Before the End (Beyond Series Ultimate Glom Edition)

by Kit Rocha

  She was sheltered, not stupid. "No. I'm afraid not."

  It was his turn to laugh. "Probably the smartest thing, generally speaking."

  A tightness between her shoulder blades loosened, and she smiled—a real smile, for once. "It's not personal. I hope you understand. But I don't know the rules here. A gift like this in Sector Five would come with...specific obligations."

  "Mmm." He arched one eyebrow. "Tell me, Lili—do I strike you as someone who needs to buy women?"

  "Not particularly," she conceded. "But most men of my acquaintance found it easier, whether they needed to or not."

  "I'm not most men."

  No, he wasn't. "Then...why? Why give me a piano?"

  "Because the piano will mean more to you than the money did to me."

  An unfathomable answer, the latest in a long line of things that made no sense to her. Maybe she'd never understand the rules of this place enough to blend in, but she had to keep trying.

  Didn't she?

  "Kindness, Miss Lili," he murmured. "It can still be found in the world. If this gift can show you that, it'll be well worth it."

  Still. Her world had never held kindness. It was a fantasy, a dream, and the thought of it made her throat ache. She swallowed, trying to banish the threat of tears, but what had been a simple act of self-control with her heart insulated by the drugs seemed impossible now.

  She had to feel it all, too bright and too raw. The sadness and the gratitude and the unfamiliar bite of hope. It wouldn't just go away this time, and she didn't know how to hide it.

  Lili turned away from him and covered her awkwardness by touching the piano. "Do you play?"

  "I'm technically proficient," he admitted.

  "I don't know if I am." She brushed her fingertips over the keys, grounding herself in the familiar sensation. "But I love it. My mother taught me."

  "That sounds lovely. And far preferable to my proficiency. I never really cared to learn, but it's expected of me."

  "It is?" It was a curious enough statement that she glanced back at him. "Why?"

  He wasn't smiling now. "The ladies of Eden have cultured tastes. Or, at least, they like to imagine they do."

  Lili studied him again. His strong features, all hard lines that seemed more severe without a friendly expression to soften them. His perfect body and immaculate clothing, both as carefully maintained as hers had been. Not just carefully—purposefully.

  Maybe that was what drew her to him, more deeply than the proper suits and polished shoes. He felt familiar because he was as shined and buffed as she'd always been, a person made up of all the talents and interests other people desired.

  But it made sense for her. She'd been a wife, with all the attendant duties. Men rarely had to please anyone but themselves.

  Jared tilted his head again. "You don't know."

  Shame at her own ignorance was another feeling she was having to get used to. "Whatever it is, I'm afraid I don't."

  "I'm sorry, I assumed someone would have told you." He shrugged. "That's my job—pleasing the ladies of Eden. I'm a whore."

  "Oh," Lili said faintly, as if the words made any sense at all. Oh, the whores in Sector Five had hardly been restricted to women—even Lili knew that—but imagining that any of them were there to cater to a woman's pleasure…

  He slid his hands into his pockets. "I've shocked you."

  "No. I mean, yes—" Her cheeks weren't the only thing flushed now. Her whole body felt too warm, and she couldn't quite meet his eyes. "I'm…" Surprised that a woman would pay for that.

  Maybe she shouldn't be. She'd been watching the O'Kane women for weeks, her certainty in their deception slipping bit by bit. But there was wondering if they were truly enjoying themselves, and there was knowing. Knowing could change everything.

  "Horrified?" he supplied ruefully.

  "No," she said forcefully. And now she had to tell him the truth, as humiliating as it was. "I didn't know women...sought out that sort of companionship."

  "I see. Well, they do. Quite often, as a matter of fact."

  He said it as if it was an understood truth. Water was wet, the sky was blue, women often paid for sex. It was more than she could process all at once, more than she'd ever be able to process with him standing there, beautiful and tempting and representing a world of terrifying possibility.

  But she needed him to know she wasn't judging him. She didn't know why it felt so vital, except that it wouldn't be fair to repay kindness and honesty with disdain. "I'm shocked. I'm a little confused. But I promise I'm not horrified."

  There was that smile again—slow, easy. Knowing. "I've trespassed on your hospitality for too long. I should go."

  She didn't want him to leave, but she had no reason to ask him to stay. "I know you said no repayment is necessary, but maybe I could make you dinner—" No, now she sounded like she was propositioning him. "Ace could bring it to you."

  He arched one eyebrow. "As delicious as I'm sure it would be, I'd value your company more than the meal."

  If it had been any other man, she wouldn't have dared consider. But surely a man like Jared wouldn't need her for sex. Perhaps he wanted the same thing she had longed for—companionship without demands.

  Or maybe she was a foolish girl who wanted an excuse to believe he was safe.

  "I could bring you dinner myself," she found herself saying without really deciding to—which might be all the proof she needed that he wasn't safe at all. But the words were out and she couldn't take them back. She didn't want to.

  "I have a kitchen. And I'd love to see you in your element, Miss Lili."

  The way he said her name made her shiver. "I'll have to check with Lex. She might not want me to leave the compound."

  "Here, then."

  "All right. How soon?"

  "Friday night?"

  Two days. Two days to second-guess her decision while anticipation made her skin too tight. Whatever Jared could be called, it certainly wasn't safe. But maybe he didn't have to be a threat to her.

  She smiled and told him the truth. "I can't wait."

  Ace

  Ace had always had trouble warming up to prissy rich girls.

  It was easier to admit it now, with his name etched across the two people he loved most. Self-reflection wasn't as painful these days, though Ace didn't need to reflect hard to come up with a reason for his distrust. Rich, prissy women had tried to buy pieces of his soul for too many years not to leave a mark.

  He'd gotten over it with Noelle, but she'd been easy. Just a wobbly-legged bundle of earnest horniness and sweet affection, and it was hard to stay irritated at someone who got off so damn hard on being scandalized. But Lili…

  Lili wasn't eager. She wasn't horny. She was chilly, brittle repression wrapped around enough pain and trauma to be explosive. She was going to go off in someone's face without careful handling—and not in a sexy way, either.

  And Rachel had adopted her as a pet.

  Ace trailed behind them in the marketplace, his arm going numb from the weight of the purchases they'd already made. But Lili was taking her sweet time over the produce carts, examining vegetables like the fate of entire sectors depended on picking exactly the right fucking tomato.

  Rachel slid one arm around his waist. "You're scowling."

  Not anymore, he wasn't. He never was, once she touched him. "That wasn't scowling. That was seething with intensity. It's an artist thing."

  "Mm-hmm." She steered him around the side of a stall, until they were half-hidden by hanging sacks of potatoes and braids of onions. "What's wrong?"

  "It's nothing," he promised her, smoothing his fingertip over her collarbone. His name was there, in swooping, beautiful permanence, and it still didn't feel real sometimes. "Just...wondering what the hell is going on in Jared's head."

  "Baffled or worried?"

  "Do I have to pick one?"

  "No." Rachel stared up at him, her eyes bright and smiling. "Maybe he thinks she could use anoth
er friend."

  It was sweet, and no doubt exactly the reason she'd swooped in to tuck Lili under her wing. "Impossible. She's got you now."

  Her only reaction was a pretty blush as she continued. "And maybe he wants to be more than her friend. Is that so terrible?"

  Ace leaned past the sacks of potatoes to make sure Lili hadn't wandered off and found her peering at a row of herbs he couldn't have identified if his life hung in the balance. Her expression was so serious, as if, to her, it really was life or death.

  "Not terrible," he murmured, looking back to Rachel. "Unless she doesn't want it. Men have delicate hearts, angel."

  "Worried, then." She stroked her fingers through his hair, drawing her nails down his scalp to the base of his neck. "It can be worth the risk, can't it?"

  Pleasure shivered down his spine, even at that simple touch. If they'd been alone, he'd be finding a secure alcove already, someplace to push her against a wall while he teased her with the threat of discovery.

  He'd have to do it later. With Cruz's help.

  She laughed softly. "I'll take that filthy look as a yes."

  He had to scramble to remember her question. "Some risks are bigger than others. And Jared's never been big on the emotional ones. I don't want your little friend to end up hurting either, sweetheart. Lord knows the last few months have knocked her around pretty hard."

  "Do you want me to talk to her?"

  If Jared was working a slow, delicate seduction, barreling into the middle of it would go about as well as bothering Bren when he was elbow-deep in a bomb. Or maybe that was exactly what needed to happen. "I don't know. I don't know her as well as you do."

  Rachel kissed him, just a quick brush of her mouth at the corner of his. "Do you trust me?"

  "Always, angel."

  "Then let it be. See what shakes out." She gazed up at him like he was the king of the world, and she was so damn adorable his chest ached with it. "You might be surprised."

  "Oh, I'm sure I will be." He snuck his free arm around her waist and tugged her tight against his body. "She's lucky she has you. Don't make me too jealous."

  "Of what?"

  "Of having you." He brushed his lips over her ear and summoned his lowest, darkest whisper. The one he used for filthy promises of pain and ecstasy. "I know you have a big heart. But it's still ours."

  Rachel shivered. "In my heart and on my skin. No one else, Ace, ever. Just you and Cruz."

  "Damn straight." He kissed her again and reluctantly released her. "Let's go round up your little lost lamb, angel. Before any big bad wolves get ideas."

  "Uh-huh." She took two of the bags from him and slung them over her shoulder. "You know she's likelier to be scared of you, right?"

  "Me? I'm a tamed man."

  "Doesn't matter." She turned to face him, her expression serious and her voice low. "She's from Five. She's spent her adult life—plus some—drugged and numb. I don't think anything can scare her the way feeling can."

  Ace glanced over Rachel's shoulder again. Lili was tracing her fingertip over the curve of an apple now, tentative in that same brittle way she seemed to be about everything. But he had seen her the first night she'd dropped on their doorstep, doped so heavily her eyes were beyond blank.

  The dead eyes were gone, but Rachel was right—it wasn't just repression that had taken over. It was restraint, a desperate grasp at controlling herself in a world where everything felt bright and intense after a lifetime of shadows and numbness.

  Ace knew how that felt. "All right, I hear you, Rae."

  "Do you?" She framed his face with her hands, smoothed her thumbs over his cheeks and jaw. "You make people feel—happiness, excitement, laughter. Love." A smile curved her lips, and she winked at him. "Must be an artist thing."

  The warmth and affection in her eyes heated him more than her touch—and that was heating him up plenty all on its own. "Must be. I'll try to tone it down for her. Be really boring. Practice my Bren impression."

  "Good luck with that, baby."

  Ace suspected her of more than a little bias, but he took her to heart nonetheless. He'd tone down his scowls and his smiles and cut the girl a break. If Rachel saw someone worth caring for buried beneath all that armor, she was probably right.

  He had to believe that now, because she'd been one of the first to see it in him.

  Chapter Six

  The stylus slid silently over the tablet's smooth surface as Jared scrawled his signature, filling the final empty box of the contract. "There, it's done." For better or worse, he was now the owner of record of a grungy, unnamed—and illegal—underground club in Eden.

  "You sure this is what you want?" Dylan Jordan was uncharacteristically sober as he accepted the tablet. "It's not exactly an easy retirement by anyone's definition."

  "I'm not cut out for easy." He'd tried it. For the last five years, his life had been easy, with all the wealth and security he could ever want falling into his lap. Hell, he'd had the satisfaction of seeing his best friends well settled.

  And none of it made him happy. He wasn't even content. He was drifting, as lost as all the rest of the people Dallas O'Kane liked to snatch up.

  "Well," Dylan said slowly, "there's easy, and then there's quitting your job to become a fucking sp—"

  Jared shot out of his chair and clamped his hand over the man's mouth. "Don't say it, Dylan. Not even here."

  He stared back at him, his eyes glinting, until Jared moved his hand. "Come on, lover boy. Don't tell me you haven't swept this place recently. No one's listening."

  "That's not the point." Not entirely. He couldn't let that word get into his head—spy—or it would move the fuck in and live there. It would color everything he did, everything he said, and someone would figure it out.

  Dylan caught his wrist, held it. "So what is the point? You want to pretend that's not what's going on here? That it's not what O'Kane asked you to do?"

  Such a fine line, and so hard to explain to someone who didn't have to live it. But Jared took a deep breath and tried. "The best acting happens when you're not acting. You have to believe what's happening, feel it—even if it's just for a little while. So I'm going to run a club, the best damn club I can, and whatever comes of that is—"

  "A happy accident?" Dylan sighed, twined his fingers with Jared's, and pulled him closer. "I understand perfectly. This isn't retirement at all, just a change of venue and clientele."

  Maybe it was true, and he'd still be whoring himself, just in a different capacity. But they'd all reached a point where information was more precious than money, and Jared could trade in drinks and easy smiles just as effectively as he had in sweaty nights of earth-shattering pleasure. "It's worth it."

  His fingers tightened. "It's dangerous."

  "So is everything else in the sectors, Dylan."

  "No." The hoarse word seemed torn from his throat, reflected in the darkness haunting his eyes. "Don't laugh it off, Jared. You think Dallas has anything on those motherfuckers in Eden? Sure, you cross him and he'll take an acetylene torch to your face, but that's clean. Physical. If you wind up in a little room in Eden where there are no windows and no cameras, you'll wish all they'd done was set you on fire."

  The words were enough to elicit a shudder, but it was the hopeless, helpless tone of his voice that made Jared's blood run cold. The man they all called Doc had always had demons, as long as he'd known him, but this was unimaginable. Unthinkable. "Dylan…"

  He broke away and took a step back. One hand closed into a fist, and the other lifted the tablet. "If you're absolutely sure," he said, his voice clear and steady, "then I'll have this delivered immediately. But be sure, Jared. There are other ways."

  He thought of Dallas and Lex, who were trying so hard to keep everything together. Of Ace and Rachel and Cruz, who'd just stumbled into each other's arms—and deserved a lifetime or more to explore what that meant. He thought of the craftsmen and the people who relied on protection from the O'Kanes.

&nbs
p; And he thought of Lili—of her shuttered blue eyes, and the millions of unspoken questions tumbling end over end behind them. She was just waking up, and if he could have a hand in making sure that the world she woke up to was a good one, a decent place where things made sense…

  He had to.

  "We've been on the fringes for too long," he whispered. "Safely on the outside. Pretty soon, that won't be an option. Do-or-die time, Dylan."

  But the moment was over. "Indeed," Dylan said blandly as he bowed his head and took another step back. "Watch yourself out there."

  The door clicked shut behind him, jarring Jared into motion. He finished his drink, grabbed his jacket, and headed out into the waning light. The sector was quiet, with the only real activity still bustling in the marketplace.

  He skirted the square, sticking to the darker streets as he made his way toward the O'Kane compound. He rarely walked through the sectors anymore, let alone after dark, but he could remember when shots and screams had split the silence on a regular basis. When you didn't dare venture out without the comforting weight of a gun in your pocket, or three friends watching your back.

  Dallas had changed that. Not overnight, and not completely, but the difference was stark—and a good reminder.

  Dallas O'Kane might be a dictator, but at least he was a benevolent one.

  The back gate was locked, so Jared rounded the block, to the main entrance of the Broken Circle. Six was working the door, decked out in leather and glinting knives that made a statement to those who hadn't seen her take a man apart in the cage.

  Her expression had been fixed in a scowl, but it vanished when she saw him. "Hey, Jared."

  "Good evening." From this spot, he could barely see the stage, just a glimmer of flesh now and then through the crowd. "Who's up tonight?"

  "One of the new girls. But Jeni's about to go on." Six grinned. "Zan better get his ass down here before she does. Last week, she damn near started a riot."

  "I believe it." Everything about seduction that he and Gia had been taught seemed to come naturally to Jeni, and she could do it all without saying a single word. "Say hello to her for me?"