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“Money to burn,” I snarl, irrationally angry about a grown man’s spending habits. He’s buying chicken! Not diamonds. “And what were you doing on the upper deck? You still haven’t answered me.”
“Bring in the Moet, too. A couple dozen.”
“Bottles?” I exclaim. “Archer!”
“Cases,” he instructs Curtis.
“I’m done.” I toss his arm off and disentangle our fingers, then I start away. Crossing the room and making a beelinefor the door. “My husband is a capitalist weirdo snob.” I point toward the ceiling and call out, loud enough for all the hidden staff to hear me. “I want a divorce! I’ll take half the bank account and donate it to a charity in need.”
“Come back here, woman!” Archer’s voice is booming and yet, laughing at the same time. “You don’t disrespect a Malone.”
“Don’t I?” I stop at the doorway and turn back, only to be stunned by how utterly handsome he is. His playful smile clears away decades of stress piled upon his shoulders. His broad chest, the perfect place for me to lay my head each night. “I’m leaving you,Malone. I no longer wish to exist within this reality.”
“Get the food sorted,” he orders into the phone. “Make sure it’s dealt with for Sunday.” Dragging the device from his ear and slowly, dangerously stalking toward the bar, his eyes remain focused solely on me. “Come to me, Mayet.”
My heart gives a painful knock in the middle of my chest. “No.”
As though that was the right answer, his lips curl higher. “Then run from me.” Setting the phone down, his eyes become almost maniacal. “Three.”
“Archer.” I take my hand from the door frame and place it between us in surrender. “Stop.”
“Two.”
“Archer!” My pulse sprints out of control. “I said?—”
“One.” He breaks away, explosive in his movements despite the two hundred pounds his legs have to carry. But I don’t have time to think about it because I twirl before my brain even decides that’s where we’re going. A pealing, squealing laugh escapes my throat as I sprint along the hall in search of escape.
Of privacy.
Of somewhere to hidewithhim.
“Stop, Archer!”
“Keep going.” He smacks my ass and crashes against my back. Not to stop me, but to propel me forward. “We haven’t fucked inhours, Mayet. I’ve missed you.”
I slam against our door, my breath bursting from my lungs and my pulse galloping with need. Not in my chest. But between my legs. Heavy, demanding thuds of desperation.
Breath racing, he crowds me against the door and spins me, so I slam a second time. But now I’m facing him. Panting for him. “You asked for a divorce, Minnnka?”
He slips his hand into my shorts. No preamble. No warning. Nothing but a dire need to touch, and complete faith in the fact he doesn’t have to ask. Sliding two, thick fingers inside my pussy, he slaps his free hand over my mouth to silence my cry of pleasure.
“You come on my boat on the eve of my wedding, and you ask me for a divorce?” He speaks with an accent, a Brooklyn Italian dialect that leaves me equal parts breathless and sniggering. “Are you asking to sleep with the fish, Mayet?” Peeling his hand away, he drops a kiss on my lips. “Because I’ll sleep with the fish too, if that’s where you’re gonna be.”
ARCHER
“Forty-seven dead?” I pace the helipad on Saturday and peek over the side every minute or two to make sure Minka doesn’t almost catch me working.Again. “Forty-seven, Fletch! What the fuck?”
“Aubs got onto the research folks over there, since your lazy ass didn’t wanna get off the boat.”
“Dude! I offered to help. I suggested coming home.”
“And currently it’s…” He takes a moment, his breath coming heavy. Tired. “Five-fifteen in the fucking morning. Because you’re incapable of checking a world clock and making sure you’re calling at a reasonable hour.”
“Five fifteen is basically daytime,” I roll my eyes. “What did Aubs get from the research place?”
He yawns, loud and obnoxious enough to have me bringing the phone away from my ear. “The poison that killed our forty-seven is kind of like the Evicta drug itself. There are differences, of course, since Evicta isn’t sending folks into renal failure and internal bleeding within days of exposure. But a lot of the ingredients are coming up the same. The bromethalin is a neurotoxin, and chlorophacinone acts as the anticoagulant. Bothingredients are present in Evictaandour vics. Both samples are showing arsenic and difethialone, too. Put them all together and we basically have Ratsak.”
“They were putting rodent killer in the cancer pills?”
