by Kit Rocha
"Fuck, Lex." Skin. Skin and ink, his name, and his blood was fire in his veins. His hand clamped tight, and he shuddered. "I don't suppose the concubine blows the king any time soon in this story."
"You've heard this one." She smiled slowly and kicked free of the denim before climbing astride his legs. "When she was naked too, she sucked him, slow and deep, until he couldn't lie still anymore."
Her hands teased up his thighs. She closed her fingers around his, holding his grip securely in place as she bent damn near in half to flick her tongue over the crown of his cock.
"Christ." Sinking both hands into her hair, Dallas sprawled back on the mattress. Impossible not to clench his hands, not to press up in a silent plea. Maybe he should have demanded, should have fucked up into her mouth and taken control. That was his promise--his dominance for her submission, his careful control for her abdication of responsibility. It was damn near self-indulgent to lie back and let her do all the work.
And he was selfish enough to do it.
"I love looking at you," she whispered. "You're so strong. Solid. A badass fighter with ink and scars, but parts of you are delicate." She feathered a soft touch up the underside of his shaft and swirled her tongue around him again. "Delicious."
Naked words. Unguarded, with none of Lex's trademark sass and prickle, only a breathless warmth that drove him crazy. "Glad you appreciate the taste, love. Feel free to swallow it whole."
"Smartass." She licked him wet, then held his gaze as she slid her lips down around him.
That never got old.
Hazy pleasure made his eyes droop, but he forced them open. He loved the sight of her like this, glistening lips stretched wide around his cock, staring up at him as she took him deeper and deeper, wrapping him in wetness and heat. Never letting him forget that he could stick his dick in all the groupie faces he wanted, but he'd always come crawling back for this. The moment when he wasn't sure which of them was leading their filthy-hot dance.
Fucking Lex was like driving too fast. Exhilarating. Terrifying. And always a heartbeat away from spinning out of control.
A moan vibrated around him. She changed the rhythm, sucking hard as she drew him into her mouth, and licking as she retreated, over and over.
Worries about the gang and Sector Three vanished under a hum of pleasure. Release edged closer, and he slapped it away, gritting his teeth as he hauled her up until his cock popped free of her lips. "What did the king do next?"
She exhaled shakily and eased up his body. "He gave her pleasure." Her hips aligned over his so that her pussy lips nestled against his shaft, and she ground down with another moan.
Dallas dragged his hands down her shoulders and up to cup her breasts, toying with her tight nipples. "I think you have it wrong. I think he played with her." He closed his thumb and forefinger around one bud and tugged, giving her a hint of pain to balance the gentle stroking of his other hand. "I think he teased her, and told her to ride his dick and find her own pleasure."
One quick shift of her lower body brought the blunt tip of his erection closer to her pussy, almost inside. "I'll fuck you, Dallas." She rocked her hips, thrusting hard enough to take him into her. "I'll make it good."
His pulse throbbed in his ears as he shifted one hand to her hip. "I'm balls-deep in the hottest woman in any sector. Short of slitting my damn throat, you couldn't make it bad."
"Shh." She braced one hand on his chest and rolled her hips, a slow, sinuous movement that left her gasping. "Fuck, yes."
He ground his teeth together and tried to ignore the silky clasp of her body as she rose and fell. Not easy, when she was clenching and moaning and putting on the kind of show money couldn't buy.
He wanted to savor it. He wanted to remember every time she bit her lip, and the way the flush of pleasure stole down her body. He'd drawn her kicking and screaming to this point before, to the place where all of her masks were gone and she was lost in the feeling of his cock inside her.
All he'd done this time was drop his own mask, and she'd melted all over him like chocolate in the summer sun.
The relentless need for release throbbed at the base of his spine, but he tightened his grip on self-control long enough to slide his thumb over her clit.
She shuddered and clenched even tighter around him as her smooth rhythm faltered. "Tell me you feel it." The strained plea gave way to a cry--and another shudder that shook her entire body.
"I feel it," he whispered, giving up the battle for restraint as hopeless. No one could have held on to reason with Lex bouncing on his dick, writhing and moaning and coming all over him.
Dallas snarled and let go, rolling her beneath him in a clumsy move unworthy of his supposed skill. He had to wrench her hips back toward the edge of the bed and push one of her legs up to his shoulder. Half her hair ended up under one palm, pinning her in place as he found his footing and slammed into her. "Feel it. Feel us. Fuck, Lex, feel me."
Her fingernails dug into his lower back as she gripped him just as clumsily and arched her back, her skin hot under his. "Declan!"
His name, stripping him bare. Raw. Tenderness and rage. Pleasure and pain. He couldn't separate them anymore when she said his name, so he claimed her mouth in a rough kiss to keep her from saying it again--to keep himself from begging her to say it again--and fucked them both into screaming, clenching release.
Lex rode it, clinging to him until her shaking subsided into trembling. Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and held him close, brushing a kiss to his temple. Too much of his weight was resting on her body, and he had to move. He had to.
Damned if he wanted to, though, and the legs and arms tangled around him didn't help. "I'm gonna crush you."
"No." Her arms tightened. "I like this."
He chuckled against her ear. "We're hanging half off the bed, woman."
"Good point." She shoved at his shoulders with a laugh. He hauled himself upright and somehow found the energy to drag her along.
It wasn't until they were both collapsed on the bed that he realized the lights were still on. "Fuck. Sector Two is an evil damn place, but I do miss those voice-activated lights right about now."
"You owe me one." She bit his shoulder and slid off the bed. He watched her cross the room, reveling in those last few moments of admiring her flushed skin and vivid ink before the room plunged into darkness.
Moments later, the mattress dipped again, and she crawled up beside him. Hooking an arm around her, he dragged her into his side with a satisfied sigh. "I'll make it up to you, love."
"I know you will."
His mind should have been cluttered. He should have been staring blindly up into the darkness, running through the eventualities. Marshaling his forces. Making plans he'd have to abandon tomorrow, because no one as exhausted as he was should be making decisions, only he never knew how to make the thinking stop.
Fast, dirty sex and a sleepy Lex snuggled at his side seemed to be the secret. He only wanted to work on one plan before giving in to sleep--his plan to talk Lex into exchanging her collar for something a lot more permanent.
Feel it. Feel us. Fuck, Lex--
"So then I decided I didn't care, and something about forgiveness and permission and which is easier, and you are not listening to me at all." Noelle shoved a wooden dresser out of the way with a little grunt of effort, endangering a precariously balanced stack of chairs. "This is ridiculous. I know Dallas is busy, but Jas says the new storerooms have been built for years."
Lex forced her mind back to the task at hand and steadied the swaying chairs. "Sorry, I'm being a dick."
Noelle waved one hand with a little pfft. "You're daydreaming. Not the same thing."
No good answer to that--nothing that wouldn't make her sound like a kid with a crush, anyway. "Furniture for Six, right?"
"Yes. Bren moved her into a room of her own before he left, but it's... Well, sparse is being kind." Noelle's brow furrowed as she studied the dresser. "I tried to talk her into
picking out her own furniture, but that made her freeze up. She keeps saying she's fine with what she has, but she's lying. She's just scared to ask for anything."
Somehow, that possibility managed to perplex Dallas as much as Noelle. "She's having trouble believing hard work and loyalty can be enough. She thinks being an O'Kane woman has to mean selling sex, whether you want to or not."
Noelle's frown deepened. "I remember the feeling, but you and Dallas cleared it up pretty fast for me. Is where she's from so much worse than here?"
"I lived in Three for a while, way back before Wilson Trent took over." The early days, not long after the bombing that had crippled the sector. "I got the hell out as fast as I could."
"God." Noelle shivered and leaned against the dresser. "She breaks my heart, Lex. I caught her looking at a couple of the books Jas got me and offered to lend her one, but I don't know if she can even read. No one's ever taught or given her anything. Maybe I wasn't loved, but at least I was fed and educated."
"Shh." Lex caught a lock of Noelle's hair, wrapped it around her finger, and rubbed it soothingly against the other woman's cheek. "That's why Dallas brought her here. What we'll do for her."
Noelle leaned into Lex's hand with a shaky sigh. "That's what I was saying before, about asking forgiveness. I made Jasper let me into the closet where Dallas stores all the tech. He has a ton of broken tablets in there, and I think I can get one working. If it reads the books to her, maybe she can follow along and learn without feeling self-conscious."
"It'll be fine. And if he gives you shit about it, you send him to me, okay?"
"All right." Noelle dropped a kiss to the inside of Lex's wrist before straightening. "Honestly, I think I make her nervous. After the first day, I let Rachel handle her and left her alone. But this is something I can do to help." Her lips twisted wryly. "And I kind of like it. Is that crazy?"
Even Lex's eyes were burning from the dust, and she was used to far less immaculate surroundings than Noelle. "You like helping, or digging around in this junk?"
"It's not all junk." Wiggling between a desk and a dresser, Noelle laid her hand on an intricately carved headboard, the one piece in the immediate area that Lex would have picked out as extremely valuable--under the dirt. "They're so scornful of anything pre-Flare in Eden, but some of this stuff is just breathtaking. It's from a time when things didn't have to be purely functional. They could be art, too."
"Plenty of artisans left in the sectors," Lex observed. "If there's something you want, take it. If you can't find it, Dallas will get it."
Noelle stroked the high post on the headboard, her gaze wistful. "But isn't it a little sad for so many beautiful things to be tossed on top of one another in here? Why does Dallas keep them?"
Because his mother would have kicked his ass for being wasteful, for not clinging to every single resource that came his way--just in case. "Because he might need them someday. If we can't use it ourselves, maybe we can barter with someone who wants it. All this dusty shit is currency."
Nodding thoughtfully, Noelle turned to survey the room. But her gaze was unfocused, and her next words were a whisper. "I'm almost afraid to ask how you really are. You seem happy...but you went back to Two. Was it hard?"
Lex tensed, afraid of the answer that would come if she didn't force herself to choose her words carefully. "It sucked, and I never want to do it again. But I'll have to. It's part of the deal."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
Honestly, she'd rather chew glass. But this was Noelle, who cared so much. "I saw my sister. She's happy--I think. I don't know."
Noelle finally turned to look at her, and she saw a hint of understanding there. "It's hard to imagine people you care about being happy in a place that was killing your soul."
"Shit, it wouldn't even be a thing, except..." Lex ran her finger around the fluted edge of a delicate, dusty vase. "How can you tell what's real in a place like that?"
"I don't know," she admitted. "Maybe nothing is. But that's what the people in Eden say about the sectors."
"Yeah."
Noelle smiled faintly. "Everyone in Two can't be horrible, can they?"
Lex could still see the way Avery's patron had stroked her hair, the protective way he'd tried to edge between her and the possibility of pain. "No. And there are shitty people here in Four. The real question is whether it's the assholes who are in charge, right?"
Noelle pressed herself against Lex's back and wrapped both arms around her waist in a firm hug. "There's an asshole in charge here, but since the woman sleeping with him has been daydreaming about him all morning, I've decided to forgive him."
Lex's cheeks heated in a fierce blush. "Fuck you."
"Right here, in all the dust?" Noelle's chuckle tickled Lex's neck. "No, thank you. Maybe later, so the boys can watch and be jealous."
Lex turned to face her. "Dallas is...Dallas. Even when he's being insufferable, he's still one of the best people I've ever met. You'd have to be an idiot not to love him at least a little."
"I could love him a little," Noelle agreed. "But I love you more, so I reserve the right to be pissed off at him whenever he upsets you." She made a face. "And to get in screaming fights with Jasper about it, too."
The thought of her getting defensive on Lex's behalf was as adorable as it was unnecessary. "Don't--for Jasper's sake. He'd never get any peace. That's just me and Dallas. Damn near how we've always been."
"So he says," she murmured as her cheeks turned pink. "And don't underestimate him. Jasper can get his own peace when he wants it."
So that's how it was. "Well, then. Feel free to fight with him. Just be sure and invite us next time."
Pink brightened damn near to scarlet as Noelle laughed. "Stop teasing. And stop giving me ideas, or maybe I'll reconsider all the dust."
"No, you won't, because we're on a mission." Lex dragged a length of canvas off a square shape. "She'll need a nightstand. And someplace to keep her clothes."
"And a desk." Noelle pivoted back toward the headboard they'd unearthed. "Maybe a couch and a couple of chairs. And a nice bed. Or is that too fancy? Will she think we're trying to force her to owe us a favor?"
"Probably not." As far as Six was concerned, they could force her to do anything they wanted, anytime--and favors likely weren't high on the list of what she expected them to demand. "But it could embarrass her."
"Okay. Nice quality, but understated." She pointed to a solid mahogany dresser built in plain, clean lines. "Stuff like that, maybe?"
"Perfect."
Noelle grinned and started moving dusty cushions off the piece. "So here's the real question. I bet you and I could move all the furniture on our own...but I do so love watching Jasper lift heavy things. Is that wrong?"
You've created a monster. Dallas's voice, amused and a little hungry, but Lex could hear it like he was standing right beside her.
Noelle had taken to life in Sector Four fast, and it would break her heart to realize the truth about Six. The girl had a hard road ahead of her, assuming she ever learned to trust any of them. "Better idea. We'll have Jas and Bren do the work, and we'll drag Six along to watch with us."
Maybe she had created a monster, because Noelle arched both brows. "No Dallas?"
As if Lex needed the show--or the reminder of what he did to her concentration and self-control. She bumped Noelle's hip with her own. "You're bad. If you want to hear filthy details, all you have to do is ask."
"I always want to hear the filthy details. How else am I supposed to get ideas?"
"You could take him for a ride yourself." Lex mimicked her raised brows and innocent look. "Dallas and Jasper have been known to tag team on occasion."
"Tag team..." Her eyes went even wider. "You mean like Mad and Ace at that party the night before the blackout? Like, both at the same time?"
"Something like that." Judging by her expression, she was trying to imagine it--hard.
After a long moment of consideration that
prompted another adorable blush, Noelle wet her lips. Her imagination had expanded, but Lex could still tell when she was struggling to force her vocabulary to keep up. "Maybe they should both fuck you first so I can watch and decide if it's too much for me." She grinned suddenly. "Or just watch."
"Yeah, good luck sneaking that one past Dallas," Lex muttered, then explained, "He's in possessive-caveman mode at the moment."
Noelle hesitated. "Is that bad? I can't tell if you think that's bad."
Because she hadn't decided herself yet. "Here's the thing about men, honey. Sometimes, they're at their most possessive when they think you might walk. But let 'em settle down a while, they loosen that grip, and everyone's happy. Does that make sense?"
"Maybe. I think Jasper would let another guy touch me, but I don't think that makes him less possessive. It's not about sharing. It's just about getting me off. He'll use whips, cuffs, toys...Ace." Her sudden smile was lazily content and faraway. "He'll do anything if he thinks I want it."
Now who was daydreaming? "Yeah, okay. Eyes on the prize, sunshine. You may love the musty smell of all this dirty old shit, but I'm starting to itch."
"You can go," Noelle said quickly, waving her hand toward the dresser. "I can find stuff that matches that and round up Bren and Jas, now that I know what I'm looking for."
"I'd rather help." It would keep her mind off fucking Dallas O'Kane.
Literally.
Six
It wasn't until they were standing across from each other, seconds from throwing their first punches, that Six realized she'd missed Bren.
She'd expected to miss things about him. The security he represented, for starters, both physical and mental. Bren had never been gentle with her, not from that first moment, when he'd wrestled her into submission and shoved a gag between her teeth at Dallas's orders. But he hadn't been rough, either, just been blandly impersonal and efficient. The honesty in that detached competence had soothed her in a way none of Dallas's soft-spoken promises of safety ever could.