Page 65 of The Sounds of Her

I step into him. I’m not brave enough to kiss him. Besides, only assholes would make a point of showing they’re with someone by kissing them in front of everyone. I like to think I’m classier than that. But I lean into him, pressing my breast into his side. His arm moves to make space for me. Something he did not do for the other woman.

“Excuse you,” she says, glaring at me.

“No, it’s you who is excused,” I retort, turning so my back is to Archer, but I’m still only on one side of him because this woman is determined not to be pushed out.

He still isn’t speaking, the asshole, but his hand moves. I feel the heat of it on my lower back, his palm moving around so it’s on my hip. It’s out of her line of sight for now. I’m not the kind of woman who gets involved in bullshit like this, but I have one of the best reputations for arguing my point.

And winning.

“Take your hands off him and walk away.”

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” she snaps.

“I’m the woman he’s going home with,” I say back, my voice is calm. I will not shout at her.

“Yeah, right? I was here first,” she argues back.

The other guy is watching with undisguised amusement. I bet he’s hoping for a cat fight.

Not happening.

“I’m not arguing with you. I’m asking you to let go of him and back off.”

“Archer?” she looks up at him. His silence is all she gets back.

His hand squeezes my hip, before it moves around my waist. I’m pulled back against his body. His firm, muscular, hot body.

My stomach liquifies as his hand trails around, resting possessively on my stomach. His pinky finger is a hair away from the top of my panties. I’m acutely aware that the thin fabric of my dress is the only thing keeping him from touching my skin.

My brain misfires and anything I was going to say vanishes. There is something about Archer and the way he is touching me that has turned me into a mute idiot. It has the same effect on the woman because her eyes drop to his hand, to the way he has pulled me back into him, and how he lowers his head, so his mouth is next to my ear.

“Are you here to rescue me, Brooke?”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to elbow him and tell him to stop being a dick, but she can’t hear what he is saying.

She’s not backing up, her eyes moving from his hand to my face. When she sneers at me, her face distorting into something ugly, I know what she is going to say before she does.

“You’re just a pushy slut.”

Archer tenses and steps to the side of me. I don’t need him to defend me.

“Do you know Archer?” I ask, as if she didn’t say one of the worst words one woman can call another.

I won’t rise to this, but no one calls me that. Archer’s grip on me tightens. He’s glaring at her now. He hasn’t stepped in, waiting to see what I’m going to do. It’s nothing I haven’t heard before. Women can be vicious sometimes.

“I asked you a question,” I say to her.

“Oh, like you know him, is that your point?” she folds her arms across her chest.

Archer moves again, but I touch his hand, still resting on my stomach in a silent appeal for him to let me handle this. It works, because he laces his fingers with mine.

“Yes, it is. Archer is mine, and not just for tonight. I don’t want to make a scene, but if you call me another name, or if you try anything else with my man, I’m going to get security to remove you.”

She huffs out a laugh as if I’m full of myself. “You’re deluded lady. You haven’t even been near him all night. Well, I got news for you, he was about to take me back to his hotel.”

I laugh. “The hotel room you’re sharing with me, honey,” I glance back at Archer. “You didn’t tell me you were into that kind of thing.”

“Never have been, never will,” Archer says, drawing her attention from me. “I don’t share.”

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