Sex On The Seats (Love After Midnight Book 4) Read online

  “Was it the baby that got you to pick up?”

  I sighed, leaned back in my very expensive office chair. It was technically a gaming chair with amazeballs lumbar support and enough adjustability that my short ass legs could reach the floor and my T-Rex arms could touch my keyboard.

  “The Niki then,” he said when I didn’t speak. “I can’t say I hate that I’m the one with the special nickname for you.”

  “It’s all that possessive maleness.”

  “You say that like it’s a disease.”

  My brows lifted, not that he could see them. “Isn’t it?”

  He paused. “I suppose it is.”

  My laughter bubbled up like champagne threatening to escape from the top of the bottle. And it did escape, a silly-sounding giggle that had me cringing and sobering. “What are we doing, Archer?” I asked. “I have rules, but you and your dumb cock have me breaking them.”

  Except, even as I said that, I knew it was more than the sex.

  It was just . . . Archer.

  He made me wonder about possibilities and consider if perhaps my rules were less about protecting me and more about . . . hiding. Fuck. Was I hiding?

  The silence stretched before he spoke. “I like you,” he said. “For me, it’s as simple as that. I saw you across the bar, glaring at me, deliberately ignoring me, and I had to know you.”

  “So you’re saying I was a challenge.”

  “Was?”

  “Ugh.” I pushed my chair back, the wheels squeaking against the floor. “You’re just trying to be annoying.”

  “You are rather pretty when you’re annoyed.”

  “But not at other times?” I asked, my tone deadly.

  A beat. “Nope.”

  I laughed, despite myself, pushing out of my chair and heading down the hall to the stairs. I was finished pretending to work for the night. I’d gotten enough done that I wouldn’t be critically behind the next day, and clearly, staring at my phone for over an hour hadn’t done me any favors. I might as well stop spinning my wheels and just really get back on it tomorrow. Plus, I was hungry. I was tired. I wanted some of my canned pasta and a glass of wine.

  The perfect pairing.

  “I know I shouldn’t encourage you,” I said, strolling into the kitchen and opening the pantry. “But—”

  “I’m infinitely charming?”

  “But you’re occasionally amusing, so I don’t mind keeping you around,” I said, making my tone joking, even though what I’d said felt a bit like the truth. Scarily so. And for a moment, loathing filled me, hating that I was scared of something as good and pure as Archer. I was supposed to be fearless. I’d left my life behind. I’d rebuilt this new one in my image.

  I wasn’t supposed to be scared of a single fucking thing.

  But I was.

  Fucking hell. Pushing the slicing disgust down, I reached up to grab my favorite can of pasta—tiny raviolis filled with something that was supposedly cheese, although I wasn’t entirely convinced of that fact.

  “I’ll take occasionally amusing,” he said then paused, and I could practically hear the gears of his brain working through my speaker. “What are you doing?”

  I dipped my finger into the cold contents, scooped up some of the yumminess. “Eating,” I said between bites.

  Yes, I was eating it cold.

  Yes, I was really hungry.

  Yes, I had questionable nutrition habits.

  But c’est la vie and all that.

  I hadn’t eaten since the pancakes that morning, and I was wasting away. Pretty soon my hollow leg would grow, would consume my torso, my arms.

  Ha.

  If only that were true.

  “Eating what?” Archer asked, suspicion evident.

  “You don’t want to know,” I said, retrieving a spoon from the drawer because I could only be undignified for so long. Heh. Mostly, it was because my spoon was simply a better utensil for shoving my tiny raviolis into my mouth. My stomach rumbling, I returned to the pantry and grabbed another can. I’d eat this one cold while I waited for the other to heat in the microwave.

  Well, I’d dump it into a bowl first. I couldn’t risk blowing up the single appliance I used.

  “Niki,” he warned.

  “Not gonna tell you.” Though, of course, it sounded a lot like, “Snof donna shmell to.”

  Apparently, Archer could speak Dominque—or rather, Niki baby, I thought with a smile—because he said, “Put the can down and step toward your front door.”

  Brows drawing together, I spun in a circle, half-convinced he’d somehow made his way into my house and could see me noshing on my baby raviolis. But, dumbshit, if he were inside, I would have heard him talking, especially if he were near enough that he could see me playing raccoon while I tried to scrape every last bit out of my can.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I know your bloodstream is probably currently overrun with salt after your processed food foray,” he said, teasing, making his tone roll through the air, along my eardrums, and into my brain.

  Or maybe my heart.

  Both were terrifying.

  One perhaps slightly more. I just didn’t know which . . . okay, I did know. I just wasn’t ready to admit it yet.

  Especially when it was my heart.

  Gah!

  Enough.

  “Niki?”

  “What?” I asked, licking the back of my spoon.

  “Put the can down. And go open your front door.”

  I finally processed what he was saying and what it might mean. “Are you here?” I asked, experiencing a strange buoyancy I didn’t want to explore too closely.

  “No.”

  Pop.

  Deflated, I tried to temper my tone. “Oh.”

  “But I’ll be there in . . .” I heard a soft click, a sudden quiet, as though the background noise had cut out. As though he’d just parked and turned off his car. “. . . thirty seconds.”

  “Thirty—?” I dropped the can into the trash, the spoon into the sink, along with a couple of plates and cups I hadn’t gotten around to washing the day before. Luckily, my consumption of processed food—cough, out of the cans themselves—meant that I didn’t have a lot of dishes. But I wasn’t the cleanest person, and Archer was a neat freak. And—

  Oh, God. What was I wearing?

  I nearly dropped my phone as I tried to look down at my clothes, at my “hacking” outfit, which basically consisted of a tank top along with the oldest, ugliest, holiest pair of sweats I owned, a giant, half-bleached hoodie—half because during my last cleaning phase I’d had a misfire while trying to scrub my toilet—along with no bra, no underwear, and giant fluffy pink socks.

  I was a blob of gray with strange pink tentacles and—

  Knock-knock.

  “Fuck,” I breathed.

  “Niki.”

  I didn’t answer him, just kept the phone to my ear as I did one of those weird-ass flurry of movements I’d seen heroines in romantic comedies do—flying around the room, ripping off the sweatshirt and running to the laundry room. And then fighting with the laundry room door, since there was a dirty load sitting on the floor just on the other side of it that I’d been meaning to take care of . . . along with a clean one sitting in a basket on the dryer.

  Clean clothes.

  Small victories.

  “Niki,” Archer said again, the knock coming a second time.

  I put the cell on speaker, tossed it on the washer. “Just a second!”

  One jerk to toss the sweatshirt on the pile, leaving me in just my tank top. Another to drop my pants alongside it. I didn’t have time to search for underwear or a bra, just grabbed the first bottoms that my hands rested on—black leggings thankfully—and then ran out of the laundry room, wrestling with the door again on my way out.

  I paused—actually paused—to study my hair in the reflection of the fridge (seriously, what the fuck?) before I remembered myself and ran to the door.

>   Knock—

  I yanked it open.

  And sweet baby Jesus, what right did the man have to look so fucking gorgeous? Huh? Huh?

  Especially when he just held up a bag, one that smelled wonderful, and asked, “Hungry?”

  “Fuck you!” I slammed the door, banged my head against it.

  The man was too fucking wonderful, and I was feeling way too insecure and as though I never could measure up. I had intentionally ignored his first text, been snarky on the call, and meanwhile, he had been on the way to my place with food that smelled even better than my tiny raviolis, and he didn’t seem to care that I’d just shut the door in his face.

  As though the man had X-ray vision, his next knock came right against my forehead, his voice carrying laughter as it drifted through the wood. “Should I just leave this right here then?”

  I groaned, reached for the doorhandle and tugged it open. Again.

  “Where’s your cell?” he asked.

  My sigh was heavy, lifting and dropping my shoulders on an inhale and exhale. My phone was still in the laundry room, sitting on top of the washer, probably still connected to Archer’s in all my speakerphone glory, considering he still held his in one hand.

  “Why are you here?” I groaned.

  “I can go.”

  I groaned again. “No, Archer. I just . . . fuck, I’m a pain in the ass, and you’re here anyway and—”

  “You, Niki. I just like you. That’s it.” He stroked a hand down my arm, making me shiver, making me shift closer. “There isn’t an ulterior motive, except”—a curve of his lips—“that if I keep feeding you, maybe you’ll let me hang out for a while longer.”

  Hope was a roiling thing inside me. It should feel good, this new glow of meeting someone, of liking him, of wanting nothing more than to spend time with him. But it didn’t feel good, or at least not only good because of the giant elephant sitting on my chest, the irrefutable choice. My lips parted and I blurted, “I’m going to disappoint you. I always disappoint people who try to care about me.”

  Archer was statue still, his face a study in shock. But almost as I processed that, the shock disappeared, pushed out by fury that turned down his mouth, that shot sparks through his hazel eyes. He pushed past me, slamming the door behind him, throwing the lock, setting the bag of food on the table I kept in the hall for my keys and other shit that I didn’t feel like carrying any farther than the front hall.

  Then he turned back to me, and the ferocity of his expression had me skittering back a step.

  And another.

  But then he was there, right in front of me, forcing me into a farther retreat, forcing me down the hall until my back was against the wall, until his front was firmly pressed to mine, his hands on either side of my head, closing in on me, creating a bubble of just him and me, a tiny world that only existed for us.

  He crouched down, blazing hazel eyes locking with mine. “You don’t see yourself.”

  That hadn’t been what I expected him to say, not with the fury in his expression. I’d braced for a lash of words, waiting for them to permeate my skin, to activate that spike inside me, to have it fly forward and eviscerate me.

  Instead, he just stayed in place, still as that statement washed over me.

  And it did.

  A warm shower after being trapped in the freezing rain, soaking into my hair, trailing down my nape, my arms, my back, warming me, pushing the chill away.

  “I see,” he said at the same time that heat had reached my fingertips, “a woman who’s smart and a hard worker. Who’s talented and strong and sexy as hell. Who knows what she wants but doesn’t see the magic inside.”

  If he’d led with the magic inside, I probably would have burst out laughing, would have been able to discount the rest of it easily.

  But he’d begun with the other stuff.

  The ones that were more difficult to disregard.

  I was smart. I did work hard. I was strong. Though, talented was borderline—I’d just developed the skills I’d needed for this career, so I supposed in some way, that was true. As for sexy . . . well, I didn’t shy away from sex in normal times. I’d never felt insecure about my body. And while it wasn’t like I was out parading through Bone Town every night, I didn’t exactly shy away from getting orgasms when the opportunity presented itself.

  Case in point, Archer.

  But . . . I didn’t feel like I had magic inside.

  I was just . . . me, a woman who was better alone because no matter how hard I tried, there would always be a tipping point in every relationship.

  And it would tip away from me, dropping me down into a pit of emptiness.

  Which, look, I got sounded very dramatic. But it was true. I’d tried. Oh, how I’d tried. First with my parents. Then with any boy I could get to date me, who expressed interest in me. I’d spent loads of time changing myself, trying to fit into different molds. For years, I’d done that. Right up until . . .

  “I left my fiancé at the altar.”

  He blinked, probably rightly wondering how in the fuck-all he’d gone from telling me I had magic to me describing the time I played runaway bride.

  “That was the last straw for my parents,” I said. “They were furious that they’d paid for a wedding to a man, who was ‘perfect in every way,’ only to have me literally running out of the church minutes before the ceremony went down.”

  Archer didn’t move, his chest just calmly rising and falling against mine. “What made you run?”

  Funny.

  No one had ever asked me that question. Not really. I’d gotten, “How could you do that to Derek?” and, “How dare you leave?” and my personal, painful favorite accompanied by my mom’s furious, whip-sharp tone, “Why would you do that? Why would you do that to me?”

  Derek’s questions, rightly, had been along the vein of, “Why did you leave me?” and, “God, why then?”

  But no one had ever cared enough to truly understand what had propelled me to run down the street in my wedding dress, heart pounding, palms sweaty, hating that I was hurting people but knowing that I couldn’t, couldn’t stay.

  And by the time I’d understood enough to explain why I hadn’t been able to stay, it had been too late.

  Derek had gotten married. To a bride who’d stayed.

  He’d cut off all contact with me. My parents and friends had done the same. I was the pariah who made things complicated in our social circle.

  Which had been fine.

  I’d hated the person I’d let those societal pressures become. Outside of it, I’d allowed myself to grow, become different. Find this job, start my business, disappoint several other good men along the way.

  “I ran because I couldn’t find myself anymore.”

  His brows drew together, and I expected him to frown, to pull back, for that explanation to make no sense.

  Instead, he said, “I know just what you mean.”

  And that unhitched me, freed my lungs, unclenched my hands.

  Making me . . . think that maybe . . . maybe I wouldn’t actually fuck this up.

  Maybe with Archer, everything could be different. That perhaps I could be me, just me, and that wouldn’t be a disappointment.

  He laced our fingers together, picked up the bag of food from the table, and led me back down the hall, peeking through openings until he’d found the kitchen. A nudge to get me in a chair, more peeking to find plates and utensils, and then he’d scooped up something that wasn’t homemade Bolognese, but some sort of creamy chicken and rice combo, onto two plates.

  One of which he placed in front of me.

  The other next to me, where he took a seat.

  “How?” I asked, even though it wasn’t really any of my business, especially since I wasn’t exactly an open book. “How do you know what I mean?”

  His eyes drifted to mine, a thread of gentleness that probably should have pissed me off, that definitely should have made me push him away. And in the past, it would have
. But today, with him, with this buoyant feeling in my chest, I did neither.

  Instead, that gentle tone had me melting slowly from top to bottom or maybe bottom to top, or maybe both—an ice cube on the sidewalk, the heat of the concrete defrosting me at an equal pace to that of the sun. The tender was the sun. The lack of artifice in his response was the sidewalk. The way he set down his fork and reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear was . . . I don’t know. The microwave or a magnifying glass or a . . .

  Something hot that melted me from the inside out.

  Go me.

  So words weren’t exactly my strong suit. But I was trying here. I wasn’t running screaming, even despite the big feelings. I was waiting to continue an emotional conversation with a man who terrified me because I wanted more than just a quick fuck.

  If that wasn’t growth, I didn’t know what was.

  Archer’s fingers shook slightly as he brushed them over my cheek, as he closed them into a fist that he then rested on his thigh. “After my parents died, I wasn’t myself. I was engaged to my ex, and we’d already planned the wedding.” He sighed, stroked his thumb over my palm. “I’d known things weren’t right for a while, but we’d been together for so long that I didn’t know how to stop the ball from rolling. It was like I was strapped into the roller coaster and not in the least bit ready for the ride, but . . . I didn’t get off. I just let the operator push the button to send us off, and it was too late.”

  “And it went wrong,” I said carefully when he didn’t say anything further.

  “Yeah, or stayed wrong or . . . we just didn’t want the same things anymore,” he said, his eyes unfocused, telling me he was in that past, lost in those memories. “I think if we’d started dating as adults, we never would have gotten married.” He blew out a breath. “I think if my parents had been alive, I wouldn’t have gone through with it at all.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  A shrug. “We’re better off apart. She’s remarried and happy. I’m able to live how I like, able to build my life around people who aren’t always looking at our relationship as something where we have to keep score.”

  “My parents were like that,” I whispered, the admission coming without thought.

  It was just that he’d shared, that he’d opened up, and I felt like I owed him the same.