by Kit Rocha
Pride. After her life in Sector Two, it had been so important to Mia, and he’d chipped away at it every day. The coat, the heater, the payment to Cerys—a never-ending cascade of reminders that, even here, her life wasn’t her own.
He pulled the bottle out of the drawer and cracked it open. “You want one, Dallas?”
“Sure.” Dallas watched him pour two drinks but didn’t reach out to take the glass. “The only jackass man who gets to control Mia’s life right now is me. And before I tell you what’s going to happen, I’ll say this. Part of this is on me. I should have come down harder on you about drawing some damn lines, at least until she was free of Cerys’s sick shit.”
“And I should have considered what it would be like to come from a situation like that...and have to deal with me.”
“Fuck yeah, you should have.” Dallas swept up the whiskey and took a sip. When he eyed Ford over the edge of the glass, all of the warmth had left his eyes. The leader of Sector Four was staring at him now, hard and unyielding. “You contacted another sector leader behind my back, Ford.”
“For personal business.”
“None of us can afford to have personal business with other sector leaders. Especially with Cerys. Shit is sincerely unsettled right now, and I need a heads-up if anything—and I mean anything—might tip us off balance.”
“Fair enough.” Ford drained his glass and began refilling it. “I asked Cerys how much Mia owed her, then I wired her more credits than most people see in ten years.”
“And then you let that girl go over there, oblivious, so Cerys could spin her circles.”
He hadn’t had a chance to tell Mia, because he wanted it done before approaching her. So she wouldn’t be able to say no, right? “She could have asked me what it meant. Why I did it.”
“She knows why you did it. In her gut, she knows, or she wouldn’t have come back. Or she only would have come back long enough to steal all your files and bring them to Cerys.” Dallas slammed back the rest of his shot and relaxed back in his chair. “What do you want more? To be right, or to make things right?”
Ford almost snorted whiskey out of his nose. “Be right? That fucking ship has sailed, O’Kane. Best I can hope for now is for Mia not to hate me.”
“If she keeps working for you, yeah.” Dallas pinned him with a look. “Which is why, starting tomorrow, she’s working for me.”
It hurt more than everything else combined. Ford tightened his fingers around the neck of the bottle as he fought a wince. “Is that how it is?”
“You’re still not getting it.” Dallas thumped the glass against the desk. “Power, Derek. You’re an O’Kane, you’re rich, you’ve got all the advantages over her. So I’m doing what I can to level the field. I’m not slapping you down. I’m giving you a chance.”
A chance—to be someone Mia could come to without reservation, without worrying about whether she needed to fight him on every little thing just to maintain her own equilibrium. If he wasn’t her boss, she could embrace the submission she’d claimed to want instead of worrying that doing so meant giving in. Giving up.
Ford met Dallas’s gaze across the desk. “Have you talked to her about it yet?”
“It’s a done deal. I’m setting her loose with Noelle in the tech storage room tomorrow. We’ll see what she’s capable of.”
“A lot.” Something Ford should have told her.
“Yeah?” Dallas seemed to consider that as he leaned in to grab the whiskey. “You want to give her something she needs?”
“Anything.”
Dallas refilled his glass before spinning the bottle in his hand to rub a thumb over the label—over their logo. His logo. “She’s not working for you anymore. That doesn’t mean she can’t work with you. Show her what we can offer. Show me what she can offer. I could have Ace give her ink tomorrow, but it would be just as damn empty as you paying off Cerys. Help her earn her ink, and then she’ll have the kind of power no one can take away.”
The kind the other women had, the kind Lex had been fighting for since day one. “Where do I start?”
“In my experience? I’m sorry. And sometimes presents. Lex likes knives.” Dallas grinned and lifted his glass. “I know I’m forgiven if she only cuts me a little.”
There was only one thing he could think of to give Mia, and it would be the weirdest goddamn gift ever.
Which was why it just might work.
Chapter Fourteen
By the second day of her new job, Mia understood how Ford had been so cavalier about tossing expensive tech at her.
Dallas O’Kane had more. Lots more.
“This was all a jumble when I showed up,” Noelle had confessed yesterday morning, waving to shelf after shelf of neatly organized and labeled boxes. “It’s been my side project.”
It needed to be more than a side project, Mia could see that at once. Dallas’s aversion to technology was almost understandable—he was old enough to have been born just after the Flares, which meant his earliest memories must have been the darkness that followed. Data winking out of existence as circuits fried and overloaded, a world in chaos because paper records had long ago been a thing of the past...
So she understood why he clung to something tangible, something that couldn’t simply vanish. Hard copy had its uses...as a backup.
Mia could make that work. With the tech in this room, she could make damn near anything work. She should have been vibrating with excitement, with the possibilities of wrapping her brain around the entire O’Kane operation and finding all the ways to automate the process, to smooth off the inefficient edges.
Her chest felt hollow. Her neck and shoulders ached. She kept catching herself tensing against a blow that wasn’t coming—not physically, anyway. She’d been too cowardly to face Ford, but she was only delaying the inevitable. He was an O’Kane. She wouldn’t be able to avoid him forever.
Even knowing that, she still wasn’t ready when he appeared. Maybe if she’d known, she could have braced herself for the moment, or found the focus to build a polite mask. But she stepped out from between two shelves and there he was, as dangerously handsome as ever, watching her.
Waiting.
But not for long. He shoved his hands into his pockets and nodded to her. “Mia.”
She needed to cling to her mask, to act calm and reserved as she carried the box of supplies to the desk she’d already started to think of as hers. But that mask felt wrong with him still. Fakeness felt wrong. What was the point of giving up everything for independence if you were still trapped in a cage?
She dropped the box to the desk with a soft thud and met his gaze. “I should have come to talk to you. I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your work.”
“You’re not.” She fixed her gaze on his cheek, because it was easier than looking into his eyes. If they went all soft and warm, her resolve would waver. And he’d have so many rationalizations, so many reasons he’d meant well... “I’ll still help you with your office, whenever you need me. If you need me, I mean.”
The corner of his mouth wrinkled up in a half-smile. “Nah, I think Dallas has decided I’m better off working alone. Especially since you made such an amazing program already. It’ll help a lot.”
No, his cheek wasn’t safe, not when it was that close to his mouth. She tore her gaze away and stared down. “I’m sorry I compared you to Vaughn. That was unfair. I hate what you did, but I know you were trying to help, and that’s the one thing Vaughn was never trying to do.”
Ford snorted. “You were right. There was one thing you needed from me, and I couldn’t get it done. I’m sorry.”
Two simple words, and they ripped the ground out from under her.
Surprise finally drove her to meet his eyes, and part of her still expected insincerity. Mockery. Powerful men didn’t apologize. Especially not to ungrateful girls who’d spurned their gifts, shrieked at them in a rage, and stormed out of their lives. But Ford
was watching her like he meant it, like he believed it, and when her lips parted, nothing came out.
“So, yeah.” He pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and held it out. “Here. You can talk terms with Dallas. It’s his show now.”
Mia took the paper and stared at it until the words swam into focus.
And then she kept staring.
Ford had handed her a bill. Everything he’d given her was listed in a neat row, along with the cost in credits. And, for one heartbreaking moment, it felt like a punishment. She’d walked away from him, and he’d come after her, wanting to recoup his investment. Just like Cerys.
But this bill was different. She’d watched Trix buy the coat, and Ford had fudged the numbers, underestimating the cost. Not enough to turn this into a patronizing joke, but enough to blunt the edge of the final total. He’d done it with everything on the list, undoubtedly fighting the urge to keep trimming, to take away the burden instead of adding to it.
Because greed was in Cerys’s nature, but it wasn’t in his. Not like this.
He hadn’t just handed her a bill. He’d handed her a clean slate.
The edge of the paper crinkled under her fingers, and she realized her hand was shaking. She set it down on the desk and smoothed out the creases. “Did Lex tell you to do this?”
He grimaced. “Lex isn’t exactly speaking to me at the moment.”
“Because of me?”
“Because I was thoughtless,” he countered quietly. “Because I would have known better if I’d stopped to think about something besides myself.”
It was a statement as profound as anything Lex had said, because it made her reassurances more than comforting words. Ford had crossed a line. Lex believed it. Dallas believed it.
Ford believed it.
Her clean slate stretched out in front of her. An empty canvas, and she could fill it with anything she was brave enough to reach for. She could fill her life with him.
Gathering her courage and her pride, she stroked the edge of the bill. “Can I ask a favor?”
“Anything.” His calm demeanor cracked, just a little, regret and a shred of hope splashed across his features. “I’d still do anything, Mia.”
She swept up the paper and took one step—figurative and literal—toward meeting him in the middle. Because having the power to say no made yes so much easier. “Could you help me pay this?”
“Help you?” he echoed.
“You can’t pay back Jade,” she said, as hope and nerves danced dizzily in her stomach. “I bought my life back, and I need to pay the debt. That’s the only way it’ll ever feel real. But the little things...maybe too much pride is as dangerous as none.”
He nodded, his throat working as he swallowed. “I can do that, buttercup.”
“You don’t have to be afraid to let me choose, Derek.” The paper fluttered between them as she held it out. “Because Dallas is wrong. You’re not better off alone. I choose you.”
He brushed past her outstretched hand, wrapped one strong arm around her waist, and dragged her to him.
Mia let everything go. The bill, her terror, a lifetime of holding back. She rose up on her toes and buried her fingers in his hair, drawing so close her lips almost touched his. “It’s better this way. You know why?”
His answering rumble vibrated against her lips. “Why?”
Because all of the games they’d both been dancing around could be hotter and darker and rawer, because they would only be as real as she let them be. “For one thing, now you can tell me to pull up my skirt and bend over your desk, and I might do it.”
He licked her lower lip as his hand slid down to her ass, clutching her firmly against him. “You would have anyway, just to find out what happened.”
“Maybe,” she admitted, since it was true. The thought had always heated her blood, and now she could let it. Freedom and responsibility in her life, freedom from responsibility in his bed—it was the opposite of everything Sector Two stood for, and it was hers for the taking.
So she took it. Parted her lips and claimed him, muffling his groan as her tongue slid over his. Deeper and rougher than ever before, especially when he clutched the back of her head and tilted his mouth to hers.
Taking, because the line had been there for him, too. Now the only lines left were the ones they drew together.
Not that she was drawing many now. The harder he kissed her, the more eagerly her body reacted. She was flushed already, breathless and melting, and if he jerked up her borrowed skirt and snuck his fingers between her thighs, he’d know just how hot she was.
But he didn’t lift her skirt. He lifted her, turned, and settled her on one of the wide steel desks along the wall. Mia edged her knees apart, making room for his hips between her thighs. Over his shoulder she could see the wide-open door and the hallway beyond.
It wasn’t exactly fucking up against the cage during fight night, but the possibility of being caught zipped through her, bringing with it a fresh surge of exhilaration as she reached for his shirt. He batted her hands aside, but only long enough to tear open the buttons on her shirt.
He cupped her breasts through the lace of her bra and bent his head to them with a groan—one she echoed when his mouth opened over one nipple. The flimsy fabric wasn’t enough to shield her from heat that only grew more intense when he worked the edge down and his mouth met flesh.
Mia arched her spine, whimpering when her shoulders slammed against the wall. Unyielding concrete at her back, unyielding man in front of her. She had been totally naked and felt less debauched than she did like this, almost entirely clothed.
Then his hands slipped under her skirt.
“Belt,” he rumbled against her skin.
“What?” Those big, wonderful fingers were sliding up the insides of her thighs, and this time he wouldn’t go easy with them. Just a few more inches and he’d realize how wet her panties were, how much she wanted this moment—
His fingers bit into her thighs, and he nipped at her chin—hard. “Unbuckle my belt, Mia. Now.”
Her hands trembled. She had to take a steadying breath and slow her movements, guiding the supple leather free of the silver buckle. “What else? Tell me.”
His rasping laugh shivered up her spine. “Get your fucking hands on my dick, buttercup.”
Oh God, yes.
She fumbled with his fly and shoved aside his underwear, and she didn’t care if Noelle came back from lunch and caught her jerking Ford off. It was probably only a matter of time until she came back and found Jas bending Noelle over a table, because squeezing every possible drop of joy out of every spare moment seemed to be what the O’Kanes were all about.
There was so much pleasure in this. In the heat of his cock under her fingers, in the way her touch made him groan and arch up against her hands. She caught his gaze and licked her palm before wrapping it around him, and he answered by edging his fingers into her panties and thrusting them into her.
Maybe she was getting used to having him inside her body, because she barely registered the discomfort. His fingers were still broad and long, but she was wet and a hundred years past ready, straining to spread her knees wider as she stroked him. “Don’t make me wait. Please.”
“Not another second,” he promised roughly. He tore at her panties, the delicate lace yielding beneath his hand as he dragged her with the other to the edge of the desk. “Do it. Put me inside you.”
There was something deliciously lewd about the words, about obeying them. She gripped his shaft and teased herself with the broad head, slicking it over her clit with a gasp. But it wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t be enough until he was buried deep, so she guided him into place.
And waited.
It killed her not to lift her hips, not to wrap her legs around him and drag him forward. He hovered there, just barely inside her, and she shivered and stared up into his eyes. “When we’re like this? I’ll take anything you want to give me.”
Ford looked down at her,
his gaze fixed on her lips. “Do you need it, Mia?”
A question with a dozen meanings. Did she need his cock, did she need the sweet freedom of sexual submission, did she need this relationship and whatever it could be, did she need him?
A dozen meanings, and only one answer. “Yes.”
He drove into her, thrusting deep, and he swallowed her cry of pleasure.
With his mouth on hers she couldn’t speak, couldn’t tell him how good he felt moving inside her, how much she loved the way his hands stroked over her body, as if he couldn’t stand leaving any part of her untouched. She couldn’t tell him she wanted to spend every night in his bed, curled around his body with his heart thudding under her ear, a reminder that she never had to be alone again.
She couldn’t tell him anything—and then his hands settled on her hips, lifting them until the angle of his strokes sparked fire in her blood and light behind her eyes, and she couldn’t remember what she’d wanted to tell him.
She’d figure it out. Sometime between now and forever.
Beyond Addiction
She’s fought like hell to leave the past behind.
Trix changed her name and her life when she got clean four years ago. Now, she has a new family and a job she loves—tending bar and dancing at the Broken Circle. As an O’Kane, she’s happy, untouchable. Until a nightmare from her old life tears her away from her home and drags her back to Hell—also known as Sector Five.
He’s still living—and dying—in it.
Losing Trix was the kick in the head Finn needed to get sober, but working as an enforcer for a man he hates is slowly crushing his soul. The only thing that keeps him going is his determination to destroy Sector Five from the inside. Then Trix comes back into his life—alive, in danger—and nothing else matters.
Getting her home could be a suicide mission. The only thing deadlier is the old spark that flares to life between them. Soon, Finn and Trix are battling the one addiction neither of them ever managed to kick—each other. And it could cost them everything.