Secret Sins (16 page)

And she did try.

Pride was most often her downfall. Yet with each touch of Archer’s knowing, experienced
hands, her pride melted, bit by bit, for the pleasure her body was beginning to crave.
His touch was addictive. His kiss was like a drug.

Lifting his head from her breasts, his expression was tight and hard with lust. Archer
stared down at her with narrow-eyed hunger and dominant sexuality.

“Did you think I would let you go so easily?” he growled.

Her lips parted as she fought to drag in air, to breathe rather than gasping with
each hard pulse of pleasure racing through her body.

“I won’t let you go,” he snarled when she refused to answer him.

He wouldn’t let her go? But he didn’t love her. He didn’t need her.

Archer believed love was a fairy tale, something only children believed in. As much
as it hurt, as deep as the pain went, she couldn’t fight the pleasure. But she sure
as hell could build her defenses against him, once he wasn’t throwing her senses into
chaos.

And her senses
were
in chaos.

As Archer’s lips roved over her neck to her lips, stealing yet more kisses, her pleasure
was spinning out of control. The hard length of his cock pulsed and throbbed against
her stomach while her pussy wept in need.

“Please, Archer,” she cried out, the melting ache in the depths of her vagina demanding
the hard thrusts of his cock.

“Please what, baby?” His head lifted, the fierce demand in his gaze bordering on command.
“Please fuck you? Please give you all the pleasure we’ve both ached for?”

Damn him and his arrogance.

His dominance.

“Damn you, Archer, fuck me,” she made her own demand. “Fuck me like you mean it.”

“Oh, baby, every stroke, every cry I pull from your pretty lips, trust me, I mean
it.”

His lips covered hers again. Briefly. One hard, stinging sip of her lips before he
pulled away and quickly pulled her around to bend her over the wide desk beside them.

Before Anna could process the fact that he was coming in from behind her, his hard
hands were gripping her hips as he came over her.

Surrender echoed in her pleading cry. Sensual surrender rushed through her as the
thick crest of his cock parted her intimate lips and she felt her pussy beginning
to suck him in. Her juices flooded from her inner flesh, making it slicker as he began
to stretch the inner muscles and work his way inside her.

“Archer.” Arching to him, losing her breath, nothing mattered but the feel of his
hips pressing, rolling, penetrating her vagina with fiery thrusts.

Rubbing, stroking, the thick, hot crest rasped the tender tissue, burned as it stretched
her and sent flaming pleasure tearing through her. His lips brushed against her ear,
nipped, then sent her senses spinning further as he began to speak. “Damn, baby, I
love how sweet and wet that tight little pussy is around my dick.”

His voice, tight and filled with lust as he pressed his dick slowly inside her. Moving
in, then out, thrusting in to his balls before pulling back and fucking inside once
again.

Wide and steel-hard, his erection rasped over nerve endings so sensitive she cried
out at each stroke, poised at the edge of release and on the point of screaming to
be pushed over. The need to orgasm burned through her, her hunger for it clawing at
her senses.

“Do you like it, sugar-girl?” he groaned at her ear. He thrust harder inside her,
his cock shuttling to the hilt with each stroke. Each impalement sent a rush of radiant
heat and pleasure-pain radiating through her. She felt ready to fall into a maelstrom
of erotic sensation so brilliant that nothing else mattered.

Reaching back, Anna grabbed his thigh, desperate for some part of him to hold onto.
For some part of Archer to hold onto.

“Do you want more, sugar-girl?” he demanded, his voice hoarse, his own pleasure building.
“Do you want to come for me, Anna? Do you want to send that sweet pussy clenching
and raining over my dick?”

“Yes,” she cried out, unable to deny him anything now. “Oh God, Archer, let me come.
Let me come all over your cock.”

“Do you love it, Anna? Do you love coming for me?”

“Yes,” she cried out. “I love it, Archer. Oh God, I love how you fuck me, how you
make me come—”

Groaning, his thrusts became harder, faster. Drilling inside her, the thick width
raking and caressing delicate nerve endings drove her insane with the building sensations.
With his hands tight on her hips, holding her in place, he shafted inside her with
such powerful inward strokes she became lost in the dizzying rush to release. She
couldn’t hold back. She was lost in him. She felt so much a part of him at this moment
that she wondered if she could ever live without his touch, his possession.

Each thrust pushed her higher, burned brighter inside her.

Anna whimpered his name, begged, pleaded for release. When it exploded, it tore through
her senses and, for a moment, destroyed any idea she’d ever had of pleasure.

Behind her, Archer fucked her through each explosive pulse of release. He pounded
inside her, taking her fiercely until, at the last second, he pulled free of her,
spilling his release to the rounded curves of her rear.

Archer was branding her with his touch. He was stealing parts of her that she had
no idea how to protect. He was tearing through any walls she could have built against
him and anchoring himself so deep inside her that she feared he was going to end up
owning her soul.

CHAPTER 9

Two days later

Anna was going to make him crazy.

Sitting at his desk, Archer tried to keep his attention on the reports he was supposed
to be working on, but he was damned if he could do it. All he could think about was
Anna, her pain-filled eyes and the sense of betrayal he’d glimpsed there.

Hell, it wasn’t as if he’d run over a damned pet or something. Yet she’d had that
same look in her eyes.

Trying to shake the memory wasn’t easy. And fixing it was going to be even harder.
She’d been betrayed by everyone around her, and now she was expecting Archer to betray
her as well.

He forced his attention back to the report on the abandoned vehicle he’d found on
Main Street that morning. The car was registered to Elizabeth Haley of Sweetrock,
but Archer hadn’t been able to locate an address for her. The address listed was one
that hadn’t been used in years. The house on the property was falling in and the name
on the mailbox was dried and faded, though still legible.

That name wasn’t Haley.

He’d checked with Talia Beckett in the clerk’s office and, though they had the same
information he had, she couldn’t remember an Elizabeth Haley, either. And Talia, it
seemed, had known everyone in the County by name and by face until this one.

As he frowned down at the information, the sound of his secretary’s voice pulled him
from the report.

His secretary, Madge, wasn’t pleased.

“Just try to hurry, Mr. Sorenson. I’ve been trying to get those reports out of him
for days.”

“Stop fussing, Madge. He can take ten minutes for me.”

Archer grinned at the querulous tone of the County attorney’s voice before the office
door opened and Wayne Sorenson entered quickly.

Tall, reed-thin with a slight stoop at his shoulders in a subconscious attempt to
appear shorter, Wayne Sorenson had that studious, lawyerly look portrayed in movies
for decades.

With serious brown eyes and a face lined from years of squinting over law books and
worrying about clients or cases, the other man had just celebrated his sixty-fifth
birthday and was still going strong.

Hell, Archer hoped he had half the energy at that age as the County attorney had.

“Damned bulldog,” Wayne muttered as he closed the door and frowned over at Archer.
“Where the hell did you find her? She’s a menace to society, Archer, and a pain in
my ass whenever I have to deal with her.”

Archer snorted. “At least she’s not making you do reports.”

Pushing the files to the side while motioning Wayne to have a seat, Archer pushed
the intercom button.

“Yes, hon, what can I get for you?” Madge answered with her best Southern-charm voice.

Archer lifted his brows in surprise as he glanced at Wayne, before letting a grin
curl at the side of his lips.

“Madge, could you get some coffee? A pot, please, and two cups. And if you don’t mind,
a few pieces of that banana-nut bread you brought in?”

It was a hell of a way to have to get some of that bread himself. She’d turned him
down until he finished his reports. Hopefully, she wouldn’t deny him in front of Sorenson.
She should know that was just a breach of good manners.

“Are those reports finished yet?” Madge asked sweetly, causing Wayne to chuckle in
triumph.

“Not yet,” Archer growled. “And if I don’t get my coffee
and
bread, then you’ll be lucky to get them before the week is out, let alone my shift.”
He disconnected with a swift click of the line before she could bring up an argument
that would just piss him off.

“Lord have mercy, that woman needs a husband and a passel of kids to chill her out
and keep her out of trouble,” the older man grumbled.

“Hell, then I’d just have to lock one of ’em up for killing her.” Archer grinned,
glancing outside the smoked-glass window as Madge rose from her chair, glared through
the window, then turned and headed for the break room.

“Damn woman,” Wayne muttered before giving Archer an appraising look. “Loan her to
me for a few months. Maybe I could get caught up on my paperwork.”

Archer really didn’t want to have to arrest Madge for killing the county attorney.
That would just be a hell of a mess.

“Sorry about that, Wayne.” Archer shook his head, grinning back at the other man smugly.
“As irritating as she can be, I think I’ll keep her.”

Wayne nodded, though Archer could see the instant calculation filling the other man’s
eyes. If he thought he could bribe Madge away, then he had a surprise coming. There
wasn’t a chance in hell Madge would leave the sheriff’s office, and Archer knew it.

“If you ever change your mind, let me know,” the other man bargained instead. “I at
least want first choice at hiring her.”

“That I can do,” Archer promised, grinning at the thought. “You’d return her in a
day flat, though.”

Leaning back in his chair he watched as the slender, doe-eyed young woman opened the
office door and stepped inside with a large coffee tray.

Madge had spent five years in Atlanta, Georgia, working for an upscale designer, modeling
the clothes they made.

She had instead elected to stay in Sweetrock to look after her parents while her brothers
and sisters ran around the globe and had fun rather than continuing in the career
she had chosen.

Her father had begun developing Alzheimer’s the year before, and her mother had only
recently had a stroke.

If Madge was bitter about the choice, she never showed it. No matter where Archer
saw her, or how bad her day might have been in dealing with him, she still seemed
to keep her cool.

Setting the tray on the corner of his desk, she gave the obviously uncompleted stack
of files a hard look before turning her attention back to him.

Archer narrowed his gaze on her. “Two hundred years ago you would have been burned
at the stake as a witch,” he informed her.

“Not hardly, sugar,” she drawled. “Especially if the judge’s files were in the same
shape yours are.”

He had to give her that one. No doubt Madge would have survived when many others went
up in flames.

Waiting until she poured the coffee and sliced the bread into small, thin slices,
Archer took the opportunity to watch Wayne from the corner of his eye.

The other man couldn’t take his eyes off Madge’s legs, encased in silk hosiery and
black heels.

Setting Archer’s cup and saucer in front of him, Madge then turned and placed Wayne’s
at the end of the desk.

“Hold my calls until we’re finished, Madge,” he told her as she finished.

“I’ll take care of it,” she promised as she turned and walked gracefully from the
room before closing the door behind her.

Archer enjoyed the slice of bread, small though it was, and sipped at his coffee as
he gave the other man a chance to do the same.

“Why do I think I was privileged to a slice of that heavenly bread because it was
the only way to get your own?” Wayne asked ruefully as he finished it, then brushed
any possible crumbs from his gray slacks.

Archer chuckled. “She’s a slave driver.”

“She reminds me of Amelia before I forced her home and took something very important
from her.” Wayne sighed. “She’s not been the same since,” he lamented again.

Archer had to admit Amelia had changed over the past few years.

“Where is Amelia?” he asked the other man. “Anna was worried about her. She hasn’t
answered her calls since Anna returned to Corbin County.”

Wayne sighed, shaking his head. “I talked to her last night, but getting her to answer
the phone isn’t always easy. I keep telling her she’s going to have to pull out of
this slump, but—” He shrugged helplessly as he lifted his gaze to the window behind
Archer. “Hell, she stopped confiding in me a long time ago.”

“When you talk to her again, would you let her know Anna’s worried?”

Wayne nodded. “I’ll make sure she calls, Archer. Anna’s one of the few friends Amelia
has left. I’d hate to see anything happen to destroy that friendship.”

Archer rather doubted it was that imperative, but he didn’t tell Wayne. Sometimes,
Archer had the feeling that the other man manipulated his daughter far more than anyone
suspected. Wayne just wasn’t the type to beat her as far as he knew.

“So, then.” Archer leaned back in his chair, putting his arms on the padded rests
at the side. “What can I do to help you?”