Arran’s Obsession (Body Count, #1)

Consciousness came with a flex of my limbs then bringing them around the man on me. In me. Arran slept, but his dick was still buried in my pussy, and still semi hard. I’d woken once already to find him fucking me, or playing with me in some way, but I’d been so tired I’d just let him continue without participating.

If he’d needed me awake, he would’ve made me so.

I didn’t hate it either. It felt like the beginnings of an addiction. The rush of desire and lust and need so incredible all I wanted was more.

It was new, the position we were in, both naked, hugging, connected. Throughout the past week, I’d often woken to him holding me, but he’d jump away the moment he realised. Now, he only hugged me closer.

Inside me, he pulsed, and I drove my knees into the bed and shifted on top of him. Riding him. Arran blinked his eyes open, his hands going to my hips. Then one came up to feel my heavy breast. I rolled my hips, working him in and out of me. This felt so good. All sweaty and sticky. Covered in him. I could taste him in my mouth. I didn’t care. Only needed more.

I’d also never done this before, but with everything between us hostile, if he blamed me for my technique, or the lack of it, I could happily tell him where to go. Instead, Arran thrust into me, his eyes darkening with pleasure that jolted through me in a lightning strike.

Then he opened his damn mouth. “Don’t come.”

Oh, fuck him.

“Fine,” I gritted out.

When everything was over between us, I was buying a vibrator and spending a week in my bed.

I kept working his dick, changing the pace so it didn’t chase my pleasure. It was hard, though. My body was so ready for this. Need infected every cell. My skin tingled. Parts of me I’d never felt in my life bloomed with pleasure.

Deep inside, I spasmed.

Abruptly, Arran flipped me onto my back and withdrew from me. Kneeling over me, he jacked his fist then came over my chest with a groan of pleasure.

When his breathing regulated, a grin spread, satisfaction clear. “One of the only things I didn’t do to you in the night.”

Then he drove his fingers into the mess and spread it all over my chest, coating my nipples and covering my skin.

I grumbled and climbed from the bed, cum dripping down me. “Good for you, big man.”

He came after me, slapped my ass, then passed to enter the bathroom first. The shower went on, and he extracted a fresh set of towels from the cupboard. “Get cleaned up then dress. We’re leaving in a couple of hours.”

My amusement fled. “Back to the city.”

“Back to reality.” He paused at the door, the thundering of the shower filling the space between us. “It changes things.”

“I know. We no longer have to lock ourselves away. We can be apart for more than two hours.”

Arran lifted his chin. If he had anything else to say, he didn’t bother, leaving me alone to get ready to leave.

At dusk, we left his rooms. Arran had said goodbye to his friends already, but one of them, Jamieson, walked with us.

On the steps outside the house, I paused.

All week, the picture Cassie had shown me upstairs had played on my mind. The identity of the child had flickered at the very edge of my consciousness until a memory joined it. I stopped dead.

“I’m just going to say goodbye to Cassie,” I told the men.

She’d watched from the top of the stairs but hadn’t come down.

Arran let me go, Jamieson talking to him low about something.

Across the entrance hall, I quickly climbed the flight but found the hall empty. Good. Scanning the pictures, I found the one I wanted. The sweet toddler in the rainbow dungarees grinned back at me. Holy hell. I really did know them. I even remembered those dungarees in real life.

My mind raced over the connection. Who were they to Arran? At the point I’d met the child, their mother as I believed her to be, had been twenty-two, and dating my father. But she definitely wasn’t Arran’s mother. She wasn’t old enough. Maybe the child was a niece or nephew?

That didn’t explain why he kept a picture in his office, or why he’d been searching like Cassie had said.

“Thought you’d gone,” a voice startled me.

Cassie approached from down the corridor. She was in a black playsuit, her hands in her pockets and her wild hair up in a chunky ponytail. She looked her age, almost, but the edge the woman carried added years in other ways.

I backed away from the picture. “I’m glad I saw you. I wanted to apologise.”

She stopped a few feet away, one of her bare feet pointed. “Did Arran tell ye to come up?”

“Nope. I didn’t tell him I upset you. I’m sorry I did.”

“I wasn’t so shy about pronouncing ye a grade A bitch for your view of him. I told him to be more open with ye. It’s not surprising ye had that opinion if ye didn’t know better. I also told him he was the worst.”

I gave a surprised laugh, because he’d told me hardly anything. “All men are.”

She grinned, her hostility shifting a tiny degree. “Right? I’ve been told I have emotional difficulties.” She put the words in exaggerated air quotes. “Which I take to mean I can jump to conclusions. Maybe next time we meet I won’t have reason to tear into ye.”

“I’m not sure there’ll be a next time.”

“Oh, there will. I’ve been wanting to try out dancing at Arran’s club for a while. See ye on the main stage, aye?”

Producing a half-smile, because I was a little scared of the fierce woman, I backed away, turned, then left.

Jamieson’s car was already heading off, but Arran waited to help me in my door. When he climbed in the other side, I answered his quizzical glance.

“I just needed to apologise to her. She and your other friends were generous with clothes and things. I’ll probably never see her again but I didn’t want to leave a bad impression.”

He tapped the steering wheel but didn’t answer.

Exasperating man.

Staring into the dark countryside as it flew past the windows, I mused on the picture, considering how to bring it up. Then Arran spoke and set my teeth right back on edge.

“Cassie’s a good judge of character.”

I slanted a look at him. “Suggesting if she didn’t like me, that’s valid?”

He shrugged, but amusement played on his lips.

I changed the subject. The events of the previous night and day had left my body taut. “Is there something specific in your rules about not letting your claimed woman orgasm?”

A smile flirted with Arran’s lips, but he concealed it. “The rules only state sex, not orgasms. I’m told not all women can come through sex, so it isn’t so hard and fast.”

I wished for other things that were hard and fast. In the shower, I’d tried and failed to make myself come. Which was insane because all he had to do was touch me and I was on the edge. If he’d broken my pussy, I’d kill him.

“Tell me all the things you did to me in my sleep,” I demanded.

His hands gripped the steering wheel hard, though his gaze remained on the road ahead. “I stripped you, put my fingers, tongue, and dick inside you. Toyed with your ass.”

My mouth dropped open. I breathed, but there wasn’t enough air. “You cut my top off me, too.”

“With my knife. I spanked your clit with my holster, fucked you with the handle of it, drew lines in your skin, and used the cold blade on your nipples.”

Holy shit. My pussy clenched. “Wish I’d seen that. Maybe next time.”

Arran gritted his teeth. Amused that somehow I’d got the upper hand, I faced away so he couldn’t see my red cheeks.

The thought of him doing those things to me turned me on even more. Damn him to hell.

After a while, we left the brightly lit main road that took us south through the Cairngorms and plunged into dark countryside.

I squinted, confused. “I thought we were going back to the city?”

“We are. This won’t take long. There’s someone I need to see.”

“Another woman to screw over?”

“Something like that.”

A short while on, and we came to a pair of gateposts. I could just make out the house name engraved on the stone. Kendrick Manor.

I’d never heard the name, but something crawled over my skin, and I cringed in the seat. “What is this place?”

Again, no answer came my way, and we entered an avenue of trees, emerging into a park like the one in the house we’d just come from. Except for one huge difference. There was no house at the end of the road, only shadowy rubble and stones. It spread over a huge site, and it was clear that whatever property had been here before had been sprawling. And recently destroyed.

Arran parked up and climbed from the car. I followed suit, gazing in wonder at the ruin. Now we were right in front of it, I made out the shapes of rooms. Maybe towers from the circular bases. It had to have been a stately home, some place really grand. Huge blocks had fallen and tumbled, the grey stone an unkind shade but scorch marks cluing me in to what happened.

It felt like a place of darkness. Even weeds didn’t grow in it. Nearby trees had been burned to blackened stumps.

Fire had consumed it all.

What had Cassie told me about her brother? That he’d burned down their home? I’d seen him casually spark a lighter, too. Was this his work or was that Arran’s claim?

For a minute, my captor stared straight ahead, something shifting in his posture. He stood taller, shoulders back and chest out, something so lost in his expression that a pang of emotion broke free inside me. Stepping carefully, I made my way to him. Then like a damn fool, I took his hand and held it in mine.

Arran sucked in a breath. He broke his stare off with the ruin and switched his gaze to me.

“Why is this place important?” I asked. “What happened here?”

Instead of answering, because nothing could ever be that simple, he grasped my cheek and fitted his mouth to mine. He kissed me, with no second of warning or to give me space to process it. He’d said no kissing. We’d had a limit on the free use.

I didn’t give a damn.

Hunger roared, and I kissed him back, just as hard, even more urgent, our mouths clashing in perfectly imperfect presses.

Then a sound pierced my consciousness. A rumble of tyres behind us had him spinning around. Another car was coming down the avenue.

A pale-coloured saloon car with an unlit siren on top.

From the irritation in Arran’s expression, the incomer was bad news. Taking me with him, he jogged to the left side of the destroyed house where woodland started. At the edge of the trees, he pushed me to continue. “Follow the line of trees in this direction. Don’t use your torch and don’t stop until you come to a small fenced-off area.”

The engine sound grew louder, the headlights sweeping around the curve.

I shot my attention back to Arran, suddenly afraid. “Who is it? Why do I have to run?”

“Someone I don’t want to see you. Now go.”

He walked away and stabbed at his phone, lifting it to speak, hostility infecting him. I set my head down and entered the forest.

Trying to keep in a straight line was almost impossible.

I jumped at the flight of a small creature, then a twig snapped under my foot, jolting fear through my heart. Clamping my hand over my mouth, I kept moving, focusing on the line of trees so I didn’t lose my path.

Darkness swallowed me. My pulse raced.

Any manner of things could happen. The unwanted visitor could hurt Arran. They could hunt me after and I wouldn’t have a clue what happened to him. I could get lost in the woods and never find my way back to him. On the drive out here, there had been no other houses. Not a speck of light for miles.

I stepped on, dodging ghostly limbs and stumbling on the uneven ground. In my head, I started my alphabet game, picking countries as my topic. A is for Angola, B for Botswana, C is Canada.

A crunch sounded nearby.

I stopped dead.

My heart beat loud in my ears. That had been a footstep, I was certain. Not a scurrying rodent or a bird, but a heavy foot coming down. I’d been followed. Surely there was no one else out here in the trees. If it were Arran, he’d call out.

Terror gripped me. To my right was a large oak tree. Holding my breath, I crept around it, trying desperately not to make a sound. At the far side, I sank down with my back to the trunk. Night stared back at me from the forest.

I strained to listen. My imagination in the dark had always been a terrible thing, and I’d been wrong when I’d told Arran that I didn’t mind it so much outdoors. That was limited to the city where streetlights or my scooter’s headlamp chased away shadows. There was nothing out here. Not even the moon penetrated the thick cover of leaves overhead.

It was just shades of black and grey, and the cushion of forest floor underneath. Tree trunks were spectres. Falling leaves were evil things.

For a minute, nothing happened. No more footsteps. Nothing beyond the sound of my breathing and my pulse.

So badly, I wanted to activate my phone’s torch, but I wasn’t sure how far I’d come into the woods and whether Arran’s visitor would be able to see me. More, it would make me a sitting duck, highlighted for anyone out there.

A twig cracked the other side of my tree.

Oh God. My fright crested, and I shook, my teeth chattering. I wrapped my arm around my legs to make myself as small as possible, my other hand still covering my mouth so I didn’t scream.

Another crunch, closer again.

He’d found me, whoever the stranger was. He’d killed Arran and followed me. My brain offered up the only logical solution. And…it infuriated me. How dare he?

My shaking fingers were at my throat, and I found myself holding Mum’s necklace which Arran had retrieved for me. If she was watching over me, I hoped she wasn’t about to witness my end.

A short sound of breath came from my right, and I lifted my terrified gaze right as a body came into sight.

A pale face.

Dark eyes.

A deer trotted past on the forest floor.

A deer? I collapsed down, taking deep pulls of the air I’d starved myself of, my heart nearly giving out. Fucking hell on a handcart. Christ above. That had been the worst few minutes of my life.

I stood, and the creature spotted me and took off silently into the trees. Bloody thing. It managed to move quietly enough that second time. I scowled after it and returned to the other side of the oak, setting out once more. Grumbling to myself about animals and stupid, scary woods, I plodded on.

It was a false reprieve, though. Soon enough, the sounds of the woods got to me again. Sweat pricked my brow, though it was cooler here. My senses were mixed up. I’d been wandering a while and hadn’t come across the fence Arran directed me to find.

I was very possibly lost.

For a moment, I stopped. Then I risked taking my phone from my shorts pocket and activating the map. It didn’t load, not enough signal for what I needed. I tried the compass next then realised I neither knew how to use one nor which direction I wanted to go in.

This was ridiculous. I could’ve hidden in the car or concealed myself in the rubble and acted as backup.

If he was dead when I got back, I’d kill him.

A sound of frustration burst from my lips. What should I do, just stand here waiting?

A crash sounded. Another. Regular footsteps, undoubtedly.

My breath caught, and I whirled around, right as a man emerged from the murkiest part of the trees.

Jamieson, Arran’s friend, stormed up and took my lit phone from my hands. “Put that down or you’ll give yourself away,” he commanded in a whisper.

“I’m lost,” I squeaked.

“Are ye now?”

Towing me by the elbow, he marched us through the next line of trees, and there on the other side was a small fence, encircling a patch of clearer ground with an oblong of rocks in it. Leading me over, Jamieson held up a finger. “Wait here. I’ll be back.”

As fast as he’d appeared, he was gone.

I stepped over the fence and dropped to sit on a rock the other side, my legs giving out. He was who Arran had been calling then. He’d been out in his car and presumably nearby.

God, I’d been so afraid.

It felt like forever until he came back, and my mind had sunk to misery.

Jamieson stepped over the fence and took a seat next to me. “Arran’s still occupied. I’m sure he willnae enjoy being apart from ye.”

I sniffed. “Really? I can’t imagine he’d care that much.”

The man stared at me then gave a low laugh. “Yet he sent ye to his mother’s grave and called out his best friend to come protect ye. Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart.”