“What’s wrong?” He frowned.
“Nothing.” I tried to smile, but it didn’t work. Archer could see through me now.
“You don’t gotta do this, Em.”
My belly swooped at his statement, the nickname most of all.
Em. I think I liked it when he called me Em. I liked the sound of it, the way it looked on his mouth when he spoke it out loud.
“Say that again,” I whispered, ignoring him.
“Say what?”
“That nickname.”
“JP?” He scowled.
“No,” I laughed. “Say ‘Em’.”
His eyes grew tender and serious. Lifting his hand, he cradled my cheek and traced my jaw with his thumb. “Em.”
I smiled. “I like that.”
He leaned forward, closer, pressed our foreheads together. His voice shook as he said the words, “Don’t do this.”
I stiffened.
“Come home with me. Back to Rockford. Please. Don’t fucking leave.”
My eyes burned with unshed tears. I shut my lids, though, because I didn’t want them to fall. I didn’t want Archer to see them. And most of all, I didn’t want to make this choice.
“It won’t work,” I said, pulling away. “You know what will happen if I try to bring my mom back—”
“Then don’t bring her.” His eyes narrowed. “Your mom left you, Emily. What part of that don’t you get?”
I shook my head. “She did it because she had to. Mom was trying to save me and Niyol.”
He growled and shook his head. “Fuck that.”
I touched his arm, squeezed his elbow tight. “Please, Archer. You have to know there’s no choice for me here. I can’t stay. My mom needs me.”
“And what if she doesn’t, huh?” He laughed bitterly. The noise made my skin crawl and had me taking a small step back again. “What if you get there and she’s all fucking happy with her life? What if she doesn’t want you around? What if she’s lying to you again? You know she’s capable of it.”
A knot formed in my throat, but I lifted my chin, not willing to back down. “I’ll convince her otherwise.”
“Stupid, stupid girl.” He gripped his bike handles so hard his knuckles turned white.
I winced and got behind him, trying my best to hold back the tears as I pressed my forehead against the middle of his back.
Surprisingly, though, Archer didn’t start the engine. Instead, he spun around on the seat, facing me, his eyes pained. Tortured, even. “Listen to me, Em. Your mom? She’s a wanted woman. If my brothers ever find you two together…”
My heart throbbed in my chest when I realized what this was about. Archer was scared for me.
As far as I know, nobody had ever been scared for me before.
Not my brother. Not Sam. Maybe not even my mom.
“It’s gonna be okay.” I cupped his face between my palms. “I know it is.” For him, yes. But not me. My life was over. Getting my mom to go with me was just one step. Everything after that? I was clueless about.
I really was stupid.
“You don’t know that,” Archer barked, dropping his hands. “I want you safe, Emily. But you can’t side with traitors and expect everything to be fine. Even if I do take care of Pops, your mom has pissed off a lot of people, and you being on the run with her is gonna make you a target too. I’m only one person in a club with hundreds.”
“I’m not asking for your protection. I’d never expect for you to choose sides,” I whispered.
Fingers glided through my hair, a palm cupping my cheek this time. Our eyes met, an impending explosion just waiting between us. “You’re crazier than I am, you know that?”
I tried to smile but couldn’t. Everything hurt when we were so close like this. Everything pulled at me in a direction opposite to my mom. I was torn. And it killed me because I knew that the decision I wanted to make—be with Archer—wasn’t the decision I was destined for.
“If you want to come home, I’ll make it happen,” he continued. “I’ll keep you safe, make some shit up about Pops threatening you or something. Hell, we can turn around right now. But if you go with your ma, I can’t do shit for you. And that…”
“That what?” I whispered.
“That will kill me.”
My bottom lip trembled, and my heart ached with crushed hopes and stupid dreams forever laid to rest. “It’s a good thing I’m not asking you for help then, right?”
Archer hesitated, studying me with furrowed brows. And just when I thought he’d argue with me some more, he nodded and did the opposite, turning back around in his seat, forcing my arms around his waist as we left the barn.
After multiple dips and divots taken through the fields, and a layer of thick mud coating our shoes and pants, we finally made it up to the main road that led back to the two places of business. We weren’t on the road long when it began to rain again, though, making the blacktop slick for the tires. As we approached the bridge from yesterday, I found myself on edge, struggling to slow my frantic heartbeats. Just before the bridge was rushing water, faster than it probably should have been going. The base of the bridge could still be seen, but getting to it would be an issue. Regardless, Archer kept going, his speed slow, his legs and feet glued so tightly to the bike that no force of nature would tear him off of this thing.
But my body, on the other hand…
I continued to peek over his shoulder, a total control freak by nature. My chin was so close to his neck that my breathing had to be hot against his skin. He shuddered a little, and I worried for a second that maybe I was distracting him… until I heard him say, “Fucking hell, we got a tail.”
I looked over my shoulder this time, eyes widening at the sight of the dark car drawing close. “Who is it?” I yelled, feeling my heart beat faster, my stomach tighten.
Archer shrugged, kicked the speed of his bike up too.
“We need to find somewhere to pull over and hide!” I shouted into his ear.
He shook his head then veered right, taking an unmarked path that I hadn’t seen.
Quickly, I glanced back over my shoulder, still spying the car. The road we were on narrowed ahead, but the black car kept going, speeding faster, the rain splashing harder against the windshield.
Archer took a quick left then, followed by an even sharper right a few minutes later. My arms tightened around his waist. This time when I turned to look at the car, I didn’t see a single thing but the trees around us and the falling rain.
“We lost them!” I yelled over the roar of the thunder.
He nodded, but instead of going faster, he slowed the bike, cursing loudly. Slashes of water became like buckets against not only our faces but our calves as the rain fell faster and the water grew higher beneath us.
Crap. We were in flood waters now.
“Hold on tighter.”
I buried my helmeted face against his back, praying for a chance.
A chance we never got.
The water increased in speed below us and above us, my heart racing so fast it was as though it knew it needed to escape as much as my body did. Eventually, Archer was forced to stop. He pulled over to a patch of land beneath a tree, which sat up on a small hill that was quickly getting surrounded by water.
He turned off the bike just as a flash of lightning filled the sky above. I jumped, as did he, and the fierceness in his gaze as he slid off the bike and reached for my hand was something so dangerous.
Archer, for the first time since I’d known him, looked terrified.
“We gotta move.”
I nodded, rushing after him, feet sliding as I followed. I officially hated the rain—all bodies of water really—and if I ever had to be outside in a thunderstorm again, it would be too soon.
The rumble of a car engine sounded somewhere below. I looked, finding that same black car trying to get to the path we were on. “Archer!” I yelled, motioning a hand toward it.
“We gotta go. Now.” We raced th
rough the mud, me falling to my knees once when my foot sank into the ground.
“Emily!” he shouted.
I yanked at my pant leg, my ankle too, looking back at the car, then the hole again, which only seemed to grow deeper by the second. Unable to see through the steam filling my helmet, I whipped it off just as Archer dropped down beside me. He yanked at my leg, pulling my foot loose, minus the shoe.
A loud crunch sounded from behind. The two of us turned just in time to see Archer’s new bike being overtaken by the rush of water.
“Fuck!” he cursed loudly, bending over to scoop me up into his arms.
My eyes burned with tears as the water grew higher below. When it got to be too much, I buried my face in his cold neck, saying another silent prayer that we could get up and over the hill to the field on the other side before the water overtook us completely. Before the black car found us too.
“Can you climb it?” His hair stuck to his face and mud coated every inch of him.
I looked to where he was pointing. A tree just ahead.
“Yes, I can climb it.”
“Alright. You go first.” He set me on my feet then urged me ahead, pointing at a low tree branch. “Step there,” he ordered.
As a child, we’d mostly lived in apartments, so the tree-climbing thing had never been a part of my world. But thankfully my legs were strong and my body was in shape from the gym, so it didn’t take me long to figure out how to make up for my lost childhood.
Once I made it up as far as I could go, I turned, eyes widening when I noticed Archer was still at the bottom, watching the water, his back braced against the tree. I screamed his name and begged him to come up. But when he tilted his head back and glanced my way, I realized two things.
Number one: he wasn’t going to climb up here.
And number two: he was sacrificing himself for me.
“No!” I yelled, not thinking twice as I moved back along the creaky branch and slid to the trunk, beginning my descent.
“Emily, what the hell are you doing?”
By the time I got down beside him, there was absolutely nothing that could stop me. “You asshole.” I flung my arms around his waist, gasping as I stepped into the cold water that now hit mid-calf.
Another crash of lightning hit, and the thunder followed within seconds.
“You’re so stupid,” he yelled back, pulling me closer, his lips on my head, his arms encased around my body. “Why the fuck—?”
I cut him off, yanking his face to mine. Then I did what he’d told me not to.
I kissed him.
Nineteen
Archer
I wasn’t scared of dying. Never thought about it. I didn’t believe in God and all that shit, and I’d always been fine with the logic of life ending and there being nothing beyond.
But beneath that tree, for the first time in my life, I was terrified of what was next. Not for myself but because of the woman in my arms. The woman who was breaking all my rules.
My old man once told me kissing was the curse that started it all, and I’d be fit not to do it. Ever. Other than a couple of times when I was eighteen, then again at twenty, I’d taken his advice and kept my lips to myself. But Emily… sweet, sassy, stubborn Em. She’d ruined my mind and my rules.
Hell, I was pretty sure she’d ruined me for every woman now. Either way I looked at it, I was going to die, whether it was at the hands of Pops or this water, it didn’t matter. All I wanted was to get Emily to her mom and away from Pops and his rogues. Then I’d die a man worthy of death.
To think that the woman I’d always thought was a spoiled pain in the ass was now the one thing I couldn’t live without. A woman who wanted her family safe, just like me. How the fuck could I have ever resisted that?
I gripped the base of Emily’s hair, pulling her head back. Water filled my shoes, covered my weakening knees, but Goddammit, I wasn’t about to die without feeling every inch of her mouth against mine. Slow but fierce, I parted her lips with my tongue, running it over the surface of those red lips that had been teasing me for days—years, really.
Her fingers tightened along the back of my shirt—whether it was fear or lust, a combination of both, I wouldn’t know. But I took it all, let it happen, devouring her. Loving her.
The water rose higher, hitting my thighs. Emily fell against me, and I slammed a hand back against the tree, keeping the other locked in her hair. My balance was shit, felt like I was seconds from being pulled under the water, but if I was gonna die, then I wasn’t about to go down without making sure Emily Lincoln remembered who I was and what it was like to be kissed by a man who’d sworn to never do it again.
The tips of our tongues barely touched before she started falling away. Our lips disconnected, foreheads pressed together…
“Archer!” she screamed, losing her balance too.
“Hold on, damn it. Don’t you fucking let me go, you hear? I’m going to get us out of here.”
She nodded against me, wrapped her legs around my waist beneath the water. We began to float, my hands slipping, her legs sliding away.
“Emily!”
Her eyes widened in panic. I reached out, grabbing her sleeve, only for my body to be thrust back… and for hers to disappear beneath the rising waters.
Twenty
Emily
My head throbbed. Water choked me, but the land beneath my body was dry, and when I blinked, I found myself being lifted in the air, something holding me tight. I coughed before I could scream, eyes blurring through tears. A familiar face was there… until it wasn’t.
The second time I woke, I was in a hospital, a nurse hovering over me and taking my vitals. My ears were buzzing like they were both filled with water, yet I knew the nurse was speaking to me because I could see her lips moving.
Panic clawed at my throat, and I immediately sat up straighter in the bed, my gaze frantic as I searched the room and tried to yell, “Archer! Archer!”
Our kiss.
His panic-stricken eyes.
His fingers clinging to the sleeve of my cardigan just before the water swept us apart.
I shuddered. My bottom lip began to tremble too. Oh, God. Where was he? Why wasn’t he here? Why hadn’t he even tried to climb that stupid tree? Why was he so stubborn?
Had the men in the car found him? Found me?
I ripped the blanket off my lap, going for my IV next, but a hand settled against my shoulder. The nurse. I looked at her, blinking through my haze and tears and panic.
“Where is he? Where’s the man I was with? His name is Archer Benedict. He’s blond and tall and… and…” A sob let loose, strangling me. I should have told him not to come. I should have run away. I was selfish and stupid for letting him come with me, and I hated myself. So much.
He wasn’t there.
He was gone.
The nurse’s words grew clearer, but her face was filled with confusion as she looked over her shoulder toward something—or I should say someone. A figure moved into the room, standing beside the nurse.
Short body, long hair, eyes that matched mine… I gasped, a hand flying over my mouth when I finally realized who it was. Instead of happiness or relief, the only emotions waging war inside of me were confusion and anger.
So. Much. Anger.
It was her fault we were here.
Her fault Archer might be gone.
Her fault that my life had fallen apart because she’d lied to me about it all.
No longer did I want to reach out and hug her. Instead, I wanted to reach out and wrap my hands around her neck and shake.
My mother.
My mom.
Why was she here?
Where had she been?
She smiled at me, giving me a small wave. In her hands was a cup of coffee. Always freaking coffee, always in a Styrofoam cup. She looked healthy. She’d put on a little weight even. She looked… good. She wasn’t supposed to look good. She was supposed to be Pops’s prisoner. Bruised an
d battered and skinny and imprisoned. I’d been so worried about how I was going to get her away from him, yet there she was, this well-dressed and happy woman standing before me.
My hearing grew clearer just in time for the nurse to say, “You’re so lucky your mom was able to get to you in time.”
I whipped my head her way, eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Your mom. She said she had been following your car, but the two of you got separated.”
The black car. Mom had been in that black car.
Twenty-One
Archer
I woke up cuffed to a wall. Go figure. Kinky toys and sex would never mean the same to me now. Not after my time with Emily. With Em.
At the thought of her, I yanked on the cuffs, needing to get out of here. To find her and make sure she was okay. God, if only I’d held on a little tighter or forced her ass to stay in that tree…
Think now, Archer. Regret later.
Breathing in deep, I looked around the room, trying to figure out where the hell I was. Four white walls, no windows, and an old black table with folding chairs sat surrounding it. I didn’t know who’d gotten me because I’d been knocked out—the bump on the back of my head proof. But I wasn’t dumb. We’d been close enough to wherever Pops was that it was likely him. Who else would it be?
My stomach grew hot and hard at the thought, while my brain waffled between images of Emily and the water, the black car too. If she hadn’t drowned, then there was no doubt that whoever had me also had her.
“No,” I growled to myself, yanking at the cuffs even more. Still, I got nowhere.
I laid my head back against the wall, sweat dripping down the back of my neck. Damn it, she had to be okay. Emily was my fighter. The woman who’d broken my walls down and figured me out when nobody else could. She was also the only person in my life that I was pretty fucking sure I’d break every rule for if I ever saw her again.
Her Hot Ride: A gripping and sexy biker mc romantic suspense novel Page 17