The Callahan's: Secret Sins Part 13

"If we can't make it, then we deserve to drop where we stand," Saul muttered as he picked up the cane he had set by his chair and rose to his feet.

"Didn't remember you carrying a cane before, Saul," Archer drawled.

The old man gave a bitter half grin before gripping it with both hands and pulling free a long knife from one end. "I only need it when I want to, Sheriff. Only when I want to."

Shaking his head, Archer watched as the three men slipped from the study through the back door and made their way into the darkness.

Closing and locking the door after them, he stiffened, feeling the presence that stepped into the room as he silently cursed with a virulence he hadn't used in years.

Turning, he faced Anna, and in that second knew she had heard far too much.

"You could have told me you were just f.u.c.king me to draw a killer out," she drawled. "I might even have gone along with it."

"I think you know better than that, Anna."

He could see the pain and the confusion in her eyes. Chaotic, soul-deep, the emotions tearing her apart now were clearly reflected in the deep, emerald green of her eyes, and he'd be d.a.m.ned if he could blame her for any of them.

Uppermost in her gaze, and filling her expression, was bitter betrayal. The emotion darkened her eyes, but it also caused her face to pale and revealed the ultra-light scattering of freckles across the top of her nose.

h.e.l.l, and why had he just noticed those? There wasn't a chance in h.e.l.l she was going to let him brush his lips across them as he suddenly wanted to.

Her gaze dropped down, eyes narrowing at the evidence of the hard-on pressing against his cotton pants.

A grin tilted the corner of his lips. "I think you just might have made me hard again, sweetheart."

Her lips tightened in anger, but that flame of arousal he glimpsed in her eyes hadn't been doused. h.e.l.l, it might even be a shade brighter now.

"Don't think you're good enough to make me forget a single word of what I heard tonight," she warned him. "And don't think for a moment you're not going to fill me in on every word I might have missed."

"Just exactly what did you hear?"

She was smart, and despite John's a.s.sertions, Anna knew how to keep her mouth shut, especially when it came to the only friend she had in Corbin County.

"I believe it might have been the part where my grandfather was asking you about the ring and the commitment. And I didn't miss the part where you a.s.sured him I wasn't into fairy tales, either."

Ouch.

Now that part he would have preferred she hadn't heard. Because Anna did have fairy tales she still lived by, but there wasn't a chance she'd believe his explanation, either.

Anna was smart enough to know love rarely, if ever, happened at first sight. It came with knowledge, it came with understanding.

And that wasn't a discussion that was going to walk hand in hand with explanations of the danger she was currently involved in.

He breathed out wearily and glanced at the clock before meeting her gaze once again.

"You didn't miss much," he growled as he rubbed at his lower jaw in irritation. "The reason they placed you in private schools, and kept moving you, was because, according to your grandfather and his friends, they've been blackmailed for decades, Anna. That's why they disowned your aunt, Crowe, and now you. If you didn't leave Corbin County, then he was to disown you and ensure you had no option but to leave the county to survive."

Graceful, charmingly innocent, she lifted one hand to rub at her forehead, her brow creasing thoughtfully.

"My parents moved with me for several years," she said softly as she turned from him, the white gown and robe sweeping softly at the floor as she moved. "Until I was nine."

He remembered that. Her father had traveled often between the ranch and wherever she'd been enrolled in school.

"I don't know why they stopped." He knew the unvoiced question before she turned and stared back at him, her gaze tortured. "Those are questions you can ask later. But I think you know it's not a question you can ask right now, Anna. You have to maintain the illusion that you are indeed disowned. Not just being protected. As your grandfather said, even your only friend, your best friend, can't know the truth. The chance that she would confide, in anyone, would be too great."

Delicate nostrils flared as a jerky breath shook her body and she gave a tight nod. A shudder worked down her spine.

G.o.d, if she started crying it was going to destroy him.

Instead, she wrapped her arms across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s before pacing to the map on the wall and staring at it unseeingly.

"Why?" she asked. "Why all this conspiracy just to claim property that could have been sold? h.e.l.l, it was sold. Crowe's grandparents sold it in three parts to the remaining Barons. Remember?"

"The property was tied up in their daughters' trusts after JR and Eileen Callahan's deaths. JR and Eileen had the property placed in trust for their sons in the event of their deaths. According to papers filed several days before their bodies were found, they had sold the property to Corbin, Rafferty, and Roberts on the condition that the property went into their daughters' trust funds. Everyone knew JR and Eileen had a soft spot for the other three Barons' daughters. They wouldn't have sold to your grandfather, Rafferty, or Roberts, though, after they refused to help Eileen while JR was in the hospital. Especially considering her youngest child's death occurred at the time she was begging the others for help." He frowned at that knowledge.

Unless they hadn't actually sold that property, he thought.

Forty years.

That would have been about the right time if JR and Eileen had been murdered. Then, to frame the remaining Barons, that property had somehow been placed in trust for their daughters?

Still, none of it added up.

"Archer, it doesn't make sense," she pointed out what he already knew. "Why make it so d.a.m.ned difficult if the point was to get the land?"

Giving his head a hard shake, he focused his attention back on Anna.

"Unless the point was to frame your grandfather and the others for JR and Eileen's deaths," he murmured.

What the h.e.l.l was he doing? He'd told himself he wasn't going to discuss this with her, yet he was.

Archer tightened his lips, determined to hold back any other observations he might have.

h.e.l.l, she wasn't a trained law enforcement agent or a deputy. She was a tender twenty-four-year-old ex-virgin with more dreams than experience, and more stubbornness than any woman had a right to possess.

And that stubbornness went hand in hand with her soft heart, her generosity, and her open nature.

Yet, who else deserved the information? Who else could he discuss it with besides Anna and the Callahans? Crowe, Logan, and Rafer would have to have the information. And, no doubt, Ivan Resnova as well. Resnova would have the resources to get answers they couldn't.

That added four others who could possibly reveal the secrets the Barons had kept for so long.

f.u.c.k.

"If they were framed for JR and Eileen Callahan's deaths, then once the trusts were acquired, he'd have to have something in place to ensure he had the property," Anna pointed out logically. "Their daughters were teenagers then. He couldn't marry all of them when they came of age, which is what he would have had to do if gaining the property was the point."

Archer nodded. "Dead end," he murmured.

"Why demand I be taken out of the County and placed in a different school every year?" The years of loneliness filled her voice. "How could I have played in this scheme, Archer? What makes me so important?"

"That's a question only one person can answer." He sighed. "h.e.l.l, there are a lot of questions only the person who began all this can answer."

"And the Barons believe that person is the Slasher," she stated, rather than asking for affirmation.

"That's what they believe." He nodded. "So far, there have been three different men committing these murders. Thomas Jones killed twelve women twelve years ago. Lowry Berry killed three women this past spring and tried to kill Cami Flannigan. Now, someone else, so far unidentified, has killed at least two women, and possibly a third. Yet there are too many similarities to rule out the same man being involved in each death."

"The FBI profilers have always said there were two or more men involved." Her frown deepened.

Archer grimaced. h.e.l.l, he couldn't keep his mouth shut here, and this endless round of questions was going to get them nowhere.

"I didn't take you to my bed to catch a killer." It was time to change the subject.

Rather than arguing the statement, she stared back at him silently, the bitter betrayal in her expression never wavering.

"Then why did you?" she asked him. "You've had every chance to take me since I turned sixteen."

"And I was an adult," he snapped. "Do you really think I would have touched you at that age?"

"That wasn't what I said, Archer," she retorted, her own tone heated now. "I said you had every chance. Since I was sixteen, every time I saw you, I flirted so blatantly it's a wonder the words 'f.u.c.k me' weren't stamped on my forehead."

His jaw tightened. "Should I apologize for waiting until you were old enough to understand what the h.e.l.l I might want from you?" he growled.

Her nostrils flared, eyes narrowed. Well, h.e.l.l, wasn't she just p.i.s.sed off now?

"What you should do is forget the whole thing," she snapped. "While I move into your very comfortable guest room."

Oh, he wanted to f.u.c.k her. He wanted to f.u.c.k her with a hunger that belied the fact that he had already had her once that night.

As she turned to stalk from the room, determination began to burn through him.

Before he could stop himself, he was pulling her around and jerking her to him. "d.a.m.n you, Anna, I don't think I'll ever have enough of you. I could f.u.c.k you until the end of time and I'd still want you." And he didn't look in the least happy about it.

There was nothing so s.e.xy, so sensual, as the l.u.s.t burning in his gaze, tightening his face. Nothing that could have held her in place easier than the pure erotic heat that surrounded her.

Before she had a chance to argue, even if she had wanted to, his lips covered hers, possessed them, and stole any fight still hiding inside her.

She couldn't fight this pleasure. She couldn't fight his touch. She loved it far too much. She loved him far too much. Her fingers gripped his shoulders, her nails digging into him as she strained against him, desperate to get closer now. Her lips parted, accepting his tongue, stroking it, tasting him and becoming drunk off the need spilling from his kiss. Moaning, aching for him, Anna pressed closer to the hard wedge of his c.o.c.k as it centered between her thighs. Rolling her hips, riding it, aching for more, she dared him with every move to take her. With the hard wedge of his c.o.c.k centered on her sensitive p.u.s.s.y, Anna couldn't help but move against him. Whimpering with pleasure and rising need she rode the iron-hard erection her body craved, torturing them both with her hunger.

As she felt her back meet the wall, Anna moaned at the s.e.xual promise inherent in the move. Her fists uncurled, her nails biting into his shoulders as she arched against him. She couldn't get close enough. No matter how she tried, her gown and the cotton pants he wore kept their flesh from touching, kept his c.o.c.k from demanding entrance inside the aching depths of her s.e.x.

"Oh h.e.l.l, no, you little wildcat," he growled as she tried to push the elastic band of his pants over his hips. "I'll be d.a.m.ned if I'll let you have it that easy."

Archer pulled back, placed her on her feet, then shocked her again. Just when she thought he was going to release her, he gripped her gown and robe in both hands and, before she could fight him, had both over her head and tossed to the floor, leaving her naked before him. His head lowered, lips parting, and as Anna gasped, his teeth gripped a tight, hard little nipple.

Worrying it first with his teeth, Anna felt the electric jolts of sensation shooting from the tender tip to her swollen c.l.i.t and the clenched depths of her p.u.s.s.y. Her hands buried in his hair, pulling at the thick strands as she strained to force him to suck the needy tip.

Anna cried out in desperate pleasure at the lashing sensations surging through her s.e.x with each hungry draw of his mouth. She was only dimly aware of him removing his pants as his tongue licked at the tortured tip before moving to its mate. Pleasure, desperate and burning in its intensity, rocked her senses.

What was he doing to her?

She should never, not in a million years, allow him to touch her now. As furious, as hurt as she was, she should be anywhere but here.

But, oh G.o.d, it was so good.

The pleasure bordered on pain. It rode an edge of sharp sensation so incredible that Anna couldn't resist, no matter how hard she tried.

And she did try.

Pride was most often her downfall. Yet with each touch of Archer's knowing, experienced hands, her pride melted, bit by bit, for the pleasure her body was beginning to crave. His touch was addictive. His kiss was like a drug.

Lifting his head from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, his expression was tight and hard with l.u.s.t. Archer stared down at her with narrow-eyed hunger and dominant s.e.xuality.

"Did you think I would let you go so easily?" he growled.

Her lips parted as she fought to drag in air, to breathe rather than gasping with each hard pulse of pleasure racing through her body.

"I won't let you go," he snarled when she refused to answer him.

He wouldn't let her go? But he didn't love her. He didn't need her.

Archer believed love was a fairy tale, something only children believed in. As much as it hurt, as deep as the pain went, she couldn't fight the pleasure. But she sure as h.e.l.l could build her defenses against him, once he wasn't throwing her senses into chaos.

And her senses were in chaos.

As Archer's lips roved over her neck to her lips, stealing yet more kisses, her pleasure was spinning out of control. The hard length of his c.o.c.k pulsed and throbbed against her stomach while her p.u.s.s.y wept in need.

"Please, Archer," she cried out, the melting ache in the depths of her v.a.g.i.n.a demanding the hard thrusts of his c.o.c.k.

"Please what, baby?" His head lifted, the fierce demand in his gaze bordering on command. "Please f.u.c.k you? Please give you all the pleasure we've both ached for?"

d.a.m.n him and his arrogance.

His dominance.

"d.a.m.n you, Archer, f.u.c.k me," she made her own demand. "f.u.c.k me like you mean it."

"Oh, baby, every stroke, every cry I pull from your pretty lips, trust me, I mean it."

His lips covered hers again. Briefly. One hard, stinging sip of her lips before he pulled away and quickly pulled her around to bend her over the wide desk beside them.

Before Anna could process the fact that he was coming in from behind her, his hard hands were gripping her hips as he came over her.

Surrender echoed in her pleading cry. Sensual surrender rushed through her as the thick crest of his c.o.c.k parted her intimate lips and she felt her p.u.s.s.y beginning to suck him in. Her juices flooded from her inner flesh, making it slicker as he began to stretch the inner muscles and work his way inside her.

"Archer." Arching to him, losing her breath, nothing mattered but the feel of his hips pressing, rolling, penetrating her v.a.g.i.n.a with fiery thrusts.

Rubbing, stroking, the thick, hot crest rasped the tender tissue, burned as it stretched her and sent flaming pleasure tearing through her. His lips brushed against her ear, nipped, then sent her senses spinning further as he began to speak. "d.a.m.n, baby, I love how sweet and wet that tight little p.u.s.s.y is around my d.i.c.k."

His voice, tight and filled with l.u.s.t as he pressed his d.i.c.k slowly inside her. Moving in, then out, thrusting in to his b.a.l.l.s before pulling back and f.u.c.king inside once again.