Page 55 of Edged
“Like nothing?”
The couch groaned when Archer stood, and I could hear the soft sound of his footfalls as he approached, the heat of his breath against the back of my neck when he got too close, and the ache in his voice when he said, “As if I haven’t been walking around half-dead since I left your house that night, Owen.”
I turned and Archer took another step. My back pressed against his wall and I looked up at him, defiant and sad all at the same time. His features were weary, gentle, but every crease and line on his face telegraphed the truth of his admission. He looked over my shoulder at nothing and licked his lips. A slow drag from one side to the other and back again, accompanied with a small shake of his head like he was in disbelief at everything we’d said to each other.
“What are you saying?” I croaked.
He huffed and raised his hand, hesitating when his fingertips were inches away from my face. From the corner of my eye, I saw Archer flex his fingers and pull back before changing his mind and moving closer. His fingertips landed against my cheek—one, two, three, then his palm cradled my face and there was no stopping me from closing my eyes and leaning into him.
“If I could go back, I wouldn’t have left. I know that Mandy, I…I wouldn’t want her to be angry with you, but I couldn’t go back and walk away from you another time,” he said.
“Arch…”
“I know I walked away from you at Rapture, but I wasn’t sure you weren’t a fever dream and then you called me, and…”
He didn’t need to finish that sentence because we both knew what happened after I had called him to my hotel the weekend before.
“You walked away then too,” I reminded him. “You left me asleep in the hotel. You make a habit of leaving me, Arch, whether you want to admit it or not.”
He chewed the inside of his cheek, fingers flexing against my cheekbone. His other hand slotted over my bare hip, fingertips grazing the skin of my waist and sending ribbons of fire whipping up my spine.
“Would you rather I stay?”
The question was more than fair, and at the time, it was a no. I wouldn’t have wanted him around because I’d been carrying so much anger toward him for so long. But something about the way the morning light filtered in through his windows and the way the coffee smelled on his breath made me rethink all of that.
I still didn’t think there was a happy ending for us because everything that had been wrong about us in the past was still wrong now. But I didn’t see the harm in closing my eyes and living like a teenager again, living in the present instead of the future for once. After all, I’d already gotten on the plane and I was already in California, in hishouse, and he was so fucking close to me, and his lashes were long and falling closed over his chocolate eyes, and then his mouth was against mine and nothing else mattered.
Nothing would ever matter again besides the way my entire body sparked to life when Archer put his lips to mine. So, I parted them and moaned when he slid his tongue inside. When he tightened his hold around my waist and pulled our chests flush. The hand on my face went back into my hair and I went soft against him, except for the one place I’d gone achingly hard.
In that moment, it was easy to close my eyes and go back to being eighteen in the basement, climbing onto Archie’s lap and begging him to put me out of my misery. He was doing it again, but it had a very different flavor than before. He licked into my mouth deeper, groaning when my fingers scrabbled against his hips. Between him and the wall, though, I wasn’t going anywhere.
Without warning, he pulled back for a breath, eyes opened. He scanned my face, and I shook my head. He was looking for me to tell him to stop, and even if Mandy walked in his front door, I didn’t think I could have found the strength to do it. I grabbed his face and crashed our mouths back together, pushing off the wall and walking both of us to the couch. The backs of his knees hit and he landed on his ass with a huff of breath that shot past my lips, and I climbed on his lap without thinking. The movement was muscle memory it seemed, because our bodies slotted together and it felt like the same kind of blasphemy as before.
“Is that a yes?” Archie murmured, his hands sliding past the waistband of my underwear and kneading my ass until I gyrated against him and groaned.
“I just want to be with you here and now,” I said, kissing my way down his neck. He dropped his head back, angling his face toward the ceiling to give me more room and I sank my teeth around his collarbone until he made that sinful grunt I’d been jacking off to the memory of for ten years.
“Harder, then,” he murmured, and I let go and bit him again before pulling back and licking over the divots left from my teeth.
“Do you still like when it hurts?”
“I like whenyouhurt me.” He dropped his face down and fisted my hair, yanking my head to the side and sucking what would undoubtedly turn into a bruise onto the side of my throat.
“We’re too good at doing that to each other,” I said, and he slanted our lips back together before I could say any more.
Being kissed by Archie was better than being fucked by anyone who wasn’t him, and by the time he got his hands back into my underwear, I was ready to come all over his hand without so much as a single word of encouragement.
I scrambled away from him, partly to get his hands off my cock and partly to get my underwear off. I almost fell onto the table, kicking free of the material, and Archie took advantage of the space to get a bottle of lube and a condom out from a cabinet in the sideboard.
“Do you store lube and condoms in every room?” I asked, coming back toward him as he settled back on the couch.
“Would you rather I use the cheese?”
He rolled the condom down his length, then took my dick into one of his hands and shoved two fingers on his other into my mouth. I thought about babies and baseball to stop myself from coming on the spot.
“Get them wet, Owen. There you go,” he praised, dragging his fingertips down the length of my tongue.
I climbed back onto his lap and he wasted no time sinking both of his spit-soaked fingers into my ass. Passing me the lube, he wrapped his other arm around my waist and pulled me down onto his hand.
