Beyond Pain

by Kit Rocha

  A home, if she was brave enough to believe in it. A home no one could take away from her.

  Not even Bren.

  Rachel

  The last person she expected to barge in on inventory day was Cruz.

  She blinked up at him, setting aside her clipboard as she fought to cover her suddenly galloping heartbeat with nonchalance. "Can I help you?"

  His expression was just as bland, though he looked rough around the edges. "Someone said the medkit was in here."

  Her nervousness slipped away in the face of a potential emergency. "It is. What happened?"

  "Nothing bad," he assured her quickly, then pulled up his shirt to reveal the chiseled muscles of his abdomen--and a large bandage. "Need to change this."

  Rachel peeled back the edge of the bandage and winced. It was a nice-sized slice, one that had been neatly but inexpertly sutured. What concerned her was the blazing heat of his reddened skin. "What did you do, sew this up yourself?"

  His long pause was answer enough, but he clearly felt her disapproval because he tried to justify it. "We're stretched thin, trying to clear those roads."

  "It's not so dire you can't spare ten minutes," she protested. "A little gel, and I could have had you fixed right up. Now, you'll need antibiotics."

  She could almost hear him grinding his teeth. "Then I'll take the antibiotics."

  It stung. Had he cared so little for his own well-being that he'd neglected to care for a simple cut, or had he needed so desperately to avoid her that he'd decided to chance infection?

  She jerked open the cabinet and pulled out the medical case. "If you need med-gel, you don't have to come to me. You can get it from Dallas's office."

  He reached out to brace the heavy box for her. "His office wasn't any closer."

  "Then I really don't understand." She unzipped the case and snatched up a bottle of antiseptic. "Don't you give a shit?"

  "I wasn't trained to give a shit. I was trained to stay alive long enough to get the job done, and deal with the consequences later." His arms flexed as he dragged his shirt over his head and tossed it aside. "It worked better when I had access to a regen lab."

  Remorse stabbed at her. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, dabbing at the cut. "We don't have the same kind of resources around here. You'll have to be more careful."

  He didn't flinch, didn't give any indication her touch hurt, though it must have. "I know. I didn't mean to upset you."

  Such perfect control. But she'd seen a different side of him, felt him tremble beneath her hands and mouth when that control had failed him. There, in the dark, for those few stolen moments, he'd been hers.

  Not that it mattered now.

  She tried not to stare at the muscled expanse of his abdomen as she struggled to find an innocuous answer. "I'm not upset," she said finally. "You're the one who gets a needle to the ass cheek now."

  That got his attention. All those glorious muscles tensed as he jerked back. "A what?"

  "A shot. The antibiotics that were no big deal a minute ago?" She capped the antiseptic and reached for a single-use gel applicator. "If you're worried about flashing your ass at me, don't be. It's nothing I haven't already seen."

  It should have flustered him. A month ago it would have, but now his eyes narrowed in what looked like suspicion. "You still use needles to administer antibiotics?"

  "Oh, for Christ's--" Rachel bit her tongue. "Yes. Yes, we do."

  His lips twitched. "If it helps, all the doctors hated me. I'm not a biddable patient."

  "No shit." A laugh bubbled up and, for a moment, it was as if nothing had changed. They were just two people, laughing at each other and themselves, discovering one breath at a time what it meant to be special to someone.

  But it was an illusion. Because of her, things were different, and they couldn't go back. So she swallowed her laughter, fell silent, and busied herself with squeezing the med-gel onto his wound in a thin, careful line.

  She'd almost regained her composure when he shattered it. "Ace says I owe you an apology."

  Oh God, she couldn't handle the thought of them sitting around, talking about her. She'd have expected both men to have the common courtesy to pretend she'd never happened--to either of them. "Ace says a lot of things."

  He caught her hand, his fingers folding around hers, enclosing them. Trapping them. "This is important. And more about me than you."

  He was always so cautious, the sheer heat and size of him only highlighting the tenderness of his touch. "Cruz--"

  He exhaled roughly. "I came out of Eden with some twisted ideas about sex and how to treat a woman when you want her to know you respect her. You got the worst of it."

  Her throat ached. "You didn't hurt me. That's not--"

  "Just let me finish." He touched her chin, tilted her head back. "I had a lot of stupid, bullshit ideas about right and wrong. I was acting like you were too pure to fuck, even though all I could think about was getting inside you and getting you off. I was a bastard."

  She exhaled. It was all she could manage with him touching her, gazing at her--and casually talking about how much he wanted to fuck her. He'd always been considerate, a true gentleman--and the bit of careful distance his strict sense of decorum provided was the only thing that had ever allowed her to keep her head around him.

  How the hell was she supposed to do that with him talking dirty to her?

  When she didn't respond, he rubbed his knuckle along her jawline. A soft brush, but devastating when combined with the serious look in his eyes. "I wanted to be a hero, but there aren't any heroes out here, are there?"

  The tightness in her throat migrated to her chest, and she pulled his hand away from her face. "If this place changes you, it should be because you're waking up. Not because someone else said you were wrong."

  His laugh was tinged with something she'd never heard from him before: darkness. "I woke up all on my own, it just took a while. If it'd been Ace's doing, this apology would have happened a long time ago."

  Yeah, Ace moved fast--when he wanted to.

  Rachel looked away. "Apology accepted."

  Cruz was silent for so long that she might have suspected he'd left, if his presence hadn't prickled over her skin with constant, tantalizing heat. "Do you want me to find someone else to stab my ass?" he asked.

  "That's stupid." She reached for the vial and a syringe. "Turn around."

  She was left staring at the broad, chiseled expanse of his back as his belt clicked, and his pants sagged, dipping lower and lower and dragging her gaze with them.

  His ass was as perfect as the rest of him, of course. She'd seen some beautiful men--the gang was fucking full of them--but something about the way Cruz carried himself elevated that beauty to damn near supernatural levels.

  He had an awareness of his body that spoke of his complete control, as if he never made a move or a sound without meaning to. So when she touched the small of his back to hold him still, his quick, indrawn breath hit her like a rough caress.

  Jesus Christ. She wanted to keep going, see where else she could touch him to elicit more gasps, so she administered the injection and stepped back. "All done."

  Even when he hauled his pants up, they still settled low on his hips, inviting her gaze to linger on the intriguing play of muscle under his skin. "Thank you, Rachel."

  "You're welcome."

  Cruz turned, still fastening his pants, only to freeze when his gaze fell on her. "Hey. You okay?"

  "No." Every time she thought she had her feet under her, something happened to send her spinning again. "I mean, yeah. No worries."

  He stepped close, crowding into her space. He took up too much room, but he didn't touch her. He studied her, his expression impossible to decipher. "Worrying about you is my right, isn't it? That's what the ink means."

  He sounded like Ace, and it pissed her off. "Well, that depends. Are you worrying because you care? Or do you do it so you can say how noble and giving you are, looking out for me when there
's no reward?"

  Two steps. He took two fucking steps and had her back against the shelves, his hands on either side of her head, his face hovering over hers. "I've always cared, and that didn't stop just because you decided you were done with me. You can be pissed at Ace for being Ace, but you don't get to pretend you couldn't have me any fucking time you wanted."

  "I'm not done," she ground out. He was too big, too close--too everything. "I was trying not to hurt you."

  He laughed, like she'd said the funniest thing in the world.

  Tears stung her eyes. "I'm glad that I amuse you."

  "Life amuses me," he corrected, but his gaze softened as he cupped her cheek. "He's trying not to hurt you, you're trying not to hurt me, and all I want is to protect you both."

  She couldn't bring herself to move away, so she closed her eyes and spoke past the lump in her throat. "Save it for Ace. He needs it more."

  "Does he?" His thumb brushed her lower lip before pressing hard enough to coax her lips apart.

  She reacted out of instinct. Her tongue touched the rough pad of his thumb, and she opened her eyes in time to see him lowering his mouth to hers.

  He stopped, so close she could feel his heat. "You should tell me to go, because I'm done protecting you from myself."

  Rachel took a deep breath, but all she managed to do was draw in his scent. His breath. It wasn't fair that she still wanted him to kiss her, just plain wanted him, after all that had happened.

  "Ace," she whispered, a warning and a reminder. "You two seem happy together."

  His brow furrowed. "We're not together."

  "Bullshit."

  "We're partners."

  "You're more." Someone else should have had to break it to him, someone without painful ties to both him and Ace. "I see it. So does everyone else."

  His expression didn't change beyond the slightest tightening around his eyes, but she was close enough to sense his sudden tension. "Not everything is about fucking."

  It hurt. With only a few words, he'd managed to belittle so much--her perceptions and jealousy, Ace's affections, and maybe even his own feelings. What it meant to be an O'Kane, and all the ways they could care about one another, ways that could never be reduced to fucking.

  Her throat burned, but she bit back her angry words and gave him ice instead. "You were right. You should go."

  He opened his mouth, but it wasn't his voice she heard. It was Ace's, echoing from just beyond the door. "Cruz, where the fuck are you?"

  Cruz lunged away, but even his reflexes weren't fast enough. He'd barely snatched up his shirt when Ace rounded the corner. "I told Gia we'd pick up her payment..."

  He stopped and stared at Rachel, his gaze tracking over her flushed cheeks, but she knew he hadn't missed Cruz's disarray, either. Shirtless, his belt hanging open--

  It looked bad. But the worst part was feeling like she'd come between them, and this was all her fault.

  Cruz started to speak, but Ace lifted a hand. "I hope she kissed it all better, brother, because we've got twice as many stops tonight with half the men over in Three."

  She'd heard him fake cheerful before, but never with this much manic intensity, as if his life depended on the two of them buying his lighthearted, breezy words.

  She couldn't look at him.

  Chapter Twelve

  With the roads cleared, the trip across the border and into Three took half the time, not to mention half the attention.

  No longer having to dodge debris, Bren guided his motorcycle into the heart of the sector. There, with fewer stone walls to magnify its rumble into an echoing roar, the engine sounded almost quiet. Tranquil, a sharp contrast to the lingering destruction surrounding them. At one time, these streets had housed the factories and shipping warehouses that made Sector Three a power to be reckoned with. Now, crumbling brick and dusty, pitted concrete were giving way to the grass pushing up through the wreckage.

  He pulled to a stop next to the squat building Six had described. "Is this it?"

  "Yeah." She slid from the bike and nodded to the corner. "Around this way."

  Her apartment was underground, straight down two flights of cracked cement steps and hidden behind a padlocked steel door. There were no windows Bren could see, nothing but gloomy shadows and darkness, despite the early hour.

  "Doesn't look like anyone's broken into it," she said, lifting the undamaged padlock. "How good are you at picking locks?"

  The ancient lock in her hand was sturdy but simple. He tugged the small set of picks out of his back pocket and slipped a tension wrench and a small hook free of the case. "It might take me a minute."

  She took the case from him and shifted aside before running a finger over the S-rake pick. "These are really nice. I bet you can get into anything."

  "They come in handy." He turned the tension wrench a little and flicked the hook across the pins inside the lock. "Only three pins."

  He cocked his head as he worked, listening for the telltale clicks as he set one pin, then another. With the final click, he turned the wrench and the lock fell open.

  "Damn." Six took the tools from him and slipped them back in the case. "If you ever get bored with cleaning guns while I watch, you could open locks instead."

  "I'll remember that." Bren slid the lock free, but this door wasn't his to open. "After you?"

  Six drew in a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and dragged open the creaky steel door.

  Inside was pitch black. Six flicked on the flashlight he'd given her and swung it toward the wall a few steps inside. "If the wires to the solar panels are still in place..." She flipped a circuit breaker, and lights flickered on.

  Christmas lights.

  They were everywhere, tacked to the walls and running across the ceiling, mostly cheap white bulbs mixed with a few strings of color that started to fade in and out as they warmed up. The strings illuminated a snug room just big enough for a mattress piled high with blankets and pillows, a coffee table, a couple of rickety chairs, and a few cluttered shelves.

  "It's silly." Six poked one of the dead bulbs in a string of lights draped by the door. "But they were pretty cool when I was a kid."

  They still were, because they reminded him of her--tiny glows in the darkness, determined but struggling. "I like it."

  "So, this is it." She sat on the edge of the mattress and leaned forward to run a hand along the bottom surface of the coffee table. "I think everything's still here."

  "Doesn't look like it's been ransacked..." His words trailed off as she pulled out a wad of cash bound by tape. "When were you last here?"

  "A couple months before Trent threw me to you guys. I haven't lived here full time in a few years, though. Even after I started running with Trent, I liked knowing I had somewhere to go." She waved the cash. "Somewhere to stash things."

  Someplace safe. "Lex did the same thing in the early days. Drove Dallas nuts."

  She tilted her head and studied him. "Would it drive you nuts? Knowing this place is here?"

  "If you kept it, you mean?" So tempting to give her the easy answer, the one she probably wanted to hear. "A little, but not because you shouldn't have your own space. If you needed it to be away from the O'Kanes."

  After another silent moment, she nudged aside the coffee table and reached for his hand. "Come here for a second."

  It skirted dangerously close to we have to talk. "Shit, what did I do?"

  "Shut up and come here."

  At least she was laughing. Bren dropped to the closest chair and wrapped his fingers around hers. "What is it?"

  She shifted to her knees in front of him, her gaze suddenly intense. "Lex talked to me about joining. I mean, she didn't flat-out offer me ink, but...she asked if I was ready." Six exhaled. "And I told her I was."

  He quelled his reflexive relief and took a deep breath. "Ink is for life, Six. Are you sure you're ready for that?"

  "I don't know," she admitted softly. "I don't think anyone can know. But she wanted me
, Bren. And not to sling drinks or give you a friendly place to stick your dick. Lex believes we can be more than some guy's bitch. I still don't get Dallas, but I'll follow her into hell for that."

  She might never understand Dallas, or realize that everything his queen did was because he had her back. But Lex was O'Kane, just as much as Dallas was, and if Six could trust in her...

  That was enough. "Congratulations, sweetness."

  "Yeah?" She lunged upwards, sliding astride his lap fast enough to rock the rickety chair back and threaten a total collapse. "Don't speak too soon. Lex said I could switch from bartending to bouncing, as soon as you think I can handle it."

  He'd have to teach her how to move drunken assholes twice her size with pain instead of leverage, but she'd be good at it. Protective, attentive. Smart. "Sounds right up your alley, if you ask me."

  Her eyes lit up, and she wound her arms around his neck before pressing her forehead to his. "You sure you don't mind sharing your home and your family with me?"

  His. She still thought of it all that way, and it was time for that to end. "Until I took these cuffs, none of it was mine, either. You're a little late to the party, that's all."

  Six laughed, tightened her fingers on the back of his head, and kissed him.

  Slow and soft, so sweet that he felt clumsy for the first time as he wrapped his arms around her waist. It hit him square in the gut--the kiss of a woman opening up, not just to him, but to a world of possibility.

  She caught his lower lip between her teeth, then released him to whisper against the corner of his mouth. "I never brought a boy here, you know. I never brought anyone here. You're the first to see all of me."

  A gift, greater than any control she'd ever given him over her body. "Thank you."

  "Mmm." She kissed her way up his jaw, stopping to feather a kiss over his earlobe. "Wanna screw around? Over the clothes only."

  The tiny caress splintered through him. "No fucking?" he asked lazily.