Before the End (Beyond Series Ultimate Glom Edition)

by Kit Rocha

  Her blue dress with the polka dots. Her mind filed it away with surreal serenity, considering her trembling limbs and galloping pulse.

  “No panties,” he added with a sudden, wicked grin. “Nothing underneath it but you, so when I bend you over my lap, it’s just all those ruffles and your perfect damn ass.”

  She had to drop her bound hands to his head to steady herself. “Say it.”

  The wariness was in his eyes. The fear of scaring her, of hurting her. But he said it anyway, letting the words fall between them with the hoarseness of a man letting go. “I want to spank you. And I want it to get you wet.”

  The one thing he needed above all others—her pleasure. “It will.”

  His eyelids drooped. He lifted his thumb, licked her taste from it, and returned with a firmer touch. “I want to work these pearls into you again, until you’re on the edge, just like this.”

  The knot of pleasure wound tighter, dangerously close to an ache now. But she held back, because she needed to hear more. Every delicious detail.

  He rose slowly, catching her wrists and pressing them up above her head. His other hand cupped her pussy, his palm firmly possessive and torturous against her slick, swollen flesh. Holding her gaze, he curled two fingers inside her, setting off a dangerous wobble in her knees.

  The pearls shifted. His fingers crooked, rubbing them inside her with slow precision until he found the spot that stole her breath and arched her spine.

  Smiling, Finn pressed the heel of his hand against her clit. His voice dropped to a whisper, as if he’d saved the most illicit part for last. “And then I’ll take the one thing I missed the most after I lost you. The thing I regretted not doing all the damn time.”

  He didn’t give her a chance to ask. He showed her by capturing her lips in a kiss so painfully gentle, her brain stuttered. For a moment, she couldn’t process the dichotomy of that sweet, hungry kiss versus the firm, demanding movements of his fingers inside her.

  Then his tongue touched hers, and everything snapped into place. She fell into his kiss as the first waves of orgasm broke through her, and he swallowed her rough, helpless cry as it continued to build.

  He was so sweet. So gentle. So brutal. After so long on edge, her entire body shuddered under the force of release, and he kept pace with it, pushing her higher so that the first wild rush of release broke open into a second, rougher climax.

  Her knees buckled, and he braced her weight with one arm around her body. He dragged her side against his chest, his renewed erection grinding against her hip, but even that didn’t buy her mercy. He thrust his fingers harder, and he groaned in her ear. “You can take more, can’t you?”

  “Fuck—” Her breath caught on a sob. She couldn’t, she just couldn’t. “Don’t stop—”

  He bit her jaw and somehow pushed a third finger inside her. Along with the pearls, it should have been uncomfortable, even painful, but all Trix knew was pleasure—blazing, blinding. Transcendent.

  Vaguely, she realized they were moving, sinking. When she opened her eyes, she was on the floor, on Finn’s lap. He made a soothing noise against her cheek as he eased the pearls from her body. “Next time, we do this on a bed.”

  “If we can get to one.” The words came out sounding slurred and far away as blood rushed in her ears.

  “No shit.” He tossed the strand of beads aside and slid a gentle hand between her thighs. “You so much as twitch your finger at me, and my self-control goes to hell.”

  “Good.” She was oversensitized, like one giant nerve laid bare to his touch, but she didn’t jerk away. He would always be more careful with her than he would with himself. “I like you that way.”

  “You better, because my dick hasn’t recovered this fast in years.” But even though she could feel the hard heat of him against her ass, he didn’t make any move to get in her. Just kept up his slow, soothing caress.

  Trix fought a smile. “Finn?”

  “Mmm?”

  “We’re not done yet.”

  His fingertip grazed her clit with the softest pressure. “We can be, if you’re wrung out.”

  Sated, exhausted, but none of that mattered when he touched her. Arousal unfurled in her belly again, licking through her like flames.

  She shifted on his lap, easing up until she could wrap her legs around his hips. She settled with her bound arms around his neck, her breasts pressed against his chest.

  Finn curled his hands around her waist and lifted. So slow. So careful. He pushed into her one agonizing inch at a time, his muscles tense with the effort.

  It felt like coming home.

  Trix buried her face in the hollow of his shoulder and held on as he rocked her slow and steady, guiding her to roll her hips at a pace that had to be torturous when he was so hard inside her. But he didn’t hurry her, just spread both hands wide on her back and groaned. “We’ll never be done.”

  Four years and a world of distance hadn’t stopped them from winding up right here at this very moment. He’d thought she was dead, and that hadn’t stopped him from picking her up when she’d stumbled back into his life.

  Nothing would stop him, and she needed to hear it so badly that her throat ached. “Say it,” she whispered against his skin. “Just once.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he promised, low and rough. “I’ll never leave you.”

  She moaned and turned her head to find his mouth, open and searching. He kissed her as their gentle rocking sped, as his hands slipped down to grip her hips. He lifted her a little quicker each time, brought her down a little harder—but it was still careful. Still loving.

  Finn used words to distract or deflect, but he used his body when it mattered. He wasn’t making love to her. He was declaring it, swearing it, showing it with every kiss and lick and bite and thrust.

  A slower climb, but just as high, just as fierce. She clenched her hands in his hair and pulled as her shivers of pleasure turned into a full-body tremble.

  He kissed her throat. Buried his face against it and groaned. “Come with me. I need to feel you this time.”

  Her skin burned and her heart pounded. She was tense, so tense, everything drawn tight. Then Finn shifted her hips, dragged her down into a thrust harder than the others, and she shattered.

  He clamped a hand over her mouth, letting her scream her release against his palm as he shuddered and groaned his own. His forehead fell to hers, his hand caught between their lips, muffling their panted breaths.

  The door slammed open, and Jeni walked in. “Oh, shit.” She squeezed her eyes shut and backed up, only to run into the doorframe. “Fuck, sorry. Shit, I’m sorry—”

  Finn let his hand fall away with a choked laugh. “Damn it.”

  “Fuck,” Jeni said again.

  She sounded so mortified, almost scandalized. Trix couldn’t help but laugh. “No, we’re finished, thanks.”

  “You could still close the door, though,” Finn grumbled.

  The door swung shut, and Jeni’s voice drifted through it. “Sorry.”

  Trix swallowed another round of giggles. “Think she apologized enough?”

  “She didn’t pull a gun on me.” Finn rubbed his thumb along her jaw. “I’d call it a win.”

  She closed her eyes and leaned in to his touch, letting the quiet peace of the moment steal through her. “The pearls are yours, and so am I.”

  “Fuck the pearls. I only need you.”

  I’ll never leave you. For the first time, she believed it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Finn heard the voices from inside the garage. Not one or two people having a too-loud conversation or a party that had spilled out of the Broken Circle, but the distinct murmur of an anxious crowd—one that was growing larger.

  Abandoning his current project, he stepped out into the courtyard and surveyed the tight knot of O’Kanes hovering just outside the barracks. Dallas and Lex stood to one side, looking grim enough to twist worry through Finn’s gut. He scanned the crowd qui
ckly, that worry ramping up when he couldn’t find a flash of familiar red hair.

  He found Bren instead. Finn stopped next to where the man stood on the edge of the crowd. “Is something wrong?”

  “Maybe,” he answered cryptically. “Doc’s been in there with Flash and Amira.”

  The bouncer and the waitress weren’t the sort of power players Finn had needed to know about for his duties in Sector Five, but on the O’Kane compound one thing set them apart from everyone else—their daughter.

  Before Finn could ask about her, a strangled sob came from inside the building. Muffled but audible, more so when the crowd fell silent.

  “Shit,” Bren muttered under his breath.

  The door opened, and the doctor stepped out. He was a mess, his jaw stubbled, his eyes bloodshot. But he looked sober, at least, even if it seemed like he hated being that way.

  That discomfort just got worse when he faced the crowd, and Finn got the feeling the man hadn’t been coming out to explain what was going on. He was flat-out fucking fleeing whatever had set off those heartbreaking sobs.

  Dallas lifted a hand and crooked two fingers in summons. Doc obeyed, but with a snarl. “Fuck off, O’Kane. You want to know, you talk to Flash. Doesn’t matter, anyway.”

  Dallas’s stern expression didn’t waver. “Tell me. Now.”

  “Or what? You’ll beat the shit out of me?”

  “Dylan.” Lex’s voice cut through the silence, but not in command. She stood there, both arms wrapped around her midsection, as if shielding herself. “Please.”

  “Oh, fucking hell.” The man grimaced. “Hana’s sick.”

  Dallas didn’t ask how sick. He didn’t need to, with the sound of Amira’s grief ripping through all of them. “How do I fix it?”

  The doctor’s answer was final. Damning. “You can’t.”

  “Bullshit. I can find a regen tech—”

  “And it won’t do any good, O’Kane.”

  Dallas balled his hand into a fist, looking seconds short of driving it through the doctor’s face. “Stop telling me what I can’t do and explain it.”

  “Amira noticed some muscle weakness in the baby, and she told me something was wrong. I thought she was being paranoid—until I did the blood work.” Doc sighed heavily. “It’s a metabolic enzyme deficiency. The prognosis is—” He cut off with a vicious curse. “The prognosis is shit, that’s what.”

  “There has to be something we can do. Medicine.” Dallas shoved his hand through his hair and looked at Finn. Just for a second, but long enough for Finn to read the conflict there.

  Even if there was medicine that would help, Beckett wouldn’t hand it over. Not without getting something—or someone—in return.

  “Gene therapy in utero,” Doc whispered. “That’s how they’d fix it in Eden. But it’s too late for that now.”

  Not necessarily. In Eden, registration for reproduction involved genetic counseling meant to avoid situations like this. But rich people broke the rules, and there was always a demand for experimental drugs on the Base.

  Getting them would be dangerous. Dallas would have to beg for them or steal them, and, in either scenario, Finn was likely to be front and center. He’d promised Trix that he’d stay with her.

  He’d promised himself he’d deserve her.

  He stepped forward, drawing Doc’s attention. “What if I could get my hands on a programmable retrovirus?”

  “Excuse me?” Doc stared at Finn like he was the crazy, tripping, suicidal bastard.

  For once in Finn’s damn life, he actually wasn’t. “The Base does gene therapy all the time. Experimental and dangerous as fuck...but it happens.”

  Dallas raised an eyebrow. “Well, Doc?”

  “Could you make that work?” Lex took a step toward him. “If this is as bad as you say, anything you can give Flash and Amira… They’ll take it.”

  “I stored some of Hana’s umbilical cord blood when she was born,” he admitted. “I don’t know, maybe. But it’d take a fucking miracle, even if Beckett’s boy here is telling the truth.”

  “I’m not Beckett’s boy,” Finn replied, meeting Dallas’s eyes. “Though I’m sure he’s dying to get me back.”

  “It might have come up,” Dallas said, way too casually. Beckett was making demands, then, which made it a good time for Finn to prove he was useful for more than fixing cars and building gardens.

  He turned and gestured to Bren. “When Trix and I were in the tunnels beneath Five, she said something about Noah. That he can hack his way through all those damn security doors?”

  Bren nodded. “You got a plan?”

  “There’s a storage drop on the edge of Five. Fleming was required to keep a stockpile there of everything the Base uses.”

  It was information, not a plan—but Bren only nodded again. “When do we leave?”

  Dallas pointed at Doc. “You stay right here. We’re gonna go find Cruz and see what he knows about the Base’s experiments. Lexie, love?”

  “I’ll take care of them.” She slipped through the door and closed it quietly behind her.

  “Bren?” Dallas jerked his head toward the Broken Circle. “Round up Noah and map out a route. Figure out who you need.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you.” O’Kane folded his arms across his chest and stared at Finn for long enough to prickle wariness down his spine. He was used to assholes and sociopaths leading sectors, but Dallas O’Kane knew how to level a look that made a man feel bared to his soul, judged for his sins and found sincerely wanting.

  Since there wasn’t much to say in his defense, Finn stayed silent.

  “You,” Dallas repeated. “If you fuck us over, Finn, I’m gonna find you. No matter how the fuck far you run or who you think could hide you. I will find you, and I will turn you inside out. And then I’ll bring you back here and let Lex at you.”

  A threat only an O’Kane could make—saving the scariest for last. Dallas O’Kane could break your body. Finn didn’t want to see what kind of vengeance Lex could be stirred to when properly motivated—especially when she knew his most vulnerable spots. “My loyalties are pretty damn simple.”

  “Trix?”

  “From start to finish.”

  After a moment, Dallas nodded. “Good enough for now. Go with Bren. Get this shit figured out. And, Finn?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” Dallas said quietly. “Don’t break her heart. Come the hell back.”

  It was the promise he’d already made, the one he had to keep. “I’m planning on it.”

  Trix stumbled out of the back door, her eyes wide and her chest heaving with shallow breaths. “Lex said…” She trailed off as she caught sight of Finn.

  “Hana needs medicine,” he said, meeting her eyes. No pain, not yet. Because she hadn’t figured out what came next. “I’m going to help Bren and Noah get it.”

  She wasn’t moving, but she seemed to still anyway as realization dawned. “Get it...because it’s in Five.”

  Finn tugged her away from the milling people—and away from Dallas, though his gaze followed them. “Nobody else knows where the place is. It’s the kid’s only chance.”

  She opened her mouth, but the argument she obviously wanted to make died on her tongue. “For Hana,” she said finally.

  He slipped his fingers into her hair and pulled her close, until he could lean down to press his forehead to hers. “For you,” he corrected. “This is your family. I get it. I still don’t know shit about having one, but let me protect yours.”

  Trix wrapped her hands around his wrists. “Be careful?”

  “I’ll be back before you know it.” He smiled and stroked his thumb across her cheek. “Donnelly’s crazy, but I bet he’s real useful in a pinch.”

  “I mean it, Finn.”

  He kissed her. Short and abrupt, because it wasn’t the place and there wasn’t time, but even that brief taste of her made his blood pound. “You think I’m taking any f
ucking chances with you waiting for me on the other end?”

  “Hell, no.” Her voice shook the tiniest bit. “I’ll be here.”

  And he’d be one step closer to belonging. “Give me a good-luck kiss, doll.”

  She brushed her lips over his, softly at first. Then she sank her teeth into his lower lip with a moan. “Remember what you promised me.”

  Finn caught her hand and pressed his lips to her palm. “This is home. Nothing will change that.”

  She curled her fingers to stroke his beard. “Then hurry back.”

  Noah Lennox was a little scary.

  Finn had known him for years, since the days when he was a newly recruited enforcer and Noah was still a surly teenager, the brilliant son of Sector Five’s bitter, angry tech specialist. Fleming had always gone easy on the kid, too afraid of spooking a valuable resource—especially after the elder Lennox opted to overdose his way out of life.

  Then Noah had fallen for a girl. Emma Cibulski, the little sister of one of Finn’s least reliable dealers. Finn didn’t know when the idiot had started rolling on his own stash, but he’d bet every credit to his name that Fleming had helped Cib along the path to destruction.

  And Emma had been slated for a fate like Trix’s—addicted to the dangerous shit, held hostage to ensure Noah’s good behavior. Scaring the two of them out of the sector had been the first decent thing Finn had done in a while, but fresh off the latest attempt to wean Trix from her addiction, it had been the only choice he could stand to make.

  If he’d had a clue just how dangerous Noah could be, he might have chosen a different route.

  With a datapad in one hand and a lock override device in the other, Noah led Finn and Bren through doors Finn had never realized were even there and down tunnels he would have sworn on his life didn’t exist. “This is fucking insane,” Finn muttered to Bren as they watched Noah hack the control panel on a huge steel blast door. “Is there anywhere he can’t get with that thing?”

  “Through a solid wall, maybe.” Bren patted the backpack slung over his shoulder. “But that’s where I come in.”

  Finn raised an eyebrow. “I always heard you were a sniper, not an explosives nut.”