by Riley Ashby
I rubbed my eyes, trying to hide how frustrated I was from Josie. This wasn’t going the way I expected it to. If I still had my FBI connections, this would be moving a lot faster. Then it occurred to me. I did still have one good connection, someone who already knew the stakes.
Back in my apartment with the door closed slightly to muffle my voice, I dialed Castel and told him what I needed. I explained about the new notes and the request to meet her. I left out what happened after I carried Josie back to the apartment over my shoulder. He said he’d look into it and see what he could find.
“Archer,” he said just as I was hanging up. “How is he getting all these photos? I mean, it sounds like they’re personal. Family stuff. Why would he have access to those?”
“I don’t know, and neither does she. My guess is he went off the deep end and maybe stole them. Shit, maybe he’s got a whole shrine made out of her dirty tissues.”
We hung up.
I did as much research as I could for the rest of the day.
Dinner was tense and silent. She clearly wanted to ask me questions about what I had found out, but she held her tongue.
My phone rang, and I went back to my apartment, expecting Castel.
“Found out more so soon?”
“Mr. Archer, it’s Dr. Davis. Your mother’s cardiologist.”
My own heart leaped in my chest. This was it, what I’d been saving for. Why I’d thrown away my career and risked jail time in the process.
“Is it time? Is there a heart available? I can transfer the money tonight. I’ll have—”
“Mr. Archer, I’m afraid it’s not good news.”
Time slowed to a halt, the blood freezing in my veins. “What do you mean?”
“Your mother has taken a turn for the worse. She has further organ damage beyond her heart. At this stage, even if a heart were to become available, we couldn’t offer it to her. Her body has simply suffered too much damage for her to be a viable candidate.”
I fell against the wall. “What are you saying? What’s the next step, then?”
“I’m afraid there is no next step. It’s my estimate that at this time she has less than six months left to live. I’m very sorry, Mr. Archer.”
It took everything in me to hang up politely, but once the call disconnected, I hurled the phone across the room and screamed. It was all over, everything. I had nothing left. I slid to the ground along the wall, my head in my hands, wishing for the first time I’d never taken any of that fucking money.
I didn’t know how she opened the door without my hearing, but somehow, I felt small hands peeling my hands away from my face.
“Are you okay?” she whispered quietly, and I could only shake my head.
“My mom. She’s dying.”
She held my hands in hers and kissed my knuckles gently, no pretense or temptation present. Just comfort.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. I heard the truth in her words, how much she really felt for me. Not just placating or saying words to fill the space. When I looked into her eyes, I saw the tears already forming, her heart aching for me even though she’d already lost so much herself, when she barely knew me, when I’d been so cruel to her.
“That was why I got fired. I took bribes,” I confessed, the words rolling off my tongue like water. She deserved to hear it. “She needed a heart, and they’re easily the most expensive organ. So I took some bribes to let some people go, keep their names off the record, in order to save for her. All this time, that work, and it doesn’t even matter. She’s too far gone for them to do a transplant.”
She shoved herself between my legs to get closer but didn’t touch me anywhere inappropriate. Wrapping her arms around my torso, she hugged me tight with her head on my chest.
“She has a congenital heart defect. It didn’t cause her problems for most of her life until she had kids. She sacrificed her good health to have me. When I started working at the Bureau, they told us she was going to need a new heart.” I stopped speaking to swallow around the lump in my throat, looking down at the woman with her cheek pressed against my heart. I had her undivided attention and every bit of her mind. “I had to do something about it, so I sacrificed everything in order to be able to provide for her, but it still wasn’t enough.” Every word broke my heart a little, chipping away at the veneer I’d trained to cover myself through a decade of service in the most inhospitable parts of the earth and dealing with the worst kind of criminals. Every part of it came tumbling down around me, and I didn’t even care. I had no plans to pick up the pieces anytime soon because there was simply no use. Why lie anymore, to her or myself?
“She’s only got a few more months to live. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’d give her mine if I could.”
I was holding her just as tight as she held me, crushing her probably, but she didn’t complain. I remembered she told me her mother had died, and she hadn’t even known, and I felt like even more shit for dumping this on her.
“You don’t have to comfort me,” I muttered. I tried to shove her away, but she held fast. “I know you just lost your mom.”
“And you held me through it,” she said. “I mean, I’m still pissed at you for calling Vail, but you were there. You held me together when everything else fell apart.” She settled her head against my neck in the hollow space above my collarbone. “I can hold you a little while longer.”
Her arms around my middle made the world seem like it might not fall apart just yet.
It felt pure.
I picked her up when I stood, despite her protestations, but she quieted when she saw I was bringing her back to my bed instead of trying to drop her off in her own room. She helped me out of my clothes, hands running soothingly down my back as she guided me into bed and slipped in next to me. She curled up against my chest and whispered words against my skin, lips grazing, giving me everything I needed and not asking for a single thing in return. She didn’t make any promises or dare to tell me everything would be okay. Her hands moved only in soothing motions without seeking anything from me. I had nothing to give even if she had. She held me tight as the world shook apart around me until finally, somehow, consciousness slipped from me.
I’d never seen a man break down like Archer did. For my whole life, I was brought up to see men as resilient and tenacious in the face of all hardship, unfeeling even in the most moving of circumstances.
But when he fell apart in front of me, somehow, I knew exactly what to do. I knew something awful happened to make him have a breakdown. And it turned out I knew almost exactly what he felt—his mother, the woman who gave birth to him and raised him and turned him into the man I knew and cared for, was going to be leaving him far too soon. I felt that acutely. It was the least I could do to hold him just as he had held me.
He didn’t make any moves on me even though I thought he would. He really must have been too sad to think past it. But I woke in the morning with his hardness pressing against the small of my back. When I arched my back against him, he slipped his hand up my shirt to grab my breast. Then, as if shocked, he pushed me away.
“You should go back to your apartment,” he growled. But it was halfhearted; his hand remained on my hip.
I rolled to face him, snuggling up tight against him again. “I don’t want to go back.”
He pushed my hair back from my face with one finger. “I don’t need you to support me, Josie. I don’t deserve your support. Don’t you understand what I told you? I’m not a good person. I’ve betrayed my country and innocent people who needed my help, and it didn’t even matter. My mom is going to die, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
There was the truth about why he kept me so far away. The real reason he was so adamant what was between us was wrong. The logic behind why he was holding me closer against him when his words told me to go; why he’d put me down and pushed me away all while kissing me and making me food. “Is it really that surprising I would like you for you? Do you hate yourself s
o much you can’t even fathom someone wanting you just as you are?”
He shook his head and covered his eyes. “I know girls like you. Willing to do whatever you need to get a hit of that dominance again. Following me around, hitting me up ...”
I put my hand over his mouth. Even now, he couldn’t let that façade drop? “Should I remind you that you came to me too? You kissed me. You took my clothes off in the foyer and carried me to my bedroom.” I wasn’t letting him push me away anymore. Not when I’d seen the true depths of his feeling. Not now that I understood the truth of his reluctance. I let one hand slide down his chest toward his stomach; his muscles tightened as he inhaled, but he didn’t pull away. “Are you saying that was all because I’m a little pushy?” I pressed my lips against the scar over his heart. “I like you because of who you are, Archer. I know you’ve done some bad things.” I raised my head, but his eyes were shut against me. “You know all of my past, and somehow, you still want to touch me.”
He swallowed, ignoring my last statement. “One way or another, I’m getting back to the East Coast. I’m sorry I’ve confused you for the past few days, but we talked about this. It was a mistake.”
I slipped my hand over his crotch and was unsurprised to find him half-hard. I waited to see if he would pull away, but his hips moved forward into my hand as I threw one leg over him, bringing the heat between my legs against that hardness between his.
“That doesn’t feel like a mistake.”
“Josie,” he warned, but he threw his arm over my neck and buried his face in my hair.
“That’s what I thought.” I slid my hand beneath the waistband of his boxers, moving my fingers slowly down his front until I reached him, that warm steel so smooth beneath my palm, and I couldn’t help the little cry that escaped my lips at finally, finally touching him where I’d wanted to for so long.
“Tell me what you want, Daddy,” I whispered, and he leaped in my hand. I passed my thumb over the head, smearing a bead of precum, spreading my legs as wide as I could in our awkward position as he ground his hips so my own hand rubbed against my core, pushing on my clit, smearing my wetness across my pussy lips. “I’m right here. I’m not leaving. I’m not fighting you off. I want to—”
He grabbed my head and dragged my lips up to his. Our tongues battled inside our mouths as he rolled me more to my back, bending my wrist painfully but not so much that I would let go of him before he told me to. Then he rolled me on top of him and took my face in both his hands, holding me just too far away from him to kiss.
“Suck it,” he whispered, and I could have cried with relief. “Suck it like the bad little girl you are.”
I forced myself to linger as I shuffled down his legs and grabbed his waistband, wrenching it over his hips so his cock sprang free. He was fully erect, standing tall and proud in the morning light drifting through the windows. Before he could change his mind, I tossed my hair over my shoulder, leaned down, and wrapped my lips around his cock.
He groaned and pulsed within me at the same moment.
“Fuck, Josie.”
“Do you like that, Daddy?”
He bulged again, catching me off guard as I thrust down his length until I gagged a little. He didn’t pull back at the sound. Instead, he reached down to grab a fistful of my hair and shove me even farther down on him. His cock hit the back of my throat and kept going, easily sliding down my throat despite his girth. I swallowed.
“You made me hard for weeks, do you know that? Walking around shaking your tiny little ass, looking up at me with those big fuck-me eyes, and licking your lips every time you opened that pretty little mouth of yours. It’s enough to drive any man over the edge.”
I thrummed with pleasure as he pulsed in my mouth. He still wanted absolution for what we were doing, and I’d give it to him tenfold. I’d suck him off a hundred times if it meant he’d let me stay in his bed. I hummed a little to show him how much I meant it.
“Christ, you make it hard to hold on.” His choice of words told me everything. He needed me to make him feel as if he had no choice because I was too tempting, because what I did to his cock was too gratifying to turn down. I sucked harder, tasting the little spurts of his precum as he did everything he could to last longer and hold himself back from climax. I let one hand fall between my legs, stroking myself softly through my shorts as my arousal soaked through the fabric. I moaned when I touched my clit, and he rose a little off the bed.
“If you don’t want a mouth full of cum, you’d better stop right now.” I flicked my eyes up to look at him for the first time. His face had changed entirely, single-minded in his lust and desire to climax. He more than wanted me, and he was absolutely starving. He’d given in after weeks of denial and fasting, and it was all becoming too much, but I was nowhere near done with him. I began to bob my head up and down, and he moved his hand to the back of my head, guiding my mouth until he threw his head back and arched his hips, screaming through his teeth. He exploded in my mouth, hot and spicy cum hitting my tongue faster than I could swallow it. How long had it been since he’d had sex? I licked up the remnants dripping down his length as he lay panting, still as hard as he had been before.
Quietly, I slipped off my shorts and panties and climbed over him. I placed my bare sex against his skin, just above the base of his cock, and he jumped. I leaned down and put my mouth against his ear.
“Do you have condoms?”
“Side drawer.”
I fumbled around until I found one. I started to tear open the foil when he suddenly flipped me over. He slid between my legs and hovered there, the condom trapped in my left hand where he had it pinned next to my head. He held my right arm down below my wrist, making sure not to hurt me even in his obsessive and unstoppable lust. He was shaking with the effort of holding himself back. His eyes lingered on my sex, ran up my stomach, hesitated when he came to the hem of my shirt resting below my breasts.
“We don’t have to use it,” I whispered. “I’m clean. I have an IUD. You can fuck me raw if you want.”
His eyes snapped up to meet mine, and I held my breath, bracing for him, spreading my legs a little wider.
“Please, put it in me, Archer. I can’t stand it anymore.”
He released my right wrist and put his hand around my throat, squeezing the sides gently, but before I could suck in a breath, he was off the bed, covering me with the blanket as he grabbed his shorts off the floor.
“What’s wrong?” I sat up, letting the blanket fall to my waist, but he didn’t turn around.
“I’m going out,” he said. “This was a mistake. Christ, you make me lose my goddamn mind so fucking easily.”
“Archer, please—”
“Don’t be in my bed when I get back.”
I blinked, and he was gone, the sound of the slamming door echoing through the apartment, empty except for me.
*
I didn’t leave his bed. I didn’t even put on my clothes. I stayed in his room, wrapped in his sheets, leaving only briefly to use the restroom or eat a quick meal. I was committed to being in his bed when he came back, no matter what he said.
I was willing to give him some time to work out his feelings. He was suffering so much, and it had taken a lot out of him to reveal that to me. But the point was, he did reveal it. He let me hold him as he fought back his obvious tears, still so dedicated to his image that he couldn’t break down in front of me. I needed no entertainment as the hours wiled away; I brainstormed ways I could help him. But I couldn’t cure heart disease; I couldn’t convince the medical community of a full-body organ replacement. I didn’t know what to do, and I felt helpless, but I still wanted him. And now I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he wanted me too. He couldn’t continue to push me away after this. My fingers had slipped between the cracks in his armor; with a little tugging, he would reveal himself to me.
The shadows on the walls shifted and grew longer as the day progressed, from morning to afternoon to evening, and h
e still hadn’t returned. It was only the phone that got me out of bed.
That little red light started blinking, and I knew, once again, there was a new secret for me downstairs.
I contemplated. He’d told me not to go after the mystery of the photographs anymore; I’d promised him I’d stay out of it and I meant it. But he was gone, gone, gone. He hadn’t called or texted me all day; it had been hours without a single word.
He’d told me to rely on him, but if he was going to run out, then I didn’t owe him anything. I was going to take care of myself. I threw on clean clothes and ran downstairs as quickly as I could, not even bothering to put on proper shoes. I planned on coming straight back to the apartment. I’d give the photos to Archer as soon as he returned, whenever that was. Maybe he’d be so distracted he’d forget whatever had caused him to run out on me. I frowned, shifting, remembering I still hadn’t achieved any climax thanks to him. I wouldn’t be angry if he hadn’t so clearly enjoyed my services before leaving me high and dry.
In the lobby, I was surprised to find no pictures, not even an envelope. There was only a folded piece of notebook paper with two words:
Outside. Now.
I frowned and looked around the lobby, but I was alone except for the doorman.
“When did this come?”
“Less than ten minutes ago, miss.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I had my phone, but no purse. The letter didn’t say I had to go anywhere, just outside. I would step out, see if Chad was around, and duck back inside if not. Maybe I could convince him to talk to me in the lobby, where at least we’d be on camera and have a witness.
Either way, I could show the letter to Archer whenever he got back.
If he wanted to run off on me, I would do things my way. Fuck his opinion and fuck his temper. He was the one who couldn’t make up his mind.
