Secret Sins (12 page)

Hard flares of sensation raced from her nipples to her clit, striking into her vagina
and sending her juices rushing past clenched muscles to further dampen the folds.

“Oh God, Archer,” she moaned, her hands moving from his shoulders to his hair, her
fingers clenching in the strands as he released her nipple and began spreading heated
kisses lower.

Moving down her body, his gaze held hers as his lips kissed, his tongue licked her
sensitive flesh. Anna felt intoxicated by the rising pleasure and the desperate sensations
building inside her.

With her fingers buried in his hair, his gaze holding hers, she could only watch,
her breathing restricted, as his kisses began moving across her stomach to her abdomen,
and moving inexorably to the aching flesh between her thighs.

She could barely breathe. Held mesmerized by his gaze, by the incredible pleasure
building inside her, she could only watch as he placed stinging, roughened kisses
on her thighs.

“Archer, please.” Arching to him as he paused just above the throbbing bud of her
clit, his gaze still holding hers, Anna tried to lift herself to the heat of his lips.

“Please what, Anna?” he tempted her, brushing his chin against the sensitive mound.
“Tell me what you want. Tell me how you want it.”

What she wanted?

How she wanted it?

Moaning, she shook her head. How the hell was she supposed to do that? She’d never
been touched like this before. Reading about it, or watching it, didn’t give her a
clue what she wanted or how she wanted it.

“Archer—”

“What do you want, sweetheart?” he tempted her further. “Tell me, and I’ll give it
to you.”

Tightening her fingers in his hair as she licked her dry lips, Anna fought to push
past the need to cry out at the rising desperation building in her body, in her senses.

“Please, please, Archer.” Finally forcing words past her swollen lips, she arched
to him again, needing his lips there, his tongue, his kiss.

“Tell me what you want, Anna.” His voice was more demanding, rougher than ever, as
the brush of his breath against the sensitive flesh drove a shaft of searing sensation
racing through her pussy and throbbing through her clit.

“God. Archer, please. Like my nipples. Take my clit like you did my nipples.” She
couldn’t bear the need any longer.

Hunger trumped shyness and sent her racing headlong toward the flames threatening
to consume her. “I want your tongue, Archer. Your lips.” Her breathing hitched on
a moan. “Now, Archer. Please, God, put your lips on my clit.”

The words were no more past her lips than his tongue found her. Swiping through the
saturated slit, rasping the sensitive flesh hungrily as Anna felt such ecstatic sensations
tearing through her that she would have screamed if she’d had the breath to do so.

She didn’t have the breath.

Parting her legs further, her knees lifting and spreading as her heels dug into the
mattress, she fought to get closer to him. Anna lifted to his questing tongue. As
Archer licked with hungry demand around her throbbing clit, it felt as though a thousand
suns exploded through her taut muscles and over sensitive flesh.

A wail tore from her lips, only to be caught halfway as his lips suddenly clamped
on the exploding nubbin. His thumb pressed into the clenching entrance of her vagina,
barely penetrating, stroking as his lips, tongue, and the suckling heat of his mouth
sent her hurtling through ecstasy.

She couldn’t cry out.

Anna lost her breath to the incredible sensations tearing through her unprepared senses.
Even her own fingers, her knowledge of her own body, had never produced such rapture.
She was locked in it, her body shuddering, jerking against him as his suckling mouth,
his rasping tongue, and knowing fingers delivered such sensual chaos that Anna could
only ride the fury of the sensations as they tore through her.

Rapid bursts of ecstasy were still firing inside her as he moved. Ignoring her desperate
cry of denial, Archer came to his knees between her thighs, his knees pressing her
legs further apart as he gripped the base of his cock and covered her shuddering body.

The wide, pulsing cock head pressed against the clenched entrance, stretching her
slowly as his kisses began to devour her lips.

She could taste herself on his kiss, but rather than pulling her free of her arousal,
it only built it.

Flames of pleasure-pain began tearing through her as the blunt, engorged head of his
cock pushed inside her, stretching the tender entrance. The impalement of previously
untouched muscles burned her flesh as he worked the blunt head slowly inside.

The iron-hard crest raked across previously hidden nerve endings, striking at her
senses with so many alternating sensations that she could barely process them.

“Oh God, Archer!” Crying out his name, Anna watched through pleasure-blurred eyes
as his head lifted, his fierce eagle gaze locking onto hers as his hips moved again.

Pulling back, pressing deeper, Archer worked the thick, hard flesh against the clenched,
untried muscles of her pussy. He possessed her with a single-minded intent that stole
all semblance of control.

As he pulled back again, Anna felt the throbbing crest poised at the entrance of her
vagina as his thighs tightened and the muscles of his hips bunched. A second later
he was surging inside her with a fierce, hard thrust that sent the thick shaft pushing
past the veil of innocence she had been saving for him.

Anna could only hold on for the ride.

Her fingers tightened on his shoulders, ragged cries falling from her lips as he began
to move with powerful thrusts, pushing deeper inside her with each inward movement.
Anna arched her hips toward him, desperate to take all of him.

Every sensation, every harsh groan, every stroke of his thick erection shafting inside
her sent ecstatic explosions converging on her senses as ecstasy built higher inside
her.

Driving into the clenched depths of her pussy, past previously untouched flesh and
bared nerve endings, Archer drove his erection in to the hilt. Pleasure ruptured with
blazing force inside her, each explosion ripping through her senses and marking her
soul.

He was possessing her.

Dominating her every response.

He was taking more than her virginity, more than the sensitive depths of her responsive
body. With each fierce, plunging thrust, she swore he was stealing her heart.

Building, rapturous pleasure, violent in its intensity, began exploding through her.
As though there were too many sensations, too much heat—

Anna exploded again, crying out his name, her head tilting to the side as stinging
kisses were delivered to the sensitive flesh of her neck.

The additional pleasure-pain amplified the explosions, the pleasure, until Anna could
only cry out again with the force of them. She gave herself wholly to the force of
the orgasm as it possessed every molecule of her body, every ounce of her emotions.

She was only dimly aware of Archer’s ragged groan as the force of her own climax began
to ease. Her vagina still clenching, rippling around his erection, her breath caught
as he forcefully pulled free of the clenched grip she had on his cock.

A ragged male growl echoed through her senses as the heated, damp spurts of his release
spilled against the swollen, sensitive flesh of her clit.

His lips were parted against the side of her neck, the burning bite of a fierce, possessive
kiss against her flesh mixing with the echoing waves of her completion.

Exhausted, physically sated, she lay beneath him, unable to move, barely able to breathe.
Lying against her, his hold still tight and possessive despite his completion, Anna
luxuriated in the warmth of his flesh, the beat of his heart.

She could lie in his arms, just like this, forever.

She didn’t have to move, she decided. There was no reason to even consider leaving
the bed and his hold, until she simply had no other choice.

Archer was moving, though. Easing from her, she expected him to collapse beside her,
but instead he was moving away. The feel of him leaving the bed sent regret and aching
hurt racing through her.

Keeping her eyes closed, she told herself she wasn’t going to call him back. She wouldn’t
beg, rage, or cry as she had heard of other women doing when their lovers eased away
from them and found another bed to sleep in.

He’d given her a pleasure she couldn’t have expected—

The sound of the bedroom door closing behind him wasn’t what she heard, though.

A frown flitted between her brows as she heard water running in the bathroom. Seconds
later her eyes opened quickly at the feel of his hands parting her thighs.

Archer moved between her legs, his expression pensive as he took the cloth he carried
and tenderly cleaned the wetness from the tender flesh between her thighs.

“What are you doing?” She was shocked at the action.

She had never heard the girls who bragged of their sexual conquests saying anything
about this.

“You’ll sleep better,” he promised, as his lips quirked at the side in a slight smile.

She would sleep better?

Watching as he finished cleaning the proof of their release from her, Anna admitted
that Archer wasn’t a man she would ever figure out easily.

But she wanted to.

She wanted to know him, to know his touch, his pleasure, his agonies, and even his
regrets.

She wanted to know why he wanted her, and why he hadn’t let her know before now that
he desired her.

And she would ask him about it, she promised herself, just as soon as she had slept
and recovered from the pleasure that had sapped the last of her strength.

Moving from the bed and returning to the bathroom, Archer ran more water, then, as
Anna felt drowsiness stealing over her, returned to the bedroom and the bed.

Even more shocking, he eased her back into his arms as he settled in beside her, her
head coming to rest against his chest.

“We’ll talk in the morning,” he stated, his voice quiet and intent.

“Okay,” she agreed, though she wasn’t certain what the discussion was going to be
about.

No doubt he wanted to discuss the whole lack of emotion, lack of relationship rules.
She almost smiled at the thought of it. Too late for that on her end.

For now, all Anna wanted to do was lie against him, to sleep, and to luxuriate in
the completion that filled her.

She might never actually recover from it, though.

She knew she would never recover from the man and the intensity of the pleasure he’d
given her.

Anna knew there would never be another touch that could ever compare to that of the
man who held her now.

A man she feared she could never possess as he now possessed her.

Body.

Heart.

Soul.

She just might well belong to Archer Tobias.

CHAPTER 7

A man was stepping into a minefield when a woman had the power to make him forget
something as important as the meeting he had scheduled several hours before dawn that
morning.

Archer was just beginning to drift off to sleep, Anna held securely against his chest,
when the silent vibrating alarm in his watch went off. It wasn’t a response to alert
him to the time, but a trigger set off by the alarm system in the house.

Gently detaching himself from the fragrant warmth of the woman resting against his
chest, Archer quickly slid from the bed, found the pants he had kicked off earlier,
and pulled them over his legs hastily.

As he moved from the bed he collected the weapon he kept tucked just beneath the head
of the mattress.

He doubted the weapon was needed, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Archer
had never considered John Corbin an enemy, but, now that Anna was here, in his bed,
anything was possible.

With the Glock tucked against the side of his leg, he moved to the door of the study
that he’d left ajar by several inches before going to bed and angled his head to look
inside the room.

He could see John Corbin standing in front of the large map of Corbin County that
Archer’s grandfather had commissioned. Using yellow tacks, Archer had marked the position
of each body the Slasher had left for the authorities to find.

John was frowning at the map, his heavily lined expression reflecting his grief over
the situation he’d found himself in, and his inability to find a way to resolve it.

Archer narrowed his eyes at the older man, waiting to see if he moved.

It had been John who had come to him ten years before, when Archer’s father had first
begun showing the signs of Alzheimer’s.

Randal Tobias had been quietly investigating the Slasher’s kills, attempting to pinpoint
some common individual the girls had associated with, besides the Callahan cousins,
who might have had such murderous tendencies, or such an overriding hatred for the
three young men.

With Randal’s illness, John had been desperate. His granddaughter, Anna, had been
a teenager, barely fourteen, but already begging to return to Corbin County when her
parents moved back to the ranch for the spring to help John with the ranch during
calving.

The older man had claimed he kept his granddaughter from the county because of the
Slasher, and because of Anna’s curiosity where her Callahan cousin, Crowe, was concerned.
It seemed no matter the excuses they made or how often they tried to tell her it was
too dangerous for her in Corbin County, she refused to believe it.

The Slasher only struck at the Callahans’ lovers, she argued once she’d understood
the significance of the targets the killer chose. She wasn’t a lover, she was simply
a cousin.

Every occasion the young girl had been home it seemed the opportunity arose that she’d
run into Crowe or one of the other cousins. She’d always spoken to them, always attempted
to draw them into conversation, and always ended up in tears when they refused to
talk to her.