"d.a.m.n you, Anna, you"re going to cause us both to get arrested if I end up f.u.c.king you here," he groaned, pulling his thumb free of her lips.
"What"s wrong, Sheriff?" she asked. "Afraid you can"t stop with a kiss?"
"One kiss would never be enough."
Staring up at him breathlessly, lips parted, Anna waited with adrenaline-laced antic.i.p.ation as his head lowered and his lips touched hers.
As her lashes feathered closed, sensation began erupting inside her. His lips rubbed against hers, stroked and smoothed until a whimper of longing spilled from her lips.
"Please, Archer, kiss me. Just once." Trembling, adrenaline and pure hunger crashing through her system as her nails bit into his shoulders, Anna didn"t think she would survive if he didn"t kiss her.
His teeth caught her lower lip, gripping it for a second before releasing it, and then he gave her the kiss she had always dreamed of.
It wasn"t hard and rough. His lips settled on hers with a firm heat and an erotic caress. His tongue licked at the plump curves of her lips, parting them, catching the lower lip between his lips and licking over it before taking advantage of the fact that her mouth had parted for him.
Slanting his lips over hers, his tongue slid over her lips, licked against them, and possessed her with tenderness.
Oh, yes.
Pure erotic need shot through her senses.
Her lips parted further beneath his, her arms wrapping around his neck as her knees tightened at his hips and he ground his c.o.c.k between her thighs. The rasp of material, his and hers, over the swollen bud of her c.l.i.t sent waves of furious need whipping through the oversensitive bundle of nerves and striking to the heart of her womb with burning heat.
Pushing her fingers into his hair, Anna fisted them in the thick strands, desperate to hold him to her. He nipped at her lips, licked the little wound, then came back to take hard, heated tastes of her.
One hand slid from her rear, then his fingers stroked beneath the fabric of her skirt to find the curves of her rear left bare by the thong she wore beneath the frothy material.
Her knees tightened further against his hips, shudders working over her body as he stroked lower, curving between her thighs to find the hot, silken juices gathering at the entrance of her p.u.s.s.y, saturating the silk of her panties.
His fingers eased slowly, so d.a.m.ned slowly beneath the elastic of the thong- His head jerked up as he found the tightly clenched entrance at the same moment that slick dampness spilled from her again. Anna trembled against him, tiny, whimpering little cries escaping her lips as she felt the violence of the pleasure threatening to erupt into flames inside her.
"Come home with me, Anna." His gaze locked on hers, his body demanding, the need inside her insisting.
Come home with him?
No one had ever said those words to her before.
Come home- She"d never had a home, but the need to leave with him was suddenly as fierce, as strong, as the need to have him. As strong as the need to belong- "Sheriff, we have a situation." The voice that came through the radio at his hip was like a shock of ice against the heat raging through Anna"s body.
Archer stilled, stiffening against her, his lips drawing back from hers as she bit back a cry of denial.
Forcing her eyes open, staring up at him as he slowly eased her to her feet, Anna wanted to grab the radio and throw it away. Throw it so far that they could never be destroyed by it again.
"Sheriff, you there?" John Caine, Archer"s deputy, repeated, his voice low but no less demanding.
Pulling the radio from the case at his hip Archer brought it to his lips. Lips swollen by their kisses, sensual, s.e.xy.
"I"m here," Archer answered, the hammered gold of his eyes slumberous with the need for s.e.x but quickly clearing, as though that hunger had never been there. "What"s your location?"
"I"ll meet you on the western edge of town, out near the Hopkins" place. I"m on Hopkins Creek Pa.s.s, at the clearing," John answered. "Give me your ETA."
"ETA is thirty minutes unless you need me faster."
His gaze didn"t leave hers. He didn"t blink, and Anna felt her throat tighten with the need to scream, to rage, to deny the fact that he had to leave.
It had taken so long to get her nerve up. So long to tease him, to tempt him to her.
"Thirty minutes." Caine sounded as though the time wasn"t the problem.
Disconnecting the radio, Archer lowered it to his hip and pushed it into the case again.
"You have to leave," she said, her hands sliding down his hard chest to the clenched muscles of his stomach as she licked her lips, suddenly uncertain.
He nodded slowly.
Nothing else?
She waited, staring up at him, knowing, praying she was wrong; praying it wasn"t over.
Surely he would ask to call her? To see her? Perhaps have her wait for him-in his bed?
"I better go," he said softly.
Her throat tightened and she felt the rejection coming. She was intimately acquainted with being left behind, but this time it had been the last thing she had imagined happening.
"Archer-"
"Shhh." A finger against her lips reinforced the command. "Think about this, Anna. Think about it, and be sure, be very sure, this is what you want."
Before she could a.s.sure him that it was, he had moved away from her and disappeared along the shadowed path outside the small grotto. The protest forming on her lips was left unsaid, and the tears that filled her eyes, as always, were left unseen.
She couldn"t believe this.
Staring into the dark, with music, muted voices, and laughter surrounding her, Anna realized she should have expected it. After all, she couldn"t remember a time that she hadn"t been rejected, in some way.
Blinking back her tears and drawing in a deep breath, she too left the grotto. Unfortunately, she couldn"t leave the memory of what had happened in it behind her.
Pulling into the clearing next to Deputy Caine"s four-wheel-drive Tahoe, Archer turned the engine off and simply sat in the vehicle, staring at where Caine sat on his haunches next to a pale form.
Son of a b.i.t.c.h.
Son of a b.i.t.c.h.
Pushing open the door he stepped from the interior, the chill of the late summer air rushing at him as he closed the door and watched the other man straighten before moving toward him.
"Did you call anyone else?" he asked the deputy as the other man neared him.
"No, sir." Caine breathed in heavily.
"Who called it in?"
Caine shook his head. "I was driving by when I thought I saw lights out here. I turned in to investigate and saw the same thing you just saw when I pulled in."
The glow of headlights off a silken, pale body.
A lifeless body.
Pushing his fingers through his hair, he steeled himself for the inevitable. Striding the remaining distance, he hunched down and stared into the expression of pain and horror that twisted her features.
"f.u.c.k," he muttered as the girl"s ident.i.ty registered. "Ah, h.e.l.l."
What the h.e.l.l was going on here?
Katy Winslow, one of the waitresses from the Tavern. Her father had reported her missing the night before when she hadn"t returned home from work.
"The wounds are consistent with the Slasher"s." John sighed heavily. "And it looks like she"s been raped."
Yes, she had been raped.
Heavy, dark bruises marred the skin of her inner and outer thighs, as well as her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her eyes were open, staring out in unseeing horror and pain. A knife had cut into her body in far too many places to count them all in the dark. The most telling cut, though, was the puncture wound to her side and the one across her throat. The Slasher"s trademark wounds.
Blood marred her body.
She hadn"t even been cleaned before she had been deposited in this clearing.
"Rafer Callahan"s place, the old Ramsey Ranch, is just over the rise." Caine nodded in the general direction.
"Callahans didn"t do this, John." Archer wiped his hand wearily over his face before rising to his feet. "Call Nash in. See if he can justify that high-a.s.s salary he demanded."
Callum Nash, Corbin County"s new crime scene investigator, had been hired specifically for crimes such as the Slasher"s.
"Sheriff, Katy Winslow isn"t on the list of past Callahan girlfriends," John stated quietly, turning to face him. "h.e.l.l, Crowe"s the only one not involved with someone right now. He would have told us if he had signed up with someone new, and he makes a point not to talk to any of the women in town."
"Yeah, I know." Archer was well aware of that fact, just as he was aware that Crowe deliberately ensured there was no way the Slasher could target another woman because of him.
"Has she been seen flirting with the other two? Talking to them?" Archer asked.
John was a regular at the Tavern and Bar. It was there that most of the gossip and rumormongering began or eventually filtered through.
"As far as I know, Katy doesn"t talk to many men at all. She"s been dating the bartender there since she was in high school." Confusion filled the deputy"s voice. "Why kill her if she"s not a.s.sociating with the Callahans?"
"f.u.c.k if I know." Archer sighed. "Call in Nash and Chayna. Let"s see what we can find, and start praying that b.a.s.t.a.r.d hasn"t found a reason totally unrelated to the Callahans to start killing again."
Turning, Archer stomped back to his Tahoe, rage festering in his gut at the thought of the Slasher striking again.
The Slasher"s attention had seemed to focus on Rafer and Logan"s fiancees, who were now under the protection of Ivan Resnova. There had been some incidents, but he hadn"t managed to seriously hurt either woman. But why had he targeted Katy Winslow? It didn"t make sense. Sliding into the driver"s seat, Archer slammed the door before grabbing his cell phone from the pa.s.senger seat and dialing Crowe.
"Sheriff?" Callahan answered on the first ring.
"Crowe, how well do you know Katy Winslow?"
A dead silence came over the line for several seconds.
"I only know who she is, and where she works." Crowe"s voice was hollow, emotionless. "I"ve never spoken to her. Not to say h.e.l.lo, excuse me, or good-bye." He paused before breathing out wearily. "She"s dead, isn"t she?"
"It looks like one of the Slasher"s kills," Archer confirmed his suspicion, his teeth clenching. "When I catch him, Crowe, and I will, I"m not promising I"ll save him for prison."
Katy was a good kid. She and her boyfriend had been saving up for an apartment together. She was always smiling, always filled with laughter.
And now, she was dead.
"You"ll have to beat me to him," Crowe informed him, his voice so icy cold it would have sent a chill up a lesser man"s spine. "Are you at the site now?"
Archer gave him the location before disconnecting the call, knowing Callum would have a fit over the interference, but also knowing the Callahans well enough to know that by not telling them he would have been risking the threat of them attempting to investigate or draw the Slasher out on their own.
Leaning back in his seat and closing his eyes, he deliberately brought Anna"s face to mind. He let himself remember the touch of her, the taste of her, the warmth that surrounded him as he touched her.
She was his weak spot.
For far too many years Anna Corbin had been the woman he ached for the most, and the one he knew he couldn"t have.
At twenty-four, she was sweet as candy, as temperamental as a volcano, and just as hot. And she was his.
He"d been claiming her since the evening he"d realized, to his soul, to the base of his hardening d.i.c.k, that she was a woman.
Six years.
For six years he"d done everything he could, fought every battle, cursed himself, fought his desires, and ached for her.
She"d haunted his fantasies, invaded his dreams, and tonight, of all nights, had filled his senses with a pleasure he knew he wouldn"t be able to hold himself back from.
He"d told her to be certain what she wanted, because he knew once he got her in his bed, escaping it might not be easy for her if that was what she eventually decided she wanted. He was too hungry for her.
f.u.c.k that, he was too d.a.m.ned h.o.r.n.y for her.
The l.u.s.t that raged through him where Anna was concerned was one that no other woman could a.s.suage. If another could, then he would have ensured it was taken care of before now.
Before he touched her.
Before he tasted her.
Before he allowed himself to become addicted to the feel of her close to his chest, in his arms, and somehow awakening hungers he"d never known he had.
Archer could feel the fact that Anna was home to stay tightening in every bone and muscle of his body. She was a woman now, and he recognized that steely confidence he had seen in her eyes. She was a woman who knew what she wanted. He"d take her into his bed, but he would not let her into his heart-at least no more than she had managed already. d.a.m.n it, a man had to draw the line somewhere if he wanted to preserve his own sanity. In the meantime, he was going to ignore the voice in his head telling him that it was already too late.