Archer (Reynolds Protective, #1)

by Rebecca Sharp

Words were more effective than bullets. Bullets killed quickly. Words buried deep in your consciousness and would hold you hostage forever.

Safety came at a price, and the price of protection would always be solitude.

And then she walked out of the post office like I could just accept that she wasn’t dead and move on with my life. Like I could just continue living in my small-ass-town knowing the woman I’d sworn to protect—the woman my body still craved—was now living here, too. Keira McKenna.

There was only one thing that could keep me from her. And unfortunately for her, I wasn’t going to fall for the play dead card again.

But with two short sentences, he had us both by our balls, and he knew it.

“Permanence isn’t something that should be feared… or taken for granted.”

I’d felt a lot of things for Keira. Protective. Worry. Sympathy. Lust. Ache. But jealousy was a fucking new one. In fact, I couldn’t remember ever experiencing the sensation before—

“I’m forever marked as a man who died so the woman he cared for wouldn’t have to break her vow,” he corrected me, but he wasn’t talking about Artemis or Orion.

“Fifteen stars.” He traced lower, reaching the top curve of my breast before his hand turned so it was the backs of his knuckles that dragged along my thin T-shirt. “Fifteen bruises.”

“I’m going to end on that sweet clit of yours,” he swore, and my mouth dropped open, instantly going as dry as the Sahara. “I’m going to suck her so fucking hard your orgasm will brand you from the inside out. It will ink into your nerves a kind of pleasure that will never be erased—the kind of pleasure that will turn you to fucking stars.”

“It’s everything, Keira. If I fuck you, I want more than just the trust it takes for you to give me your body. I want you to trust me with it all,” he explained through clenched teeth. “Your past. Your secrets. Your fears. Every fucking thing because that’s the kind of man I am—the kind of man I’ve always been. I won’t settle for parts of you, and that is a big fucking deal.”

Life had taught her that protection spelled imminent danger; it was why she and her dad had gone the route that they had. I thought protection was the easiest way to get what I wanted—to get her. It wasn’t.

“I’ve lived enough lies, Archer, to know what is the truth,” I told him breathlessly. “And the truth is, past, present, or future, I will always regret every chance I give up to be with you.”

I didn’t blame him for not surviving. If that was the only way to see her every night, I’d pin myself to the night sky, too.

“I just want to be able to tell her she’s safe.” My voice was low, hardly recognizable. “Sometimes, Archer, it’s more important to know you have someone to face the unknown with, no matter what that is, than to have all the answers.”

She wasn’t the one who’d been claimed in that doorway, I realized. I was. Utterly and completely claimed by her.

“I’m saying that there will always be something to run from in life, baby,” he rasped softly. “But I want to be the thing that makes you stay and fight. I want to be the hope that makes you stand against the odds.”