Page 18 of Sinful Obsession

“I would’ve killed him a long fucking time ago.” I study her beautiful eyes. The way they widen at my admission. “If I was the sorry fucker who had to run the family, and I found out this prick took my brother, sliced him open, and tortured him for a couple of days, all because he was mad about turf and money, I would’ve ended his life and made it known Malones weren’t to be trifled with.”

Minka’s tongue comes out to wet her dry bottom lip. But perhaps more noticeable is the way her pussy thrums around my cock. How it tightens, even in the otherwise silence.

“You left the family, Archer…” Her eyes flicker between mine. “You chose to leave sixteen years ago.”

“Uh huh. I chose something else for my life. But that doesn’t change who I am at the core.”

“And who are you at your core…?” She swallows, the movement something I feel against my chest. “A mafioso?”

I consider her question for a beat. I think of the life I led for the first half of my existence. The constant need to fight or die. The perpetual necessity to sleep with one eye open, and fuck, the complete idiocy should you consider yourself in love and let the people in that world know about it.

Then I think of my wife. And I know. I know who and what I am.

“Pastore hurt Christabelle. Turf, and money, bad blood, and brothers aside. You don’t come for a man’s heart and expect to live after that. Felix got the boss’ permission to spill blood in the streets of New York. That’s not a small deal. Now, come on.” I swing my arm down and smack her ass till she hisses. “Time to get up and work. I have a case to solve and a honeymoon to plan.”

Minka rolls to the side, disconnecting us without a single moment of warning. Which is her payback for the smack, I guess. My loss, enough to leave me with a scowl even after I got to come only minutes ago.

“Your honeymoon hinges on the idea that Adrianna Alves is guilty of murdering her husband.” She pushes to her feet at the side of our bed, makes a show of looking around, then she selects my shirt, balls it up, and uses it to wipe the cum dribbling along her thigh. “Your desperation for a honeymoon impedes your ability to run this case objectively.”

“That’s why we have Fletch.” Smug, I crawl across the bed and stand behind her, my hand on her belly and my cock nestled against the small of her back. “I’m not planting evidence, Mayet. I’m merely collecting it. And I have Fletch following up behind me to make sure it’s all above board.”

“Yet, you expect me to believe your desire for a vacation somewhere fruity and reclusive doesn’t impede your ability to run this case without bias?” She picks my hand up off her stomach and drops it away. Cold, calculated, and just daring enough to make me chuckle. “What will you do if you’re proven wrong and she’s innocent? Are you saying we’ll never take a honeymoon?”

“Well…” Humming with a good mood, I cross our room and slide the old, rickety, wooden drawers open to reveal silk boxer shorts. “I guess I may have been a little forward when I made that bet.”

“Oh!” Mocking, she takes out a pair of panties too small for me not to think innocent thoughts about, and stepping into them, she glances back over her shoulder to pin me with a look. “You think? And now you’ll bend your case like a pretzel to ensure you get what you want?”

“Mostly, I was thinking Adrianna is probably guilty.” I close the drawer and go to the next to find a pair of jeans. “So things are already leaning in my favor. But if it should turn out that she’s not, then my plan B was to fold you like a pretzel, withhold your orgasm, and wait for you to beg me to take you to a secluded island somewhere.”

Of course, she barks out a laugh that makes my heart skip a beat in my chest. It’s not often that Minka Mayet laughs out loud. The guffawing, belly-aching, soul-clenching kind. But she does it this morning and ensures I could never walk away from her with my sanity intact.

Not that I’m looking for an out, anyway.

“Sexual coercion? Really?” But then she stops and purses her lips. “Yeah. I’m not surprised.”

“Would it work?”

Shrugging, she selects a black T-shirt bra and slides it on that upside-down, back-to-front way she does. She fastens the clip and spins things around until it’s on and cupping her perfect tits the way I’d prefer to do with my hands. “It could. Depends on how good the orgasm is, I suppose. What are you up to this morning?”

“Sex?”

She snickers, her chest bouncing as she moves to our small closet and takes out a pair of long, black trousers and steps into them. The crease is perfect, despite the fact that I’ve never seen this woman wield an iron in all the time I’ve known her. And the fit is… well, made for her body. “I meant at work, Detective Malone. Surely you can disconnect one from the other while we discuss the unfortunate murder of a man who didn’t even make it to thirty.”

“Unfortunate?” I shake a pair of jeans out and step into the stiff denim while Minka picks out a black, button-up shirt. It has a high neckline and no sleeves at all, making her look formidable and sexy, exactly the way I like her. “Babe, you have no sympathy for the wife-beater currently stinking up your second-floor fridges. You’re so set on not pinning Adrianna for that murder—you’d place the knife in the vic’s hand and testify to the fact he did it to himself.”

She rolls her eyes, like I’m the fool. “Of course I wouldn’t testify to that. It would make me sound dumb. Though,” she fastens the buttons on her shirt and looks at me with a shit-eating smirk that makes my cock stir. “I will testify that the wounds that man suffered could only come from someone much larger, much stronger, than Adrianna Alves. I would be more inclined to say a man, though of course, it could have been a very strong woman. My experience says the angles in which an eight-inch blade entered and exited William Alves’ body indicates that the person wielding the knife stood at six feet or more in height.”

“You can’t know that.” I fucking love sparring with her on a case, so I scoff, obnoxiously so, and purse my lips. “Could’ve been a woman. He was sitting, she was standing. She uses her body weight and gravity to make up for the strength she doesn’t have, and she positions herself over him, perhaps even behind him, so when he reclines back to sleep, he provides her with the perfect open canvas to go nuts. You cannot know where she stood.”

“You’re not so obtuse as to think your killer’s position can’t be obtained after studying the blood spatter patterns.” She finishes her buttons and sets her hands on her hips. Taunting me. Challenging. “That’s not even my job, and I know it can be done.”

“I can argue my point to a judge, Mayet. You know the evidence is damning.”

“And I will gladly allow myself to be cross-examined,” she tosses right back. “I’ll call your intelligence into question, make your testimony look stupid, and make you feel,” she lifts her left hand and spaces her thumb and forefinger an inch apart, “this small. Then I’ll soothe your fragile feelings by buying you dinner after.”

“Savage.” I tug my jeans to my hips and fix the button and zipper, then crossing our tiny room—as in, walking the three steps from where I was to where my wife mocks me—I take Minka’s jaw in my hands and force her to the tips of her toes.

Without fail, her lips always pucker and wait.

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