Beyond Pain

by Kit Rocha

  She hadn't, not once all night. "Got a summons. I have a meeting this morning, and you've got one this afternoon."

  That brought her eyes open fully. Clutching the blanket to her chest, she twisted into a seated position. "What kind of meeting?"

  "To talk about Sector Three, I suppose." He finished assembling his rifle and nestled it into its case. "Debriefing."

  Her gaze was fixed on his hands. "Huh?"

  "A meeting." Her distraction was blatant--and adorable. "I have other guns I can clean, if you want to watch."

  She slipped from the bed and crossed the room, his blanket still crushed to her chest and trailing the floor behind her. "You put it together without even looking."

  "Mmm. It was my first. Had it close to twenty years now."

  Her finger brushed the edge of the case, but her hair had spilled over her shoulder, hiding her expression. "It fits you. Graceful and deadly."

  He pulled her around the edge of the table and into his lap, spinning her so that the blanket wrapped around her first. "Sounds scary when you say it like that."

  "Not to me." After a moment of awkward stiffness, she leaned into him, resting her forehead on his jaw. "Because you've got my back."

  "Yeah." It helped to soothe him. This was a place of power, of control. He couldn't change the past, but she'd invited him to protect her now.

  She turned her face to his neck, and her breath tickled his skin. "You saw my back."

  "I did."

  "Some of it's old. It wasn't all Trent."

  "No?"

  He felt her shake her head, take a breath, and let it out again. Then she changed the subject. "How many guns do you have left to clean?"

  "Fourteen." But he made no move toward any of them. "I was born in Eden, but not in the city proper. In the underground. I don't have a number, the barcode on my wrist was faked, and my name isn't Brendan Donnelly. I don't know what it is, or if I ever had one, really."

  "Oh." Six slipped a hand from the blankets and ghosted a finger over the black box on his wrist, where Ace had filled in his barcode all those years ago. "I thought there weren't slums in Eden."

  If only. "There are slums everywhere, sweetness. Even in Eden. Another dirty little secret."

  She touched the tattoo again. "My father had seven wives. He learned my brothers' names, but he mostly called us girls by whatever order we came out. Some of my little sisters never got real names at all."

  "I'm sorry." His own story couldn't compare to that. At least it wasn't his family who'd left him nameless, but the loose network of outcasts beneath the city. "It worked out for me. I survived, and then Cooper plucked me up."

  "Cooper?"

  "Neal Cooper, retired military police. He--" Words didn't exist to explain Coop's unwavering honesty to people used to lies. The matter-of-fact kindness where only cruelty was expected. "He takes care of lost things, people who've been thrown away."

  Six twined her fingers with his. "I'm sorry you were thrown away. Whoever did it was stupid."

  "Desperate," he corrected. "And it doesn't matter. The hardest shit in my life came early, and I didn't know any better. It just was, and I got through it."

  "Everyone's desperate," she whispered. "Everywhere but here. You don't understand how stupid I am. All this tech you have? The running water, the electricity? This is what I imagined Eden was like."

  There were places in the sectors that defined wasteland, where the land beyond the borders, out in the wilderness, was a less forbidding place to live. "You aren't stupid. Life here in Sector Four's pretty damn posh. Dallas keeps it that way."

  She huffed in amusement. "No, I'm a little stupid. Girls don't need to read on the farms in Six and Seven. I was just gonna be some old guy's eighth or ninth wife."

  "Uneducated is one thing. It means you can learn. Stupid means you can't, even when someone gives you the chance."

  "I guess." Her lips brushed his throat, over his pulse. "I know I'm not really stupid, but sometimes I feel that way. Like it doesn't matter if I can learn, I'll never do it fast enough to catch up with everyone else."

  Bren had seen burly men--tough men--reduced to tears at the prospect of trials and changes smaller than the ones she'd endured. "You'll be all right, that's a promise. Have I ever lied to you?"

  "No."

  "And I won't. Even if what I have to say is hard."

  "I know." Her laughter tickled his skin. "You're my favorite of all the people who've ever kidnapped me."

  It was sweet, in a sad, twisted sort of way--which pretty much described both of them perfectly. "You're absolutely my favorite person I've ever kidnapped."

  Six eased her hand from his, only to slide it up his arm and over his shoulder. Her nails pricked his skin. "You're good at fucking, aren't you?"

  Bren had never been one for conversational niceties like graceful segues, but her subject change was so abrupt he blinked. "I don't suck at it. People come."

  When she lifted her head, the early morning light revealed her flushed cheeks. "I don't know how to do this. I've never wanted to encourage someone to try to fuck me before."

  She was so nervous he couldn't tease her. Instead, he brushed her tangled hair out of her face. "We fucked last night. I didn't put my dick in your pussy, but trust me. We fucked."

  That tiny furrow appeared as she processed the words, adding the information to whatever mental file she was building. "Then how do I tell you that I want that? Your dick inside me? There should be a word."

  His body tightened as he imagined her husky voice tripping over the possibilities. "My dick inside you, yeah. Or I could say I want you to ride me, show me how you like it. Hard and fast, or just hard. Or maybe you like it soft and easy, but I don't think so."

  She scratched her nails down his arm, leaving a kiss of pain in their wake. "I don't know what I like best. I hate not knowing."

  "You haven't been ready." Her touch shivered up his spine. "Are you now?"

  Her answer held no hesitation, no doubt. "Yes."

  The morning sunlight streamed through the window, catching the hints of red in her hair and gilding her skin. It was enough to wash out the scars, but Bren slipped his hand under the blanket to rest in the middle of her back, over the soft, raised skin. "Tonight," he said finally. "You think about it today, what you might like, and you can tell me about it tonight. Then we'll find out."

  Chapter Seven

  Lex held her meeting in the room typically reserved for Dallas and his men. Tucked away on the second floor of the Broken Circle, the conference room was dominated by a long wooden table ringed with padded chairs. A leather-upholstered seat impressive enough to qualify as a throne sat at the head of the table--Dallas's usual chair.

  For the moment, it belonged to Lex. Noelle and Rachel sat on either side of her, passing one of Noelle's fancy tablets back and forth as they discussed something about a brewing business Rachel's family ran in the city. Six had ended up in the chair next to Noelle by virtue of being herded into it like a helpless kitten.

  Two other women rounded out the group--Trix, looking as sleekly beautiful as ever, even without being dressed for tips, and Jade, the only other non-O'Kane in the room. Where Trix was pink-cheeked, with the sorts of curves Six envied, Jade looked strung out and half-dead. Which had been mostly true.

  Shivering, Six forced her attention back to Lex. She'd take another year under Wilson Trent's thumb before one week drugged into obedience as Jade had been. Bad enough to know you were likely to die if you walked away, but to lose control of your mind...

  Ten years of Trent's shit would be better than that.

  "Our sources in Eden were clear," Lex was saying. "No one on the council gave two shits about Gareth Woods when he was alive, and they're kinda glad he's dead. But they'll be on the lookout for trouble now, and if they find it, things won't be pretty."

  "The corrupt will be seeing to their own protection," Jade mumbled in a voice as hollow and pale as her expression. "Perhaps that wi
ll serve as a distraction."

  "And the devout are probably busy feeling smug," Noelle said, rolling her eyes. "Unfortunately, distraction never lasts with them. Not when they smell money."

  Lex lit a cigarette and tossed her lighter on the table. "Which is why we're in disaster cleanup mode in Three. No new ventures means no new profits, and that's fine with me and Dallas. Especially if it keeps Eden off our asses for a while."

  This was Six's moment to speak up, and for once she knew exactly what she wanted to say. "Maybe you should fix up the bar first. If you give 'em a glimpse of what things could be like, people will come to you. Faster than if you try to use words, anyway."

  "Okay, then. You and Bren can oversee that."

  That easy, like Six was really one of them and Lex trusted her to get the job done. It was tempting to leave it at that, but a glance at Noelle's overly encouraging expression gave her another idea. "You said all the furniture you gave me was leftover stuff. Does Dallas need all of it?"

  "No." Lex tilted her head. "Why, you want to trade it off over in Three?"

  "People aren't going to trust help," Six explained. "Not if you just give it to them. And if you tell them to come to you with problems, they won't trust that either. But an exchange will make sense to them. They point out problems and get something in return."

  "We'll arrange transport." Lex jotted a note on the paper in front of her. "Be sure you run the inventory by Dallas before you take it." She paused and tapped her pen on the table. "Any problems we need to know about, or is it all standard stuff?"

  Six hesitated, tracing one finger along the edge of the table. "Maybe this isn't my place..." she said finally. "But are you thinking of recruiting any women from Three?"

  "Straight out of the gate? Hell, no." Lex leaned back in her chair. "But I'm listening."

  For a silent moment she studied the queen of Sector Four, the woman who so easily held the position Trent had offered Six all those years ago. He'd sworn he needed a partner, and she'd fallen in love with the idea of being more than a vicious street kid. She'd imagined being a leader, a woman strong enough to protect the kids who weren't as tough as she was.

  Scarlet had warned her not to fall for Trent's bullshit, and Six had reacted like the immature idiot she'd been, accusing the woman of jealousy and ulterior motives. Of wanting to keep Six as one of her pretty little pets.

  Only one of them had turned out to be a decent leader, and it hadn't been Six. If Lex was going to pull Three out of the rubble, the best thing Six could do to help was step aside. "There's a woman you should meet. I know Three inside and out, but I'm tainted, as far as the people who hated Trent are concerned. They respect Scarlet."

  "Will she come here, or do we have to go to her?"

  Scarlet probably had the courage to walk into hell, but Six had a different reason for her answer. "I could use some help figuring out how to clean up the club. Maybe we could take care of both at once, someday soon?"

  Lex nodded and turned to Noelle. "How's the surveillance coming?"

  "Slowly," Noelle admitted, pulling another piece of tech in front of her. It was three times the size of the handheld tablet Noelle had given her, but the girl flicked her fingers over the surface with a speed that made Six dizzy, sending text zooming by as windows popped open and rearranged themselves as if by magic. "When you set me to tracking communications, I figured it wouldn't be that hard. I had no idea how much chatter goes back and forth between Eden and the sectors. I can record it, but even if I scan it all day, every day, I'll never have time to filter out what's important."

  Lex rubbed her temples. "All right. We'll add that to the list of shit that needs fixing. Maybe we can find someone."

  "Someone who can write code." Noelle settled back in her chair. "I can ask Mad to look at it, but I think he's more interested in the electronics. Hardware, not software. But maybe he'll know someone."

  This time it was easier for Six to speak up. "There's a guy in Three, one who can do anything with Eden's computers. Scarlet's already trying to find him for Bren."

  "Then we'll get a status update on that when we go meet that chick." Lex capped her pen and looked around. "Okay, that's it. Get out. Not you, Six."

  Six stiffened, even after Noelle smiled encouragingly. She and Rachel swept out with Trix lagging behind at Jade's slower pace. But too soon the door was swinging shut behind them, and Six was left clenching her hands together in her lap as Lex watched her.

  Finally, the woman spoke. "How was your trip?"

  "Okay." Surely Bren had told Dallas everything important, and Dallas would have passed it on to Lex. Though, for all she knew, that had included Bren getting her off in a warehouse. It wasn't like the O'Kanes were private about sex. "Did you wanna know about something specific?"

  Lex finished her cigarette before answering. "I lived in Three for a while, you know. Back before your time."

  She'd only heard that Lex had grown up in Two, which was supposed to be a fantasy heaven with luxuries almost as nice as the ones in Eden. "Probably wasn't much nicer back then, was it?"

  "It was a pit," she said flatly. "Are you okay?"

  Six could sense nothing beneath the words but honest concern, so she forced herself to relax. "I think so. It's still a pit, but the people who hurt me the most are dead."

  "You gonna be all right, having to go back again?"

  She almost said Bren won't let anything happen to me, but that was the easy answer. Her gut was certain that almost nothing in Eden or the sectors could get past Bren, but it was still almost.

  The deeper reason made that chance worth it. "You know how I got in trouble with Trent?"

  Lex shook her head and poured her a glass of water.

  It took two sips before Six could force out the truth. "I wanted to be you. Not you, but what you are. Trent convinced me he wanted that too."

  "I'm guessing he didn't."

  "Oh, sure he did. For a while." Water splashed over her wrist, and Six realized her hand was shaking. She set the glass down carefully. "I was young, but I didn't suck at getting shit done. He thought it was great until I started trying to clean up things he liked dirty."

  "Then it's a good thing he's dead, isn't it?" Sighing, Lex flipped her notebook shut and rose. "Some promises weren't meant to be broken. Trent should have known that."

  Maybe that was worse--when they didn't mean to break the promises. "Doesn't mean they don't get broken anyway."

  "True enough." Lex studied her face. "We don't want to draw attention to ourselves or Three, so we're gonna move slow. There'll be a lot of back-and-forth over the next few weeks. Day trips, overnights, that kind of thing."

  "All right." It was more or less what she'd expected, but what she couldn't have predicted was the low buzz of excitement. Lex hadn't laughed at her. She hadn't mocked the idea of Six being more than some guy's piece of ass. "I want to help. I really do."

  "I know. And you will."

  Six addressed the topic looming silently in the room. "And Bren's looking out for me. So I'll be fine."

  "He doesn't fail," Lex agreed. "I don't think he knows how."

  "Yeah." The words warmed her cheeks for no good reason, leaving Six to study her boots and try not to think about Bren and fucking and all the things they might be doing to each other in a few short hours.

  "Yeah," Lex echoed, gentle humor lacing her voice. "Dallas is sending Bren out with Cruz tonight. If you want to raid my closet while he's gone."

  Six had been in Lex's closet before, with Noelle, who'd blithely carried off a small fortune in silk drowning in lace and ruffles. Feeling awkward about the charity, Six had stuck to things that looked cheap--simple cotton pants, beat-up denim, and a couple of plain T-shirts.

  She had some clothes of her own now, things she'd paid for out of her slowly growing hoard of cash, but everything was so practical. Tonight, she wanted to feel powerful and sexual. And maybe she wanted to shake Bren's perfect self-control.

  Smiling, she
met Lex's eyes, not minding for once if the other woman read everything she was thinking. "Okay."

  Lex's humor grew into an answering smile, and she wrapped an arm around Six's shoulders as they headed for the door. "Okay."

  Cruz had been running with Ace for weeks, and it seemed to be working out well. So when Dallas pulled Cruz off the usual runs for a special assignment, Bren had anticipated a quick recon mission into Eden, or possibly across the hostile border into Sector Five.

  He didn't expect Cruz to point the car toward the wilderness at the outskirts of their own damn sector.

  He stared out the window into the darkness. "We got problems at the outer edge?"

  "Rumor is that someone's got a still up and running out here." Cruz seemed more relaxed than he'd been in years--since before he'd been pulled into the upper ranks of Special Tasks. Cruz had never coped well with moral ambiguity.

  And there was nothing ambiguous about distilling moonshine in Sector Four. If you made it, you'd damn well better be drinking it yourself, because selling it wasn't an option. Dallas let most everything else slide, but having someone else run liquor through his territory would cut into his profits, make it harder for him to take care of his sector.

  And the consequences were clear. Get caught once, he'd destroy your operation. Get caught again, he'd fuck you up good. Everyone knew it.

  But Cruz wasn't everyone. "You know what goes down if this turns out to be a repeat offender, right?" Bren asked.

  "I know." He flexed his fingers, as if in anticipation of a fight. "They had their warning. What happens next is on them."

  They lapsed into silence again. It wasn't new for them, but the tension was. They'd barely talked since Cruz's defection from the city, mostly because Bren had been responsible for it--and still carried the guilt. "How have you been doing?"

  "I'm okay. I'm..." A hesitation, and he caught Cruz glancing at his newly inked wrists. "I'm good, actually. I got something back that I thought I'd never have again."

  "A conscience clear enough to sleep at night?"