Chapter 16 — Deterrence #3
Logan and Wren stood near the roulette wheel. Logan gave Eden two thumbs up. Wren made a face of exaggerated disgust, then positioned herself between Dana and our table when Dana shifted.
Eden looked back at me.
"They're supportive."
"That's a word."
"Luke."
Her voice changed.
Not much. Just enough.
The tease stayed, but something deeper came under it, the same note I had heard on the float when she told me why she had gone last. Want, yes. But more than want. A need that scared her and thrilled her in the same breath.
"I love that you let me do this," she said quietly.
The noise of the room kept moving around us, covering the line.
I slid my hand to her lower back. "You don't have to ask permission to want me."
"I know." Her fingers curled in my shirt. "I think I'm learning what happens when I believe that."
The look in her eyes nearly did me in.
Then Miles appeared again, carrying a small plastic case.
"Luke," he said, with the gravity of a man holding sacred evidence. "Clemente."
Eden's head turned slowly.
"Dad."
"It'll take thirty seconds."
"No."
Miles looked at me.
I looked at the card case.
Eden's hand slid from my chest to my tie and tightened.
"No," she repeated.
Miles looked at his daughter. Then at me. Then at his daughter on my lap.
Something clicked.
Not the whole truth. Thank God.
But enough.
His face warmed with a laugh he didn't let out.
"Tomorrow," he said.
"Thank you," Eden said.
"You're welcome." He looked at me. "But you're seeing this card."
"I believe you."
"No, you need to see it."
"Tomorrow," Eden said again.
Miles walked away, shaking his head and smiling.
The second he was gone, Eden stood.
I stood with her because she still had my tie.
"We're leaving," she said.
"Are we?"
"Yes."
Logan materialized by my shoulder as if summoned. "Need extraction?"
"Yes," Eden said.
Wren appeared on the other side of us with Eden's clutch in hand. "You forgot this."
"I didn't."
"I know." Wren handed it over. "Plausible excuse."
Eden stared at her sister.
Wren shrugged. "What? I'm rooting for you. Also, it's hard to watch."
"Love you too," Eden said.
Penny stepped smoothly into a conversation path, blocking two older guests from turning our way. Reese joined her, all warm smile and easy voice. Kiki pulled Dana into a question about the charity table. Shay and Tatum made enough noise at roulette to distract an airport.
For one clean minute, the room opened.
Eden took it.
She walked me toward the front hall with her hand locked in mine, and this time she didn't pretend we were circulating.
Dana caught my eye as we passed.
She smiled.
Not worried. Not angry.
Too knowing by half.
"Goodnight, Eden," she said.
Eden didn't slow down. "Goodnight, Mom."
"Goodnight, Luke."
"Goodnight, Dana."
Miles called from somewhere behind us, "Tomorrow. Clemente."
Eden opened the front door.
"Never," she called back.
Then the summer night took us.
Four houses between the Archer place and mine. Four dark lawns, a stripe of road, the soft wash of lake wind through trees, and Eden's hand in mine like she had spent all evening proving a point and had one more proof left.
She didn't talk until my house came into view.
Then she stopped under the porch light, turned, and looked up at me.
The black dress looked different out here. Less performance. More promise.
"I want a bed," she said.
My body went tight.
"A locked door," she continued.
"Eden."
"And time." Her thumb moved over my knuckles. "No cards. No parents. No Cal Voss. No pretending I'm using you for anything except exactly what I want."
I unlocked the door.
She stepped inside first, turned in the low light of my entryway, and waited for me to close it.
The latch clicked.
Eden smiled.
"There," she said. "Now touch me."
***
I had been looking at that dress all night like a man studying the last door between himself and the rest of his life.
Now the door was locked behind us.
Eden stood in my entryway under the low amber light, black dress smooth over every curve I had been forced to admire in public.
Her hair had loosened from whatever careful style she had started with.
There was lipstick faded from her mouth and a faint mark near my jaw where she had kissed me at the blackjack table.
She looked less composed than she had at the Archer house.
She looked better.
"You said touch you," I said.
"I did."
"Anywhere?"
Her eyes darkened. "Everywhere."
I crossed the space between us.
Not fast. I wanted fast. My body wanted her against the nearest wall with the dress shoved up and all that public restraint burned out of both of us in one violent minute.
But Eden had spent three hours making me watch her in that dress.
I wasn't going to let the dress leave without paying it proper respect.
My hands found her waist first.
She inhaled.
The fabric was warm from her body. Smooth. Expensive. Tighter than mercy. I slid my palms over the curve of her hips and felt her lean into the contact like she had been waiting for my hands all night, which she had, which I knew, which made the simple act of touching her waist feel indecent.
"Luke," she said, very softly.
"I'm looking."
"I know."
"I'm going to keep looking."
"Good."
Her voice had gone rough at the edges.
I kissed her.
The party kiss had been controlled because people were watching.
This wasn't controlled. Her hands fisted in my jacket, dragging me down, and her tongue pushed into my mouth with the hungry confidence of a woman who had run out of polite.
She tasted like champagne and Eden and three hours of bad decisions we hadn't made yet.
I walked her backward until her shoulders touched the wall.
She made a sound into my mouth.
My hand moved to her thigh, found bare skin below the hem, and slid up slowly.
"I wanted your hand there at the table," she breathed.
"I know."
"Higher."
I went higher.
Her head tipped back against the wall.
"God, yes. That. I kept thinking about it. Your hand on my thigh. Your face when I sat in your lap." She laughed once, breathless. "My father talking about baseball cards while I was trying not to grind on you."
"You failed."
"Not enough."
I bit the side of her throat lightly, and her hips jerked toward me.
My other hand slid up her ribs, over the side of her breast, feeling the full weight of her through the dress. She arched into my palm.
"I need this off," I said.
"Then take it off."
"Turn around."
For one second, she looked almost shy.
Not shy enough to stop. Never that. Just aware. Finally aware that there was no more cover story, no more noise, no family room full of people to hide inside. Only me, her, the dress, and all the wanting she had stopped pretending not to have.
She turned.
The back of the dress was worse than the front.
Her dark hair spilled over one shoulder, leaving the nape of her neck bare. The zipper started high, ran down the middle of her back, and vanished into fabric that hugged the curve of her ass so tightly I had to breathe through my nose for two full seconds before trusting myself.
I put my hands on her shoulders.
She trembled.
"You okay?"
"If you ask me that again before you unzip me, I may do something rude."
"Noted."
I caught the zipper and pulled.
Slowly.
The sound was small in the quiet house. Metal teeth parting, inch by inch, while her back appeared under my hands.
Warm bronze skin. The fine line of her spine.
The narrow strap of black lace underneath.
The small of her back, those shallow dips above her hips, the skin I had been denied by a room full of witnesses and one baseball-card enthusiast.
I bent and kissed the back of her shoulder.
Eden's hand flattened against the wall.
"Luke."
I kissed lower. Between her shoulder blades. Down the newly exposed line of her spine.
She shivered hard enough that the dress shifted under my fingers.
I pushed it off one shoulder.
Then the other.
The fabric slid down.
She let it fall.
The black dress pooled around her heels, and Eden Archer stood in my entryway in black lace underwear and nothing else, her back to me, her body trembling with the effort of not turning around and taking over.
Her ass was perfect.
There was no better word for it, and if there was, I didn't have the blood supply for vocabulary. Tight and round, lifted by those heels, soft over muscle, with the black lace cutting high enough to be less clothing than provocation.
I put both hands on her.
She laughed, low and satisfied, then pushed back into my grip.
"There," she said. "I was wondering when you were going to get to that."
"I have been thinking about this all night."
"Only all night?"
"Eden."
She looked over her shoulder, hazel eyes bright.
"I've been thinking about your hands on me for years."
That did something violent to my control.
I turned her around.
Her breasts were full and heavy in black lace, the cups doing heroic work and still failing to hide how hard her nipples were. Her waist dipped in, hips flaring below it, thighs strong and smooth, legs still in heels, dark hair loose over one shoulder, mouth swollen from my kiss.
She watched me watch her.
"This is the part where you say something," she said.
"No, it isn't."
I dropped to my knees.
That shut her up.
For half a second.
Then her fingers slid into my hair.
I kissed her stomach first. Warm skin, soft little intake of breath, the faint scent of perfume and heat and the woman underneath it all. I kissed lower, over the edge of the lace at her hip, then the inside of her thigh.
Her fingers tightened.
"Luke."
"You wanted worship."
"I don't remember saying that."
"You didn't have to."
I hooked my fingers under the lace and pulled it down slowly.
She stepped out of it.
Bare.
Wet, her pussy already slick and pink in the low light.
Already shaking.
I looked up at her from my knees, and her face changed. The humor didn't vanish. Eden without humor wouldn't have been Eden. But something raw came through it. Need. Trust. A little fear of how badly she wanted exactly this.
"Still mine?" she asked.
"Completely."