Authors: Cassidy Browning
Tags: #Romance
The door flew open
,
and Blaze stood in the doorway. He glared at Decker and said, “What the fuck are you—”
“I’ll show you what the fuck we’re doing, you fucker!” Finn blasted past Decker and tackled Blaze, knocking him to the ground.
Daphne let out a shriek, scrambling off the bed where she seemed to have been cowering. “Finn!”
“Are you hurt?” Decker took her in his arms and examined her as well as he could. Her top was ripped, her face was red and swollen, but Decker couldn’t tell if she’d been hit or had just been crying. Debris was scattered across the room
,
and the phone lay on the floor under a large dent in the wall.
“No, I’m okay, I think.” She gave him a pathetic, lopsided smile and clung to him, simultaneously pointing at the struggling pair on the ground. Her hand was unsteady
,
and her voice was thick, making him doubt her assertion. “Shouldn’t you—”
“Shouldn’t I what? Finn looks like he’s doing pretty well by himself,” Decker said, watching Finn’s fist connect with Blaze’s nose. But he could hear Eddie clattering up the stairs, shouting, “What’s going on up there?”
“Okay, Finn. Remember that Daphne needs you. Let’s not get thrown in jail today.” Decker pulled Finn to his feet, and Blaze scrambled up as well, blood streaming out of his obviously broken nose. Eddie stormed in the room, looking outraged.
“Thanks for your help. We found who we were looking for.” Decker gave him a casual smile, as if he and his friends always attacked each other on sight.
“Obviously.” Eddie peered into the room. “Are you okay,
m
iss? Do you need help?”
“I’m fine.” Daphne nestled closer to Decker’s side, watching Finn and Blaze between the fingers covering her eyes.
Eddie gave them a wary look then surveyed the room, his gaze lingering on the phone and the dent in the wall. He glared at Blaze. “Did you do that?”
“I gave you a damn credit card. Take it out of that. Now get the hell out of here.” Blaze turned, smearing the blood on his face with his hand, and went into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.
Eddie looked from Decker to Finn to Daphne. They all smiled, although no doubt with varying degrees of believability. Daphne was recovering now, although she weaved as she walked forward and threw her arms around Finn’s neck.
“I’m rescued,” she announced thickly. “My heroes.” She gave him a long, hard kiss. Then she turned to Decker, holding her arms out. She took a step, but before she could reach him, she sighed and slumped to the floor.
The men dropped to either side of her, checking her pulse. Confident that she had simply passed out, Decker lifted her up easily into his arms and stood. “I think, if you don’t mind, that we’ll take her away from all this.”
Eddie transferred his astonished gaze from Daphne’s limp form to Decker, then Finn, then the still-closed bathroom door.
“I guarantee you, he isn’t going to object,” Finn told him as he grabbed a blanket off the bed and followed Decker to the door. “If he wanted her to stick around, he wouldn’t have run off into the bathroom. You can add this to his bill.”
“Who did you say he was?”
Finn looked back. “Let’s just say you might want to put that credit card through as quickly as you can. It might not be good in a day or two.”
Daphne’s eyes opened slowly and painfully. There was too much light. She groaned and tried to cover her face with both hands as she struggled to sit up.
She couldn’t. She seemed to be slumped over someone’s lap, in the back of a car. Arms encircled her tightly, preventing her from moving.
Flapping her hands, she tried to swat at whoever was holding her. “Calm down, Daph,” said Finn’s voice.
“Oh, thank God.” Her eyes squeezed closed again as she relaxed back into his lap. Finn. That’s right. He’d come to save her. And—
“Is Decker still here?” She squirmed, trying to see who else was in the car, until Finn reluctantly let her sit up and slide onto the seat next to him.
“Right here, babe. Do you want to tell us what the hell you were doing?” Decker’s eyes met hers in the rearview mirror, and her elation at remembering his presence in the hotel room drained suddenly away.
“I’m an idiot.” Daphne covered her face and slumped into the corner.
Decker’s voice held a touch of humor. “Not disagreeing with you, necessarily, but we’d really like to hear what happened.”
Finn reached over and stroked her arm. “Come on, Daph. You’ve got to tell us.”
“You’re going to leave me!” Daphne wailed, aware that she was pulling away from him. She would have preferred to throw herself back into his arms, but that wasn’t an option. He’d threatened so many times to quit if she ran off again, and this time she’d screwed up the concert
,
too. This couldn’t possibly end well.
“I
–
It’s fuzzy. I don’t know how I got so drunk. I only had one drink. I think. There was a note. Blaze said—”
Both men stiffened. “Blaze said what?” Finn asked, pulling his hand back.
There. I knew it.
“I don’t remember exactly.” What had she been drinking? She couldn’t even remember now.
“Back up.” There was no humor in Decker’s voice anymore. “When did you see Blaze?”
“Right after I got back to the hotel.” She looked apologetically at Finn. “Some guy delivered the flowers, and a note. Then Blaze was knocking, and he had some stuff—whiskey, maybe. He said it was to celebrate our new successes. I should have known. He was just trying to get me fucked up.”
“By the looks of things, he succeeded with that. As usual.” Finn looked away from her, out the window.
“Sounds to me like the drink was spiked with something,” Decker put in.
“Maybe.” She rubbed her temples, trying to remember. “That’s right. He kept going on about McFarland contacting him, saying that he wanted to marry me. I told him I was through with McFarland, that I never wanted to see him again. I left, because Blaze was trying to get me to go with him.”
“Where did you go?” Decker glanced at her in the mirror again.
She frowned, trying to bring it into focus. “I went to the festival. I wandered around for a little while because I knew you wouldn’t be there yet, but I started feeling really weird. I should have called the hotel and left a message for you
,
but I didn’t have my phone. And then—” She stopped, remembering, and looked accusingly at Decker.
“And then?” he prompted.
“And then I heard you say I wasn’t worth it.”
“You heard what?” Finn turned back to her, wide
eyed.
She nodded then abruptly wished she hadn’t. Her head started swimming again
,
and she had to grip the front seat to hold herself steady. Finn didn’t reach for her.
Another bad sign
.
When she was able to focus on Decker’s eyes again, she was surprised to find they were full of sympathy.
“I wasn’t talking about you, babe,” he said gently.
“You weren’t? Because Blaze said—”
“Blaze had just pulled a knife on us. I was debating whether to use it to cut his nuts off. I decided he wasn’t worth the paperwork.”
“Oh.” She sat back and tried to process that. Her brain still felt like it was full of potato soup
,
but she was beginning to piece things together.
“So what did you do after that?” Finn asked.
“I left. Blaze found me at the entrance and said you were at the hotel and wanted me back there. But then he took me to that horrible place instead
,
and he—he was going to rape me. When I tried to stop him, he started screaming and throwing things. He was acting like he was going to kill me. I thought maybe it would be better that way. You guys had given up on me, and I was sure you would quit once you knew I’d gotten drunk again—” Her voice broke
,
and she put her face back into her hands.
This time, to her surprise, Finn did reach for her. He pulled her back against him and wrapped his arms tightly around her.
“Come on, Daph. You know as well as I do that I’ll never be able to quit. You’re stuck with me.”
Her sobs had started, though, and there was no stopping them. She’d been sure she’d lost them both. She’d seen Decker, had been rushing to thank him for coming to her concert, when she’d stopped suddenly, realizing they’d been talking about her. Then she heard Decker say, “You’re not worth it,” and everything had fallen apart.
“I missed the concert, didn’t I?” she moaned.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” Finn said gently. “For now, just try to calm down.”
“How did you know where to come? And were you yelling ‘Police!’?”
Decker’s head ducked, ever so slightly. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Corny, I know, but I thought it would get his attention. It was either that or ‘Land Shark.’”
“Thank God we got there,” Finn said.
Daphne twisted to look at him. “Why? He was right. I am just a worthless slut. I let you down.”
“Don’t ever say that,” Finn said, grabbing her shoulders and giving her a quick shake. “You’re beautiful and talented and intelligent and if you ever go running off like that again I’ll—well, I won’t quit, but I might kill you.”
“And I might have to help him. Or at least hide the body,” Decker said, slowing down to turn into the small airport.
* * * *
Daphne slept off the aftereffects of the drug on the flight back to Grandpointe. Once she was settled in the back, Finn went up to sit next to Decker in the cockpit.
“So what do we do now?” Finn asked, looking out over the view.
“About Daphne?”
“Yes.”
Decker made some adjustments on his controls then shrugged. “I think that depends on you.”
“What do you mean?” Finn squirmed a little.
“I mean, what do you want now? Are you going to quit?”
“No. I meant what I told Daphne.”
“Are you going to continue your relationship with her?”
“Yes.” Finn hesitated then cleared his throat. “I wanted to talk to you about that, actually.”
“Yes?” Decker kept staring out the window. Finn didn’t think it was strictly necessary to watch where you were driving in a plane, but he didn’t question it.
He shifted again, unsure how to go on. “Well, the thing is, how do we do this?”
“Are you still thinking that you want me to join you?”
“Yes, but—”
“But you’re nervous about it.”
“Nothing personal,” Finn began, but Decker waved a hand.
“Of course not. You’d be stupid not to be worried. Polyamory isn’t for the weak or the impatient. You’re going to feel like every issue you’ve ever had is coming back to haunt you.”
“Every issue?”
Decker chuckled. “Yeah. It’s not about sex, remember. It’s about relationship and communication. That means conversations—lots and lots and lots of conversations. Until you think you’d rather die than have to talk about your feelings one more time. But if you want it to be successful, you have to be willing to keep doing it. Are you sure you’re up for that?”
Finn considered it, glancing back at the unconscious woman he loved. “Ask me again in a month. But for Daphne’s sake, yes. I think I can handle it.”
“Okay. Then we’ll need to have some extensive negotiations when we get back to Clifftop. I want to go into this with everybody knowing exactly what the other people want and what’s expected of them. You and I especially need to decide what our relation is to each other.”
Finn gulped
,
and his voice went up a notch. “You mean sexually?”
Decker gave him an amused glance. “Not necessarily, although there will be a lot more contact between us than two regular vanilla guys might be used to. If we’re sharing Daphne, then we can’t be too homophobic. Are you willing to have sex with her at the same time?”
“I’m willing to try it.”
“Then you’ll need to be comfortable being naked around me, and having me touch Daphne, and maybe you briefly, while you’re having sex. Not to mention sleeping in the same bed. Are you still willing?”
“I don’t really see any option. It’s not like I can invite you to enter our relationship and then expect you to sleep somewhere else. By the way, where do you live?”
“In a small community near San Luis Obispo
,
” Decker said. “How about you guys?”
“We both have apartments in the city. I don’t think it would break my heart to live in a smaller place. Besides, we’re on the road a lot, so it’s not like it matters.” Finn gave a thoughtful glance at the sleeping form in the back of the plane. “And it certainly would be better for her. But is it someplace you’d be comfortable taking her? I mean—”
“You mean would the community judge me if it became known that I was in a triad?” Decker laughed. “Believe me, I don’t think I could shock them anymore. They called us the Kinky Couple when Sharon was alive. She wasn’t very reticent about her lifestyle choices. Besides, if they don’t like it, they don’t have to talk to us. With my career I travel around a lot
,
too, and when I’m home I pretty much keep to myself.”