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

reached up and smacked myself across the forehead.

Lucas wasn’t familiar because I had seen him before.

“Your Archer’s brother!” I exclaimed, feeling like a dolt that it took me that long to recognize that fact.

Lucas smiled, tapped his fingers to his brow in a salute. “One and the same.” He smirked. “How many good things has he told you about me?”

I paused, amused despite myself. “A lot actually.”

Lucas’s smile grew.

“She means nothing,” Archer muttered. “I told her you were a pain in my ass, who never knows when to shut up. Especially, when he’s a pain in the ass who just shows up out of the blue without any warning.”

“Had to check up on my big bro.”

Archer rolled his eyes then tugged me toward him as he towed us toward the kitchen. “Hungry?” he asked, coaxing me into a chair as he began going through the bags. “I got stuff to make Bolognese.”

“He’s already made the pasta dough,” Lucas said, sliding into the stool next to me. “I helped.”

“By helping, he means by generally being annoying.”

Lucas buffed his knuckles on his shoulder. “That’s my expertise.” He dodged when Archer threw an orange at his head, the fruit bouncing off the wall behind him with a thunk, rattling the paintings I’d admired the first time I’d come here.

“Come over here and help me put the groceries away,” Archer said, and I started to push myself off the seat, but he pointed a finger in my direction. “Not you,” he grumbled. “You,” he said, narrowing his eyes at Lucas. “You’re not a guest, so get your ass up off that stool.”

“I—”

Archer rounded the island, bent over me and slanted his mouth across mine, his kiss hot and intense and . . . tragically brief.

Because he released me, grabbed his brother’s shirt sleeve and brought them both to the other side of the counter. “Groceries,” he ordered and turned to the stove.

“I’m only going along with your orders because you’re feeding me,” Lucas muttered.

I snorted.

Lucas glanced up at me, brows raised.

“It’s only, I’ve said a similar thing to him.”

Lucas’s lips twitched, and then he laughed. I joined in, cackling when Archer glared at us both before releasing a long-suffering sigh. “Why do I already regret the two of you meeting?”

“Because we’re going to team up?” I asked.

Lucas reached across the island and held up his hand for me to high five.

Archer sighed again.

My lips curved.

His did, too.

And I knew this was going to be one of the best nights of my life.

Chapter Seventeen

Archer

I’d slipped a key into her purse before dinner was even finished cooking.

Not that I worried I’d forget, but rather that I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to have that link with her.

So when she went off to use the bathroom, I’d tucked it safely onto her key chain, along with returning her lockpicking tools—a story I’d need to get all the details to at a later point.

Later, because Lucas had shown up out of the blue a couple of hours before, a duffle bag in one hand, a carefree smile on his lips, and totally and effortlessly interrupting my plans with Niki. Then he’d abandoned me in the grocery store, leaving me to carry the food home, food he’d mostly selected because he had terrible eating habits and my normal healthy fare wouldn’t satisfy his taste buds.

Not that I wasn’t happy to see my brother.

It was just . . . I had plans.

With Niki.

Plans without a third wheel of my annoying, awesome, frustrating, exceptional younger brother, who’d charmed Niki far more easily than I had been able to. A fact I like to consider was because she wasn’t attracted to him—because she’d liked me too much to let me get close so quickly, right?—either that or she just liked Lucas better.

Rolling my eyes at myself, I gathered the sleeping Niki closer.

She was cuddled against my chest, having succumbed to sleep before the first episode of the show we’d put on after dinner had finished.

My chest.

So, she clearly liked me better.

I allowed myself one more eye roll and then ran my fingers through her hair as I turned my gaze back to the TV.

Lucas’s voice was soft, barely reaching my ears. He reached for the remote, paused the show. “I like her, Arch.”

My heart squeezed. “Me, too.”

“She’s different.”

“Yes,” I agreed, running my hand lightly up and down her back. She was different, a juxtaposition of fearful and brave, of smart and capable, of beautiful and fragile. But strong. She was mostly strong, because she’d managed to put that fear aside and give me a shot.

I wasn’t going to fuck it up.

“She’s really different,” he said.

“Yes,” I agreed again.

“You should marry her.”

I froze, my arms seizing so tightly that she frowned against my chest. Quickly, I released her, ran my hand up and down her back again, settling her, waiting until her face relaxed again before acknowledging Lucas’s statement. “I just got her to agree to date me,” I said. “It would be a stretch to get her to accept a proposal.”

My brother smirked. “You are difficult to stomach.”

I chucked a pillow in his direction, but because I didn’t want to jostle Niki too much and risk waking her, I missed by a mile.

“Getting old enough that your eyesight is going?”

“Fuck off.”

“I will,” he said. “Tomorrow, because I don’t want to drive home through the night.”

My heart had been doing all sorts of squeezing over the last few days, but it didn’t appear that the reaction would be stopping any time soon. “Luc?” I asked.

Wary hazel eyes coming to mine. “Yeah?”

“Thanks.” I swallowed, my throat suddenly tight. “For everything you did. I—I—” I inhaled, exhaled slowly. “I wouldn’t have gotten through it without you.”

Lucas’s expression went serious for once. “You would have.” I wasn’t sure I believed that. “And, before you start rejecting that idea, just think about all the times you were there and saved my ass. I’m not even talking about how I wouldn’t have gotten through identifying their bodies,