“Can you come over?” she asked, sauntering towards him and sliding her arms under his to loop them around him.
Tucking her thumbs into his waistband at the back of his jeans, she curled her fingers around the horizontal sheath containing his knife that was always present on his belt, and squashed herself into him. He was the only guy allowed to carry a weapon in Sizzle.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll come over tomorrow.”
Aware that it may appear petulant, Nya exhaled and stuck out her bottom lip. “This is crazy, Fella, I never see you. I want you to come over. I want to be with you.”
“It’s been three days, Squirm. You knew the script when we hooked up.”
“But we’re not hooking up!”
Having gorged herself on his body at any time of her choosing for weeks, she’d been spoiled with his attention. That over-indulgence had been reduced to a famine and she had felt the pinch from the very first night.
That her sulk entertained him only frustrated her further. But she didn’t pull away when his fingers scooped under her chin. “It’s temporary, Squirm.”
Unsatisfied, she enjoyed his touch, but was still disappointed. “Until the next job,” she muttered.
His amusement reached its limit and his temper soured. “Yeah, until the next one. What do you want me to do? Stop working?” he asked, opening his hands at his sides.
His job wasn’t what bothered her, it was their separation. “No,” she said. “But you could let me come over.”
Also by Scarlett Finn
THE BRANDED SERIES
BRANDED
SCARRED
MARKED
THE KINDRED SERIES
RAVEN
SWALLOW
CUCKOO
SWIFT
FALCON
FINCH
THE EXPLICIT SERIES
EXPLICIT INSTRUCTION
EXPLICIT DETAIL
EXPLICIT MEMORY
RISQUE SERIES
TAKE A RISK
RISK IT ALL
GAME OF RISK
HARROW DUET
FIGHTING FATE
FIGHTING BACK
MISTAKE DUET
MISTAKE ME NOT
SLEIGHT MISTAKE
Copyright © 2017 Scarlett Finn
The right of Scarlett Finn to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published in 2017
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover by Najla Qamber Designs
www.najlaqamberdesigns.com
All rights reserved.
for loyalty
contents
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eleven
twelve
thirteen
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fifteen
sixteen
seventeen
eighteen
nineteen
twenty
twenty-one
twenty-two
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.”
Leaving Jada to gape, Nya strutted up the bar and came to a stop opposite Archer. The music was loud so she didn’t bother with a traditional hello. Slapping her forearm on the bar, she leapt up and grabbed his jacket to pull him down for a kiss.
When he gifted her his tongue, she smiled at the instant carnal reaction in her core. But kissing wasn’t why she’d phoned him. “When I said call me if you need anything,” he shouted over the bass of the music that wasn’t as loud at this end of the bar. “This isn’t what I meant.”
“I know,” she said. “There’s a guy standing two-thirds of the way down the bar.” Tracing her finger down Archer’s sternum, she batted her eyes like they were flirting so as not to raise suspicion.
“Did he touch you?”
Shaking her head, she turned her cheek into his hand when he caressed her face. “No.”
“You called me to cut a guy who flirted with you?” he asked, but didn’t hesitate. “I’m on it.”
Without questioning her any further, Archer was on his way to hurt the guy. Except she couldn’t let him until she explained herself. Catching his arm to hold his hand on her face, Nya stopped him from leaving, and twisted her wrist, silently asking him to kiss her brand, which he did.
“Fella,” she mouthed, drugged by the cloud of their attraction.
Archer wasn’t as distracted by their connection. “I’m curious, what the fuck did he say? I say all kinds of nasty shit to you and you never get offended. He must be a real pro.”
His almost impressed gaze began to wander toward the guy she’d described, but she boosted up to steal his mouth again before it could get far. “He’s wearing your mark and he’s asking questions.”
Fixating on her, he snatched her chin. His interest became more acute. “You’ve got skills, Squirm. What’s he asking?”
“If you’ll be in. He heard you’d been seen here,” she said.
“Does he know who you are?”
“To you?” she asked. The guy had to know she was the manager, but Archer nodded indicating he didn’t mean her position at the club, but her position in his life. “If he saw us kissing, he does now.”
His gaze fell to her mouth. “That’s why you should learn to keep those lips to yourself until you clue me in. Still so much to teach you.”
“You mean you wouldn’t have kissed me if I’d talked first?” she asked, pushing out her breasts.
His brief moment of admiration cooled and he reached over to fasten another button on her shirt. “Those are for private viewing only.”
“These babies pay Mama’s bills,” she said, unbuttoning it again.
He lunged over the bar and seized a handful of her shirt to yank her against her side of the bar. “That’s what Daddy is for, baby, and those belong to him.”
A mean-looking security guard, Robbo, stepped into a pool of light at the corner of the bar to check out who had a hold of her. Once he registered the details of the scene, and exchanged a nod with Archer, he melted away.
Archer did up two of her shirt buttons this time. Tucking her hair behind her ears, Nya didn’t fight him. “Letting you handle Sizzle security gave you ownership of the place,” she said, but wasn’t really complaining; her club had never been safer. But because Archer hired all of her new security guys, they were more loyal to her boyfriend than t
hey were to her. “I have more résumés in the office for you to filter.”
Running his hands over her breasts, he took a look at the patron who’d been asking about him. “Let me deal with him first.”
Taking his hand, she held him back. “Don’t get hurt… I might need your body later.”
Kissing her brand once more, he wandered off without reassuring her or pandering. Taking a deep breath, she tried to be subtle about observing first contact. No punches were thrown, no knives bared, so she relaxed and went about serving her customers.
It was almost closing time, so Archer probably wouldn’t start a fight when there were drunk idiots ready to brawl in such large numbers all around him. As often as their schedules allowed, her man would take her home at the end of a shift. Given that he was here anyway, she imagined he’d hang around and give her a ride. Nya would get the skinny then… if he was forthcoming. With Archer, that was often hit and miss.
Though he could be secretive, he did have some uses. A new security system had been installed and they were recruiting security guards with the aim of hiring three times as many as they’d had before.
Archer had handled all of it. She’d known he would from the moment he’d sat in her office chair, picked up the first stack of résumés she’d received, and began to scoff and discard them one by one. The man knew something about almost everyone. Those who weren’t on his radar weren’t immune from his scrutiny and he quickly gathered whole life histories on those he didn’t know.
It hadn’t been planned for Sizzle to become his base, he’d never had a regular one before, but now that word was seeping out about their relationship and he’d been spotted here so much, people expected to find him at her club and often asked for him.
Most of the time, she played dumb, but this guy wore Archer’s mark, telling her that the two men had history. Good or bad, she had to tell Archer that he was here. If the stranger wanted help, Archer could decide whether or not he wanted to give it. If the visitor wanted to hurt her lover, Archer would handle that in his usual swift and final way.
It used to be that at the end of a shift in Sizzle, all Nya could think about was sleep. She was still thinking about bed all right, but slumber was far from her mind. At the register, she was completing her usual task of cashing-out now that the customers had been ushered out.
Archer’s hands landed on her shoulders just as she finished bagging up the last of the takings. “Are we far from take-off?” he asked, burying his lips in the hair at her crown.
“No,” Nya said, putting an elastic band around the bag. “I just have to take this to the office.”
“Nya!” The voice of her newest server made her turn to the left. “Can I head out?” Jada asked, side-eyeing the unfamiliar man behind the bar with them. “We’ve finished cleaning up.”
Without knowing who Archer was, he probably intimidated the crap out of the twenty-two-year-old. But he was here so regularly that Jada would have to get used to him. “Jada, this is Archer,” Nya said. “He’s part of the furniture… not that you should sit on him… that’s my job.”
Some of the server’s wariness waned, but it didn’t dwindle altogether. “Your boyfriend?” Jada asked. “He doesn’t work here?”
“No,” Nya said. “Not officially.” But since they’d got together he’d spent so much time here watching over her that she had considered giving him a pay check. Packing the money bags into the cloth pouch they were kept in, she closed over the register. “You can’t leave on your own, we all leave together.”
Jada wasn’t happy, but she didn’t complain and instead wandered off to join the other employees who were gathering around one of the tables opposite the bar.
Security had tasks, continuing to do sweeps, but they kept doors locked after the last customers left. The staff did the cleaning up and sometimes griped when they were bored and wanted to go home. Nya did her work as fast as she could and they were paid for every minute that they spent there. But she couldn’t take the risk of letting anyone go out into the street alone where they’d be vulnerable. Losing one member of staff was enough; Jamie’s death hadn’t been for nothing.
The only exception to her rule was Archer. When Archer was at the club and the staff had finished their work, Nya let everyone else leave together as a group. As long as she had Archer watching over her, she could finish her work with only him for company and he’d take her home when she was done.
That night he’d been ensconced in his conversation with the stranger, even after closing. But the man he’d been talking to was no longer at the bar. “Where’s your friend?” Nya asked him, moving down the bar toward the office with the takings.
Her man followed. “Gone. I kicked him out, don’t worry. There won’t be any trouble.”
Only when they were both in the office, with the door closed behind them, did she ask another question. “Who was he?”
Archer scanned the room he’d been in a dozen times before with an absent gaze, a sure sign that she was about to be dismissed. “Don’t worry about that,” he said.
Grumbling to herself, she went to the safe and input the combination to open it. “He came to my club, I have a right to know,” she said, dumping the takings inside.
“You did the right thing, you called me,” he said. “I’m taking care of it.”
So he wasn’t going to tell her who the guy was or what he wanted. Fine. If it became a regular thing that this same stranger showed up, she’d push harder. For now, she moved on. “And the job?” she asked while locking up the safe. “The one you left to come here tonight, how’s that going?”
For the last three days, he’d had a man imprisoned in his apartment. Nya told Archer that she could handle what he did, she understood that he hurt people to get information that would help others and he did it for money. His motives weren’t altruistic or benevolent, but he didn’t hurt anyone innocent. Those he took into his custody deserved whatever fate he delivered them, as they’d often handed out unjust punishments themselves.
“Getting there,” he said, sliding his hands into his pockets though his eyes scanned the documents in her in-tray and those scattered on her desk. He was always looking for an angle, always seeking secrets, even in her boring office where she’d previously given him permission to look at everything.
Telling him that she was capable of handling what he did had seemed straightforward at the time. What she hadn’t factored in was what ended up being more difficult, which was not the pain he inflicted on others, but the sexual deprivation he inflicted on her.
“Can you come over?” she asked, sauntering towards him and sliding her arms under his to loop them around him.
Tucking her thumbs into his waistband at the back of his jeans, she curled her fingers around the horizontal sheath containing his knife that was always present on his belt, and squashed herself into him. He was the only guy allowed to carry a weapon in Sizzle.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll come over tomorrow.”
Aware that it may appear petulant, Nya exhaled and stuck out her bottom lip. “This is crazy, Fella, I never see you. I want you to come over. I want to be with you.”
“It’s been three days, Squirm. You knew the script when we hooked up.”
“But we’re not hooking up!”
Having gorged herself on his body at any time of her choosing for weeks, she’d been spoiled with his attention. That over-indulgence had been reduced to a famine and she had felt the pinch from the very first night.
That her sulk entertained him only frustrated her further. But she didn’t pull away when his fingers scooped under her chin. “It’s temporary, Squirm.”
Unsatisfied, she enjoyed his touch, but was still disappointed. “Until the next job,” she muttered.
His amusement reached its limit and his temper soured. “Yeah, until the next one. What do you want me to do? Stop working?” he asked, opening his hands at his sides.
His job wasn’t what bothered her,
it was their separation. “No,” she said. “But you could let me come over.”
“No.” His firm voice startled her and she knew how final his decisions were once he’d made up his mind. “Not while I have a source in my place. No way. Not a chance.”
That he wanted to protect her was flattering, but she thought he was taking it too far. “What harm can an hour do? I’m not talking about moving in.”
Which had been another sore point. After a casual comment about what it would be like living with him, during one of their lazy days, he’d shut her down on the prospect of them ever residing together full-time under one roof.
All she’d said was that it would be a breeze to room with him because he was always tidying up after her, so she’d never have to lift a finger again, except to do about seventy percent of the cooking. The other thirty percent of the time, he sought flesh, and she hadn’t succeeded in cooking that for him yet.
He managed to find some patience. “I’ve left him alone for too long already. If I come to your place, you know I’ll end up spending the night. We suck at leaving each other once we’re lying together.”
With nothing to say that could persuade him, she stayed silent, and he turned as if to go. But she wasn’t ready yet, so she grabbed his arm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t want to fight.”
Their time alone these last few days had been scarce, she didn’t want to waste their precious seconds together on bad feelings. “Squirm—”
“I know,” she murmured and stroked his rough jaw. “I’m sorry.”
Continuing her caress as she whispered her apology, Nya pulled him down and pushed up until eventually, she got what she wanted: his kiss. While he had other responsibilities detaining him, he avoided kissing her for the same reason he couldn’t lie with her—he’d never want to leave her.
Right now, she wanted to distract him. Nya wasn’t as adept at self-control as he was and she had no desire to be. Her desire was focused on this pillar of a man. When he snatched his arms around her waist, the power in them squeezed the air from her lungs into his mouth and the battle of their tongues increased in pace.
Scarred (Branded Book 2) Page 1
