Before the End (Beyond Series Ultimate Glom Edition)

by Kit Rocha

  Dallas was a hell of a lot better at deception. Jasper could have almost believed his impatience and irritation as he checked his watch. "You sure you gave your driver the right address?"

  "He'll be here," Trent assured him. "Probably had to circle around because of a blocked street."

  "He'd best hurry his ass. I've got plans tonight that don't include dancing with the military police."

  "I don't think you have to worry about that, O'Kane."

  The big, blinking sign might as well have come with a klaxon horn. Jasper shifted his weight and crossed his arms over his chest. "You could head on back, Dallas. I'll stay to make the trade."

  Dallas checked his watch again and sighed. "Maybe I'll do that. You and Flash can handle the shipment."

  For a moment, Jasper thought Trent might break. Instead, he slammed his hand down on the table. "I don't send my men to do business for me, and I expect the same courtesy from you."

  Dallas didn't even crack a smile, just arched one eyebrow and gave Trent the opening he was dying for. "If it's that fucking important to you, go do your damn business and find out where the truck is."

  The man blinked, though it only took him a second to recover. "Yeah. Yeah, I should do that." He turned to the two men who'd accompanied him, brand-new faces Jasper had never seen before. "You boys stay here as a show of good faith. I'll be back in a minute."

  It was forced and overplayed, ridiculous in a dozen ways, not the least of which was that in the three years of their alliance, Jasper had never seen Trent take so much as a casual suggestion from Dallas without turning it into a pissing contest.

  Dallas held his annoyed expression. "Fine," he muttered, turning to study the two men Trent clearly intended to sacrifice. "Make it fast."

  Trent hesitated, as if fixing the scene of his triumph in his mind, then smiled. "Sure thing." He headed for the door, a shade too fast to be convincingly casual.

  The heavy steel slammed behind him with a clang, and Jasper counted off the seconds. One, two, three, with the fourth count splintered by the crack of a rifle shot.

  Dallas drew his handgun and leveled it at the man on the left. "That was your boss's head blowing out. Time to ask yourself whether he's worth dying over."

  The other man looked like he was going to make a move, so Jasper bared his teeth as he pulled his own pistols free of their holsters. "Don't."

  For a second, he thought it really would be that easy. But Trent's men only shared his lack of brains, not his lack of loyalty. The taller of the two kicked a chair toward Dallas and dove out of the way of his first bullet, drawing his gun as he moved. The shorter twisted his hand, and a knife flashed.

  The blade zipped through the air. Jasper spun and deflected the knife with his arm, wincing as the sharp edge glanced off skin with a shallow, wicked slice. The man already had another knife ready to throw, so Jasper put two shots in his chest and a third in his head.

  When he turned, Dallas was putting the man's partner down. The final shot echoed through the room, and Dallas glanced toward the door. "Think anyone else will come running? Or are the rest of them holed up somewhere, wondering why this place hasn't gone up yet?"

  "I'd go with the latter." Jasper put his pistols away and looked down at his arm. A steady stream of blood trickled from the cut, but it was slow enough not to worry him. "Think Trent was smart enough to have a backup plan?"

  "Not fucking likely, judging by how he played the rest of it." Dallas holstered his gun and nodded to Jasper's arm. "Do we need to bandage that?"

  "I'll get some gel on it. It'll be fine."

  "Let Noelle patch you up." Dallas grinned, and it held a feral edge. "I bet she'll kiss it all better."

  She'd been eager to suck his cock after a cage match. What would she be eager to do after a real fight? Jasper pushed through the door. "Should have let you get banged up a little, then."

  "I'll tell Lex I almost let some bastard shoot me. She'll beat me up and kiss it bet--" Dallas stopped cold at the sight of Bren--and Wilson Trent, bound and gagged on the cracked sidewalk. "What the fuck?"

  The man was only half-conscious, bleeding from one knee. From the livid marks around his throat, Bren had throttled him pretty good.

  The blond man blinked at Dallas now, then gestured to Trent. "Thought I'd take him back with us. He's someone else's kill."

  Dallas's confusion melted into narrow-eyed disbelief. "The girl?"

  Bren slipped a hunting knife from the sheath on his leg and dragged Trent's head back by his hair. "If it's a problem--"

  "No." Dallas waved the offer away. "Fuck, she earned it, if she wants it. If not, you clean up."

  Right on schedule, Flash pulled to a stop at the corner and climbed from behind the wheel of the truck. Three dead men, and a messy plot foiled. By the end of the night, word would spread through all eight sectors--Trent had tried to fuck Dallas, and now he was dead.

  Whether that would spell the end or the very beginning of their troubles was anyone's guess.

  Six

  The last time Six had seen Wilson Trent, she'd been bound and gagged, bruised and bloodied, her pride stripped away and her future in jeopardy.

  This moment had a certain symmetry, which was the first thing she'd found amusing in over a year. She lifted her gaze from the half-dead body to the man who'd brought him. Brendan Donnelly was solidly built, with just enough flesh over hard muscle to hide how much of it there was until he flexed, or wrestled you into submission, or dumped a six-foot man at your feet.

  He watched her, waiting for a reaction with an air of anticipation that had her shivering. "I don't understand. Does Dallas want me to kill him as a test of loyalty or something?" If so, it was a damn shitty one. Most of Trent's men would have stabbed him in the back for fun.

  The corner of Bren's mouth quirked up. "That'd be stupid. Dallas isn't stupid." He held out a knife, his fingers light on the blade and the handle pointing toward her. "I figure this one's yours, that's all."

  She could snatch it from his hand and sink it between his ribs. In her fantasies, at least--and maybe his, too, judging from the way he watched her sometimes, as if he liked the idea of her being as dangerous as he was.

  Fantasies were the only place she was dangerous. He'd stop her before she grazed the blade across his skin, but apparently he'd let her take that same knife and sink it into Wilson Trent's traitorous excuse for a heart.

  Still, she didn't reach for it. "No tricks?"

  "No tricks."

  Six nudged Trent's leg with her boot. "Untie him."

  Bren didn't move, only waved the knife at her. "You do it."

  She curled her fingers around the hilt. It was heavier than she'd expected, the blade itself nearly half a foot long. Trent choked out a muffled protest and squirmed back, and Six felt the first stirrings of satisfaction as she sliced through the ropes.

  Fear before death was too good for him. He'd taught her that there were worse things than fear. Things like hope. "Get up."

  "Fuck you," he rasped.

  She planted a boot in his side. "Get up, bastard. Get up and fight. I thought you liked hitting me."

  He lunged up on one knee and grabbed for the knife. Fast, but not fast enough. She slammed her knee into his face, reveling in the crunch of bone as his nose broke. "Take this," she snarled at Bren, thrusting the knife at him.

  "You sure?" But he was already reaching for the blade.

  "I'm sure."

  When Trent rocked up, she smashed her fist into his jaw. Pain splintered through her hand and up her arm, and she relished it. Relished the faint hope in Trent's eyes, as stupid and reckless as it was. He'd fixate on the fact that she was unarmed, see her as the victim he'd made her, and somewhere in his sick fucking skull, he'd think he had a chance.

  She'd beat the hope right back out of him, like he'd done to her, and then he could die.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Her heart in her throat, Noelle shoved through the door to Dallas's bedroom a
nd nearly moaned her relief at seeing Jasper on his feet, more or less whole. Bring the med kit to my room was all Dallas had told her before wheeling off in search of Lex, and the five minutes it had taken her to collect the first aid supplies and traverse the maze of corridors to the large suite had been among the longest in recent memory.

  But she was here now, and he was alive. "Jasper? Are you hurt?"

  He held up his arm. "It's nothing. Just a scratch."

  An odd piece of furniture sat a few feet in front of her, one that looked like two padded leather benches connected back-to-back, so they faced in opposite directions. She set the med kit down on the shared back and lifted the cover. "Sit and let me look at it. I'm not very good, but I know how to use gel and bandages."

  Instead, he slipped his hand into her hair and yanked her down for a rough kiss. The pounding of her heart shifted from fear to exhilaration as she slapped one hand on his shoulder to keep her balance.

  Even that didn't help when he dragged her into his lap and pressed the slim tube of healing gel into her hand. "This and you. That's what I need."

  She had to catch her breath as she twisted the top off the tube. "How did this happen?"

  Jasper growled. "Some bastard got this bright idea to blow Dallas up. We stopped him. Had a little bit of a fight, though."

  Her hand trembled, and it took another breath to steady it enough to apply the healing gel to the long, shallow cut. Blood had dried on his skin, bisecting the flesh left bare of ink, in some places looking like artwork of its own.

  "You all could have died," she whispered as the truth of that fact hit her hard in the gut. The cage fights, those were manufactured danger, violence in controlled form. Tonight had been real.

  "We smelled the trap," Jasper countered. "We had it, solid. No reason for you to worry."

  She frowned. "You're bleeding."

  "That happens more often than you'd think out here."

  "Then I get to worry if I want to." She dropped the gel back into the kit and found a precut bandage. His muscles were so large that it only wrapped around his arm twice, and she stripped away the protective panel from the adhesive at the end and sealed it in place with a kiss to the coarse fabric. "I don't like it when you bleed."

  He smiled, slow and hot. "Liar."

  It wasn't the blood that stirred her, but the fact that he was whole. Hard against her, so vital, so alive... "I don't like it when you bleed," she repeated, kissing the warm skin above the bandage. "I like it when you win."

  "That I believe." He slipped his arms around her and kissed her again. Slow and warm and wet, his tongue working past her lips to stroke the inside of her mouth, each deep caress tugging at things low in her body.

  In minutes, she was squirming in his lap. "We could go back to your room," she offered against his lips. "I can like more of you."

  "We could do that." Jasper trailed his mouth to her jaw, then to the spot below her ear. "Or we could stay here. Dallas went to find Lex."

  Memory rose, a fractured piece with no beginning or end, just the feeling of Jasper at her back and Lex crushed against her chest, and Dallas smiling as he gripped Lex's hips. All of them moving together, grinding, swaying...

  She shuddered and tilted her head back. "You don't mind?"

  "No." He nipped at the front of her throat and soothed the bite with his tongue. "You want me, but you want them too. Tonight's the night we find out how much. How far."

  Not a night for saying no, then. Hopefully not a night where he'd want her to. But she could draw one line. "I have a condition."

  His hands traced up her back. "What?"

  She sank both hands into his hair and adopted the firmest, fiercest look she could manage. She was an O'Kane woman. She could say these words. "I want you to fuck me tonight."

  Jasper shifted beneath her, his arousal as evident from his heated gaze as from the growing hardness of his cock. "Say it again."

  "I want you to fuck me." She rocked against him, wishing she'd worn a skirt instead of her jeans. Something easy to jerk out of the way, because she'd spent too many nights going to bed frustrated, and she thought she might be able to chase her pleasure just like this...if he let her. "Promise you will."

  "I'll fuck you," he whispered. "I promise, Noelle."

  "No cheating. No technically. You have to really do it." She released his hair and gripped her shirt instead, tearing it over her head, leaving her hair a disheveled mess. Her bra was the only one she actually owned, the only one not borrowed from Lex, a clever bit of lace and wire that pressed her breasts together and up, and the way Jasper's gaze lingered made it worth every credit. "You promise?" she asked again, while she had his attention and the advantage.

  He dragged her arms behind her back, pinning them above the swell of her ass. "I'll fuck you," he answered in a rough murmur.

  Maybe Lex had been right. The more she demanded, the more he gave her exactly what she'd wanted all along. She wiggled a little, enough to trigger that delicious sense of helplessness without the risk that he might mistake her squirming for actual struggles.

  Trapped. Finally. Noelle wet her lips and summoned another challenging glare. "Tell me how. Tell me the dirty details. The obscene ones."

  "No." He hefted her against his chest and rose.

  Her heart skipped, slamming against her rib cage as her breath caught. "Tell me," she snarled--or tried to snarl, only without air it came out as a gasp, a begging plea that used up all the oxygen she had left.

  He didn't answer. He dropped her on her knees on one side of that odd, two-sided bench and bent her over the center section of it. He pulled at her jeans, drawing the button and zipper free in one hard yank. Her heart started pounding, her pulse throbbing everywhere. She could hear the blood rushing in her ears, could feel it between her legs, an ache that wouldn't go unanswered this time.

  She tilted her head to toss her hair from her face and blinked at the wide metal rings affixed to the opposite side of the bench. They were clever, nearly invisible unless you knew to look for them, but once she did she found more on the sides. "What is this thing?"

  Jasper's nails scratched her skin as he pushed her jeans and her panties down. "Ask Dallas. He'll show you."

  Oh God, this was familiar, too. The bite of the bench against her stomach, the scrape of fabric over her thighs, that heady mixture of anticipation and helplessness that came from being exposed. Last time she'd wanted too much--or too fast--and it had twisted into disappointment.

  Not a mistake she wanted to repeat, so she tried to shove away anticipation and focus on his words. "Dallas isn't here. Can you show me?"

  "Sure he can." Lex closed the door behind her and smiled at Noelle. "I know where the cuffs and chains are."

  Cuffs and chains.

  Yes.

  She was drunker now than she'd been last night, drunk on the possibility of having everything she wanted at her fingertips. Smiling, she spread her arms wide across the back of the bench, her fingertips inches from the rings. "Then maybe you should show me."

  Lex dragged two leather cuffs and a thick length of chain from the bedside table drawer and walked over. She leaned in to kiss Jasper with a pink flash of tongue, then unhooked Noelle's bra. "We don't want to rip this."

  Dazed by the sudden tangle of emotions, Noelle let Lex coax the fabric down her arms. Seeing another woman kissing Jasper should have made her jealous. Maybe it had, a little, but only a dull niggle that tasted as much of what she should have felt as what she really did. Arousal. Belonging. She wanted them to kiss. Kiss each other, kiss her--one got her as hot as the other, because no one would be left on the outside and wanting. Not this time.

  Lex tossed aside the bra and stood there, her hands on the bench, and she didn't move them until Jasper said, "Touch her before you put on the cuffs." Then she lifted her hands to Noelle's face as Jasper slid his lower, drawing the denim all the way down.

  Noelle shivered and met Lex's eyes. "Kiss me?"

  Lex
tipped her head back and drew her thumb across Noelle's bottom lip before licking it. The sensual shock lasted only a moment before a greater one overtook it--Jasper's tongue across the small of her back.

  "That's right," Lex murmured and kissed her, her mouth open and seeking. Wet warmth and the tang of liquor, and Noelle moaned into the other woman's mouth as Jasper slipped off her shoes and her jeans and spread her legs wide.

  He molded his hand to her pussy, cupping her before easing one finger over her clit.

  She cried out against Lex's lips as the jolt of pleasure jerked her entire body. It was too much, too fast, the kind of overwhelming sensation that had her using the leverage of the bench to squirm her hips up and away from such direct contact.

  Jasper pushed her back down with a firm hand on her hips. "Chain her."

  Lex broke the kiss and buckled the first cuff around Noelle's wrist. "What made you pick the bench?" she asked softly.

  "It was the closest--" She yanked against the chain as Jasper's finger brushed her clit again. The sound was breathtaking, the rattle of iron and the kiss of it sliding over leather. Noelle whimpered and uselessly tried to twitch her hips out of Jasper's grip. "I didn't pick it on purpose."

  Lex fastened the second cuff and ran her thumb over it. "If you like this, you'll be glad. So glad." She took a step back and started unbuttoning her shirt.

  It wasn't a show, not like when Lex danced on the stage, but Noelle couldn't tear her eyes away as fabric teased apart, baring tawny skin stretched over sleek muscle and intriguing curves.

  She wasn't wearing a bra. Naked from the waist up, she moved closer, until one nipple hovered near Noelle's mouth. Jasper reached out, curled his fingers in the top of Lex's skirt, and dragged her across the remaining space.

  Not a verbal order, but a command nonetheless. Noelle swiped her tongue experimentally across Lex's peaked nipple. It hardened under her touch, even more when she closed her lips around it and sucked hard.