by Lora Leigh
Unless they hadn’t actually sold that property, he thought.
Forty years.
That would have been about the right time if JR and Eileen had been murdered. Then, to frame the remaining Barons, that property had somehow been placed in trust for their daughters?
Still, none of it added up.
“Archer, it doesn’t make sense,” she pointed out what he already knew. “Why make it so damned difficult if the point was to get the land?”
Giving his head a hard shake, he focused his attention back on Anna.
“Unless the point was to frame your grandfather and the others for JR and Eileen’s deaths,” he murmured.
What the hell was he doing? He’d told himself he wasn’t going to discuss this with her, yet he was.
Archer tightened his lips, determined to hold back any other observations he might have.
Hell, she wasn’t a trained law enforcement agent or a deputy. She was a tender twenty-four-year-old ex-virgin with more dreams than experience, and more stubbornness than any woman had a right to possess.
And that stubbornness went hand in hand with her soft heart, her generosity, and her open nature.
Yet, who else deserved the information? Who else could he discuss it with besides Anna and the Callahans? Crowe, Logan, and Rafer would have to have the information. And, no doubt, Ivan Resnova as well. Resnova would have the resources to get answers they couldn’t.
That added four others who could possibly reveal the secrets the Barons had kept for so long.
Fuck.
“If they were framed for JR and Eileen Callahan’s deaths, then once the trusts were acquired, he’d have to have something in place to ensure he had the property,” Anna pointed out logically. “Their daughters were teenagers then. He couldn’t marry all of them when they came of age, which is what he would have had to do if gaining the property was the point.”
Archer nodded. “Dead end,” he murmured.
“Why demand I be taken out of the County and placed in a different school every year?” The years of loneliness filled her voice. “How could I have played in this scheme, Archer? What makes me so important?”
“That’s a question only one person can answer.” He sighed. “Hell, there are a lot of questions only the person who began all this can answer.”
“And the Barons believe that person is the Slasher,” she stated, rather than asking for affirmation.
“That’s what they believe.” He nodded. “So far, there have been three different men committing these murders. Thomas Jones killed twelve women twelve years ago. Lowry Berry killed three women this past spring and tried to kill Cami Flannigan. Now, someone else, so far unidentified, has killed at least two women, and possibly a third. Yet there are too many similarities to rule out the same man being involved in each death.”
“The FBI profilers have always said there were two or more men involved.” Her frown deepened.
Archer grimaced. Hell, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut here, and this endless round of questions was going to get them nowhere.
“I didn’t take you to my bed to catch a killer.” It was time to change the subject.
Rather than arguing the statement, she stared back at him silently, the bitter betrayal in her expression never wavering.
“Then why did you?” she asked him. “You’ve had every chance to take me since I turned sixteen.”
“And I was an adult,” he snapped. “Do you really think I would have touched you at that age?”
“That wasn’t what I said, Archer,” she retorted, her own tone heated now. “I said you had every chance. Since I was sixteen, every time I saw you, I flirted so blatantly it’s a wonder the words ‘Fuck me’ weren’t stamped on my forehead.”
His jaw tightened. “Should I apologize for waiting until you were old enough to understand what the hell I might want from you?” he growled.
Her nostrils flared, eyes narrowed. Well, hell, wasn’t she just pissed off now?
“What you should do is forget the whole thing,” she snapped. “While I move into your very comfortable guest room.”
Oh, he wanted to fuck her. He wanted to fuck her with a hunger that belied the fact that he had already had her once that night.
As she turned to stalk from the room, determination began to burn through him.
Before he could stop himself, he was pulling her around and jerking her to him. “Damn you, Anna, I don’t think I’ll ever have enough of you. I could fuck you until the end of time and I’d still want you.” And he didn’t look in the least happy about it.
There was nothing so sexy, so sensual, as the lust burning in his gaze, tightening his face. Nothing that could have held her in place easier than the pure erotic heat that surrounded her.
Before she had a chance to argue, even if she had wanted to, his lips covered hers, possessed them, and stole any fight still hiding inside her.
She couldn’t fight this pleasure. She couldn’t fight his touch. She loved it far too much. She loved him far too much. Her fingers gripped his shoulders, her nails digging into him as she strained against him, desperate to get closer now. Her lips parted, accepting his tongue, stroking it, tasting him and becoming drunk off the need spilling from his kiss. Moaning, aching for him, Anna pressed closer to the hard wedge of his cock as it centered between her thighs. Rolling her hips, riding it, aching for more, she dared him with every move to take her. With the hard wedge of his cock centered on her sensitive pussy, Anna couldn’t help but move against him. Whimpering with pleasure and rising need she rode the iron-hard erection her body craved, torturing them both with her hunger.
As she felt her back meet the wall, Anna moaned at the sexual promise inherent in the move. Her fists uncurled, her nails biting into his shoulders as she arched against him. She couldn’t get close enough. No matter how she tried, her gown and the cotton pants he wore kept their flesh from touching, kept his cock from demanding entrance inside the aching depths of her sex.
“Oh hell, no, you little wildcat,” he growled as she tried to push the elastic band of his pants over his hips. “I’ll be damned if I’ll let you have it that easy.”
Archer pulled back, placed her on her feet, then shocked her again. Just when she thought he was going to release her, he gripped her gown and robe in both hands and, before she could fight him, had both over her head and tossed to the floor, leaving her naked before him. His head lowered, lips parting, and as Anna gasped, his teeth gripped a tight, hard little nipple.
Worrying it first with his teeth, Anna felt the electric jolts of sensation shooting from the tender tip to her swollen clit and the clenched depths of her pussy. Her hands buried in his hair, pulling at the thick strands as she strained to force him to suck the needy tip.
Anna cried out in desperate pleasure at the lashing sensations surging through her sex with each hungry draw of his mouth. She was only dimly aware of him removing his pants as his tongue licked at the tortured tip before moving to its mate. Pleasure, desperate and burning in its intensity, rocked her senses.
What was he doing to her?
She should never, not in a million years, allow him to touch her now. As furious, as hurt as she was, she should be anywhere but here.
But, oh God, it was so good.
The pleasure bordered on pain. It rode an edge of sharp sensation so incredible that Anna couldn’t resist, no matter how hard she tried.
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.”