Sex On The Seats (Love After Midnight Book 4) Page 11

  “I’m only going along with your orders because you’re feeding me,” Lucas muttered.

  I snorted.

  Lucas glanced up at me, brows raised.

  “It’s only, I’ve said a similar thing to him.”

  Lucas’s lips twitched, and then he laughed. I joined in, cackling when Archer glared at us both before releasing a long-suffering sigh. “Why do I already regret the two of you meeting?”

  “Because we’re going to team up?” I asked.

  Lucas reached across the island and held up his hand for me to high five.

  Archer sighed again.

  My lips curved.

  His did, too.

  And I knew this was going to be one of the best nights of my life.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Archer

  I’d slipped a key into her purse before dinner was even finished cooking.

  Not that I worried I’d forget, but rather that I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to have that link with her.

  So when she went off to use the bathroom, I’d tucked it safely onto her key chain, along with returning her lockpicking tools—a story I’d need to get all the details to at a later point.

  Later, because Lucas had shown up out of the blue a couple of hours before, a duffle bag in one hand, a carefree smile on his lips, and totally and effortlessly interrupting my plans with Niki. Then he’d abandoned me in the grocery store, leaving me to carry the food home, food he’d mostly selected because he had terrible eating habits and my normal healthy fare wouldn’t satisfy his taste buds.

  Not that I wasn’t happy to see my brother.

  It was just . . . I had plans.

  With Niki.

  Plans without a third wheel of my annoying, awesome, frustrating, exceptional younger brother, who’d charmed Niki far more easily than I had been able to. A fact I like to consider was because she wasn’t attracted to him—because she’d liked me too much to let me get close so quickly, right?—either that or she just liked Lucas better.

  Rolling my eyes at myself, I gathered the sleeping Niki closer.

  She was cuddled against my chest, having succumbed to sleep before the first episode of the show we’d put on after dinner had finished.

  My chest.

  So, she clearly liked me better.

  I allowed myself one more eye roll and then ran my fingers through her hair as I turned my gaze back to the TV.

  Lucas’s voice was soft, barely reaching my ears. He reached for the remote, paused the show. “I like her, Arch.”

  My heart squeezed. “Me, too.”

  “She’s different.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, running my hand lightly up and down her back. She was different, a juxtaposition of fearful and brave, of smart and capable, of beautiful and fragile. But strong. She was mostly strong, because she’d managed to put that fear aside and give me a shot.

  I wasn’t going to fuck it up.

  “She’s really different,” he said.

  “Yes,” I agreed again.

  “You should marry her.”

  I froze, my arms seizing so tightly that she frowned against my chest. Quickly, I released her, ran my hand up and down her back again, settling her, waiting until her face relaxed again before acknowledging Lucas’s statement. “I just got her to agree to date me,” I said. “It would be a stretch to get her to accept a proposal.”

  My brother smirked. “You are difficult to stomach.”

  I chucked a pillow in his direction, but because I didn’t want to jostle Niki too much and risk waking her, I missed by a mile.

  “Getting old enough that your eyesight is going?”

  “Fuck off.”

  “I will,” he said. “Tomorrow, because I don’t want to drive home through the night.”

  My heart had been doing all sorts of squeezing over the last few days, but it didn’t appear that the reaction would be stopping any time soon. “Luc?” I asked.

  Wary hazel eyes coming to mine. “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.” I swallowed, my throat suddenly tight. “For everything you did. I—I—” I inhaled, exhaled slowly. “I wouldn’t have gotten through it without you.”

  Lucas’s expression went serious for once. “You would have.” I wasn’t sure I believed that. “And, before you start rejecting that idea, just think about all the times you were there and saved my ass. I’m not even talking about how I wouldn’t have gotten through identifying their bodies, their funerals, and taking care of everything with their estate. I’m talking about being a pain in the ass kid with a chip on his shoulder who liked to stir up shit.” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “I would have gotten my ass beaten way more times than actually happened if you hadn’t had my back.”

  Read: we’d both gotten our asses kicked a shit-ton until I’d figured out how to fight back then had taught Luc.

  Good times.

  Also, the best times. Everything was so much simpler then—stupid kids doing stupid shit, stealing our parents’ booze, hiding out in the field behind our house getting drunk (being stupid), smoking pot, and bringing whatever group of friends and girls we’d managed to convince to hang out with us.

  Mostly because we’d had alcohol.

  Also because my brother was funny as hell.

  But at the foundation of all of that had always been Lucas and me. The two of us, and I wouldn’t give up that time for anything.

  “So what I’m saying” —Luc’s voice was a little hoarse, the emotion in his voice making my eyes burn— “is that I will always be there for you.” He cleared his throat, the mischief returning. “Even if it’s just playing best man at another wedding.”

  I sighed. “We’ve been over this,” I said. “I just got divorced.”

  My brother smirked and reclined on the couch. “Just saying, if I were you and in love with a woman like Niki, I’d lock it in as soon as possible.”

  Love.

  In love.

  My heart thudded in my chest, my fingers convulsed, sinking into Niki’s soft curves as that thought flowed over me, as I poked and prodded it, just for good measure. Did I love her?

  How . . . could I not?

  I let the truth flow over me, settle over my brain like a warm blanket, comfort sinking into me as reality struck home.

  I loved her.

  Of course I did.

  “You’re a pain in my ass,” I grumbled.

  “And damned proud of it.”

  I tossed another pillow, my aim this time true.

  It flew through the air and . . . smacked him right across the face.

  “Hey!” he muttered, snatching it and winding up like he was going to throw it back. Then his eyes narrowed. “You’re lucky I don’t want to hit Niki.”

  “I love you, too, Luc,” I said.

  Those eyes stayed narrowed. Then he stuck the pillow behind his head and curled his legs underneath him. “Shut up so we can watch the show.”

  I shut up.

  He hit play on the show.

  And just as it began rolling again, my brother said, “I love you, too.”

  My heart did some more of that somersaulting.

  Because, damn, the fucker was good.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Niki

  I heard the door click closed downstairs and hurried to finish my email.

  I’d just met with a new client, and I like to summarize the tasks contracted, especially when I had a feeling said client would be a pain in the ass.

  Contrary to any pseudo-legal researching like I did with KTS, this client was fully legitimate—although maybe legitimate wasn’t the right term because KTS was a real patron of mine, and they paid in real money. It was just that the organization didn’t always operate under strictly legal means, even though several governments had sanctioned the project.

  So anyway, this research would be less hacking and more actual research. Although, I would get to place a tracing program, and hopefully I’d worked out any kinks that had en
abled it to be detected before.

  The research, however, would be secret. The email going to an untraceable inbox that only the CEO and I could access.

  The Fortune 500 company had contracted me after having received a tip that the CFO was embezzling. It was my job to track down the proof of that, to deliver it to the CEO and only the CEO. They’d handle the CFO in whatever way they handled him, although—and I’d made this very clear—if I found that innocent people’s money or assets were affected in any way and the company didn’t make that right, then I would make it right.

  And they wouldn’t like my solution.

  Smiling, I finished the email and hit send, shutting everything down before I left my office, stopping in the hall to check that I had indeed put on pants that morning. (For the record, I had). Then I made my way into the kitchen to find Archer putting groceries away.

  It had been a month since I’d met Lucas, and we’d fallen into a routine. The nights he wasn’t working, he came here and cooked dinner. The nights he was, and if I didn’t need to stay glued to my computer all evening, I went to the bar and stuffed myself full of yummy, fried food.

  So basically, I was eating better than I ever had in my life.

  Though, I did occasionally sneak a can of tiny ravioli if I managed to surface from work at lunchtime.

  Also, I was going to have to buy new jeans if I continued this way, either that or go pants-less, and I found that I didn’t care because . . . Archer had unpacked the grocery bags and pulled out ingredients for . . . Bolognese!

  “Bolognese! Bolognese!” I said, doing a little happy dance, which had him glancing up and smiling then hooking his arm around my waist and drawing me close.

  “How was your day?” he asked, nuzzling my throat.

  “Mmm,” was the only response I could muster, especially when his hands began to wander, slipping down to cup my ass then drifting up to brush the outsides of my breasts.

  I wanted them to touch the insides.

  I wanted them on my bare skin.

  Which was why I pushed him back, reached for the hem of my shirt and tugged it over my head.

  “But what about the Bolognese?” he asked, his fingers gripping the bottom of his tee, yanking it up and over his head. “I know how hungry you get.”

  I was hungry all right. For his cock. For rough, warm hands on bare skin. For his mouth on mine, on my nipples, my pussy. It had been almost twenty-four hours since I’d had him, and I wanted him like it was the first time every time. Need that wove through me, making my hands tremble, my thighs clench, that had me walking over to him and flicking open the button on his jeans.

  The zzz of his zipper sliding down was the best sound ever.

  “Not hungry,” he murmured, brushing my hands away. His jeans were precariously perched, open and loose, hanging on the edges of his hips, and the temptation to nudge it down, to slip my hand into his boxer briefs, to enjoy the treasure within—ha, but also true—was intense. Whether he read that in my eyes or was just experiencing temptation of his own, I didn’t know. All I did know was that one second, I was staring at the hard ridge of his cock, imagining how delicious it would be to lick it like my favorite lollipop, and the next, my pants were on the ground, my ass on the edge of the counter.

  “Magician,” I teased.

  “My next trick,” he said, leaning close and kissing a spot beneath my jaw, “is to make your bra disappear.” And then he lent action to words by reaching behind me and flicking open the clasp on my bra.

  “Next thing I know,” I said, running my fingers over the bristles on his jaw, “you’ll be pulling a rabbit out of a hat . . . or maybe a condom out of thin air.”

  He reached into his pocket. “How about a condom out of denim?” he asked, holding up the plastic square, his lips curved into a sexy smile I just had to kiss. So I did . . . and then I gave in to the urge to push down those pants.

  One nudge and they hit the tile.

  Another and his boxers joined them.

  He set the condom on the counter, pulled back, and brushed his thumb over my bottom lip, trailed it down my throat, across my chest, massaging one breast then the other, rolling my nipples between thumb and forefinger. Oh fuck, that was good. I jerked, pleasure flowing through me, damp heat pooling between my thighs. “You’re a magician now, too?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You made my pants disappear,” he said, bending to take one aching tip into his mouth, suckling deeply.

  My fingers found his hair, clenched tight, but he wasn’t deterred. Instead, he continued using his mouth and hands to whip my need into a frenzied froth of desire, lungs burning, pussy drenched and aching in emptiness, my lips and fingers tingling.

  I snagged the condom from the counter, tore it open with my teeth, and rolled it down the length of his cock.

  His forehead dropped to my shoulder, hot breath puffing on skin, fingers drifting down, slipping between my slick heat, one circled the bud of nerves, sending wave after wave of bliss through me.

  “Enough,” I said, pushing his hand away and reaching for his cock, gripping it tight and tugging it toward me.

  And then he was inside, the crown of him stretching me tight, filling me full to the brim as he pressed deep in slow, incremental strokes, bottoming out, coaxing my legs around his waist. “Closer, baby,” he murmured, tugging me toward the edge of the counter in one quick move that brought him even deeper and had me gasping, gripping the square lip.

  “Sorry,” he murmured.

  “I’m not,” I said, wrapping my legs tighter, using my heels to encourage him to grind against me.

  Sparks of pleasure flew through me, gathering together into a thick rope that wound through my insides, stiffening my spine, a tiny ball of fire, of pleasure growing in my abdomen, expanding until it filled every part of me, licking over my nerves, tightening my muscles, until . . .

  Boom.

  Explosion.

  In cinders.

  My head fell back as he continued moving, sparking the embers into an orgasm that went on and on and on.

  He groaned, hips jerking, my name tumbling from his lips as he found his own climax, and then we were both wrapped in pleasure, both soaring together, both slowly, oh so slowly, coming back down to earth.

  We stayed in place for long minutes, but eventually reality intruded, the cold and hard of the counter seeping into my ass, the cool air prickling along my skin.

  I kept my arms and legs wrapped tight around him, not ready to let go.

  My heartbeat slowed. The sweat evaporated on my skin . . .

  My stomach growled.

  Loudly.

  Archer laughed, his arms tightening around me, the warm puffs of his chuckles on my throat. He leaned back, cupped my cheek. “Bolognese.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Archer

  I poked my head through the door, saw Niki typing away, and started to turn and go back downstairs, but she spun in her chair.

  “Wait,” she said, extending a hand in my direction. “I just need to finish this email”—she turned back to her computer, pressed a few final keys, and clicked her mouse—“and . . . done!” She smiled, ran her hand through her hair in a motion I’d seen often enough to understand it was one of those small, unconscious movements that one only learned about their partner when they’d spent enough time together.

  And we’d spent a lot of time together.

  Every free moment outside of work.

  Laughing together in front of the TV, cuddling in bed talking about nothing at all. Her glaring at me from across the bar, smiling when I snuck a Sex on the Beach in front of her—or as we’d begun calling it, Sex on the Seats, since she’d said my ability to mix vodka, juice, and schnapps had gotten me a free ride right into her pants.

  But more than the sex and the eating—both of which were great—I found that Niki was a friend.

  A good friend.

  My best friend.

  I’d never found someone who
was so easy to be with. From the moment she’d decided to let me in, to date me, our relationship had been effortless in a way it had never been with my ex.

  Right.

  This with Niki was right. I was head over heels in love with her, I’d fallen hard and deep and fast, and I knew it was the absolute best thing I’d ever had in my life. The only thing that would make it better—literally, the only thing—would be if my parents were around to meet her.

  They would love her just as intensely.

  And Niki deserved to have parents like I’d had.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t resurrect the dead or change people who were despicable. I could, however, love Niki, and we could build our family around us.

  Family that was coming over to her house for dinner.

  She pushed to her feet, crossed to me, coming into my arms with a pinched expression that had her winged brows drawing into a V.

  I brushed my finger over them, smoothing the frown away. “What is it?”

  “I’m nervous,” she said, wrinkling her nose in a way that had me aching to tumble her onto the bed and make love to her until she forgot all about being worried. “How stupid is that? It’s not like I need to impress them.” She did that thing with her hair again. “Did you know I took a break this morning and scrubbed the grout in the bathroom with a toothbrush?”

  I guided her toward the stairs. “I, for one, approve.”

  She made a sound of disgust. “It was already clean. I did my whirlwind of that yesterday. I don’t think this place has been so neat and organized and scrubbed since I moved in.”

  “I, for one—oof!” I said, busting into laughter when she smacked me.

  “You’re not funny.”

  “Except, I am.”

  A huff. “Archer,” she warned.

  “It’ll be fine,” I said. “Your place needed the cleaning, though”—I kissed the tip of her nose as we reached the first floor—“I told you, I’d help you with that.”

  “It’s my place—”

  “My mess,” I said, finishing the statement she said every time she caught me cleaning something in her place. “Again.” I cupped both of her cheeks, tilted her head up so I could slant my lips over hers. “But I don’t mind helping the woman I love,” I murmured. “In fact, I enjoy it because it means that I take something off her plate when she’s already managing a lot.”