by Vivian Arend
She ignored the question and gestured to his straining fly. “Do you want me to help? Or just watch?”
The thrill of anticipation that shot through him made him the worst kind of asshole, after all. A snake. He snorted to cover it. “If I wanted a whore, lady, I know where to find one. I’m a big boy. I don’t need Lex to deliver.”
Her expression didn’t change, but that damn shirt left her back and shoulders naked, and he could see her muscles tensing. “Lex warned me you were cranky. But calling me a whore won’t scare me off, you know. I don’t consider it an insult.”
Her tone raked at him—defiant and resigned, all at once—and suddenly he knew. “Shit, you’re from Two. What house? You act like a Rose.”
That made her flinch, though her lips twisted into a mockery of a smile. “Why, because I’m not like Lex? No one’s like Lex. A Rose would have blushed and pretended she didn’t know what your dick did, because that’s what men want, isn’t it? A girl who acts like she’s never seen a cock but can still swallow it when you shove it down her throat.”
That sounded about right—for the fancy men in Two, the ones who liked their women mindless and obedient. Completely dependent, subservient—which was why they all kept whores. “Look, lady, you don’t know me or my dick. And Lex didn’t give you nearly enough information if you think the men in Sector Four prize bullshit fake innocence over a woman who honestly loves to fuck.”
“Fake innocence was never my specialty.” She slapped a hand down on the folders. “This was. Because Orchid House trains girls to use their brains. That’s why Lex is the queen of your damn sector, and why I wanted to work for her.”
“And she stuck you here.” He snorted again. “That must suck.”
“Not hardly. So you’re grumpy and drunk and like to talk about your dick.” She stepped closer, and he could smell her perfume now—something sensual and floral that hit him low in the gut. “You don’t own me. Makes you the best boss I’ve ever had.”
“Give me time, buttercup.” He offered her the bottle with one upraised brow.
She snatched the bottle, knocked back a swig—and choked. Furious color returned to her cheeks as her eyes watered, but she managed to swallow around her sputtering. Her gaze found his, and Lord, she was embarrassed as fuck.
Her jaw tightened, and she lifted the bottle again. Her lips closed around it so slow and deliberate it was fucking well obscene, and she watched him as she took another sip.
She knew what she was doing, all right—and he was playing right into her sweet little hands. “Tomorrow,” he murmured finally. “You want to get your hands all over my files? Ten a.m., and don’t be late or I’ll fire your ass.”
Her sudden, radiant smile lit up her face and eyes as she handed the bottle back to him. “Mia. That’s my name.”
Oh fuck. Her fire was one thing, but that smile... It hit him in places more dangerous than his gut, lower and higher. Places he could ill afford for anyone to touch.
He swallowed and nodded. “Got it. Now can you do something for me, Mia?”
“Sure.”
“Get out. Seriously.”
She smiled again and turned to retrieve her thin jacket. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
She left looking pleased with herself, and why shouldn’t she? She’d gotten exactly what she wanted, all because he hadn’t been able to look into those dark, dark eyes and tell her to get lost.
Ford groaned and dropped into his desk chair. It smelled like flowers now, damn it, the same erotic perfume Mia wore. It wrapped around him, cutting through the sheer relief of being off his injured leg. Instead, tension twisted, leaving his balls heavy—and everything else painfully tight. Achy.
He winced as he pulled open the remaining buttons on his fly and freed his cock. He touched it lightly at first, the way a timid virgin would, then grinned as he shifted his hand to grip his shaft.
Mia wasn’t a virgin. And he’d seen one thing in her eyes as her gaze had traveled over him—she wanted to touch him.
She wanted it bad.
She wouldn’t hesitate to take what she wanted, either. Ford closed his eyes, and the image came immediately—Mia, on her knees, walking her fingers slowly up his thighs. He groaned and squeezed his hand for a moment before relaxing into easy strokes. Not too fast, not at first.
His mind formed the words, whispered them as instructions to the Mia in his fantasy, and his pulse stuttered as his own hands disobeyed…just like she undoubtedly would. He bit off a curse and thumbed the head of his dick, slicking through the moisture his raw arousal had already released.
He opened his eyes, dragged open the top drawer on the right side of his desk, and retrieved the small bottle of lube he kept there. It was cool as he poured it out in his palm, and Ford hissed when he wrapped his hand around his erection once again.
The whiskey beckoned, and he lifted the bottle to his lips. He could taste Mia on the glass, and he groaned as he began to pump into his hand, quick and hard. He could fuck her like this, with her long, smooth legs over the arms of his chair, her tits just out of reach of his mouth. He’d hold her hips above his and drive up into her—
He squeezed his fist as the first pulses of pleasure tickled down his spine, and he came with breathless speed, silent as he swallowed another groan. No, not a groan—a word—
Mia.
CHAPTER TWO
Mia woke up on a thin mattress in a narrow bed, staring at a paint-cracked ceiling as it shuddered beneath the trampling steps of her upstairs neighbor. The wall beside her head was just as shabby and insubstantial. The girl who rented the room next door was already up and singing some pre-Flare classic, high and off-key, every word as audible as if she were perched at Mia’s table.
Her apartment was a dingy little room in a sad little building, with everyone scraping by on stolen power and water that never heated beyond tepid. Her furniture was fifth-hand, sagging and patched, and the landlord was horrid, stooped and mean and threatening to raise Mia’s rent every time she turned around.
She’d fallen so far from the luxury of Sector Two that she could hardly credit it, and Mia still smiled as she crawled out of bed.
No more gilded cages for her. No more trading her dignity for silken sheets, or her pride for comfortable surroundings. No more late nights huddled in the bathtub, trying to scrub away the hurtful words, as if water and soap could make her feel clean on the inside. Her heart and soul weren’t for sale anymore.
Neither was her body.
Oh, it had been tempting. She’d almost done it a dozen times during that first disorienting week. She could have walked into the fanciest whorehouse in Sector Four and presented her credentials, and there would have been no cold baths or dirty floors. Just comfort, familiar luxury, and the game she’d been learning to play since the day her parents sold her to Orchid House in desperate hopes of giving her a better life. Please the men. Make them feel good, invincible. Lie to them.
But she was tired of telling men what they wanted to hear. If the first week had been overwhelming, the next two had taught her that. She was still drunk on the freedom to do and say what she wanted. She didn’t have to please anyone but herself. She didn’t want to.
At least, she hadn’t before last night.
Not that Ford wanted a whore. He’d made that painfully clear, somewhere in between opening his belt and invading her dreams. And he’d guessed she was from Two as if it were branded on her forehead. Damaged goods or broken toy or whatever men like him thought of girls like her.
She hated that she’d responded to him, that the frank crudeness in his gaze had stirred a response in her body. But he’d seen her, and his words—
Lex didn’t give you nearly enough information if you think the men in Sector Four prize bullshit fake innocence over a woman who honestly loves to fuck. No, if Derek Ford ever fucked his own fist while calling her a dirty girl, he would mean it as a compliment.
It was wrong to close her eyes and imagine
it, but even the lukewarm bath water couldn’t stop her entirely. He’d gotten hard last night. He’d stood there unashamedly erect, his belt undone, that top button popped open like a challenge. Lex had said he was struggling to recover from a near-fatal motorcycle accident, but Mia had seen no hint of weakness as he’d loomed over her, all broad shoulders and dark hair and eyes so bottomless they defined brooding.
And he’d still been fully clothed, all except for that button. That goddamn button. Thinking about it made her mouth water, her fingers itch. If she’d taken a few more sips of the liquor, she might have begged to slide down his body and try all the things her patron had never let her do to him. All the things the good people of Eden would call a sin, as if the word had any meaning in a world that had ended before Mia’s parents had even been born.
She dumped cold water over her head to rinse her hair and wash away all her sinful thoughts, then scurried out of the tub as her teeth began to chatter. The air was just as chilly in her apartment, so she hurried into her last clean outfit and her borrowed coat and boots.
Everything she had was charity, including the wad of cash nestled in a box on her rickety table. But she still peeled off five precious bills, enough to buy breakfast and tea for two in the marketplace near the O’Kane compound. A peace offering, because she could hear her trainer’s voice droning in her head. You catch more flies with honey, Mia. Why must you persist in being vinegar?
Because she’d never wanted to catch flies before.
She stroked her finger over the locket nestled beside her money before closing the box and rushing out of her apartment. The key stuck in the lock until she jiggled it and lifted the door, but in a minute she was down the narrow stairs and out into the dirty street.
The sun was already up, flooding the alley with clear, cool light, but the cracked sidewalk in front of her building was still lined with men huddled around the fires they’d built in huge metal drums. They exchanged cigarettes and flasks and watched her as she shoved her hands deep into her jacket pockets and strode determinedly past them.
“Hey, sweets. Need a man to keep you warm?” one of them called after her, his voice edged with a meanness she recognized all too well. She ignored him and walked faster, lifting her gaze to the tall wall that separated the pristine city of Eden from the dirty tangle of humanity struggling to survive on this side.
The closer you got to the walls, the nicer things were—but they were expensive, too. It was a ten-minute walk to the O’Kane compound, through narrow streets lined with hard-faced men and women who eyed her shabby, patched coat and worn boots and probably judged her not worth the trouble of robbing.
Probably.
One sharp-eyed woman paused to do a double take, and Mia ducked between two men and hopped up onto the sidewalk, doing her best to project confidence. One of the first lessons any girl in Orchid House learned was that predators could sense fear—and that they were being molded into perfect, tempting prey.
Perfect, tempting traps.
She made it safely to the street that led to the O’Kane compound and walked another five blocks to the edge of the marketplace. One vendor had a clock on his stall that read half past nine, so she hurried to the stand that sold luscious pastries baked fresh in the little shop behind the table.
She smiled at the plump, pretty woman managing the sales, and tucked some extra money into her hand after accepting the paper sack. “Can I rent one of the thermoses for the tea, Pam?”
“Not drinking it in the shop this morning, honey?”
Mia had every day for the last week, borrowing the warmth her apartment didn’t have and trading lighthearted stories with Pam and her husband. But today would be different. Today would be the start of a whole lot of differences. “No, I’ve got a new job that starts in twenty minutes. The boss already told me I’m fired if I’m late.”
Laughing, Pam poured tea into a battered tin thermos, the kind with a plastic cup that twisted off the top. “You found a job already? I bet Lou you would. You look like a clever girl.”
She was a clever girl, but that violated another of the trainer’s rules. Everyone likes to make use of a woman’s brains, but no one wants to be forced to admit she has them. So she smiled and demurred with a shrug. “It’s nothing fancy. Just doing paperwork for the O’Kanes.”
Mia had seen too many fixed smiles not to realize the other woman had gone stiff. Her smile was still there, but it was forced now. She twisted the top onto the thermos and pushed it across the counter. Uncertain, Mia wrapped her chilled hands around the blessedly warm metal, only to find folded cash being stuffed beneath her fingers.
“You have a good day at work,” Pam said intently, patting Mia’s hand. “No need for the deposit, love. Just return it when you have a chance. Or come back tomorrow, and we’ll refill it. We know where our loyalties lie.”
“All right,” Mia agreed, mostly to soothe the anxiety in the older woman’s gaze. She lifted her bag with one last smile and slipped back into the crowd, making it two blocks before she was safely out of view and could look at the cash in her hand.
It was all there. Not just the money for the container—all of it.
God, if the mere mention of Dallas O’Kane’s name garnered this sort of treatment, no wonder the people who wore his ink around their wrists wandered through the most dangerous parts of the sector with impunity. She could get used to that kind of reflected power.
The market was only a stone’s throw from the four square blocks that housed the O’Kane compound. Mia crossed the parking lot behind the Broken Circle and climbed the stairs with fifteen minutes to spare. Remembering Ford’s anger at finding his office invaded the previous night, she didn’t shove through the door.
She knocked.
“Come in,” came the gruff reply.
Better than go the fuck away. Taking it as an optimistic sign, Mia slipped through the door and held the bag in front of her like a white flag of truce. “I brought fresh cinnamon rolls.”
Ford barely glanced up from the sheaf of papers in his hand. “I already ate.”
He was wearing a T-shirt today, a plain cotton thing that should have been unremarkable—though she supposed the remarkable part was how it hugged everything beneath it. It took supreme effort to drag her gaze from his powerful chest to the tousled, dark hair curling damply against his neck.
Oh, he was enchanting. Grumpy and rude and beautiful and so, so much fun to look at.
There was a folding chair propped against the door, its message clear—she might be tolerated, but she wouldn’t be welcome.
Grumpy, indeed.
Hiding a smile, she shifted the bag and thermos to one arm and grabbed the chair. “I hope you don’t mind if I eat. I’ll be quick.”
He frowned at her. “Your hair is wet.”
“So is yours,” she replied easily. It took a little maneuvering, but she managed to unfold the chair with one hand and her knee.
“I haven’t been outside in the bitter cold.”
Better not to tell him how cold her bath had been, then. The chair was wobbly, but sturdier than the one in her apartment. She settled in and savored the sweet smell of spice and sugar as she opened her breakfast. “It’s nice and warm in your office. I’ll be thawed out in no time.”
But Ford only grunted. “Dry your hair before you come to work,” he instructed. “I’m not taking the time to train you if you’re only going to up and die on me.”
She spared a wistful thought for the hair dryer she’d taken for granted in Sector Two. Even if she could find one in the market that cost less than a week’s pay, who knew if she’d have the electricity to run it on any given morning?
Obstacles are opportunities to hone your wits. Her trainer had a pithy saying for any occasion, but that one was true enough. Give her a few weeks with Ford and her wits would be sharp enough to cut steel. “All right. What do you want me to look at first?”
He slid a folder across the desk. “Grain suppliers
. We used to import directly as well as through other sectors—Three, specifically. I’ve been working on taking all of our deals straight to the source.”
Her interest piqued, Mia pushed her bag aside and reached for the folder. “You mean the farms? I admit I wondered where you obtained your grain. It can’t just be from the communes. Eden keeps a chokehold on the reserves.”
He lifted one strong shoulder in a casual shrug. “It’s my job to loosen that hold. Not too much, but enough.”
She scanned the list of suppliers and reconciled it with her mental dossier of Eden’s official farming communes and some of the larger illegal operations. “You don’t have the South Tahoe Collective on here.”
“You know your shit, I’ll give you that.” A muscle in Ford’s jaw clenched. “We don’t deal with Tahoe. Dallas doesn’t like the way they operate.”
Neither did he, that much was clear from his narrowed eyes and compressed lips. She didn’t blame him. The one time her patron had hosted a representative from Tahoe, she’d endured two straight days of leering and “accidental” groping, and the cruel edge in the man’s eyes had left her with no doubt what would happen if she let him catch her alone.
And he’d tried. He’d tried everything up to slipping into her bedroom, and on the final night of his visit he’d tried that too, foiled only by her locked door. She reported the attempt to Vaughn the next morning, expecting her patron to at least resent the insult to his pride if not the threat to her safety, but he’d brushed her off with the cold words that had been the beginning of the end of her life in Sector Two. If you’d done your duty when he first arrived, he wouldn’t have been reduced to such theatrics.
So many things wrong with that statement. So many fucking things, but the worst was that, for a moment, she’d almost believed him.
Ford flipped the folder shut. “We rotate through suppliers, for two reasons. One, it helps ensure they’re not overtaxed. Secondly...”
Mia dragged her attention back to the cluttered safety of Ford’s office. He’d trailed off with a slightly raised eyebrow, as if testing her, so she scrambled to reconstruct what he’d been saying. “You can’t afford to give any one supplier that much power over the future of your business.”