Branded: You Own Me & The Virgin's Night Out

by Walker, Shiloh

  Boone’s brain supplied the man’s name—and the quickest method of putting him down—as Forrest Corbin came up and hugged Sloane. Hugged her too tight and did his hand have to rest—

  You’ve lost your mind. Boone jerked his mind away from how low on her hip Forrest’s hand rested and tried to focus on breathing. He had to figure out—

  “Hey, Boone! Get your antisocial self out of the corner and come here.”

  All eyes swung toward him.

  The neck of his tuxedo felt way too tight. The temperature seemed to skyrocket as he pushed off the wall, moving out of the shadows of the long, narrow room the groom and his groomsmen had been given for the wedding.

  For a moment, Sloane just stared.

  Tyler—for once—was too distracted to notice much of anything. “Sloane, this is Boone. Boone, my sister. You two have been writing to each other for…”

  “Years,” Sloane supplied, her voice oddly steady.

  Her face was flushed. Her eyes glassy.

  “We’ve been writing to each other for years,” she said.

  Boone braced himself. Once she told Tyler they’d already met—and Tyler figured out how—Tyler wasn’t going to be happy. This was his wedding day, though, and—

  “Boone.” She stepped forward and held out a hand. Polite. Distant. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

  Thrown off-balance, Boone lowered his gaze to stare at her hand. The back of her knuckles were raw and scraped, still swollen. Nice to meet you…

  Everybody was staring.

  He shot out a hand just as Sloane went to lower hers. “Yeah. It’s…well.” He gave her a stiff nod.

  “Your hand…”

  She tugged away. “It’s nothing.”

  Then she turned away and gave him her back.

  Boone felt like she’d punched him in the gut.

  Sloane.

  He’d spent last night with Sloane Redding.

  Funny, bright Sloane—

  It had been hard enough to think about handling this responsibility—and without his cock exploding every time he thought about his mystery woman from last night, but now…

  She wasn’t a stranger at all.

  Although, judging by the way she’d just turned away from him, you couldn’t tell.

  • • •

  The second she could, Sloane escaped, clutching her mother’s lace gloves in one hand. She pressed the other to her stomach and when somebody came out of a room, she ducked into the closest open door.

  A bathroom. Locking herself in, she closed her eyes.

  Boone.

  She’d slept with Boone.

  Her brothers had met plenty of guys in the service, talked about a number of them. But there had only been one she’d really wanted to meet. They’d bonded, Pierce had once said, almost like they’d known each other from birth. If he had to pick a brother, Tyler had once said, shoving Pierce away with a mock sneer, he would have picked somebody like Boone.

  They’d been like brothers.

  But he never came to visit.

  So she’d written instead.

  And now he was here—

  Her legs trembled and if she hadn’t been wearing a dress that cost more than she usually spent on clothes in six months, she would have just sat on the cold tile floor.

  “Talk about riding the crazy train,” she whispered to herself.

  The door knob twisted.

  Jolting in shock, she moved away from the door. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  She moved to the sink and turned it on, letting the water run although all she did was stand there.

  The sound of the water covered the noise—she didn’t even hear the sound of the door being unlocked—from the outside. Boone was just suddenly there, filling the doorway, bigger than life.

  Sucking in a breath, she shoved her hands under the water—biting, shockingly cold. “If you’re in that big of a hurry, there’s another restroom at the other end of the hall,” she said.

  Wow.

  She sounded nice and calm there.

  “But you were in this one.”

  Slowly, she turned around and met his eyes. “Point being…?”

  “We never did finish that talk.” He crossed his arms over his chest.

  She knew the tone in his voice—had heard it from her brothers a hundred times. She was tired of men who thought they needed to take care of her.

  Okay, maybe sometimes she did stupid things. Evidence of that stood in front of her, watching her with dark, unreadable eyes.

  But all he did was say, “Are you alright?”

  “I…” She frowned. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  He glanced at the door, locked it. Then he moved toward her.

  She instinctively backed away, bracing her hands on the counter of the sink, but there was nowhere else to escape to.

  He stilled at the movement. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said softly.

  “I didn’t think you were.” Licking her lips, she looked past him. “This is…”

  The words didn’t even come to mind. She usually had a head full of words, too many of them, but just then, she couldn’t think of a single thing that would describe how she felt.

  Her body knew though.

  Her heart started to beat in hot, slow beats and the very blood in her veins seemed to turn to lava. All because of the way he looked, standing there, and the way the memories rushed through her mind.

  “Awkward?”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “This…” He made a vague gesture between them. “It’s awkward.”

  She laughed and turned around, bent over the sink. Closing her eyes, she said, “I don’t know if awkward touches on it. But…yeah. It’s not…”

  Heat warmed her back.

  She stilled. Lifting her head, she met his gaze in the mirror.

  “All last night, I thought it was just as well I didn’t know your name,” he said, the words strangely, oddly flat. “Then you disappear and I was kicking myself. Now I know and…”

  “You wish you could undo it all, I bet.” Now she understood what she felt—an odd, crushing sort of regret. She tried to find something else to look at, but he was all there was.

  In vain, she focused on the plain, sturdy sink in front of her.

  “No.”

  His hands came up and caught her hips.

  Startled, Sloane looked up.

  Their gazes caught in the mirror and the oxygen trapped in her

  throat while thought stuttered to a slow, grinding halt. His head dipped and she shivered as he slid his lips over her shoulder. “The one thing I don’t wish is to undo it all.”

  Nervously, she turned. “I…um…look…”

  Boone was looking.

  At her.

  At her mouth.

  At the way silk the color of a ripe peach draped over her skin.

  She licked her lips and he looked at that, too.

  Then he groaned and leaned in. One hand went to her neck while he used his thumb to tilt her chin back. He was fully prepared for her to pull away—and she should. She absolutely should.

  What she did was reach up and cup his head, her fingers tangling in the overlong strands as she rose onto her toes.

  Hunger turned him into a monster and he fed at her mouth, sipping at her lips, sucking on her tongue and when she would have broken the kiss, he dragged her back for more.

  They were both panting when she shoved him back a second time.

  “We…” She licked her lips.

  He groaned.

  “Stop. We can’t do this.”

  No. Boone knew that—he knew it better than most. But damn if he didn’t want to.

  “No.” He pulled away, let his fingers drag over the silk of her skin, committing it to memory.

  “I mean…” She glanced around. “My brother is getting married. I’m the maid of honor and…”

  Pressing his thumb to her lips, he watched as her lashes fluttered.
r />   “It’s your brother’s day,” he said agreeably.

  But that wasn’t really the point.

  If she’d just been the sweet, sexy stranger he’d thought she was, maybe he could have seen himself having one more night—one more week even—but if he knew anything about Sloane Redding, it was

  this…

  Sloane believed in happy endings.

  Boone knew they didn’t exist but he’d be damned if he ruined that idea for her.

  Brushing the curve of her lip once more, he stepped back.

  “We’ll talk later.” He glanced at her belly, tried to figure out just what he’d do, how he’d handle it if something…

  “I already told you,” she said, her voice going cool. “I’m on the pill.”

  Sloane didn’t know what had happened.

  One moment, she’d been losing herself to him all over again and then he was…gone.

  Not physically, but emotionally, he’d cut himself off and she wasn’t going to try and reach across that chasm. Despite the fact that now she wanted to more than ever.

  Cutting around him, she moved to the full-length mirror behind him and checked her face, her dress, her hair. She used her fingers to smooth her hair back, glad that Ellen had decided that her dress would work better if she left her hair down. The artfully done curls looked a little more tousled but she used her fingers to smooth them down, concentrating on that instead of the man behind her.

  He seemed to suck up all the oxygen in the room.

  All of it.

  She concentrated on her reflection and what had to happen in the next couple of hours.

  “It’s not…the right time,” she said, hating the blush that rushed to her cheeks. “But like I said, I’m on the pill. I don’t know how we ended up being one of the infinitesimal few who had a condom fail, but that’s why backup is suggested.”

  “Infinitesimal?” he echoed.

  “We’re a small percentage.”

  “I know what it means,” he said mildly. “Still, I want to know if there’s a problem.”

  She gave him a cool smile. “Of course. But you’re worrying for

  no reason. Nothing will happen.”

  Chapter Seven

  “I don’t understand. How did this happen?”

  Sloane stared at her doctor.

  “Well…” Dr. Erica Hendricks wasn’t just her doctor—they were friends. Erica had once had a crush on Tyler—or Pierce—half the time, Erica didn’t seem to know. But now she was married to a sweet guy who fixed computers for a living and she had just joined a small family practice a few months earlier.

  Sloane had needed a new doctor. Her other one had been a cross between a quack and jerk—a querk, maybe? And she’d all but begged Erica to let her come here.

  They’d taken her on as a patient, but more often than not, Sloane saw Dr. Janet Grady. The exceptions were today—when Dr. Grady was sick, as she’d been for the past few weeks.

  Erica gave her a tiny smile and shrugged. “Sweetheart, I know your mother discussed the birds and the bees with you. I was the one who had to listen to your fake gagging sounds as you talked about how gross it was.”

  “That’s…” She groaned and rubbed her forehead. “That’s not what I meant. I’m on the pill.”

  “It’s not foolproof. The OB/GYN you see would have told you that. And you’re a smart woman—you know that. The father…”

  Sloane shoved her hands through her hair and hopped off the table.

  I want to know if there’s a problem.

  “He’s not in the picture,” she said quietly. Shaking her head, she wrapped her arms around herself. “I can’t believe this. First the rubber broke and now…”

  “The rubber broke?” Erica stood and came closer. “Well, I’m glad to hear you were backing things up. The likelihood of this is so slim. But it’s happened.”

  Erica hesitated and then said, “You do have options.”

  “No.” Sloane rested a hand on her belly. It didn’t matter that the baby had only been growing inside her for a month. As far as she was

  concerned, the only option for her was to have the baby…

  A wave of longing, of love swamped her, just that fast.

  A baby.

  “Well, I guess you already know what you want to do.”

  Puzzled, she looked up at Erica. “I do?”

  “If we weren’t friends, we wouldn’t even discuss this.” Erica shrugged. “But I know the look on your face—you’re already seeing booties in your brain. Just think…Tyler is going to be an uncle.”

  “Yeah.” A watery laugh escaped her and she moved back over to the exam table, leaning against it. “He’ll like that.”

  If it’s a boy, I’m naming him after my brother, she thought. Pierce. First name, middle, she didn’t know. Maybe even for a girl—the middle name, at least.

  “You need to set up an appointment with the OB, so she can make sure everything looks okay.”

  “Why wouldn’t it?” Sloane stared at Erica, her fingers curling around the edge of the exam table. “Is something wrong? Do you think—”

  “Sloane.” Erica interrupted her. “It’s routine. You’re young. You’re healthy. You take care of yourself and other than the occasional sniffle, you’re hardly ever sick. Those are all good things.”

  Feeling foolish, Sloane nodded. “Okay. Okay, then. Wow. This is two for two. The past two times I come in here, aching and puking my guts up…I was almost positive I had strep again.”

  She gave Erica a weak smile.

  “Again?” Erica looked at the electronic chart. “When did you have…” She breathed in, held it. “Well. That makes sense. Honey, when you were here and saw Dr. Oliver, did he by chance tell you about what happens with the pill when you’re on antibiotics?”

  “What?”

  “According to the chart, you had strep throat five weeks ago—you took antibiotics.” Erica tapped something on the chart. “Your last period was three weeks ago. Was it normal?”

  “No,” Sloane said, her voice faint. “Just…spotty.”

  Erica gave her a gentle smile. “That’s nothing to worry about.

  When was the last time you had sex?”

  “A month ago.” She twisted her fingers together as she looked toward the window. “At…” She winced. “This is all confidential stuff, right? I…I…”

  “You need to talk.” Erica stood up. “You’re my last patient of the day and yes, anything you say in here is confidential.”

  “It was at the wedding.”

  Erica, for once, looked startled. Her only response was a weak, “Okay, then.”

  Yeah. That pretty much summed up how Sloane felt.

  • • •

  For the second time in less than two months, Sloane went home.

  Nowhere still felt like home, despite the fact that she’d all but ran away from here after the humiliation she’d suffered at the hands of her former fiancé.

  It wasn’t just that he’d all but stood her up at the altar.

  Oh, he hadn’t let it go that far.

  He’d had his brother come by with a note and Bobby had hurriedly shoved it into her hands before he beat a fast retreat.

  She’d been in her robe, already having her hair done while she read the note.

  She’d gotten dressed and gone after him although she hadn’t realized until afterward that her brothers were right behind her. She had been determined to bang on the door until Rodney opened and explained to her himself that he’d changed his mind, that he needed time.

  So what if everybody thought she was the shy Redding? The one who had gotten short-changed when it came to courage? When it mattered, she pushed. And this had mattered. Or it should have.

  Then she’d pulled to a stop in front of Rodney’s house and seen him in a liplock with Paula Hornback. The trunk had been packed and they were on their way out of town—with the money that had been given to Sloane and Rodney at their wedding shower for ther />
  honeymoon.

  Humiliation had scalded her every time she thought about coming home.

  Now, as she drove through the streets of the small town, her heart ached.

  There wasn’t another place on earth like Nowhere.

  The town had two stoplights, a bar, an inn…and more character than any place she’d ever been.

  Driving down Main, she came to a stop at a four-way stop and somebody drove through the intersection on his tractor. When he saw her and waved, she smiled back. Judd Monroe—he owned the farm a few miles down the road from where Sloane had grown up and although he had a car, he’d rather drive his tractor.

  Once his wife had said they might need a damn tractor for the funeral—one to dig a hole big enough so they could bury Judd and his tractor when the time came.

  As she drove by the bar, Huley saw her, nodded.

  She waved back.

  Home.

  She’d missed it.

  The last time she’d come back, she’d been too determined on what she’d say and do to Rodney—he’d left after the wedding, along with Paula and Sloane had heard the rumors—he had a new job, a big break at a big bank Tuscaloosa. Now he was back, living with his brother and Paula was dating her former high school boyfriend.

  All that humiliation—how he’d told her he needed a stronger woman, one with passion, one who’d help him go places…and he was sleeping on his brother’s sofa bed.

  She’d come home to tell her brother and sister-in-law about the baby.

  But she realized something vital.

  It was time to come home.

  • • •

  “Not that it’s not lovely to see you, Sloane, but if you don’t tell me what’s bothering you, I’m going to start singing 99 Bottles of Beer

  until you talk.”

  Tyler had come out onto the deck after dinner.

  The land stretched out around them forever. Years ago, the Reddings had been farmers, but times changed. Their mother had sold all but a hundred acres. The house was deeded to all…no, both of them. Pierce was gone, after all.

  Sloane had been sitting out there thinking about how much she didn’t want to raise her baby in the city.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  When there wasn’t a response, she looked up at her brother and saw, for once, an expression of dumb shock on his face. Amused, she settled back in the chair and kicked up her feet, eying him and wondering if that sudden pallor as a bad sign.