Branded

by Scarlett Finn

  Granting her the steady gift of eye contact, he didn’t flinch. “Comes from you being so easy, horny one. You’re begging for sex before your eyes open in the morning.”

  “I’m competing with breakfast,” she sneered. “I have to put my order in early.”

  “Serving you is the highlight of my day. Nothing tastes better in the morning.”

  Ok, so their conversation might be antagonistic, but she was feeling that rumbling awareness that came with the increase in her pulse rate. This was foreplay. Archer’s seductions may not be typical, but that made them no less intense.

  “You guys want to put each other down for ten minutes and focus on the actual problem?” Gio snapped.

  He was right. Shaking herself from her distraction, she slapped her hands onto Tag’s thighs. “This is a gift,” she said. “You have a way with women, you can do this. You can make her think about being with you, once she realizes she’s attracted to you, she’ll dump this other guy. We’ll figure out how to set up a couple of chance meetings, take her out for a meal. Flirt it up. Kiss her.”

  “Yeah,” Gio said. “Then we get the boyfriend to catch you together, and the relationship will fall apart.”

  Concern made her look to Archer. “What do you know about the boyfriend? Is he stable?”

  This wouldn’t be such a gift if Tag got himself slaughtered for seducing a woman he hadn’t even been interested in in the first place.

  “The way I see it is this,” Archer said. “Your boy here is at risk of harm either way. From what I know about the sister, she’s stubborn when it comes to her brother, but flighty and not used to the attention of men. Guys have always been too afraid to make a move. But, for sure, she’s a flirt… she wasn’t shy about flirting with me.”

  Nya was on her feet before she’d even thought to stand. “You were flirting with the gangster’s sister? Flirting with another woman?”

  His tone and expression stayed level. “She was in the room for about thirty seconds,” Archer said. “I was there to talk to Hexam but happy I got a look at her, and a feel for what she’s like. It will help. There was nothing to it, Squirm.”

  Working in a bar, she flirted with men all the time and knew that it meant nothing. “Nothing to it,” Nya said and then frowned at the tone of her voice because it didn’t sound like her to be irrationally jealous over a casual flirtation.

  Archer was relaxed. “I knew she was interested when I caught her checking me out. It was important for me to figure her out. I’d heard on the street that Hexam’s only issue was getting his sister away from this guy, I had to know how easy it would be to do that.”

  “So that’s what you meant the other night,” Tag said. “When you said you had an idea.”

  “You can’t come at him with business, you’ll insult him,” Archer said. “He thinks he’s the best, better than you, that’s for damn sure. He has an ego.”

  Who didn’t? Nya thought. Definitely every man in this room. Every man she’d met was guilty of having one of those. “This is the only personal problem he has. If you fix it, he’ll forgive you,” she said. “I’d rather you do this than sell your soul to him forever.”

  Gio had been quiet for too long and with his next words she figured out what he’d been mulling. “What if we just got rid of the boyfriend?” Gio asked. “How would Hexam feel about that?”

  “He doesn’t order hits,” Archer said. “Nya reminded you of that like two minutes ago. Are you paying attention, wingman?”

  Gio was nodding. “I know he doesn’t order it, but it would solve his problem and save Tag from having to catch this girl’s eye. What if she’s not attracted to him?”

  “She’s attracted to you,” Tag said to Archer.

  Nya was horrified to hear her friend make such a suggestion. But Archer laughed and leaned back. Clutching the back of the chair, he took it onto its two front legs before dropping it down again. “Yeah,” he said. “You’d like that. I’ll solve your little problem by screwing the little princess and fuck up my relationship with Nya in the process. Sorry, buddy, that’s not gonna happen.”

  “I agree,” Nya said.

  Something about their last sex session must have screwed with her head because Nya seemed to be reacting and speaking without thinking through the whys and consequences. She’d been willing to give up her life to protect Tag’s location, but she wouldn’t give up her relationship with Archer when this was something her friend could do himself.

  Skirting the coffee table, she went to Archer and put her hands to his bare shoulders. Bending as she slid them around him, she laid her cheek against his. “You’ve got me, Squirm, don’t worry,” he assured her on a murmur. “My dick’s going nowhere.”

  “Archer’s gone way beyond what you would’ve done for him,” she said to Tag.

  “I have to stay neutral anyway,” Archer said after kissing her arm. “I can only broker these deals ‘cause I have no investment in the outcome. That’s the only reason I can walk into Hexam’s place and walk out again with all my limbs. He trusts me. Just as I can be paid to give out information I extract, I can be paid for my silence too… If I screwed the princess, Hexam would know I did it to protect you and then he would want to know why. I’m not opening myself to that kind of scrutiny.”

  Reading between the lines, she realized he meant he wasn’t opening her to that kind of scrutiny. Archer was only involved in this because of her and her connection to Tag. It wouldn’t take long for someone like Hexam to figure that out.

  “So it’s your call,” Archer said. “I can tell Hexam you’ll do it and he’ll set it up for you to meet his sister. It will have to look random and you can’t tell her what’s going on.”

  Gio straightened up. “All you have to do is kiss her, we’ll make sure the boyfriend sees it.”

  Something so simple. Nya stood up, sliding her hands to the sides of Archer’s neck and down his shoulders again.

  Hexam’s sister must mean the world to him and protecting her was his priority. Neither she nor Tag could argue with that level of allegiance. Although they weren’t blood, they had a similar relationship; she’d proved that by watching Jamie die instead of giving up her friend.

  When her absent stroking took her hand into Archer’s hair, he caught it and brought it around to kiss her brand. Immediately, she tensed. Shit. The brand. Archer’s tee shirt was huge on her, but the sleeves were nowhere near long enough to cover her wrists. But her cuff was in the bathroom.

  “Uh, excuse me,” she said, side-stepping to hurry away. Except before she could get too far, Archer caught her hand.

  His brows clamped together. “What’s wrong?” he asked, probably sensing her anxiety.

  “Nothing,” she said. The word was too hurried for him to believe it. Mr. Human Lie Detector knew there was something up. “I’m going to the bathroom.”

  Clutching her branded wrist to her chest, she widened her eyes at him. Her need to cradle her limb betrayed her secret and he let her go. Hurrying to the bathroom, she found her cuff, and strapped it on fast. When she came back out, Nya picked up the towel she’d dropped at the door when trying to get Archer’s attention.

  She began to fold it as she went back to the men. All three were on their feet.

  “That cuff again,” Tag said. “It’s so important to you.”

  Moving in to Archer’s side when he extended his arm around her shoulders, Nya hooked her thumb in his belt loop. “Yeah,” she said, wearing a smile and praying he wouldn’t ask any more about it. Because Gio was on his way to the door, she guessed they were making their exit. “You guys just got here, you’re leaving already?”

  “We have some stuff to work out,” Tag said. “I’ll call you later.”

  She showed them to the door and Tag kissed her cheek before disappearing down the hallway. Closing the door, she leaned against it, and Archer reached past her to secure the locks.

  “You have a lot to answer for,” she said, prodding a finger into his
chest. “You set that up so we’d be having sex when they got here.”

  “Yeah,” he said, not bothering to deny it. “His attitude on the phone pissed me off. He’s got no fucking right to ask what we do with each other. This is our business, not his.”

  From a man who needed to know everything about everyone at all times, that seemed like a ridiculous thing for him to get his back up about. But privacy was important to her, so she appreciated him defending theirs.

  “Ok, but what would you have done if we hadn’t finished?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer her question, he just did the locks, then pressed his palms to the door on either side of her head, pinning her in. “And what about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Didn’t have you pegged as the jealous sort.”

  Her inhale was joined by an eye roll. “You declared in front of a room full of guys that you were flirting it up with some young, gorgeous, probably dangerous woman.”

  “I didn’t say she was gorgeous.”

  “You said she was beautiful,” Nya said. The difference between the two words was so negligible that semantics weren’t going to change how she’d felt. “It doesn’t matter. As soon as I opened my mouth I felt like an idiot. You can flirt with whoever you want, just don’t touch.”

  “Ok, good deal. So long as you know that you have nothing to be jealous of.”

  “I do. What are we going to do for the rest of the day while Tag makes his decision?”

  When he put an arm around her again to lead her away from the door. “I’m in the mood for Cheerios,” he said, burying his face in her hair.

  Smiling, she turned her face into his chest. “Then Cheerios it is.”

  twenty-five

  “This isn’t right,” Nya said, looking into the plate of sumptuous food that had just been put down in front of her.

  “What’s wrong with it,” Archer asked, leaning over the table to peer into his plate as he gnawed on a meatball. “Looks fine. You haven’t tasted it.”

  “Not the food,” she said.

  They’d come back to Louie’s and had the same reception. The atmosphere was cozy tonight, it wasn’t quite as busy and they’d received such an enthusiastic welcome that she got a free bottle of wine into the bargain, making her think Archer might have done some recent work for someone associated with this place.

  “Then what?” he asked, scooping up more food. “The wine?”

  “No, it feels wrong to be sitting here safe and happy when Tag could be in danger.”

  It had taken another ten days to work out the details between the parties and con Hexam’s unsuspecting sister into being set up. None of the men had a problem with what they were going to do to Farrah Hexam. Nya voiced her unhappiness several times, but was ignored until she just gave up arguing.

  It didn’t matter how many times Archer tried to explain to her that this was business and it would bail Tag out, it didn’t feel right to play with a woman’s emotions. But, he also pointed out, that if Farrah was that into her current boyfriend, Tag wouldn’t turn her head. So they’d just have to wait and see how everything played out.

  “In danger on a date?” he asked, not sharing her apprehension. “Her sexual tastes are vanilla, you have nothing to worry about.”

  It was her turn to be unimpressed. “I don’t want to know how you know that.”

  He smiled. “No, you probably don’t.”

  She refrained from making a sound of disgust. “What if he’s in trouble?”

  His impatience didn’t slow his eating, nothing did. Though it annoyed her that he could be so loose about Tag making a move on Hexam’s sister with only Gio nearby for support, it probably served her better that Archer was focused on his food rather than turning his irritation into anger. “The whole reason you made us come out was so we were ready and could move fast if we had to.”

  Eating at Louie’s hadn’t been her original request, it had been a compromise. “We could help quicker if we’d gone to the club they’re at.”

  “She’s seen my face,” he said. “I can’t be too close. And your boyfriend has his own reinforcements hanging close. He doesn’t need you.”

  “I’d feel better if I knew he was safe. What if—”

  Archer’s fork clattered to his plate, startling her into silence. In the same move, he sat straight, slamming both palms to the table. “This has to stop.”

  Surprised by his abrupt action, she took a few seconds to stutter “Wha... what?”

  “I love you, baby, you gotta know that, but your obsession with Taggert is a buzz kill.”

  Offended, his outburst didn’t ease her anxiety, in fact it made her madder. “I’m not obsessed with him,” she said. “He’s my friend. You might enjoy going through life without anyone to worry about except yourself, but the rest of us need human connection.”

  “I got plenty of human connection,” he said, bowing over the table. “Wait ‘til we get home and my dick will spend the night connecting with your throat, will that be human enough for you?”

  Maybe he was insecure, but she’d never given him any reason to think that there was anything beyond friendship between her and Tag. “He’s like my brother, would you be this pissed if I was worried about my brother?”

  “Like a brother is not the same as a brother,” he said. “And he doesn’t think of you as a sibling, you heard his dig about setting me up with Hexam’s sister. He wants us apart.”

  “Hexam wants his sister away from her boyfriend and they are siblings. What Tag is doing is the same thing. He’s trying to protect me ‘cause he thinks that you’re bad for me.”

  “Why?” Archer demanded. “I challenge him to compare the limit of what he’ll do for you to what I would.”

  Stabbing at her plate, Nya tried her food. “I’ve told you before, it’s not a competition.”

  “Listening to you talk about him makes me think it is. Would you be this worried about me?”

  “You wouldn’t be on a date with a gangster’s sister,” she said, forcing the pasta down her throat. “You should be supportive. You should realize that he’s important to me.”

  His shoulders went up. “What the fuck else could I do but eat the girl’s pussy for him! I saved his ass and got nothing but shit from him. Where’s the gratitude?”

  “Is that what this is about?” she asked. “God, men are such—”Although she knew it wasn’t the relevant point, her concentration glued on something she’d missed that smacked her in the chest now. “Wait, you… you said you love me.”

  “So what?” he grumbled, hunching over his plate and forking up some spaghetti.

  “So what?” she asked because she couldn’t believe he was that clueless. “You fucking love me and you say ‘so what?’ Like it’s no big deal.”

  “If you hadn’t figured it out already you need your head checked,” he said, swiping his beer bottle from the table to glug half of it down.

  Being with him was like nothing she’d experienced before and she knew her own feelings ran deep. But it hadn’t occurred to her that he might be ready to declare his own feelings for her, putting them out in the open without being awkward or hesitant.

  Anger was gone and she was almost breathless. “Fella,” she whispered, resenting the table that was between them.

  Sliding out of her seat, she swept around to his side of the booth and had just sank down beside him when he slammed the bottle onto the table. His eyes moved over her body, watching her actions like he wasn’t sure what she might do next.

  “What are you doing over here?” he asked. “Go back to your own side.”

  He could see over her head, so it wasn’t like she was blocking his view if there was something interesting for him to note going on in the restaurant. But she stroked her hands up his jacket, under his collar, then over it to clasp his jaw.

  “I love you too, Archer. You infuriate me and I never know what you’re thinking but… I love you.”

  “Then
you’ll have to get over the obsession.”

  He wasn’t asking her to choose, just to talk about Tag less, and tonight, after what he’d revealed, she was ok with that. “I guess I’ll have to find something else to obsess over then.”

  “I’ll help you out with that,” he said, wrapping his fingers in her hair at the back of her head, he pulled it back to drop his mouth to hers.

  Archer loved her and she’d admitted to feeling the same, neither of them were running for the hills, not yet. Tag was out with the girl who was going to save his life and if he succeeded, they’d never have to worry about Hexam ever again.

  “Archer,” she said when she eased away from their kiss.

  “What?” he asked, seeking her kiss again.

  But she resisted because she had something to say. Over the last ten days they’d been focused on solving Tag’s problem. With that out of the way, Nya could think about her own mission. She needed to tell Archer it was time. “I’m ready.”

  “Ready for what?” he asked, keeping one hand at the back of her head while the other snagged her chin, so he could force their kiss.

  “To take them down.”

  Kissing was forgotten when he became serious and frowned at her. “You’re sure?”

  She nodded. “We had a deal and I’m calling it in.”

  Read on for an excerpt from:

  one

  “There’s a terrifying guy glaring at you from the end of the bar. Should I call security?”

  Nya smiled at her new server’s words and finished pouring the draught beer for her customer. She hadn’t seen the terrifying guy arrive at Sizzle, the club she managed, but Jada had. “He vetted security,” Nya explained. “Don’t think they’d toss him out on his ass.”

  Even if they tried, they’d find themselves knocked down flat in a pool of their own blood. “You know him?” Jada hissed in her ear.

  Nya handed the customer his drink and accepted his money with a smile. “Unfortunately, I do,” Nya said, turning to put the money in the register. Only when it was closed did she twist toward her new waitress and fixate on the man she was still gawking at. “He’s my boyfriend.”