Minka
Iwake the next morning before the sun has a chance to fully come up, sweat pooling where my skin touches Archer’s and burning heat pushing my internal temperature higher.
Too high to sleep.
But Archer’s broad chest moves with a rhythmic up and down that creates an almost meditative-like relaxation for my brain. His breath streams from his nostrils on every slow exhale. His lashes, long and pretty, kiss his cheeks.
Factor pulses through my veins anew, the same medication that makes me sleepy on infusion night, forcing my adrenaline and energy to spike in the morning.
I’m awake, while the rest of the city is asleep. And for just a minute, before the world encroaches and everyone else’s eyes open, I get to be the only person on the entire planet lucky enough to study this man while he rests.
I push up to my elbow, careful not to jostle the bed.
Dragging the sheet down, I study Archer’s tattooed chest in the shadows, my memory easily filling in the lines hidden by darkness.
I trail my fingertips, feather-soft, over the drawings he had penned on an eternity ago.
The scars he had covered, like he no longer wished to remember them.
The pretty words he wanted to live his life with.
And then I trace the wedding band hung around his neck, the shiny, unblemished gold I’m not sure he’s ever not had attached to his body for a single moment since we exchanged them.
Smug with power, I inch closer and slide the tip of my tongue over his exposed nipple, thrilling in the goosebumps that spread across his skin, pleased with the way his nipple hardens, and, further down, his cock thickens beneath the sheet.
I swallow my silent snicker, shaking my head from side to side.
Archer Malone will always be ready for me. It wouldn’t matter if he were in a medically induced coma; I know he’ll forever respond to my touch.
“You start playing, Mayet, you better make good on your promises.”
My pulse hammers in my chest, pounding against my diaphragm and sending bolts of electricity all the way to my toes. But I bring my eyes up again, my smile stretching my cheeks, until I meet his barely opened gaze.
His lips quirk up on the side. “Morning after infusion turns me on. Now, how are you gonna fix what you did?”
“What did I do?” I lower again and suckle his nipple. “What’s the problem?”
He slips his hand beneath the sheet and fists his dick.
“You existed, mostly.” He grabs the back of my hair with his free hand, pulling me away from his nipple, but only so he can have my lips instead.
He brands me with his tongue, swallowing my soul and grinning because he knows it. “You taste good in the mornings.”
“I should brush my teeth.” I nip at his jaw and glide my palm along his ridged abdomen. The hard lines and sporadic puckered scars that hold a lifetime of trauma. Of pain. But he doesn’t speak of them. “I need a shower.”
“You showered last night.”
“I sweated while I slept.”
“Which makes you taste all the better.” He throws me over and crushes me to my back, then he follows with a chuckle and hungry hands, his fingers roaming my thighs and his lips trailing my belly.
He lays over my good leg, careful not to hurt my bandaged knee, and pressing his palm to the inside of my thigh, he parts my legs and hums his pleasure.
“You smell like a garden of roses, Minnnka.” He does to my clit what I did to his nipple, taking the hardened nub between his lips.
“Ah.” Breathless, I fist the sheets and dig my head deeper into the pillows, staring at the wall behind our bed. “Shit. Archer.”
“Tastes like dessert.” He drags his tongue from top to bottom, feasting on my body and groaning. “Tastes like I wanna drown in you.” Without warning, he slips two thick fingers inside my pussy and pins me to the mattress. “You’re so tight, Minnnka. How could I possibly resist you?”
Electricity pulses in my veins, sparking at every nerve ending and frustrating more than it helps. “I want you.” I fist his hair the way he did mine, tearing his feral gaze up and away from my pussy. “Not your fingers. Not your tongue. I want you.”
“Soon.” He drops again and feasts on my clit, sliding his fingers forward and teasing my asshole with his pinky. “I’ll get you soon, Mayet. But I wanna eat first.”
“Jesus.” I gasp as pleasure ripples up through my belly and into my chest. “Archer.”
“I love you so much.” He nips at my thigh, sucking on my flesh and leaving behind a mark only he and I will ever see. “I have no clue who the fuck I was before I met you. I was a nobody.”
“You were a whore.” I wrap my legs around his torso—screw my knee—and try to force him up. “Spending your time with all the wrong people.”
“But the moment I saw you, I knew.” He crawls over me, biting as he goes.
My belly. My ribs. My nipple. He presses a kiss right over my heart, and then another on the front of my throat, right where my pulse hammers out of control.
Finally, he stops with the head of his cock at my pussy. “You ran into me, and I just knew.”
“You ran into me.” I reach between us and line him up, desperate for him. Frantic for more than just his fingers. “You were rude and antagonistic and utterly Malone.”
He flashes a smile in the dark, a charming, sexy smirk that transforms my pounding heart into something a lot gooier.
“You fought so hard against falling in love. You wanted nothing to do with it.” With a grunt and one fast slide, he buries his cock to the hilt and slaps his hand over my mouth, trapping my cry of pleasure and pain.
“But you married me anyway. Twice.” Retreating to the very tip, he barrels forward again and destroys me, body and soul.
He rides me with abandon, filling me to the brim.
And with every movement of his hips, he stares down into my eyes, smug with satisfaction.
“Twice means you meant it. It wasn’t a rash decision. ”
I bite his palm and draw a heady breath, refilling my lungs. “Once means I meant it. Twice means I’m shit out of luck if you change your mind.”
“Never.” He scoops my leg up, draping it over his shoulder. “I spent thirty years just fucking around. Wasting my time. Now you’re here and everything is exactly how it should be.”
Fire builds in my belly, furious and blistering.
Burning in that way where pain feels so, so good.
My release grows larger. Closer. But I’m not ready for this to end, so I pull him down and take his lips with mine.
I taste myself on his tongue. I smell myself on his skin.
Most of all, I bathe in us, knowing that someday, it’ll end.
Not yet. Not for a while.
But eventually…
“You’re so needy after infusion.” He breaks our kiss with a gasp, grabbing my breast and folding to take my nipple between his lips. “Just thinking about infusion turns me on now, because I know I’m gonna wake to my cock wet with you.”
I drop my head back and moan, squeezing my eyes shut.
“You’re so fuckin’ tight.” He glides forward, violent and possessive, but so, so perfectly sized, he becomes the puzzle piece I was created to fit.
He nibbles on my breast, swapping sides to ensure fairness all round.
And slipping his hand beneath me, lowering it to where my tailbone touches the mattress, he drives a finger into my ass and holds me down when I buck wildly out of control.
“You like that, huh?” He changes position, bringing his knees up beneath himself and lifting his chest. He grips my leg, holding it over his shoulder, but he fucks my ass with his digit and rocks his hips forward until I’m nothing but a slave to him.
There’s no escape. No reprieve. There’s nowhere for me to go except through the fire.
“Archer….”
“Come for me, beautiful.” He brings me down onto his cock. “Crush me. Cream all over me. I wanna see you explode.”
“God.” I fist my hair, tugging until I feel the sting in my scalp, and choking on my breath, I try to inhale.
I try to fill my lungs to counteract the way he leaves me dizzy.
But all I manage is a cough and groan, pleasure pushing me up, up, up to the very precipice of an eruption I can’t avoid.
Then I step over the edge and free-fall, crying out as his hand comes over my mouth again.
“Those are for me.” He throws his head back, a wolf howling at the moon.
But he joins me in our freefall, filling me with his release and burning me from the inside out.
His body twitches, his lungs desperate for air.
And then he collapses on top of me, nuzzling and burying his lips against my pounding throat.
“You’re heavy.”
He chuckles, burrowing in so his hair tickles my chin. “You gotta hold me up for a minute. I don’t wanna move.”
“I was going to suck your dick.” I draw my trapped leg out from between his chest and mine and drop it to the mattress with a groan. “You woke up too quickly.”
“Give me a minute,” he pants. “Then you can suck me off. I don’t mind.”
I roll my eyes. But it’s all for show, because pleasure becomes a gentle hum in my veins. Completion, a relaxing consciousness where I’m neither awake nor asleep. “Love you.”
He grunts, withdrawing his hand from beneath me and slipping to the left, placing most of his weight on his side. But he drapes his arm over my belly, his leg over my thighs, and pins me to the mattress. “Love you, too. Now shush. Going back to sleep.”
I snicker and stare up at the ceiling as the sun works just a little higher in the sky. As the day heats and the sweat I woke with only gets worse. But I walk my fingers through his hair and scratch his scalp, because his breathing slows. It deepens, and I’m pretty damn sure he grows heavier.