Marked (Branded Book 3)

by Scarlett Finn

  Levi got up and only thought about retorting for a split second before he glared and turned to march away.

  Nya growled into her hands and shoved Archer’s back. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  He spun around, his anger hadn’t gone anywhere. “You parade your fucking boyfriends in front of me again and I swear I’ll slit their throats and make you watch them bleed out, you hear me?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend! He’s a neighbor! He wanted to get to know people! Some people like being social! Some people like having friends!” She sighed, clenching her fists. “I told him we shouldn’t come near your door.”

  Leaning down, he wasn’t playing. “Trust your instinct next time,” he said, blocking her when she tried to get past him.

  “Are you gonna keep me prisoner up here all day?” she asked because he was still jamming her, left and right.

  “I’m giving your boy a chance to think about what I said before you run off to try sucking his dick.”

  Oh, she was beyond mad now and Archer had the audacity to be just as angry. “Somebody should apologize to him for your behavior,” she said.

  “Yeah, he’ll tell you how much better he’ll feel if you climb up into his lap and pull up that skirt,” Archer said.

  His arm swooped around her so he could shove a hand under her skirt onto her ass. Curving his thumb beneath the vertical strip of her thong, he slid it down, pulling it from her ass cheeks. Leaving his thumb there, hooked into her underwear, he twisted the fabric around it.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she asked, hitting his chest and trying to locate her outrage.

  Giving her thong a yank, he tightened it against her core, which put pressure on her clit. “I wanted to check how ready you were,” he mumbled and shuffled her back against the wall opposite his open apartment door.

  “Stop it,” she said, squashed between him and the wall. Her hands were flat against his chest, but she couldn’t move.

  He took his hand from her ass and she thought that was it. Nya was ready to curse at him and leave. But he wasn’t done. Pushing his chest harder on hers, he made it more difficult for her to breathe as he eased his hips away and then his fingers slid into the front of her panties and moved from her clit to her threshold and back again.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” she asked again, but her breath was louder than her words. “Stop it, Archer.” Losing the last letter of his name when his fingers slid into her, Nya was beginning to drown. “Stop it.” But her eyes were closing as her head fell against the wall. “You’re not allowed to touch me.”

  There wasn’t an ounce of force or sincerity in what she was saying. He moved his finger in and out. “You’re not wet,” he said.

  That fact was quickly changing, and only got more intense when a second finger joined the first. He moved them in and out of her, stimulating her from the inside.

  As he curled his digits to massage the cushion within her, Nya moaned. “You were so rude. So mean,” she whispered, her panted breaths were getting shallower. “All he wanted to do was make friends.”

  Tipping his lips to her ear, Archer spoke into the shell of it. “All he wanted to do was slide himself home right here,” Archer said, moving his fingers faster. “This is what he wanted, Ny. He wanted to play with my pussy. He wanted to put his dick where only mine can go. He wanted to come all over your sweet pink tongue. But the only man you taste is me. You made me a promise, Squirm.”

  He pulled his fingers out, rubbed her clit fast, and then plunged them back into her. Nya cried out and her hips bucked against his thigh. “That’s my girl,” he exhaled. “Your pussy’s been missing my spunk. Hasn’t it, sweetheart, tell me.”

  “Oh, it has,” she said, he was rubbing her clit now in wide, slow circles.

  “You want to taste some?” he asked.

  She nodded, opening her eyes a millimeter just to check if he was being serious. She didn’t think that he was, even this was a step too far beyond what they were supposed to be allowed to do with each other. She’d just told him no, just told him she was leaving, and now his fingers were in her underwear, coated with her juices.

  “Mm hmm. Please.”

  “Help yourself,” he said and his eyes were as sure and aroused as hers.

  Archer’s fingers slipped away. Putting them in his mouth, he sucked them hard. His expression of ecstasy was almost enough to give her another orgasm. As he sucked and licked her taste from his digits, he unbuckled his belt.

  He meant it. He was actually going to let her. But she’d touched him since they broke up and he always stopped her. This time, she couldn’t give him the chance. Dropping to her knees in the tight space he’d left her, Nya didn’t play with him or tease. She pulled open his jeans, yanked out his dick, and swallowed him whole.

  “Fuck,” he said and his fist hit the wall high above her.

  That was exactly her sentiment, bobbing her head back and forth, she drew her eyes up to his and he was watching everything she did. Watching her head move back and forth as his dick appeared and disappeared from between her lips. She was getting better at taking him deeper. Nya sucked like the key to her existence would be delivered in her prize at the end.

  She withdrew him from her mouth, pumped her fist over him, ran his head across her lips, and purred. “I like it,” he said and she had to grin because that’s exactly what he’d said the first time they had sex.

  Still there on her knees, she opened her mouth and sucked his head, tonguing the slit that would serve her gift. She wanted to ask him to fuck her, wanted to stand up and expose her breasts, to beg him to touch her.

  But this was like a dream, something she’d been sure they would never have again. She wasn’t going to tempt fate, she had to taste him now, had to swallow him, had to savor this experience for as long as it lasted. She wouldn’t get caught up in what it meant or what would come tomorrow.

  He thrust forward and the crown of his dick hit the back of her throat, making her skull bounce off the wall. Taking her hair in his fist, he began to drive himself in and out of her mouth, swearing and huffing each time he went deep.

  Gritting his teeth, he growled. “Fuck, Ny.”

  He forced out the words as his thick, salty seed fired against her throat and spread on her tongue as he pulled himself back. She swallowed and swallowed, then licked the tip of him to capture the remaining drips after he slid away from her lips. She wasn’t willing to let any of him be wasted.

  His hand was flat on the wall above and his head fell against his extended arm. Nya stayed where she was licking her lips and closed her eyes to commit that taste and this moment to her memory.

  A door opened and she rolled her head on the wall to locate which one it was. The guy next door to Archer came out into the hallway and took a second to take in the scene.

  “S’up?” Archer asked.

  Nya glanced up to see him looking at his neighbor as if there was nothing at all intimate or unusual going on. “Arch,” the neighbor said in acknowledgement and nodded. “Nya.”

  She lifted a hand in a wave, but the guy was already turning to head down the stairs. He didn’t care about what they were doing. Being that he and Archer shared walls, the neighbor was probably used to experiencing some element of their intimacy.

  Archer put his dick back in his pants, but didn’t fasten them. Then he bent to catch her arm so he could pull her onto her feet. “Ok?” he asked her, brushing a hand from her hip down her thigh as if he was straightening her skirt, but it had fixed itself.

  “That’s as far away from distance as you can get,” she said. “I tell you that what we have is unhealthy and we have to move on and the next day, you make me soak through my panties and skull-fuck me in the hallway.”

  Now she was even more confused because she didn’t know if he had a clue what was going on either. He hadn’t known she was going to come to his door. This wasn’t planned. If Archer decided he was going to do this, he’d
have come and knocked on her door when he wanted it.

  This was serendipity. For the first time since cutting herself, she could feel something deep in her gut, in her heart. The love was so immense that it overwhelmed her. As desperate as she was to ask what this meant or to insinuate herself back into his apartment and into his life, Nya considered that this might have been their goodbye.

  They’d done well to avoid giving in to their urges so far. But now if she was really going they didn’t have to, because they could have this and still walk away.

  He didn’t say he loved her. Didn’t ask her to stay. He just put her on her knees and gave her what she’d been asking for, for weeks. His forehead came to hers as his hand slid down the wall to stop behind her ear.

  “I figured if I took the edge off you’d stop sniffing around other guys,” he murmured.

  So he’d made her come to delay her asking another man to do it. Did that mean his own sexual need had been reaching critical mass and maybe he’d thought about asking another woman to satisfy him? So seeing the chance, he’d used her to alleviate the need?

  Nya didn’t know.

  There was so much she didn’t know, and she didn’t see answers in his eyes. “I have to go to work,” she said.

  Although he didn’t move a millimeter, he let her slide out from between him and the wall. Their indecent encounter didn’t make her question her decision, it reinforced it. As long as she and Archer were close to each other, their attraction would pull them together.

  Levi was a decent guy and maybe if her life wasn’t so fucked up, she’d think about pursuing something with him. As it was, he was a victim of the confusion in her life and she couldn’t begin to explain it to him.

  She’d get ready for work and go through the motions there. Next time she saw Levi, she’d apologize. At least she didn’t have to worry about deflecting unwanted advances from him. Archer had made his position clear to the neighbor and she envied him that, because Nya didn’t have a fucking clue what she felt. Every minute, her emotions got more confused. Getting out was the only way she could see to save her sanity.

  seven

  Nya had just finished dealing with a leak in the Sizzle toilets when she came out to find a man behind the bar. This man didn’t work for her. She’d never slept with him and would have to think twice before labelling him a friend.

  Pissed off as she was that he’d just helped himself to her liquor, Nya wasn’t threatened. “Derren?” she asked, going over to dump the wrench on the bar.

  “Working hard?” he asked, swilling the liquid in his glass as he examined the tool.

  “Owning a place is a lot different to managing it,” she said. “I didn’t think anything of calling out emergency repairmen when it was just numbers on a check.”

  “Now it’s your job to make sure that check clears,” he said.

  She nodded once. “Exactly.” He took a drink. “I’m not going to point out that we’re closed or that technically you shouldn’t have been able to get in here, I’m just gonna ask you… what’s up?”

  “I owe you one,” he said, going back to fill his glass again and from his generosity to himself she was about to say he owed her two. “I don’t like debts hanging over my head. So I’m here to find out what you want for squaring with Ester for me.”

  Payment.

  Nya could see where Archer got his education. Her mind didn’t work in the same way, and she was about to tell him that she’d just done what she did to protect a friend, meaning Ester.

  But, at the last second, she realized this was an opportunity. “I can have anything?” she asked.

  “Anything.”

  Emptying his glass into his throat, he slid it away down the bar and pushed his weight onto his forearms on the surface between them, while taking in an eyeful of her breasts through her damp shirt.

  His interest forced her to ask, “Would you really fuck me?”

  If the impact of surprise that registered on his expression was anything to go by, she’d given him the shock of his life. “Is that what you want?”

  Archer wouldn’t have had a relationship with her if she’d been whore enough to sleep with his mentor. But Derren’s lewd conduct was either meant to set her off-kilter or he was bastard enough to screw his ward’s ex-girl.

  Narrowing her eyes, she pushed her breasts together and leaned closer. “Archer really fucked me up when he dumped me,” she purred. “Maybe a little payback would feel good.”

  He didn’t move, but she kept edging forward. Tipping her lips higher, she had to lift her feet from the floor to gradually lever further over the bar, taking her mouth to within a whisper of his.

  Derren shoved off his forearms onto his hands, straightening up. “Ok, sweetheart, you got me, you can have anything except that.”

  A burst of laughter made her grin and she slapped her own palm onto the bar. “I knew it,” she said, and grabbed hold of him to pull him down so she could kiss his cheek.

  “You’re hot,” he said, wearing a scowl. “But not hot enough for me to screw over my kid.”

  Nya just laughed. “I’m not sure who Archer would kill first, you or me.” He might be ready to be rid of her, but he didn’t handle betrayal well, something she knew firsthand. “Get yourself another drink,” she said, slipping away from the bar to head for a table. Pulling out a chair, she swept a hand across it. “Then come take a seat.”

  “That piece of shit chair wouldn’t stand up to a session,” he said, adding more liquor to his glass.

  Taking a seat at the same table, she crossed her legs. “We’re past the sex,” she said. “You’re going to give me what I want and it’s nothing to do with your dick.”

  He came over to join her and dropped into his seat with a satisfied exhale. “A drink with me?” Derren asked. “You’re cheap, girl.”

  This wasn’t a simple drink. Propping her chin on her hand, she fixated on him. “I want to know why you stuck around,” she said. “Tell me about your relationship with Ester and why you looked after Archer. You didn’t have to, but you did.”

  “Straight for the meat, no garnish for you,” he said. “If you guys are through, why do you care?”

  Nya wanted to know about their history and Derren wouldn’t be forthcoming unless she had leverage, like this. “You owe me. This is how you can settle the debt.”

  Still, he made her wait, just like Archer would. “Ester got knocked up when she was fifteen. She was barely sixteen when Arch was born.”

  Nya knew there weren’t many years between mother and son, but she hadn’t known there were that few. “Oh my God, who was the father?”

  “Much older guy, married guy. Ester gets pissed when I say it, but he basically raped her.” Nya’s lips parted. “Not a back alley, middle-of-the-night rape. He groomed her for years, she was thirteen when they met. It was sick. She says she loved him, I think it’s bullshit.”

  So Derren was protective and didn’t hear what Ester said, he passed his own judgement and stuck to it. “Did he stick around?”

  “Not when he found out about the baby,” Derren said into his liquor. “He took his family and left the state. CPS tried to take Archer, but Ester wouldn’t let ‘em. She and her mom moved to their own trailer, away from Ester’s piece-of-shit father, just to keep the baby and she did great with him for years. It’s amazing if you think about how old she was and everything she was missing out on.”

  “What changed?” Nya asked, because something had. Archer’s memories were of a party-girl mom who had a different boyfriend every week.

  “Ester’s mom died on his sixth birthday,” Derren said. “Ester lost it, couldn’t handle raising him alone. She was so sure she’d fuck it up that she didn’t try. Arch hasn’t celebrated a birthday since.”

  God, that was sad and her sympathy welled until tears touched her eyes. “Where do you fit in?”

  “I wasn’t around then, I met Ester about five, six years after. By then, she was off the rails. I had
no idea that she had a kid, thought she was a good-time gal.”

  “So you took advantage of the good time?” Nya asked. She didn’t want to sound judgmental, but she thought it seeped into her tone.

  “First time I saw her with Arch I went crazy. The kid had scrapes on his knees, bruises, he wasn’t even wearing a shirt. I thought she was abusing him, he was so scrawny. She ran off crying and I talked to him. Turned out, he got the bruises from scrapping. He got into every fight going, he was so angry. He fought for money, picked pockets, was into burglary, selling stolen goods. His enterprise was impressive for a kid so young. He was determined to support his mom, who was doing fuck all. He only saw the inside of a school room a couple of times a month, if that. He spent all his time looking after his mom.”

  “And you took pity? ‘Cause you had Kristof?”

  “Kris was off on his own by then, he was still around I guess, but he was sixteen, seventeen, something like that, I knew I’d taught him right. Arch needed someone, something his mom was never gonna be able to give him.”

  “Supporting his mom is still important to him,” Nya said, thinking about how insistent he was about supporting her too.

  A faint nostalgic smile flickered to his lips and he put an elbow on the table, twisting the base of the glass on the surface. “He was saving up for this dumb weight set too. He was fast and smart; it was his cunning that let him win fights. He couldn’t match the other guys for bulk… I changed that fast.”

  This big guy, sitting here, looked mean. But he’d taken pity on a kid who had a chip on his shoulder and nothing going for him. “I’m totally in love with you,” she said and her smile amused him. “You did an amazing thing.” His lips stayed together. “Were you and Ester through then?”

  “Naw, we knocked boots for a couple of years after that, broke-up, things got casual. I saw less of her. After Arch grew up, he stayed with Kris for a while, and everyone went their own ways.”