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Black Light: Branded

Page 11

by Parker, Kay Elle


  Her arms began to itch.

  You know, he's never going to be enough to compete with the burn. You like it too much, need it bad enough that it won't matter how hard he fucks you, hits you, hurts you...the burn will devour it all and demand more. Demand blood. There'll be a line he won't cross, an itch he can't scratch, and you'll do anything to have more. More pain, more often.

  She shouldn't be feeling this way already, not after last night. Finn was her barrier against it, her buffer. Where was her reprieve from the craving, her time to be normal?

  The bite of her nails into her palms didn't stop the urge to gouge pieces out of herself. Tiny, inconsequential nips of pain that didn't come close to assuaging the desire to self-harm. Part of her wanted to turn into Finn, tell him how she was feeling so they could deal with it together. Hadn't she already learned a hard lesson about not confiding in him? However, lessons in using him as a sounding board couldn't compare to the terror filling her bones, her heart, when she thought about pushing him so far past his limits that he couldn't help her anymore.

  If she lost Finn, she'd be just as well making her next cuts the final ones.

  Though her steps turned hesitant, Finn's continued. She blinked against the light peeking through the barn slats, then stepped into the warm, oddly scented air beyond the doors. It baffled her how the smell of cow shit, bovine bodies, and straw had grown on her, no longer offending her city senses. There was...comfort in it, somehow.

  It sounded stupid, but Ava found it soothing. Being around the cows was calming; when she'd met her first cow up close, Finn had warned her to just relax and not show any nerves—not the easiest thing to do when faced with an animal that could squish her into unrecognizable mush with one cloven hoof—because, like horses, they responded negatively to fear.

  With practice, she'd learned how to control her nerves around them and in doing so had discovered she did indeed have some control over herself. Not enough, obviously. How and where did she find the control to stop feeling the phantom hilt of a knife in her hand? If she closed her eyes, she could imagine drawing the blade over her forearm and the trickle of blood that followed, but she just couldn't grasp onto anything but an echo of the burn.

  The one thing she lusted after held out of her reach.

  The massive barn was split into five sections. The first, third, and fifth areas were almost fifty feet wide and triple the length, bedded deeply in straw and packed with cattle the size of small houses. Automatic water feeders were placed at the far end of each pen, and the sides were designed to allow the cows' heads to poke through so they could eat the silage and feed on the other side, which was where sections two and four came in.

  Those sections were narrower, large enough for the tractors to drive in and reverse out to deliver food.

  Finn had promised he'd teach her how to drive one of the huge green machines, but Ava wasn't inclined to take him up on it. Those things were like three times taller than she was and he expected her to get behind the wheel of one? Nuh-uh. Knowing her luck, she'd crash through one of the barns, leaving a cartoon-esque cut-out in the side of the building and releasing a herd of heavily pregnant cattle into the wild.

  Nope, she wasn't taking responsibility for that nightmare.

  Finn's hand closed over hers, his fingers prying her nails from her palm as they walked down the concrete aisle. “That's a pretty significant tell, darlin'. You go quiet, but your body screams. Do you need me to take care of it before we head east?”

  Crap, he was a damn mind-reader sometimes. He still surprised her by being so casual about the whole thing, as though giving her pain when she needed it was as simple as brushing his teeth every morning. “I don't think your cows would be happy if you spanked me in their home. It would be an invasion of their privacy.”

  “Darlin', it ain't the cows' privacy I'd be thinking about.” Halfway down the barn, Finn stopped and grinned down at her before pointing to three black balls spaced along the big steel beam running down the middle of the roof. “Eyes in the sky, twenty-four-seven, Ava. High definition CCTV monitored by the staff in the office. Not to mention, one of the crew should be doing his hourly check anytime soon.”

  “Oh, well. That's good.” She laughed nervously, shrinking under the invisible eyes watching her from above. “If you've got cameras in here all the time, why do you have people checking the cattle every hour? Surely they only need to come if there's a problem?”

  “Cameras don't pick up signs the way a person does, Ava. We cover all the bases here, give ourselves a fighting chance at calving with the best percentage of survival we can.” He spun her around, pointed with his free hand into the center pen. “See that big black Angus there? She's one of my best cows. We have three of her daughters in the herd, and two years ago we weaned a bull calf off her, decided to let him keep his balls. He went to the breeding sale in Helena last fall and sold for just under two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  Ava's mouth dropped open. “Someone paid a quarter of a million dollars for a cow?”

  “Bull, darlin'. Record for an Angus bull is one point five million, so we've got some improvements to make yet, but I'm happy with what we're producing. What we don't keep, we sell, and we only keep quality. Now imagine if we'd fucked up that calving and that calf died. We lose the bloodlines, the money, and the boost to our reputation, not to mention a life.”

  “Why do you always say 'we'?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Whenever you talk about this place, your place, you hardly ever say 'I'. It's not I keep or I sell or I lose.”

  He shrugged, a flicker of discomfort ruffling his cool. “Because it's not a case of 'I', Ava. Sure, I started this. A one-man band wrestling paperwork and cattle, wringing twenty-seven hours out of a day. Over the years, it's gone from being just me to evolving into a team. Hundreds of people under my employ across the four stations, people I trust implicitly to run things when I can't, who help me with research into bloodlines and source new stock. The ranch has my name on it and, yeah, I stand to lose everything if it ever goes down, but there are a lot of hearts and guts invested into the business who'll lose just as much. It's a team effort.”

  Her heart kind of rolled over and sighed in her chest. If it had a face, it currently wore the expression of a teenage girl infatuated with her high school crush. Sheer adoration. “Not everyone would be so nice about sharing the credit for an amazing achievement.”

  “Probably not, but then, not everyone is me. My parents expected me to be a waste of space, darlin'. Never thought they'd see the day when I made something of myself and they were shocked to hell and back when I made my first profit on a bunch of run-down old cows. I know the value of family, and I've tried to build one here. You're just the shiny cherry I've been looking for to crown the whipped cream.”

  She snorted, quipping, “I don't have any shiny cherries left, Finn.”

  “So long as you keep hold of that air of innocence about you, little dove, you'll be the cherry every man dreams of.” As though realizing he'd stepped into soft and sappy territory, he cleared his throat abruptly and reasserted his stern persona. “Now, do you need a good spanking before we take our little road trip? I won't ask again.”

  Ava evaluated herself quickly. The itch remained under her skin, but it wasn't quite as irritating as it had been. No doubt it would lurk, waiting to flare up again, but for now, she was calmer, and she didn't have an urge to succumb to the voices. “No, thank you, Sir. I think I'll be okay.”

  “You let me know if that changes,” he said simply, and she was so grateful in that moment that he hadn't chosen to berate her for trying to hide it. “Now, our job this morning is to cast an eye over these beautiful girls. Any with calves will be separated out into the maternity ward later this morning, so just ignore them unless you see something that doesn't look right. Do you remember the signs I taught you to look for on your first day?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good
girl. Keep them in mind and point out anything you're not sure of.”

  They walked the aisles together in companionable silence, with Finn occasionally pointing out a heifer growing close to her time and guessing when she'd drop. From the five hundred cows in the barn, Ava counted a whopping thirty-two calves born overnight. She loved the different colors—there were black calves, and gray calves. Some Finn called silver, and others he told her were roan.

  They said good morning to the young woman who slipped into the barn about ten minutes after Finn and Ava began their walk through, then headed for the next barn. Ava was already tiring, the short night's sleep and early wake-up call sapping her energy. When Finn's watch signaled eight-thirty a.m. with a high-pitched beep, they were just finishing the seventh and last barn.

  The fresh air and promise of sunshine boosted her back into a functioning human being.

  No problems, no issues.

  Finn checked the first job of the day off with a wink for her. “Making good time, little dove.”

  Suspiciously, she narrowed her eyes at him, aware of the eyes on her from all corners of the ranch. “You're usually already done by now, aren't you?”

  “We're only about twenty minutes behind schedule, we're fine. Checking the cattle consumes a lot of time, especially if there's something wrong. The time we spend doing one job can be made up on the next. We roll with the punches, gain a little, lose a little.” Finn lifted his hand to a trio of riders departing the yard on horseback with a pair of black and tan dogs trotting ahead. “So long as the cattle are loaded on time, the crops are harvested before the rain comes, and we get through a day with everyone safe and sound, I'm satisfied.”

  “And if those things don't happen?” she asked curiously.

  He chuckled darkly, bending to brush his lips over hers before setting his hand against her lower back and guiding her away from the barns. “Imagine a Dominant pushed to his limits by a bratty sub, then throw in a nuclear bomb, a rottweiler, and an avalanche. Blend them all together and you get me at my worst. I'm a patient man, Ava, but I have a temper. Because I know it's there, I keep a firm grip on it and very rarely let it loose.”

  When she stiffened, his hand stroked up and down her back over the jacket. Despite the padding between them, she still felt the pressure of his touch as though they were skin to skin. “Um, I should probably tell you I hate being shouted at. Angry voices do something to my insides, and I can't...I don't function very well.”

  “I figured that out for myself, darlin'. I've got a soft spot for skittish fillies, and you...well, if you were a horse, I'd say someone's beaten your hide and kicked the shit outta you.” With the slightest movement of his hand, he directed her around the side of a small building, and through a door. It clicked shut behind them. “Take a seat, Ava.”

  As much as she loved his house, Ava adored Finn's outside office. It was smaller than any room in the house and obviously built for practical reasons, but there seemed to be more of him here. One wall was essentially a ginormous sheet of glass, offering a view of the mountains, the sky, and the pastures that spread as far as the eye could see. So much terrain, all of it belonging to Finn. Patches of forest, the sea of green fields dotted with cattle and horses.

  It was a miracle he got any work done here.

  Someone had carved a desk from what seemed like half a redwood and left it in front of the window. A brown leather desk chair was pushed back as though Finn had stood up and left it waiting for his return in that precise position. A computer monitor sat on the polished surface of the desk along with a keyboard, and that was all. No pictures, no stationary, just the bare essentials.

  Three armchairs in the same rich leather as Finn's fanned around the other side of the desk, and Ava slid into one sheepishly, thinking she'd rather sit on the floor than scuff the material. A long couch was pushed into the far corner, part of the set. Her eyes darted around the room, passing over framed pictures of horses and cattle that evidently held a place of pride in Finn's heart. There were show ribbons and certificates among them, obviously displayed to impress.

  Ava made an effort not to move her boots on the hardwood floor. It was scarred and worn in places, sure, but it was spotless and as shiny as the desktop. Though her boots were brand new, she couldn't remember if she'd stepped in anything on their hike around the barns or across the yard.

  “Relax, Ava, you're not going to hurt anything.” Finn slid into his own chair and leaned his elbows on the desk, watching her with dark eyes. “I want to ask your opinion on something before I set events in motion, Ava, and I'm going to be honest with you. I'd appreciate it if you would do the same for me.”

  Any insult she felt at being compared to a flighty female horse disappeared as anxiety sank its claws into her stomach and throat, ready to tear them out with one wrong word from him. She swallowed hard, shrinking back into her chair. “O-Okay.”

  “Don't be scared, little dove. I did a lot of thinking last night while you were kicking me in your sleep. We still have a lot to learn about each other—I barely know anything about your family, your past, your dreams. You're aware of some of what made me, but there's a lot to explore.”

  She squirmed. Where was this leading?

  “The fact you self-harm is a huge concern for me. I worry for you and about you. This morning was a prime example. Causing yourself pain, even in small amounts, is a precursor for more. I'll do whatever's necessary to provide that pain for you, it's not a hardship.” Finn ran his hand over his mouth, his eyes softening. “However, I'm not happy chasing after the craving, Ava. One misstep and you're bleeding out on the floor. We need to get under it, dig beneath the reaction and root out the cause.”

  Her heart plummeted into an abyss, wrenched from her chest by a cold hand. Her mouth filled with saliva, dread making her belly twist with the need to be sick. Rooting out the cause meant talking about Bartholomew, and she wasn't strong enough to do that.

  “I'm a rancher and a Dom, darlin'. I have a feeling I ain't qualified to guide you through whatever we find on this journey. I sure as shit don't want to rile things up and cause holy hell if I don't know how to fix it properly. So, how do you feel about talking to someone who can? This isn't an ultimatum,” he assured her. “I'd like to know how you feel about having someone to confide in, that's all.”

  “No,” she croaked, shaking her head. “I'll talk to you, I swear I will.”

  She’d tell him how her childhood had been spent in solitude, hiding under the bed with her thumb in her mouth as her father destroyed their demolition-worthy shack in drunken rages. How he’d liked to drink the day away, then wreak havoc once the stars winked to life.

  There weren’t monsters under her bed or in her closet, he was the monster who had no need to conceal himself.

  And under the cover of darkness, he thrived.

  She’d tell him how, by the time she was ten, the monster became a constant presence. The house littered with bottles of alcohol in various stages of fullness, the walls pocked with holes where his fists had smashed through the drywall. How her father wallowed in filth and reveled in tormenting the little girl trapped in his chaos.

  What would Finn think if she explained how women paraded through the house on a regular basis, so often the sounds of rough sex and pained cries were nothing unusual. She didn’t want to remember how she stayed away from them, huddled in her room with toilet paper stuffed in her ears to muffle the noise.

  No doubt he’d be appalled if he knew about when she was twelve and her breasts grew noticeable, so the foul tirade of insults and names her father usually directed at his whores swung Ava’s way. How she became a slut without sullying her innocence.

  “Darlin', it's not just about the talking. Listen to me now. Opening up old wounds isn't just about letting the shit out. When you've got nasty, infected wounds that start eating away at you, you've gotta get deep down into them and clean out every last trace of infection, otherwise it just keeps on brewing and causing
problems.”

  It wasn't fair to burden someone else with what was in her head. As far as Ava was concerned, no one else needed to have that knowledge, certainly not the man she loved and wanted to spend the rest of her life with, and not some hapless therapist who would live with it for the rest of their days.

  She hadn't told Finn anything because she couldn't bear to think he would look at her differently. She answered his questions if and when he asked them, but she never expanded, never told him things of her own volition if she could help it. Even when the words were on her tongue, ready to spill her secrets so she could be free for just a little while, she bit them back, holding onto being his Ava for a few days longer.

  “I'm not thinking about dragging you to a stranger and dumping you there for the requisite fifty minutes, Ava. I give you my word that won't happen. I can pull some strings, find someone you're comfortable with. I'll stay with you if you want me to. We need someone who knows what they're dealing with, little dove. As much as I hate admitting it, you need more than just me right now.”

  Ava slipped her hands between her thighs, squeezing the muscles tightly. God, she didn't want to consider it, but Finn sounded disheartened and unhappy. “I don't...this would make you feel better?”

  Finn shoved his chair back and patted his knee. “Come here, darlin'.”

  There was no need to tell her twice. Ava bolted from her chair, would have scrambled over the desk to get to him if the monitor hadn't been in the way. Instead she hurried around the desk and threw herself onto his lap, burrowing into him. He slipped her hat off and set it on the desk before his arms curled around her protectively. “Don't make this about me, Ava. I'll be fine as long as you're with me. This has to be your decision. It's your health, mental and physical, at stake.”

  “And if I tell you I don't feel like I need to do this? What then?”

  I'll say liar, liar, banned panties on fire. I know why you don't want to talk to anyone, dirty girl. You're afraid they'll get rid of me, that you won't hear me anymore. The last connection to your dear old dad. Once you start spilling all these filthy secrets in your head, all the people you love will just walk away and leave you alone to rot. And when they're gone and I'm banished by the big, bad shrink, there's no more distractions. No more reasons to hold onto this life you cling to, no more me to defy.

 

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