by Kit Rocha
"For the reminder," she said instead, pulling the curtain back. It helped dispel the illusion, bringing the gritty reality of her sad little apartment into their fantasy world. "It's easy to forget that promises can mean something."
The bed creaked, and she heard the rustle of clothing being righted. "I'll always be straight with you. You may not like it much when I am, but it'll be there."
Another promise. Maybe he handed them out like candy. Maybe he wandered the sector, being everyone's hero. Strong and honest and telling it like it is. What a luxury it must be, to have enough power to be honest and keep promises.
She'd have to settle for not breaking any. So she didn't offer to always be straight with him. She couldn't.
She already knew she couldn't do this again.
And if she told him now, her resolve would falter. It wouldn't take much. A touch, a kiss. A promise—he had so many of them, one to soothe every fear and worry in her heart. So she'd tell him later, away from her bed. After she'd forgotten the feel of him moving above her, against her, inside her.
That was another thing Stones were good at. Avoiding a fight like a fucking coward.
Chapter Five
When Dallas was helping out with physical therapy, he didn't bother with things like bags and shadowboxing. He strapped on his battered gloves and fully expected Zan to hit him in the fucking face.
Zan ducked a quick left and wove around to the other side of their makeshift ring. "Things may not be as simple as we thought."
"They never are." Dallas was still going easy on him, giving him a chance to warm up, but that wouldn't last much longer. Dallas's next swing was too swift to duck, forcing Zan to block with his injured side. His stiff muscles screamed, and Dallas edged back to give him time to recover.
No, they never were—especially when it came to women. Tatiana had damn near melted into him, but it didn't take a genius to understand the look on her face afterwards. A one-time thing, no matter what she'd said about being down for a quiet, discreet affair.
Irritated, he took his own jab at Dallas. "I screwed up. Maybe."
Dallas knocked his arm aside hard enough to rattle bone. "Yeah? Did you screw her?"
"What do you think?" he snapped.
Dallas lifted an eyebrow, but his gaze was serious—and sympathetic. "So where'd it go wrong—in bed, or after?"
After. Definitely after. Zan wasn't a smug man, overly impressed with his own game, but he knew when a woman got off. And Tatiana got off on him. Hard. "She's scared. Who wouldn't be?"
"Only an idiot." Dallas's next swing was lazy, slow, but it wasn't a ploy. His leader had fallen deep into thought, his body moving solely on instinct. "You've been watching the crafters for years. How bad is it? How much will we lose if we have to wipe Wallace's supporters out?"
"The goods? Not much. He doesn't have as many of the crafters solidly behind him as he wants everyone to think." Zan pulled back, just a little. Drawing the other man in toward his center. "The real problem is bigger. You wipe those guys out, and you start to look a lot more like Stone than before."
"And then everyone can hate me." Dallas blew out a frustrated breath. "Tatiana can put a stop to it, but only while they're still running on grumbles and nostalgia. If this picks up too much steam, we'll have to risk a little hate. So what's her price? The sister?"
"She says so." But that would be too easy.
Dallas struck without warning, a left hook that might have knocked a smaller man clear off his feet. Zan dodged the blow—barely. "So what's her real price?"
"I don't know yet," he hedged. "Catalina's part of it. The rest is...confusing."
"Well, shit." Dallas backed off, dropping both hands to his sides. "I'm not above snatching them both up and stashing them somewhere safe while we hash it out. It's not ideal..."
The temptation to jump on the words in agreement made Zan's tongue itch. "I think we should wait and see."
"I trust your judgment," Dallas replied, quiet but firm. "And I trust that if this girl starts screwing with your judgment, you'll tell me."
It sounded like a question—and a warning. Zan opened his mouth to say something, anything, only to snap it shut when the back door to the warehouse opened.
Lex walked in, her hair swinging behind her in a sleek ponytail. "What's the word?"
Dallas snorted. "It's complicated."
"I bet." She turned to Zan, one eyebrow cocked. "You'd better make it work, honey. A woman like that? She's spent her whole life with other people bossing her around, thinking they know better than her. If we kidnap her, she won't appreciate it. And she sure as hell won't be touching your dick again."
"Charming as always, Parrino." Zan leaned in to kiss her cheek. "But I'm not the one who calls the shots."
Dallas snaked an arm around Lex and tugged her against his side. "Yeah, well, you're gonna have to get right with your options. If kidnapping her's the only way to keep her alive..."
"Then she can hate me all she wants," Zan answered. "At least she'll be safe while she does it."
"See? He's got this." Easy words, undoubtedly meant to reassure, but Zan had lost his leader's attention. After years of being the hardest man in the sector, Dallas O'Kane had given in to his one weakness—the woman snuggled to his chest. When Lex walked into a room, everyone and everything else took a back seat.
It was damn cute—when it wasn't damn infuriating.
"Tatiana will listen to reason," Zan said. "She likes living."
"Depends on what kind of woman she is," Dallas drawled, sliding a hand down Lex's back. "Ask Lex what she'd do if that was her sister."
"He'd regret fucking around with my sister," she answered immediately. "If he lived long enough."
An approving smile curved Dallas's lips as he met Zan's gaze over Lex's head. "Find out her price, Zan. Because letting Tatiana Stone put a knife in that bastard would work just fine for me, but I don't think it'd turn out so good for her."
Or for the O'Kanes. It might not be so much of a stretch for people to whisper about how that had been Dallas's plan all along. "Got it. I won't let you down."
"I know." Dallas pressed a kiss to Lex's temple and released her. "Get out of here, woman. I'm supposed to be kicking this bastard's ass."
She turned her head and sank her teeth into his upper arm.
The crazy bastard laughed. "Unless you had other plans?"
"I might." She glanced at Zan again, but her words were for her lover. "You think I should let him in my closet?"
Dallas tilted his head. "You got anything good in there? For her, I mean."
"I could." She seemed to consider that for a moment. "Then again, some women want more intangible things."
It must have been a private joke, because Dallas laughed and swatted her hip. "And some women prefer knives. But not every man wants to get stabbed as foreplay, Lexie love."
Intangible things. Like independence, self-reliance, all those things people thought they could take away, never realizing they would always be a part of you. He wondered if Tatiana even knew.
Zan shook off the thought and squinted at Lex. "If she liked stuff, she'd still be in Gia's bed."
"An excellent point."
"But she's not." Dallas smoothed his thumb over Lex's jaw, slow and soft. "That's the key to the whole thing, isn't it? They don't run because of what you're giving them. They run because of all the things you're not."
Lex grinned and patted his cheek. "You two don't even need me around."
"I learned it all from you."
A bolt of jealousy shot through Zan, and he covered it quickly by clearing his throat. "Man, sometimes being around you two is like watching my parents make out."
"Bite your tongue," Dallas retorted, but he released Lex with one last caress. "I'm not that old. And I'm about to prove it."
Lex hummed. "Good luck." She pivoted on one heel and headed off toward the front door.
And Dallas watched her the whole damn way.
&n
bsp; When he turned back, his expression was still gentle around the edges. Lex could be cunning when the occasion called for it, but Zan had known Dallas for a long time, and the man had always had his own brand of cunning. What he'd learned from Lex was something else, something that had made him a better—and more dangerous—leader.
Empathy.
"You never answered," he said softly. "I know how far you'll go for the gang. How far will you go for this girl?"
"What's the real question?"
"Would you keep her, if she let you?"
He didn't need to think about that at all. "Yes. But she wouldn't let me," he added. "Tatiana won't be kept. Even if she was exactly where she wanted to be, where she would be—if she thought she was being kept, she would leave."
Dallas rolled his shoulders slowly, his eyes unfocused. "I let them walk away, you know. When Stone's organization fell apart, I almost put his kids on a bus—to the communes or the mountains, just out of the way. I wanted to make them someone else's problem."
Zan barely remembered the aftermath of the showdown with Stone. Still, barely was more than he wanted.
His brother Hunter had always been the strong one. After their parents' deaths, he'd been the one to hold their tiny family together, scraping out a meager living on the streets of Sector Four. He'd protected Zan, and Zan had idolized him. So when Hunter had thrown in behind the upstart bootlegger known as Dallas O'Kane, Zan gladly went along for the ride, because his big brother had never steered him wrong.
Then he died fighting Stone's men, and Zan's world had fallen apart. Every truth he'd ever known, gone in an instant, and the only thing left was O'Kane. The man with the vision. The man Hunter had trusted enough to die for.
"I don't remember much about back then," Zan confessed. "But I know Hunter believed in this, and so do I."
"Your brother was a good friend. A good man." Dallas's gaze swung to Zan. "He understood that a leader who has to abuse his power just to prove he has it isn't a fucking leader at all. That's why we wanted to take down Stone. And that's the kind of power your girl grew up with, the abusive kind. Remember that."
"It's hard to forget." Tatiana reminded him of it every time she looked at him, and it made his chest hurt.
"I know."
Yeah. The trick would be getting Tatiana to recognize the difference between a man who wanted to control her...and one who wanted to protect her.
Chapter Six
Tatiana always closed early one day a week. It gave her time to get ahead on the products that took more time to prepare, the meticulous soaps and carefully packaged lotions that sold in Eden's fancy boutiques.
It had taken her two years to crack Eden, and even then it was through so many middlemen that her profit margins were whittled to nothing. So she worked longer hours, made deals. Free cleaning supplies for any food cart willing to render cooking fat for her. Credit in her shop for anyone who brought in ashes so she could make her own lye water.
It had been hard at first. People had been cold. They remembered Tatiana Stone, her father's doted-upon princess, the girl who wore jewels and fur coats while they shivered and starved. Some of the people most loyal to Dallas had delighted in trying to humiliate her.
Trying to.
After years of her father's rages and those first few terrifying months after his fall, it took more than a little hazing to wound her spirit. She'd risen before dawn, leaving Catalina asleep in bed, and had trudged from shop to shop. She'd gotten on her knees to scrape the ashes from their fireplaces and chimneys while they smirked behind their hands. She'd stumbled home aching and smudged with soot, the Cinderella of Sector Four who'd already shunned her fairy godmother when she wouldn't let Gia keep her as a pet.
But it had paid off. Day by day, she'd earned their grudging respect. They stopped smirking, stopped shunning her. Stuart had been the first to strike a deal, but once he relented, everyone loyal to the O'Kanes followed swiftly behind. People began to barter with her. To shop at her store. To welcome her as one of them.
And she could lose it all in a heartbeat if she took one wrong step.
God, she already had. She'd fucked an O'Kane. Not even a nice, clean fuck—she'd opened that box of frustrated desire, all the power and submission that belonged in a stable, trusting relationship instead of an illicit one-night stand.
Gia would have smacked her ass good for that. Or hell, maybe not. It wasn't as if Tatiana hadn't been her usual too-demanding self. No patient obedience or placid vulnerability, only selfish hunger that still hadn't faded, because she couldn't shake the feel of him.
She was like those sad old-timers, hooked on O'Kane whiskey and rationalizing all the ways that one drink wasn't a bad thing. One drink to heat the blood on a cold night. One to drive away an ache in the bones. Just one more sip. One more taste.
Until someone caught Zan creeping out of her bedroom and every person who'd ever supported her father started whispering that she was an O'Kane whore. They didn't need power to destroy Tatiana's life. The only person they needed was curled up in Wallace's bed, dreaming of being a princess again.
So today she wouldn't think about Zan and his big, warm hands and his big, hard body. She'd think about soap and profit margins and how the batch she was pouring might be the most valuable yet.
Color had been the key to cracking the Eden market. In the sectors, most people just wanted function. Soap that got them clean, lotion that soothed dry skin, salves that helped sore muscles.
But practicality wasn't enough to open the fancy pocketbooks in Eden. They wanted things to be beautiful, too. So she'd improvised, experimented. The results were spread out before her—twenty pounds of rose-scented soap in her largest mold, with row after row of alternating colors across the top.
This was the tricky part. Each stripe of color had to be precise, but she had to make them all before the soap solidified too much. Because the final touch was to swirl the colors together in an intricate, dizzying pattern by dragging a board with a few dozen nails pounded through it back and forth through the liquid soap.
That was the part Eden paid for, that thin layer of color that added nothing of substance but quadrupled her asking price. Of course, the store owners turned around and charged their customers even more, but this was the best Tatiana could hope for. It wasn't like she could lure the fancy women of Eden down to a sector market to do their shopping.
It was something. And God, she needed a victory today.
She'd finished the lines of color and eased the board with its sharp, shining nails into place when the bell above her office door jingled. It was out of place, and it took her a second to realize why—she'd locked all of the doors before coming into her workroom.
She lunged for the pistol on her side table, but that took a second too long. A meaty arm looped around her waist and dragged her back.
"Shh." A hand that smelled of dirt and grease clamped over her mouth. "Just want to talk, princess."
The voice was familiar. One of the vicious bastards who had followed her father—and followed Wallace, now. Buzz had been too cowardly to fight alongside his so-called brothers, but he'd been quick enough to come after her in the aftermath, eager to take a pass at the boss's no-longer-untouchable daughter.
She'd been softer back then. Still grieving, terrified. Still convinced that O'Kane would turn on her at any moment, so she couldn't afford to alienate the only people who might feel loyalty to her. So she'd only stabbed Buzz a little.
That was a mistake she wouldn't be repeating.
"That's it," he breathed. "A nice chat never hurt anybody."
Icy calm flooded her veins. She had her knife in her boot and plenty of makeshift weapons within reach, but he was bigger than her and stronger than her. Timing mattered. So she went still and resisted the temptation to bite off a few of those fingers covering her mouth.
For now.
"You gonna scream?" He didn't sound entirely displeased by the possibility.
Fu
cking pervert. He'd like having an excuse to gag her, one that fit whatever story he was already telling himself to make him into the hero of this scenario. Punishing Stone's disloyal daughter, putting her in her place. Funny how the only way they could ever come up with to do either usually involved their dicks.
Or maybe he didn't give a shit about being a hero. Maybe he just wanted to hurt her.
She shook her head, slow and careful, and he dropped his hand from her mouth, grazing her collarbone and the upper curve of her breast as she jerked away. "Talk, Buzz."
He leaned against her worktable, his casual stance belied by the tension in his shoulders. "Got a message for you, princess."
"Then let's hear it."
"Wallace wants you to play nice with your sister." Buzz's eyes gleamed. "The fighting makes her sad."
It made Tatiana sad, too. What it didn't make her was stupid. "Wallace doesn't give a shit about my sister."
Buzz snorted out a laugh. "See, that's what he means, I guess. Not very nice."
She took a step to the right, putting a little space between them. "Fine. I'll go see her tomorrow. I'll play nice."
He followed her. "That's good to hear."
The position put him between her and the gun—another mistake she wouldn't make again—but another step brought her within reach of her worktable. "You don't want to do this, Buzz."
His expression hardened. "Relax, princess. This isn't that kind of visit."
"So leave. I got the message."
"Don't be so fucking rude." Buzz picked up a stirring stick and turned it over in his hands. "There's more to the message. Well, it's more like an offer."
She didn't want to hear anything Wallace had to offer, but she knew she had to listen. She had to know how bad it was—and how much worse it could be. "And that is?"
"You could take her place," he answered casually.
Wallace was an idiot. A cruel, sadistic idiot. And still, for one moment, she was tempted. It would solve plenty of her problems. Catalina would see him for the opportunistic fool he was—and once she was safely away, Tatiana could cut his throat in his sleep.