“But I want to take stock of every part of your body I love.” Dropping his face, he goes to work bewitching my neck. Tantalizing my senses. “Like right here.” He smiles even as he nips. “And here.” He slides his teeth over my collarbone. Distracting me with that, he feathers his fingertips along my hipbone and sets my body alight with want. “Here,” he rumbles. “Everywhere.”
“Do you remember that time you wanted to break up with me?” Gently, and with a playful grin, I push him to the right.
I couldn’t move him on my own, he’s too heavy, but because he’s willing to go wherever I lead, he makes space for me to rise.
Our movements are slow, our roll careful, but when Archer is on his back, and the hand—the arm hecancontrol, after a nasty bullet tore through the other—comes to my hip, I climb up to sit on top of him. Then I take stock of whatImarried.
Broad chest and beautiful eyes. Commanding hands, and a mind that keeps me here even on the days his words annoy me. Nestling atop his stiff length, I lean in and press a kiss to a soccer-ball-sized bruise that still mars his otherwise perfect body.
“You got shot,” I murmur with a shake of my head. “Then you tried to break up with me, like it wasmyfault you stepped in front of a gun.”
He snorts. His left arm and hand are mostly unusable while his wound heals, but it’s yet to stop him from holding me. From taking me. From keeping me close at night. And on the day we said ourI dos inside a bland courthouse, there was nothing that could stop him from lifting his hand and accepting my gift of a stupid length of string circled around his finger, since our nuptials were spur-of-the-moment and we hadn’t gone ring shopping yet.
He’s a cop, and I’m a doctor; jewelry, in general, won’t work for us. But a length of cotton string was accepted by the homicide detective with the same reverence many would accept a massive diamond.
He wants me. He wants my commitment and my heart. And if I find out someday that he’s folded up our marriage certificate and stuffed it in his wallet for safekeeping, I wouldn’t be surprised.
“I was trying to protect you.” Archer is lazy with the way he speaks, slow and sleepy, since we haven’t left this apartment in days.
We’ve ordered in each night. Rarely gotten dressed beyond underwear. Hell, I’m not entirely sure we’ve left this bed, besides sporadic trips to the shower and coffee machine.
As he’s done so many other times these past few days, Archer single-handedly lifts me to his lap until I sit perched on his muscular thighs, then he reaches between us to fist his cock. It’s already hard. It so often is. He guides it between my legs and waits for me to lower. To accept him with a sigh, and then for me to set my hands on his chest and bring us both pleasure.
“I was trying to keep you safe,” he finally adds with a heavy breath. “It was my job to step in front of you.”
“Uh huh.”
Sex with Archer Malone is usually hurried. Hot. Dangerous… and, often, in places we probably shouldn’t be having sex. But when it’s just us in the apartment, when no one is expecting us and work leaves us alone, it can be the best kind of slow. The perfect kind of languid, orgasmic paradise.
Pleasure ripples beneath my skin, and when I glide up so the tip of Archer’s cock touches me where it counts, I whimper and battle to keep my eyes open. To see him, even with the bruising and the stitches he’s worn since I was forced to cut a bullet from his flesh. I study his doting eyes, and meet his satisfied grin when he watches me move.
We’re both a little smug right now. We’re enjoying the laziness of staying in and ignoring the rest of the world. And because of that, we get to enjoy countless orgasms. Whenever we want them. As often as we want them.
“Minka.” As his peak drags closer to the surface, Archer turns a little more demanding. He attempts to push up, to wrap his arms around my torso, all so he can control my movements and speed me up, or slow me down. To command my every slide and bring us to completion at the tempo he chooses.
But all I have to do is set a gentle hand on his bad shoulder and push him back.
“Lay down.” I whisper the words and roll my hips to the beat of whatever music comes from the apartment below us. Archer’s neighbors are listening to something slow. It’s sexy and unhurried, and when Archer succumbs to my hand, he falls back to the pillows again, too weak to fight. Too bewitched to care.
But he won’t be bested. Instead, he brings his good hand between my legs, his thumb to my clit for slow circles. A long moan travels along my throat and sends vibrations through my chest. “Archer…”
“Come for me, Mayet.” His voice is gravelly. Sexy and hoarse, the very same tone I hear in my dreams. “Come for me,wife.”
A soft snicker escapes my lips, mocking because his obsession with marrying has been a thorn in my side for most of our relationship. I want to laugh, to tease, but my orgasm teeters on the edge of a freefall. My breath comes faster, and my throat burns dry.
Then I topple with a gentle sigh. Like floating on the ocean, I let each wave take me. And when Archer’s hand grows tighter on my hip, I know he’s coming too.
The song changes, the cat whines, and my breath comes out on a hitched staccato. But instead of falling to the side—or worse, sliding off Archer and disconnecting our bodies—I drape myself forward and rest my ear over his heart.
It beats fast. Strong. Powerful. And that’s all I need to know—that it beats—for me to be okay with this thing called marriage.
“I love you,” I whisper, and melt into his embrace when he wraps his arm across my back. “Even when you tried to break up with me.”
He chuckles so his chest bounces, and I move along with it. “I was trying to put your safety above my wants. It was the right thing to do.”
“Yeah, and you folded like a house of cards in a rainstorm.” Pushing up tall, I study his expression, his stubble-coated jaw, and his perfect, green-eyed stare. Then I shake my head. “Evidently, you suck at poker.”
Renewed with energy, he throws me to the side and rolls on top so he’s pinning me down. But he barks out a fast laugh. Playful and sexy.