by Kit Rocha
Trix saw her coming and turned away, angling her face down to cover her cheek, but Lex caught her arm and shook her head. "That's not how it works, honey. Who was it?"
Trix's eyes widened. "Tell Dallas I'm not trying to cause trouble--"
"I need a name." A name Lex could connect with a face, which she could then connect with her boot.
She didn't answer, but her gaze skittered tellingly to the corner, where Dom was holding court with a handful of the punks who came to fight in the cage, hungry for a little of Dallas's attention.
If they thought listening to Dom was the way to get it, they were right...in the very worst way.
He tensed as she approached, but Lex couldn't manage to wipe the anger from her features. "You're in deep shit this time, Dom."
Dom jeered at her, puffing out his chest in a useless attempt to look unconcerned. "Yeah? Says who?"
She slapped the drink out of his hand. "I'm not fucking around. If Dallas doesn't kill you, I'll do it myself."
"You better watch your mouth, bitch." He leaned close enough for his breath to wash over her, reeking of tequila. "I hear you're not so high and mighty now. Just another piece of ass who doesn't know when to shut up, strip down, and spread 'em."
Rage swelled, closing off her throat. Not at the personal insult, but at his implication--that women were only good for one thing, and worthless for anything else. Worse than worthless. Subhuman, nothing but disembodied parts waiting for his slavering, short-lived attention.
He'd already shed his shoes in anticipation of a fight in the cage. Lex stomped down on the bridge of his foot, then slammed the heel of her hand up against his nose.
He howled and swung a fist toward her, but it went wide. Not because she'd dodged, but because an iron arm had locked around her waist and hauled her out of the way.
Jas and Bren appeared on either side of Dom, sending his companions scattering. No doubt none of them wanted to be associated with the beatdown to come, especially when Dallas's voice tickled Lex's ear. "Lexie love, were you about to throw an ass-stomping party and not invite me?"
Easy words, lazy, at complete odds with the rigid tension in his body. He was playing his part, king of Sector Four, and she found herself going along with it. "Had to. I would have saved his head for you, though. You'll want it when you see Trix's face."
Dallas lowered her carefully to the floor. "Jas? Make sure Dom doesn't get any ideas about moving."
The crowd had gone silent, and Lex looked up. Her eyes locked with Trix's big blue ones, and she motioned her over. "Come here, honey."
The woman's chest heaved, but she obeyed, crossing the room with her hands clenched at her sides. "I'm sorry, Dallas."
He caught her chin with gentle fingers and tilted her head back, angling her bruised eye toward the light. "Only thing you need to be sorry about is not coming straight to me. You work for us, girl. You're protected."
She bit her lip and nodded.
Dallas released her and turned to Lex. They'd known each other so long it was easy to read the silent plea in his gaze. For this night, for this moment, he had to be the king, and he desperately needed her. Not Lex, his lover, or even Alexa.
He needed his queen.
Dallas didn't look away, even when he spoke. "Get in the cage, Dom."
Bren stepped forward, but Lex cut off his protest with an upraised hand. "You heard the man. He's ready to settle this."
Dom bit off a curse. "Fuck that. I won't."
"O'Kane for life," Dallas drawled, the painful edge under the words sharp enough to cut. "You wanted to punch someone, I'll give you someone to punch. If you're one of us, do what you're fucking told and get in that cage. If you're not, I'll let Bren put two bullets in your head right now. Trust me, he wants to, just to spare me the fight."
Jasper nudged him, and Dom stumbled forward. "Have it your way, O'Kane. I'll kick your ass." He stomped toward the cage.
A queen wouldn't let her king go into a fight without her favors. Lex hesitated for a half-second before curving her hand around the back of Dallas's neck and drawing him close for a quick, hard kiss.
His lips moved against hers, but not in a kiss. In a whisper. "Thank you."
Let them all think the rumors were just that. They'd find no weakness here, no dissension. "Go."
He went, stripping off his leather vest as he walked. The harsh warehouse lights allowed for nothing to be hidden. Not the proud swirl of ink dominating one arm and shoulder, not the scars that marked his chest and back.
He was rough, hard and unforgiving. A force of nature.
And, like a storm, he had no mercy.
The cage door had barely shut when he hit Dom for the first time, smashing a fist into the man's unprotected face. He fought back, but he was no match for Dallas's cold fury.
Lex watched, every breath burning in and out of her lungs. The fight could have been over in a few minutes of brutal punches and well-placed kicks, but Dallas was holding back, almost toying with Dom. Going as much for pain as for victory.
He was putting on a show. Sending a message. Every time Dom staggered to his feet only to be knocked back down, Dallas reinforced the line he'd drawn. You didn't hurt Dallas's women. You didn't touch his people. Not the ones wearing ink, not the ones who worked for him. Because if he'd do this to one of his own men, no one else had a hope in hell of survival.
The fight had started with cheers, but as it dragged on, the warehouse grew still around Lex. O'Kanes watched in solemn pride. The rest of Sector Four watched with a mixture of satisfaction and fear.
Dallas carried the weight of everyone's safety on his shoulders, and he won it with violence and blood, taking one last swing to lay a staggering Dom out before flexing his bruised knuckles.
Dom thudded to the concrete, and Dallas lifted his head to meet Lex's gaze. Frustration. Satisfaction. Heat, as his adrenaline pumped and one sort of arousal melted into another.
He was thinking of his fantasy, the one he'd laid out so bluntly in her bathtub. The one where he celebrated his victory inside her, right there in front of everyone.
Not now, after everything that had happened. But turning away wasn't an option for Lex, either. So she stepped forward and held out her hand. Dallas hopped out of the cage and clasped her fingers. Kissed them.
Then he walked away.
As he neared Jas, he jerked a thumb toward Dom's prone figure. "Strip his cuffs," he said, raising his voice so his words carried back to them. "And then dump him with the trash."
Lex winced. As loathsome as Dom was, stripping tattoos was nasty business. The doctor had lasers, but he saved them for people he liked, or when his work had to be neat. Dom would get acid, and then he'd get turned out into the streets.
"I'll call Doc," Jasper said brusquely.
Dallas took one last look back, and Lex froze. A last look, that's exactly what it was--him drinking in the sight of her, fixing it in his mind because soon it would be gone.
She would be gone.
He turned and slammed through the back door nearest the garage.
Her mind fluttered, struggling to light on why she felt sick inside. She'd known this. The decision had been made. Plans begun. And yet something inside Lex still shrank away from the thought. Her friends, her family--
But that wasn't what twisted a cold knot in her gut. She didn't have to leave Sector Four, or even the O'Kane compound. She could stay right where she was, be as close to any of them as she'd ever been.
But not Dallas.
Her hands began to shake. He'd spent days waiting for her to come around, to tell him it would be all right, but it seemed that now he understood the one thing she needed more than apologies, more than promises.
He was finally letting her go.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The garage was dark, and the slamming of the door echoed behind her. "Dallas?"
A clatter came from the far side, where tools lined a low wooden workbench. Light flared, sudden illumin
ation that offered her the sight of Dallas's back in silhouette. "Go back to the warehouse, Lex." He bit off each word, as if he had to measure them one at a time to keep his control. "I need to cool off."
"I can't." She was drawn to him, always. Unable to walk away. "Are you all right? Your hands?"
His snarl echoed through the darkness. "I'm not fucking around."
"I can't," she said again, desperation almost choking her. "I can't leave. No matter what's going on between us, you need me here. I'm not just an O'Kane."
Dallas spun, still mostly backlit. She could barely make out his face, only sharp shadows playing over a fierce expression. "If you touch me, I can't promise I'll let you go again. Not right now."
She couldn't go, but she couldn't stay, either. Couldn't push or retreat. Love him or hate him.
Something had to give.
"All I wanted was you." Her voice broke on the confession. "To be as important to you as you were to me."
Silence. Heartbreaking, humiliating silence, until Dallas shifted his weight. "Would you stab me, Lex?"
An exact echo of his words from their horrible, horrible fight. She shuddered. "Only if you make me."
He was still wearing his boots. He hadn't taken them off before fighting Dom, and now he bent and jerked a knife free from the left one. He flipped it around so he was holding it by the blade and offered it to her.
His way of providing her an escape. If she couldn't walk out the door, she could still stop him.
As soon as she touched the hilt, Dallas was on her.
It was harder and different and more than the night she'd stripped off his collar. Rough hands, intense kisses, his mouth slanting over hers as he immobilized her with an unforgiving grip in her hair. But it wasn't angry. It wasn't punishment.
It was hunger, pure and simple. Unchecked, uncontrolled desire, spilling out of him without finesse or thought, drowning her in the truth of how much he wanted her. How much he needed her.
This was what she couldn't walk away from, the reason she'd stay, no matter what. Her longing reflected in the trembling clench of his fingers.
Lex let the knife clatter to the table and wrapped her arms around his neck.
Groaning, he slid his hands down to her thighs and hoisted her against him. "I can't do this without you. I can't be Dallas without Lex."
The night had driven that home already. "We can't wind up hating each other, either. The damn sector won't survive it."
"I know. I know." One hand caught her hair and dragged her head back again. "If you can't stay and be Lex, I'll be Declan and go. Anywhere you want, anywhere you can be happy. None of this is worth a damn if you're not here."
The world stopped. He couldn't do it, could never give up what he wanted so much and had worked so hard to build--and yet there was no deception on his face, just an earnestness that almost hurt to see.
He'd leave it all. For her.
"I want you to be happy," she whispered. "With Four, with the gang. With me."
His grip relaxed in her hair, shifting to cradle the back of her head as he turned and set her on the workbench. The knife glinted a few inches away from her fingers as he lifted his other hand to her cheek. "With you. That's the only way I'll ever be happy, Lex. I thought it didn't matter if you left, that it couldn't matter, but I'm a goddamn liar. I'm too fucking selfish to stay here and suffer like some noble fucking martyr. They're my people, but you're everything."
Power was one thing, but his people were another entirely. "You need them, too. But that's okay. So do I."
Dallas exhaled and rested his forehead against hers. "Yeah, okay. Maybe I need them. That's what's gotta change, isn't it? No more lying. Not to you, and not to myself."
"No more," she agreed. But he wasn't the only one who'd hidden things, from himself or her. "If you can do that, so can I. Because I love you."
"I've always loved you." A shudder worked through him, and he pulled her closer. "I've always wanted you. They don't have a word for how much I need you. Everything good I am, everything good I've ever done...it's all you. You make me a king. Without you, I'm just another psychotic thug."
She framed his face with her hands and kissed him through a laugh. "I hope I don't make the thug in you disappear completely. I like him."
His answering laugh was low, relieved--and a little dangerous. Cuffing one of her wrists with his fingers, he dragged her hand down until it covered the hilt of the knife. "How much do you like him?"
Enough to give him what he needed, forever. Even if that meant promising violence to keep him from crossing her lines. She closed her hand around the handle of the knife. "Enough to stop him if it's too much."
He stroked a warm path down the side of her neck before gripping her throat, his hand settling high enough to tilt her chin back. "You're worth getting a little cut up. Just don't stab anything you'll want in working order later."
"Smartass."
He just laughed. He was still laughing when he snapped the braided straps on her tank top and jerked the fabric free of her breasts. He caught one nipple in his mouth and sucked hard, the edge of his teeth scraping her flesh.
Lex abandoned the knife and scratched her nails across his bare back with a shiver. "I saw you in that cage. Thinking about this."
"No you didn't." He lifted his head, giving her the full impact of his half-crazed eyes. Need and triumph and bloodlust, and he licked his lips as he thumbed her damp nipple, as if the taste of her lingered on his mouth. "I was thinking about you on your knees, so hot for my cock you'd suck it all night long. Because I'm a psychotic thug and a goddamn barbarian."
"And a horny bastard." She skated her fingers around his rib cage and reached for his belt buckle.
He let her get his belt open before stepping back to lean against the side of one of his favorite cars, a sleek little pre-Flare antique he'd lovingly restored with years of tinkering. Spreading his arms along the roof of the vehicle, he grinned lazily at her. "You can bring the knife with you if you want. It's fucking hot."
Instead, she left it on the worktable and walked toward him. "I used to do this all the time. Right here in the garage, remember?"
"Your mouth isn't the sort of thing a man forgets, love."
"So you've told me." She slipped to her knees and looked up at him, unable to resist rubbing her palm over the hard bulge beneath his fly. "Sometimes I think you don't even care how it feels, you just want to see it. Me, on my knees, with my lips sliding around your cock."
He inhaled sharply as his eyelids drooped. "It doesn't suck."
"Then watch me." Her voice dropped to a yearning whisper as she tugged at his zipper. He had to know what this did to her, being able to wrap her hand around him and hear his breath catch. To see every muscle in his body tense when she freed him from his pants, to hear him groan when she stroked him.
"Only one thing could improve the view," he rasped as she licked small circles around the head of his cock.
She squeezed his shaft and lifted her head. "What's that, honey?"
He bared his teeth in a feral smile. "Ink. Marks."
"Ink." Her nipples tightened as heat rushed through her to settle between her thighs. "Tell me what you want. And try not to scratch the car." She took him deep but not hard, gripping the base of his shaft as she sucked him lightly.
"Fuck." His hand fell to the back of her head, impatient desperation clear in the hard press of his fingertips. "Matching ink, you and me. Something fitting for a king and queen. For Dallas and Lex."
She hummed, the image already forming in her mind--an early version of the O'Kane symbol, stripped down and simple, with a crown for each of them.
Beautiful. Right. She sucked harder, flicking her tongue against him.
"And I want your name on my skin," he continued. "Yours. Alexa."
His fantasy, and she couldn't fulfill it without words. She pulled away and coaxed another curse from him with one smooth glide of her fist. "And your name on me. Do you want
everyone to see it...or just you?"
"Just me." The words were a growl. "Declan is yours."
"Mine." She licked him again, base to tip, and moaned.
Growling, he thumped his free hand against the car hard enough to rattle it. "Quit teasing, or I swear to Christ--"
Her heart skipped and stuttered as hunger seized her. "You'll what?"
He tugged at her hair and leaned down. "You give me my fantasy, or I'm gonna give you yours. And you know which one I'm talking about."
It should be here, in the garage, surrounded by the scents of motor oil and tire rubber and metal. This was where she'd watched him work on the salvaged cars, listened to him talk about his grand plans for the gang. Where she'd first begun to wonder if there was a place in all of it for her.
Her fantasy and his. They'd have both.
She took him again, closing her eyes with abandon when he thrust against her mouth with a ragged groan. "That's right." He threaded both hands through her hair to hold her in place. "You like it like this. Dirty and rough, getting fucked by a man who wants you so bad he'll risk all your sharp edges. Who fucking loves your sharp edges."
Because he had them, too, the quiet, sneaky kind that would cut you before you realized what was happening. Lex knew that now.
And it didn't matter. All she gave a damn about was her people, her family. Her man. She'd fight to protect and love them all, even if she had to fight them.
Or herself.
She reached up to grip his ass, and he hissed as his head fell back. "I know you wanna suck me off. It gets you hot, doesn't it? Deciding when I come." He thrust forward, pushing deep enough to choke her. "Which one of us is in control now? I never fucking know."
She didn't need to breathe. She'd never need anything else, ever. Just this.
He surrounded her, overwhelming her. Sweat and leather and whiskey and even the metallic scent of blood, from where his bruised knuckles lay wrapped beneath strands of her hair. When the world began to swim he drew back, stroked her hair and said that she was beautiful, that her mouth made him crazy, just long enough for her to catch her breath before rocking forward again.
Lex pulled away, heedless of the sharp tug of his fingers in her hair. "You're in control," she gasped.