A woman of twenty-three if Nya wasn’t mistaken. Young, even by Tag’s standards. Her interrogation wasn’t even close to over, but a door at the opposite end of the room opened and Tag came marching out.
“I’m sorry, I—” Halting, he took in the scene before him and dropped his hand to his side, still holding the phone he’d been scrolling through. “Yorkie,” he said with an uncomfortable shift.
Raising her brows, she wasn’t going to make this easy for him because he didn’t deserve easy when he was making such a dumb decision. “Taggy,” she drawled, leaning back in her chair and taking one heel to the crossbar. “I’m just getting acquainted with the new woman in your life.”
“I thought she was your girlfriend,” Farrah said on a giggle.
“Isn’t that funny?” Nya asked, pinning her unimpressed glare on him.
She expected him to give her an explanation, one that he could give in front of Farrah. In fact, she wouldn’t have put it past him to flat out deny that there was anything going on and come up with some ridiculous excuse that he’d backpedal with Farrah when Nya was gone.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Tag said to Farrah while narrowing his eyes on Nya. “She’s a nuisance, butting in where she doesn’t belong.”
So he was going with anger. Nya bobbed her head in acceptance of that. “At least you’re not denying it. I’m surprised you didn’t tell me about her,” Nya said, lightening her tone. “Usually you let me know when you hook up with someone new.”
He didn’t take out a full-page ad, but he’d never gone out of his way to conceal his relationships from her before. What that told her was that he knew exactly how stupid he was being. But he wasn’t ashamed of it, he was infuriated.
“You shouldn’t be here. Sailing in without invitation is rude,” Tag said.
His petulance made her scoff. “I have a key! You can’t give someone a key and then expect them not to use it.”
“For emergencies,” Tag said, coming towards the women. “You have a key for emergencies, and so that you can get in if I’m not here when you fight with your lug-head of a boyfriend.”
“Is that why you’re not denying this?” Nya asked. “Because you know you can tell me this isn’t what it looks like now, but the minute I walk out of here and tell Archer what I saw, he would find out the truth in a minute.”
“Archer?” Farrah asked. “You know Archer?”
“Yes, she does,” Tag said, folding his arms. “He’s the lug-head.”
Nya spread her hands on the table edge. “When did this become a game of tear down Archer? He’s keeping it in his pants, he’s not doing anything wrong.”
“Last I heard you were at it like rabbits,” Tag said, holding onto his anger. “Or is that why you’re here, to tell me he’s lost interest in screwing you?”
Nya considered taking a leaf from Farrah’s book and doing the silly smile when she thought about what they’d been doing at Sizzle last night, but she didn’t. She got to her feet and rounded the table. “I meant he’s screwing only who he’s allowed to screw. He makes sensible decisions about who he sleeps with.”
“Sensible?” Tag said, puffing himself up a bit as Nya came to a stop in front of him. Except he was already much larger than her, he didn’t need more bulk to intimidate her, so it had to be habit. “I don’t think you’re a sensible choice for any guy to screw.”
It was like fighting with a brother, at least Nya would guess it was. “Why? Because I’m so easy to fall in love with and will only break their hearts when I realize that they’re not good enough for me?” Nya asked, wading into full-on sarcasm.
She almost wished that Archer was here to witness her triumph because she knew he’d enjoy it. All that spunk he’d been pumping into her had to be seeping into her blood because she was managing a beginner’s level of condescension that he would be proud of.
“Because you root around, root around with that little nose of yours until you find dirt. You roll around covering yourself in muck and then you wonder why everybody knows that you were the one digging in a place you shouldn’t have been.”
“That’s rich,” she said and understood why he was being snide because he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He’d been caught screwing his enemy’s sister and it was clear that the sister had no idea.
“Why shouldn’t he be with me?” Farrah asked.
Nya didn’t answer her. “You haven’t been out of trouble for two months and you’re already in it again,” Nya said, keeping her focus on Tag, because it was her place to judge him. Farrah was a stranger, Nya didn’t give a crap about her safety, Hexam would take care of that. “What is this, some kind of attention seeking? Are we not giving you enough?”
When she patted his chest, he snatched her hand. “We’ll talk about this later,” he said.
So he wanted to appease her but couldn’t do it in front of Farrah. That made sense. “Ok,” she said, pulling her arm free from his grip. “I’ll leave you to your sordid, secret affair.” Going to grab her purse, she slung it across her body. “It was very nice to meet you, Farrah.” Striding across the room, she acknowledged the practical stranger, but only set a glare on Tag. “Try taking a cold shower and thinking this through before you get us all tossed into a wood chipper.”
Sailing from the room, she slammed out of the apartment, something she was getting used to doing. The only way Archer knew to close a door was to throw them back into their frames with great force, and under his influence, she’d begun to do the same.
So much for a pastry and a catch up with her best buddy. Now the rest of the day was her own and she didn’t know what to do with it. It didn’t take her long to come to a conclusion because it wasn’t like she could sit on this news now that she had it.
As much as she knew she wasn’t supposed to be casually visiting his off-limits apartment, she knew one person who just loved to be in the know, and with valuable information like this, she might just be forgiven for breaking his rules.
three
Tag’s new apartment was closer to Archer’s than it was to hers. That made it easier for her to justify stopping in to see how he was doing. The cab ride was short and she was desperate to talk about the repercussions of Tag’s ill-judged actions that could create devastating shockwaves. Not only for Tag, but for Archer as well, who’d staked his own reputation on cleaning up the mess Tag had made with Brett Hexam.
Passing the graffiti plastered over the hallways of Archer’s apartment building, she knew the place might be messy, but it was still a palace compared to where she lived. So she hopped over the soda cans, ignored the rotting bannister and kept on going until she got to his floor.
She had a key for his apartment too and just like she’d said to Tag, he couldn’t give her it and then not expect her to use it. So she slotted it into the door and turned it. Going inside, she expected to find him standing behind the couch reading subtitles on the silenced TV, except he wasn’t. There was a man seated at the central kitchen table. A shaking, sniveling, crying man who wasn’t wearing a shirt.
Closing the door, she dropped the keys into her purse then ducked sideways to look under the table to confirm that he was chained to the solid eyebolt Archer had driven into the floor beneath it.
“Please,” the man said like she was rescue-incarnate. “Please help me.”
Choosing not to respond, Nya felt sorry for this guy, but not enough to undermine Archer. When they talked about her facing what Archer did, she hadn’t known that she’d have to address it quite this directly.
Finding herself here, like this, was curious. She’d sat in that chair, chained to that bolt, and she’d begged Archer not to hurt her. Now she was on the opposite side of the equation and it was strange how powerful she felt.
“He’s got me chained up,” the guy said with exasperated desperation. “I’ve been here for weeks.”
That was an exaggeration and she crooked a brow. “You’ve been here for four days,” sh
e said, surprised at how normal her voice came out when this man sounded so frantic.
Shock silenced him for a beat. “You have to help me. You have to let me go.”
Honesty was better than ignorance. “That ain’t gonna happen,” she said, lifting her purse over her head and going over to dump it on the breakfast bar. “Has he fed you? Probably not.” She responded to her own question. “I could make you a salad… though I haven’t been here in a few days, so I haven’t stocked up his groceries. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
“Who?” the guy hooted. “Who are you? Please, won’t you help me?”
“I could,” she said, opening the fridge to find nothing but soda, beer, and steak. “Eurgh.” Although she grumbled, she hadn’t expected to find anything else, and slammed the fridge to go looking in his cupboards. “If you tell him what he wants to know, he’ll let you go.”
“I… I can’t…”
When she found nothing of interest, she went to the freezer to retrieve one of her popsicles. They were the one thing she didn’t mind keeping indefinitely and their expiry date wasn’t short like those on her other purchases.
One of her favorite snacks, she loved the sweet, frozen water, and her appreciation for them had grown since she and Archer started to play with them. For now, they’d serve to hydrate her because she didn’t like beer or soda and there was nothing else lying around that appealed to her taste buds.
That the victim was whispering suggested to her that Archer wasn’t far away, which made her think. “He didn’t just leave you here,” she said, trashing the popsicle packet and skirting the breakfast bar to return to the body of the room, ensuring to leave distance between herself and the captive. Sauntering to the opposite end of the table, she took one long suck of her popsicle before holding it away from her body.
“I… I don’t know where he is.”
“Fella!” she called out and less than a second later he leaned backwards out of the bedroom door.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Archer said. Returning to the bedroom, he was only gone for a second before he reappeared. Marching out of the room, he stomped up the hall to the side of the table and dumped the leather roll she recognized as the one filled with his blades.
Eyeing the package on the table, she speculated on what was to come. “Oh, it’s about to get interesting,” she said, taking another slurp of her popsicle, she rolled her tongue around the tip, maintaining wide, innocent eye contact with him as she curled her lips around the top.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, fixated on her mouth, but as stern as she’d expected him to be given her disregard of his order.
Letting the popsicle slide from her mouth with a satisfying pop, she smiled. “You’re not the first man to tell me that today,” she said. “I have news.” Extending a hand to draw her fingertip along the back of the chair in front of her. “Very interesting, but equally terrible, news.”
She knew she had him. He didn’t register interest, but she felt it beating from him. Licking the popsicle from base to tip, she circled her tongue around the top once, twice, and then let it tickle the tip down to the base of the first ridge, right where the edge of his head would be if she was sampling something more intimate.
His thought must have been the same because he snatched her hand and ripped the popsicle from her mouth. “Calm it,” he growled, yanking her so hard that she fell into him with a thud. “What news?”
“I can’t tell you here,” she said, side-eyeing the man still at the table. “You have to get rid of him first.”
“He’s not gonna tell anyone. I’ll cut out his tongue before I set him free.”
“That won’t do,” she said, tracing the outline of his lips with her fingertips. “He could still write something down. You’ll have to slit his throat.”
It came off as flirtation, as foreplay, but she was trying to do her bit and he knew it, Archer read her signals and played along. This moment was hot, but not for the reason their audience would think. “Would you like that, baby? Like to watch me work, spilling his blood for you? Would that make your pussy drip?”
“Mm hmm,” she purred, enjoying her role as simpering Archer-devotee.
“I can’t do that if he tells me what I want to know. You know the rules. He tells me the truth, he gets to go free.”
She sagged like an impudent child being refused a treat. “He’s had you for four whole days,” she said. “How many chances does he get? How long until you’re mine again?” Dragging her fingernail down over his chin to his tee-shirt-covered chest, she parted her lips. “I think four days is enough. I think you should do it now.”
“No!” The captive exclaimed.
They ignored him. “How many more days does he get?” she asked again. “Come on, Fella, get rid of him and you can put me in your chains.”
“He gets one more day,” Archer said.
She began to reverse and because he still had hold of her hand, he came with her. But when she sat on the corner of the table, opposite where the captive was chained, Archer guided the popsicle back to her lips and she accepted it into her mouth letting him pull and push the cold, wet mass over the heat of her melting tongue.
“But you don’t get that long,” he said, pushing it further into her mouth. “You tell me what I want to know right here.”
Holding the popsicle on the threshold of her throat for a few more seconds, he then withdrew it from her lips. Grabbing her hair at the back of her skull, he yanked her head back hard and drew a wet line from beneath her chin, down the column of her throat, and into her cleavage with the tip of the popsicle. The tingling shivers the ice left in its wake vibrated throughout her body, but that was nothing compared to what happened when Archer bent his knees to kiss the spot the popsicle occupied before lapping his tongue up over her damp skin to erase the sweet, wet vertical trail he’d drawn there.
Seizing her mouth in an open-mouthed, all-consuming kiss. His powerful tongue proved its superiority over hers, his dominance was palpable and she loved it when he demanded what was rightfully his.
The popsicle was forgotten when his hand closed over her breast. He had to have cast it aside because it had disappeared, though she didn’t give a crap what he’d done with it. Both of her hands were looped around his neck, locked to pull herself tighter to him, and her legs climbed higher around his waist. Attaching herself to the man who towered over her, ensconcing her in his power, consuming her with his dominance, she was weak, vulnerable, helpless under the weight of his need.
His entitled grip on her hair tightened, he tugged and pulled the strands, which sent spikes of pain into her skull. Ripping his kiss from hers, he bit her bottom lip. Overwhelmed tears sprung to her eyes, but it was awareness that quaked through her. Writhing on the spot, her breasts swelled until they felt heavy on her lungs and constricted by the fabric that she wished he’d rip from her body.
Her mind was swimming, awash with ideas of passion and bliss. Her core grew slick in anticipation of the invasion she prayed he’d mount on her.
“Sex,” she breathed. “I’ll tell you what you want to know in exchange for sex.”
Lunging forward, he forced her body to slant back to support her weight on her hands. “Here?” he grunted, slamming both hands down hard over hers, pinning her to the spot. “In front of this scumball? Is that what will get you off? Letting him watch as I fuck you? You’ll tell me what I need to know now, and maybe, if you’re lucky and I’m happy, I’ll let you suck your reward from my balls.”
“And if you’re not?” she asked, her pants becoming more shallow.
Taking one hand away, he unbuckled his belt. Instead of pulling himself out, he stole her hand, yanked it forward and forced it into his underwear. Coiling her fingers around his engorged shaft, he made her stroke him.
“It won’t matter how much you beg,” he said, working her hand over his dick, he tightened his overlying grip. “I’ll fuck myself inside you, take you to that
sweet spot, and leave you hanging. I’ll shower those tits in my hot spunk and never let you have a taste. You know the rules. I get what I want and you beg for scraps that you’ll get if I feel generous.”
The speed of his movement betrayed his need, he wanted her, and with every tug, her desire grew too. Her body surrendered to his. She was unable to reject his will, so she let him move her soft palm in his chosen rhythm, up and down the silken sheath wrapped around the dynamite she wanted to explode within her.
Sucking her tongue from her mouth, he released it only when his had coated hers in his taste. “Fella,” she moaned, trying to return to their kiss, but he resisted.
“If what you tell me isn’t good enough, if it isn’t worthy, I’ll fuck my way up your hot, tight ass, take what I want, and make sure that you’ll never sit down again. I’ll watch you cry for release and it won’t make a damned bit of difference. There’s only one cock that you’re allowed to ride and if I’m not satisfied, you’ll never get off again.”
The pressure created by his words on her center, on her heart, on her head, made her clamor for every heaving breath. Trying again to kiss him, she was thwarted when he eased back to talk again. “So what have you got? Is it worth it?”
“Yes,” she exhaled. “I promise.”
Sweeping an arm around her hips, he yanked her forward, clamping their interlinked fingers around his dick, locking their bodies together. “Then I think we better warm you up,” he said. “ ‘Cause you’ve got a lot of talking to do.”
Hauling her up, he stormed through the apartment, ignoring the distraught, speechless captive. Striding down to the bedroom, he tossed her onto the bed. The bulk of his body on hers made her try to wriggle, to stroke and scratch, anything to stimulate him in the same way he was riling her. After accepting the intensity of his demanding kiss, his lips moved to her jaw, then marked her neck and he pulled her top up over her head, leaving it tangled in her hands.
Biting into his shoulder, Nya noticed that the door was open, but didn’t care. She wrapped her legs around his hips and tried to seek his mouth, but it was occupied by her responsive breasts that were pinched and aching in need of his devotion.
Scarred (Branded Book 2) Page 3