Deja Who (Insighter #1)(74)

“You were,” he agreed, smirking.

“You said you’d show me more things I missed by not going to high school. But . . . ?” She gestured. “I have seen you. I have seen cars.”

He slapped the side of the car, then winced. “Wow, they really don’t make ’em like they used to. It’s a rental, and I got it for a great rate for the day, part-time job number fifteen.” He went to her, dropped a quick kiss to her smile, then escorted her to the vehicle. “It’s a Crown Vic.”

As if that would have any meaning for me. “All right.” Bemused, she slid into the passenger seat as he held the door for her. “So we are in a Crown Vic.” It was nice, if you liked gas-guzzling monsters. She herself was indifferent, but with much of the country in an uproar about going green, she suspected people would start throwing gasoline on guzzlers the way fur activists used to throw red paint on women wearing mink. “Where you shall show me what I missed.”

“Yep. Buckle up, baby.”

“I insist you stop calling me that,” she said without heat, and got another kiss for her trouble.

He drove with easy confidence, one hand on the steering wheel and (often) one resting lightly on her leg. She pondered part-time job number fifteen and his many other jobs (her current favorite, part-time job number four: lemonade stand franchise owner) and thought his exhaustive need to try everything might help prove her theory that life-blind weren’t blind, just new.

They drove out of the city and eventually parked at the end of a scenic lookout, where they could see hills peppered with fields for what seemed like miles, even as the sun set and swept the land with shadows.

Then he pulled her to him and she could feel herself opening for him, wanting him, not just her mouth but her entire body seemed to want him, and his tongue stroked into her mouth, slid along her tongue, nibbled her lower lip, and her hands were under his shirt, clutching the long muscles in his back, and things got rather more delightful every minute, every second, and then they were tumbling into the backseat and he was showing her what she missed in high school.





FORTY-EIGHT


“We’ve done it!”

“Eh?” Leah was struggling back into her bra. “Have you seen my balisong—ah! There it is.” She had explained to Archer that although Tom was moldering in his grave, and good riddance, she felt naked unless she had at least one knife concealed on her person. Far from being put off, he’d nearly tackled her on the spot and they spent a delightful hour experimenting with cowgirl and reverse-cowgirl. “Yes, we have definitely done it; it seems obvious.”

Archer was back in the driver’s seat, shirtless. “We are the first couple in the history of backseat banging to have terrific sex in the back of a car! You have no idea how unprecedented this is.”

“The word ‘first’ tipped me off.” She couldn’t help the grin, an expression she suspected would eventually become more or less permanent with Archer in her life. “It’s good that it’s unprecedented, though. That makes me glad. Until you pointed that out, I was sad about missing high school sex.”

“Yeah, that? About that. Typical high school sex: picture what we just did, but suck ninety-five percent of the pleasure out of it and factor in muscle cramps and a paralyzing fear that you may have knocked up the girl in question, and also that your folks will find out what you’ve been up to, calculate all that, and it’s actually much, much worse.”

She sniffed. “Then why indulge?”

“Um . . . sex? Even bad sex is still pretty great. Because: sex.”

She tossed his shirt at his head. “Spoken by every man ever, and no woman ever,” she muttered, but it was impossible to maintain her pique. “So I should not actually miss this, because backseat sex tends to be unsatisfying?”

“Not the way we do it,” he replied with deep, masculine satisfaction. She rolled her eyes, but nothing would bring him down. “You know that feeling you get when you’re positive you haven’t done this before? Déjà new? That’s what Leah and Archer backseat sex is. Déjà new.”

For some reason, that made her laugh so hard she dropped her knife. And then there was nothing for it but to slip into the back again and go for Round Two.





EPILOGUE



NELLIE NAZIR

1985–2017

The World Remembers Her Always

Archer took a long look. “Wow. It’s beautiful.” And it was. The headstone was purple marble and when the sun hit it, it kicked up a glitter effect that made the stone seemed to glow. Even on a cloudy day, the effect was striking. The letters and numbers were deeply, crisply chiseled and unlikely to rub off for at least a couple of centuries. There were trees nearby, and the grave was nearest the pond full of koi, which Nellie had always thought were the epitome of class, though she went to her grave having no clue how to tend to them.

“It’s a lie, of course,” Leah said, smiling at him. She had dressed in a sober black business suit, black stockings, and black high heels, attire she loathed and would never wear in the course of an ordinary day. Which this was not.

Archer knew she was trying to show respect to It—um, to Nellie—the only way she could, and made a mental note not to tell her how sexy she looked in mourning. God, the high heels alone . . . ! “It’s really beautiful.” This in an attempt to keep his Leah-obsessed mind out of the gutter for five entire minutes.