Page 50 of Brother to Brother

“Archer,” she moaned, and my name on her lips in that breathy plea nearly made me completely lose my shit.

“Oh god, not yet, Baby. I’m not ready for this to end,” I groaned and she held onto me that much harder.

I knew she’d come at least once, her pussy gently gripping and releasing my cock in a rhythm that’d been hard to resist. I swallowed hard, pressed my forehead to hers and reached between us to tease her clit. I wanted to trip her trigger just one more time, just once more before I…

She cried out, her body gripping mine, pulling me deeper before she shuddered beneath me in every single fucking way that made a man feel like one. I lost my grip on my control completely and I came with her. I came with her, and I think, I came the hardest I ever had in my life. I let myself rest in her arms as we both fell back to earth, panting. Sweat cooled on my skin and my cock jerked in counterpoint to the little aftershocks that ran through Mel.

I looked into those true fuckin’ blue eyes of hers from inches away, the candle light turning them a deep cobalt, and I told her, “You’re mine, Mel. You know what that means to one of us.” Her eyes widened and she nodded mutely, I held her in my arms and let my eyes sink shut, relishing the feeling of her so warm and close. “Good,” I said and nodded, more to myself than anything else.

I had no doubts that she would take the oaths she pledged seriously. It was one of the things that had secretly pissed me off about my brother. I loved Grinder like no fucking other, but it fuckin’ pissed me offlikeno other, him running around on Mel when she’d so clearly devoted herself to him. It wasn’t right, which was why I hadn’t wanted to believe that she’d chased Grind half way across the country, let alone that whatever she’d said or did had chased my brother right into his fuckin’ death.

I never imagined the truth would be that Grind had chasedhimselfto an early grave. That he woulda runhimselfto death runnin’ from his responsibilities as a fuckin’ man.

“Hey,” her voice was soft and just like her name to my ears; a melody beyond compare. Her hands gently cupped my face, drawing it forward so that I faced her again. I hadn’t even realized I’d turned my head.

“What?” I asked her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked and I swallowed.

“I been meaning to ask you, and I need you to tell me… why’d you come runnin’ out this way lookin’ for Grind?”

I eased myself out of her and over her leg, stretching out on my side, head propped in my hand so that I could look at her. She looked like one of them paintings, hanging in a rich person’s museum. The only thing that was missin’ was some little fuckin’ baby angel feeding her grapes.

She licked her bottom lip, and it was everything in me not to cover her mouth with my own; to suck that pink tongue into my mouth and let mine dance with it. I wanted her to have something, at least one thing that she felt like she had control over. I knew I was a controlling bastard. It was just my nature. I also knew it would take a special kind of woman, a strong one, to put up with my ass and Mel had done pretty fuckin’ admirably the last several months on that account. I didn’t have much to offer her, but what I had was hers… and I was not only impressed, but grateful, that she’d taken it.

“When Grind,” she cleared her throat, “left…” she said diplomatically.

I shook my head, “No need to sugar coat it for me, Baby. When Grind ran out on you and the responsibility he owed you for being the half of the equation needed to make you pregnant with Noah…”

“Ah, yes…” she nodded, and didn’t disagree with me, which was good. I was glad she wasn’t makin’ excuses for him. I damn sure wouldn’t. “When he left, I held on for as long as I could with my waitressing job, but as you know… Grinder helped out a lot with bills and things when he’d been there.”

“He should. I’da whooped his ass again if I caught him freeloading anymore.”

She blinked, stunned into silence, “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

She shook her head as if to clear it, “The doctors’ bills, prenatal care, even with help and on a sliding scale… they stacked up quickly. I couldn’t hang on anymore, and when I got into my sixth, almost seventh month, I had to move back in with my mother and Phil.”

“Grind said something about them bein’ some kind of piece of work,” I murmured and pulled her protectively into me.

“That’s putting it mildly… I spent the rest of my pregnancy being called a whore. When my water broke, I had to take a taxi to the hospital. They refused to stay for the birth.”

I felt the darkness in her then, saw the despair and the fear. I’d never wanted to kill one of my own brothers before but if Grind had been alive, I would have put him in the ground. I smoothed her hair out of her eyes and waited for her to continue. It took her a minute to get her shit together enough so that she could, and it wasn’t lost on me that she skipped over the rest of her hospital stay. It must have been bad, and it was something we’d have to revisit later.

“They were hard on me, but I figured I could withstand it, for Noah. They kept demanding that I move out, but in the next breath demanded I pay rent. I paid them to stay in their basement with Noah, but diapers and formula; I had trouble breast feeding so I had to supplement it… took just about everything I had left.

“They wouldn’t watch Noah at first, either. So it was hard to get back to work at the diner. Finally, my mom agreed to watch him, and it was okay, for a while, hard, but okay. Except the longer I stayed, the more I tried to follow their rules…” she shook her head.

“It was like they would set down rules and I would follow them, but suddenly, midway through things, the rules would change. Then Noah started growing up, becoming more aware and I was afraid… I didn’t want him growing up like I did. I didn’t want him to grow up thinking the way they treated me, and him, was normal. Babies deserve to be loved. They deserve patience and kindness, but that was never what Phil was about. He was strict but it wascrazy, Archer.”

“Shh, it’s okay,” I smoothed a hand over that satiny, light blonde hair and listened to her, but I didn’t need her getting worked up either. When she seemed calmer, I asked, “What made you run?”

“There was an argument. I was trying to work extra shifts at the diner to put away more savings, so that I could do what they wanted and get out of their house, but suddenly, that wasn’t good enough anymore. They wantedmeout, but they threatened to take my son away from me. They threatened to lie and tell the state that I was a drug addict and that I was sleeping around with all of the brothers. They were going to keep my son and raise him right, they said, and I couldn’t let that happen. They would have crushed his little spirit, andI couldn’t let that happen,Archer. So when they went to church, I pretended I was sick and shoved as much as I could into the car. That night, I took Noah and ran. I had nowhere else to go.”

She broke down and sobbed and I knew that she spoke nothing but the truth. I wasn’t the best at comfort, but sometimes, women like Mel just needed to be held and just needed to be heard. So I tried that, and what do you know? It worked.

“I promise you, no one’s taking our son,” I said into her hair, “I’d make ‘em fuckin’ disappear first.”

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