Branded Read online

  He was no longer at the table. At that moment, he was leaning against the sink, one ankle crossed over the other, a glass of water pressed to his lips. When he finished gulping, he put the glass by the sink and sauntered back. “No result and no fun.”

  “Fun!” she wailed. “Do you think this is fun?”

  Sinking astride his chair as he had before, he opened his hand. “Give me your arm.”

  Yeah, right, like she was stupid enough to hand herself over to him. She wouldn’t do it, she wouldn’t make this torture easier for him. In defiance, she closed her lips tight. The pain was agonizing, but she’d endure it if it saved her friend even for a day.

  With a scowl, he lunged over and wrestled her injured arm from her and slammed it onto the table, making her yelp again. Jolting her forward, he compelled her breasts to the blunt angle of the table edge to get her arm as close to him as possible.

  But as she prepared for him to hurt her again, he grazed a thumb over the wound in a tender gesture rather than a vicious one. The perimeter of the pointed injury was an angry, bloody mess, suggesting the edges of the knife had pierced her with his pressure, but been cauterized by the heat.

  Within the bowed triangle injury were two unaffected shapes and it was these shapes he traced with a fingertip. The intrigue and pride on his face appalled her. He wasn’t examining it out of concern, he was admiring his handiwork, impressed by his own despicable act.

  His grip was loose enough that she could snatch her arm away, and he let her take it. “It’s clean,” he said, resting his arms around his chair back again.

  Lowering her gaze to her wrist, she scrutinized the inflamed flesh that would now always bear his mark. Peering closer, she tried to decipher the shapes of uninjured skin and she thought they almost looked like connected letters, C and A.

  “What is this?” she asked, keeping her wrist straight to alleviate aggravation of the wound.

  “What’s next, Squirm?” he asked, relaxed as he leaned away and selected a new blade from the flattened roll. “Do you like the smell of blood?”

  His appetite hadn’t been satisfied yet. “Wha…? What?”

  Grabbing her hair, he twisted her head back, and urged the point of his new dagger under her jaw. “It’s intoxicating,” he said. “Thick and rich, it’s so sexy when it coats the smoothness of the steel.”

  Holding her breath, she waited for the cut, but he didn’t push it in, he trailed it down her shoulder and rose as he did. His letting go of her hair, meant that holding herself away from the blade was her responsibility and she was concentrating on that when he grabbed the back of her chair to yank it out from under her, sending her onto the floor with a thud.

  Bruises were insignificant; the pain in her wrist was still her focus. Curling on her side in the fetal position, she waited until his shadow blocked all of the candlelight before she confessed the truth. “Beat me,” she coughed. “Cut me. Burn me. Rape me. It won’t change a thing, Archer.”

  Using his name was meant to remind him of his humanity. Changing his mind about hurting her was Nya’s only hope. She wouldn’t break, but wanted to breakthrough his tough, detached exterior.

  “What did he do to earn your loyalty?” Archer asked.

  Rocking until she could see him crouched beside her with a knife still in his sure grip, she examined him to see that the curiosity on his face outweighed the anger. Her hysterical smile almost made her laugh, but she didn’t have the energy to muster it.

  “You’ll never know,” she said. “Even if you did, you’d never understand it.”

  Archer was a mystery who’d come from nowhere and stolen her from her life to demand she betray her oldest ally. It wasn’t going to happen.

  Expecting further interrogation and torture, she steeled herself when he grazed his knife over her cheek to move her hair away. The cool metal made her shiver, but there was no pain.

  “We’ve got plenty of time, Squirm,” he murmured. “You need some time to get used to wearing my mark.”

  Unfastening her from the bolt driven into the floor, he seized her arm and dragged her back to the bathroom, clicking the chain to the pipe again.

  “I’ll leave off the tape,” he said. “If you get any ideas about screaming, forget it, you’ll piss me off. Around here, nobody gives a fuck.”

  As if on cue, a distant argument became a feminine scream and Archer shrugged as he turned and walked out, leaving her with the light and the dripping faucet.

  Nya grew up in places worse than this, she knew no one cared about domestic violence, crime, or any woman in need. That was why she didn’t call out before.

  In this cramped internal room, she didn’t hear vehicles or foot traffic. She hadn’t counted how many floors they’d ascended, so she didn’t know how far above street level the apartment was. Muffled arguments and bangs were more distant than the barking dog that often became frantic about nothing.

  Adrenaline and exhaustion weighted her body so much that she slid down the wall. Her spine cooled as it pressed to the bath panel and her head fell to the floor. Citrus buzzed her senses, but it wasn’t enough to waken her this time and she gave in to slumber.

  three

  Plop, drip, splash. Gazing up at the cracked ceiling, she had her arm in her cleavage. The wound was blistering, it ached and itched, but she was trying to ignore it. With few distractions, that wasn’t an easy task.

  When the bathroom door opened again, she didn’t flinch. If he wanted her, he’d grab her. “Give me an address,” he said.

  Licking her lips, she moved her tongue to moisten her mouth and took time to answer him. “One, two, three, Bite Me Street.”

  “Play your games, girl. You’ve got plenty more skin for me to burn.” That wasn’t an experience that she wanted to repeat. “Give me an address.”

  She didn’t really have the energy to sass him much more right now. “I can’t. Even if I could, Tag wouldn’t let you in.”

  “I’ll worry about that. Give me an address.”

  “No,” she said, closing her eyes.

  A loud thwack by her ear made her pounce up. Gathering her wits, she fixated on the knife embedded in the floor an inch from where her head had been. Stuttering at the sight, she experienced the first positive emotion she’d had since she got here: relief that he was a bad aim.

  Negativity took over fast when he came over to hunker down. Pulling the knife from the floor, he stuck it in a horizontal sheath on the back of his belt then put a long metal tin on top of the toilet lid.

  Transfixed, her eyelids were frozen wide apart when he popped it open. Inside was an empty syringe and an unmarked glass bottle. Panic erased some of her lethargy. “No!” she said. “What is that?”

  He didn’t reply. Taking out the needle, he pulled off the plastic cap with his teeth and spat it away as he upended the bottle to fill the syringe. “Just a little prick, Squirm.”

  Again, she resented his strength because despite being overcome by a desperate thudding need for survival when he took hold of her injured arm, her resistance didn’t dent his progress.

  The pinch of the needle made her wince, but there was no getting away from it. Anything could be in there, opioids, poison, a sedative, she could wake up naked under anyone and there wouldn’t be a thing she could do to defend herself.

  Too soon, she began to feel heavy and a moment later, she slumped forward.

  Cold. Freezing cold. Under the stuttering urgency of shock, Nya’s mouth opened sending freezing water cascading into her lungs, making her choke.

  Blinking through webbed lashes, she tried to figure out what was going on and why her arms burned as she spat water from her mouth. She hadn’t gone far from where she was when she passed out.

  Still in the bathroom, she was on her feet in the bath, hauled to the end of her toes, barely able to stand. All her weight was hanging on her bound wrists, which were stretched above her head and tethered to the shower curtain rail that was solid steel, more secure than
any she’d known.

  The freezing water from the showerhead cascaded through her hair, and the intense, piercing pressure made her scalp sting. “Why?” she chittered, her whole body going into shock. “Why are you doing this?”

  It took a while for her vision to clear. When it eventually did, she saw her captor sitting on the floor against the closed bathroom door, his long legs stretched out toward her. With a knife in hand and a metal stick in the other, he slowly sharpened the blade.

  “Your loyalty got me thinking,” he said, deliberately dragging the blade in long, thorough strokes against the sharpener. If the scraping sound was meant to intimidate, it failed. She couldn’t hear anything over the throbbing headache akin to the worst brain freeze she’d ever had. “If you’re this wild about him, he’s gotta feel the same about you.”

  She wasn’t following, but the chill was slowing her thoughts. “Wha…? What?”

  “Your boy owes me money. A lot of money. I’ve been chasing him down for months. Now I figure why waste the time looking for him when his girl can work off the debt.”

  Putting the knife and sharpener down, he pounced to his feet to come to her. When he reached over her to turn the water off, he didn’t react to the cold water that ran over his arm before he stemmed the flow.

  Spitting cold water and matted hair from her mouth, Nya couldn’t see him properly, not until he began to pick up hunks of her sopping locks. Peeling them from her face, he draped them over her crown where they slid down in soaked slices to the back of her shoulder.

  “You’ve got a pretty face. You got those big doe eyes that guys love to see tear up when they fuck you deep. If you cry, they’ll pay extra. I know some real sick fucks who’ll pay top dollar to break you. Beg ‘em for mercy and you’ll clear Tag’s debt quick.”

  Because her shirt had never been fastened again since Jonno’s buddy ripped the buttons off to fondle and violate her, the weight of her saturated bra was making her breasts ache and tingle in their attempt to stimulate feeling. Nya would endure the discomfort of that, and the constricting cling of her skirt, if the alternative meant parting with the clothes.

  Shivering, the chattering of her teeth got worse. “I’m not a whore,” she said, fumbling her words through her purple lips.

  He leaned in, resting a hand on her shoulder. Although his touch repulsed her, it was warm and her body craved the sensation awakened beneath his heated palm. “You will be for me,” he growled. “You will be until I have every cent your boy owes me.”

  Most men would take advantage of an enemy’s woman before pimping them out… unless that was the way he made his money. “Why not take it from my body for yourself?” she asked.

  The question didn’t come out right. It sure hadn’t been an offer. Though the brute was attractive, she didn’t want him to touch her, didn’t want to be anywhere near his bed. Far from it. Except experience had taught her that one maniac at a time was favorable over several.

  Drawing back, his head tilted and for a second she saw astonishment like he hadn’t considered that as an option. He began to check out her figure, and she squirmed under his scrutiny because in this enclosed space and with her sopping clothes clinging to her every inch, he’d be able to make out every detail of her figure.

  It didn’t take him long to reach his decision. “You wanna fuck, we do it for fun. You’ve got no worth to me unless I turn you out. You’re a commodity to exploit. That’s it.”

  She’d seen the kind of men he associated with and what they’d done to Jamie. A flash of anger made her rear back and thrust forward, spitting out at him with everything she had. Nya refused to be his product and the idea of sleeping with him for fun made her want to scream.

  Wiping the spittle from his face, he sneered at her breasts and leaned past her again. She shrieked when the cold water dribbled down her spine and braced for the gush that had assaulted her before. Instead of turning it up, he left it on that slow, dripping ooze.

  Icy water hit her back, trickled into the valley of her spine and over the rise of her ass. But he wasn’t done. Opening her shirt cuff with one efficient tug, he ripped her shirt from her body to toss it toward the closet door, perpendicular to the entrance.

  Grabbing the sides of her neck with both hands, he tugged her forward. “You’re not a whore, but you’ll fuck around on your guy?” he snarled. “You bitches are all the same.”

  His reaction suggested he’d been hurt before and had a hatred of women, except he hadn’t engaged in the abuse of Jamie. That was little reassurance given the sequence and timing of events. By the time he’d arrived at Sizzle, the cops’ arrival had been imminent. Not getting arrested probably took precedence over getting his ya-yas with a comatose woman.

  The cold water tickled as it tormented her. “I’m not Tag’s woman,” she said, drawing in a quivering breath. “We’re not together, never have been.”

  Tightening both palms around her neck, he came closer. “Then why the fuck does everyone say you’re the way to get to him?”

  “Because, protecting me is what he’s done since I was fourteen,” she said.

  The trauma of physical injury, sleep deprivation, and a lack of nourishment were taking their toll. She never spoke of Tag, never to anyone. Privacy was her keystone, sharing went against the fiber that constructed her every cell. But here she was telling the truth.

  Her relationship with Tag was more complicated than simple sex. Treasuring him came from within her; he’d saved her life when she’d been sure no one would come to her aid. Since then, he’d guided her, always been around for her, and held her up while letting her live her own life without hanging over her.

  “Why?” he asked.

  Shaking her head, she vibrated and her gooseflesh raised every hair. “Sell me to your friends. I’ll work until you have every penny owed, but he’ll come for you. You think this is torture? Tag will let what’s left of me watch as he takes you apart one inch at a time.”

  Bowing, he touched his mouth to the corner of hers. “I look forward to it, Squirm.”

  Leaving the water on her back, her arms elevated to the curtain rail, and the light on, he stormed out of the room, taking his weapon with him before slamming the door.

  At some point in the night, he came and unhooked her from her hanging tether to put her on the floor again. She had been somewhere between awake and asleep, between consciousness and oblivion. Details eluded her.

  Water dripping on her face brought her into reality what had to be hours later. Blinking in response to the water that blurred her vision, it took time for her to focus. Eventually, she drew in the details; she was on the bathroom floor, chained to the pipe in her original position. The drips were coming from the man standing over her, but she couldn’t concentrate, so closed her eyes.

  Something nudged her a minute later and she didn’t realize it was his foot until he prodded a toe into her. “Are you dead?” he asked, giving her another kick. “Where’s all that action you gave me last night? Come on, little Squirmer. Time to wake up and fight with me.”

  Nya was groggy enough that although she could hear the words, she couldn’t figure out what they meant until she opened her eyes and tried to lift her head; only to find her cheek was numbed by the linoleum she’d been lying on.

  The foot in her shoulder was annoying and made her pressure point ache, so the next time it shoved her, she tried to grab it to throw it away, but was reminded of the cuff connecting her wrist and ankle. He stroked her cheek with his bare foot, rubbing it from her forehead down her temple to her jaw.

  Grumbling, she rolled away and used her other hand to swipe it away from her face. “Don’t touch me,” she croaked. “What the fuck did you do to me?”

  She remembered the shower and his sinister mood. Nya remembered the ache in her arms when they were tied above her head. But she couldn’t remember how or exactly when she’d passed out. The memory of the needle made her tense and led to so many possibilities. He’d had access
to her body and could’ve given her anything and done anything to her.

  Pushing back into the corner, she got as far away from him as she could. “Did you rape me?”

  His brows went up. “Rape? Yeah. I did. ‘Cause that’s what gets me off, a woman who lies there like a sack of flour without moving or making a sound, it really gets me going.”

  Given what he was putting her through, she didn’t appreciate his sarcasm. “I deserve the truth; did you?”

  Now instead of being amused, he just looked angry. “Why would I rape a bitch like you, who’s nothing but straight up trouble? Look at me, I’m a fucking catch. I could walk into any bar in town, pick a slut, and bring her home to let her ride my cock like a rodeo cowgirl.”

  “Nice,” Nya said, reassured enough that she could relax. Her joints and muscles were sore probably because she’d spent the night curled on the floor in a cramped space. As far as she could tell, her clothes were no more disturbed now than they had been last night, and none of her orifices felt violated. “Tell me what I’m doing here.”

  “Tell me where he is,” Archer returned.

  Steam was pluming above the closed curtain and she heard the drum of the water. Archer was wearing a towel around his hips and she saw another tattoo, this one started around his ankle and wound up round his calf to his thigh, black and tribal like the arm sleeve on the opposite side.

  The thickness of the muscles in his thigh were impressive and she wondered if his fitness and physique were cultivated in a gym or if torturing and other criminality were exercise enough.

  “So that’s it? Tag. Do you plan to keep me here until I give him up?”

  “Yep.”

  He could keep her here and drug her every night for the rest of eternity, she would never betray her friend. “Won’t happen,” she said.

  Resting a hip on the sink, he folded his arms. “I’ll keep you until you give him up, but there will be a variation on the ‘here.’”