Secret Sins (3 page)

“What kind of birthday kiss, Anna?” he questioned, his voice hoarse, rough.

“Do you remember the dress I wore?” she asked, tilting her head back as his lips moved
along the shell of her ear.

She ached for his kiss. He had never kissed her. She had never felt his lips on hers,
and she needed it.

“I remember,” he growled.

The dress had been white, long and flowing, the soft chiffon a caress against her
flesh and falling around her like a waterfall of material.

“You lifted me to my dresser and pressed me back to the mirror. You pushed my gown
above my thighs as you spread them, and you kissed me there.”

She couldn’t stop the flush that surged beneath her skin at the declaration.

His breathing was rough and ragged as his fingers flexed at her hips, then slid around
to her rear. Clenching the rounded curves and lifting her, he ordered, “Spread your
thighs, baby, grip my hips.”

His cock ground against the mound of her pussy, nothing but the silk of her panties
and Archer’s pants between him and the slick dampness spilling from her sex.

Anna’s mind froze. For one long moment she couldn’t think or process the sensations
racing through her.

“I think I can make that dream come true soon,” he groaned as she felt her rear settling
on the top of a table and his fingers speared into her hair and pulled her head back.

The sharp, heated sensation that tugged at the roots of her hair shouldn’t have been
pleasure, and it shouldn’t have been arousing. But it was.

Then his hand moved, sliding around to her cheek, her jaw, his fingers cupping it
as his thumb glided over her lips. The rasp of his flesh against the sensitive curves
had them parting as she drew in precious air.

Eyes narrowed, he watched her, the gold of his gaze mesmerizing her as the pad of
his thumb stroked, caressed, building the heat inside her to an inferno.

Finally, he parted her lips, the broad digit pressing against them as she flicked
her tongue over the pad of his thumb.

Archer froze, a hoarse growl leaving his lips as she licked, then sucked it inside
and loved the feel, the taste, of him. Rubbing her tongue over the pad, she suckled
at it. She felt the hard, aching clench of her womb and the heated wetness as her
juices flowed from her pussy.

“Damn you, Anna, you’re going to cause us both to get arrested if I end up fucking
you here,” he groaned, pulling his thumb free of her lips.

“What’s wrong, Sheriff?” she asked. “Afraid you can’t stop with a kiss?”

“One kiss would never be enough.”

Staring up at him breathlessly, lips parted, Anna waited with adrenaline-laced anticipation
as his head lowered and his lips touched hers.

As her lashes feathered closed, sensation began erupting inside her. His lips rubbed
against hers, stroked and smoothed until a whimper of longing spilled from her lips.

“Please, Archer, kiss me. Just once.” Trembling, adrenaline and pure hunger crashing
through her system as her nails bit into his shoulders, Anna didn’t think she would
survive if he didn’t kiss her.

His teeth caught her lower lip, gripping it for a second before releasing it, and
then he gave her the kiss she had always dreamed of.

It wasn’t hard and rough. His lips settled on hers with a firm heat and an erotic
caress. His tongue licked at the plump curves of her lips, parting them, catching
the lower lip between his lips and licking over it before taking advantage of the
fact that her mouth had parted for him.

Slanting his lips over hers, his tongue slid over her lips, licked against them, and
possessed her with tenderness.

Oh, yes.

Pure erotic need shot through her senses.

Her lips parted further beneath his, her arms wrapping around his neck as her knees
tightened at his hips and he ground his cock between her thighs. The rasp of material,
his and hers, over the swollen bud of her clit sent waves of furious need whipping
through the oversensitive bundle of nerves and striking to the heart of her womb with
burning heat.

Pushing her fingers into his hair, Anna fisted them in the thick strands, desperate
to hold him to her. He nipped at her lips, licked the little wound, then came back
to take hard, heated tastes of her.

One hand slid from her rear, then his fingers stroked beneath the fabric of her skirt
to find the curves of her rear left bare by the thong she wore beneath the frothy
material.

Her knees tightened further against his hips, shudders working over her body as he
stroked lower, curving between her thighs to find the hot, silken juices gathering
at the entrance of her pussy, saturating the silk of her panties.

His fingers eased slowly, so damned slowly beneath the elastic of the thong—

His head jerked up as he found the tightly clenched entrance at the same moment that
slick dampness spilled from her again. Anna trembled against him, tiny, whimpering
little cries escaping her lips as she felt the violence of the pleasure threatening
to erupt into flames inside her.

“Come home with me, Anna.” His gaze locked on hers, his body demanding, the need inside
her insisting.

Come home with him?

No one had ever said those words to her before.

Come home—

She’d never had a home, but the need to leave with him was suddenly as fierce, as
strong, as the need to have him. As strong as the need to belong—

“Sheriff, we have a situation.” The voice that came through the radio at his hip was
like a shock of ice against the heat raging through Anna’s body.

Archer stilled, stiffening against her, his lips drawing back from hers as she bit
back a cry of denial.

Forcing her eyes open, staring up at him as he slowly eased her to her feet, Anna
wanted to grab the radio and throw it away. Throw it so far that they could never
be destroyed by it again.

“Sheriff, you there?” John Caine, Archer’s deputy, repeated, his voice low but no
less demanding.

Pulling the radio from the case at his hip Archer brought it to his lips. Lips swollen
by their kisses, sensual, sexy.

“I’m here,” Archer answered, the hammered gold of his eyes slumberous with the need
for sex but quickly clearing, as though that hunger had never been there. “What’s
your location?”

“I’ll meet you on the western edge of town, out near the Hopkins’ place. I’m on Hopkins
Creek Pass, at the clearing,” John answered. “Give me your ETA.”

“ETA is thirty minutes unless you need me faster.”

His gaze didn’t leave hers. He didn’t blink, and Anna felt her throat tighten with
the need to scream, to rage, to deny the fact that he had to leave.

It had taken so long to get her nerve up. So long to tease him, to tempt him to her.

“Thirty minutes.” Caine sounded as though the time wasn’t the problem.

Disconnecting the radio, Archer lowered it to his hip and pushed it into the case
again.

“You have to leave,” she said, her hands sliding down his hard chest to the clenched
muscles of his stomach as she licked her lips, suddenly uncertain.

He nodded slowly.

Nothing else?

She waited, staring up at him, knowing, praying she was wrong; praying it wasn’t over.

Surely he would ask to call her? To see her? Perhaps have her wait for him—in his
bed?

“I better go,” he said softly.

Her throat tightened and she felt the rejection coming. She was intimately acquainted
with being left behind, but this time it had been the last thing she had imagined
happening.

“Archer—”

“Shhh.” A finger against her lips reinforced the command. “Think about this, Anna.
Think about it, and be sure, be very sure, this is what you want.”

Before she could assure him that it was, he had moved away from her and disappeared
along the shadowed path outside the small grotto. The protest forming on her lips
was left unsaid, and the tears that filled her eyes, as always, were left unseen.

She couldn’t believe this.

Staring into the dark, with music, muted voices, and laughter surrounding her, Anna
realized she should have expected it. After all, she couldn’t remember a time that
she hadn’t been rejected, in some way.

Blinking back her tears and drawing in a deep breath, she too left the grotto. Unfortunately,
she couldn’t leave the memory of what had happened in it behind her.

*   *   *

Pulling into the clearing next to Deputy Caine’s four-wheel-drive Tahoe, Archer turned
the engine off and simply sat in the vehicle, staring at where Caine sat on his haunches
next to a pale form.

Son of a bitch.

Son of a bitch.

Pushing open the door he stepped from the interior, the chill of the late summer air
rushing at him as he closed the door and watched the other man straighten before moving
toward him.

“Did you call anyone else?” he asked the deputy as the other man neared him.

“No, sir.” Caine breathed in heavily.

“Who called it in?”

Caine shook his head. “I was driving by when I thought I saw lights out here. I turned
in to investigate and saw the same thing you just saw when I pulled in.”

The glow of headlights off a silken, pale body.

A lifeless body.

Pushing his fingers through his hair, he steeled himself for the inevitable. Striding
the remaining distance, he hunched down and stared into the expression of pain and
horror that twisted her features.

“Fuck,” he muttered as the girl’s identity registered. “Ah, hell.”

What the hell was going on here?

Katy Winslow, one of the waitresses from the Tavern. Her father had reported her missing
the night before when she hadn’t returned home from work.

“The wounds are consistent with the Slasher’s.” John sighed heavily. “And it looks
like she’s been raped.”

Yes, she had been raped.

Heavy, dark bruises marred the skin of her inner and outer thighs, as well as her
small breasts. Her eyes were open, staring out in unseeing horror and pain. A knife
had cut into her body in far too many places to count them all in the dark. The most
telling cut, though, was the puncture wound to her side and the one across her throat.
The Slasher’s trademark wounds.

Blood marred her body.

She hadn’t even been cleaned before she had been deposited in this clearing.

“Rafer Callahan’s place, the old Ramsey Ranch, is just over the rise.” Caine nodded
in the general direction.

“Callahans didn’t do this, John.” Archer wiped his hand wearily over his face before
rising to his feet. “Call Nash in. See if he can justify that high-ass salary he demanded.”

Callum Nash, Corbin County’s new crime scene investigator, had been hired specifically
for crimes such as the Slasher’s.

“Sheriff, Katy Winslow isn’t on the list of past Callahan girlfriends,” John stated
quietly, turning to face him. “Hell, Crowe’s the only one not involved with someone
right now. He would have told us if he had signed up with someone new, and he makes
a point not to talk to any of the women in town.”

“Yeah, I know.” Archer was well aware of that fact, just as he was aware that Crowe
deliberately ensured there was no way the Slasher could target another woman because
of him.

“Has she been seen flirting with the other two? Talking to them?” Archer asked.

John was a regular at the Tavern and Bar. It was there that most of the gossip and
rumormongering began or eventually filtered through.

“As far as I know, Katy doesn’t talk to many men at all. She’s been dating the bartender
there since she was in high school.” Confusion filled the deputy’s voice. “Why kill
her if she’s not associating with the Callahans?”

“Fuck if I know.” Archer sighed. “Call in Nash and Chayna. Let’s see what we can find,
and start praying that bastard hasn’t found a reason totally unrelated to the Callahans
to start killing again.”

Turning, Archer stomped back to his Tahoe, rage festering in his gut at the thought
of the Slasher striking again.

The Slasher’s attention had seemed to focus on Rafer and Logan’s fiancées, who were
now under the protection of Ivan Resnova. There had been some incidents, but he hadn’t
managed to seriously hurt either woman. But why had he targeted Katy Winslow? It didn’t
make sense. Sliding into the driver’s seat, Archer slammed the door before grabbing
his cell phone from the passenger seat and dialing Crowe.

“Sheriff?” Callahan answered on the first ring.

“Crowe, how well do you know Katy Winslow?”

A dead silence came over the line for several seconds.

“I only know who she is, and where she works.” Crowe’s voice was hollow, emotionless.
“I’ve never spoken to her. Not to say hello, excuse me, or good-bye.” He paused before
breathing out wearily. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“It looks like one of the Slasher’s kills,” Archer confirmed his suspicion, his teeth
clenching. “When I catch him, Crowe, and I will, I’m not promising I’ll save him for
prison.”

Katy was a good kid. She and her boyfriend had been saving up for an apartment together.
She was always smiling, always filled with laughter.

And now, she was dead.

“You’ll have to beat me to him,” Crowe informed him, his voice so icy cold it would
have sent a chill up a lesser man’s spine. “Are you at the site now?”

Archer gave him the location before disconnecting the call, knowing Callum would have
a fit over the interference, but also knowing the Callahans well enough to know that
by not telling them he would have been risking the threat of them attempting to investigate
or draw the Slasher out on their own.

Leaning back in his seat and closing his eyes, he deliberately brought Anna’s face
to mind. He let himself remember the touch of her, the taste of her, the warmth that
surrounded him as he touched her.

She was his weak spot.

For far too many years Anna Corbin had been the woman he ached for the most, and the
one he knew he couldn’t have.