Brand Me (Imagine Ink Book 2) Read online

  The shower wand was a girl’s best friend after all. As the pulsing water played her body just so, she let the memory of those silver ice eyes boring into her soul amp her up a notch or two. Michael’s velvety smooth voice came to her mind, as if he was right there speaking into her ear. When she pictured kneeling in front of him and taking his cock into her mouth, she was teetering over the edge. Her other had caressed the back of her head the way she imagined he would while she sucked him off, a little rough with gentle undertones. Intense.

  “Michael, Michael.” His name spilled from her lips like an invocation and she felt the familiar tightening that indicated she was ready to fly. Moving the wand with more purpose and focus, she tightened her grip on her hair, pulling her head back further and she leapt into the heavens and exploded into a million birds that soared gently back to Earth.

  Wow, one of the most intense orgasms of her life, definitely top five, if not the fucking top, just happened in a cabin, in the woods…alone.

  What the fuck is that all about?

  She was. She absofuckinglutely was. His fantasy girl, Tori, was masturbating in his fucking bathhouse, and by the sounds of it, she was nearing the end—that ephemeral moment when body and cloud switch actuality. A moment of such intense pleasure it suspends the soul in the sky, while locks the body in a state of euphoria for a sliver in time.

  God, he’d always fucking loved witnessing that moment, almost more than when he soared to the clouds himself, almost. When he’d put that look of sheer bliss on the face of a woman, it was a source of great pride and pleasure. After she came back to her senses, he never lasted long. There was something so primal about a woman who could obey her body’s desire to seek her pleasure and relish the moment. Really let go. A moment he used to live for—until Tonya. Then, just as he thought he would take delight in those moments once again, the waitress happened. He blamed her, and her, and her. Fuck it all to Hell, he was angry with the world; he blamed them all.

  Just as his anger was whitening his knuckles and blurring his vision, he heard it again.

  Michael.

  But it wasn’t like it was before, this was breathless and primitive, ripped from the throat of a woman who just Freaky Friday’d it with the clouds. Fuck, he missed that part of his life. As her voice rose, his grip on the bottle neck tightened until it shattered with her, thrusting shards of glass into his palm.

  “Fuck!” He cursed and released the remains of the amber glass to plop softly between the timbers of the porch, letting them land in the snowy slush underneath. Michael snatched up his towel and wrapped his hand. He could handle lots of things, but the sight of his own blood slowly dripping onto the porch boards was making him light-headed. Or maybe it was the sound of her pleasuring herself, coupled with the fact he’d just downed a beer on an empty stomach and all the blood was rushing to his dick after he’d just ran ten miles.

  Plopping down heavily on his ass once again, he loosened the towel to peek at his hand; he shouldn’t have. A piece of glass was protruding from his palm like a sharp, sad middle finger, flipping him off.

  Shit, he needed to get up and leave, before she found him here—passed out like a pussy or dead from blood loss—or worse, his brother found him. Of course, Richard would love it if he bought the farm. There would be no one standing in his way of making a quick buck off the only thing his family had left. Trying to regain his feet was futile. He swayed and ended up right back on his ass.

  “Hello? Is someone out there?”

  Shit, when it rains, it fucking pours. Now she knew he was here. She would think he was creeping on her, and then she’d see the blood, thus confirming his membership into pussyhood. This was going to be humiliating. Well, good thing his pride had been robbed from him already, because he had nothing to lose. It was better for her to know the truth about him. The look of revulsion on her face would go a long way in helping him exorcise her out of his fucking system.

  Women like her wanted protectors, real men. He was neither of those things anymore. Better she be with her asshole boyfriend than him any day of the goddamned week. The humiliation of her disappointment would be his just desserts. That agony would bring some sort of salvation, or at least some well-deserved punishment for all the wrongs he must have committed in his life to bring him to this point.

  First, he wasn’t even a man anymore; now, he’s just a broken man—a broken and bleeding man. Fuck if that didn’t sting. What a fucked up mess he really was and his fucking gashed open hand was a sad mark of reality—his playing hand at that.

  Just thinking about losing his ability to play made him nauseous, well more nauseous anyhow. Music was the one thing that always seemed to bring him to center, that and running. They both gave him a high and a calm at the same time, but they were different. Running was for when he wanted to suppress whatever it was and music was when he needed to express it, get it the fuck out.

  Again, he probably deserved to lose that outlet too.

  “Yeah. It’s Michael, from the plane? I was waiting for the bathhouse and I’ve seemed to have a bit of an accident. Some assistance would be appreciated if you don’t mind, but sooner rather than later might be prudent.” After butt-sliding down the stairs to reach a snow pile on the ground, he plunged his hand into it in an attempt to stem the flow of blood. Boy, this thing is really bleeding.

  “Um, you’re not squeamish at the sight of blood are you?” He yelled back toward the open window, or at least he thought he did. “Because if you are, you’d best go out the back way and get your boy…”

  That came out more of a mumble before trailing off as the single mound of blood-colored snow blurred into three.

  Frozen.

  Frozen in steaming hot water. Yep, ironic. It was him, the panty-melting hunk from the plane. The same man she was picturing and calling out to as she became close friends with a shower wand.

  Wow, if he’d heard her, she would curl up and die of embarrassment right there. They’d find her wrinkled and bloated body when the water cooled and the volunteer fire squad broke down the door.

  Somehow, she always knew she’d go out like that. She never did anything half assed, nope. If she was going to die of mortification, it would be an over-the-top spectacle, the likes of which this little community had never seen.

  She would become local lore that got passed down from generation to generation, an urban or country legend used to scare kids from masturbating or making out in the woods.

  Listen up kids, anyone who goes up to Black Oak Lake to seek carnal pleasure, whether alone or with their significant other, is doomed to die a humiliating death and haunt the Brande bathhouse for one hundred and one years. Cursed to ferry the souls of those who didn’t heed this warning to the afterlife. Naked.

  God, I’m pat…wait, did he just say blood?

  Tori didn’t stop to think, she slipped her feet into the flip flops she brought for the bathhouse, threw her long jacket on and rushed outside. The slick surface of her cheap plastic shoes lost traction on the porch made slippery by the combination of snow and blood, and she noticed she barely missed some broken glass. Visually tracking the trail, she saw Michael sitting on the bottom step, head resting against the rail support, hand in the snow, and quite a bit of blood. He was wearing nothing but the running shorts and shoes she saw him in earlier.

  Shaking off her shock, she sprinted to his side. “Oh dang, what happened?”

  He turned her way while leaving his head against the railing. A smile ghosted across his lips and those silver eyes opened and stared straight into hers. They drunkenly lowered to her lips and his smile widened. “You’re fucking beautiful, you know that? If I’m dreaming, I don’t plan on waking up this time, not before I’m the one who makes you scream like that, repeatedly.”

  Before her humiliation overtook her at his confession, his hand, the one not in the snow, was behind her head forcing her lips closer to his. In a flash, his tongue was in her mouth and she was kissing him back.
/>   Now, she was as dizzy as he appeared to be, but for a very different reason. She regained enough sense to know this was wrong, she and Richard were still together, at least until she made her way back to the cabin with the news. And Michael was hurt and needed help, not this. But God, it was splendid, or it was until she felt a sharp stab to her cheek and he wrenched his mouth away with a vicious curse.

  It took her a second to realize what had happened, seeing him clutching his hand and feeling a trickle running down her cheek started making sense. She reached to wipe a minuscule amount of blood away and confirmed her suspicions. Michael had brought his injured hand to her face, hurting them both. Tori composed herself and turned her left side away as she helped him to his feet. The last thing he needed was to see he had injured her. It appeared he was in enough pain.

  “Come on, up you go. Come back to where I’m staying, we have a first aid kit and I’ll get you fixed up.”

  “No, I’m closer, and I have a kit with everything I need. Just help me get there and I can take care of it.”

  “Okay, you win, cowboy, which way?”

  “Please don’t call me that.”

  “What, cowboy?” She shrugged, “I like it, but hey, if you don’t.” She trailed off. “Okay, then Wingman, which way?”

  “There.” A sinking feeling landed in the pit of her stomach when she realized he indicated the cabin next to the bathhouse. Still a hike, but it was unmistakably one of Richard’s family’s cabins. The cabin Richard’s brother was supposed to be staying in.

  No. No fucking way Michael was his brother. No. Her brain refused to accept it. But as they made their way through the snow toward the cabin, there wasn’t another possibility. He had to be, yet, they looked nothing alike, even for half-brothers. Nothing. How could this be? This was next-level fucked-up shit.

  If she thought Walker and Erika had some messed up relationship woes, hers just Crocodile Dundee’d that shit in a mugging. “That’s not a knife…”

  Oh, my effing God, really Torionna, you can’t stop playing movie savant for one freaking minute to sort this out? Typical, she was starting to freak out. Funny how she could handle other people’s issues, but her own turned her into a basket case. She had to get him bandaged up and out of there, so she could think. Over with Richard or not, there was no way she was going to get tangled up with his brother, half or otherwise.

  Accepting the fact she’d be alone forever, she muscled her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend’s brother the rest of the distance to his door. As soon as they entered, she deposited him on the couch and inquired about the location of the first aid kit—bathroom, to the right of the sink, top shelf. As she closed the cabinet door and turned to leave, she caught a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror.

  Great, she was in her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend’s family cabin, with his bleeding brother, and she was dressed like a saucy stripper gram. The coat barely covered her hoo-ha, and she was still dripping wet from her bath. That, combined with walking through the snow, had made her cheeks rosy and her nipples diamond grade.

  What’s a girl to do at this point? Take a deep breath, get out there, steri-strip the hot pilot’s hand and get the fuck out of here before you throw your leg over his lap and ride him hard and put him away wet.

  Reality came with the warmth of the cabin. His hand was throbbing. The bleeding finally slowed to a creeping ooze, but it was the other throb that was concerning him. Railroad spikes didn’t stand a chance against the wood he was fucking sporting. He had kissed her, that memory was coming back, alive and in living color. More importantly, she had kissed him back, until…he hurt his hand against her cheek. Oh shit, is she cut now, too?

  Mind circling back to the kiss, he adjusted himself with his non-lethal hand. God, it felt borderline orgasmic to actually have an erection. That, and having the lady he wanted to share it with under the same roof. It’d been way too long since that had happened. His adjusting turned into more of a rubbing situation. Then, as he remembered her descending the bathhouse steps, he could see her lips—and not the ones on her face—and the rubbing took on a vigorous nature.

  Holy Hell, that meant she was in the bathroom, in his fucking cabin, with no panties on. Now the rubbing had purpose. He didn’t give a flying fuck if it was a one-room cabin and she was merely feet away, he couldn’t fight this feeling, didn’t want to. Besides, he’d heard her, it was only fair to share and share alike. Maybe it was blood loss lending to his bold nature, or maybe it was just her and the first real and desired erection he’d had in months, either way, he didn’t care.

  She needed to run for the hills anyway, as far away from him as possible, so he’d help push her along and maybe the degradation would do him good. Yeah, how fucked up is that?

  Cock out and pumping furiously, he starting chanting her name, fully aware that she could hear him and see him if she so desired. Loving every single sensation he was giving himself, he was lost to the self-induced bliss. When he heard her sharp intake of breath, he knew he was nearing the end. Cracking open one orb, he turned slightly toward the bathroom door and made eye contact with a shocked but obviously intrigued—and if he wasn’t reading too much into it, a very turned on—warm chocolate gaze through the hinge crack of the door.

  That was all it took, he exploded all over his own lap. And oh, what an explosion it was. Even Tonya, with all her skills in the bedroom, had never elicited the intense response this woman did simply by existing. Scores of women, he’d been with scores of women and yet, this moment on the couch was the magical one, go figure.

  Tori disappeared from the doorway, only to reappear in front of him with first aid kit in one hand, and two warm, damp towels in the other. God bless her, she didn’t seem embarrassed by the display at all and she’d thought of him. Taking one of the offerings, he cleaned up his impromptu solo love session and tossed the towel into the bathroom through the open door. “Thanks.”

  She took a deep breath before speaking, so maybe she was put more off-kilter by their twisted shared masturbating sessions than she let on. She may not have voluntarily shared her private moment with him, but he wanted, no, needed, to share his with her.

  “You’re welcome, now, let’s see about your other hand, since you seem pretty proficient with that one.” She blushed so fucking red, he thought she’d go nuclear before she went to the kitchen area behind the couch to retrieve a pitcher of warm water and an empty bowl.

  Look at that, little miss put together is embarrassed and frazzled. He liked it, a lot. She seemed so authentic when she wasn’t trying to be proper and distant. Tori pulled the coffee table corner between his legs and she extend her hand in request of his as she sat down. His eyes dropped immediately to the beautiful patch of dark hair between her thighs, which was waxed to perfection. She brought his hand close to her face for inspection. His attention was glued between her thighs. He almost missed what she said.

  “It doesn’t look awful, I guess. I need to remove the glass. I can close it with the butterfly bandages in the kit, but you really need stitches. It’s deep and I can see a lot of tissue. Unless, of course, you don’t care about full range of motion in your fingers, in which case, well, you still need stitches.” She lowered his hand to her lap, within a hair’s breadth of her beautiful cunt and looked into his face.

  When he felt her staring, he begrudgingly looked up, too. “What do you do for a living? If dexterity is important to you, we should borrow an ATV or something and get you to town A.S.A.P.”

  The heat of her fucking perfect pussy was burning his hand; he snatched it away before he ripped the glass out with his teeth just to plunge a finger into her. God, what he wouldn’t give for that. “It’s fine, I’m fine. Thanks for the assist, but I’ve got it from here, you should get back and get some clothes on before your boyfriend comes looking for you. You’re out at the Simpkins’ place, yeah? I wouldn’t advise going back to the bathhouse or walking that far in just what you have on. If you check the dresser over there,�
�� he indicated behind her with a nod of his head, “you’ll find a pair of sweats that will help and some snow boots by the door. Ten sizes too big, but they should do to prevent you from freezing to death.”

  The anger growing in her was visible, like reading the mercury rising in a fucking thermometer that was going up and up. He even found that irresistible. She needed to go, and now.

  “How do you know I have a boy…never mind,” she said as she snatched his hand back, grabbed the bowl, and put it between her thighs with his hand over it. Michael watched in fascination as she took the pitcher and rinsed away debris from the wound.

  After extracting the glass with tweezers and the precision of a surgeon, she continued cleaning it. Once all the glass was gone, she moved the bowl, dried his hand, and rested it on a towel, now on her lap, while she rooted through the first aid kit.

  Again, his hand was in a position that was killing him. He wanted to walk his fingers under the towel and explore her intimately. It felt like his hand had a mind of it’s own, like Thing. The knuckle on his pointer finger started rocking back and forth, caressing her thigh through the beige terry cloth barrier. If she noticed, she didn’t let on. She seemed so confident in her own skin, yet, not. It was as if she were a sex kitten without even trying when she forgot she was practically bare assed with a stranger, but he would watch the shadow overtake her when she was conscious of her state of undress.

  This boyfriend was not only an asshole, he was blind as a fucking bat or he liked to tear her down. At least, that’s how it seemed to him. She must’ve found what she was looking for, returning her attention to his hand, as she rubbed some ointment in.