, my sock. To the other, they were gone. With a vicious sweep that pulled my ass to the edge of the counter, forcing a gust of electrified breath from my lips, my jeans were torn away.
I watched Deke straighten, his hands to his own jeans. He pulled them down over his hips, his hard cock springing free.
Then he surprised me.
He didn’t bend over me, take my mouth when he took my cunt.
He reached to me, wrapping his hand around my throat. Collaring me with his touch, scalding me with the look in his eyes, he caught the back of one of my knees in his hand, yanked up as his hips pressed in.
They rolled and his cock head slithered, fixed on its target, and then he drove in.
Taking him, feeling the exquisiteness of Deke filling me, my neck arched back, the weight and warmth of his large hand spanning my throat splitting my avid attention from that to the force of his thrusts pounding into me.
“Eyes on me, Justice,” he ground out.
I righted my head, looked into his eyes, watched the ferocity of feeling etch in his face.
That ferocity for me.
All for me.
I trembled on marble.
“Root myself in you,” he grunted, doing just that and grinding.
Oh God.
God.
I lifted the leg he didn’t have hold of and pressed the inside of my thigh to his side, everything quivering, legs, belly, lips, fingers, pussy.
“Deke.”
He pulled back, but not out, and again started thrusting.
His fingers tightened on my neck even as his thumb slid up, wedging against the hinge of my jaw. Trembling more violently, I felt the pad of it pressing there, searing, certain after we were through I’d look in the mirror and see the burn of his print there, scorched into me.