handle. "Are you having a fucking stroke or something?" I parked my hands on my hips and fixed a combative glare onto my face. After everything he'd done, he didn't deserve to look at me like that. Like I was a woman he wanted to fuck the daylights out of. That was firmly off the table for Archer and me.
His lips curled in a ghost of a smile, and he swiped a hand across his face—seeming to hide his amusement—as his eyes shifted back to Nicky and her camera. He'd always had some decently long stubble, but he'd let it grow out enough that it could probably be classified as a short beard now. I hated beards on men. Or... I thought I did.
Fucking hell, maybe it was me that was having a stroke. Or certainly some sort of brain misfire. Because as much as I wanted to deny it, I was already imagining what his beard would feel like against my inner thighs.
Yeah, I needed some therapy or something.
"Okay, yes," Nicky said, lowering her camera and flashing me a bright smile. "Hot damn, you look incredible. Can I get you over here?" She indicated where she wanted me—thankfully not in Archer's lap—and I let my brain switch off a bit as she positioned us and went to work.
For the most part, I was able to ignore Archer. Or at least pretend he was someone else. Some random, faceless, nameless model that just happened to be in the same photo shoot... but then Nicky called out her next instruction.
"Excuse me?" I replied, blinking at her. Surely that had just been an echo of my own thoughts.
Nicky quirked a brow at me like she was trying not to laugh. She'd just set Archer up on a backless bar stool in front of a cool light feature against a brick wall, and she wanted me to sit on his lap.
What the actual fuck?
My eyes narrowed, and my lips parted to tell her I was not okay with that—because my willpower only extended so far and I was all too aware it was possible to totally loathe someone and still fuck their brains out. But Archer gave me no choice in the matter.
His huge hands wrapped around my waist, and I let out a small squeak as he lifted me into his lap, my ass sideways.
"What the fuck?" I hissed at him, my teeth clenched to try and hide our animosity from Nicky and everyone else in the room. Most of them weren't paying close attention, thankfully, and I didn't actually give two shits if everyone knew I couldn't stand being within five hundred feet of Archer D'Ath. But I also didn't want anyone else—like Jase the creeper—sticking their nose into our fight.
He dropped one hand away from my waist, resting his wrist ever so casually on his thigh—the one I wasn't sitting on—and a small, mocking smile touched his lips. "Chill out, Madison Kate. It's just a photo shoot; I'm not going to go molesting you. I don't fuck unwilling chicks."
A snarl burned through me. "No, you just marry them while they're underage." My words were whispered, but the venom was clear.
Instead of releasing his hold on me, like I'd expected, his grip around my waist tightened, pulling me closer into his body. I wobbled, my arm shooting out in an instinctive reaction to save myself from falling to the floor.
"What is it that you're most upset about, Madison Kate?" Archer asked me in a dark murmur, his lips barely moving as he stared into my eyes. Somewhere in the background I could hear Nicky's camera clicking, but she'd stopped giving us directions. "Is it the fact that your father sold you? Or that I bought you? Or are you just pissed that I refused to fuck you when you were so clearly begging for it?"
Rage boiled within me, and I placed my hand against his chest, trying to shove him away—or me away from him, as it was—but his hand around my waist was tighter than the safety restraints on a roller coaster. Appropriate, given how I felt like I was on the most dangerous rusty, broken-down old roller coaster imaginable when I was with Archer.
"Let go of me, Archer," I snarled, pushing against his chest to show I wasn't fucking around. My other hand was on his bare shoulder, my arm around the back of his neck, and I deliberately dug my fingernails in as I retracted that hand.