Minka #2
“You have a whole house just sitting up there in the hills! Use it! Don’t be wasteful.”
“She’s only saying that because she has to pack when we get back to Copeland.” Archer nibbles along my wrist, nipping gently on my skin. “It cost oodles of money, and now she feels weird about it. Capitalistic Barbie back there is insecure.”
“I’m not capitalistic! And I’m not insecure. At least I’ll be using my house. Capitalism is owning a mansion in the hills and not even occupying it. That’s wasteful.”
“Eh.” Archer leans in to my space, his lips hovering by my ear. “How are you feeling? Okay?”
“Medicated. Fed. No existential dread.” I tilt to the right and thrill in the pleasure of his lips sizzling against my cheekbone.
He doesn’t think about it, and I don’t hesitate.
He merely kisses, because we’re close enough to do so.
“Unlike you, I’m not freaked out about this.
It’s my job, Archer. I’ve consulted on cases exactly like this in the past.”
“It’s not your job,” he rumbles. “Because the person who called you is not an authorized official of the city or state you work for. She’s not federal either,” he adds before I can argue. “She’s a civilian with too much firepower and an ego larger than Aubree’s giant house.”
“Stop talking about my house!” Aubree smacks the back of Archer’s chair, pushing him forward until his knees hit the chair in front of us. But then she squeaks, gasping and clapping a hand to her mouth.
I swing around in my seat and peek at her through the gaps, only to follow her gaze and look to the front again. Finally, I lock eyes with a furious Cato as he limps along the aisle. For every giggle that escapes her throat, his jaw grows tighter, and his eyes burn hotter.
“Oh, dear.” I choke on my laughter, thankful Archer thought ahead and shoved me into the window seat. Because as Cato arrives and slams his carry-on into the storage bin above, he brings his dangerous glare down.
“I did not consent to that.” He swallows and growls, his nose and lips wrinkling with a feral sneer. “I did not consent!”
“You need to sit down.” Chuckling, Archer grabs his brother’s shirt and tugs him forward. “You’re already on thin ice with the air marshal, stupid.”
“There’s an air marshal on this flight?” I unsnap my seatbelt and pop to my feet, searching the rows behind us. “How do you know?”
“Jesus.” He snags my shirt, too, and yanks me down. “We’re Malones. Our tickets are in our names. I assure you, there’s an air marshal on this flight.”
“They don’t have air marshals on all flights, right?” Aubree stands and sets her arm on the back of Archer’s chair. “How do they know which ones to put them on?”
“Intelligence agencies.” Fletch clutches her wrist and pulls her down. “The second Soph purchased these flights, and then two more Malones jumped on board at the eleventh hour, flags went up in every office from here to New York.”
“But you have badges, too.”
Cato slaps the luggage bin closed and sits, only to gasp and bounce an inch upward again.
Sore bootyhole.
I burst out giggling, but I swear, I really, truly swear I try to clamp my lips shut and silence the sound.
Tears fill my eyes, and the muscles in my cheeks ache, but then I look at Archer, who only glowers, and lose my battle.
“I’m sorry!” I howl, wiping my eyes and clutching my stomach.
“It’s so bad. So, so inappropriate to laugh. ”
Aubree leans across Tim’s lap and looks around the chairs.
“Things got a little out of hand, okay?” Her breath explodes on a soft, almost silent snort.
“I was kidding. But they latched on to it real fast. Way faster than I expected. And now that I’m hearing about the intelligence stuff and your names sending up alerts, I can see how they were already primed to get a look inside someone’s butt. You were unlucky today.”
“I’m gonna get you back.” Red in the face and not nearly as playful as usual, the mafia boy voices a very real, very deadly threat, right in front of an air marshal.
Probably. I can’t tell which one he is.
“Revenge is best served cold, Emeri. You won’t know when it’s coming or what I’ll have planned for you. You’ll just know that I?—”
“Forgot she has a gift,” Fletch chuckles. “There isn’t shit you can do to her that she won’t see coming. Now, put your seatbelt on and stop making a scene. I wanna get wherever the hell we’re going, quickly , so I can turn my phone back on in case something is happening with my baby.”
I settle back into my seat and open the file Soph sent over, and though a part of my mind focuses on the flight attendant closing the door of the plane and locking us in, and then as she picks up a phone to make her announcements— doors are locked and ready for taxying —I scan the profile in front of me.
Though God knows, I get no name. No date of birth or hair color or eye color.
I just get approximations and photographs from the scene.
“That’s a knee reconstruction.” I pick up the top photograph and bring it closer, staring down at the skeleton of a woman—easy to know in just a glance—who is somewhere in her twenties—though that will require measurements and testing to confirm—and most obvious of all, the titanium joint she wasn’t born with.
“This is dumb.” I show Archer the photograph and point at her knee. “How can they have discovered a body but not identified her, when replacements like these are registered and documented?”
Curious, he takes the image and settles back into his seat. While outside, the terminal grows smaller as we roll toward the runway. “She’s had surgery.”
“Mmhm. Even the most inept, small-town, shitty coroner’s office would know about the registry, so why the hell haven’t they identified her yet?”
“Maybe that’s part of the mystery,” he murmurs. “Maybe it wasn’t registered, which is what makes this difficult. Or maybe it was registered incorrectly. Or?—”
“Maybe they can’t check the registry since this case is not on the up and up. But that doesn’t make sense either.” I shuffle to the next page. And the one after that. “Sophia knows what we ate for breakfast, Archer. There’s no reason she can’t look this up herself. It would take ten seconds.”
“Which brings us back to the registry being wrong.”
“Oh God.” Aubree clutches to her seat and groans as the plane screams along the runway and up . “Oh God. We’re off the ground. Tim, we’re off the ground!”
Cato growls. “It sure sucks to be uncomfortable, don’t it, Emeri?”
Ignoring them, Archer leans closer and whispers into my ear, “When the seatbelt light is off, I’m getting up and going to the bathroom.”
“Uh…” I pull back and search his eyes. “Okay? Thanks for telling me.”
“You’re also getting up and going to the bathroom.” He flashes a devious smile and slips his hand onto my lap, his walking fingers hidden beneath the open file. “I’ve never fucked on a commercial flight before.”
“Are you serious right now?” I firm my lips and study his smug expression. But do I push his hand away? No. I do not. “Archer, we’re working!”
“Minnnnnka.” His fingers inch nearer to my core. “We’re gonna be five miles off the ground. I’ve fucked at nine miles. I have not fucked at five.”
“You’re being ridiculous!”
“And you’re being entirely too loud right now.
” He captures my lips and grins, because he knows he’s already caught me.
“I don’t intend to fly commercial very often, Chief.
And it turns out my wife has become accustomed to a certain level of luxury, which means she’s not gonna fly commercial if she can help it either. ”
“Archer…”
His pinkie finger has the power to take my breath away, his knuckles brushing my already pulsing clit.
“People will know what we’re doing.”
“People will wish they were doing the same.” He suckles on the tip of my tongue and beams when, right on cue, the seatbelt light dings, and passengers immediately start moving. “If I go in there and you don’t follow, I’m gonna be pissed.”
“Coercion.” Already, my hands tingle, and my mind insists I snap the file closed and place it in the back of the seat in front of me. But doing so would reveal Archer’s fingers, and shit, I’m not quite ready for them to stop yet. “We already banged today. That not enough for you?”
“It’s not the number of times I come, Chief Mayet. It’s the fact you have me hard all the fucking time . I’m getting up now.”
“Archer, wait?—”
“If we wait too long, some slob is gonna drop a giant turd and stink the cubicle out. I’m not willing to risk it.”
“Wait!” Giggling, I grab his arm. “Those cubicles are tiny. We cannot fit in there together.”
“Bet.” He drags his hand from between my legs and unbuckles his belt, and when a man who already has sweat on his brow and a newspaper pinched between his fingers stands, Archer moves faster.
He shoves past his brother, whose sexual proclivities, we’ve discovered today, do not extend toward a kink for backdoor entry, and then he stumbles into the aisle just two feet ahead of the newspaper guy.
He swings his eyes back to me, burning and direct, then he looks to the front again and marches himself to the closest bathroom.
Shit.
“Everyone knows what you’re doing.” Sneering, Cato sits off center, putting his weight on just one butt cheek and all of his bad mood into his tone. “I know what he just told you to do.”
“Shut up.” I unfasten my belt and hurriedly tuck Soph’s file into the seat pocket, then moving to my feet, I stumble toward the aisle and slap Cato’s hands away. “Don’t touch me,” when I’m horny. “It’s weird.”
“Sure, because I’m the only motherfucker today whose consent no longer matters.”
“I didn’t do that to you.” I hook my thumb toward the paralyzed Aubree, white knuckling her armrests.
“She did. And she’s busy in her own version of hell right now, so you’re gonna have to sulk in silence for a few minutes.
” I lift my legs and fight with his because he’s a future NBA star with way too much femur to be considered normal. “Move.”
“Sorry, ma’am.” He talks entirely too loudly, drawing eyes when eyes are clearly already pointed our way. “I didn’t mean to disrupt your dirty sexcapades. Do you need a condom? I have an ample supply. Allegedly .”
I press my hand to his face and hop into the aisle, slamming my knee to the armrest opposite and gritting my teeth as pain radiates up through the joint. “Dammit, Cato!” I smack his hands away and turn with my shoulders ridiculously high. My chin, too high. My spine, rod straight.
Because that’s not weird at all.
“You’re a pain in my ass,” I snarl. But then I stop and sneer.
“Wait, my mistake. The TSA guy, whose name is probably Bubba, is a pain in your ass. Sucks to be you.” I whip my hair back, totally nonchalant, and start along the aisle.
Not conspicuous at all . I approach the bathroom I’m pretty sure Archer stepped into, and knocking, I wait just a single Mississippi before the door swings open.
His powerful hand whips out and latches on.
He yanks me in, slamming the door and flipping the lock, and quicker than it takes for my eyes to adjust to the ugly blue light, he pins me to the wall, his lips nestled at the base of my neck and his hands cruising the length of my thighs.
“It is so hard to get in the mood for this.” I tilt my head back and give him room to work. “Your brother just announced to the whole plane what we were doing in here. And even though literally no one else has used this toilet since it was cleaned, it still stinks.”
“Close your eyes, block your nose.” He crushes his lips against mine and squeezes my nostrils, banging his elbow to the mirror frame and sucking what little oxygen I have straight out of my lungs with his hiss. “Shit! Fuck, Mayet!”
“This is not sexy.” Giggling, I slide my hands beneath his shirt, dragging my fingertips over his ridged abdomen and around to his hip, where he would normally wear a gun. “It feels strange to be able to put my hand here.”
“Here, where?” Frantic, he bruises me all over, and yet, feels none of the guilt he used to feel when hemophilia was a new word in his world. “My hip?”
“Mmm. Whenever you’re dressed, you’re usually wearing a gun. When you’re naked, I’m not really thinking about anything except that you’re naked.”
He snorts and slows his hands. Less frenzied. Way sexier, so when he slips his fingers under my shirt and draws it up, I let him peel the fabric over my face and smile when our eyes meet.
Everything is blue in here. His skin. His lips.
The walls. The toilet paper. All of it. But even without the assurance of his beautiful green stare, I still fall under the spell of his adoring gaze.
Hot and fast and heavy has its merits, and sneaking sex is as fun as any other sex.
But when he slows things down and simply loves , that’s when my body melts into his.
“Hey.” Lazily, he peppers his lips over mine. “It smells pretty fucking bad in here.”
I snort, piggish and silly, but I open my legs wider and allow him to unfasten my belt and unsnap my pants. “You’ve never had sex on a commercial plane before? Really? The man I thought had had sex everywhere is missing a box on his bingo card?”
“I haven’t had sex everywhere .” He tugs my pants down and holds me up as if I weigh a mere few pounds. “And I definitely haven’t had sex with you everywhere. So if I find a new experience and know we’re unlikely to revisit anytime soon…”
“So very economical of you.” I tip my head back and let it hit the mirror with a thunk , but I have no time to worry about another bruise because Archer frees his cock from his jeans, lines up at my opening, and enters with a single, smooth thrust that empties my lungs just as thoroughly as the first time.
“Shit.” I close my eyes and ride the waves of pleasure he never fails to bring me. I roll my hips and enjoy the flutter of bliss in my belly. “Archer.”
“I love you so much, Minka.” He squeezes my thighs and rocks forward to fill me again. “Forever.”
“Forever.”