AllFreeNovel
Share Us
ARCHER
Minka lies in the center of her bed, barely conscious and completely naked after I carried her from the shower and finished what we started.
She was with me while we made love. Or fucked. Or whatever the hell we did. She was active and engaged. But the moment she came and I stepped over the ledge right behind her, her words stopped coming. Her explanations. Her declarations.
Now, I get silence… and that’s worse than any argument we could ever have.
“Are you hungry?” I crawl over her and press a kiss to the small of her back. Then another to her delicate shoulder blade. “Minka?”
When the silence continues and she doesn’t acknowledge that I spoke, I stretch forward and brush the hair off her face until I see her fluttering lashes. Her pursed lips. “Are you asleep?”
I know she’s not, but when she scrunches her eyes tighter, she confirms it for me.
“Do you need anything?”
She only shakes her head, which brings an exhausted sigh up my throat.
“You’re not talking to me? That’s what this is?”
Silence hangs for a minute more. A pregnant pause in which the only thing I hear is my heartbeat and her soft breathing. Then she turns to her side, revealing her bare chest and tight stomach. She shows me her delicate throat, and her plump lips. Finally, she opens her eyes and allows me a window to her soul that, without words, tugs at my heart and makes my stomach drop.
“Minka…”
“You should probably leave.”
“Stop—”
“I’m talking to you.” Pushing up to sit, she gently presses her hand to my chest and moves me back to make room. She’s naked from head to toe, the most seductive image I could ever conjure, but her eyes hold me captive, and the emotion in them strangles the breath from my lungs. “I’m not playing a game of payback where I won’t talk to you because you didn’t talk to me. But we’ve gone around and around.”
“No! We—”
“Are too different,” she cuts in. Then she chokes out a soft laugh. “Actually, we’re similar in so many ways, it makes this almost absurd. But the hill you choose to stand on, the fight you won’t let go, means we can’t be together. You’re a cop. And I’m a killer who won’t stop. And that…” She forces a gentle smile to her lips. “That’s something we can’t overcome. So it’s best if we let things go now and give ourselves at least half a chance to heal.”
“I don’t want to let go,” I snarl. “I don’t want to walk away and pretend I never knew you.”
“We could be friends.” Reaching up with one hand, she cups my gritted jaw and studies me. “And I mean that in the least condescending way possible. We could be friendly, we could be good for each other, but…” Slowly, she shakes her head. “Not together. If you can turn a blind eye to what I’m doing, and I never mention what you did when you were sixteen, we’ll be kind of even.”
“So if I don’t, you won’t?”
She slides the pad of her thumb over my bottom lip. “This isn’t blackmail. I won’t snitch on you for something I believe was the right thing to do, even if what you did came from rage and impulsivity. And I can’t stop you from turning me in for what I do. I can’t do anything but hope you might consider first that my actions save innocent lives.”
Her beautiful, dark eyes flicker between mine. “Before you ride your bronco named Morals into your precinct and toss me to your boss, I can only ask that you think of the people who benefit from what I do. After that,” she lifts a single dainty shoulder. “Your destiny is your own, and mine belongs to me.”
“So fucking casual, huh?” I snatch her hand away from my face, but I lace our fingers together and hold on tight. “Destiny and a warped moral compass. Let’s be friends and let’s be good to each other.Blah, blah,fuckingblah,Minka. It’s your way or we’re done?”
“Is that not the same thing you’re saying to me?” Tugging her hand from mine, she slips away and snags a silky robe from the bed as she goes. Shrugging it on and quickly working the ties into a knot at the front, she steps across the room and picks up my jeans. “You’re telling me to stopor else. Neither of us will compromise on this, so that leaves us with only one option.”
“To pretend we never happened?” Frustrated, I shove up to stand and catch my jeans with a growl when she tosses them.
Stabbing one leg in, then the other, I yank the denim up and fix the button. “You want me to let myself out, and we’ll go about our lives like I never gave you my fucking heart?”
At the vulnerability in my words, she sheds a little of the callousness from her stance. And for just a moment, a split second in time, her jaw wobbles.
But of course, she pulls herself under control and clamps her lips shut. “Yes.” Nodding, she balls up my shirt next and tosses it when I’m done with my zipper. “Unless you can somehow come to understand what I do and why I can’t stop, this won’t work. I don’t mean to be so uncompromising.” She steps forward as I slip my shirt on, resting her hands on my arms as I pull the fabric down. “But I can’t choose you and leave potential victims defenseless. I can’t go to bed with you each night, pretending we live in this world of bliss and purity, when men like Preston James and Justin Dowel prowl the streets at night.”
“So you choose hypothetical victims over me?”
The immediate shake of her head sets my heart racing faster. Then she slams a nail in the coffin I so desperately try to keep aboveground.
