Branded

Chapter Twenty-Nine #2

“Was almost out the door when Rad found me. Said we could look for you on the cameras. We’ve got cameras all over the ranch.

Said I needed to slow down. I needed to think.

” Another puff of air that makes his entire frame shudder.

“But I couldn’t think. I didn’t think there was time for me to think.

Thought I was goin’ to be too late like last time.

Then I saw you on the screen, walkin’ through the woods, headin’ to fuck knows where, and I took off.

I rode like I’ve never ridden before and just as we were comin’ up the path, I heard you scream my name and I… ”

“Arsen,” I say, trying again to get his attention.

But he still doesn’t give it to me, and his next words tell me why: “She died because of it.”

“Because of what?”

“Rawhide Redemption.”

“What?”

“They were lookin’ into it. Back then. They were hell-bent on finding evidence against us. So they could use it and have our land seized. And when they couldn’t find somethin’”—he pauses to take in a broken breath that swells his chest out so much that it must be painful—“they took her instead.”

Oh God. Oh my fucking God. Of course he looked like he was stuck in the past. Of course he looked haunted. She died because of it, because of what we were looking into tonight, and I…

I give in to the urge to kiss him and lean forward. I’m this close to putting my mouth on his when his focus comes back and his fingers flex in my hair. When something brutal flashes through his eyes and he says roughly, “You’re not her.”

And I flinch, a sharp pain piercing my chest. But oblivious, he keeps going, his voice all grunts and growls, “But somehow it doesn’t matter. Somehow, never been able to think straight when it comes to you. Not even in the beginning. Not since the first letter.”

“What about the first letter?”

He watches me a beat before saying, “I did it.”

“You did what?”

“Kept them away,” he explains, his eyes flicking back and forth between mine. “All the other inmates.”

My heart skips a beat. “From writing back to me?”

He licks his lips. “Wanted you to be mine.”

“I am yours,” I say, my fingers trembling on his face.

“And then I did the other thing too.”

“What thing?”

“Sent that professor away.”

I’m shaking now. Shaking and shivering and sweating with how heated he’s making me with his confessions. “The one… The one who made a pass at me?”

His eyes narrow for a second. “The one I asked you to stay away from. But you didn’t listen.”

“You sent him away?”

“Got a cop to do it. To run him out of town.”

“I don’t… I didn’t… You never said anything.”

“Didn’t want anyone comin’ between you and me.”

“Arsen,” I whisper because I don’t know what else to say. I don’t know how to handle all the things he’s saying to me. I joked about it, yes, but I never, not in a million years, could’ve imagined him actually doing something like that.

For me.

“Woulda pissed a circle around you, if I could,” he goes on, his eyes flashing. “To keep all the motherfuckin’ dogs away.”

“You don’t have to. There’s no one except—”

“It don’t make sense though, do it? You were a Turner,” he accuses in almost an unhinged way.

“I wasn’t a Turner,” I insist. “I’m not a Turner. You know that. I’m—”

His eyes bore into mine then. “And somehow you turned out to be more dangerous than one.”

I’m so confused. I don’t know what he’s saying. And he doesn’t give me time to understand, either, because he goes, “You thought it was over, huh. This mornin’.”

I swallow. “But I didn’t want it to be.”

He clenches his jaw. “You will.”

“What?”

“By the time tonight ends, you’ll wish it was over.”

Fear pierces my chest, and I lose my breath. “What—”

He licks his lips again, and squeezing my throat, he commands, “Take me out.”

“I-I’m sorry?”

Letting go of me, he sits back and for a few seconds, I feel so unmoored without his brutal hands on me. Without his fingers pulling my hair and holding my breaths captive. I watch him widen his thighs, sliding down on the chair so he looks as if he’s draped on it like a king of some sort.

No, a cowboy who owns this ranch. This dark cabin with its dark secrets.

“Unzip me and take my dick out.”

My thighs clench, and I feel another drop of cream sliding out of my pussy.

It’s so twisted, everything he makes me feel.

Before I met him, I never knew fear could be a turn-on too.

Or that discomfort and adrenaline, apprehension, could make your heart race so much that it feels like you’re flying.

You’re riding like the wind. You’re riding with him as you watch the world go by in the periphery.

When all I do is stare at him wordlessly, he growls, “Do it or fuck off.”

My hands fly to do his bidding then, all eagerly but haphazardly.

And he notices. Even though I’m focused on getting his jeans undone, which I’ll admit I’m totally screwing up, I know he’s watching me.

And I know he’s doing it with a challenge in his stare.

Arrogance dripping from every inch of his burly cowboy frame.

“Little miss eager, aren’t you,” he taunts, his voice rough.

Blush paints my cheeks. It paints my entire body, and I’m thankful for the meager lighting. Or he’d be able to see me all red and hot and bothered. As it is, I think he can hear it in my breathless voice: “No, just your sweet little wife doing as you say.”

His chest shakes with a gusty breath. “The kind of mood I’m in, it’s gonna serve you well either way.”

“W-what mood?” I ask, finally getting his button undone and moving on to the zipper.

“The kind where my sweet little wife pisses me off and I make her choke on my cock.”

My hands stumble and I look up. “Ch-choke?”

His features are so tight in this moment, tight and brutal. “Choke.”

“But I—”

“And trust me when I say, you wanna choke on it, darlin’.”

I shake my head, fear winning out in this moment. “I don’t.”

“Yeah, you do,” he insists, his eyes flashing. “You want me to choke you. You want me to make you gag.”

“No.”

“Because the more you gag on my big fat dick, the better it’ll be for you.”

“It won’t be.”

“Later.”

My heart thuds. “Later?”

“When I put it in your ass.”

“What?”

His eyes rove over my features, and he leans forward as he says, “You didn’t think I’d make you blow me in a dark cabin and we’d call it a day, did you?”

“I didn’t—”

He keeps studying me like I’m some novel object, his eyes almost fond. “You know, I should be used to it by now.”

“Used to what?”

“How young you are. How innocent. All shiny and bright like the sun, sweet like a flower.” Then, as if to himself, he mutters, “My sweet little wife.”

“Arsen, stop.”

He comes back to me. “Makes me almost wanna leave you alone.”

“No, don’t. I—”

“But I won’t,” he says, putting me at ease. “And blowin’ me right next to the man I almost killed for you is only the beginning.”

Once again, I forgot that there is a man next to us, lying unconscious because Arsen beat him up for me. And again, I don’t find it as revolting as I should. I’m more concerned with what Arsen has planned for me. Which he tells me in very graphic detail.

“First, I’m gonna slide my dick in your mouth,” he begins, as if we’re in a class and he’s teaching me “how to please your husband after you piss him off and make him almost kill someone.” “And fuck your tight little throat. I’m gonna fuck it so long and so hard that you’ll be lubing it up not only with your spit but also with your tears.

You’ll gag and drip on my cock. You’ll make a mess.

It’ll be hard to breathe for a while but then, you should’ve thought of that when you went lookin’ for trouble tonight, yeah?

Anyhow, I know it sounds brutal and mean but as I said, it’ll be good for you.

So I want you to gag, all right, I want you to fuckin’ choke and drown my big fat dick in your spit and tears.

Because then, I’m gonna turn you around and put you on your hands and knees. Do you know what position that is?”

I jerk out a nod, my breaths already choppy in this moment, already hard to come by, and he hasn’t even done anything yet.

“Tell it to me,” he orders.

“D-doggie style,” I whisper and then blush like crazy.

His lips stretch up in a lopsided smile as he praises, “Good girl.”

God, he shouldn’t say things like this when I’m so scared. Because then I become even more turned on and I don’t know what to do with myself.

“You read that in a book?” he asks next.

“Yes,” I reply, clenching and unclenching my thighs.

His smile widens and so does the fondness in his eyes, in his tone. “Yeah, you did. ’Cause my sweet wife is a college girl, ain’t she? Straight-A student, no less. Except sociology though. That’s how she got stuck with a no-good ex-con like me.”

“Arsen, you—”

“And the reason it’s called that is ’cause that’s how dogs fuck,” he says, making me flinch and somehow even hornier.

“That’s how all animals fuck, by the way.

Don’t know if they taught you that in your big, fancy college but you grow up on a ranch, you know these things.

But the point is I’m gonna fuck you like that.

Gonna mount you like a goddamn bull you reduce me to, all horny and randy and lookin’ to get his nut off.

But I ain’t fuckin’ that pussy, I’m fuckin’ your ass.

” His jaw clenches for a second, but he isn’t done scaring me because he goes on, “And if my dick felt so big last night, sliding into that tight little college girl snatch, it’s gonna feel fuckin’ monstrous goin’ into that tiny little asshole.

So do you understand what I’m sayin’ to you?

You wanna choke on my cock, darlin’, so it goes easy for you when I fuck you in your ass later. ”

“But it’s going to hurt,” I blurt out.

At my words, his dick under my hands jumps. “It is.”

“What if… What if I can’t sit right for a while?”

“You won’t be able to walk right for a while too.”

My eyes pop wide. “No.”