Scarred (Branded Book 2)

by Scarlett Finn

  “It was perfect,” she said. “He’s a prick and we could’ve killed him, then he would’ve just been more hassle, a body to get rid of and evidence to clean up. Now he has to live with what he’s done, knowing that someone’s watching him. You really are good at what you do.”

  “Don’t sound surprised,” he said, bringing her hand up to kiss her knuckles. “We get rid of him and then get back to mine.”

  “We?” she asked. “I can come to your place? What about your friend?”

  His eyes stayed on the road. “You can meet him,” Archer said. “But you’ll have to split before the business starts. He’s an old-fashioned kinda guy.”

  As opposed to Archer who was such a modern man. Even if it was just the tiniest crack of a view into his life beyond her, she would take it. After what had happened tonight, Nya would be in his debt forever, and her gratitude overflowed.

  “I love you,” she said, nuzzling his wrist. “So much, Archer, I…”

  “How much?” he asked, pulling her hand to his groin to rub her palm on the thick, hard shaft nestled in his jeans.

  “Threatening men turns you on?” Continuing with the intimate massage, after both his hands went to the wheel, a little TLC was the least she could offer him.

  “You, like this, turns me on. You’re so fucking happy right now.”

  Her happiness made him horny? Nya thought she had always been happy when she was with him, maybe she’d been wrong. She wasn’t usually this exuberant and the adrenaline would be causing a heightened reaction to the emotion that bubbled through her.

  Maybe it was that, which made her open his belt and his fly, and that which made her climb onto her knees on her own seat to bow over his lap.

  Bending her body across the car, she took him into her mouth. “Jesus,” he exclaimed, curling his fingers into her hair. “You are fucking grateful.”

  Her response was to suck harder because she was. He’d put everything on the line for her tonight and he’d trusted her to watch him work and to know another man’s secrets. One man down and six more to go.

  She wasn’t afraid anymore. She was invigorated. Tonight, wherever she was, Jamie would rest a little easier and that was all because of Archer. This wouldn’t have been possible without him.

  ten

  “This guy who’s coming over tonight, who is he?” she asked, taking their food from the fridge.

  “Derren’s biological son,” Archer said and she stopped in the middle of the kitchen.

  “Really?” she asked. “I didn’t expect you to be that honest.”

  He glanced at her from the pan he was heating up on the stove. “You asked. You’re always telling me to tell you shit.”

  She was and she appreciated him following through. “Well that makes sense,” she said, handing over his food as she went to work setting out her prep area. “If Derren has a biological son, he must have seen something of this guy in you, and that’s why he took you under his wing.”

  “Maybe,” Archer said, seasoning his meat and then placing it in the pan.

  “Thank you for letting me stay,” Nya said.

  Swaying to the side to nudge him, she paused in her task of slicing salad vegetables at the kitchen counter beside where he stood at the stove. Leaning over, she peered into his pan. But he slanted his body and used his strength to urge her upright at her station.

  “I’m just curious,” she said, slicing through a tomato. “You don’t have to worry about me stealing it. I’m the best girlfriend ever.”

  “Self-titled,” he muttered, turning his steak over.

  “Come on,” she said, continuing with her task of chopping, preparing her own meal. “I’m better than your ex-girlfriends.” When he said nothing and reacted only with a twitch of his brow, her hands stalled. “Do you really compare me to your exes?”

  “No more than you compare me to yours.”

  Finishing with her tomato, she put the pieces into a bowl and rested her hand on the next one. “I don’t really,” she said, considering it for the first time. “You’re more serious, more dominant.” She turned to rest her hip on the counter and pointed her knife at his groin. “Your cock’s certainly the biggest I’ve handled.”

  He took her wrist and turned the blade back to the chopping board and she returned to preparing her salad at his unspoken request. When it was done, Archer took his steak from the pan and slid it onto a board on the other side of the stove as he turned off the heat.

  Nya chopped into another tomato and managed to slice through her finger in the process. “Oh, fuck!” she exclaimed, dropping the knife to snatch her injured hand. But before she could look, he pulled her finger into his mouth. As he sucked the blood from the wound, she hissed. “Even your kitchen knives are sharper than sin, Arch. Do you have to be so OCD about sharpening them all the time?”

  Their eyes met and the pain in her finger began to lessen as his tongue moved over the wound. “Stop that,” she said and tried to withdraw, but he wouldn’t let go. Instead, without looking, Archer’s other hand moved to her breast and the pad of his thumb began to circle her erect nipple. “It’s fine.” Nya tried to yank her hand away again, but he was too strong, and he’d already awoken her core.

  All of her awareness centered on that spot he salved and sucked. Her intimate flesh began to swell and tingle. It wasn’t just the motion of his tongue that stimulated her, or the strength of his grip on her hand. It wasn’t the way his thumb pushed deeper, flicking over the apex of her breast either.

  “Archer,” she murmured because he’d snared her with his gaze. So intent on her, his focus was absolute, and she couldn’t look away, like a moth mesmerized by a scorching flame. She didn’t mind being burned, in fact she craved it. “Stop it. We’re expecting your guy to show up.”

  But he didn’t seem to be listening because he began to walk forward, forcing her back until her ass hit the counter. “What are you doing?” she asked, the breathy sound desperate and aroused.

  Taking her injured finger from his lips, he reached beyond her to flatten it on the counter and then used her hips to turn her whole body away so he could do the same with the other. “Fella, you better not be thinking about…”

  But his hands were already under her skirt, hooking her underwear, which he pulled down to her knees then without apology or permission, he compelled her to bend with a powerful hand between her shoulder blades, forcing her chest down against the cold countertop.

  His fingers began to fuck her fast and she whimpered. Squeezing her eyes closed, she rolled her forehead against the surface she was face down on. “Oh, that feels good,” she whispered.

  “I like that,” he said as his fingers freed themselves from her body.

  Twisting around to look over her shoulder, she watched him lick them clean. The lingering moisture on them was slick against her clit when he began to rub her. Up and down at first and then in circles, her hips rocked in complement to his every move. Pushing back, begging for more, Nya didn’t have to ask aloud for him to know what she wanted.

  A few seconds later, his dick slammed into her. “Oh!” she cried out and began to rise, but he grabbed a handful of her hair to push her down flat. Screwing her here in the kitchen, with her panties around her knees was so dirty, and it made her want him more. “Faster, Arch!”

  She gasped and he pulled her head back to slide his long fingers around her throat. He didn’t squeeze, just held the column of her throat in one hand, while clutching a handful of her hair in the other. Cradling her windpipe, he had complete control of not only her pleasure, but her life as well.

  His hips worked hard in search of climax. “I’ve ruined this body for every guy,” he growled. “Your pussy’s stretched to fit me now. It won’t take any other cock. You promise me, Squirm.”

  “I promise!” she cried out and would probably promise him the moon and the stars or anything he wanted, because while his shaft was inside her, Nya was a slave to him and anything that he wanted.


  “She loves it. You love it. You ain’t never said no to this cock.” And that was true, she hadn’t. “You love it.”

  “Yes! I love it!” she screamed. “I love your cock! I love you!”

  “Fuck, yeah, horny one. You’re my little Squirm, always moving, always ready to take my dick deep any time I bend you over. You drain the spunk right out of me with that tight little cunt.”

  Panting and yelping, she called his name. There was something primal about the way he was holding her in this submissive position. At any time, he could break her neck. He could pull her hair harder and cause real pain, or just squeeze his fingers around her throat and end her life in a heartbeat. And it was that trust that heightened this intimacy and made her need him.

  “Archer!”

  Pounding her hard, he ground out his own desire. “My pussy. My girl.”

  “I love it when you fuck me! Arch, fuck me! I need it!”

  Seizing her hips, he thrust in hard, once, twice, again. Pushing all of the air from her lungs in one long scream, she grasped her breasts through her shirt and collided with orgasm at two thousand miles an hour. It sapped every bit of her energy, stole her soul, and yet he kept on going until he threw himself into the same abyss.

  Nya was still making noises and wriggling when he slid out of her body. He pulled up her panties, but she didn’t care that her ass was on display for the world. She was happy face down on this countertop and had no intention of moving.

  “You better wash up, Squirm, you’ve got two minutes,” he said.

  She whined as she rolled over and forced herself to stand. “You can’t do that to me and then ask me to be social,” she whinnied.

  He winked and went to wash his hands. “You know where the bed is. If you want to get naked and wait for me…”

  “And how long will that take?” she asked, suspicious that it had been his plan all along to satisfy her sexually so that she wouldn’t ask too many questions when his friend arrived.

  He moved his steak onto a plate and took it over to the table. “Your call, Squirm,” he said, then there was a knock at the door. “Keeping my bed warm is your job.”

  “Archer,” she said, causing him to stop on his way to the door. Running her hands up over her sensitive breasts, to her neck then down to her pelvis, she bit her lip. He’d left her undone. She was exposed. At his mercy. And his half-smile knew it too.

  “Get a Band-Aid for that finger,” he said, and carried on to answer the door.

  By the time she’d been to the bathroom to wash up and fix her finger, Archer was already halfway through his steak and there was a man at the table. Conversation stopped when she emerged from the hallway.

  “Heard you had a girl,” said the man she didn’t know. “Didn’t know you were showing her off though.”

  Archer used his knife over his shoulder to gesture between them. “Kristof, Nya, Nya, Kristof,” he said without turning to look at her.

  “It’s a pleasure,” Kristof said, checking out her figure, but she didn’t mind because she did the same.

  He was older than Archer, but she couldn’t tell by how much, could be five years, could be ten. They had the same sort of build and the same sort of wary look in their eyes when they were meeting new people. The name was unusual and she didn’t know if it was his first name or his last, but she wasn’t going to ask.

  “Likewise,” Nya said, wondering why she was being so proper. She went into the kitchen to get back to preparing her salad. As she sliced and tossed, she tried to listen in to the conversation, except no one said a word. It wasn’t until she was plating her food, and drizzling on the dressing that she heard any noise at all.

  “Seems like the best way to handle it,” Kristof said. “But you know it’s risky.”

  “So is everything I do,” Archer said, chewing as he spoke.

  “You asking for back up?”

  Nya turned to take the rest of her salad over to the table. Archer shook his head at Kristof. “No, if I get into shit, I’d rather only have my own ass to worry about.”

  Kristof scrutinized her act of scooping the rest of the salad onto Archer’s plate, who leaned back a couple of inches to accept it.

  Archer’s large hand went under her skirt to squeeze and massage her exposed ass cheek, he loved that she wore thongs, and as long as it was distracting him from the piles of salad she put onto his plate, she didn’t mind him being so proprietary in front of his friend.

  “I’ve never seen you eat that green shit,” Kristof said.

  Archer gave her ass a smack. “I eat the healthy crap she puts on my plate. In return, she sucks my cock. Can’t argue with that.”

  Kristof laughed. “No, I guess not. Any more of that green shit around?”

  Archer exhaled a semi-laugh, which surprised her, because Kristof was implying that all it took for her to get down on her knees was a guy eating a few lettuce leaves. “No,” she said. “Archer’s the only one I feed.”

  “And he feeds you right back,” Kristof said, but was looking at Archer.

  Nya was forgotten about when she returned to the kitchen, and Kristof went back to their conversation. She ate her salad where she was because she didn’t want to go too far, so she could keep listening. But sitting at the table would make her eavesdropping too obvious.

  “Those three guys are the ones you have to watch,” Kristof said.

  “I figured that,” Archer said. “I just need the inside.”

  “And I’m on it,” Kristof said. “I’ll get the four-one-one.”

  Listening to their conversation was infuriating, it wasn’t like they were talking in code, but they were so vague, they might as well have been. Nya wanted to ask for specifics, but imagined those had already been covered maybe on the phone or while she was in the bathroom. But she wasn’t getting any tonight.

  Her phone buzzed.

  Archer got up to get it from the coffee table and read the screen. Instead of handing it over, he answered it. He was a guy who had to know everything. Nya couldn’t argue his arrogance in front of a stranger, which Kristof was to her.

  “Yep,” he said into the device and she left her salad to go to the space between the breakfast bar and the fridge. “Uh huh.” Archer’s gaze landed on her. “Right.” Nya tried to find out what was going on with a shake of her head as she lifted her hands in an open shrug, but he wasn’t forthcoming. “Send Robbo over to pick Nya up.” Robbo was one of the security guys Archer had hired and obviously someone he trusted because this wasn’t the first time Archer had commanded the man to taxi her around. He hung up the phone. “They need you at Sizzle.”

  “For what?” she asked.

  “Some stock issue or something. Something ran out, I don’t know.”

  He’d been only half listening, but he expected her to go down there and fix it? “The new girl can’t figure out the barrels,” Nya said, wondering if that was the problem. It was too much to expect that she could’ve neglected Sizzle for so long. The way the shift rotations worked, there were only experienced members of staff on sometimes. They’d taken on a lot of new staff, who may have exaggerated their resumes and might not know how things worked. “Ok. Let me get changed.”

  “Robbo will be here in five,” Archer said, going back to his seat at the table. “I’ll pick you up after.”

  Pick her up after what? A full shift or when Kristof was gone? She was to fix the problem and then wait around to see? Archer hadn’t wanted her here while he was talking to his friend. It seemed too coincidental that he’d just gotten his wish.

  Where Archer was concerned, she was always suspicious that things weren’t quite what they seemed to be. He may have set it up this way.

  From the snippet of conversation she’d heard, she wasn’t worried about missing much here. So she’d go to Sizzle, deal with the issue, and then hope that Archer would be honest when they got home later.

  eleven

  Sorting out the original problem in Sizzle took less
time than she thought. But Nya found the basement in an absolute mess and had to spend close to two hours reorganizing everything downstairs before she could get into the office to deal with the overdue paperwork that was piling up. No one else had the authority to deal with it… or the inclination.

  The music was giving her a headache, but the hubbub in the club beyond her sheltered office was a good sign that business was booming. Everyone was having a good time and as long as the customers were happy, her job was safe.

  The usual scuffles, and shouts, and conversation carried through to her, but she couldn’t pick out specifics, just laughing and signs of fun. She trusted her staff to deal with running things, because she wasn’t supposed to be here anyway, and she wanted to finish the invoices before Archer appeared. One thing she didn’t plan to do, was spend any more time screwing in this office.

  The door opened and she was about to chastise her staff for entering without knocking, something they would never normally do. But when she saw who filled the doorframe, she shot up from her chair and didn’t restrain her gasp.

  “We haven’t been introduced,” her new visitor said.

  It wasn’t so much his identity that scared her, it was his size. Although he was under six foot, he was built wide and hard. His shoulders strained his tee shirt and the biceps that bulged beneath were covered in tattoos leaving barely an inch of untouched skin on show.

  His short beard and angry glare would steal the courage of any woman sitting alone. When he strode in and closed the door, she wanted to call out and object. Except who would hear her while there was such a noise in the club? And if she tried to grab for the phone he’d know she was intimidated.

  Nya searched his person for a weapon, but didn’t immediately see one. Not that it mattered, his bulk made it obvious that he had the ability to take her down. A full crate of beer tested her limits, if this guy got hold of her, she wouldn’t stand a chance.

  “I’m Brett Hexam.”

  The weakness that consumed her made her sink into her chair. “Oh,” she said.