by Nina Lane
I lifted my head, saw the darkness of his eyes before he slowly lowered his head and captured my mouth in a kiss.
I sighed, sinking against him. I slipped my arms around his waist to touch his smooth, muscular back.
My tension shifted into urgency and the drive to obliterate everything else with pure, carnal pleasure. I opened my mouth to deepen the kiss, moving one hand around to trail along the front of his jeans.
“Kelsey…” Tension laced his arms.
I pressed the length of my body against his, squirming against the burgeoning hardness of his erection. My nipples budded against my bra.
I suddenly wanted us both naked, skin sliding against skin, my breasts bared to his touch, his muscles flexing beneath my hands. I wanted to hear his deep voice issuing orders. I wanted him to tell me what to do. I wanted him to control me. I wanted to be controlled.
I slid my tongue into Archer’s mouth and fumbled for the buttons of his fly. My heart pounded with anticipation as I unfastened one button, longing for the sensation of his warm, hard shaft in my palm.
“Stop.” His hoarse command broke through my fog of pleasure.
A hint of fear rose in me. I spread my hands over his chest.
“Come on, Archer,” I whispered, pressing my mouth to his again. “I want you to fuck me.”
A shudder coursed through him. I trailed my fingers over the line of hair leading to his fly. God, he felt so good. My nerves sizzled with anticipation.
“Kelsey, I…”
“I want you to fuck me hard and rough,” I continued, nipping his lower lip between my teeth. “I want you to spank me. I want to spread my legs for you, and I want you to pound into me over and over, so hard that my whole body shakes. I want to tighten my pussy around you, cream all over your cock, and—”
“Kelsey, stop.” Archer grabbed my wrists, halting my increasing exploration.
Shocked, I stumbled back and yanked my arms from his grip. Our breathing rasped through the air. I shoved a swath of hair away from my face and stared at him.
“What?” I snapped.
“You don’t want that. Not now.”
“The hell I don’t.” A rising humiliation scorched my chest. “Are you going to fuck me or not?”
His mouth compressed with regret, but he looked me in the eye and shook his head. A column of heat rose up my spine. I bit out a curse and shoved him in the chest.
“Bastard.”
I turned to stalk out the door. He grabbed me around the waist before I could escape, pulling me back against him, his arms wrapping around me in an unbreakable hold. Anger shot through me.
“Let go,” I snapped.
“No.” He locked his arms around mine, trapping them against my sides.
His chest was a solid wall against my back, and I knew even as I struggled that there was no escape. My throat constricted.
“To hell with you if you don’t want me.” I hated that my voice wavered.
“I want you,” Archer said. “More than I’ve ever wanted anything or anyone. But I won’t let you run. Not from me. Not from yourself.”
An upwelling of emotion, hot and painful, boiled into my chest. Before I knew it, before I could stop it, tears flooded my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. My breath was choppy, too fast. The room tilted off balance. Archer tightened his grip. The only solid element in my world.
“Let me go,” I hissed.
“No.” He lowered his head to my ear. “I won’t let you go, my kotyenok.”
I think I broke. I felt a snap inside me, like the crack of a tree branch, something that could never be put back together in the same way again.
Sobs crowded my throat. I tried to swallow them back down, but with Archer holding me so tightly in his powerful arms, like he’d be there throughout the entire storm, no matter how long it took or how destructive it was, I surrendered and cried. Hot tears spilled down my cheeks, my whole body weakening under the force of the onslaught.
Archer sank into an easy chair, pulling me on top of him, his arms never loosening their grip on me.
I buried my face in my hands and let the tears fall, acute grief and pain whipping like wind through me. I cried until my throat was scraped raw, until the sobs left me shuddering and exhausted.
“I did everything right,” I whispered, pressing my palms to my hot face, the confession tumbling out of me. “Everything.”
“I know you did. So did she.”
“Then why, Archer?” I was hollowed out. Aching. I pulled away from him and paced to kitchen, as if movement would ease the pain. “Why the hell did she die?”
“Kelsey, whether you did everything right or wrong makes no difference. There’s only so much you can control.”
Intellectually, of course, I knew that. But emotions were not ruled by intellect. My heart felt like it was being squeezed in a fist.
“I had a girlfriend,” Archer said behind me. “She died, too.”
My fingernails dug into my palms. “How?”
“Car accident. She was pregnant.”
I turned to face him, my chest so tight it hurt. He unfolded himself from the chair and rose to his feet, his presence so potent that I took a step back.
“What happened?” I whispered.
“You called me a fuck-up when we met,” he said, and I tried not to wince at the reminder.
“Archer—”
“You were right,” he said. “I was much worse than you ever were or ever could have been. After I dropped out of high school and left the West family’s perfect life, I did it all—drugs, fighting, stealing, jail time. Stayed away from my parents. Didn’t want a goddamned thing to do with Dean. Especially didn’t want to hear about all his achievements. Even as a kid, I knew he was destined for success. I was hell-bent to go in the opposite direction.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I was living with Sarah outside of Vegas. She’d also had a messed-up life, but she was trying to get her act together. Good person. Worked as a waitress. For some reason, she put up with me. We were living together for a couple of months when she got pregnant.”
I sank onto the edge of the bed and buried my face in my hands. I didn’t want to hear this, but I didn’t want him to stop telling me. Didn’t want him to stop giving me a piece of himself.
“After we found out, she convinced me to straighten up, get clean, try to do right by this kid we were going to have,” he said. “I went into rehab, got my head together. We talked about getting married. A Social Services woman helped Sarah with prenatal stuff. I found a job with a construction company. The owner had a lead on a house that was going into foreclosure, and I asked him if I could help work on it. I had this…”
He paused and cleared his throat. “I had this idea that if I helped fix up the house, maybe I had a shot at getting some kind of mortgage so Sarah and I could live there one day. If nothing else, at least it would prove I could work. It was a little two-bedroom place.”
He’d never had a chance to work on the house. I knew that already. My chest ached. I couldn’t tell if my heart hurt so badly because it was so empty or because it was getting so full.
“Sarah was working at a restaurant,” Archer said. “She was late coming home one night. The cops…” He paused again. “The cops said she’d gone off the road. The car hit a tree. They said she died on impact.”
“Oh, Archer.”
I couldn’t stand it. My eyes filled with fresh tears. I felt his presence, felt him go down on his knees in front of me, pulling my hands away from my face.
I stared at him through blurred vision, seeing my own pain reflected in his dark eyes, the shared intensity of it seeming to steady the world again.
“Kelsey, I’m telling you because I did everything right.” He tightened his hands on mine. “Sarah and I both did. Everything we were supposed to do, we did. And she still died. It’s fate, you know? A lousy toss of the coin.”
I buried my head in my arms again. Aching for what he’d gone
through, for a girl’s life lost too early, and a baby who’d never had a chance.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
He brushed his hand through my hair. “You take on too much, storm girl. Pain happens. Sometimes like tornados out of nowhere.”
Tornados that I still loved for all their fury and destruction.
After a few minutes of quiet, Archer lifted me into his arms and eased me onto the bed. He stretched out beside me, curving his body against mine.
A perfect fit. His chest pressed to my back, my rear against his groin, his knees tucked into the backs of mine. I buried my face in his pillow. He rested his hand on my hip. His breath stirred my hair. I fell asleep in the shelter of him.
I woke before Archer did and untangled myself from him to use the bathroom. I still wore my suit and trousers from yesterday, everything now completely wrinkled.
I borrowed Archer’s toothbrush to brush my teeth, and his comb to pull the knots out of my hair. I looked tired, with dark circles under my eyes and my skin like parchment, but I was calmer. The worst of the storm had passed.
But I’d been an atmospheric scientist long enough to know that there was always another storm front on the horizon.
Always.
He was still sleeping when I came out of the bathroom. This time, I tucked my body against his from behind and slid my arms around his waist. I must have fallen asleep again because I woke when the bed dipped. Archer sat on the side of the bed, pulling his jeans off.
He looked over his shoulder at me when I stirred. He didn’t ask me how I felt. He didn’t mention the previous night. He just reached out to brush a lock of blue hair away from my face.
I pushed to one elbow and fumbled for my glasses, which I’d left on the bedside table. I closed my hand around the frames, then dropped them. Archer was still watching me.
Aside from his boxer briefs, he was naked. With his black hair rumpled, his sculpted torso bare, and that raven’s wing tattoo skimming over his right arm, he looked like a magnificent, otherworldly creature about to take flight.
I leaned forward. He met me halfway, our lips colliding in a warm kiss that tasted of mint. He shifted, moving to brace his arms on either side of me, probing deeper but unhurried.
I let myself sink against the pillows, let him inside my mouth. I smoothed my hands over his arms and up to his strong shoulders.
He unfastened the buttons of my blouse, parting the folds to reveal my white lace bra. When he undid the front clasp and bared my breasts, I gave over. I knew I didn’t have to do anything but fall into the cascade. I knew that wherever he took me, it would be a place of pure bliss. All I needed to do was surrender.
I watched him kiss his way down my body, rubbing the taut peaks of my nipples. He dipped his tongue into my belly button before pulling off my pants and the skimpy panties between my legs. His hot murmurs vibrated through my skin, creating a pool of warmth in my core.
I stretched and arched against him. We shed the rest of our clothes slowly, peeling them away like snakeskins. He moved over me, fitting his body against mine. He pushed. I yielded. He gave. I took. He captured. I surrendered.
The world rocked, like the rhythmic sway of a ship, the thunderclouds too far away now to be of concern. I shattered beneath him, a slow rise that unfurled in my veins before exploding into a thousand stars. As I was falling back down, I watched Archer above me, his chest muscles shifting, his face set and eyes dark with heat.
He lowered his mouth to mine again just as he plunged into me with his own release. I tightened my arms around him, wanting to feel every shudder coursing through his body, knowing he was feeling this bliss because of us.
When he rolled to the side, I sat up and did what I hadn’t yet had a chance to in the weeks we’d been together. I explored all the slopes and planes of his body, tracing his pecs down to the ridges of his abdomen and the V of muscles leading to his groin.
I ran my hands over his thighs, his flat, hard belly, and the corded length of his forearms. I flexed my hands on his powerful arms, smoothed my palm over his raven’s wing, the flowers spread across his shoulder.
The birds hovering over the flowers were both silhouettes with their wings outstretched. If you looked closely, you could see the threads of color woven through their wings—red, purple, blue, and gold.
“You’re beautiful,” I whispered, letting my fingers trace a flower petal. “So incredibly beautiful.”
His jaw stiffened as he looked at my hand on his skin. For a moment I expected him to refute what was so obvious and true. But instead he grasped my wrists and tugged me so I was lying half on top of him. He closed his arms around me.
Moonlight shone through the uncurtained window. I could still see the outline of the Butterfly House.
“Are you finished with it?” I asked.
“Almost.” He pressed a hand to my hair. “We’re doing the final touch-ups on the floors and trim. Lots of little things left to do, but the major work is done.”
Though I had known from the beginning he’d leave one day, pain stabbed through me at the realization that the day would soon be here.
“Oh,” I managed to say. “So when are you leaving?”
Tension rolled through him. “As soon as it’s done, I guess.”
“Okay.”
That was the biggest lie I’d ever told. It was not okay. Nothing was okay about Archer West swooping into my life like a beautiful, wild bird, sending my life into a tailspin, and then leaving.
Not just leaving. Leaving me. Leaving me alone.
“Okay,” I repeated, only because he was looking at me with his dark, haunted gaze and all I wanted to do was throw myself at him and never let go. But I couldn’t because he was leaving.
A knot formed in my throat. I could hardly remember my life before him. I didn’t want to imagine my life after him.
“I don’t want to go without you,” he said.
“Then don’t.” Though I had never been one to ask for anything, the plea came out as easily as thread slipping from a needle. “Stay here.”
His eyes darkened. I sensed the uncoiling of old pain in him, the regrets and sorrow we’d both felt for so long they had become part of us.
“Why not?” I whispered.
A faint smile tugged at his mouth. “Square peg. Round hole.”
“That’s not true. You… you fit here, Archer.” With me.
Even as I stammered out the words, a black pit opened inside me because I’d come to know Archer as well as he knew me. He hadn’t come to Mirror Lake to stay. He didn’t fit here, not really, not with Liv and Dean’s life and Avalon Street and my tenured professor career.
Still, I tried to picture it. I so wanted to believe it could happen—that I could convince him to stay in Mirror Lake and that we would both be happy. He could find a construction or motorcycle repair job. I’d teach classes and write papers and do all the professor things I was supposed to do. We would go grocery shopping together. Visit the mall. Take a trip every now and then. Share chocolate milk.
And beneath the surface would run a river of unease as I waited for the day when Archer realized he was bored out of his skull living such a contained life. The day when my guilt over forcing him onto my safe, narrow path became too much to bear.
I didn’t think Archer would ever fit in anywhere. He couldn’t. He was too bold, too fierce, too powerful. The world had to accommodate him, not the other way around.
A tight feeling gripped my chest. “I’m not… I don’t mean that you should stay for good or anything. Maybe just a few weeks longer.”
He turned away from me, his expression shuttered. He shook his head.
The black pit inside me opened wider. But I had known. I had known from the beginning.
I had no tears left to cry. The combined weight of our pasts and uncertain future seemed too heavy to escape.
I stroked Archer’s tattoo down to the raven’s wing curled over his arm. I traced the feathers and
wished above all else that I could take flight with him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ARCHER
STAY HERE.
Just a few weeks longer.
Though I’d never had illusions about anything, I couldn’t get Kelsey’s honeyed voice out of my mind. I wanted to stay. I wasn’t ready to end things with her anytime soon. But the longer I stayed, the harder it would be to leave.
And I’d have to leave eventually. I don’t mean that you should stay for good.
I’d never intended to. She’d never expected me to. Though we’d had an incredible time, though we cared about each other, the facts hadn’t changed. I was a former addict with no job prospects, and she was Professor March. I’d been hit by reality enough times to know that some obstacles were permanent.
The Butterfly House was almost finished. Liv and Dean planned to move in their belongings the following week, and a furniture store truck was scheduled to deliver a bunch of new stuff.
It was raining the afternoon before the truck was supposed to arrive. A spring rain shower, heavy and warm but nothing like the supercell storm Kelsey and I had been in.
I walked through the house, checking the floors to make sure there was nothing I needed to touch up or fix. Everything was bright, shiny, new.
I went upstairs. Four bedrooms. Liv had told me Nicholas’s room would be the one facing the back garden. There was an oak tree outside the window, and a view of the forested area beyond. I imagined The Castle Two in a big, solid tree somewhere out there. I’d subconsciously already mapped out a blueprint in my head.
The front door closed. I walked back downstairs, hoping it was Kelsey. Instead Dean was in the foyer, taking off his damp suit jacket. He held a large brown envelope under his arm.
“Just checking things out,” I told him. “There are a few places that could use some putty. I’ll do that before the furniture gets here.”
“Good. Thanks.” He tossed his jacket on the stair railing and tilted his head to the kitchen. “Got a second?”
“Sure.” I followed him into the kitchen. There were a couple of stools beside the quartz-topped central island, and we sat down.
