Page 18 of Branded

My phone chimes with a text. I walk over, pick up my pants off the floor, and pull the phone out of my pocket.

Dad

Heard the auction was eventful for you.

Fuck, of course someone called him. I might run the auction, but my father is never very far from the outcome of them.

Me

Eventful is one way to put it.

I’m not about to give him more than that right now.

Dad

You need to come home. Nathaniel has his hands full and the ranch is paying the price for it.

Me

I’ll be home in a few weeks.

Dad

You’ll be home tomorrow after you verify your wedding night. This isn’t a request, Sebastian, it is an order. I can take everything away from you as easily as I gave it to you. You’ve created a mess with Marshall and it needs to be dealt with.

Thomas Marshall is our closest neighbor and the biggest pain in the ass. He had a burr under his saddle about land deals that happened years, even generations, before I was born. What my father is talking about, though, is the land I stole out from under them four months ago. We box them in now; there is no way they can expand off their original ranch any more, and it will only be a matter of time until they have no choice but to sell. The fact I cut off the water access probably hasn’t helped either.

Nathaniel is against the purchase and the lengths I’m willing to go to to ruin them, but I don’t need his permission to spend the money I’ve earned in my own business.

Me

Fine. I’ll be home tomorrow.

Dad

Don’t forget to bring your new wife.

“Fuck,” I mumble as I toss my phone back down onto my pants. I finish my whiskey and lie back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to her move around in the bathroom and feel myself harden.

I marked her. Claimed her. And soon, we’ll do it all over again. Because she is mine now.

6

LENNOX

I wake to warmth. Not the kind of warmth that comes from blankets or the sunshine streaming through windows. This is body heat. The solid presence of another person in the bed beside me.

My eyes fly open.

Sebastian is lying next to me, on his side, propped up on one elbow, watching me sleep. His dark hair is slightly mussed, falling across his forehead in a way that would be boyish if not for the predatory intensity in his eyes. The sheet sits low on his hips, exposing his bare chest, and in the gray morning light filtering through the floor-to-ceiling windows, I can see every detail I was too overwhelmed to notice last night.

He is heavily muscled, not a lean, runner’s build, but the thick, powerful frame of someone who works hard. Broad shoulders that taper to a narrow waist, arms that look like they could snap me in half. His chest is covered in dark hair, across his pecs, trailing down his abs, disappearing beneath the sheet.

But it’s the ink that makes me stare.

Tattoos cover his right arm completely, a sleeve of black-and-gray artwork that starts at his shoulder and ends just above his wrist. In the morning light, I can make out the imagery: barbed wire wrapped around his bicep like it’s binding him, a longhorn skull with a crown of thorns at his shoulder, wildflowers—bluebonnets, I think—twisted with more barbed wire down his forearm. His left arm has less coverage but still bears a significant piece on his inner forearm, with coordinates and numbers that probably mean something to him.

His chest holds ink, too. Over his heart, partially hidden by the hair, I can see the edges of what looks like a cattle brand. It’s a rocking D, and it reminds me of the brand my father uses. A heaviness settles over me. And there, just above his right hip, where the sheet lies dangerously low, is the beginning of something larger that disappears beneath the fabric.