Brother to Brother: The Sacred Brotherhood Book I

by A. J. Downey

  The last man to touch me had been Grinder, and I was shocked to find that his much coarser brother touched me with more care and consideration than Grinder ever had. I didn’t quite know what to do with that except to watch, fascinated, as he drew the beautiful satin and lace shorts down my legs, his fingertips skimming my flesh, leaving trails of tingling sparks in their wake.

  My mind may have rebelled against the thought of Archer touching me, against the idea of doing anything remotely sexual with him, but he’d eased my fears and had taken the very edge off my concerns with his carefully chosen words. My mind was warming up to the idea of having him touch me like this, but my body didn’t seem to care what my mind thought about it anymore.

  My body certainly seemed to have a mind of its very own and it was all about having Archer’s lips on my skin. It liked it very much, thank you, and it showed it’s appreciation for the attention by arching of its own volition very much into Archer’s touch. I could feel him, hard and pressed against my throbbing pussy and I couldn’t believe how much I ached to have him inside me. I wasn’t sure I could completely chalk that up to biology, either.

  He grasped the hem of my camisole and raised it up over my head. I lifted my arms to allow him to take it, feeling much bolder now that he’d made his position about the marks my body bore clear. He went back to kissing across my chest, exploring my skin, sucking one of my nipples into his mouth and tugging at it gently between his teeth all the while his green and gold eyes speared into the heart of mine.

  He was so incredibly warm to the touch, and I let my hands do some of their own exploring, running them gently over his shoulders, tracing a weal of scar along his ribs, tiny pinpricks of white scar tissue riding above and below the rough mark where the wound had been crudely stitched back together.

  “What happened?” I gasped and he stopped nuzzling my breast long enough to look at me and give me the truth, his voice rough with a cross between desire and annoyance at having to stop what he was doing.

  “Got sliced pretty good around my second or third year with the Arizona chapter, a dispute with another club over wandering into our territory uninvited.”

  “Oh…”

  “No more questions, I’m trying to make my wife feel good and I’d appreciate it if she’d let it happen.”

  I couldn’t help it, what he said made me smile. A for real smile that he echoed faintly before he resumed trailing his lips and teeth in tiny nips against my flesh in an ever downward trajectory. It took me a full minute for my brain to catch up to his intended goal and when it did, it was already too late. He had my thighs spread, using the breadth of his shoulders to keep them apart even as he fastened his mouth over my clit, his tongue teasing me carefully and gently into a fevered pitch.

  I gripped the sheets and moaned, eyes squeezed shut as I just tried to concentrate on the feelings and shove the fact that this was Archer to the back of my mind which still didn’t want to come to grips with the fact that: This. Was. Archer.

  “Oh god!” I cried and it almost sounded like a plea, at least to me. Archer hummed in satisfaction against my body and it added a whole new dimension to what he was doing.

  “Archer!” I gasped and he took it as an invitation, sitting up and licking the palm of his hand deliberately, the motion both erotic and slightly intimidating as he reached down and stroked himself between my legs.

  “I’m gonna go easy, I promise,” he murmured and placed himself at my opening, easing himself inside of me with restraint, letting my body adjust to take him comfortably.

  I closed my eyes and let my head fall back, my breath escaping in a shuddering sigh. I hadn’t expected to feel not full but more like… complete. His body met mine and he was fully seated, as deep as a man could go in a woman and my body lost some of the tension that it wanted to hold onto out of fear, suddenly going limp instead. He leaned over me, and smoothed my hair back from my face, his hands rough with callouses but his touch so gentle.

  “Look at me,” he said, voice rough around the edges with emotion that I couldn’t place. I opened my eyes and sucked in a sharp breath when he drew back and surged carefully, but firmly forward again.

  He captured my gaze with his own and I wondered, briefly, if this was what drowning felt like. While I could breathe and just fine, I might add, I still felt as if I were being drawn inexorably down into Archer’s eyes. I forced my fingers to let go of the sheets, and instead, let them curve around his shoulder, drawing myself up, tucking myself into the shelter of his body even as he drove a slow, satisfied moan from somewhere deep down inside me.

  I couldn’t ignore the truth, I couldn’t deny what he was doing… Archer wasn’t having sex with me, not one bit. Archer was as good as his word. With every slow and considerate thrust, Archer was making love to me, and I just didn’t know what to do… if it was okay, this early on, for me to do the same.

  Chapter 22

  Archer

  I didn’t want her to be afraid, any other woman and I probably wouldn’t have cared, but this was Melody, the mother of Noah, who was now my child. She was my wife and would soon, hopefully, be the mother of more of my children… that deserved a level of respect that I’d never had the occasion to show any other woman.

  I nearly came undone when she relaxed, her body accepting my cock, her arms twining around my shoulders and pulling me gently down over the top of her. I held her as gently as I could, as if she were more fragile than a baby bird in my arms even as I fought to draw this out. I didn’t want to come too quickly, but it was hard holding off. For one, it had been a while for me, and two, I’d held a secret torch for my brother’s woman for years. I could deny it out loud to my other brothers and to my club brothers all I wanted, but I couldn’t deny it to myself.

  I sighed out in both passion and contentment and kissed the side of her neck. I wanted to kiss her for real so badly, but I wanted to wait, I wanted her to take that from me, I didn’t really have any other measure that she’d accepted me so I figured that would be as good as any when it came to an indicator.

  God she was fierce, so beautiful, and despite the rough go she’d been having, so solid. She needed to reach out though, she needed to understand I would protect her, just as fiercely as she protected Noah.

  “Archer,” she moaned, and my name on her lips in that breathy plea nearly made me completely lose my shit.

  “Oh god, not yet, Baby. I’m not ready for this to end,” I groaned and she held onto me that much harder.

  I knew she’d come at least once, her pussy gently gripping and releasing my cock in a rhythm that’d been hard to resist. I swallowed hard, pressed my forehead to hers and reached between us to tease her clit. I wanted to trip her trigger just one more time, just once more before I…

  She cried out, her body gripping mine, pulling me deeper before she shuddered beneath me in every single fucking way that made a man feel like one. I lost my grip on my control completely and I came with her. I came with her, and I think, I came the hardest I ever had in my life. I let myself rest in her arms as we both fell back to earth, panting. Sweat cooled on my skin and my cock jerked in counterpoint to the little aftershocks that ran through Mel.

  I looked into those true fuckin’ blue eyes of hers from inches away, the candle light turning them a deep cobalt, and I told her, “You’re mine, Mel. You know what that means to one of us.” Her eyes widened and she nodded mutely, I held her in my arms and let my eyes sink shut, relishing the feeling of her so warm and close. “Good,” I said and nodded, more to myself than anything else.

  I had no doubts that she would take the oaths she pledged seriously. It was one of the things that had secretly pissed me off about my brother. I loved Grinder like no fucking other, but it fuckin’ pissed me off like no other, him running around on Mel when she’d so clearly devoted herself to him. It wasn’t right, which was why I hadn’t wanted to believe that she’d chased Grind half way across the country, let alone that whatever she’d said or did ha
d chased my brother right into his fuckin’ death.

  I never imagined the truth would be that Grind had chased himself to an early grave. That he woulda run himself to death runnin’ from his responsibilities as a fuckin’ man.

  “Hey,” her voice was soft and just like her name to my ears; a melody beyond compare. Her hands gently cupped my face, drawing it forward so that I faced her again. I hadn’t even realized I’d turned my head.

  “What?” I asked her.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked and I swallowed.

  “I been meaning to ask you, and I need you to tell me… why’d you come runnin’ out this way lookin’ for Grind?”

  I eased myself out of her and over her leg, stretching out on my side, head propped in my hand so that I could look at her. She looked like one of them paintings, hanging in a rich person’s museum. The only thing that was missin’ was some little fuckin’ baby angel feeding her grapes.

  She licked her bottom lip, and it was everything in me not to cover her mouth with my own; to suck that pink tongue into my mouth and let mine dance with it. I wanted her to have something, at least one thing that she felt like she had control over. I knew I was a controlling bastard. It was just my nature. I also knew it would take a special kind of woman, a strong one, to put up with my ass and Mel had done pretty fuckin’ admirably the last several months on that account. I didn’t have much to offer her, but what I had was hers… and I was not only impressed, but grateful, that she’d taken it.

  “When Grind,” she cleared her throat, “left…” she said diplomatically.

  I shook my head, “No need to sugar coat it for me, Baby. When Grind ran out on you and the responsibility he owed you for being the half of the equation needed to make you pregnant with Noah…”

  “Ah, yes…” she nodded, and didn’t disagree with me, which was good. I was glad she wasn’t makin’ excuses for him. I damn sure wouldn’t. “When he left, I held on for as long as I could with my waitressing job, but as you know… Grinder helped out a lot with bills and things when he’d been there.”

  “He should. I’da whooped his ass again if I caught him freeloading anymore.”

  She blinked, stunned into silence, “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.”

  She shook her head as if to clear it, “The doctors’ bills, prenatal care, even with help and on a sliding scale… they stacked up quickly. I couldn’t hang on anymore, and when I got into my sixth, almost seventh month, I had to move back in with my mother and Phil.”

  “Grind said something about them bein’ some kind of piece of work,” I murmured and pulled her protectively into me.

  “That’s putting it mildly… I spent the rest of my pregnancy being called a whore. When my water broke, I had to take a taxi to the hospital. They refused to stay for the birth.”

  I felt the darkness in her then, saw the despair and the fear. I’d never wanted to kill one of my own brothers before but if Grind had been alive, I would have put him in the ground. I smoothed her hair out of her eyes and waited for her to continue. It took her a minute to get her shit together enough so that she could, and it wasn’t lost on me that she skipped over the rest of her hospital stay. It must have been bad, and it was something we’d have to revisit later.

  “They were hard on me, but I figured I could withstand it, for Noah. They kept demanding that I move out, but in the next breath demanded I pay rent. I paid them to stay in their basement with Noah, but diapers and formula; I had trouble breast feeding so I had to supplement it… took just about everything I had left.

  “They wouldn’t watch Noah at first, either. So it was hard to get back to work at the diner. Finally, my mom agreed to watch him, and it was okay, for a while, hard, but okay. Except the longer I stayed, the more I tried to follow their rules…” she shook her head.

  “It was like they would set down rules and I would follow them, but suddenly, midway through things, the rules would change. Then Noah started growing up, becoming more aware and I was afraid… I didn’t want him growing up like I did. I didn’t want him to grow up thinking the way they treated me, and him, was normal. Babies deserve to be loved. They deserve patience and kindness, but that was never what Phil was about. He was strict but it was crazy, Archer.”

  “Shh, it’s okay,” I smoothed a hand over that satiny, light blonde hair and listened to her, but I didn’t need her getting worked up either. When she seemed calmer, I asked, “What made you run?”

  “There was an argument. I was trying to work extra shifts at the diner to put away more savings, so that I could do what they wanted and get out of their house, but suddenly, that wasn’t good enough anymore. They wanted me out, but they threatened to take my son away from me. They threatened to lie and tell the state that I was a drug addict and that I was sleeping around with all of the brothers. They were going to keep my son and raise him right, they said, and I couldn’t let that happen. They would have crushed his little spirit, and I couldn’t let that happen, Archer. So when they went to church, I pretended I was sick and shoved as much as I could into the car. That night, I took Noah and ran. I had nowhere else to go.”

  She broke down and sobbed and I knew that she spoke nothing but the truth. I wasn’t the best at comfort, but sometimes, women like Mel just needed to be held and just needed to be heard. So I tried that, and what do you know? It worked.

  “I promise you, no one’s taking our son,” I said into her hair, “I’d make ‘em fuckin’ disappear first.”

  She clung to me and let it out, and I hoped like hell she heard the truth in my words, because I meant them. Melody and Noah were my property in the outlaw sense of the word. You touched a man’s property upon pain of death. It was the way of my world and I wasn’t changing it for no one.

  We lay like that, the candles burning down, the fire in the fireplace too, and eventually, Mel slept and for once it was a role reversal; I couldn’t. My mind turning over and over the possible ways her parents could either track her down or fuck with what we had going. I contemplated making a stop at their place when I went through AZ, considered the best way to handle things and protect my new family.

  Maybe this time it was best to let sleeping dogs lie? I didn’t know. It wasn’t exactly territory I’d been through before. I mean granted, I’d come up in the system, but I’d never done it from the side of being a parent and I was still pretty new at that part. I was hoping I wouldn’t have too much trouble with the curve.

  Eventually, I fell into a sleep. I’d meant it to be light, but it’d been a hell of a day. When I woke up, it was to light streaming through the windows, the gauzy white curtains not doing a hell of a lot to keep it out. I sat up only to find Mel wasn’t in here with me, her new pajamas I’d had bought for her were neatly folded at the foot of the bed, but her boots were missing from the entry way.

  I got up and went into the bathroom, getting my morning routine out of the way. I pulled my hair into a loose horse tail and threw on some jeans, a tee shirt, and because it was a touch cool, a flannel shirt I left open over that. I shrugged into my jacket and cut and pulled the front door open to see Mel striding up the path, one of those paper travel coffee cups with a lid on it.

  “I brought you coffee, and some breakfast,” she called softly. When she stopped in front of me, she handed the coffee over.

  “Thanks,” I said and took a drink. She pulled a banana out of one of her coat pockets and a muffin wrapped in a napkin out of the other.

  “You were sleeping so hard, I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “I wish you did, I don’t like waking up and finding you not here. It just doesn’t sit right.”

  She blushed faintly and stared at the ground, “Sorry,” she said.

  “S’okay, I guess.” I took another drink of coffee which was perfect. I liked that she knew what I liked. “What do you feel like doing?”

  “A walk would be nice,” she said, and I nodded, the corners of my mouth turning down as I considere
d it.

  “Not a bad start,” I agreed. “Go where you want, I’ll follow your lead.”

  “Okay,” she said and hands buried in her pockets, turned. I juggled the breakfast offerings a minute and got the door shut and latched while Mel looked on amused.

  “Would you like me to hold something?”

  “Nah, I got it.”

  I fell into step beside her and she strolled gently, giving me time to eat and drink my breakfast.

  “Thanks for grabbing this for me.”

  “Oh, sure. I figured you’d get hungry without anything. Lunch is a ways off.”

  We fell into a silence that was more comfortable than not, and moved along at a sedate pace, towards the water.

  “Mel, can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.” She side eyed me curiously, as if surprised I’d asked her and hindsight being twenty-twenty, I guess I could have made more of an effort to talk these last few months. It was just hard for me to let anyone in; always had been. Once I did, though, for some reason it was like flipping a switch. Either you were out or you were in. There was no in between phase. I don’t know… maybe some of my circuits were fucked up from getting the shit kicked out of me when I was a kid so much.

  “This whole thing with your parents, is that why you freaked the fuck out so hard when Noah hit his head a couple months back?”

  She pursed her lips and nodded, “I thought for sure the hospital was going to alert CPS, and that they were going to investigate and find that I’d bolted from Arizona with Noah.”

  I shook my head, “Mel, did your parents ever have any kind of official custody of our boy? I mean, was there any reason for ‘em to?”