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But while he’s turned the other way, I bound out of bed in my most subdued version of panic and go in search of my clothes. I pounce on my jeans and stab my legs in with quick work, then, stumbling in the denim, I dash toward my bra and work it on with fumbling hands. It’s twisted, the wire pokes me, but I’m desperate to dress, and Archer is slowly turning on the bed.
I snatch up my sweater next and shrug it on after securing only one of the two hooks of my bra, then stopping in the middle of Archer’s sparsely furnished room, I desperately search for my panties.
“I’m not telling you where they are.”
Dropping my hands to my hips, I glance up only to be imprisoned by Archer’s deceptively dark eyes. Deceptive, because in the light, they’re a malachite green, but unless you can get close enough to see for sure, you would assume they’re damn near black.
“Your underwear.” He turns to his back and leans against his gray fabric headboard. The sheet remains down by his hips, which means I’m treated to a display of the abs I slid my tongue along only hours ago.
Oh god, I licked his abs.
“I’m not giving them back.”
“Uh…” I cough when my voice comes out on a croak. “What?”
Turning just his head, lazy like a big cat in the jungle, he looks me up and down with an appreciative study. “I’m keeping your underwear. A little memento to remember you by.”
“I might legitimately puke if you tell me you have a drawer full of random women’s underwear somewhere in this apartment.” With a wrinkled nose, I glance toward the lone chest of drawers pushed against the wall opposite the bed, then back to Archer as my lips curl up in disgust. “Just out of curiosity, how many women have been on that bed before me?”
Playful this morning, Archer bends his left leg at the knee and forces the sheet to trickle away to reveal his muscled thigh. “Jealous?”
“No. It’s more about risk control. Should I get an STD test, or…?”
“You don’t trust my previous bed behavior,” he questions, “but you’d trust my answer if I said you were fine?”
“Good point.”
Turning, I cast another glance around the room, in case my panties happen to be hanging from a light fixture in the corner.
“I’m, uh…” I make my way to the door, patting my jeans pockets for my phone. I don’t have keys, since I’ve yet to collect them from Steve, and Tim has my debit card. Assured I have everything else, minus my panties, I collect my bag from the door handle and sling it across my chest. “I’m just gonna leave.”
“You wanna fuck again before you go?”
My heart kicks at Archer’s easy question. At his forwardness.
“Minka?” He says my name as though testing it on his tongue. Then again. “Minnnnkaaaaa. I’ve met no one with that name before.”
“Okay. Well…” I swing the bedroom door wide, readying to bolt and escape this apartment, but when I spy a man in the hall, I seize up. “Holy sh—”
“Don’t panic!” Surprised by my squeak of terror, the stranger sprints along the hall and slaps his hand to the door when my instinct demands I slam it shut. “Locking yourself in there with Arch iswayworse than coming out here.” Sniggering, the guy’s shoulders bounce with laughter. “I promise.”
“Fletch?” Archer sits taller on the bed and peeks past me at his visitor. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Checking up on you!” Fletch’s chest almost touches mine. His aftershave replaces my self-disgust after a bad night filled with bad decisions, but then he glances down at me and grins, his eyes dancing with playfulness. “You were at the bar.” He speaks to Archer, not me. “Then you weren’t. I was worried someone wiped you out while I had my back turned.”
“Took you ten hours to come looking,” Archer snarls. “That’s barely an afterthought.”
Fletch’s honeycomb-colored eyes study mine. “We gotta work at nine. And I was busy being wiped out elsewhere.” Offering his hand, he stays close enough that the ends of his fingers touch my stomach. “Charlie Fletcher. De—”
“Leaving.” I let his hand hang and slip through the gap between him and the doorframe. “Pretend you never saw me. Pretend I don’t exist. Pretend this never happened.”
“What about last night?” Archer’s voice follows my mad dash along the hall. “Someonemade me come!”
“Wasn’t me.”
I skid through a tidy kitchen and past a long, L-shaped leather lounge. A pair of lace-up boots lay strewn haphazardly on the floor between the couch and the coffee table, while a pile of shirts takes up another chair. Archer’s apartment isn’t overly large, which makes my race for freedom easy enough; my only sacrifice, the single pair of panties I currently have in my possession.
I hope Steve returns my things when I see him today.
