It was on the tip of my tongue to refuse and tell him where to shove his conversation. But his pale eyes glittered with cunning.
"Unless you're so scared of your own body betraying you that you can't handle being so close. Understandable, I guess. You do have a history of throwing yourself at me." His smile was taunting me, and I rose to the bait. Dammit.
Seething with anger and indignation, I walked around to the other side of my bed and perched on the very edge of the mattress, facing him with a sour look. "Happy?"
Archer snorted a laugh. "Ecstatic."
I released a slow breath, mentally counting to five. If I wanted more answers, I needed to keep my cool and ignore the tattooed Adonis making himself at home between my sheets. Easy right? Yeah, and Mount Everest was just a hill.
"So, what other pearls of wisdom do you plan on dropping in your attempts to reconcile our differences, Sunshine?" I asked in a dry tone when he made no signs of speaking first. For some, probably alcohol-impacted reason, he seemed perfectly comfortable just staring at me like a creeper.
He gave another heavy yawn, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. "I hardly ever drink this much, you know? Can't even remember the last time I was drunk enough to make the whole room spin."
I rolled my eyes. "If you vomit in my bed, I'll leave you to drown in it."
He just laughed. It was jarring to hear from him, like he'd been body-snatched by a jovial and friendly alien who just wanted to hang out and chat all night.
"Okay, how about this one," he drawled, tucking his forearms behind his head. "I think I know who is trying to kill you. Why, at least."
My brows shot up. "Excuse me?"
He rolled onto his side, grinning drunkenly. "You can tell Zane to stop sniffing around; he won't unravel the paper trail. I cleaned it up myself to stop anyone from tracking you down before Riot Night even happened."
I was speechless. Utterly speechless. Here I was with Zane and Demi both trying to uncover why my mother's family seemed to have been erased from documentation, and the culprit had been under my nose the whole time.
"Except," Archer continued, oblivious to or uncaring of my state of shock, "obviously, they'd already found you and placed the hit on the dark web. So all that work was fucking pointless."
Closing my eyes for a second, I tried to scrape together coherent thoughts. "Okay, start again. You know who is trying to kill me, and you're only now telling me?"
It was his turn to roll his eyes. "There's no pleasing you, Princess. Keep secrets, get kicked in the balls. Tell you the truth, get blamed for not doing it sooner."
"Wow," I replied, deadpan. "You're a real piece of work, you know that?"
He grunted a noise of agreement. "Yep. I am. But even with all my many, many failings, you still fantasize about what it'd be like to add me to your harem. What does that say about you, Madison Kate?"
Motherfucker had a point. Not that I'd ever admit it, though.
"No, I don't," I lied. "Get back on topic. Who is trying to kill me?"
Archer squinted at me, already seeming to be half asleep. "Your uncle. I think. Or maybe your cousin... it's hard to know who's pulling the strings over there without an in-person visit."
I shook my head, even more confused than ever. "What are you even babbling about? I don't have an unc—" I broke off, comprehension dawning. "You motherfuckers. I have other family that I don't know about?"
He just shrugged one shoulder. "Don't blame me for that one. Besides, when you consider that one of them is trying to have you killed, do they really sound like the kind of people you want to know?" He twitched a brow at me, and I had to concede his point.
"So why do they want me dead? Let me guess. My inheritance is a shitload more than I think it is?" My voice was flat and resigned, and I wasn't even remotely shocked by the knowing smile on Archer's lips.
He nodded. "Bingo."
"How much?"
He shrugged. "Don't know. Billions, probably."
Outrage bubbled up in my throat. "You don't know? You fucking purchased me on the caveat of my trust fund passing to you when I turn twenty-one. You seriously want to tell me you don't know how much it's worth?"
He gave me a bored look. "Let's get something straight here and now, Princess. I didn't marry you for your trust fund. In case you didn't notice, I'm not exactly hurting for a dollar myself." His tone was harsh, somewhat less slurred than it had been a moment ago. "I married you because it was the only thing I could think of on short notice. If it wasn't me, you'd have gone to auction and probably wound up as a sex slave for some Venezuelan drug baron."
Shock rippled through me. When he put it like that...
"Trust me, Kate," he added in a grumble, "you're better off right now. By a long fucking shot. Those fucks that buy people at auction are disgusting, depraved, sadistic bastards, and a girl like you would have attracted the kind of buyer who likes to break and degrade his pets."
What was it Steele had told me? There was always someone worse out there. And yeah, Archer had a point. As furious as I was at the whole situation, it could have been a whole lot worse.
"Is that why you refused to sleep with me?" I asked before I could stop myself. The second the question left my lips, I cringed.
Archer just eyed me curiously. "Yep," he replied without even a hint of deceit. "Puts the whole thing into perspective now, doesn't it? Yes, I paid your father a crapload of money to clear his bad debts, and in exchange he signed over ownership of you and your trust fund. But I haven't hurt you, I haven't raped you or kept you caged. So why am I this big bad villain in your eyes, huh?"
His jaw pulled with another heavy yawn, and his lids dropped heavier. If I wanted any more answers out of him, I needed to be quick before he passed out.
But the way he'd just summarized my whole problem had left me stunned and seriously questioning everything I thought I knew. Why was I so furious? Like he’d said, my situation right now could have been a million times worse if he hadn't acted to save me. That was what was knocking me around.
Archer D'Ath hadn't imprisoned me or taken away my freedom. Quite the opposite. He'd saved me.
Well fuck. Now where did that leave us?
"I can see I just exploded your brain," Archer mumbled, his eyes just cool blue slits framed by long black lashes. "I'll nap until you scrape all that scrambled gray matter together and come up with a new unfounded reason to hate me." He closed his eyes fully and shifted until he was comfortably wrapped in my blankets.
I still had nothing to say back to him. What the fuck was there to say?
For the longest moment, I just sat there on the edge of my bed, staring down at him as his chest rose and fell with his even breathing.
"Stop staring at me," he said, startling me enough that I jumped and almost fell off the fucking mattress. I actually would have if his hand hadn't shot out of the blankets and grabbed my wrist.
Embarrassment flooded my cheeks. "I thought you were asleep," I grumbled, like that was any excuse for staring at him. Come to think of it, that made it worse.
His fingers flexed on my wrist, and he pulled me closer to where he lay on the other side of my bed. "Lie down, Princess. Rest that paranoia for a couple of minutes. You can finish bitching me out in the morning when I've got a hangover. Won't that be fun?"