The eye flare that got was also brief.
But it was closer to the surface.
Progress.
So she’d take that too.
eight
Asshole
BRANCH
Branch woke the next morning perfectly aware of where he was.
That being as Evangeline had positioned him after the warm bath she’d given him, this being after she’d fucked him on her couch.
He was tied to her bed with silk ropes at his wrists and ankles, on his stomach, arms spread wide, legs spread wide, hips up on a soft, cylindrical bolster, ass in the air, all of him covered in her sheets with her tucked tight against his side, her leg wrapped around the back of one of his thighs.
It was still mostly dark. He saw from the light in the room that dawn was just touching the sky, and he didn’t even try to stop his mind drifting back to all she’d given him the night before.
It went without saying, the woman knew how to take a man’s ass. She’d used a thick, long, rigid, sweet cock he’d feel for the next week.
And totally get off on it.
And he’d come harder, and needless to say, longer than he’d ever come in his whole fucking life.
Close to the end of it, he thought he might not ever quit coming.
And he didn’t fucking care.
Evangeline kneeling between his legs, taking him there, her face not hiding the fact that she seriously dug the show, he’d do it again. He’d do it hourly, if his ass could hack it, just to get off that fucking huge.
Just to know she was getting off right along with him.
But it was arguable if that was the best part.
No, even after the most phenomenal orgasm he’d ever been given, his fingers deep in her sweet, wet pussy, watching her take herself there couldn’t have been better.
Fuck, so damned pretty he’d never forget it. Never forget watching her eyes darken, her cheeks get pink, feeling the little gusts of breath she pressed out against his lips.
But even with all that, one could say he was not a big fan of coming to her house and discovering he had to sit for dinner and small talk (though her cooking was unbe-fucking-leivable—it was spaghetti but it was amazing).
He couldn’t have felt more awkward, a man like him being in the kitchen of a woman like her. A kickass Mistress.
But so much more.
She’d built her own business. Bought herself a sweet house. Had good friends who felt everything for her. Created a home that might be frilly and busy and flowery, but it was also warm and inviting, comfortable, and a place where Branch had not earned the honor to hang.
Unless he was giving her something, like allowing her to fuck him because she loved doing it and loved that he loved taking it, and letting her use his fingers to make her get off.
But he had to admit that she somehow made even hanging in front of her TV eating dinner not as bad as it could have been.
If it had been as bad as it could have been, if anything could make him walk away from Evangeline Brooks, that would have done it.
He couldn’t say during that time he shared with her eating in front of her TV that he ever felt like he was right at home mostly because it had been years since Branch had felt right at home anywhere.
He could say the longer he was with her, the easier it got, and once she’d unwound from her day, she didn’t fuck around being how she was.
Hands seriously on.
After the scene on her couch was over, she didn’t invite him kindly to leave and he also had no opening to do that himself.
Not that he’d want to.
Her version of looking after him included a warm bath in her big, oval sunken tub that comfortably fit two, the jets on. A bath that smelled of lavender and mint, where she got in with him, bathed him and petted him and stroked him. And the warm water, his huge orgasm and her attention, with her curls stacked in a mess on top of her head, some hanging down on her shoulders getting wet, far from sucked.
Not to mention, his ass needed it. He liked rough. She liked rough. And she could give it rough, but more, be right there as he rode himself raw.
After the bath, she’d toweled him off, made him stand there while she did the same with herself, giving him time to take her in naked, something he’d only seen briefly as she joined him in the tub, a spectacle that was as he’d expected it would be.
Seriously fucking sweet.
She’d then pulled on another nightie (this one gray with lace, but just as short as the other), no panties, and led him to a bed where she’d already swept the covers down and laid the bolster.
She gave him his instructions, he carried them out, then he got languidly hard again as she’d tied him down.
Once she had him down, she put more antibiotic ointment on the cuts on his back that didn’t need it, but this time, he didn’t attempt to share that info.
After that, with his ass in the air, the room dark, was when she quietly, efficiently and tenderly took care of business he’d not once allowed anyone to do for him, not even Tara, inserting a capsule of some gel up his ass that instantly eased his jacked hole.
After doing that, she kissed each cheek, the small of his back, the area between his shoulder blades and the side of his neck.
Without a word, she’d pulled up the covers and settled tucked into his side.
He was learning she could fall asleep at the drop of a hat.
What shocked him was that, tied to the bed in a position that wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, but it hindered all movement, her sweet body pressed close, within minutes of her dropping off, he could do the same.
Now he was awake and Branch had a decision to make.
She’d claimed him at the Pound. He’d let her spank him with him braced against his truck (and he’d let her drive the damned thing, and no one drove his baby but him, even if he had someone in his life he could allow to do that). She’d staked him with her jewel. She’d sucked him. Jacked him. Fucked him. Bathed him. Tied him. And he’d filled himself and jacked himself at her command, texting her he’d done it.
He’d come.
So the time had also come for him to decide if he was done.
The right choice was clear.
Get the fuck out of her life.
He was a dead man with a mission and so much baggage, she’d get crushed under it if she knew.
In his research before deciding whether or not to meet her, he’d learned she had a mother and father and two brothers, all living, none of them living close (she grew up in Wisconsin), but she was still close to them, with them talking frequently and visiting each other when they could.
She had a life.
She probably wanted marriage. Kids. Soccer games and dance lessons and family vacations to Disneyland.
Branch could give her none of that.
He didn’t even have a social security number.
The government had killed him off once, not a loss to his drink-addled mother and drug-dealing older brother, two of the three reasons why he’d escaped and joined the army at eighteen in the first place. The third being his father, who had showed in their lives often enough to teach Branch how not to treat a woman, and this not only the lesson of You Shouldn’t Take Your Fists to Your Wife, but a shitload more, before he’d disappeared altogether.
His computer geek buddy, and partner in a variety of literal crimes, Gerbil, had made certain Branch was well and truly dead, no one could trace him, no one could track him, no one even knew there was a him to track.
Regardless, Branch remained off the grid. No bank account. Cash-only payments for business. No foreign travel. Condo and truck owned under a shell that could, if given a year and a team of forensic accountants to find it (Gerbil was that good), be traced to a man from Monaco who’d died three years earlier.
Nothing else.
No trace of Branch Dillinger.
He breathed, he didn’t exist.
Gerbil told him he could get on the grid. No one was looking but it didn’t matter. Gerbil could make it so he could live a real life and no one would find him.
But until Gerald Raines was dealt with, Branch was going to remain a ghost.
After he was dealt with, Branch was going to take the cash he’d been carefully accumulating and go somewhere no one could find him, and more important, he couldn’t fuck up anyone else’s life.
No family trips to Disneyland in the cards for him.
And none of that even scratched the surface of why he’d checked out in the first place. Joined Raines’s team. Happy to leave his life behind in a permanent way as a living ghost who was sent on government missions they’d deny any knowledge of if the team fucked up. This after he’d ended things with Tara because he was young and stupid and hadn’t learned relationships were compromise.