Archer
ARCHER
“ T hat went about as well as one could expect it to.” Fletch stalks across the living room of a house he doesn’t live in. But he’s staying over tonight with his sweet little Mia, the latter, who climbs onto a stool in front of an untuned piano and taps at the keys. Fifi sits on the couch, her posture intensely rigid and her face pointing in any direction except toward the little girl she so desperately wants to spend time with.
She doesn’t look at Fletch, either.
Aubree sits beside her, and Tim… well… he’s around, I think. He said he was, but I’ve yet to see proof of that since he deposited Aubree here and left.
The mayor declined his invitation to stay inside my father’s home—the estate handed down to his sons once he died—citing his very own home right next door and the ample security he possesses.
He, too, has connections to a certain computer-wielding ballerina who only works with the very best security money can buy.
“You just set the whole fucking precinct on fire.” Frustrated, Fletch pins me with a glare. “You know what you did.”
“Yeah.” My phone vibrates with messages. Phone calls. Emails. The whole world wants my attention, and none, except for one, gets it.
Minka, of course, receives her rocks as promised.
“I did it on purpose. Now we wait for the fallout. ”
“You don’t believe the broccoli is a cop?” Aubree does the crazy-eyes and looks toward an oblivious Mia badly playing the piano. “The broccoli is someone else?”
“No, I definitely believe the broccoli is a cop. I also believe the broccoli is exceptionally sneaky and well insulated. I believe the broccoli is likely to confront me tomorrow. I do not believe the broccoli is going to shoot up any of our homes.”
“But you’re putting us here, just in case,” Fifi rumbles. “There’s doubt in your beliefs, Detective.”
There’s love in my heart for the people who matter to me. And you, my sweet Seraphina, matter to my best friend.
“Just being cautious,” I answer instead. “There’s enough room here for everyone to have their own privacy, and the property is well protected. We’re on a hill, so we’ll know if someone is driving up, and not only is the house secure, but the mayor’s is even more so. His alarms will bleat in time to let us know we have company.”
My phone vibrates again, and my stomach rumbles with hunger, so I turn on my heels and head toward the kitchen. “We lit the fuse,” I call over my shoulder, taking the phone from my pocket and spying Minka’s name on the screen. She doesn’t send me a rock this time, but a penguin. A request. “Felix has allocated additional security to the house,” I tell them. “I’m sending one of them out to get us food, since there’s nothing here to eat.” And yet, I hit dial on Minka’s name and swing the fridge open in misplaced hope. No one has lived here in decades, so if there was food, that would be a fuckin’ problem. “I’m taking this call, then I’m coming downstairs to eat.”
“?” Minka’s breath shudders on a sigh of panic. “You’re in so much trouble.”
I slam the fridge shut and move into the hall. I know she hears me breathing. My steps. I know she knows I’m here, but as I jog up the stairs, I remain silent and wait. For privacy. For space, for just the two of us.
“I miss you so much,” she exhales, reclining on her mattress so I hear the ruffle of her blankets. “It’s been barely more than twenty-four hours, and I feel like I’m going to crawl out of my skin.”
“I miss you too.” Finally, I breach the top landing and turn toward the main bedroom. My father brought his whores here. He killed here. He ruled the very city Nathan Booth wants to own, from this house. “If I could pick you up from that bed and bring you to mine, I would. In a fucking heartbeat. ”
“How could you tell I was in bed?”
A smile breaks across my lips, just in time for me to leave the hallway and close the bedroom door at my back. “I know what you sound like in bed. You breathe different when you’re horizontal.” I don’t look around too much. Fuck knows, I don’t want to see the massive four-poster bed and think of the women my father cuffed to them. Sometimes it was sexy, probably . Most of the time, it was torture. I don’t want to see the desk he worked at, or the sofa he sipped his coffee on while he ended lives. Or ruined them. Shit, he might’ve created life in this room—me, or one of my brothers, perhaps. “Talk to me.” I cross the room and perch on the edge of the mattress. “Take me out of this world and put me in yours before I go crazy.”
“You’re scaring me.” Her voice hitches with an ache I know too well. A dread I loathe for her to feel. “You’re painting yourself as a target, and now you’re begging me for relief. You didn’t have to do that, ya know?”
“I’m not worried about work.” My skin practically fucking crawls for every miniscule second I sit here, so I slip off the end of the dusty bed and park my ass on the floor instead. My knees up, so I can rest my elbows on top, and my back pressed to the frame.
If nothing else, I know for certain my father never sat here.
He was too proud to assume such a position.
“I brought everyone to the waterfalls. To get them out of their apartments for a night, and somewhere no one would think to look. Just in case.”
“Just in case you get shot,” she sighs. “Not comforting.”
“Just in case things go awry,” I amend. “I doubt they will, but I’d rather be a step ahead and keep my friends safe. Our killer is slicker than this. He has a plan, and he’s gonna run through it now that I gave him something new to focus on. But being in this godforsaken house,” I groan, scrubbing a hand through my hair in frustration. “I’m realizing the really fucking obvious flaw in my idea.”
“That you have to spend the night inside a house you don’t want to be in?” Finally, she releases a little of her rage, her breath coming out on a rattling exhale to make way for comfort. Reassurance. “You’re inside your father’s other house, and you don’t like it?”
“I haven’t been in here in a really long fucking time, Minka. Like…” I lift my head and stare up at the ceiling. “I was a kid back then. Beaten. Bloody. My life was so ridiculously different to how it is now… I’m completely unrecognizable.”
“You were a child at the mercy of bad people,” she soothes. “You’re grown now, . You’re in control of your own destiny.” She pauses for a beat and allows a soft smile to etch into our call. “You made really brave choices when you were still a kid. Choices that changed the trajectory of your life.”
“Would you still be my wife if I were the old version of Malone? The mafia kid? Or would you have considered me ruined goods and tossed me back the second you realized the fish you’d caught?”
She scoffs, breathy and mocking. “There’s only one version of you. Remember? All of the smaller, singular pieces of you make up the whole. You’re the cop. And you’re the fourth son of a dead gangster. You’re the homicide detective who hunts murderers, and you’re the guy who has, to put it bluntly, murdered others.”
“Sure hope no one is monitoring our calls,” I tease. “That little sound bite could go to a grand jury.”
“There’s only one person monitoring us,” she snickers. “And that person has also murdered others. It’s a system of non-snitching that works out. And she promised not to listen all the time. Just when she hears her sister’s name.”
I choke out a soft, exhausted laugh. “Michelle—fuckin’—Mancino. The way my life has come all the way around again is a joke. You had dinner yet?”
“Yeah.” She snuggles into bed and hums in the back of her throat. “Mary made a baked chicken dinner tonight. That’s two home-cooked meals in a row.” She cracks a smile that comes across the line audibly. “I might bring Mary home with me. She’s yet to annoy me, so…”
“You’re fierce in all things, beautiful. But I don’t think you’d pry her from Felix’s side for all the money in the world. Showered?”
“Yeah. You don’t have to micromanage me. I’m on this call to chastise you for being a dummy on national television. Not so you could make sure I’ve been fed and watered.”
“Infused?” I continue anyway. “That’s tonight, and I know you took your medication with you.”
She practically growls. But she’s done exactly what I asked of her. I’m thinking of her and not of my father and the things he did in this room. “I haven’t infused yet. I was saving my vengeful hate for when you finally deigned to take my call. I’ll medicate after we hang up, then I’ll go to bed.”
“Feeling okay?” I steamroll over everything she says, cold and mean and exactly the way I know will pique her anger. “Tired?”
“Awake enough to remember the reason I wanted to talk to you. Why are you poking at that guy the way you are? If you think you know who killed those detectives, make the arrest and be done with it.”
“Not yet. Hang on, I’m gonna call you back.”
“Wait.” Stunned, she shoves up so fast, I know the whole bed jostles. “What?”
“I said hold on.” I drag the phone from my ear and kill our call. Then I jump over to the video option and dial again. I want to see her face. I want to look into her eyes when she’s angry with me.
The call rings only for a second, then she accepts and gifts me with an image of her pursed lips. Her fiery eyes. Her flushed cheeks. Because beneath the fire is a sleepiness that instantly helps me relax.
“It’s rude to hang up on people like that, . You didn’t even ask if I wanted to video chat with you.”
“Consent was implied when you accepted the call.” I drag my bottom lip between my teeth and spy the cute camisole she wears to bed. The lacy edges and absolute zero cleavage she shows off. “You’re tired, huh?”
“You called to tell me I look like crap?”
“I called to see your face, because you’re so fucking beautiful it takes my breath away.” I angle my phone, like I could somehow magically get a new view. “Lift your cami, babe. Show me.”
“You’re insane if you think we’re gonna?—”
“Put your hands in your panties. Touch yourself and let me see you come.”
“!”
“What?” Chuckling, I spread my legs a little wider and reach down to unbuckle my belt. “I’ll touch and you’ll touch. You only need one hand to hold the phone. None, if you perch it against a pillow.”
“Arch—”
“I’m not asking,” I snarl. Finally, my tone catches her off guard and brings a stunning, glowing red to her cheeks. “I wanna see, and you want to please me. We have privacy, and it’s rare that we’re apart like this. I’m not gonna send you away just to recreate this moment, so don’t waste it, Minka Mayet. Take your top off, then reach into your panties and touch yourself.”
“I don’t…” Her words say one thing, but her actions say another. Her hand moves along her torso and down to the hem of her camisole. “! I don’t know how to do this.”
“You know how to follow instructions.” I groan when she lifts her top and reveals a ridged abdomen. Lines that cross her stomach and a smattering of freckles I long ago stopped noticing. It’s funny how distance has created a brand-new appreciation for the woman I get to call mine. How the fact that I can’t have her makes me want her so much more. “Think of this like a practical lesson in college, Doctor Mayet. I’ll be your instructor.”
“Lawd.” She half laughs, half pants. But fuck, she brings the fabric all the way to her throat and shows me a perfect set of tits that make my tongue tingle with need. “You’re gonna make it weird.”
“I don’t know all the medical words. So you’re gonna have to work with me.”
“Doesn’t make you a very good teacher then, does it?”
“Hush.” I unzip my jeans and lift my hips to move the denim down. Then I sit again, slipping my hand into my boxers and wrapping my palm around my cock. Already, it’s hard for her. Needy for the only woman on this planet with the ability to make me gentle. “Grab your tits.” I drag my bottom lip between my teeth and groan when her hand comes up to follow my instructions. “Play with them.”
“Mammary gland.” She mocks me, using the world’s least sexy words, but she releases a soft breath when her finger and thumb circle her nipple and elongate the tip. “I’m massaging the mammary gland.”
“Shut up,” chuckling, I squeeze my cock and draw my hand along the length until the end. “We don’t need the medical words. I changed my mind.”
“So we can hang up now?”
“Fuck no.” My hand vibrates with a desperate desire to hold her. To be with her. To bruise her flesh and use her up the way she so selflessly offers night after night. “You never tell me no.”
Distracted, she plays with her nipple and half-closes her eyes when pleasure ripples through her blood. “Hmm?”
“Sex. I realized in all the time we’ve known each other, no matter if we’ve been fighting, or working, or running around busy, it didn’t matter if you were mad or sad or completely enthralled in something else, you’ve never told me no. Not once.”
“You have a gift for convincing me. Shit…” she exhales a long, breathy sigh. “…”
“You say my name like that and think I’m not gonna come in my own hand?” I pump a little faster. A little firmer. “Bring your fingers down, Mayet. Over your belly and into your underwear. Move the camera,” I clarify when her hand disappears. “Show me more. Open your legs and put the phone at the end of your bed so I get to see you touch yourself. ”
“This is practically porn.” And yet, she lowers the phone and provides me with a perfect view of boy-leg underwear hugging her trim hips. The video jostles, stealing from me a moment of pleasure. But she snags a pillow and tosses it toward her feet, then she sets the phone against it, emptying her hands and using her newfound freedom to slide her panties down.
“Fuckkkkkk,” I groan. Because I get a perfect view of her asshole. Her pussy. Those sweet lips and a narrow thatch of hair she doesn’t always keep. “Minka?—”
“Tell me what to do.” She throws her underwear away and lies down again, setting her feet on either side of the phone and trailing her fingers along the inside of her thigh. “I want specific instructions, so I don’t feel like an idiot.”
“You don’t look like an idiot. I promise.” I stroke my cock and study her pussy. Already, fire burns in my veins and leaves me damn near breathless. “Fingers, Mayet. Start with one and show me how wet you are.”
She follows my order, running her fingertips down and gasping when she brushes over her already throbbing clit. “Ahhh…” She whimpers, lifting her hips as her body searches for pleasure. As her core chases that touch.
“Inside, beautiful.” I study the phone intently, wishing for a fifty-inch screen, and not one that stretches only three. “Slip your finger in all the way to the knuckle. You like it when I do that.”
“God.” Her touch is hesitant, slow, but she follows my orders and slides her middle finger in, all the way until the end. Then, dragging it out again and moaning, she repeats the process, but with two fingers. “…”
“I love you so much.” I crush my cock in my palm and pump, tempted to close my eyes and pretend I’m wrapped in her. But I refuse to give up the image she gifts me with. “Go faster. And curl your fingers back until you feel it.”
“Until I feel…” But then she gasps, whimpering and straining her legs as her back arches and her hips twist. “Ahhhh.”
“That.” My mouth waters as pleasure sprints in my veins. “You’re frothing, babe.” My eyes turn hooded, but I force them open and train them on her swelling pussy. On her hand, so much smaller than mine, working her body the way I like to. “I want to eat you up so fucking much, Minka.”
“I wish you were here.” Her hips jut high, then her chest grows as she inhales, her tits creating a mound I get to study despite the angle of her phone. “, I wish you were doing this for me.”
“I know.” I gasp when fresh spires of heat sprint in my veins. As my release teases closer and closer. “You’re coming home to me soon.” I speed my hand, like I’m riding her supple body and not my own palm. “Then I’m gonna fuck you raw and lock us in our room for a week straight.”
“!”
“Come for me.” Moisture slicks the tip of my cock, coating my hand and almost tricking my brain into thinking I’m with her. “Now, babe.”