Possess: An Alpha Anthology Page 9

  Once he had my jeans off, he paused on his knees for a moment. The move made him wince and that kind of tugged at my heart a little. I knew the damaged knee still troubled him, in more ways than one.

  Bran recovered in a hurry and yanked his own pants down, his black boxers barely containing the thick, hard organ that pushed against the fabric. His shirt was off in a heartbeat and in the full moon I could see what a genius slice of artwork he was, superior to the most noted marble renaissance sculpture. Matthew Branson was absolutely fucking gorgeous, the kind of gorgeous that girls create memes for and then share all over their social media lives.

  He bent down and kissed me with utter confidence, like he did everything. It wasn’t a gentle kiss. It was a kiss of passion and ownership, a kiss that told me he was going to take everything he wanted and give me a few valuable things in return.

  Our limbs tangled together and our mouths were wild. I wound up in his lap and slowly he sank down to his back, pulling my legs around his body and positioning me where he wanted, in a wide straddle. I gasped out loud at the feel of his huge dick through my panties. He liked that. He liked shocking me. I could tell.

  “Don’t be scared,” he whispered, gripping my hips and starting to rock me back and forth, first slowly, then more rough. “Feel how much I want you, Cricket? I’m so hard for you I’m gonna bust right through this shit.”

  I could hardly answer. “Yes. Oh god, I feel you.”

  “That’s right baby, go with it. I want to see your face when it happens. I meant what I said. I’ve always been looking at you. Now that I’ve got you it’s gonna be so fucking good. I’m gonna do things to you that you never even heard of.”

  I couldn’t answer if it meant saving my own life. I needed all my concentration to focus on what was going on between my legs. Something was building and the more I clenched and rocked and grinded the closer it got.

  Bran reached around to my back and unhooked my bra, slipped the straps down and then tossed it into the darkness. Instinctively my arms crossed my chest as part of me panicked and realized I was damn near naked and riding atop the hard cock of Hickey’s very own superman.

  Bran pulled my arms away, stroking me, running his thumbs over my hard nipples and holding my breasts in his rough hands. “Insane. You’re so fucking beautiful.”

  “I am not,” I whispered, lowering my head.

  He pushed my hair out of my face and tipped my chin up. “Yes you are.”

  I wondered if he’d used that line on three dozen other girls in the last year. But he’d already proven he was so much different than what I thought. Plus, he had warned me not to swallow every rumor that was tossed around about him. That was good enough as far as I was concerned. I was ready to believe he was better than he seemed.

  I threw my head back and felt the erotic tickle of my long hair on my bare back. I let him move me harder and harder, always just a square of fabric away from full penetration, even though I was so open and ready I could scream.

  And then I did. Scream, that is. The wave of the powerful climax rocked me so hard I let out a feline howl that was probably heard in Akron and maybe even reverberated across the dull waters of Lake Erie.

  “Aw, baby,” groaned Bran before he seized me with rough passion. I felt the mighty shudder roll through him, heard the roar rip out of his throat and then between my legs I was suddenly even wetter than I’d been a few seconds ago. With a shock I realized it was him. Bran’s dick had escaped the confines of his boxers and pulsed against my inner thigh. The feel of the hot leak, knowing I’d made that happen, fascinated the hell out of me.

  “Shit,” he panted, rolling back on the blanket with his eyes closed while I quietly climbed off him. He cracked an eye open and watched me pull my shirt to my chest.

  “Come over here.”

  “I am here.”

  Bran chuckled and gently pulled me to his chest. He kissed me lightly and ran his fingertips over my cheek.

  I cleared my throat. “Why didn’t you, um…”

  “Fuck you?”

  “You don’t have to put it that way, but yeah.”

  He grinned as wide as the Cheshire Cat. “I’m saving that.”

  I propped myself up on one elbow. “You are saving the smashing of my virginity?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  “Bran!”

  He kissed my lips and then propped himself up on one elbow. “Listen Cricket, you wanna be crazy?”

  “I think I already am.”

  His grin widened. “Well then, lets get married.”

  I turned away, annoyed at the joke. “Yeah, right Bran. Married. We’re eighteen and you barely know me.”

  Bran gently touched my face and tilted it back in his direction. He wasn’t laughing. He looked at me for a long time, like he was trying to put words together in a certain order before he shared them. “You listening to me right now? Really listening?”

  I swallowed. “Yes.”

  “I think I love you and if that sounds weird it’s only because it’s not something I’m used to saying. Just seeing you makes me happy and I haven’t really been too happy since my knee got busted and everyone in this fucking town started looking at me like I’m something you throw quarters to on a street corner. And I meant it when I said I’ve always watched you, always wanted you. It’s true. I get it; your life sucks since your dad ran off and left you to pick up all the pieces. But when we’re together, just you and me, it’s like we’re some kind of team. I think if we had each other we could face all the bullshit of the years ahead while being stuck in this shithole. People have far worse reasons for getting together every day. So I’m asking you, Cricket, with all my heart, will you marry me?”

  It was a real testament to my limited life experience that such a desperate speech from a confused kid made sense to me. But that was likely because I was just as desperate and confused.

  Then he picked up my left hand, kissed the inside of my palm and spoke so softly I could hardly hear him. “I know you, Cricket Monroe. I’ve always known you. And you know me.”

  I thought about that. I thought about the past twelve years and how in one way or another they’d always included Matthew Branson. I didn’t know everything about him. But I knew him. I also knew I didn’t want to end up like my mother, broken and withdrawn. If it didn’t do something now, I might see twenty years speed by and still be serving chips and salsa at Garcia’s, wondering how to make life happen.

  Yet it didn’t have to be that way. I didn’t have to wait for life to happen. Bran was right there, offering it to me with a hopeful look on his face.

  “I know you,” I whispered and looked him right in the eye. “Yes, Bran. I will. ”

  He let out a whoop of triumph and gathered me into his arms like I was a precious treasure. We held each other and kissed passionately and there’d never been a more romantic moment in the history of Hickey, Ohio, as when the damaged local hero fell for the plain hometown girl who’d never even had a boyfriend.

  Nobody tried to stop us. That was surprising. You’d think my mother would have despaired, that his father would have hollered, but none of that happened. The news was greeted with bewilderment, a few lackluster questions, and then acceptance. Bran and I drove to the county seat of Corinth to say our vows in a musty courthouse before witnesses dragged in from the lobby. I wore a knee-length cream-colored dress with cowboy boots. Bran wore jeans.

  We were in love, or so we told ourselves. We honeymooned in a shitty hotel that squatted a hundred yards off the dirty Interstate and it was there, on a scratchy mattress with the distinct smell of Lysol in the air that I lost my virginity to Matthew Branson, my husband. After three days of eating out of the vending machine and screwing each other fifteen different ways until we could hardly stand, we returned to Hickey and moved into a crude apartment above Bran’s father’s garage.

  Those were tender times. The way Bran held me close after we made love, the way we breathed as one and idly stroke
d each other, they were the happiest moments of my life. He told me things, like what it felt like carrying around the crushing weight of an entire town’s expectations, about wanting to scream ‘Fuck you!’ in the face of their pity and disappointment.

  I told him things too. Like how I hated my father and hadn’t picked up a sketchpad since the day he left.

  One night, in a moment of post-orgasmic bliss as I traced make believe patterns on Bran’s chest and an autumn thunderstorm pounded the thin walls, he peered down at my traveling fingers. “What are you writing, babe?”

  I smiled. “I’m using you. You are my canvas and I am recreating ‘A Starry Night’ by van Gogh. I’ve always had a thing for that painting.”

  He laughed, a sudden deep rumble. “Reminds me of fifth grade. Used to piss old man Kaplan off when you scrawled all over your desk all the time.”

  “I can’t believe you remember that.” I ran my palm over his chest like I was erasing the picture. “I don’t know, I guess that’s why I always dreamed of art school. I just wanted to make my own pretty world and get lost in it.”

  “And now you don’t?”

  “Now I know there’s no point in trying to make the world seem prettier than it really is.” I kissed his chest, traveled lower. “Anyway, real life looks pretty damn good at the moment.”

  Bran grew hard immediately but he made no move to encourage where my head was going. Suddenly he reached over the side of the mattress, hunted around in a plastic nightstand and withdrew a marker, pressing it into my hand.

  “Make the world prettier, Crick.”

  “Now?”

  He smiled. “Now.”

  Bran was a cooperative subject. His dick was pointed due north the whole time I worked intently on his skin but he didn’t touch me. He let me take my time. Once, right before I started illustrating him, I asked him if he was sure the dry erase marker would come off in the shower. Bran just laughed and said he didn’t care if it did or it didn’t. I loved him so much for that. I drew the scene from the painting from memory. A print hung over my bed in my childhood room. I’d spent so many hours lying there, staring at it and wondering how many more hours I would need to spend in that very spot before something worthwhile happened to me. I remembered every detail and I drew them all.

  When I finished he pulled me close, rolled on top of me and propped himself up on his elbows. He yanked away the sheet I’d wrapped around myself, staring as he caressed my skin.

  “Stop looking at me,” I complained, shrinking back under his scrutiny. I still wasn’t used to it.

  “Nope. You’re mine. I’ll look at you as long as I want anytime I want.”

  “Bran, I-”

  He silenced me with a long kiss. He was good at that.

  “Cricket,” he whispered, kissing the gold band on my left hand. “No matter what else happens, I really love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  Bran kissed me again. He rolled on top of me with a condom already in place and wordlessly opened my legs, entering me with one smooth thrust that always made me gasp with shock over the sheer size of him. I pulled him in as deep as he could reach and thanked all the surrealistic stars in the world for making Matthew Branson the fairy tell prince of legends. And for giving him to me.

  If our lives had continued together and been full of times that like that – intimate and tender - then my complete set of Bran-featured memories would surely look very different.

  But that’s not what happened. That’s not what happened at all.

  Chapter Three

  Almost the second we arrive in the ER, Cinnamon’s howling catches the attention of the hospital staff. She winds up being bumped ahead of quite a few less vocal patients and swept into the triage area. Even though I have a million questions buzzing around my head about why my ex-husband has resurfaced here and now, I’m not ready to tackle that subject yet.

  Besides, Cinnamon needs all the help she can get at the moment. Her face is so raw from crying she looks like she’s been sitting in the sun for six hours. I get stuck calling her mother in Portland and the woman gets so hysterical you’d think I just delivered news that Cinnamon was vaporized by a red laser beam from outer space.

  When they wheel her away for x-rays, I start to feel slightly out of place hanging out in the triage area amid all the emergencies. Directly across from where I sit quietly in a metal folding chair, a woman rolls around on a cot, gripping her belly and barking like a seal. An older man I figure might be her husband boldly leers at me while licking withered lips every ten seconds. I leave word with the nurse that I’ll be out in the waiting room, relieved to escape the eye of the lecherous senior citizen. Besides, it’s time to stop pretending I don’t have a small emergency of my own.

  He’s sitting out there just where I left him, paging through a People magazine and looking good enough to make a couple of fading beauties resplendent in their designer regalia sit up straight and check their makeup. It looks like he hasn’t shaved in a few days and his muscles strain the seams of his faded t-shirt. Now that I’ve recovered from the initial shock of his presence I have time to soak in a good, long look at him. I can’t blame those faded ex-sorority types for preening in the hopes he’ll notice them at some point. If I didn’t know who he was I might go out of my way to get his attention too.

  Bran continues to idly thumb through the magazine and the casual way he sprawls in the small chair leaves me infuriated.

  I don’t know why he has to look this good anyway. The guy should have managed to acquire a few flaws in seven years. And who told him he could show up in my part of the country and barge right into a university dorm?

  Bran looks up as I approach. He doesn’t set the magazine down. There’s nothing on his face but mild curiosity, as if I might be approaching to offer to sell him Avon or something. He waits until I sink into the orange plastic chair beside him.

  “How the girl?” he asks. “I was just out for a walk when I saw her jump. The fuckers who were goading her on took off like they were on fire. What’s her name again?”

  The sound of his voice messes with me. It seems like I just heard it yesterday. My fingers curl around the edge of the plastic chair and I hold onto it for strength.

  “Her name’s Cinnamon. She landed on her heels. They are probably shattered, along with a few other useful bones. She’ll need surgery.”

  “Hmm,” grunts Bran, returning to his magazine. “That’s too bad.”

  “Yes it is too bad. What the hell are you doing here, Bran?”

  He flips a page. “I rode in your car, remember? Figured I’d hang around and make sure everything was okay.”

  I’m starting to feel like I’m missing a critical element of the equation. My grip on the chair tightens. The sharp edge of the plastic digs into my skin but I welcome the distraction. Without it I might grab that magazine out of his hands, roll it up and start whacking him like a piñata.

  Or I might jump in his lap and maul him with my tongue.

  Now that’s a wayward thought if ever there was one. A thought like that has no business showing up right now. I’m not a horny, naive eighteen year old anymore and I learned the hard way that Bran is sure as hell no fairy tale prince.

  I clear my throat and level a deliberate glare at him. “You know exactly what I mean.”

  “Of course I do. Hey, you mind giving me a ride back to campus?”

  “Are you planning to answer my- wait, what? Why would you need to get back to campus?”

  “I live there.”

  “You live where?”

  “Third floor of Agave Hall. You know it, right? It’s close to the Memorial Union.”

  He’s messing with me. He has to be. “You are twenty five years old. Agave Hall a freshman dorm. You cannot live there.”

  But no, he’s not kidding. He’s having a grand old time. I see it in his face. “I am a freshman,” he grins. “Besides, you are twenty five yet you apparently live there.”

  �
��I am a Resident Advisor, Bran. I am not prowling the hallways looking for innocent teens to corrupt. And don’t you dare change the subject. I don’t believe this is a coincidence that you’re here.”

  “It isn’t a coincidence. You drove me here because you’re not strong enough to haul around a screaming girl with two broken feet. I did you a favor by carrying her to your car and then carrying her into the building. By the way, since you’re so interested, I’m not corrupting anyone at the moment.”

  “I don’t really care who you’re corrupting!” I realize I’m yelling. People are staring. I make a conscious effort to sound more civilized. I lower my voice and even smile. “And I beg your pardon but I find it slightly implausible that you just happen to turn up in the same place I’m going to school, in the very building I’m living in.”

  “It’s a free country, Crick.”

  “Don’t call me that and anyway I could have sworn you were obligated to be off fighting for this so-called free country. Are you AWOL or something?”

  He smiles. He still has it, that smile. The Bran Smile. “Maybe.”

  “Last I heard you were dodging sand dunes and grenades in the Middle East.”

  Bran had enlisted in the Army shortly after we imploded. Always in the most fearful corner of my mind lived the dread that he was in danger and someday there would be terrible news. No matter what happened between us in the end, the idea of a world without Bran living somewhere in it was unbearable. But just because I don’t want him blown to smithereens by a roadside bomb doesn’t mean I want him sitting two feet away.

  Bran shrugs. “I was. I’m done now.”

  “You’re done now,” I repeat, shaking my head. “We’re a thousand miles from home. Why didn’t you go back there?”

  An amused smirk plays at the corners of his mouth. “Why didn’t you?”

  I take a deep breath. I count to five. I might have to count a little higher if I want to fully suppress the urge to break off a chair leg and shank Bran in the throat with the ragged end.

  No use. No matter how high I count there’s no avoiding the truth. I wish that glaring daggers at someone could be literally accomplished. It would be a convenient talent.