Before the End (Beyond Series Ultimate Glom Edition)

by Kit Rocha

  If only they knew. The momentary flash of outrage at Lex's presumption had vanished under the gut instinct to turn it to his advantage. He'd missed his window of opportunity on collaring her during the Wilson Trent blow-up, but this time he wouldn't give her a chance to get skittish.

  It was a pity that pressing this particular opportunity involved skipping a few key steps. Discussion. Negotiation. The setting of guidelines and the drawing of boundaries. Collaring was ownership, however temporary, and a smart man made sure his idea of ownership fit before trying to shove a woman into it. Doing otherwise tended to end badly.

  Lex came back to the dais, a whiskey triple in one hand. The ice clinked as she held it out to him, the perfect picture of submission, ruined only by the glimpse of fire he caught before her lashes lowered.

  She reached up, and the collar shifted as the top of her halter dress loosened and fell to bare her chest. The slinky red fabric slipped down to her hips, then the floor, and she stood there, clad only in his ink, his leather, and her high-heeled shoes.

  So much for giving Noelle and Jasper back their spotlight. "Thanks," he drawled before patting his thigh. "Care to sit?"

  "We can do better than that." She dropped to her knees.

  He'd lost count of the number of times she'd blown him right here, just like this, and every memory paled beside the reality of having her on her knees. Burning, like that collar was the only thing holding back the kind of explosion that would singe a man to ash.

  Sometimes she was a little scary when she looked at him like that, and fuck if he didn't like it. "I don't know, love. The way you're looking at me, I don't trust you not to use your teeth."

  She laid her hands on his knees, slid them up his thighs. "Has that ever stopped us before?"

  "Not really." He rested the hand holding his glass on the back of the couch and slid the other into her unbound hair. "Is this what you were going for, Lexie? Is this what you wanted?"

  "I always do." His belt buckle clicked, and leather whispered over leather as she drew open the belt. She reached for the button on his pants, the zipper--all by touch, as if she knew this moment too well to even look down.

  He tightened his fingers in her hair, a quick tug of warning. "So you're going to swallow my dick like nothing's changed?"

  "You want something else?" she asked, pulling against his grip as she leaned over his legs. Closer. "Is that why you asked me to sit on your lap? So I could ride you right here? Now?"

  The first time he buried his cock in her, no one else would be watching. He'd been waiting too long to share any part of that first time, even the sight of her coming for him. "No," he murmured, pulling her hair hard enough to edge her chin up. "But being collared means you get my dick when I give it to you."

  "Oh." Her hands stilled. "So that's how it's gonna be."

  He left his drink balanced precariously on the back of the couch and stroked his thumb over her lips. His skin was chilled from the ice, and her breath burned as hot as her gaze. "Is that a surprise? I remember you saying you knew all about what gets me off."

  "Of course." She smiled, easy and bland.

  Sometimes it amazed him, how fast she could shutter her eyes. A product of her training from Sector Two, no doubt. Sighing, he released her hair. "That ain't it."

  Lex sat back on her heels and folded her hands in her lap. Waiting, silent and obedient and so sweetly submissive they were attracting stares again. Lex on her knees was nothing new, but Lex in a posture of surrender...

  This is what he got for trying to play the game without discussing the rules first. She was gazing at him like an empty-headed doll, and he had no one to blame but himself. "Get dressed, Lex. Tomorrow we'll have a talk."

  She snatched up her dress but didn't bother slipping into it before she stalked off, through the crowd and out the door.

  "Well done, old man," Dallas grumbled before draining his whiskey. The party would go on, and he'd sit and endure their looks and their barely concealed speculation, but by God if one of them dared pity him--

  Well fucking done, indeed.

  Jasper stared at him in sympathy. It wasn't overt, but Dallas had known him long enough to see the commiseration beneath his seemingly impassive features. Then he broke the awkward near-silence with a muttered question to Noelle, one she answered with an eager nod.

  At some point, the flogger had found its way from the dais to the main floor. Bren handed it over to Jasper, who tested its weight and balance in his hand before drawing the suede tails slowly through his fingers--and then across Noelle's bare, upraised ass.

  The crowd fell silent, and even Dallas held his breath as Jasper began to twirl the flogger, rotating his wrist until the tails swirled in a smooth figure eight. The tense silence broke when he let the first hint of suede thud against Noelle's skin, and her grateful moan ripped through the room.

  A show. The kind that would please his woman but also distract a drama-hungry crowd from gossiping about Lex's sudden departure.

  It was working, too. By the time Jasper began to intensify his efforts, landing harder and faster blows on Noelle's reddening skin, people had either gone back to screwing each other, or they were watching with a rapt attentiveness that left no room for thoughts about Dallas.

  And fuck if Dallas didn't owe him for it. Big time.

  Chapter Four

  Lex had a splitting headache, a sore neck, and a powerful urge to crawl back under the covers and hide from the world. All three were her own damn fault, and irritating enough to drive her from her bed and into the shower.

  Ten minutes to linger under the steamy water, and she forced herself out. She dried her hair first, then wound the strands into an intricate mass of braids, a style she hadn't worn since her days in Sector Two. More than a decade, and her fingers still moved automatically, smoothing every hair into position.

  She'd never be rid of that goddamned place.

  The last thing she did was fasten Dallas's collar around her neck. It was exquisite, easily the most beautiful thing she'd ever owned, and the weight of it threatened to strangle her. But what had she expected? That he'd lock her in a collar and suddenly change, read her mind and give her exactly what she wanted?

  Maybe she had expected that, and why not? Fuck, if a man wanted to own a woman like her, he'd damn well better earn it.

  With that rebellion fresh in her mind, she wrapped herself in armor--a boned leather corset and jeans that sat low enough on her hips to bare her fresh ink. Every bit of ownership carefully framed, from the tattoo to her collar to the darkening bruises on her skin.

  Let him look at what he'd bought.

  He answered on her second knock with a muffled, "Come in," and she pushed open the door to find him bent over the desk with a stack of papers under one hand and his hacked computing tablet under the other.

  His scowl faded when he glanced up, but frustrated tension still knotted his shoulders. "Lex."

  His gaze raked over her, and she welcomed it. All the other bullshit aside, she turned him on, quick and hard, so at least she wouldn't be the only one twisted up. "I came to discuss my duties."

  He frowned. "Duties? Really?"

  "Hmm, maybe not." She dropped into a chair and crossed her legs. "You made it pretty fucking clear last night this is all about appearances."

  "Is that what I did?" He shoved the papers aside. "Why don't we back on up to the beginning of this tangle?" He pointed at her tattoo. "Don't pretend I'm the one who set this off."

  After the humiliation of the night before, she'd pretend whatever she pleased. "I got a little ink, and you jumped at the chance to put me in my place."

  "No, I took you up on your invitation."

  "Did you?"

  "Yeah. But I made a mistake." Dallas jerked open his desk drawer, rummaged around, and pulled out tobacco and rolling papers. "We skipped right over the important part, and I know better."

  She watched his hands, mesmerized by the leashed strength there. "The negotiat
ion, you mean."

  "Mmm." He measured out the tobacco with easy, absentminded movements, most of his attention focused on her. "You put me in a hell of a spot, love. Normally, I'd tell you to take that collar off until you agree to what comes along with it, but you forced my hand a little, didn't you?"

  Lex would have admitted as much--hell, she had the night before, but now... "I didn't force you. You had other options."

  "Forced my hand, not me." He paused with the tobacco-filled paper pinched between his finger and thumb and gave her a level look. "Let's cut through the bullshit. We've been dancing around this for years, but until last month, I never thought you'd consider a collar. Because you don't get to be just another girl in my bed, Lexie. None of the others has been one of us. You know where this puts you."

  He'd had women in and out of his bed, always collared and always outsiders, women who came and went like clockwork. Shift change, Lex had ruefully called it.

  No more.

  "It means I have duties," she said, feigning a patience she didn't feel. "Is it the word that offends, or the fact that I'm not slobberingly focused on the many things I get to do to your dick once you deign to let me touch it?"

  His gaze dropped to her throat, where her fingers had come to rest on the collar. Lex tensed but refused to jerk them away, and he clenched his jaw as he turned his attention back to his task. "All right. Duties is fair enough, as long as touching my dick isn't one of them."

  As if she'd been the one to deny him. "That's the funny thing about these collars." She scratched one fingernail over the rough surface of the O'Kane emblem. "Most men put them on women they plan to regularly fuck the shit out of."

  His lips twitched. "I put them on women who get off on having me fuck the shit out of them however, wherever and whenever I want."

  Even the words tightened her nipples, raised goose bumps on her skin. "But you think that isn't me."

  "You can flip the submission on like a switch, darling, but you sure as fuck weren't getting off on it last night."

  She crossed her arms over her chest. "Noelle likes punishment. I don't."

  Dallas finished rolling the cigarette before offering it to her. "That wasn't punishment, which proves my damn point. We both know better than to play games when no one knows the rules."

  He kept talking in circles, and they were getting nowhere. "Okay, I'll play along." She leaned forward and snatched the cigarette. "If keeping me off your dick wasn't punishment, what was it?"

  His lighter was shiny silver and etched with a skull, and it reflected the light as he swept it up and flicked it open. "Foreplay."

  Lex glared at him over the flame. "We've had six years of that. Do we really need more?"

  Dallas grinned. "And here I thought you girls trained us this way on purpose."

  She rolled her eyes and lit the tip of the cigarette, puffing until it caught in a gentle smolder. "Rules. You show me yours, and I'll show you mine."

  "Control, Lex. I want it." He snapped the lighter shut to emphasize his point before starting to roll a second cigarette. "Sometimes I'll want you to give it to me. Sometimes I'll want to take it. You need to be right with both."

  It pulled the air out of her lungs. Part of her wanted to blame it on the smooth tobacco smoke, but she couldn't, not with her attention riveted to the lines of his face as he stared down at the paper in his hand.

  Control. Oh, how she'd hungered to let go for a little while, to have Dallas hold it all, but the way he spoke proved he didn't know. Maybe not how much, or maybe not at all.

  She opened her mouth to say something, anything remotely coherent. Instead, she sucked in a rough, ragged breath.

  He lifted the second cigarette, and his gaze flicked to hers as he drew his tongue along the edge of the rolling paper, licking it like a lover.

  "I don't know if I can give it," she said in a rush. "Not entirely. But you can take it. Me."

  After a pause, he nodded. "Here's what we're going to do. You're going to take a day and think. Really think. And then you're going to tell me what you like, what you don't like, and what's straight-up off-limits."

  There were no such things as boundaries, no limits when it came to Dallas. "And if I don't need a day?"

  He lit his own cigarette and exhaled toward the ceiling. "Take it anyway. Seriously consider it--for me."

  "You want me to...what? Make a list?"

  "Yes," he said without hesitation. "An honest one."

  "Of things I don't want you to do." Jesus, it'd take her all day to think of one. "All right. You, too."

  He smiled and nodded, then changed the subject. "Tell me what you've heard about Sector Three."

  "What everyone's heard--that it's falling apart. Wilson Trent may have been a piss-poor leader, but he was a leader. Now they don't have anybody calling the shots." Lex tilted her head. "You're not thinking of staging a takeover, are you? The other sector leaders might not want Three and all its problems, but if it looks like you're expanding your power base, they'll flip their shit. Guaranteed."

  "It'd mean going back to late nights and double shifts," he admitted. "The money might not make up for it at first, especially if we have to bring in new bodies to hold the territory. And we'll need real friendly neighbors in Two and Five." He paused. "So, no. No takeover. Not yet, anyway."

  Lex stiffened. "I wouldn't count on Two. Cerys is only real friendly when it serves her purposes. And who the hell knows what Mac Fleming's doing half the time over in Five."

  "He's cooking drugs," Dallas replied, his mouth twisting around his distaste. "Getting as rich as we are too, and maybe richer, since he plays both sides. Medicinal and recreational."

  Dallas hadn't minded availing himself of Fleming's regenerative technology when Lex and Noelle had both had bullet holes in them. "He keeps to himself. No reason to cause trouble--but no reason to throw in and back you on anything, either."

  Clamping his cigarette between his lips, Dallas shoved everything on his desk to one side with a careless sweep of his arm and unrolled a meticulously sketched map of Eden and the surrounding sectors. The city walls formed a near-perfect circle in the middle, with the eight main roads out of the city thrusting out like spokes on a wheel.

  Dallas thumped an ashtray down in the corner near Sector Seven to secure the edge and frowned at the map. "Mad brought back some updates," he muttered around the cigarette as he jabbed his finger at an area marked with fresh ink in a slightly darker color. "Seven's in trouble. Eden seized two-thirds of their fields. Mad thinks the city's building more wind farms."

  Lex rose and bent over the map, bracing her elbows on two of the other curled edges. "The ones they've already got plus the solar arrays aren't enough?"

  Dallas bit off a bitter laugh. "Probably. But hell, what are a few potato farms compared to the ladies in Eden getting to use their fancy hair dryers whenever they want?"

  No wonder people had been flooding into Sector Six and pushing outward, toward the wide, empty spaces away from the city. "I wonder what Eight'll do when Seven empties."

  "Eight's always tricky." Dallas traced his finger over the manufacturing district that made up a healthy part of that sector. "They have to walk the line. If they don't provide Eden with the supplies they want, the city'll seize those factories. And if they make it look too profitable..."

  Most of the sectors had buildings that predated the Flares--tenements for workers, factories, and warehouses that had been built to support the day-to-day functioning of Eden. But Eight and Five were the only ones with facilities that still ran, industries deemed too valuable to destroy--for now.

  Three had had one too, once upon a time, a sprawling plant that produced electronics. Lex still remembered watching it burn from the top floor of the Orchid House in Sector Two, the night sky alight with flames and intermittent explosions--like the fireworks she'd read about, only deadlier.

  She straightened and propped her hands on her hips. "It's all conjecture. But you know what comes next."


  Dallas crushed his cigarette into the ashtray hard enough to slide the heavy glass three inches across the desk. "Yeah. I get a pretty invitation from Cerys. And the meeting will go pretty much however she wants it to, once she's buried all the sector leaders in booze and beautiful women."

  "Don't hate the player," Lex teased with a wry smile. "Stay on her good side and it won't matter. Remember--she's brilliant and ruthless."

  "Oh, I think I know something about women like that," he drawled, rolling up the map again. "Speaking of brilliance, turn a little of yours toward Six, huh? The girl, not the sector. Bren seems to think she's trustworthy, but maybe he's not seeing clearly. Dragging Wilson Trent back here for her to kill doesn't fit my definition of a courting gift, but his idea of flirting might be as twisted as his sense of humor."

  "Does everything have to be about fucking?" Lex straightened with a shrug. "Maybe he just wanted to do something nice for her."

  Both of Dallas's eyebrows swept up, but a moment later he was grinning at her. "You beautiful, bloodthirsty bitch."

  "Mmm. Remember that when you think about pushing my buttons." Lex brushed against him as she leaned over to put out her cigarette in the ashtray. He was warm and solid, the kind of hard that came from working and fighting in equal measure. "Your place, this time tomorrow. I'll bring my list."

  She got the satisfaction of hearing his breath catch, but he managed his warm, easy drawl. "I'll clear my schedule."

  "Hell yeah, you will."

  Ace

  Jared's loft might have been wall-to-wall bare brick and exposed steel beams, but it was the swankest place in Sector Four that didn't belong to an O'Kane, and the only place outside of the compound that Ace had ever felt at home.

  Sprawled on the expensive leather couch, he eyed the new sculpture of a frolicking couple that dominated one corner. It wasn't bad, for a post-Flare carving, but more loving detail had been given to the man's undeniably impressive cock than to the rest of him. The woman was a masterwork of tits and ass, with a rapturous look on her face that skated close to being comical.