Before the End (Beyond Series Ultimate Glom Edition)

by Kit Rocha

  And she fucking loved it.

  Six was squirming again, tiny furtive movements that pushed her ass up and drew Bren deeper inside her. She was trying to get a hand beneath her to toy with her clit, so he dragged both arms over her head and pinned them there. Then he eased his free hand beneath her and gave her what she wanted, fingers moving in a quick, rough circle.

  That was all it took. She turned her face into her arm, muffling her cry as she came on his cock in shuddering spasms that rocked her slight body.

  Not yet. He pulled free before he could give in to the lure of her pussy convulsing around his dick and spun her to face him. "Look at me, sweetness."

  It took forever for her eyelids to flutter open. Her gaze was dreamy and unfocused, but it still slid toward the stage with the next cry, as if she couldn't help herself.

  Rachel slumped to the couch in Lex's arms, her chest heaving and her hair damp with sweat. Dallas dropped beside them, murmuring in Lex's ear and caressing them both as Rachel recovered.

  A furrow crinkled Six's brow, confusion mirrored in her still-dazed eyes as she shifted her attention back to Bren. "They stopped. You stopped."

  "Not for long. Just a minute, so everyone can catch their breath."

  The furrow deepened as she shifted her hips. "It doesn't hurt you?"

  His shaft was still slick, and the smooth glide tightened his balls. "Don't worry about my dick. It'll be back inside you soon enough."

  "Oh." Smiling, she touched his lips. "Good. I like you there."

  He echoed the gesture, tracing her smile with his thumb before pushing it between her lips. Her gaze stayed locked on his, so open, so trusting, as she swirled her tongue around the tip and then sucked.

  His cock twitched, and he thrust his thumb deeper with a groan. Her cheeks hollowed out, and she bobbed her head, her eyes all but daring him not to imagine pushing something else between her lips.

  He couldn't stop.

  Bren straightened. "On the floor, Six. Now."

  She slipped from the couch and hit the floor on her knees, her hair a wild tumble around her shoulders. "I won't be able to see."

  "I will." He sat and stretched out his legs, caging her between them. "Got a real good view from here."

  Her breath caught, and she slid her hands up his legs, pausing hesitantly on his thighs. She wet her lips and stared at his cock. "Tell me you want my mouth."

  He took his erection in hand and pumped it slowly from base to tip, just to see her lick her lips again, to watch that pink flash of tongue and imagine it on his aching cock. "I want you to take it this time," he whispered. "Fuck me with your mouth. Show me how good it is."

  Almost shyly, she slid her hand over his, working her fingers between his until he could feel the contrast, the soft warmth of her skin alternating with the rougher brush of his. Her breasts rubbed against the coarse denim he still wore as she leaned in and closed her lips around the crown.

  A voice broke through the buzz of pleasure in his ears. "Six and Bren are out there." Lex looked mellow under the harsh lights, relaxed as she toyed with Rachel's hair. "Think they're fucking yet?"

  Rachel answered in a low, satisfied purr. "I hope so."

  Six tongued his piercings, exploring the ends of each barbell as Dallas's laughter rang out. "Not even stone-cold Bren Donnelly could keep his pants on through you coming, sweetheart. Tell her how good she looked, Lexie."

  "Like an angel."

  Rachel's back stiffened, but after a moment she kissed Lex's open mouth. "Show's not over, though. Is it?"

  "Not yet," Dallas agreed. "Do you wanna help me fuck her?"

  That quickly, the fire returned, burning in Rachel's eyes. "Show me what to do."

  Dallas silently swept Lex up, and Bren had to clear his throat before describing the scene to Six. "He's laying Lex out. Pushing her legs up for Rachel to hold."

  Six hummed her approval, her tongue vibrating delicately against the sensitive underside of his cock before she sucked him deeper.

  "Fucking hell." Bren bit his tongue. "Again."

  She slid up slowly, her gaze locked to his, and repeated the entire thing over again. The sucking, the humming, the way her hand squeezed his and her eyes danced with mischief and newfound power.

  Words. He dragged his gaze back to the dais. "Dallas is in his favorite place--between Lex's thighs. But I think Rachel gets off on it, too. On pinning her down."

  Lex whimpered as she tried to wiggle free, and then moaned as Rachel held on so tight she left red marks on the woman's golden skin. Dallas pushed deep, fucking fast and hard from the first stroke, his face a mask of tortured intensity.

  Rachel stretched out on the other end of the couch, keeping her face close to Lex's as she held on to her legs and spoke, low and satisfied. "You were right. He can fuck you so deep it feels like you'll never stop coming."

  The words drove a moan from Lex's throat, and Rachel soothed her with a teasing lick to the lips--but she didn't stop with her mouth. Instead, she kept exploring, drawing a wet path down past Lex's collarbone to her breasts.

  Rapt, Bren watched as she sucked one rigid, peaked nipple between her teeth. It should have looked lazy, like Rachel was entertaining herself while Dallas drove Lex closer and closer to orgasm.

  But no, her hands on Lex's thighs trembled, and an aroused flush colored her cheeks. She was as invested in this pleasure as she had been in her own.

  As invested as Six was in sucking Bren's dick, in taking tiny caresses and building them to a blinding crescendo.

  He reached down to tangle his fingers in her dark hair and pulled her head up. "You've seen Lex come," he rasped.

  Breathing heavily, she nodded. Laughed. "Everyone has."

  "Then look." He turned her face with one rough hand on her chin. "What do you see?"

  "She's close." Six swallowed. "God, she's so close. Her skin's all flushed, she's tense, I think she's biting the hell out of Dallas's hand. We both like to bite something when we come."

  "But he just started." Bren hauled Six into his lap and bit her ear. "You think she got off that hard on fucking Rachel?"

  Six squirmed. "I got off that hard watching."

  He slid back inside her, angling her hips for maximum friction. "Can you come before she does?"

  "I don't--" She shifted, shuddered, and tilted her head back. "You can make me if you want to. I know you can."

  "But can you take it?" He ran his hands down to her thighs and rubbed his thumbs over her bare skin. "Ride me."

  She hesitated until he slapped a hand against her hip, and then she was moving, the strong muscles of her thighs working as she rose and fell, taking him deep and hard and frantic.

  It shot through him like a shock, but a string of curses drew his attention back to the trio on the other couch. Lex arched and writhed, pinned down now not only by Rachel but by Dallas's hand around her throat. Caged and wild--and on the verge of an explosive orgasm.

  No time for Six to find her rhythm and ride him to completion. Bren gripped her hips and held her suspended above him. She made a single noise of protest that turned to sheer pleasure as he drove up into her, pumping his hips in thrust after desperate thrust.

  She came with a cry everyone must have heard, not just a cry but his name, broken and desperate. He fucked her through it, fucked her until the tight, rhythmic clench of her pussy drew him over the edge, too.

  The room blurred, everything but the thump of Six's heart as he hauled her close for his last frenzied thrusts. Nothing touched him but her. It had been true for months, but never so much as here, now, when she'd given him so much.

  Nothing else mattered.

  Chapter Eleven

  Six woke up sore, a little hung over, and still floating.

  Bren was a solid mass of warmth around and over her, though his breathing lost the easy rhythm of slumber as soon as Six began to stretch.

  After a lifetime of jerking away every time a board so much as creaked within a dozen yards of he
r, the previous night's blissful, uninterrupted sleep was a slightly guilty pleasure. "Did I keep you up all night?"

  "Keep me up by sleeping?" He stifled a yawn. "How would that work?"

  She squirmed onto her back and studied his sleepy eyes and disheveled hair, unprepared for the jolt of innocent affection that made her heart wobble. "You always seem to wake up whenever I so much as twitch a toe."

  "Mmm. Maybe I'm getting used to it."

  God, she could get drunk on that, on being so far beneath Brendan Donnelly's skin that his instincts simply accepted her presence. "Good." She gave in to the temptation to touch him, tracing her fingertip along one eyebrow and down to the shell of his ear.

  He turned his head until her fingers brushed his cheek. "What about you?"

  "I'm getting used to lots of things." Like his naked skin against hers, and this warm, relaxed feeling that shifted to delicious tingles when she remembered the previous night. She scraped her nails lightly over his cheek and smiled teasingly. "Like coming more than once. I'm getting used to that."

  A ghost of a smile curved his lips, but then vanished. "No regrets?"

  "No." She let her own smile fade as she flattened her fingers to cup his cheek. "It was...intense. Maybe a little confusing. I wish I knew why some things get me off when they feel..." If there was a word to sum up the feeling, she didn't know it. Something to explain how it felt to be pinned by him, his hand over her mouth, adrenaline and pleasure spinning her into a dizzy mess, all while an angry, guilty part of her protested that it shouldn't feel good.

  "When they feel like they should be wrong?" he prompted.

  Sudden tears stung her eyes, and she squeezed them shut as words bubbled up in a rush. "I should be more broken, right? That's how the other girls act sometimes. Like I should be afraid of fucking or hate it or something, because Trent and some of the others fucked around with me. And I wonder who they are, and where they grew up that they thought they'd go through life without people using their bodies in ways they didn't want. As long as you survive it, what the fuck does it matter? It's a body."

  He drew her closer with a soothing noise. "They're looking at it the way they would, but that doesn't make them right. They don't get to decide for you what the worst shit was. That's yours."

  It should have helped, but another fear lurked beneath it. A deeper one, one she barely dared admit to herself, much less to anyone else. Even trying made her voice come out in an uncertain whisper. "But what if they are right? What if I'm so broken that I only think I like some things because someone did them to me?"

  Instead of denying the words outright, he shifted and sat up, with her still in his arms. "I know how that goes. Everyone assumes that's why I like pain--because I got hurt so much that my mind twisted it into something good out of self-defense. But they're way off the mark."

  Sitting like this was another thing she was getting used to. She liked leaning into his chest, burying her face against his throat, surrounding herself with the warmth and scent of his skin. "So why do you like it?"

  He exhaled. "I told you Cooper got me off the streets. What I didn't tell you is that I went back to them. I mean, Coop's place was home, but I didn't stay there a lot. I ran with a pretty rough crowd."

  "Street kids usually are," she agreed. "I know I was."

  "So was Chey." His expression turned thoughtful, almost nostalgic. "Her brother was a friend of mine. He kicked my ass when he found out I'd been messing around with his sister."

  He fell silent again, and she almost wanted to give him an out. A chance to laugh it away as a joke instead of baring his past to her, especially when there was so much she still hadn't told him. "So he got you into pain? Or she did?"

  Bren poked her in the side. "Chey was hardcore. Into a bunch of shit I don't mess with anymore--barbs, branding, even blades. It's hard to explain, except...I'd never met anyone who only got off on inflicting welcome pain. Most of the assholes you run into who like hurting people aren't exactly looking for willing partners."

  It was a distinction that had never mattered to her before, because she hadn't imagined it was possible. "How did she know? How did you?"

  He shook his head. "I don't even remember. But when it happened, it was like I knew I'd needed it all along."

  No one had broken or twisted him. He wanted what he wanted and didn't seem to feel guilty about getting it. "The shit with Trent, it wasn't black and white. Obvious. It's not like we went to bed happy one night, and I woke up with him beating on me. I'm not sure when it got bad, only that by the time I realized it was, it felt like it had been bad forever."

  "And then you fought back."

  "That gun you found in the warehouse. It was his." The memory was still crystal clear, after all this time. The scent of fresh ink on his paperwork. The rough grain of the wood under her cheek. "He liked to fuck me over his desk. He wasn't all that into it or me, didn't even just need to get off. And every time got meaner, like he wanted to see how far I'd let him go. So I finally told him I didn't feel like it..."

  He'd thrown her over the desk anyway, hard enough to bruise her face. Not that she hadn't ended up bruised before, but it had been the first time she'd said no, and some stupid part of her had thought it would matter to him. That he'd only been roughing her up before because she'd been letting him, not because he didn't give a shit whether she wanted it or not.

  "I went for the gun," she continued, before Bren could interrupt, before he could try to comfort her. Comfort would feel like pity, and she'd never make it through these words. "I told him no and he still tried to fuck me, so I went for the gun. I was gonna blow his balls off."

  Bren swallowed hard, but he waited, silent and watchful.

  She took a careful breath and focused on a spot just beneath his left eye. A small scar, a reminder that he had plenty of his own bad memories and wouldn't judge her for hers. "The fact that he beat me half conscious and fucked me anyway wasn't the part that really hurt. Until that moment, I was still so goddamn deluded I thought he loved me."

  Bren closed his eyes, but his hand found her cheek anyway. "Trent is dead. He can't hurt anyone anymore."

  Trent was dead, all right. At her hands. Her knuckles had been split and sore for weeks, and she'd cherished every throb of discomfort as a reminder that she was finally safe. "I shouldn't be making you listen to any of this. It doesn't matter."

  "No, look at me." He slid his hand around to cup the back of her neck. "He can't hurt you anymore, but he hurt you plenty already. That doesn't go away just because he did."

  "I know." She swallowed around the lump in her throat and got the last words out. "The twisted part is that everything that happened after that? It hurt. God, it hurt. But it's easy to shrug off, because I know none of it was my fault. I said no. I fought back. Hell, I killed some of them. None of that's on me."

  "Neither is what he did before."

  "I didn't try to stop him."

  "Do you think that makes it okay? That it means he got to be as big an asshole as he wanted?"

  He said it like the idea was silly, absurd, but he'd lived on the streets, too. He knew the answer. "It doesn't matter if it's okay. People'll take as much as you let them get away with."

  "Yeah, they do. Doesn't make it right." His jaw clenched. "What would you say to someone else? To Trix, or Noelle? Would you look them in the eye and say it was their fault, that they should have fought harder?"

  The bottom of her stomach dropped out as she imagined sweet-faced Noelle trapped in a room with Wilson Trent. Or God--Trix, who'd let a member of Dallas's gang hit her and hadn't muttered a word of protest, because she'd believed she wasn't worth defending.

  He would have eaten either one of them alive, hurt them and twisted them and made them think it was their fault from start to finish. They weren't broken and mean inside like Six. They were people who cared.

  "It's not the same," she said weakly, even with her rationalizations crumbling beneath her feet. "I knew better. Af
ter the farms, and the--" Panic tightened her chest, and she stumbled past the final secret, the one she didn't ever think about. "The streets," she said instead. "After all that, I knew better."

  "Knew better than to trust someone." It wasn't a question.

  Put that way, it was so stark. It made her sound broken, feel it too, because it was nothing but truth. "I know better than to trust you," she whispered, bracing herself for him to pull away. "I know better, only I can't stop. And that scares me a little, but not as much as not wanting to stop."

  "You don't have to stop," he offered quietly.

  She choked on a hysterical laugh and buried her face against his shoulder. "Thank you."

  Bren wrapped his arms more tightly around her. "I don't know if I can help. Really help, I mean. But you can talk to Lex."

  Lex seemed so fucking tough that it was hard to imagine her like this, hurt and scared and clinging to a man. Then again, maybe that was reason enough to ask. Weeping on Bren was easy and safe, but the pity in Elvis's eyes was a fresh wound. If she ever saw that reflected back at her from Bren...

  She turned her face to the warm, bare skin of his shoulder. "You just keep telling me I'm not a pervy freak, okay? I'll figure the rest out."

  "You got it."

  He had bruises on his throat again, bruises she'd put there with her teeth. She traced a fingertip over the edge of one. "You never told me what happened with that girl. The first one."

  He breathed out a soft laugh. "Nothing tragic. Chey wasn't just a sadist, she was one hell of a dominant lover. I got tired of fighting to be on top, and we parted ways."

  "Did last night count as you being on top?"

  His voice dropped to a growl. "Would you have said no to anything I told you to do?"

  She struggled to hold back a smile as something giddy rose, wiping away her lingering pain. She loved being able to put that rough edge in his voice with a few simple words, like she had the power to drive unflappable Bren crazy. "Only if you told me to do something that didn't seem fun."