Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The House
“This is nice,” Archer murmured in the dark.
“What?” I snorted. “A naked woman in your bed.”
“Not just any naked woman. You.”
I patted his bare chest. “You don’t need to sell it, Archie. I already slept with you. But don’t get used to it.”
“Used to sleeping with you? I know how good it is between us, and now I will be doing anything and everything I can to get you into bed.”
“That’s gonna be a little bit difficult. What with your daughter living in the house. I’m not doing that, Archer. I’m not going to wait for her to go to bed and then sneak down to your room and have my naughty way with you and then creep back upstairs. That still feels like a walk of shame.”
“It’s not really a walk of shame,” he said. “Not since we live together.”
“We live together because I’m the nanny. Not because I’m your girlfriend or because you asked me to move in with you.”
He brushed the damp hair at my nape away and he pressed a kiss to the curve of my neck, causing me to shiver.
“Wyn,” he began, “do you want to be my girlfriend and live with me?”
“No.” I tried to burrow my head under the covers to stop his seduction, but Archer’s hand that was currently splayed across my bare stomach drifted lower and settled at the apex of my thighs.
“Try again,” he whispered.
“I’m not your girlfriend and I’m not living with you as your girlfriend.”
He teased my thighs apart and slid a finger inside me. “Well, I’m not giving this up. So, we have to find a solution.”
“Shut up,” I moaned as he added another finger.
“What was that?” He nipped my ear as he thrust his fingers.
I turned my head toward him. His lips captured mine as he continued to pleasure me. And he didn’t stop until I was coming all over his hand.
He eased his fingers out of me and then painted my release on my belly.
Sighing, my eyes closed and my heart beat a steady rhythm against my ribcage.
“You don’t want to be my girlfriend,” he stated.
“Hmm. Not really.”
“Afraid of commitment?”
“To a man named Bandit? Yes.”
“Ha.” He chuckled. “There are perks to being my girlfriend.”
“What sort of perks?” I asked.
“You get to live with me.”
“I’m already doing that.”
“True,” he said. “You get to drive my truck.”
“Already doing that too.”
“A steady supply of freshly baked sour cream donuts. Cute notes left on eggshells.”
“This isn’t new behavior, Archer,” I said with laugh.
“Exactly my point, Wyn.” He rolled me over, so I was on my back and then he draped his chest over mine. “You’re already my girlfriend; you just haven’t admitted it yet.”
“No. I’m the nanny. For another week.”
He sighed. “Nannies get time off. What have you been doing with your time off?”
I frowned as I pondered the question.
“You spend every day with us. We cook dinner. We watch movies. Face it, Wyn. You were never just the nanny.”
I swallowed. “You pay me. Nannies get paid.”
“Yeah.”
“This isn’t how it was supposed to be.”
“How was it supposed to be?” he asked.
“We’ve never even dated, Archer.”
“What do you think this is?”
I shifted underneath him so I could cradle his hardness against my softness. “This is sex.”
“This is more than sex, and you know it.”
“We did everything all backwards,” I protested. “You’re supposed to meet someone, date them, then have sex, then live together, then get married, then have the kid.”
“Says who?”
“Convention.”
“Fuck convention. You tried convention, didn’t you? How did that work out for you?”
I tried to shove him away, but he wouldn’t budge. “Get off me, you anvil.”
He caged me in tighter. “Look, you don’t need to go into details about your past. I get it.
You had a shit run of it. You take as much time as you need, okay?
I’m not going anywhere. I’m not letting you go.
You can freak out. That’s fine. But you’re right about the anvil part, and you’ll never be able to push me away or get rid of me. ”
I smiled into the darkness.
“You might not trust your own judgement where men are concerned. And you don’t need to trust men. You just need to trust me.”
His erection pressed between us. I wiggled against him and reached down to grasp him.
He found another condom and took a moment to put it on.
He slid into me, inch by inch. He was hot and perfect.
I was a woman whose greatest weakness was a man saying all the right things to get what he wanted. I didn’t trust myself not to make the same mistakes I’d made in the past.
But something about Archer made me want to trust him.
And if I had any hope of getting everything I’d ever wanted—a man who couldn’t live without me—then I had to take a risk.
The biggest risk I’d ever take.
I had to give my heart away once and for all.
He filled me slow and deep. And he didn’t stop, even as I cried out against him. I wrapped my legs around him and my nails scraped his shoulders.
“Wyn,” he growled in the crevice of my neck.
Our heartbeats pounded in tandem, and I hoped like hell I hadn’t just made the greatest mistake of my life.
I cracked an eye open. Archer’s spot on the bed was empty.
Regret blasted through me. I’d gone against my better judgement and let him coerce me into spooning. Spooning had led to falling asleep. Falling asleep had led to me waking up in his bed.
Alone.
And naked.
And feeling like the biggest idiot in the world.
The bedroom door hadn’t been closed all the way—an elbow slid through the crack to push it open.
Archer stood in the doorway, bare chested, wearing a pair of low-hanging flannel pajama pants, holding a tray.
He grinned, his eyes flashing with warmth behind his glasses. “Oh, good. You’re awake. I made you breakfast.”
I pulled the sheet up to my chest. “You made me breakfast?”
“Well, I made us breakfast. I thought we could share.”
He came fully into the room and set the tray onto the bed. Thankfully there was no mini sausage dog with the tendency to steal food lurking beneath the covers.
He sat down at the end of the bed and lifted the fork. “Waffles okay?”
My heart had been hiding in my throat, and it was now slowly settling back down into my ribcage.
“Waffles are perfect,” I said, hastily turning my head away from him and his adorable dark mussed hair and earnest eyes.
“Wyn?”
“Hmm?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Wrong? Why would you think anything was wrong?” I asked, my throat unbearably tight with emotion.
“Because you sound like you’re about to cry.”
I let out a watery laugh. “It’s just . . . no one’s ever done anything this sweet for me before.”
“This is just me taking care of you.”
I couldn’t hold in the tears, and they leaked out of my eyes.
“Hey,” he crooned, scooting up next to me so he could wrap me in his arms.
I burrowed my head against his chest and breathed him in. He smelled like me and him and the passion we’d shared in his bed.
“Is this just about breakfast in bed? Or is there something else going on?”
“Damn it,” I muttered. I pulled back and wiped the tears from my cheeks. “When I woke up in bed . . .”
“Go on.”
“I woke up alone. I thought, maybe, you’d . . . left. I know that’s ridiculous, but it was just a knee-jerk reaction.”
His expression shifted. Archer blew out a breath of air. “I’m sorry you were treated so badly in the past. Glad you realize it was a silly thought. Now come on, let’s eat.”
I opened my mouth like a baby bird. He slid the fork between my lips.
“Guess I have a lot to make up for. On behalf of my gender, that is.”
After I chewed and swallowed, I said, “You know what? I’ll let you make it up to me. The waffle is a good start.”
He cut himself a bite and we shared the same fork. It was intimate. What couples did. Shared food. Shared forks. Shared jokes.
“You gonna tell me about this?” Archer asked, taking my arm and turning it over to reveal my tattoo.
“Eventually,” I said. “You going to tell me about yours?”
His smile took up the entirety of his face. “Eventually. I’m saving those stories for when you really trust me.”
“So that’s how this is gonna go, huh?”
“Yep.”
More and more of the waffle disappeared.
“What time is it?”
“A little after nine,” he said. “Lenni texted about an hour ago. She’s milking cows.”
“No,” I said with a laugh.
“She is. She’s helping Summer with farm chores. Hang on, she sent a couple of photos.”
He reached into the pocket of his pajamas and extracted his cell. While he was navigating his phone, I took the fork from him and fed myself the last bit of food.
Archer turned the phone toward me. I swiped through the photos. Mildred and a cow. Lenni and a cow. Summer and Lenni with a cow.
“She’s a farm girl,” I said.
“How do you know that?” he asked, setting his phone aside.
“She was interested in horses immediately,” I pointed out. “And now she’s into cows. We better be careful. She might try and adopt a duck or something.”
“I’m cool with a duck. Not a goose though.”
“Why not a goose?”
“I dunno, I guess I just feel like we needed some boundary on poultry.”
“Weirdo.”
“I’m your weirdo.”
His words were delivered so effortlessly that it filled my chest with warmth.
Archer set the tray down onto the floor before removing his glasses and placing them on the nightstand. He then climbed beneath the covers.
“What are you doing?” I asked as he wrestled off his pajama pants.
He raised his brows. “Making up for my gender.”
“You made up for plenty of that last night,” I remarked, attempting to scoot away.
“I’m going for a gold star, here.”
He reached for me, but I evaded his clutches.
“Wyn.”
“I haven’t even brushed my teeth,” I said in exasperation.
“Then roll over,” he commanded. “I need to be inside you again or I’m going to die.”
“You won’t die.”
“My dick will fall off. I swear it will.”
“It’s not chafed?” I asked in amusement. “Or exhausted?”
“It had an energy drink.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Fine. If you won’t roll over, then I guess I’ll have to convince you another way.”
He slid lower and nestled between my thighs, spreading them. And then his tongue was at my cleft.
My fingers splayed through his hair.
And a few very pleasurable minutes later, I sighed. “Silver star for Archer Keel.”
His head popped out from underneath the covers. “Silver star? What the hell?”
I rolled over onto my side and flashed him a wicked grin. “Still time to earn that gold star.”