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He rolls again and drops me to my back so the blankets puff up around us. Then he hovers on his elbows, his nose brushing along mine and a smile dancing in his expression.
The room is still dark, but the light coming from the clock on his bedside table is enough to show me the way his gaze flickers. “I have to get ready for work. You can go back to sleep for a couple more hours if you want, but I have to get up.”
Pulling back, he drags his cock most of the way free, but he stops before he’s out completely. “You ready?”
“Yeah.” I close my eyes and drop my hand to my face as Archer pulls out the rest of the way.
While he stands and crosses the room, I lay in his bed, spread like a starfish, and groaning as his cum dribbles onto the sheets. “So gross.”
Unsympathetic, Archer heads into the hall. “That’s a woman’s burden to carry.”
“The gentlemanly thing would be to get me a warm, damp cloth.” I push up to my elbows, because he’s already gone, and I’m still lying in my own filth. “Archer!”
“Here.” He stops in the doorway and tosses a washcloth. It splats to my stomach and draws a growl along my throat, then he spins away again so his soft laughter carries along the hall. “I love you, Mayet. Even when you look like you want to kill me.”
“You know I’m good for it.”
I grab the cloth and start wiping myself up, but it takes only a moment to realize I’d rather have a hot shower. So I push up from the bed and leave the cum-rag on Archer’s pillow.
That can be his burden to carry.
Waddling toward the bathroom, I switch the taps on and shiver as the cold mist sticks to my skin. Thankfully, it takes only a minute for it to turn to a boiling steam, then I step under the spray and moan as the heat batters at my back and clears away my exhaustion.
“Here.” Gentler now, his voice adoring, Archer steps into the bathroom with a mug of coffee clasped in his hand.
He offers it as I turn, and when I take it and sip, he moves into the shower and plasters his chest to my back.
Wrapping me up tight, he nuzzles the nape of my neck. “I’m sorry you didn’t get a lot of rest.” Pumping soap into his hands while I sip caffeine, he rubs the suds along my stomach and draws away every last dreg of what was a brewing bad mood. “I couldn’t leave you sleeping on that couch, and I can’t let Jane Doe sit on ice longer than she has to. So this was the best compromise I could come up with.”
“It’s okay.” Leaning back so Archer and I touch from head to toe, I close my eyes and exhale while the steaming shower sluices across both of us. “I don’t need bunches of sleep. And really, I got more than you.”
“I’ll get an hour at the station later if I need it.” He presses a kiss to the warm skin behind my ear. “Fletch and I said we’d meet again at five.”
“Wanna run through it?” Setting the coffee mug on the vanity just outside the shower, I turn back to Archer and pump soap into my hands. If he can wash me, then I sure as hell can do the same for him. “What did you figure out after we went our separate ways last night?”
“Not a hell of a lot.”
He drops back a step and hums under his breath as I run my hands across his chest. Soap foams between us, scented bubbles lather and build, and since I’m going, I turn my wash into something that could almost be described as a massage.
“We don’t have her name,” he continues. “We don’t have next of kin. We don’t have the baby, or the baby-daddy. At this point, solving a crime is secondary to finding the infant, so I made some calls, and hope to get all that this morning.”
I slide my nails along his pecs and up to his shoulders. “What calls did you make?”
“Tiffany Hewitt,” he murmurs. “She’s gonna run a piece for us at the six o’clock slot this morning. Then I called Brody McNamara.”
Frowning, I run that name through my mind. “Who is that?”
“Artist,” Archer answers on a mumble. “He’s gonna draw her, since the only pictures we have are post-mortem. It wouldn’t be cool to splash those on the news, so Brody will draw us something a little nicer. Chances are, her loved ones will see the segment before we can do notification. We don’t have any other way around this, but we need a name, so we’ll do it as gently as we can.”
“She’s already gone,” I whisper. “The damage is done. It’s gonna hurt her family no matter what. But if it’s any consolation, I think you’re doing the right thing.”
“Hmm. Thanks. Did you catch anything new when you had her on your table?”
“Yeah. I was wrong about the sex crime.”
“You were?”
“Well, I think so. It’s difficult to tell for sure. But I made an assumption, with the blood and bruising around her vagina. She’s messed up and swollen, but that’s consistent with giving birth. Not with sex. I’ve sent a million samples to the lab, but I don’t think we’ll find semen. I doubt we’ll find penetration or damage caused by fingers or any other object. Every indication is that something was coming out. Not going in.”
