Branded

by Scarlett Finn

  “You’d do anything for him, wouldn’t you?” he asked breathing in her exhale before he kissed her.

  Tag was nowhere near her thoughts now. “Use my body, Archer. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “You like that, Squirm? Like to give me anything I want?” Before she could nod, his hands dropped to snatch her ass which he hauled forward, pressing her into the erection pulsing behind his fly. “Only one thing you gotta know before giving yourself to me… If I have you, I keep you.”

  Maybe this wasn’t a game after all. “You want to…” be together. “You want to…” commit to each other. “You want to…” have a relationship? It was all so fast and she didn’t know how to say the words without taking the risk of breaking the mood when she wanted to do this, needed to do this.

  Clasping his shoulders, she needed his support and he gave it by kissing her again. “Yes, Squirm, I do fucking want to.”

  If this table was his base of operations, it had to have taken a beating through the years. It was obvious that the pipes in the bathroom were reinforced, so he’d probably done the same to the table. But as his weight descended, she did brace in case it collapsed under their combined weight.

  “Will this hold?” she asked when he rose to pull her bra from her arms.

  Driving his fingers into her hair, he groaned and sank his lips onto hers. His answers didn’t come in the form of words. His urgency answered for him. Maybe he didn’t care whether or not the table would hold. Maybe he knew it would. Maybe he had experience. Maybe he’d done this before. Right now, she didn’t care. She wouldn’t let herself think about other women or other experiences he might have had with them. This was their moment. Their first moment of giving in to what had been building between them since that night in the parking lot.

  For a split second she worried he was too much for her, that he would overwhelm her because he was too overbearing, too powerful. He knew what he wanted. He told her what he wanted. He demanded from her what he wanted.

  Nya couldn’t give it to him. Maybe she could. Right now, with the weight of him on top of her, and his hands skimming down her arms, up her waist, through her hair, all over her body, she wanted to be it. She wanted to give it to him. She wanted to give in to his demands, to be with a man so strong and potent.

  Already he was between her thighs, but it wasn’t enough, she wanted more. Being topless beneath his clothed form frustrated her because she craved skin-on-skin contact.

  But when she tried to wheedle her hands up beneath his tee shirt, he caught her wrists and lifted them over her head, pinning them to the top edge of the table. His hands were curled around her, pressing her fine, fragile bones into the harsh rim of the table-top. While whimpering at the sensation of his crushing force, for a moment, she wanted him to stop, wanted to tell him that he was hurting her. And then something about the way his rough palm stimulated the brand he’d scorched into her wrist reminded her of what had happened here in this place.

  Suddenly though, that night was no longer traumatic. The pain of that moment that they’d shared here at this table was worth it. Yes, he’d scared her. He’d hurt her. He’d pinned her down, heated his knife and pressed it into her flesh. It had been terrifying. She didn’t know what was coming next. Nya hadn’t known if he planned to use that knife to slice her, to hurt her, maybe to kill her. The agony of the burn was seared into her memory forever, just as the scar that had formed on her wrist would be.

  But, his mouth, his skilled, soft, hot mouth was skimming over her jaw, down her neck and his hands loosened to slide down her vulnerable arms. She could feel every groove, every ridge of his fingerprints. She was so sensitive that every hair on her body reacted to the heat of his breath when it flowed over her nipple.

  Her body was moving, she couldn’t stay still. Even with him there, holding her down with his own body weight, she managed to wriggle up and down. Responding to every move he made, countering it with her own, ensuring that they never parted contact. This didn’t make sense and yet it did. It made so much sense.

  It was physical. Nothing but physical. The attraction of her body to his, the magnetism, the sheer chemical reaction that they caused by being close to each other was undeniable now that they were on equal footing.

  She needed him. He’d promised to help. That’s why she’d come back. That’s why she’d given him the money that Tag owed him, because she had to hold up her end of the deal in order to get Archer to uphold his.

  Recalling their deal reminded her of what had happened to Jamie and how sad it was to watch her suffer in such a horrific way.

  Nya’s arms were still stretched above her head, or they had been, without thinking about it, she moved her hands to his face and opened her fingers to spread them in his hair to pull his mouth away from her breasts.

  He grumbled, groaned, and growled out loud, pissed off that she was stopping him from doing what he wanted to. Stopping him from tasting her. But she lifted her head from the table and met his eye as he wrenched her digits out of his hair to slam her hands down on the surface beneath them.

  This time, maybe ‘cause of the eye contact, he let her speak. “Archer,” she said. “I want this. I’ve never wanted anything more than I want this.”

  “Good,” he said in such a primal rumble that it came from deep inside his throat.

  She felt it through his whole body. His torso shook, his hips pushed into hers, teasing her with a sample of what was to come.

  Looking into his chocolate eyes with their dark honey flecks, she knew this wouldn’t be enough. That one joining on this table wouldn’t be enough. If they gave in to this, she wanted to learn everything there was to know about this man who held himself so far away from everybody else.

  Gio had said it. Archer knew everyone, absolutely everyone. But nobody knew him. She wanted to know. She wanted to know him physically, wanted to know what he did to keep in shape. Wanted to know what he tasted like, wanted to know if he snored, what he ate for breakfast, how many beers he drank every night.

  His head fell forward, but it was surrender, not passion that made his hair tickle her chest. “We’re gonna do this,” he said. “Even if you try to cut me off, it won’t matter. I will have you.” He kissed each breast and then her chin before he climbed up off the table to pull his tee shirt over his head. “We’re going to do this, we’re not waiting. I know you’re fucked up. But I’m fucked up. This whole situation is fucked up. We shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t want each other. This shouldn’t feel like this.”

  His words were panted like they hurt him or annoyed him or something else negative. Whatever it was, she wanted to know, but she couldn’t ask. Not now. Not yet.

  Before, when she’d seen him climbing in and out of the shower, she’d seen his body. He had no shame and he had no reason to be shy. Every muscle he could work was toned and defined. She could pick out each group and saw them move as he did. She almost didn’t notice that he was undoing his belt and sliding it from the loops until he popped open the buttons on his jeans.

  “It’s fucked up,” he said again. Peering at her, his eyes narrowed when his palms landed on either edge of the table and he leaned over her legs. “But tell me it doesn’t make some kind of fucking sense.”

  And he was right because it did. It felt right. Unhooking each of the hip buttons on her skirt, she shimmied down the table, coiling her legs around his when they slid off the end. Supporting herself with her abdominals, she kept her upper body under his that was still leaning over the table, and interlinked her fingers at the nape of his neck.

  “We have a deal,” she said. “This changes nothing about that, right?”

  “No,” he said, scooping a hand under her chin. “I’ll hold up my end of the deal.”

  She smiled. “Good.” Taking a breath, she boosted up to rub her lips on his. “Because I do need you, Archer. But I’m not a whore. This is no kind of payment. I am not doing this out of gratitude or manipulation. I sleep with men I wa
nt to be with. I sleep with men I trust.”

  And despite everything, she did trust him. Maybe she didn’t trust him a hundred percent. She didn’t trust him not to walk away and not to break her heart. But he’d heard her scream in pain and he’d heard her scream in terror.

  The first, he tolerated, but now that she thought about it, she realized he’d never repeated it. He’d never caused her pain again.

  The second, he hadn’t been able to endure. Upon hearing her fear, he’d acted. He’d put himself at risk to pull her out. To save her life. Or more importantly to her, to save her sanity.

  Twisting around, she hopped off the table. Her butt pressed to his groin and his satisfied groan was savage, but she laughed. “Not here. Not our first time,” she said, because she knew he had ideas of taking her like this, bent over the table and maybe of choosing a different hole than the one she was thinking of him occupying.

  So she took both his hands off the corner edges of the table, wrapped his arms around her forward-facing body and walked them both towards the bedroom that she knew was at the back of the apartment. He kept one arm around her, opened the door with the other hand, and shoved her forward with a strong force that made her stumble the few feet to land on the edge of the bed.

  “That’s better,” he said, slamming the door behind him. This was something that he always did, slamming in and out of rooms.

  Her skirt had come off on the journey, so she was left in nothing but her heels and her panties. Archer was still wearing his open jeans and she wanted to remedy that fast.

  Overturning, she grabbed his waistband and hauled his jeans down with his briefs and he made that wild sound of pleasure again. “I like that,” he said, stroking a large hand from the top of her head down the side of her face to her shoulder. “Open wide, Squirm.”

  Before she could even blink, that same hand planted itself on the back of her head and he was pushing the head of his dick between her lip-covered teeth. Sucking on instinct, she was surprised by the mass of him, how quickly he filled her, and was stunned when she realized that she hadn’t even taken half of him.

  This had never been her forte, but she was willing to learn. She’d done it plenty of times before so knew what she was doing enough to feign confidence.

  Nya sucked and bobbed her head, using her hands and her tongue to stimulate as much of him as she could. Rolling her eyes up to his, she was pleased to see his concentration on the circle of her lips around his shaft.

  “Yeah,” he groaned out, dragging out every syllable of his approval. “I like that all right.”

  He got closer until the hairs on his legs tickled her smooth ones and he pushed her knees apart, bringing her even nearer to the edge of the bed. But he didn’t let her finish blowing him. He obviously just wanted to know what it would be like to have her mouth around his cock. Withdrawing from her lips, Archer came down onto the bed over her.

  Pulling her towards the center of the pillows, he gave her a close-up view of the bulge of his muscles as they tensed to maneuver her. Then he relaxed all of his body on top of hers, making her squirm even more and struggle for every breath. But it was arousing.

  Being consumed by his mass made her feel feeble, giving him the power to dictate her breath, her range of motion, it excited her because it tested their trust. If she made it out of this encounter alive, it would be because he let her live and if he did, their trust would be strengthened.

  He could kill. Torture. Torment. But if he chose to pleasure her, he was using his despicable hands for benevolent means for her and only her.

  “You move, girl, feel it. Everything you want, baby, right here.”

  And she knew it, he loved exerting power over her, loved to be dominant, and she wanted to test those limits, to see how comfortable she’d be living under his instruction, his rules, his authority.

  There would be time to delve deeper into these new sensations he was unleashing in her. They would have to be a part of each other’s lives for a while, at least as long as it took them to catch up with all of the men who had assaulted Jamie. So she satisfied herself while imagining the possibilities, by stroking his body and welcoming his mouth on hers.

  His dick was long, it was larger than she’d had and she wasn’t sure if he believed her, no matter how many times she said it, but she wasn’t a whore. And yeah, she wasn’t a virgin either. But it had been a while since she’d done this.

  So, when his hand snaked down between them and his hips rose from hers, she worried that if he tried to plunge inside now, without prior stimulation, he just wouldn’t fit. But he didn’t. His fingers went first, two pushed in deep and she whined while adjusting to their mass.

  Instead of being disappointed, he smiled. “Oh,” he exhaled. “I like that a lot.”

  Since they’d entered the bedroom, he’d claimed to like a lot of things, and she was happy about that. “Yeah?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he responded. “We’re gonna stretch you out nice, right now. Gotta get you slicked up first. Tell me what feels good, Squirm.”

  His fingers went in farther, then came out, he slid them up through her juices, stroked her clit, circled it, began to learn each of her creases and folds. “That,” she moaned. “Oh, Arch, that feels good.”

  Again, his digits dipped into her and he withdrew then let them delve back in. On their next retreat, the tip of his dick met them at her opening. Instead of going inside, he smeared the juice he’d wrung from inside her over and around the bulging head of his cock.

  “You feel good to me,” he said, rocking his head against her in a series of intimate kisses that made her crave the texture of his tongue.

  “Archer,” she murmured. Her heart was racing. Her skin was alive. Her mind wanted more, but her body felt heavy and slaked and desperate all at the same time. “Put it in,” she said. “All the way in now, hard, fast…”

  The words exploded out and sounded better than the reality would probably feel. If he pushed too hard, was too rough, he’d hurt her when he slammed into her. But she did want him, all of him, now, here, inside her. She wanted this first moment over. This first joining to be complete so that she would know what was like to be his complete focus. Not in torture, or fear, or imprisonment, but in passion, in bliss, in desire that was consuming them both.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  Pushing in and easing back, pushing in and easing back, he was taking his time. Maybe it was a tease. Maybe he was worried that she couldn’t accommodate him, whichever it was, he was driving her insane.

  Balling her hands into fists in the blanket they lay on, she arched up and called out. Her juices were flowing now. Her core was swollen, soft, ready to accept him, and beyond patience for this gradual rocking that allowed her to learn only a millimeter of his cock at a time.

  Her clit was enlivened. It stung and buzzed, zapping ecstasy through her. Each signal to her nerves came and went from that sole, central point. Everything about her being centered on that hypersensitive nub. Just when she took the first three inches of him inside her and he was broadening her entrance with his girth, he flicked his fingertips over her clit and that was it, orgasm ripped through her in a drowning tsunami that made it impossible for her to draw in breath.

  Her already tight core clenched, he swore, but she couldn’t let go. Grabbing his waist, she pulled up her body and crushed her eyelids together as all moisture left her mouth. Her breasts ached, her feet tingled, even her scalp quivered.

  “Oh,” she said aloud. “Oh. Oh…”

  The moans, the whispers, the whimpers, his name, maybe hers, maybe she cursed, maybe she praised, Nya couldn’t remember what came out of her mouth. The next thing she remembered was the full impact of him driving far inside her. He hit her so deep that she cried out. There was pain, but it morphed to instant pleasure. Her body was sated. She’d already come once and her body wasn’t ready for round two.

  Except it was.

  In this joining, she felt like she had b
een created for this man. Created for this moment, for this dick. This was the meaning of her life. To have this moment, to share this moment. Nya couldn’t stop herself from making noise. She was still whimpering and moaning and speaking, and her form was moving up and down, left and right, every which way. Moving her hips in circles and figure-eights, feeling him every way she could. Throughout every action of her pelvis, Archer drove in, out, faster, harder, faster.

  The commands were coming from her. She was saying them aloud. Nya wanted more. She wanted it now. She needed him. She needed something and everything. She wanted the world and he was giving it to her.

  “Archer!”

  Unable to stop from saying his name, she was sure he said hers in response, but her ears were ringing, so she couldn’t be sure. Her sight was blurred. Her body was a liquid soup of hormones, responding to her plugged center with orgasm after orgasm.

  Their bodies were joined together in union, moving in opposition; together, apart, together, apart. Each time was more intense, was faster in and slower out. Time slowed down, but their bodies became more focused. Everything became about that one moment when they clashed to their most intimate meeting before withdrawing again.

  When he grabbed for her shoulders, her eyes popped open and she saw his gaze on her. This was it. Archer was galloping to his climax and that knowledge made her legs lock tighter around his hips. Her stimulated passage clamped around his thick, pulsing shaft and she said his name like it was a dirty word and a blessing both at the same time. Because for some reason, it was, he was.

  She came watching him answer in kind, watching his expression contort and tense. He bared his teeth, clenched his jaw. His eyes grew narrow and then he relaxed in one long rush of breath.

  He rolled away, landed on his back and said her name aloud. “Fuck,” was his next word. “What the fuck was that?”