Chapter 10
TEN
Archer lay on his back, staring into the night and counting his own breaths. Sleep wasn’t coming. It rarely did when his mind found a problem to pick apart.
Tonight that problem was Jolie.
Hours before, they’d been bobbing in a black ocean that could swallow a man. The next thing any of them knew, they were sitting down to a homecooked meal—not the slop Younger claimed was food—and enjoying game night.
It was obvious what Jolie was doing. She missed her family and was trying to create some normalcy in a confusing world of uncertain timelines and homesickness for the siblings she’d raised.
He also saw the way her smile seemed to be just a little brighter for him than the other guys. And that the faint flush that crept into her cheeks had nothing to do with her putting all the hotels on Park Place and something to do with the thoughts going through her mind.
Just as he’d inventoried threats during captivity, Archer started listing reasons wanting her was a bad idea.
Bad timing. No guarantee she’d still be here in forty-eight hours.
He’d saved her from freezing to death, not promised to warm her with his own body heat.
And Rome had looked him dead in the eye and warned him there was no future in getting involved with Jolie.
Archer rolled onto his side and glared at the strip of light beneath his door. It wasn’t coming from the hall.
Jolie still had a lamp on in her room. She was awake.
Maybe even lying there thinking the same things he was.
Slowly, he began dismantling every argument he’d made.
As if there was ever a good time for anything. Life didn’t politely warn you before an injury on the job or an unexpected pregnancy. People just dealt with it.
Even the vow he’d taken when he swore into Blackout now felt like fine print everyone ignored. The no-relationships rule made sense for a Blackout team—no distractions, no complications, no leverage.
But rules got bent every day. He’d seen it firsthand with his own sister and Charlie team’s Angelo Ash.
When he’d spent those few days after rescue on Charlie’s base, he’d seen enough to understand the blatant disregard of rules. Every man there had someone woven into his life.
The women on base had infiltrated every aspect Blackout Charlie’s life, from delivering coffee to delivering intel. Those women were trained to shoot, hack systems, patch wounds and break codes.
Their partners fit into the operations so cleanly they looked like another branch of it, one that only made the unit stronger.
That was different, he told himself for the tenth time. Those women belonged in that world.
Jolie didn’t.
She was collateral standing too close to the blast radius, and the longer she stayed near him, the worse the danger became.
He knew himself too well to lie about it. He’d spent a lifetime alone, not wanting more. But Jolie made him realize that given another few days on base, he’d stop thinking about getting her out.
Another few days and he’d start thinking about keeping her.
Another few days and it would be too late for either of them to walk away.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. The sooner Cannon could get her out, the better. She was basically a prisoner here, with no sense of time or place. He of all people knew how that felt.
A soft knock on his door scattered his thoughts.
Heart hammering faster, he swung his legs out of bed and crossed the room. In the hallway stood Jolie, wearing an oversized T-shirt and her hair loose over her shoulders. The light glowing from her room framed her body in soft gold.
And she was looking up at him without a hint of apology in her direct gaze. “I was trying to hold back. It didn’t work.”
Heat slammed into him low and hard. Dark desire swirled around the base of his spine, and his hands twitched with the need to reach for her.
To yank her inside and slam the door, creating a world where they could exist together.
“Jolie.” Her name broke free on a groan.
She stepped closer, her bare toes curling into the concrete an inch over the threshold. “I know what I’m doing, Archer.” Though her voice was steady, her pulse fluttered in her throat. “If you’re going to send me back…do it now.”
He should have.
Instead he stepped aside, and she walked in like she belonged there.
Hell, he already felt like she did.
Archer shut the door slowly behind her, his instinct split between caution and all-consuming hunger. Before he could speak, she turned to him, sliding both hands up his chest, and rose onto her toes to kiss him.
It was warm and sweet and enough to rip the last thread of control out of his hands.
He caught her waist and kissed her back hard enough to make her gasp.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” he grated out.
“I came because I wanted you.” Her eyes were two pools of want he couldn’t deny.
Her blunt honesty undid him. He backed her toward the wall, palms braced on either side of her head, gazing down at her while both of them breathed too fast.
“You have any idea what you’re doing to me?”
“Yes.” She issued a throaty laugh that made his cock swell to full mast. “That’s why I couldn’t stay away.”
He groaned and kissed her again without restraint. Jolie met him with equal hunger, her fingers raking through his hair, her body arching into his. Her thigh slid up his leg, and he broke the kiss.
“Baby.”
“That sounds like a warning.”
“It is.”
“Stop warning me.”
God. He’d survived combat and undercover missions, been held hostage by a terrorist…but he wasn’t going to survive her.
A sound broke from him, and he ducked his head to claim her mouth in a deep, endless kiss while he slid his hands over her hips to the hem of the long shirt she wore. When he teased the cloth upward, she let out a quiet sigh.
“You’re shaking.” He studied her face.
“From excitement. I want you so bad.”
He didn’t need anything else. He lifted the shirt over her head to find she wore nothing else underneath. For a heartbeat, he forgot how to breathe.
“You’re so damn beautiful,” he rasped.
Her gaze roamed over his chest and his tight boxer briefs that left her with no question as to what she did to him.
“So are you.”
He needed some control over how crazy she made him. “Get on my bed,” he ordered.
She gave him a cute little tilt of her head, part amusement and part defiance that told him she’d make a damn good adversary. She was already testing everything he knew about himself.
“Bossy,” she teased.
“You like it.”
“I like you.”
Her words struck like a bomb, landing between them with an honesty he never expected.
The way her eyes flared wide told him she didn’t expect the bald truth to slip out either.
It hung in the air, swelling into a larger force than either of them planned, ripening into a feeling neither could pretend away.
“If I’m getting in your bed, you’re coming with me.” She took his hand and led him a few steps across the room.
She sank to the edge and reached for him. He lowered himself over her and claimed her mouth while she worked at his boxers with impatient fingers. He helped her and then kicked them away.
He took control again, kissing a swath of heat down her body, over her collarbone and the swell of her breast to the warm skin of her stomach. As he moved lower, she parted her thighs.
When he saw how soaking wet she was, a primal thrill hit him. She lifted her hips in invitation, and he dipped his head and buried his tongue in her slick folds.
“Oh god! Archer!” Her hoarse rasp spurred him on and he feasted on her for long minutes, taking as much pride in the way her legs shook as he did about how well he polished his rifle.
She clutched his shoulders, the urgency in her grasp making him lift his head.
Her eyes gleamed with desire. “I want to taste you too. Can we…”
For a beat, he damn near embarrassed himself. His cock surged, precum leaking from the tip at what she was suggesting.
“You want to…” He didn’t finish the statement. Couldn’t. His tongue had dried out and his brain cells stopped firing.
She bit down on her bottom lip and nodded. “That’s exactly what I want.”
* * * * *
The words dissolved on Jolie’s tongue as Archer’s scorching gaze pierced through her.
She watched him process what she’d asked for. The muscles in his throat worked and his eyes went dark and glassy. For a single beat, devastation crossed his face, the final proof that she’d wrecked him the same way he was wrecking her.
Heat pooled in her core.
He moved, shifting position on the bed so they faced opposite directions, and she pulled him down. His masculine scent flooded her head, and the world narrowed to the two of them.
He relaxed his hips, letting the tip of his cock sink closer to her lips. She planted her hands on his carved ass and drew him all the way in. Parting her lips, she sucked his mushroomed head, and he issued a growl that sent prickles of need through her entire body.
She didn’t even get to the next inch of his cock before he stole away all thought by applying a long flick of his tongue to her clit. Electric need made her body rock, and she sucked him in all the way.
They shared a low moan and began to learn each other in a brand-new way. She sucked on his stiff length, hollowing her cheeks, and his body tensed. As she withdrew on him, he shuddered. And when she swirled her tongue around the head of his cock, more salty precum landed on her tongue.
He took control of her body, tasting and licking her with soft laps that drove her crazy.
He sucked on her clit before laving the bundle of nerves with his tongue, and her hips bucked.
When he eased one finger inside her and located her G-spot at the same time he tongued her clit, her whole body bowed.
Tingles ran from her head to her pinky toes. Under her palms, Archer’s ass flexed with every pull of her lips. As he applied pressure to her G-spot and her clit in tandem, the first spasm of a release hit.
It struck hard and fast, towing her under the waves again and again. She cried out around his length, but in a blink he rolled away from her.
She heard him tear open a condom wrapper.
Suddenly, he was inside her—sinking deep, jerking his hips over and over, plunging through her pulsating walls.
“Look at me.” His command came out gritty, and she met his stare.
He held her prisoner with his heated gaze…and there wasn’t any other place she wanted to be.
The realization struck as fast and hard as her orgasm had. Given a choice between the lonely rooms of her family home and being right here in her lover’s arms, she would choose this. Him.
A flutter in her core spread upward to capture her heart. Whatever he saw in her eyes brought a low curse to his lips.
“Fuck, baby.”
He rocked his hips once…twice…and stiffened.
When he crested, it completely shook her apart.
She held on tight, finding his lips in a seeking kiss that spiraled on even after the final moment.
She surfaced slow, wrung out in the best possible way, her pulse a thick, lazy drumbeat. Archer had pulled her back against his chest at some point—she wasn’t entirely sure when—and he traced idle patterns on her shoulder.
For a long time neither of them spoke. Finally, he roughed out, “You okay?”
“Mmm.” She lifted her head to meet his stare. “More than okay. Are you?”
He issued a low noise similar to a scoff. “I’m a SEAL.”
She giggled, twisting her lips into his warm skin. They settled into the silence for a little longer. Then, because the question had been living in the back of her mind for days, she said, “Tell me something.”
“Maybe.”
She smiled at his response. “Is there actually a way out of this place?”
His eyes glittered with amusement. “Do you think we just walk through walls?”
“Well, you just called yourself a SEAL. But I haven’t seen proof yet that you’re not really involved with aliens.”
That made his smile widen. “Let’s hear this theory of yours.”
“You’ve heard the stories about aliens held in military bunkers for testing. Tell me this isn’t one of them.”
He chuckled and brushed a kiss over the top of her head. “Nothing as interesting as aliens. We’re ghost ops. Called Blackout.”
She processed what she had already known but had never heard spoken. After another minute, she returned to her initial question. “So is there actually a way out of this place? I searched the whole base and never found an exit.”
There was a pause, and she felt his chest expand with a slow breath. “There’s one,” he said at last. “Hidden.”
“Where?”
“Jolie…”
She looked at him again. “It’s not like I’m going to try to escape. If we’re really in the middle of nowhere, I wouldn’t know how to get to civilization. Can’t you tell me?”
He gave her a solemn look. “End of east hallway—the one past the generator room.”
She replayed the base in her mind, walking it room by room the way she had when they left and she had too much nervous energy to contain. “I haven’t gone all the way down that hall.”
“You can’t get out without one of us anyway.”
“And the daylight. Where does it come from? I haven’t found any windows.”
His hand paused on her shoulder, then his touch resumed in a swirling pattern. “A mine shaft runs adjacent to the structure, and the angle’s right to pull in natural light most of the day.”
She blinked in genuine surprise. “So it’s like Stonehenge—light moving through the stones at certain times of day and seasons.”
“A bit like that.”
She grinned. “Aliens.”
“There’s a lot more to this place than meets the eye. I can’t say much more.”
It was enough for now. She turned into his arms, facing him, their noses nearly touching.
His eyes burned with an expression she longed to decode but had no idea where to begin.
He brushed a strand of hair back from her face.
The tenderness of the gesture found a soft spot inside her heart that she’d never thought to shield.
Now it was too late.
She leaned in and kissed him slow. He kissed her back the same way.
And there it was—the thing she’d been trying not to feel. It moved through her chest like the tide going out, quiet and enormous and impossible to stop.
She was leaving. And she would never see him again.
She curled her fingers against his jaw, memorizing the faint scratch of stubble and the warmth of him.
She wouldn’t have Archer, but she’d carry away the memories of the most wonderful times she’d ever claimed for herself. And that was more than most people got.
But lying in his arms with the weight of his body around her, the memories didn’t feel like enough.
That scared her the most.