AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No.” I reach back and snag another fry. My stomach is already filling. Expanding. Relaxing. “There was nothing valuable inside. Not worth the drama of filing a report.”
“Yet, right after your bag was stolen, you bumped into me and took out your rage on the innocent bystander.”
“Innocent?” I look down into my lap, past the purse I still have slung over my chest, and push his hand aside. “Hardly.”
Smirking, he looks over my shoulder at my emptying plate. “You full yet?”
“Yup.” I flash a grin that is only about twenty-five percent vodka on what was an empty stomach. “You done trying your luck on an uninterested woman?”
“Uninterested?” He pulls back and looks along the bar, then over to the pool tables, and finally back to me. He grins. “Where?”
“Crass.”
“Fancy word. I live across the street and about a hundred yards that,” he flicks his chin in some direction, “way.”
“You’re telling me this, why?”
“So you know how far you have to run in the storm.” Reaching around me once more, he grabs my drink and places it in my hand. “Drink this. It’ll make the run bearable. It’ll also quiet the voice in your head that says nasty sex with a stranger isn’t cool.”
“So you’d like to fuck an inebriated woman?” I question with a lifted brow. “That’s what they call nonconsensual, Archer.”
“Not inebriated,” he corrects. “And definitely not smashed. Just… relaxed.” Leaning in, he surprises a gasp from my throat when his teeth latch onto my earlobe and bite. “The exact right amount of relaxed.”
“You think…” Ican’tthink. “You don’t…” Ido. “Shit.”
Chuckling, he slides his stubbled jaw along my cheek. “Wanna fuck yet?”
I should say no. And I sure as hell should run far, far away. But for some reason—maybe jetlag, or maybe vodka… more than likely, it’s desperation for a night of mindlessness after days of frustration—I tip my drink back and chug until it’s all gone. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Yeah?” Like he never expected my acquiescence, he pulls back to search my eyes. “Yes?”
“Yup.” I drop the glass back on the bar, then taking out my phone and snagging the debit card from the back of the case, I toss it to Tim’s side of the bar and wait for his eyes. “I’ll come back for that tomorrow. I’m going to bed.”
Tim’s eyes flicker over my shoulder and narrow. But he’s too far away for me to hear if he speaks. He’s busy serving customers, and I’m already moving.
Grabbing the front of Archer’s shirt, I drag him along and keep my eyes trained forward. I don’t want to see the surprise in Tim’s gaze—or the disgust, if that’s how he feels about me going home with someone I disliked only ten minutes ago.
Hell, I’m pretty sure Istilldislike him. But I’m just as sure he’s gonna show me a good time. And sometimes, a woman has to take the good with the bad.
Stepping out of the warm bar and into the storm I momentarily forgot was raging, I squeak and wrap myself up to stay warm. “Which way?”
Archer doesn’t have a coat either; maybe he took one to the bar, but he was too busy or too distracted to grab it on the way out. Now, he takes my hand and wraps it tight in his. “This way.” He has to shout to be heard over the blizzard.
He huddles in defense of the cold, and starts at a slow jog in the same direction as my hotel. But his jog turns to a sprint before we clear ten feet.
“Faster!” he calls out. “I don’t want my dick to freeze up and fall off before I get to use it.”
I throw my head back and laugh, risking certain death if I slip, as vodka swirls in my blood with every running step I take. “That would be a damn tragedy, considering how hard you worked to get me out here!”
“You’re telling me.”
He hooks a sharp right and cuts across an almost empty street. Once on the sidewalk opposite the bar, he turns up the speed and grins when he looks back to find me keeping up.
It just so happens I enjoy a morning jog. It works in my favor tonight as I sprint toward a one-night stand that’ll be devastating if he can’t follow through on his promises.
If the dark and mysterious Archer, whose last name I never stopped to ask, turns out to be a dud in bed, I’m running back to Tim’s and begging for a lobotomy. Then maybe a flight to New York, where I can slink back into anonymity amongst a city bursting with over eight million people.
Screw my new job, and screw my new lab.
