by Kit Rocha
She gasped in a breath and forced her eyes open, staring up into Jared's familiar, dark gaze, the only solid thing as her body throbbed. "Jared—"
He gripped her jaw. "Give and take, Lili."
"Is this the give or—or—?"
Take.
Pleasure crashed over her, and she took it. Took every pulse, every clenching wave, and she gave in return. Her hoarse cries, her shudders, her pleas. "More, please, please—"
Rachel guided her head forward, licking a slow path over Lili's lips a split second before Jared drove between them, into her mouth. The taste of him filled her, the last puzzle piece in an exhilarating tangle of bliss.
She moaned around him when Cruz began to ease a finger into the aching emptiness of her body, and she whimpered when he stopped with a groan of his own. "Goddamn, she's so tight. Rachel, if I let you touch her, can you behave?"
Her chest heaved, shaking the chains draped on her body. "Not a chance in hell, baby."
Don't behave. She couldn't say anything, not with Jared filling her mouth, so she moaned and arched her back, begging Jared with her eyes.
And he knew. He stroked shaking fingers over Rachel's cheek and nodded. "Go."
Rachel smoothed her palm down Lili's back as she moved, over the flare of her hip and the curve of her ass, until her hand reached Cruz's. "Not so easy," she urged. "Give it to her."
"Brat." Cruz's touch vanished, but then Rachel's fingers were there, smaller, softer, but still so good, and somehow she knew Cruz was guiding her, controlling her, even before his voice washed over them all. "Give her as much as she'll take."
"Don't tempt me." But Rachel's voice was all sweet, trembling submission as she traced her fingertips over Lili's outer lips, down her slick thigh, and up again. She worked two slender fingers deep, deeper, all the way inside—and sighed, a sound full of shivering lust. "She'll take it all, and beg for more while she's still coming."
It should have been enough to tip Lili over the edge all on its own. But it wasn't, no matter how much she squirmed, and Cruz's fingers rested stubbornly shy of where she needed them again. She made another pleading noise as Ace licked Jared's shaft a final time before kissing his way up Jared's chest, all the way to his ear.
His strong fingers circled Jared's cock again, and he stroked from the base to Lili's lips. "Look at her, brother," he rasped, as if Jared hadn't been holding her gaze hostage all along. "So eager, so hungry to please you. Two seconds from coming on Rachel's fingers and she's still trying to suck you off. You want him to come, don't you, blue-eyes?"
So much. More than she wanted to come herself, even though need was a sharp thing, twisting inside her. Lili made another eager noise and nodded as much as Jared's grip in her hair allowed.
"Make him." Rachel turned her hand and curved her fingers inside Lili, sparking a dark, throbbing pressure to life. "You can, you know."
Ace's fingers tightened. Rougher than she would have been, but Jared gritted his teeth, and his hips jerked, driving him deeper into her mouth. "Come on her tongue, and then make her come on yours."
"Jesus fuck." Jared's fingers knotted in her hair, pulling sharply as he cupped the back of her head. Not the gentle guidance from before, but a desperate demand. "Harder. Suck me harder."
Finally, finally he wasn't catering to her. He wasn't building a fantasy. He was trapped in his own, and she was part of it. Central to it. Her head spun, not just from Rachel's thrusting fingers, but from the knowledge that Jared was letting go, too.
She obeyed.
"That's it," Ace rasped, stroking faster. "He's going to come in your mouth, Lili. Do you know what that means?"
That what had happened the night in the bar would happen again—but Jared wouldn't be spilling over her hand this time. She tried to nod, but his fingers were tangled too tight, and the tug on her scalp made her moan.
Jared drove into her mouth, into Ace's fist, and shuddered his release, spurting in hot jets across her tongue. She struggled to swallow, to take everything, reveling in the wild look in his eyes.
But she only had a moment to savor it before Cruz shattered her focus with a rough nudge on her clit, timed perfectly with another thrust of Rachel's fingers. Her body lurched, her toes curling. Her elbows buckled, until only Jared's fist in her hair held her up. Then he lifted her, dug his teeth into her jaw, and growled her name.
Everyone else fell away. It was just Jared, Jared's hands dragging her up the bed, Jared's body pushing her back until she was sprawled on the sheets, boneless and shaking. He loomed over her, his fingers demanding as he guided her legs up against her chest.
The position left her completely open, completely vulnerable. But all that mattered were Jared's hands under her knees, his lips on her inner thigh.
The slap of skin against skin drew her attention. Ace had his hand on Rachel's hip, rubbing a reddened spot. "Go give her something to hold on to, angel. She'll need it when he gets his tongue going."
Rachel slipped one hand into Lili's and stroked her damp hair back from her forehead. "Jared's a tease," she murmured, "making you drift down first."
As if there was any down. She was still floating, the tension close to unbearable but unimportant. Jared would soothe it. Her faith was so absolute that even her frustration had vanished. "I listened," she whispered, turning her face to Rachel's. "I trust him."
The other woman's smile wavered in and out of focus as Jared finally touched Lili, gliding his tongue over her wet flesh. So wet that every slick caress was heightened, pleasure and anticipation of more pleasure crashing into one another in deep, throbbing waves.
The edge of her tiny, safe world loomed in front of her. The boundary marking too much, more than she could take. More than she could hold in herself and still hold on to herself. And, even though she was steeped in trust, fear made her heart race.
Fear would always make her heart race until she knew what it was like to feel everything.
She closed her eyes and clutched Rachel's hand. "More," she pleaded. "Give me more than I can take."
"Haven't you figured it out, love?" Jared's words feathered over her, far away and dreamy. "There's no place I can't take you. Nowhere you won't go. Nothing you can't take. That's what this is."
He put his mouth on her again, and there was nothing slow or careful about it. He ravished her, with his lips and his tongue and even his fingers. Everything shrank to just the two of them, to frozen moments of pulsing pleasure where nothing else existed.
One thought crystallized as all others fell away. A truth. Jared had been right all along. There was no such thing as too much. Just never enough—
And she could never have enough of him.
After a lifetime of bliss, the pleasure gentled. She floated in warmth and safety, only vaguely aware when careful hands wrapped a blanket around her. A solid weight settled next to her—Jared's body, curling around hers as his fingers brushed her cheek.
Her eyelids felt too heavy, so she turned her face into his hand. "Jared."
"You with me, love?"
She smiled against his palm. "I don't know."
"Good. That's how it should feel."
She could hear the smile in his voice, and that gave her motivation to open her eyes. He hovered above her, beautiful and smiling and so very, very smug, though she could hardly blame him. "It feels like a different world." A world where she was made for pleasure after all, and her laughter was as much relief as delight. "I'm not the desert."
He leaned closer, until he filled her field of vision. Her entire world. "I think you're a little delirious, Miss Fleming."
"It makes sense," she protested, reaching up to trace his lips. "The first time you kissed me, I felt like the desert, and you were the rain. So much rain, I thought you'd wash me away. But I'm not the desert. I'm the flowers."
"So you're blooming." His mouth moved under her fingertips, like a kiss. "And you're beautiful, Lili."
She wanted more than almost a kiss, and she was
n't afraid to take it. Sliding her fingers into his hair, she tugged him down until his lips met hers, utterly unafraid of the way her body reacted to the first touch of his tongue.
She'd always known she could tolerate pain. Now she knew she could survive pleasure.
With Jared at her back, at her side, she could survive anything.
Chapter Fourteen
The bastards had smashed up his bar.
Jared stood in the open doorway, numbly surveying the damage. Every chair and stool had been either destroyed or defaced, and the smooth vinyl seats of the booths had been slashed so that the stuffing tufted out like the insides of a child's teddy bear.
The bar itself had been gouged, and messy red letters splashed across its surface in paint that was still wet. The same paint had been splattered across the wall, over spots where the wallpaper had been torn away, forming ugly letters that his brain mercifully refused to coalesce into words.
He stepped forward, over shards of wood and sparkling, shattered glass. "Mind the chandelier," he murmured.
Gia edged around it and stopped next to him, her gaze fixed on the bar. "Well, that's just amateurish. They can't even spell whore."
"Yes, they can." Jared righted a chair and sighed when it pitched over again immediately. "They just want me to think they can't."
She quirked an eyebrow. "You know who it is?"
"I know who it isn't." Random thugs, the kind that weren't supposed to exist in the city. The kind that would trash a place to send a message, or just for the sheer, exhilarating joy of it.
There was no joy in the destruction around him. Beneath the mess, there was a pattern to it all. Precise and methodical devastation, wreaked by soldiers with orders, not criminals out looking for a good time.
The acrid scent of urine drew him into the other room, and he wrinkled his nose as he surveyed the ruined carpet in the center of it. "Boot prints." He gestured to the impressions at the edge of the dark, damp spot. "Military issue."
She pressed her lips together. "So it's not amateurish. It still stinks of fear. Little men and their little insecurities."
Little men who wanted him to stay in his proper place—which meant Markovic was right. Jared posed a threat just by daring to think he could step outside the mold they'd created for him in their ordered world. Everything else was secondary—his plans, his abilities, even his possible association with Dallas O'Kane.
The rest of it would get his new business trashed. The last one would get him killed.
He turned and eyed Gia with a tense shrug. "At least I haven't stocked the booze yet. Can you imagine all those busted bottles? Not even the cost, but the sheer goddamn waste?"
"Some things are harder to replace." She shrugged off her expensive coat and draped it over the edge of an overturned table. "Tell me you have cleaning supplies, at least."
"I'll take care of it later, Gia."
She was already unbuttoning her silk blouse, revealing an equally expensive camisole. "I said the same thing to you more than once, and it never stopped you from sweeping up broken glass or scrubbing dog shit off my front door. And I never forgot what you said to me, either."
You can quit, but I'd much rather see you take all their fucking money. "It doesn't exactly apply anymore, does it?" But he rounded the bar anyway and reached for a broom with a broken handle. "We're already rich."
"They still have plenty." She stripped off her rings and tucked them into her pocket. "And you'll do better things with it than they will."
He passed her the broom and began to roll up his sleeves. "Like buy pianos for sweet young things?"
Gia laughed as she started sweeping up the chandelier. "That was a little extravagant, even for me, darling. But it seems to have worked, so I shouldn't doubt you."
Jared grabbed a bucket and sponge from beneath the bar. "It wasn't a play. If it was, I think I'd consider myself a much smarter man. But I just wanted to do something nice for her." He paused. "Is that pathetic?"
"Absolutely. As pathetic as me buying a closet full of that soap from you so Tatiana could have her fresh start with that mountain of muscle she's fallen in love with."
"A couple of pathetic suckers." At one time, the admission might have engendered dismay, even panic, but he'd turned a corner. It was impossible to spend the night wrapped in Lili's arms, surrounded by people he loved, and not understand, maybe for the first time, the dream Dallas O'Kane was selling.
Survival was important, necessary, but there were things beyond it. Even things more important, as perverse as that seemed. Every one of Dallas's people knew it, lived it. Breathed it. They were part of something bigger than themselves, a family that would live or die by their collective strength.
It was so much more massive than anything Eladio had taught him. They'd looked out for each other, of course—he and Gia and Ace—but there was always a line, a separation he couldn't quite put into words. They protected each other, but they never lived for one another. And when the time had come, they'd gone their separate ways.
He took a deep breath. "Eladio was so focused on teaching us how to be self-reliant that he never taught us how to trust."
"It would have been reckless," Gia said softly. "Where he was sending us, trust could have gotten us killed."
"I know," he told her quickly. "But sometimes I feel like a soldier who's won a war. It's time to go home, and I don't even know what that means."
"Mmm. I used to worry about Ace, about how much he let those women inside. We were never that reckless." She swept in silence for several long moments, nudging the sparkling shards of glass into a neat pile. "But now he has a pretty boy who wants to be corrupted and a pretty girl who wants to kneel at his feet and smile. I'm violently jealous."
"Meanwhile, Ace feels guilty for leaving us behind."
"Idiot," she said, but she was smiling. "You're not the only one Dallas O'Kane has courted, darling. I never blamed him for giving in any more than you did. And I wouldn't blame you, either."
She thought he was being seduced by a pretty face. If she knew the truth, she wouldn't just blame him, she'd kick his ass. "Don't worry, I'm not thinking of joining up because of Lili," he hedged.
"But you want to go home to her."
"Yeah." Admitting it no longer felt optional—though, considering the hellish mess he was standing in, maybe it should have. A better man would have taken the opportunity to reflect on the danger of his life, and then taken steps to make damn sure Lili was protected from it.
But Lili was an O'Kane now, or soon would be, and O'Kanes didn't shy away from danger. They confronted it.
Gia set aside the broom and crossed the room. She was tall in her designer heels, almost tall enough to look him straight in the eye. Her strong fingers framed his face as she studied his expression, and she smiled softly. "Nothing in this world would make me as happy as having a reason to be violently jealous of you, too."
Despite his relationship with Ace, he'd always been closer to Gia. They were more alike, closer in age and experience, everything. She was his sister, as good as blood, and he'd have given anything to be able to say the same to her.
But Gia's happiness was a tricky thing, less tied up in other people and more about what she was willing to let herself feel. So he smiled back, kissed the top of her head, and nodded. "I'm working on it."
"Good." She stepped back and laid her hand on the bucket. "So, are you going to quit? Or are we going to take all of their fucking money?"
We. "Quitting is for people who've never been hungry."
Her smile turned a little sad. "Poor Eladio. He tried so hard to raise us to be properly ruthless. Sometimes I wonder just how disappointed in me he'd be."
"I think he'd be proud," Jared told her gently. "Gia, he didn't teach us what he did because he wanted us to be hard. It was just...all he knew."
"I know." She rested her forehead against his cheek. "Now we have to live better lives for him."
Jared tipped her chin up. "Wha
t do you think Eladio would do? Send cheeky grand opening invitations to all the Council members?"
She grinned. "Or everyone but them. The only thing worse than being invited to a den of sin is not being invited."
"You were right. I do need you."
"I know, darling." She patted his cheek and broke away. "Let's get this cleaned up and show Eden why you don't fuck with sector brats."
"Because they'll punch you in the balls?" Even as he murmured the dry words, he knew what she really meant. You didn't fuck with sector brats because they were used to being knocked down, and they'd always get back up.
Which was exactly what Jared was going to do.
Scarlet
Jade had the softest skin, the kind you could lose yourself in. And not just in the usual places, like the small of her back or the spot where her thigh met the luscious curve of her ass, either. Everywhere.
All of those milk baths and warm oil massages, no doubt. Sometimes, when Scarlet was high on pleasure and surrounded by the scent of coconut oil, she was pretty damn sure that the only good thing to ever come out of Sector Two was Jade's skin.
Jade was braiding her hair now, the strands shining with that oil. She smiled at Scarlet as she tied off the end. "You look like you're thinking hard."
"Hardly thinking." She rolled her head back on the pillow and reached out. "Come back."
"In a moment." She wiped her hands and reached for another jar from her vanity.
"You don't need it, Jade."
"It isn't about need." Jade twisted the cap off and lifted it, inhaling and then sighing. "My mother taught me this recipe."
Scarlet dragged the sheet up to her chest as she rolled over and grabbed her cigarettes from Jade's neatly organized bedside table. "What is it?"
"Lotion. Tatiana makes fancier ones, but…" She shrugged and smoothed the white cream across her cheeks in slow circles. "I used to teach the girls this—have a ritual. Sometimes the familiar is the only soothing thing you have."