Branded (The Club)

Prologue

LANGLEY

“What do you see, pretty girl?” Sloan’s voice called out to me, caressing the back of my neck into a pop of goosebumps despite the heat of the evening sun setting. He found me standing outside the corral to Blackjack’s pen. The horse’s hooves kicked up red dust and dirt that covered everything including my legs standing so close to the corral fence. I stepped up on fence watching the horse. The black stallion circled the female, snorting while she made muted bleats. I tried to appear casual, looking over my shoulder at the man I called master, and smiled. I nodded toward his horse well aware that my answer was insolent in his narrowed gaze. His tan skin looked radiant, glowing under the flannel button-down shirt he wore tucked into his denim jeans. Dark brown cowboy boots encased his feet which were steady and shoulder width apart stalking toward me. I shivered with anticipation remembering the night before. Sloan had a thing about balance and obviously practiced it in all things he did in and out of the bedroom, even something as simple as walking toward me.

I turned away to swallow the dryness from my throat that had little to do with the dust, as well as hide the flush in my cheeks. I was lucky I’d earned my dress today, otherwise I would have been watching Blackjack from the confines of the heated tiles in the Spanish kitchen. Clothes seemed to be optional under Sloan’s tutelage, especially if I misbehaved. For once, I was grateful for the hot wind that licked my face in the humidity of Texas in the midst of summer. The braid I kept my hair in was wild and knotty; the wind tangled the braid into a thick rope perfect for a master’s grasp.

An unsatisfied grunt filled my ears. I could have answered him demurely. I should have, but I rarely followed his rules keeping our agreement interesting. Sloan, not one to take my silence as a good thing, crowded me up against the wooden pole fence I stood on. Thick arms rested against the sanded posts encasing me. Anxiously, I looked at the cords of muscle exposed by the rolled up sleeves of his shirt. His arms were larger than the fencing that separated me from certain danger. His strength was restrained for the moment. I wasn’t sure where the oasis of safety resided—in the pen with Blackjack or outside with the Dominant.

“What’s he doing?” I asked, referring to the animal with the sleekest silky coat of hair and the darkest pulsing eyes I had ever seen. His energy was palpable and reminded me of a brewing storm barely under control and waiting to break free in an explosion. Horses terrified me which was no secret to Sloan, and one of the reasons he warned me to stay back from the fence. Blackjack had broken free on two separate occasions trying to get to the mares in heat. Curiosity won me over, and I found myself venturing from the house after dinner to watch the stallion throw his latest temper tantrum. The horse was obviously in the throes of lust and looking to mate. His nostrils flared, exposing his teeth and skirting the mare with the shiny brown and white painted coat.

Sloan leaned in close, his mouth a hairsbreadth away from my ear whispering, “Same thing I’m gonna do to you, Luchadora.” Before I could object, his arm hauled me close around the waist grinding his hips into my backside. The nickname he gave me purred from his lips abrading every inch of my skin. His touched enlivened me with awareness as his jeans chafed me. His palm came around to cup my sex, slipping between slick folds, and I arched into him craving more. I hadn’t worn underwear in the week I had been here, and the air kissed my damp skin. I found it unfair in the moment that I wasn’t allowed to touch Sloan unless instructed to do so. Instead I grabbed the rail, hanging on. If I didn’t I would have fallen, not that Sloan would have let me, but still the anticipation was thick between us.

Arousal was a heady thing. I moaned, letting the wind take my voice. Sloan readjusted us against the fence to keep me from falling, speaking into my hair. “Watch him court her.”

Blackjack danced around the mare, his hooves stomping the ground, tossing his head up into the air, hind legs kicking out. A wild look filled his eyes, and I turned my head to see the same reflected in Sloan’s. If he kissed me, his tongue would have been fire licking at my lips. I wanted to burn, but he didn’t kiss me. Instead his palm directed my cheek back to the horses in the field. His denial should have hurt, but it only inflamed my want for him further.

We were both heavy of breath and meta

phorically circling each other, his hips to my backside. He caressed the ridge of my spine under the loose house dress, slipping his large hand over my butt cheeks and between my legs, pushing them apart for balance on the fence. His hand wasn’t exactly gentle as he positioned my legs on the railing, forcing me to grip the top railing and lean into it. The blunt tip of his finger dragged over my clit before leaving me panting and dripping.

“He’s going to mate?” The question seemed stupid once it left my lips; I knew exactly what the horse was doing. Sloan’s hand was busy working to undo his large, shiny belt buckle shaped like a bucking horse. The metal rested hot on my skin before he pulled it out of the belt loops, snapping as he dropped it onto the dusty ground. He undid the clasp to his jeans, pulled them coarsely between us, resting halfway down his muscular thighs. He kept one hand holding me by my breast, his hand squeezing and molding under his grasp. The zipper on his jeans scraped my skin, and I pushed back feeling the exposed, crisp, springy hairs covering his sex. I swore he smelled different like this, all male and musky making me drunk on him.

“He’s going to rut, fuck, and breed her.” He informed me through a forced breath as his fingers continued to roughly part my lips below. I wasn’t ready for Sloan’s entry. I rarely was unless he spent time preparing me because he was so big, and I still wasn’t used to him no matter how wet I was. It was pure friction when he entered me with those first initial strokes, and my craving to burn was satisfied. He didn’t flick my clit or bother fingering me to get me aroused. Instead, he pushed forward, skin on skin breaching my inner walls, pressing them apart with enough pressure to make me cry out into the vast valley of prairie hills before us…and to think I wanted to leave boring Ohio for something different...

1

Langley

Three months earlier…

“Honey, are you sure you’re happy?” At least a thousand miles separated us, and I could still feel her disapproval through the phone as if she were standing right in front of me. She’d be wearing a pastel pantsuit and perfectly coiffed hair, something I would never get right. My mother never failed to make me feel like all adult decisions were bad ones, especially when she wasn’t making them for me.

I scratched the top of my head, wishing I could lie or make some excuse to get off the phone like a normal college graduate living on their own. “Mom, I’m absolutely positive. I’ve been here a week.” Blowing out a breath from between my lips, I double clicked the pen in my hand, wondering how long today’s phone call would be. Yesterday took up my entire lunch hour, and by the time I got to eat my salad, the dressing had wilted the greens and my appetite was long gone.

“So far,” she snorted into the telephone, and I rolled my brown eyes inherited from Dad. They reflected in the glass reminding me of wet dirt, something my mother wouldn’t have wanted to mar with her idea of perfect. Blonds looked better with blue eyes she said. My mother has blues eyes. She kindly sent me a box of colored lenses which I’d purposefully left in Ohio express mail. Those were sitting in the bathroom cabinet unopened since moving here.

Mumbling under my breath, I said, “Can you at least give me a chance to screw this up?” I wondered if she was doing something mundane like filing her nails, dreading this phone call as much as I was, or clicking the pen half a country away.

Mom quipped, “I missed that, Langley. Did you say something smart?”

As opposed to something stupid?

I ignored her comment.

“I even found an Italian restaurant that serves pizza.” Although, Giovanni’s called it a pie and not a pizza it was still the same delicious concoction of gooey, delicious cheese and baked crust, undistinguishable from anything back home. I definitely wasn’t missing anything in Ohio.

“I don’t understand why you took this job transfer. What does Karim, Texas have that Marietta, Ohio doesn’t?”

Well, for starters it didn’t have an over-protective mother.

I couldn’t tell her what I was thinking; I never could. We didn’t have that kind of relationship, and when my dad divorced her for a woman somewhere between her age and mine—well it wasn’t a topic for conversation.

“The bank gave me a promotion. I wanted to come to Karim.” Explaining to my mother was pointless, and I looked down at my plain, thin silver watch—a graduation gift from my dad—noting how little time I had left. I wouldn’t be able to walk around the block and stretch my legs like I had planned with the five minutes I had left of my lunch break.

“You’re just a customer service specialist, it’s not like you’re the manager.” There was no pleasing this woman no matter how hard I tried, and I really tried. If I was a dart board, she was a dart pegging me dead center with her verbal jabs lessening my self-worth.

“Mom, I see my manager needs me. I have to go.” I pulled the phone way from my ear, frowning as she continued her monologue on how I should come home. She had that way of making me feel less than, always, no matter what I did. I placed the phone in my pocket, leaving the break room and heading out front to my teller station. I’m sure mom would have been even less impressed to know I technically took a demotion to transfer here. The promotion lie was a first for me and while it felt liberating, I still struggled with the guilt. The good news was that she probably wouldn’t visit me for Christmas.

I took my spot at the front counter and made sure everything was neatly organized. I lined up papers, fitting them into their designated spots. There was nothing worse than trying to count pennies for an elderly lady who couldn’t work the change machine or depositing someone’s single dollar tips if the pens were scattered with deposit tickets over my small space. It was one of the few things I could control. It gave me a brief respite, and I breathed deeply letting it calm my frazzled nerves. My hair was probably a mess in my ponytail, and I smoothed it away from my face to be sure as I looked up into startling blue eyes under a cowboy hat that hadn’t been there a moment earlier.

“A face like yours shouldn’t be frownin’, darlin’.” His drawl cut off the end of darling shortening the word. He removed his hat, tipping it in my direction which I supposed was a Texan thing. Having been here only a week, I didn’t know what was a custom or just my imagination.

Standing behind the counter, I knew he had to be tall, and my eyes shamelessly followed the line of his square jaw, deep blue eyes, and head full of messy, dark brown hair. He stood close enough to me I could almost touch the flannel of his button-down ranch shirt. I wondered how soft the material would be if I just…

“Miss?” He spoke again stopping my thoughts from further threatening to undress the stranger in my mind.

“I’m sorry.” I raised my hands to my face, feeling my cheeks. They must have been burning with a blush by how hot they felt under my fingertips. I forced my eyes back down to the counter.

“How can I help you, sir?” My manners had escaped me, but with a quick correction, I was back in my job mode ready to serve him.

“If you knew darlin’, you wouldn’t call me that.” His voice sounded gruff this time, and I swallowed back a reply waiting for him to tell me what he needed. A deposit? A withdrawal? Part of me wanted him to state his business and leave so I could go back to my private thoughts, but the other part of me wanted to stare at his perfectly symmetrical features all day long. He could have been a model on those racy book covers my college roommate designed for extra cash, or a calendar model. I imagined him gracing the month of August, riding a bull or a wild horse the way he was dressed. It made my tummy quiver, and I shifted my stance behind the counter from side to side, trying to get comfortable.

“Miss?” he said again, pulling me from my fantasy about book covers and calendars.

“Oh, sorry. How can I help you?” I swallowed back my discomfort at being caught unawares a second time, pasting an embarrassed smile on my face. My bare shoulders from my sleeveless blouse that seemed grownup and professional this morning left me chilled and wishing I had my sweater stashed in my

locker in the employee break room. He looked torn between a smirk and a frown as if he found me both amusing and frustrating at the same time.

“I need to transfer money from my checking account into a new account,” he explained, and I grabbed the appropriate paper work and handed him a pen to fill out the needed information.

“You’ll need to open the new account if you don’t already have one with us.”

He took the pen from my hand, his fingers were coarse against mine as we touched. His hand rubbed against my much smaller one teasing the soft skin under his rougher exterior. Heat traversed from my fingers up my arm to tingle in my center. It was a giddy, stupid feeling. I’d had boyfriends back home, but this was different. His touch said a novel’s worth of words in a single, and I was desperately in need of finishing the chapter he opened if only to appease my curiosity.

“Um, I can get one of our customer service reps to finish the transaction for you.” Feeling bashful, I smoothed back my hair again, needing something to do with my awkward hands that itched to touch him.

He stopped filling out the form, his handwriting neat, precise lines inside the blocks as his hand hovered over the paper, its stark whiteness a contrast to his tanned skin. The pause in his action to my words made my heart skip a full beat, and I licked my top lip to wet the dry skin. My fingers touched the bottom, wondering if they looked chapped the way he kept staring at them following my every move. Unease settled in my stomach. I should have eaten lunch. I was going to need to pick up a new lip gloss living out here because my lips felt too dry, and I couldn’t keep licking them without looking like a crazy woman without ice cream as an excuse for mauling my own lips.

“I’m fine with you handling my transaction, darlin’.” The way he slowly said transaction, my imagination ran away with me. I thought for a brief second he might have meant something else entirely different. It was impossible and yet, I couldn’t deny my attraction to him. I previously thought he might have been apathetic, maybe indifferent to me, but he finally smiled and I felt the mutual buzz between us. You know how the air changes before a storm and electricity seems to hover over everything waiting for a spark. That was me.

“Alright, Mister…” I realized I didn’t know his name as the paper was handed to me over the counter. Carefully, I avoided physical contact so I didn’t embarrass myself further.

“Sloan Tanner. I own the Rocking Star Ranch outside of Karim.” I never heard of the ranch or the man before me, but it was unlikely I would forget his face after today. I had a hundred questions I wanted to ask him. What kind of ranch? Where was it? Why name it the Rocking Star? I couldn’t keep up with my own mind asking the questions, so instead I tried to focus on opening his account.

“Follow me, please.” Ducking my head, I walked around my counter and to the desk where the customer service reps usually sat. It wasn’t busy, and my manager, Alexis Nightly, was out of the office today courting new accounts. I wished she was here, but a simple transfer I could handle. I had done plenty of them in my previous branch before. Sitting down, I adjusted my plain, black A-line skirt in the rolling seat, and then I motioned for him to sit down while I pulled up the proper computer screen and account information.