Marked (Branded Book 3)

by Scarlett Finn

  “But, babe, you should know by now, if I don’t want you to know something, I keep you far away from it. If I’m on the fucking phone in this apartment, I’m always expecting you to walk in.”

  “You wanted me to hear?”

  He shrugged. “Ny, I can’t lie to you and you can’t lie to me, which is why even though you tossed and turned all night driving yourself crazy, you couldn’t let me leave this fucking room without coming clean.”

  And that was why he was smiling, that was why he was calm, not because she’d listened in, but because she’d told the truth. Maybe he did have something to hide, he could be up to God only knew what. He was smiling because she’d been honest, even if it had taken her a few sleepless hours to conclude she had to talk to him.

  “But, hey,” he said, taking his foot off the floor to shift up the bed and sit upright against the headboard so he could look at her. “That’s twice in fucking twenty-four hours you’ve thought the fucking worst about me.” His eyes got narrow and he peered into her. “Are you trying to fuck this up?”

  That was the last thing she wanted to do. Swatting his leg out of the way, she pulled back the blankets and clambered into his lap to sit astride him. “No. No, God, please, Fella, don’t think that.” She brushed her thumbs on his cheeks and kissed him. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on. I love you. You know I do. But it’s just…”

  “Whenever your boy, Tag, gets involved you go into ultra-protective mode and everyone’s an enemy… including me.”

  She didn’t like hearing it put that way. Except she didn’t think this was about her relationship with Tag. Resting both hands on his pecs, she looked at the ridges of his muscles and tried to figure out what was going on in her head.

  “Every guy I’ve ever been with I thought I could trust,” she said, toying with his body to distract herself from his probing eyes. “And all of them screwed me up. My first boyfriend, that was a majorly fucked up situation. He kept trying to get me pregnant, he told me that him and his buddies were having some competition, the loser was the last one to knock up a girl… you know what guys like that are like. White trash who want the benefits that come with a kid. It took me years to figure out he didn’t care about me, he just wanted any woman.

  “And then there was the professor. I thought I had it made; I’d found myself a mature guy, you know, someone who wouldn’t mess me around. A guy who’d look after me because he had his shit together… but he wanted a trophy. He couldn’t date a student, it would be too messy. But he liked the way I adored him, he liked trotting me out in front of his friends. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t the blonde with the big rack, I was still a kid.”

  He nodded like he understood; calm, collected, patient, letting her reveal more of herself on her own time. Archer was always so together and she was always such a mess. “And the next guy?” he asked, brushing her hair away from her shoulder to uncover both her breasts, although he only admired them, he didn’t touch.

  “He was a major mistake,” she said. Still, to this day, she kicked herself for getting involved with Mateo. “He was the closest I’d ever come to a one-night stand. I mean it wasn’t, we didn’t sleep together the night we met. But he became obsessed. We went out a few times and we did sleep together, but the truth is… he was a rebound. Tag told me it would be healthy to get the professor out of my system and I needed to stop moping. I’d been depressed for weeks, feeling sorry for myself, you know? So it was nice to just be with someone and have a distraction from that reality.”

  “What happened with him?” She exhaled in a kind of awkward laugh because it made her uncomfortable to talk about it. “You can tell me anything, Ny.”

  Lifting her chin, she loved how he could read her, loved how he sensed her discomfort without her having to verbalize it. “He was infatuated with me. We went on a few dates, got intimate, but I broke it off when I decided to focus on myself for a while. I’d gone from one relationship to another, I hadn’t been without a man and I knew Mateo was just a rebound. I wanted a better job; those were the days when I was young and idealistic enough to believe that I could maybe have a career and a nice apartment… a normal life. I was over the professor and Mateo had done his job in helping me move on. I was free of my father and my childhood. I was in my early twenties; I could be anyone I wanted to be.” She smiled because that kind of optimism was so distant a memory that she almost couldn’t recognize herself. “We kids had nothing but potential, that’s what all the chat shows said… I noticed him, sometimes in places I was, bars and restaurants, but I didn’t think too much about it. We’d gone to these places together, maybe he liked them, it wasn’t like he approached me.”

  “You were young and dumb. It was no accident he was on your tail.”

  Yeah, no doubt about that. “It started to get creepy. It stopped being just at night. He’d show up at cafes I’d never visited with him. I saw him standing outside job interviews or on the other side of the street outside my apartment… Tag would confront him and they’d scream at each other. I begged Tag to leave it alone because Mateo never got violent, he was just everywhere. I went on a date… and this was about six months after we’d slept together for the last time… he called me crying, told me how devastated he was. Anyway, it went on like that. He never tried to hurt me or even threaten to. He just didn’t want to let go. Sometimes I was creeped out, sometimes I was angry, but mostly I just felt sorry for him because it wasn’t really about me, he just needed someone to love and I needed to be free… or so I thought…”

  “You thought?” he asked.

  Reflecting on that time in her life since meeting Archer, the man she was meant to love, gave her a better understanding on the journey of her life. Turning her lips into her mouth, she slid her ass down his thighs a bit so she could lie down on his slouched body, resting her torso on his. He wrapped his arms around her and held her for a while, saying nothing, just playing with her hair and kissing her head.

  “Then I met Damien. He got rid of Mateo, I don’t know how. I wasn’t looking for another relationship, but when I met him it was like a meteor crashing into me. He looked at me and I just… I could feel him everywhere. It was my turn to be obsessed… and that was the next five years of my life.”

  “Why have you never told me this before?”

  “I don’t know, because I don’t like talking about my mistakes. And given that I hate thinking about you with other women, I don’t want to give you an image of me with other guys.”

  “Don’t worry about my ego,” he said into her hair. “Yeah, I fucking wish you’d been lily-white when I met you, ‘cause I don’t want any other guy touching you. But there isn’t anything I don’t want to hear. Fuck my reaction, fuck what it does to my head, fuck my feelings, what’s important is that I’m here for you.”

  She sat up. “You’re a guy who takes responsibility. We sat in this room and you told me… you told me you had no interest in hos. Does that mean every woman you’ve been with you’ve loved? Like you love me?”

  He ran his fingers into her hair to sweep it away from her face so he could cradle her jaw. “There’s only one woman I love now. One woman I plan to love.”

  “Tell me about them,” she said, touching his lip. “Tell me about the last woman you were with before me.”

  He sealed his lips and inhaled through his nose. “I’ll tell you, but you’ve got to know…”

  “Know what?” she asked when he didn’t finish his sentence.

  So many possibilities ran through her mind. Did Archer still love the woman? Did she still love him? Had something terrible and tragic happened and she’d been lost to one of his marks in a deal gone wrong? Was it a forbidden love? Was it—

  “Stop it,” he said, reading her again. Something in her eyes must have conveyed to him the dozens of scenarios flashing across her mind’s eye. “All I was gonna say was, I don’t kiss and tell. Sounds dumb, right? But just ‘cause those relationships are over doesn’t mean I d
on’t feel protective towards them. I mean, fuck them, it’s not that I’m in love with any of the women from my past. They gave me something or did something for me, you know, changed something about the way I think or I shared an experience with them that changed us both.”

  “Everyone we meet has an impact on our lives,” she said.

  Bringing up her feet, Nya tucked them in behind his hips, giving him an opening to stroke his palms from her ankles to her ass.

  “Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean, and I want you to know that even the women who fucked me over, I still wouldn’t give them up.”

  So that was why he didn’t talk about the women from his past, why he wasn’t forthcoming about who they were and his time with them, because that sense of responsibility didn’t leave him even after the relationship was over.

  “So you don’t trust me with their secrets,” she said and was surprisingly reassured.

  Yes, she wanted to know every detail, but she also had major respect for Archer being this honest with her. That he held onto respect for the women from his past also spoke to his unyielding integrity, which was something Nya valued a lot.

  Archer gave her more than just reassurance with his next confession. “I can tell you that whatever this is, I’ve never had anything like it.”

  “Me, you mean?” she asked with a timid hope because she didn’t want to scare him with her exuberance.

  “Yes, you… and I’m still trying to figure out why I’m hooked on you.”

  Picking up her wrist, she offered her brand to his lips and he kissed her. “Can you tell me about the call? Why were you talking to Gio?”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” he said and she refrained from huffing, but again, he knew her thoughts. “I’m not withholding anything. I can’t talk about it while your boy is here.”

  “He’s in the bathroom,” she said, “two rooms away. I’ve been chained to that pipe. Trust me, he can’t hear a thing.”

  “Go downstairs and get yourself cleaned up. I’ll make breakfast.”

  “Breakfast?” she asked. “Is it breakfast time?”

  “Maybe, who the fuck knows,” he asked. “You have to go to the club today and I have to talk to Derren.” Climbing off him, Nya intended to do what she was told, but this time it was him who grabbed her. “I’m only doing what you asked me to do… I would never do anything to disappoint you. You believe that, right?”

  Coming back to the bed, she sat down to kiss him. “I do.” They were still nuzzling and kissing when she yawned. “After breakfast, you’re gonna sleep for a couple of hours,” he said, “right here.”

  “But the club—”

  “I’ll take care of the club and Derren will take care of Tag. You’ve got to take care of you.”

  There was too much going on for her to think about rest. “I can catch up on sleep any time.” She stood up. “We have to think about…”

  He linked their fingers, “Is this how you’ll be when you’re pregnant, not looking after yourself?”

  And that made her confront another truth. “That was the wine talking,” she said, watching their fingers twine and curl. “Forget I said anything, it was a stupid idea.”

  “So you don’t want to carry my kid?”

  “You didn’t want one,” she said, sinking to a crouch when he turned to sit on the edge of the bed, putting his feet to the floor.

  His fingertips touched her jaw. “I told you to give me time.”

  “You told me to wait until we had a dream that can’t possibly come true… your way of letting me down gently.”

  He tilted his head. “Is that what you think of me, Squirm? If I mean no, I say no. And if I make you a promise, I follow through. Like I said last night, just give me time. You have to show me you can take care of you ‘cause you’re the priority now.”

  “I’m not pregnant,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, one day you will be and unless you want me on your ass twenty-four-seven, watching every move you make, you’re gonna show me you can take care of you, ok? No more crazy risks or no baby.” His thumb rubbed the front of her jaw as he clasped it and dipped to kiss her. “Now fling your shit on.”

  “I can go down in your tee shirt—”

  “Ha, not a chance,” he said, his protective nature extended into her wardrobe choices.

  “I don’t want to put on my dirty clothes,” she said.

  “But you’re dirty.”

  Rising, she sat on one of his thighs and looped her arms around his neck. “Yeah, but I’ll just feel more icky. If you’re worried about my feet you can give me socks—”

  “I’m worried about the fucking neighbors.”

  She was running down a single floor, it would take less than a minute, and she probably wouldn’t see another soul. “The guys on this floor know I’m yours. Paul next door, saw me with your cock in my throat a couple of weeks ago, you didn’t care about that.”

  “That’s not the neighbor I’m talking about.”

  Levi. “You have to stop thinking about that.”

  He rubbed his eyes. “After seeing another guy standing that close to you, I don’t think I’ll stop thinking about that sight, not ever.”

  “Well…” Nya melted down off his lap to settle on her knees between his legs to take hold of his dick. She grinned up at him. “Since I’m down here anyway, let’s see what I can do about giving you a new picture to think about.”

  seventeen

  Nya went into Archer’s apartment with the brown paper grocery bag under her arm. After tugging her key out of the open door, she kicked it shut with her heel.

  “I put in a full shift of hard labor at the club only to walk out to a text telling me to bring home Cheetos and beer. I’m guessing I’m not in for a night of romance,” she said, putting the bag on the table so she could take off her jacket. A smell in the air made her wrinkle her nose. “What is that smell?”

  It couldn’t be what she thought it was. Nya was sure it couldn’t. Except Archer was sitting in the middle of the couch, occupied by something on a small, yellow plastic dinner tray. The TV was on mute as usual and although he glanced up to read the subtitles once in a while, he hadn’t yet looked at her.

  “Thanks, babe, you can split if you want,” he murmured and she heard the crunch of paper.

  “Split?” she asked, going to the couch to look over the back and Archer’s shoulder. “Why are you sitting down? And what is that?” She gasped. “Is that pot?”

  Skirting around the couch at super speed, Nya dropped down beside him, thigh-to-thigh. “Yeah,” he said, licking the length of the papers to stick them together. “Roach?”

  He opened one hand toward her while the other twisted the end of the joint into a short, tight point.

  Nya shoved his hand away. “Since when do you get high?” she asked. Having dealt with one man’s drug problem, she now faced another and this one was worse. “Do you know what pot can do to your fertility?”

  Smiling, he kissed her temple, then tore a rectangle of cardboard from the tobacco papers packet to roach the spliff. “Guess you’re serious about the kid thing after all, if you’re thinking about that.” She blushed, but her embarrassment was forgotten when he held it up to her. “It’s not for me.”

  “I don’t want it,” she exclaimed, wondering at why he’d give her such a peculiar gift.

  “It’s not for you either.”

  The toilet flushed, then the bathroom door opened. When Tag appeared in the living room to drop into the armchair at the couch, she could only gape at her friend who wasn’t usually wandering around like he was just a dude hanging out rather than a detoxing prisoner.

  Nya turned her shock on Archer. “You’re getting him high?”

  “We have a meeting,” Archer said, reaching past her to hand Tag the joint.

  But she snatched it before her friend could get it. “You can’t substitute one drug for another,” she said.

  What sense did it make to get him away from t
he cocaine only to give him a crutch? Marijuana might not be as damaging to his health as the harder drug, but she’d be concerned about Tag slipping back into his old ways if he had the excuse that they’d given him other illegal substances. It could be argued that the line was arbitrary and what right did they have to decide where it was for him? A zero-tolerance policy was better than being hypocritical.

  Though it might be Archer’s reasoning that a stoned Tag would be less inclined to get himself into trouble, but she didn’t want to lobotomize her friend just to give them a break.

  “This is a one-off,” Archer said. “His anxiety is gonna fuck us. This will chill him out.”

  “A meeting? What kind of meeting? A meeting with who?” Nya asked, searching Tag and Archer for an explanation. “Look, I have the joint.” She held it in her fist. “And nobody’s getting this until I find out what’s going on.”

  “You don’t need to know anything,” Tag said. “Just give me the damn thing.”

  It was Friday and had been three days since the night Tag had agreed to play nice. As far as Nya knew, he’d been a good boy. She and Archer worked together to manage the renovations at Sizzle and they spent their nights here. Tag had been given blankets and pillows to make him more comfortable, but Archer wouldn’t let him leave the bathroom because he’d insisted that if Tag got the chance, he may still give in to the temptation of taking drugs.

  Archer rose and moved around to his regular position of standing behind the couch. “We’re meeting Gio first,” he said, his eyes narrowed on the television. “If this prick doesn’t fuck that up we have another meeting after, a big one.”

  So, it wasn’t just a meeting, it was two meetings, meaning the chances of something going wrong were twice as high. Tag surged to his feet. “Don’t involve her. Nya doesn’t need to know. She doesn’t need to worry.”

  “She asked me a direct question,” Archer said, folding his arms. “And when she does that, I can’t lie.”