Chapter 5
ARCHER
I’ve never claimed to be an honorable man, nor have I made promises to fight fair. I never declared myself a saint, or selfless, or even a gentleman.
The only promise I made to this world was to protect my fucking wife. To be by her side from the moment we said I do, all the way till the end, when death parted us, and, in the event I broke her heart, I promised to put it back together again.
No matter the cost. No matter the pain. No matter the fucking hurdles I would first have to overcome.
“Archer!?” Minka stands over me, her hand pressed to the table and her sweet, succulent tits, at the exact right height to become my dinner tonight.
She leans closer, her delicious perfume wafting in to scald the base of my lungs, even as her lips peel back and reveal gritted teeth. “What the hell are you doing?”
“We had a date.” Casual as a fucking duck on water—as in, my heart thunders beneath the surface—I study her plump lips and fiery, glaring eyes, and when she snarls, the sound barely an iota above silent, I tilt my head left and spy the clock on the wall. “Seven o’clock.”
“We do not have a date! I have a commitment somewhere else, with someone else, and you absolutely shouldn’t be here.”
“And yet—” I take the hem of her dress and roll the silky fabric between my fingers.
“Here we both are. It’s dinnertime. You’re dressed up, and your eyes look like they belong to a cat.
It’s like the pharaohs from your bloodline, royalty from five thousand years ago, popped back in for a night on the town. ”
She slaps my hand away and turns toward the door. “I don’t know how you knew I’d be here, Archer, or how you got the server to move me to a different room, but I have somewhere else to be.”
I bound up from my chair and sprint across the room, slamming my belly to her back and crushing her against the door before she can open it.
Her breath races out on a gasp, her surprise on a squeak.
Her instincts, I’m thrilled to notice, leave her with a scalpel gripped in her right hand.
“You wouldn’t stab me, would you, Minnnka?
” I bury my nose against the warm spot behind her ear, trailing the tip over the ink she had put there a whole other lifetime ago.
“You came here to date another man?” I tut-tut-tut and pry the blade from between her fingers.
Just in case. “You put on a pretty dress and sexy boots for him?”
She twists and plasters her back to the door, lifting her knee and placing it strategically by my balls. She doesn’t need a blade. “I have something I need to do tonight.” Her voice crackles, even as she attempts to steel her jaw.
As if I don’t know every fucking nuance about this woman. Like I can’t practically read her mind.
“If you insist on discussing this,” she grits out, “I suppose I’ll allow it.”
“You suppose?”
“Later. For right now, I have somewhere else I need to be. If you make me late, you risk the work I’ve already put in.
” Her fiery eyes flicker between mine, but her pulse, it thunders against the side of her neck.
“I’m not asking you to understand the things I do, Archer.
But I’m telling you to back the hell up and leave this restaurant. Now.”
“You’re here to kill Poul Abate.” I duck forward, despite her surprised stare, and nibble on her jaw. Her chin. Her dimple, because she’s too stunned to stop me. “He’s not here.”
“He’s…” She rears back, slamming her head against the door. “What do you mean he’s not here?”
“I mean, he’s not here. He’s not physically on these premises right now.” I slide my hand beneath her dress and palm the luscious, silky side of her thigh. “I don’t know what to tell you, babe. Your date stood you up.”
“So you…” She gulps. “He…” She exhales a noisy, breathy harrumph. “What?”
“But since he’s not here, and by happy coincidence, I am, and since we have this room all to ourselves and no one will come in until I fucking tell them they can, I suggest we take this opportunity for what it is.”
“What is it, Archer?” Furious, she slips out from between me and the door, circling as I crash forward and bash my raging cock against the hardwood.
Aching, I spin and watch her toss her clutch onto the table, knocking silverware askew with a shrill clatter.
“You think it’s charming to hijack a meeting I was prepared for?
You think it’s sexy telling me to fuck off and not come home? ”
“No, I—”
“You sent me away!” she roars. “You don’t want this.” She gestures down at herself. “I’m here to end a man’s life, Archer. You want a different version of me. You want the well-behaved, mostly law-abiding version. But. I. Will. Keep. Hunting. Them!”
“Stop shouting at me.” I ball my fists and take a step in her direction. “Stop screaming and snapping and running away.”
“If you warned Poul not to come here tonight, thwarting my meeting and screwing me over, then that makes you a pedophile sympathizer, Archer. That means you’re on their side.”
“I didn’t thwart shit! And I sympathize with no one, least of all kiddy fuckers. But I’m here, and I want to talk to you before we make this whole mess worse.”
“I’m always gonna be this version of me! I will keep looking for these men, and when we’re done with this list, there’ll be another. There’s always another.”
“You are my wife!” I fire right back. “You are mine! I hurt you by asking for space, I get it, but I deserve a conversation.” I come another step closer. “I deserve more than your he’s dead to me bullshit.”
“And I deserve to know the man I married doesn’t want to change me.
” She stalks forward and pounds her palm to my aching chest as fat, devastating tears glitter in her eyes.
“I deserve to exist in a relationship where I’m not afraid to show all of me.
I deserve to stand behind my convictions without having a complete fucking meltdown because, oh no, oh gosh, what will Archer think? ”
“I’m not trying to change you!” I wrap my hand around her throbbing wrist and grip tighter than I should.
Tighter than I would, if only I hadn’t been surviving on nothing for days now.
“I don’t give a fuck about the dudes you’re hunting.
I don’t care if they live or die. I don’t care if they cry before their hearts finally give out.
If you call me a pedophile sympathizer again, I’m gonna smack your ass till it bleeds.
” I lean closer, closer, until her nose and mine almost touch.
“I just want you to survive this crusade you’ve decided for yourself.
I want to wake up knowing the next call I get from dispatch won’t be about you.
If you’re so fucking intent on becoming the next super assassin, do it, go to that podunk town Jay Bishop lives in and spend six months learning how to knock a guy off from twelve-hundred yards.
I. Don’t. Care. But you, my infuriating, deliciously tormenting Minka, are an up-close-and-personal blade kinda woman.
And ya know what happens to people with knives when they come up against someone stronger than them? ”
She balls her fist, attempting to tear her wrist from my grip. “Let me go.”
“You fucking die,” I spit out. “If you’re lucky, you die alone, without being raped first. Without being torn up.
Debased. Defiled. But since you have such a hard-on for a certain type of person, the chances he’ll use your body first are right up there at guaran-fucking-teed.
Is this what you ask of me?” I snap my teeth, loud and startling enough to make her jump.
“To pat your rump and wish you a good day hunting? To not love you enough to wish for different, better things for you?”
“We’ve already had this argument,” she cries, her shoulders and chest bouncing with a sob. Horrifically, tears fall and trickle over her cheeks. “We already worked through this hurt and came to an agreement. We were able to compromise that time.”
“Don’t do that.” Groaning, I inch forward and suckle a salty drop straight off her skin. “Please don’t cry.”
“We compromised so that we could both be happy. Then you promised you would never leave.” She whimpers.
“You promised, Archer. This…” Trembling, she searches my eyes and gestures from her chest to mine, “this pain? This fight? It started with my need to hunt these men, but it’s beyond that now. You sent me away.”
“I had to.” I cup her face and desperately pull her to the tips of her toes. “I didn’t have a choice. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want you. It doesn’t mean I don’t fucking bleed for you.”
“You knew what would hurt me the most,” she moans. “You knew the one trigger that would break me.”
“Minka—”
“You didn’t even try to be gentle. You slammed me, Archer. You broke my heart, and no matter what we want, no matter how many times we argue, or how many dinners you crash, or how many times you force yourself into my space, we will never put my heart back together the way it was before.”