Branded

Chapter Twenty-Four

HE’S SHOCKED.

Because he doesn’t move for several seconds. It should make things awkward. I’m the only one who’s moving her lips over his. Closed ones at that. But I’m too busy tasting him. I’m too busy finally, finally, breathing a sigh of relief because I’ve been waiting to kiss him for a long time now.

Years, it feels like.

And even though I know nothing about kissing, I’m still forging ahead.

I’m still licking the seam of his mouth.

Curling my tongue over the ends. I’m still sucking his lower lip into my mouth because it’s so soft, almost bouncy.

And every time I take a little bite of it, I think I taste lemonade.

I want to ask him if he was drinking it like me at the party and do we have the same favorite drink.

I also want to ask him a million things about himself, now that I’m not holding myself back and I have no shame left in me when it comes to him.

And also, when I know he’ll tell me; I’ll make him tell me.

But then I discover how fucking amazing his stubble feels on my tongue, all scrape-y and stingy in contrast to his plush lips, and I put everything else on the back burner.

There’s time for that later. Three weeks’ worth of time.

Just as I’m about to lick his stubble more, though, my head’s yanked back and his face, all angry-looking, fills my vision.

“What the fuck are you doin’?” he growls.

I grab the collar of his shirt and reply, “Kissing you.”

“Kissing me.”

“Yes.” I swallow, my cheeks blushing. “Was that not… c-clear?”

His eyes narrow. “It was.”

“So—”

“I’m just”—he flexes his fist in my hair—“not sure about the why.”

“Because I want to.”

His nostrils flare with his breaths. Three breaths. I count them, and I know he’s taking them to calm himself down because he was starting to breathe a little heavier back there. Then, “Did you listen to anythin’ I just said?”

I go to nod, but his grip is too tight so I switch to a verbal response. “Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“What?”

“Fucking”—he shakes my head a little, his fingers mean and brutal—“repeat it to me. What I said to you.”

I cup his jaw, caressing his stubble, those cuts as I whisper, “I need to be free. I need to run.”

His nostrils flare again. “Run where?”

“Away from here.”

“Far away,” he corrects.

“F-far away.”

“And from who?”

“You.”

“Me.”

“I—”

He shakes my head again to shut me up. “Why?”

“Because you’re… you’re bad for me.”

“And why am I bad for you?”

“You’re”—I hiccup—“cruel and selfish.”

“You forgot one,” he reminds me and pulls my head back even more.

I have to wait a second so I can clench my thighs at his rough grip, the harsh stretching of my neck. “A-and dangerous.”

“Try again.”

“I don’t—”

He leans closer to me, hovering. “The one where I put my bare hands around the throat of the motherfuckers who’ve hurt you and squeeze really fuckin’ hard.”

God.

I suck my belly in, butterflies buzzing down there. “A killer.”

His chest moves with satisfaction. “Yeah. A killer.”

“But—”

Again, he shuts me up by inching closer, bringing his mouth over mine, not touching, though, only tempting. “So tell me again, why the fuck are you kissin’ me?”

I take him in. His harsh face, every line standing taut and sharp.

His eyes dark and glittering, brutal. And I think to myself that I wasted so much time.

So much time, lamenting the fact that his eyes weren’t blue like I imagined them to be.

Or that his voice was too deep the first time I heard it, and his shoulders were broader than I thought.

I wasted so much time thinking he was nothing like I’d dreamed about for the past six months, nothing like my Bo.

When I should have been thinking that he was—is—everything I needed him to be.

Cruel, selfish, and dangerous, yes.

But also, fierce and protective and God, capable of so much love. This is what people call love. This is what people call loyalty. That he’s still willing to go through hell for the woman he loved. So isn’t it obvious why I’m kissing him?

I’m kissing him because I love him.

I fell in love with him when I only knew him as Bo and could barely imagine the fire inside of him, and I’m even more in love with him now when his flames have touched me. I keep rubbing my thumb in his stubble as I say, “Because I realized something.”

“What?”

“That I’m still mad at you.”

That gives him a pause. “You’re mad at me.”

“Yes,” I whisper, skimming my thumb along the curve of his lower lip. “If you think that I’ve forgiven you for all the things you’ve done because you wiped my tears, tears that you gave me, then you’re highly mistaken.”

His jaw pulses and I know he’s remembering my tears in this moment.

Remembering and regretting. It’s plain as day on his face.

It only makes me more determined to do this.

“I keep the letters you wrote me in my desk drawer. Just beneath the window because Bo”—his frame tightens at the name and I clutch his face harder—“told me that he likes to watch the sky through his barred window. So I figured he’d like that.

But now I know it wasn’t Bo; it was you.

You liked to watch the sky through the window.

I know I’ll never have the heart to move them, no matter how much I might want to.

So they’ll just sit there, as a reminder.

Your reminder. As the reminder of all the lies you told.

I could fill a book with all the lies you told, all the crimes you committed, and still not be finished.

I’ll have nightmares about you for the rest of my life.

So yes, I’m mad at you and no, I haven’t forgiven you yet. But I want to.”

I can see his cheek pulsing as he stares down at me. “You shouldn’t.”

“That’s not up to you,” I say, arching up to him. “The only thing that’s up to you is apologizing.”

His hands move and go down to my waist where he grips me so tightly, I teeter on my toes. “How?”

I move my hands, too, and bury them in his hair before fisting the strands tightly. “You want me to be clean, don’t you? You want me to be free, to forget all about what happened. So then, you’re going to have to make me.”

His brow furrows. “Make you.”

I pull at his hair. “Yes, because you brought me here, remember? Against my wishes.”

Understanding finally dawns on him and his brow clears. His fingers on my waist grope and pull, pinch. “So you’re the victim.”

My heart flutters at him throwing his words back at me.

But we’re way past that now, so I squeeze my arms around his neck and whisper against his lemonade-tasting lips that I can’t wait to get back to, “No, because I may not be a Turner but when you forced me to sign on that dotted line, it doesn’t matter what I wrote—I became a Grayson.

And I don’t care if you did it for revenge or that I’m the wrong girl.

All I care about is I’m your wife. You made me your wife.

So now it’s your job to turn my nightmares into dreams.”

He has to make up for all the things he did because I don’t want my love for him to be tainted by my anger, by his lies and crimes. I don’t want to remember him as my kidnapper. I want to remember him as my husband and the man I love.

Something passes through his features, through his entire body, which becomes larger somehow.

His broad shoulders stretch out and his chest swells up to massive proportions.

His eyes glitter in the dark, and I swear his fingers on my body go all heated and so, so tight that I’m this close to moaning under them.

Even his voice grows gruffer and more growly as he says, “You’ve got no clue what you just did, do you? ”

My heart, already pounding, starts knocking in my chest so hard, I lose my breath for a second. “Yes, I do.”

He circles his glittery eyes over my features before refuting, “No, you don’t.”

“I—”

“You just opened the door.”

“The d-door?”

“The one I was trying”—he kneads my flesh again, all impatiently—“really fuckin’ hard not to bust down.”

“Last night?”

“Last night.”

“I think—”

“And guess what,” he rasps, his mouth so close to mine that it feels like I’m already drinking the lemonade. “I’m not just watchin’ anymore.”

“You’re not?”

“No, I’m climbin’ in the bed with you.”

A current runs down my spine and I pull at his hair again. “I-I want you to.”

“I’m throwin’ away the sheet you’ve got on.”

“I don’t care.”

“And I’m tearin’ off the clothes you’re wearing.”

“O-okay.”

“You’re not gonna need them anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because if you want somethin’ to cover your gorgeous little body with, it’s gonna be my body. And you know why that is, don’t you?”

I shiver. “W-why?”

His fingers on my waist dig and dig into my flesh as he growls, “Because you’re my wife and if you wanna be warm, it’s my job to make it so.”

I swallow again and hold on to his shoulders, my nerves finally getting the better of me. “Okay, but… but let’s talk first.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes because I thought—”

“I know what you thought.”

I lick my lips. “What?”

“You thought I’m a man but I’m not just a man.”

“No?”

He shakes his head slowly. “No, I’m not just a man. I think in all your girly fuckin’ excitement you forgot that I’m a man who spent the last eight years behind bars. Six months of which I spent dreamin’ about you.”

“I didn’t. I—”

“And when a man’s locked up and dreamin’ for that long, he starts to change,” he goes on, his words all rough and rippling with danger.

“He becomes harder, rougher. Aggressive. So that when they finally let him out, he doesn’t come out a man; he comes out a bull.

And you know what a bull does, don’t you? ”

“What?”

He waits a beat to answer, and I know he does it to keep me on my toes.