“I love you.” I flip her onto her back and follow without losing the delicious crush of her pussy around my cock, then I bury my face in the curtain of her hair and latch hungrily onto her collarbone.Because she likes it when I bite. Even when her life hangs in the balance of scheduled infusions and bleeding emergencies, she risks it all forthis. For us.
Surging forward with a dizzying brutality, I claim her just as I have a thousand times since we met, and when I can’t hold off a single moment more, I burst deep inside and fill her womb with white-hot cum until it has no option but to squeeze back out again and dribble toward her ass. “Fuck, Minka.” I’m too weak to do much more than suffocate her with my weight, so I close my eyes and bathe in the electrical aftershocks of what she does to me. “Stress-fucking you is one of my favorite things to do.”
From panting to chest-bouncing laughter, she barks out a loud cackle and pushes more of our mixed fluids onto the bed. “That was a nice moment.”
“Still is a nice moment.” I roll onto my back and drag her with me, then I hold her exactly where she is, her swollen pussy still circling my cock, her long hair splayed across my chest, the ends tickling my ribs, and her heart pounding against mine. “You don’t need to pee, do you?” I blink through the darkness encroaching on my senses. On the sleep my body so desperately needs. I don’t give a shit that we’re on top of the blankets. I don’t even care that the lights are still on. All I care about is that she’s right here with me. “I don’t want you to get up and leave me, not even to use the bathroom.”
“I’m good for a while yet.” She positions her ear directly over my heart and exhales a heady sigh of contentment. “Oh, and Archer?”
I peel just one eye open and watch her lazily bring her head up. Then, as her lips curl into a teasing grin.
“Mmm?”
“I love you, too. For the rest of my life.”
“Mmm.” I fold my neck and claim her lips with mine. It’s barely more than a peck. A single swipe of my tongue. A declaration without words. But sleep marches mercilessly closer. Unconsciousness beckons me without remorse. “Going home tomorrow,” I mumble. “Taking you back to our side of the country and keeping you there for safekeeping. Not gonna let them drag you into New York shit.”
“Mmhm.” She lays a gentle kiss on my chest and hums a song she sings only for me. It’s about kittens and… something else. Love, maybe. “Go to sleep, Archer. Meet me in your dreams.”
MINKA
The blistering screams of an unhappy baby travel all the way up the stairs of Felix’s McMansion about an hour outside of Manhattan, where the air is cleaner than Wall Street, the gardens are bursting with color, and a baby and a dog compete to be the noisiest set of lungs in a ten-mile radius.
Zora’s probably looking for her morning meal, the dog is no doubt alerting the world to her plight, and I… am soaked in the sweat Archer’s body and mine create when we’re piled together in just a tiny fraction of an otherwise massive bed.
Because even if wecouldspread out and find comfort in space, life is still too raw for us, our forced separation is still too recent, and I’m not sure either of us would trade contact even for all the world’s treasures.
Thirst makes my throat a little dry, and the heat created by our bodies leaves me with a mild case of dehydration and a headache pulsing in the back of my skull.
It’s not the same kind of headache I suffer from after infusion. It’s not even the worst headache I’ve had this week. Or in the last twenty-four hours. It’s just a gentle, consistent throb somewhere behind my eyes, but as I bring them open and study the weight on my chest, I forget my pain completely. Because Archer’s lips pop forward in his sleep, the way I bet they did when he was just an infant. His lashes kiss his cheeks because men are genetically gifted with lashes longer than the average woman. And his hand cups my left breast; he simply can’t help himself.
He’s possessive and needy and, God, he’smine, and that’s a welcome thought, considering only seventy-two hours ago the fear of never being certain aboutusever again plagued my every waking thought.
Despite the vows we spoke on two separate occasions, on two different continents.
Despite the promises we’d made a million times since the first.
Despite the assurances we each gave that this, thatwe, were all that mattered.
Silly me.
My bladder aches with an urgency I won’t be able to ignore for much longer, and my thirst comes right after. But first, I bring my hand up and stroke the bridge of his nose. While the sun rises outside, hours earlier here on the east coast compared to our home on the west, I bask in this moment of aloneness, a rarity for us, since he so often wakes before I do. For every moment of quiet contemplation I’m rewarded with, my smile grows just a little wider. My stomach swirls, not with dread or anxiety, like it has the past week, but with butterflies and nerves, because, as ridiculous as it sounds,wefeel brand new all over again.
This isn’t exactly how I felt that morning after our first night together. Back then, my butterflies were more like cicadas screaming and flapping for freedom. But soon after that, with each new day we spent together, the butterflies came…
And then he asked me to marry him.
The first time.
“You’re such a romantic, aren’t you?” I exhale my words on a whisper and trail the tip of my finger off the end of his nose and down to his pouty lips. “It doesn’t make sense that you came from the man you came from, and then you fell in love withme, and still, you’re so friggin’ romantic it makes my toes curl.”
He smacks his lips and squeezes my boob. Too sleepy to wake and join me here in the real world. Too tired to open his eyes, since our home in Copeland City would still be dark at this hour.
The monotonous buzz of my vibrating phone draws my focus to somewhere on the floor. In my pants pocket, I think. And my pants are… not covering my butt. Resigned, I lift my head and attempt a fast glance around our room. To the overhead lights still switched on, useless now that the sun is out, then to the door I don’t recall locking last night before we fell into bed. I skim past Archer’s impressive length, his muscular thighs, and the scars he wears like armor.Armor he never asked for. Zora’s cries settle downstairs, and Bastard’s playful barking stops, too. After amoment, my phone turns silent, so all I hear is the beat of my heart in time with the ache in my head. But then the buzzing starts again.
Whoever wants my attention isn’t ready to be brushed aside just yet.
I bring my gaze back to Archer’s slack face, to his gently parted lips and each constant, cooling breath he sends feathering across my skin.