Marked

six-2

“Hey, now, buddy,” Levi said, trying out a placating laugh.

When he moved his hand as if to pat Archer’s shoulder, Archer threw his forearm up to block the gesture, and grabbed Levi’s throat with the other hand.

Storming across the hall, Archer pinned their new neighbor to the wall. “You touch her and I’ll f*****g kill you, simple as that,” he snarled. “No maybes. She’ll tell you I won’t do it, but I’ve already twisted my blade in the gut of a friend today. I’ve got no problem cutting down a stranger too. Tell me you’ve thought about screwing her and I’ll do it now, just one less trip to the dump.” Levi said nothing. “Do we understand each other?”

He was squeezing too hard for Levi to answer, so their neighbor tried to nod. Archer pulled him forward by his windpipe and threw him down the corridor. Levi landed on his a*s and skidded ten feet.

“Oh my God!” Nya said, trying to get to Levi.

Archer stole her arm and yanked her behind him. “Run for your life, neighbor,” he sneered. “This is the last warning you’ll get.”

Levi got up and only thought about retorting for a split second before he glared and turned to march away.

Nya growled into her hands and shoved Archer’s back. “What the f**k is wrong with you?”

He spun around, his anger hadn’t gone anywhere. “You parade your f*****g boyfriends in front of me again and I swear I’ll slit their throats and make you watch them bleed out, you hear me?”

“He’s not my boyfriend! He’s a neighbor! He wanted to get to know people! Some people like being social! Some people like having friends!” She sighed, clenching her fists. “I told him we shouldn’t come near your door.”

Leaning down, he wasn’t playing. “Trust your instinct next time,” he said, blocking her when she tried to get past him.

“Are you gonna keep me prisoner up here all day?” she asked because he was still jamming her, left and right.

“I’m giving your boy a chance to think about what I said before you run off to try sucking his dick.”

Oh, she was beyond mad now and Archer had the audacity to be just as angry. “Somebody should apologize to him for your behavior,” she said.

“Yeah, he’ll tell you how much better he’ll feel if you climb up into his lap and pull up that skirt,” Archer said.

His arm swooped around her so he could shove a hand under her skirt onto her a*s. Curving his thumb beneath the vertical strip of her thong, he slid it down, pulling it from her a*s cheeks. Leaving his thumb there, hooked into her underwear, he twisted the fabric around it.

“What the f**k do you think you’re doing?” she asked, hitting his chest and trying to locate her outrage.

Giving her thong a yank, he tightened it against her core, which put pressure on her c**t. “I wanted to check how ready you were,” he mumbled and shuffled her back against the wall opposite his open apartment door.

“Stop it,” she said, squashed between him and the wall. Her hands were flat against his chest, but she couldn’t move.

He took his hand from her a*s and she thought that was it. Nya was ready to curse at him and leave. But he wasn’t done. Pushing his chest harder on hers, he made it more difficult for her to breathe as he eased his hips away and then his fingers slid into the front of her panties and moved from her c**t to her threshold and back again.

“What the f**k are you doing?” she asked again, but her breath was louder than her words. “Stop it, Archer.” Losing the last letter of his name when his fingers slid into her, Nya was beginning to drown. “Stop it.” But her eyes were closing as her head fell against the wall. “You’re not allowed to touch me.”

There wasn’t an ounce of force or sincerity in what she was saying. He moved his finger in and out. “You’re not wet,” he said.

That fact was quickly changing, and only got more intense when a second finger joined the first. He moved them in and out of her, stimulating her from the inside.

As he curled his digits to massage the cushion within her, Nya moaned. “You were so rude. So mean,” she whispered, her panted breaths were getting shallower. “All he wanted to do was make friends.”

Tipping his lips to her ear, Archer spoke into the shell of it. “All he wanted to do was slide himself home right here,” Archer said, moving his fingers faster. “This is what he wanted, Ny. He wanted to play with my p***y. He wanted to put his d**k where only mine can go. He wanted to come all over your sweet pink tongue. But the only man you taste is me. You made me a promise, Squirm.”

He pulled his fingers out, rubbed her c**t fast, and then plunged them back into her. Nya cried out and her hips bucked against his thigh. “That’s my girl,” he exhaled. “Your p***y’s been missing my spunk. Hasn’t it, sweetheart, tell me.”

“Oh, it has,” she said, he was rubbing her c**t now in wide, slow circles.

“You want to taste some?” he asked.

She nodded, opening her eyes a millimeter just to check if he was being serious. She didn’t think that he was, even this was a step too far beyond what they were supposed to be allowed to do with each other. She’d just told him no, just told him she was leaving, and now his fingers were in her underwear, coated with her juices.

“Mm hmm. Please.”

“Help yourself,” he said and his eyes were as sure and aroused as hers.

Archer’s fingers slipped away. Putting them in his mouth, he sucked them hard. His expression of ecstasy was almost enough to give her another o****m. As he sucked and licked her taste from his digits, he unbuckled his belt.

He meant it. He was actually going to let her. But she’d touched him since they broke up and he always stopped her. This time, she couldn’t give him the chance. Dropping to her knees in the tight space he’d left her, Nya didn’t play with him or tease. She pulled open his jeans, yanked out his d**k, and swallowed him whole.

“f**k,” he said and his fist hit the wall high above her.

That was exactly her sentiment, bobbing her head back and forth, she drew her eyes up to his and he was watching everything she did. Watching her head move back and forth as his d**k appeared and disappeared from between her lips. She was getting better at taking him deeper. Nya sucked like the key to her existence would be delivered in her prize at the end.

She withdrew him from her mouth, pumped her fist over him, ran his head across her lips, and purred. “I like it,” he said and she had to grin because that’s exactly what he’d said the first time they had s*x.

Still there on her knees, she opened her mouth and sucked his head, tonguing the slit that would serve her gift. She wanted to ask him to f**k her, wanted to stand up and expose her breasts, to beg him to touch her.

But this was like a dream, something she’d been sure they would never have again. She wasn’t going to tempt fate, she had to taste him now, had to swallow him, had to savor this experience for as long as it lasted. She wouldn’t get caught up in what it meant or what would come tomorrow.

He thrust forward and the crown of his d**k hit the back of her throat, making her skull bounce off the wall. Taking her hair in his fist, he began to drive himself in and out of her mouth, swearing and huffing each time he went deep.

Gritting his teeth, he growled. “f**k, Ny.”

He forced out the words as his thick, salty seed fired against her throat and spread on her tongue as he pulled himself back. She swallowed and swallowed, then licked the tip of him to capture the remaining drips after he slid away from her lips. She wasn’t willing to let any of him be wasted.

His hand was flat on the wall above and his head fell against his extended arm. Nya stayed where she was l*****g her lips and closed her eyes to commit that taste and this moment to her memory.

A door opened and she rolled her head on the wall to locate which one. The guy next door to Archer came out into the hallway and took a second to take in the scene.

“S’up?” Archer asked.

Nya glanced up to see him looking at his neighbor as if there was nothing at all intimate or unusual going on. “Arch,” the neighbor said in acknowledgement and nodded. “Nya.”

She lifted a hand in a wave, but the guy was already turning to head down the stairs. He didn’t care about what they were doing. Being that he and Archer shared walls, the neighbor was probably used to experiencing some element of their intimacy.

Archer put his d**k back in his pants but didn’t fasten them. Then he bent to catch her arm so he could pull her onto her feet. “Okay?” he asked her, brushing a hand from her hip down her thigh as if he was straightening her skirt, but it had fixed itself.

“That’s as far away from distance as you can get,” she said. “I tell you that what we have is unhealthy and we have to move on and the next day, you make me soak through my panties and skull-f**k me in the hallway.”

Now she was even more confused because she didn’t know if he had a clue what was going on either. He hadn’t known she was going to come to his door. This wasn’t planned. If Archer decided he was going to do this, he’d have come and knocked on her door when he wanted it.

This was serendipity. For the first time since cutting herself, she could feel something deep in her gut, in her heart. The love was so immense that it overwhelmed her. As desperate as she was to ask what this meant or to insinuate herself back into his apartment and into his life, Nya considered that this might have been their goodbye.

They’d done well to avoid giving in to their urges so far. But now if she was really going, they didn’t have to, because they could have this and still walk away.

He didn’t say he loved her. Didn’t ask her to stay. He just put her on her knees and gave her what she’d been asking for, for weeks. His forehead came to hers as his hand slid down the wall to stop behind her ear.

“I figured if I took the edge off, you’d stop sniffing around other guys,” he murmured.

So he’d made her come to delay her asking another man to do it. Did that mean his own s****l need had been reaching critical mass and maybe he’d thought about asking another woman to satisfy him? So seeing the chance, he’d used her to alleviate the need?

Nya didn’t know.

There was so much she didn’t know, and she didn’t see answers in his eyes. “I have to go to work,” she said.

Although he didn’t move a millimeter, he let her slide out from between him and the wall. Their indecent encounter didn’t make her question her decision, it reinforced it. As long as she and Archer were close to each other, their attraction would pull them together.

Levi was a decent guy and maybe if her life wasn’t so f****d up, she’d think about pursuing something with him. As it was, he was a victim of the confusion in her life and she couldn’t begin to explain it to him.

She’d get ready for work and go through the motions there. Next time she saw Levi, she’d apologize. At least she didn’t have to worry about deflecting unwanted advances from him. Archer had made his position clear to the neighbor and she envied him that, because Nya didn’t have a f*****g clue what she felt. Every minute, her emotions got more confused. Getting out was the only way she could see to save her sanity.