AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Drowning me.
But I don’t mind being here, so long as it’s Archer’s hands holding me. His body with mine. His heart, pounding against my back, and his lips crashing against mine as he pulls me up and tugs my face around.
His breath scorches my lungs, and his fingers no doubt bruise my chin. But I long ago grew accustomed to the ferocity with which this man loves. He touches with a violence that brings me life. He owns me with a brutal possession I wouldn’t give up for all the riches in the world.
He’s Archer Malone, perfect in his vicious imperfections.
“Shit.” His cock stops twitching. His orgasm, wringing to an end. But his hands hold on tight so I don’t fall forward before he’s ready. “Baby.”
“Need rest,” I pant. But my smile notches up and adds a little levity to the serious air pulsing in our room.
I peel his hand from my jaw and press a kiss to his lips, then I droop forward and flop to our bed with athwumpthat makes me giggle.
Like I knew he would, Archer follows me down and drapes his chest over my back better than any blanket I’ve ever had. He presses a gentle kiss to my neck. To my jawbone. Another to the very top of my spine.
“It’s not boring,” I pant, completely satiated and totally relaxed. “But we’re getting faster. You know I like saving time.”
He chuckles so his cock jerks inside me. “No point wasting time when I know what you like.”
Slowly, carefully, he pulls back and steals from me that full-feeling I enjoy so much, until his cum dribbles out. Messing up our bed and drawing a moan from deep in my chest. But he drops to my left and rests on his side, his heavy thigh still draped across mine, and his fingers stroking patterns against my naked back.
“When we have an hour,” he breathes, “we could fuck for an hour and come three times. Or we could fuck for twenty minutes, come just as much, and still have forty minutes to hang out.” Leaning across, he presses a smug kiss to my shoulder blade, and chuckles when my entire body breaks out in goosebumps. “Though, if you ever request a full night of debauchery, I’m at your service.”
“Of course.” I twist under his limbs and lie on my side so we’re face to face, relieved it’s not my left shoulder having to support my weight. “How’s Anna’s case coming along?”
He chokes out a laugh and reaches across to play with a lock of my hair. “I want it on record that of the two of us, it’syouwho brings work home. You probably think this is all cute and shit, since we’re still in our first year. But when we hit twenty years married and I’m talking homicide, you don’t get to complain. You started it.”
“Uh-huh. Noted.” I push up to my elbow, and hum when his fingers drop to my hip. Stroking. Teasing. “What don’t I know about the case so far?”
“I strongly suspect you know more than I do.” His voice shifts from post-sex drawl into work mode. “What the fuck is up with the mayor in all this? Why is he so involved?”
“I don’t know.” I sigh. “He’s in deep, but he won’t discuss how. The things I know about him, his integrity and no-bullshit personality, make me think there’s no chance he was having an affair with a twenty-seven-year-old singer. But his behavior…”
“Says otherwise.” Archer nods. “Yep. That’s how I see it, too. We know for a fact he was at the house this week, shouting at her to answer the door. Witness accounts say so. We’ve requested phone records, but Anna’s world is controlled by the studio who owns her, and the publicist who controls her public image. Getting these records should be easy, but money makes the world go round, and there’s no way Garret Music or Gina Waters—the publicist—is gonna hand shit over if they don’t have to.”
I roll my eyes. “God forbid they help solve the murder of a woman they swore they cared about.”
“Speaking of.” He drags the tip of his finger along my hip. “You say murder, but it looks like suicide. Talk it out for me.” He grins. “In English, for those of us who didn’t go to medical school.”
“Toxicology results have turned up lethal levels of oxy and alprazolam in her system,” I recite, repeating what I’ve already told him. “Too much to be an accident. Sure, she could have fisted her meds and done this to herself, but it’s the second dose, taken approximately an hour after the first, that seals the unlikelihood. She could not have medicated herself by that point. Honestly, I’m surprised she didn’t choke on them when her killer fed them to her.”
“She was unconscious?”
I shake my head. “She had to have been somewhat lucid, enough to swallow. But I doubt she was sitting up on her own. His arm—assuming we’re going with the secret boyfriend being the killer—would have been across her back, holding her upright. And I doubt she held the pills. So I cannot accept that she took them on her own… not with that first dose already in her body.”
“So it’s murder,” he concludes. “No other alternatives?”
“None that I can see.” I purr under his stroking touch, shivering when he sends prickles spreading across my skin. “Her parents are dead?”
“Yeah. And she has no siblings.” He inches just a little closer and draws a smile to my lips when our legs twine. “She reminds me a little bit of you.”
“Yeah?” My smile drops away in an instant. “That why you wanted to bang her?”
He yanks me closer until my leg comes up to rest on his hip. The move opens me wide, and his drying semen leaves a sticky residue on my thighs. But he cups my ass and studies my eyes. “I never got close to banging her, Cranky. We literally spoke one time. Then I met your bitter ass and forgot she even existed. Now,” he drags his callused palm around my hip and slips it between my legs. Sliding two fingers inside, he draws my breath out on a choked exhale, but my core is already primed for pleasure. My orgasm, sitting up and awaiting permission to go again. “Come for me again.” He buries his lips against my neck and works his own special brand of magic between my legs. “Be a good girl,” he whispers by my ear. “And scream for me one more time.”
“Put your clothes on!” The front door slams shut and echoes all the way to our bedroom. “I’m home, so unless you want me to hear you come…”
I flop onto my back with a groan, and though Archer’s fingers remain buried deep in my core, my orgasm is gone. So I push him away and sit up on the end of the bed to rescue my underwear and pants.
