Stealing Home(17)

When his hand dropped to stroke himself a couple of times as he stared at the area between my legs, my fingers found their way beneath the sides of my panties, pulling them down my hips.

“Shit, that’s hot.”

Finishing pulling my panties off my feet, I flung them at his face too. This time he didn’t step out of the way.

“What’s hot? This . . .” My gaze moved down to the freshly exposed part of my body.

Archer wet his lips when his eyes followed mine. “It’s hot that I can tell you to do something and you do it. That’s hot.”

His hands dropped to my bent knees, slowly opening them until he could step between them. His gaze never left the area between my legs.

“This . . .”—the way he said it, the way he was looking at it, made every muscle in my body tighten—“is the damn finest sight I’ve ever laid my eyes on.” When my eyebrow lifted as I leaned up onto my elbows, he added, “Even better than the sight of that scoreboard at the end of tonight’s game, or the scoreboard at the end of any game I’ve ever played and won.” He didn’t stop opening my legs until they could go no farther.

“Not sure how I feel about you comparing that part of my anatomy to a scoreboard, but I think you meant that as a compliment. So thanks?”

“Damn straight I meant that as a compliment.” Archer yanked open the nightstand drawer and reached inside . . . only to find a hotel bible. “So not what I was looking for.” He groaned.

“Conditioned response?” I said, touching myself as he rushed over to one of his suitcases by the door.

“More like some combination of wishful thinking and my dick using up the blood supply that normally carries oxygen to my head.” When I raised an eyebrow at him now throwing things out of his suitcase as he searched, he tapped his temple. “This head.”

“Ah, got it. So you keep condoms in your nightstand at home and your suitcase when you’re on the road?”

“Hopefully,” he said as shoes and shirts continued to tumble out of his bag.

“Hopefully?”

“More wishful thinking.” His face lit up when he pulled what looked like a shower bag out of his suitcase.

I watched him, confused, as he tore the zipper open and spilled more things onto the floor in his desperate search efforts. I hadn’t slept with many guys, but those few I had always knew where they’d stashed their condoms, almost like that little plastic square was an extension of their dick. In a way, I supposed it was. A guy could just as soon misplace his actual package as he could a condom when he was looking to get laid.

With Archer’s blatant attempts to “woo” me, I would have thought he’d have a dozen stashed in a dozen different places, all within arm’s reach at any given time. Why was he acting like he didn’t have a goddamn clue where one condom was?

“Shit,” he cursed under his breath.

“What?”

He upended his shower bag, shaking loose the last few contents. No small plastic squares floated out. “Shit.”

Sitting up in bed, I inspected the mess he’d made ripping his suitcase apart. “You can’t say shit twice and not fill the naked woman in the room in on why you’re saying that.”

His hands combed through his hair as he turned in a circle like he was looking for something. “Condoms.”

“Yeah. I’ve heard of them.”

His gaze landed on me. “I don’t have any.”

I swallowed. “Shit.”

“My word exactly.”

Now it was me digging around in the nightstand drawer, shaking the bible out just to make sure there wasn’t one hiding in the pages. You know, since so many people probably used a condom as a bookmark while they were reading the good word at night. “Are you sure? I mean, you’re Luke Archer. I thought you’d be on an automatic refill program or something. You know, where they drop a cargo box out of the air every month.”

A dark brow lifted at me. “I’m sure. Do you have one?”

“Yeah, right here in my back pocket,” I said, patting my bare backside. “Oh, wait.”

“You’re telling me you don’t have a condom in that giant magic bag of yours?” Archer paced over to my duffel bag.

“Oddly enough, that kind of protection doesn’t fall under my job duties.”

He groaned like my answer was causing physical pain. “I could run out and get a box.”

My head whipped with a firm no. “You are not supposed to be running anywhere. If anyone on the team saw you, they’d string me up.” He shouldn’t even be on his feet right now, pacing around like a crazed man desperate to unearth some condom cache. “Plus, I’m on the shot, so if you’re worried about getting me pregnant, I’m covered.” I cleared my throat. “In case you’re worried about anything else, I’m good there too.”

Archer’s hands went to his hips, still pacing the room. “Yeah, yeah, I’m set there too, but I want to be careful. It shouldn’t just be up to the woman to take care of birth control.”

I sat up straighter. “Wow. You are oddly progressive for being such a Neanderthal.”

“I could call Reynolds.” He was already moving for his cell phone on top of the desk. “He has those things coming out of his ears.”