Sex On The Seats (Love After Midnight Book 4) by Elise Faber (most inspirational books .txt) 📗

your bloodstream is probably currently overrun with salt after your processed food foray,” he said, teasing, making his tone roll through the air, along my eardrums, and into my brain.

Or maybe my heart.

Both were terrifying.

One perhaps slightly more. I just didn’t know which . . . okay, I did know. I just wasn’t ready to admit it yet.

Especially when it was my heart.

Gah!

Enough.

“Niki?”

“What?” I asked, licking the back of my spoon.

“Put the can down. And go open your front door.”

I finally processed what he was saying and what it might mean. “Are you here?” I asked, experiencing a strange buoyancy I didn’t want to explore too closely.

“No.”

Pop.

Deflated, I tried to temper my tone. “Oh.”

“But I’ll be there in . . .” I heard a soft click, a sudden quiet, as though the background noise had cut out. As though he’d just parked and turned off his car. “. . . thirty seconds.”

“Thirty—?” I dropped the can into the trash, the spoon into the sink, along with a couple of plates and cups I hadn’t gotten around to washing the day before. Luckily, my consumption of processed food—cough, out of the cans themselves—meant that I didn’t have a lot of dishes. But I wasn’t the cleanest person, and Archer was a neat freak. And—

Oh, God. What was I wearing?

I nearly dropped my phone as I tried to look down at my clothes, at my “hacking” outfit, which basically consisted of a tank top along with the oldest, ugliest, holiest pair of sweats I owned, a giant, half-bleached hoodie—half because during my last cleaning phase I’d had a misfire while trying to scrub my toilet—along with no bra, no underwear, and giant fluffy pink socks.

I was a blob of gray with strange pink tentacles and—

Knock-knock.

“Fuck,” I breathed.

“Niki.”

I didn’t answer him, just kept the phone to my ear as I did one of those weird-ass flurry of movements I’d seen heroines in romantic comedies do—flying around the room, ripping off the sweatshirt and running to the laundry room. And then fighting with the laundry room door, since there was a dirty load sitting on the floor just on the other side of it that I’d been meaning to take care of . . . along with a clean one sitting in a basket on the dryer.

Clean clothes.

Small victories.

“Niki,” Archer said again, the knock coming a second time.

I put the cell on speaker, tossed it on the washer. “Just a second!”

One jerk to toss the sweatshirt on the pile, leaving me in just my tank top. Another to drop my pants alongside it. I didn’t have time to search for underwear or a bra, just grabbed the first bottoms that my hands rested on—black leggings thankfully—and then ran out of the laundry room, wrestling with the door again on my way out.

I paused—actually paused—to study my hair in the reflection of the fridge (seriously, what the fuck?) before I remembered myself and ran to the door.

Knock—

I yanked it open.

And sweet baby Jesus, what right did the man have to look so fucking gorgeous? Huh? Huh?

Especially when he just held up a bag, one that smelled wonderful, and asked, “Hungry?”

“Fuck you!” I slammed the door, banged my head against it.

The man was too fucking wonderful, and I was feeling way too insecure and as though I never could measure up. I had intentionally ignored his first text, been snarky on the call, and meanwhile, he had been on the way to my place with food that smelled even better than my tiny raviolis, and he didn’t seem to care that I’d just shut the door in his face.

As though the man had X-ray vision, his next knock came right against my forehead, his voice carrying laughter as it drifted through the wood. “Should I just leave this right here then?”

I groaned, reached for the doorhandle and tugged it open. Again.

“Where’s your cell?” he asked.

My sigh was heavy, lifting and dropping my shoulders on an inhale and exhale. My phone was still in the laundry room, sitting on top of the washer, probably still connected to Archer’s in all my speakerphone glory, considering he still held his in one hand.

“Why are you here?” I groaned.

“I can go.”

I groaned again. “No, Archer. I just . . . fuck, I’m a pain in the ass, and you’re here anyway and—”

“You, Niki. I just like you. That’s it.” He stroked a hand down my arm, making me shiver, making me shift closer. “There isn’t an ulterior motive, except”—a curve of his lips—“that if I keep feeding you, maybe you’ll let me hang out for a while longer.”

Hope was a roiling thing inside me. It should feel good, this new glow of meeting someone, of liking him, of wanting nothing more than to spend time with him. But it didn’t feel good, or at least not only good because of the giant elephant sitting on my chest, the irrefutable choice. My lips parted and I blurted, “I’m going to disappoint you. I always disappoint people who try to care about me.”

Archer was statue still, his face a study in shock. But almost as I processed that, the shock disappeared, pushed out by fury that turned down his mouth, that shot sparks through his hazel eyes. He pushed past me, slamming the door behind him, throwing the lock, setting the bag of food on the table I kept in the hall for my keys and other shit that I didn’t feel like carrying any farther than the front hall.

Then he turned back to me, and the ferocity of his expression had me skittering back a step.

And another.

But then he was there, right in front of me, forcing me into a farther retreat, forcing me down the hall until my back was against the wall, until his front was firmly pressed to mine, his hands on either side of my head, closing in on me, creating a bubble of just him and me, a tiny world that only existed for us.

He crouched