Beyond Jealousy

by Kit Rocha

  "Can't be both?" Cruz gritted his teeth, but his hips jerked whenever Ace moved his hand.

  "Not until you're sure dirty's not bad."

  He opened his eyes to watch Rachel as she rocked and swayed on stage. "Nothing about her is bad," Cruz murmured. "Maybe nothing about you, either."

  "Maybe," he agreed, a friendly lie because he couldn't give less of a shit about the truth right now. Cruz's cock was hard under his hand and Rachel was headed for a big finish, her lips parted, her breaths panting.

  Teetering on the edge, because they were already playing the game, even without discussing the rules. "Tell her to come," he told Cruz, stilling his hand. "Watch what happens."

  Tense. Hungry. But before he could open his mouth to form the command, Rachel tipped over the edge with a stifled shriek. She bucked and shivered, fucking her hand until the shudders faded and she collapsed to the polished wood.

  Spent. Helpless. The roar of the audience smashed into Ace, shifting pleasure to spiky hot rage. He leaned forward to wrap his hand around the rope that controlled the curtain and jerked hard, swinging it into place and cutting Rachel off from the world.

  The cheers shifted to disappointed shouts and one or two boos, and Ace didn't give a fuck. They'd go back to drinking soon enough, or Six would smack their heads into the stage until they learned manners.

  Ace didn't give a fuck about that, either. The whole damn world could burn itself to the ground, as long as no one interrupted this moment. Rachel, sprawled naked and sated, her sleepy gaze following Ace's hand. Cruz, tense and hard, his rough breaths falling against the side of Ace's neck.

  "Forget about coming on her," he said, speeding his strokes. "Come for her."

  Cruz groaned and parted his lips. His tongue stroked over Ace's skin, a fraction of a second before his teeth closed in another bite. Pain slid over him in a fiery wave, but Ace didn't let it distract him.

  The bite turned into rough suction, and Cruz held on, moaning desperately as he stiffened. His cock throbbed, heavy and hot, and he came with a grunt that melted into a shuddering sigh as he spurted onto the floor.

  Ace stilled his hand and watched as Rachel touched her hand to her trembling lips. She sat up, came to her knees, and crawled a half step toward them--

  "Ace! Cruz!"

  Jasper's voice, and it shattered the spell around them. Cruz jerked away, fumbling for his pants, and Ace wasted a precious moment hating his old friend.

  Jasper rounded the corner backstage and drew up short when he caught sight of the three of them. "Rachel." He nodded, then turned his attention to Ace and Cruz. "We're rolling out. Mad found another still."

  Cruz scrubbed his hands over his face. "Bootleg O'Kane liquor?"

  "Looks like."

  Ace had too damn much experience getting his dick under control, and it was still a struggle to shift gears. He had to shift gears, because if Mad hadn't just burned the place to the ground, it meant complications.

  Complications meant danger. "Where is it?"

  "Way the hell over in Three." Jas shoved his hands into his pockets and took a step back. "Meet us in the garage. Five minutes."

  Jas vanished, and Ace blew out a rough breath and rubbed a hand over his face. "I guess the good life has a price. You okay, angel?"

  She'd already reached for her robe. She slipped her arms into it and rose up to kiss him, soft and quick. Then she turned to Cruz and did the same. "Be careful. And I'll be here when you get back."

  Cruz grabbed her hand. "Rachel--"

  "It'll keep." She glanced back and forth between them. "I mean it. Watch yourselves out there. Come back to me."

  The other man was still staring at her, conflicted and clearly reluctant to leave, so Ace caught him by the back of the shirt. "Come on, lover boy. Clear your head on the way to the garage. It's time to make war."

  One look at the shack beside the half-collapsed factory, and Cruz knew this couldn't be the base of operations.

  At first glance, it was just like the one he and Bren had stumbled across the first time--small, nondescript, hastily assembled. But those things had been a cover, a way to hide the real treasures within. This one didn't even have a sophisticated lock on the door, and he'd stake his life on the certainty that the interior would reflect that. Sparse and minimalist, the product picked up as soon as it was bottled, with only the necessary supplies on hand and no surplus.

  They'd changed their game plan.

  Resources were a precious commodity--when he'd seen their lack at the first location, he'd assumed that was all they had. But no one who had lost everything would have been able to set up a second location this quickly. And from the looks of things, instead of wasting time and money this time around, they'd accepted the inevitable.

  It was brilliant, insane--temporary stills that popped up out of nowhere. Unprotected and totally disposable, like the men running them. Dallas could swat them down as fast as he wanted, and it wouldn't do a damn bit of good. One batch of passable swill in counterfeit O'Kane bottles could pay for the whole operation. Everything after that was a bonus.

  Jasper kicked at a broken crate near the door. "Bets on whether it's outfitted the same as the last one?"

  "No deal," Ace drawled, crouching to retrieve a crumpled piece of paper. He smoothed it out to reveal a label, too crooked to be useful, but otherwise a pretty close approximation of the legitimate design.

  To Cruz, at least. Ace scowled, glaring down at it. "They could have at least gotten someone who could trace in straight lines. I'm fucking offended."

  Bren returned from his recon around the building. "Truck out back. Either they parked it here, or there are men inside."

  Jasper shook his head. "They wouldn't leave it unattended. Only question is how many bodies."

  "Not enough." Mad was checking the sheaths on his wrists, a tight smile curving his lips. "The building's not big enough for a still and a dozen guys, and that's what it'd take. The five of us can handle it."

  Jas nodded, satisfied. "Bren, you and Cruz take the back. Mad, Ace, and I will go knock on the front door and say hi."

  Ace straightened, still looking murderous and distracted, and the first twinge of anxiety stirred in Cruz's chest. He'd started something they hadn't been able to finish, opened that door Ace had been pounding on forever.

  God only knew what lay on the other side. The three of them in a tangle of sweaty, naked limbs, fucking in configurations Cruz was still ashamed to have dreamed up. Probably fucking in a few he couldn't have dreamed up.

  On his own.

  And now he was thinking about naked bodies when he needed his head on straight. Worse, he didn't like following Bren around the side of the building. Ace was out of sight--and Christ, it wasn't like the man was helpless. He'd been navigating more dangerous situations than this long before Cruz came along, keeping himself safe with his wits and a ruthless edge.

  Bren took up position at the back door, and Cruz fell in next to him, forcing his focus to the task at hand. "Where do these guys come down on the scales of O'Kane justice?"

  "You mean, are we warning them or killing them?"

  He remembered the last time, barging in on men who honestly thought they were working for O'Kanes, nearly getting his ass blown off. Killing them had been instinct, a survival response that had come too easily.

  Not knowing whether or not he cared made trying to give a shit that much more important. "They could be dupes."

  "Could be," Bren agreed. "Minimize the carnage at initial contact, and we'll follow Jas's lead. Good?"

  Just follow orders. The easy way out, and he'd taken it for a hell of a lot longer than Bren had. The time was coming when he'd have to decide if he trusted Dallas O'Kane enough to just follow orders.

  It was coming, maybe, but not here.

  A crash sounded at the front, and the time for thinking was over. Bren burst through the door, gun raised, and Cruz had his back, like he had a hundred times before. They knew the rhythm of this. How t
o clear a room, how to divide and conquer.

  Bren thundered down the short hallway and cleared the corner as the first shots echoed through the cavernous building. Cruz followed in time to see Jas and Mad take cover behind a stack of packed crates.

  "It's O'Kane's men!" The harsh shout came from the metal catwalk crisscrossing the walls above them. "Take 'em out!"

  So much for that question.

  Cruz had always preferred close combat, hand-to-hand. There was something raw and satisfying about it, a primal thrill he'd never felt with a ranged weapon.

  But sometimes a gun was the only smart move. Cruz's was in his hand without thought. Everything inside him was calm, sharply focused. His gaze found the first target--two men firing on Mad--and his finger was already squeezing the trigger before the thought had fully formed.

  Two bullets. Two dead men. The rest of the guys hadn't even realized the enemy was coming at them from behind when Cruz lunged to the side, trying to get an angle on the men in the catwalk.

  Instead he caught a glimpse of a man with a knife lunging toward Ace's unprotected back.

  Clarity shattered. The steady beat of his pulse turned into a pounding roar, and the chaos of the room crashed in around him. Shouts and curses, shots and grunts, sounds of pain and men fighting and dying. His feet moved, carrying him forward, into the crossfire.

  But Ace was already turning, gun in hand. He didn't even look worried as he squeezed off two rounds, both at close enough range to blow out the back of his attacker's head.

  Stupid. Stupid. Ace knew how to handle himself in a fight. Cruz was the one fucking up, darting out from full cover in a fucking panic, not trusting his brothers to have shit under control. He checked his advance and lunged to the side--too late.

  Fire bloomed across his ribs, a graze that could have been lethal if he'd been a fraction of a second slower. He made it behind another stack of boxes and pressed a hand to his shirt. It came away bloody, a silent recrimination.

  He'd been fast enough this time. If he couldn't keep his shit together when the bullets started flying around Ace, next time might be a different damn story.

  Chapter Six

  Rachel had never been the one at home, waiting out an O'Kane raid.

  If she'd realized how difficult it would be, how worry could stretch the seconds into minutes and the minutes into hours, she would have found some way to occupy herself from the start, even if she had to manufacture a task. But it was only after her shower and two solid hours of sitting, perched nervously on the edge of her sofa, that she fled her room in search of distraction.

  She went to the place she knew best--the bar.

  Trix greeted her with a smile and an open bottle of beer. "You gonna help clean up?"

  "Yeah, why not?" Rachel set aside the beer and grabbed a broom.

  Zan, the regular bouncer, grinned over his shoulder as he lowered the solid wooden bar across the front door. "Chase Six around the room while you're at it. Girl's wound tighter than Dallas in a church."

  "I won't be any help with that tonight."

  Trix grinned as she turned chairs up onto the tables. "So it's true, then?"

  "Is what true?" Six came out of the back room and hopped onto the bar before waving her middle finger in Zan's direction. "And I heard that, bastard."

  He laughed, his usually gruff demeanor gone now that there were only O'Kanes in the room. "Ace and Cruz were backstage when Jas went looking for them. Backstage watching Rachel dance."

  Trix abandoned the chairs and wrapped her arms around Rachel. "I'm not teasing," she promised. "I think it's perfect."

  Perfect? Rachel barely knew what it was, and she sure as hell wasn't ready to talk about it. That moment backstage felt so fragile, as if the slightest wrong move could dissolve it all like smoke. "It's not..." Words failed her, and she tried again. "I mean, I don't--"

  "Message received." Trix gave her one last squeeze and backed off. "I get it."

  Zan leaned against the bar and wrapped a huge hand around Six's ankle, stilling the anxious bounce of her foot. "Don't even think it, girl."

  Guilt flashed through the brunette's eyes, then vanished with her scowl. "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Sure. You're not sitting there wondering if you can give us the slip and trot over to Three to back up your boyfriend. And you can't. Hell, unless there's a fucking army there, Cruz, Bren, and Mad together are already overkill."

  True words, reassuring ones, and Rachel clung to them, even as she spoke without meaning to. "Back in Eden, on nights like this, my mother always made sure there was something going on. A big project to keep all my aunts and cousins busy. I never wanted to be there, canning vegetables or making wedding quilts. I wanted to be out there, too."

  Six's other foot stilled on its own as she studied Rachel. "Your family brewed beer, right?"

  "They still do." Rachel dragged the broom idly across the floor. "Monday night collection runs, Wednesday night deliveries. Those two are the dangerous ones."

  "Because it's illegal?" Six twisted to lean behind the bar and surfaced with a bottle of rum. "I still think that's crazy. Eden has slums. And crime. Aren't they supposed to be shiny and perfect?"

  Eden had a lot of things it professed to condemn. Men were men, whether they lived in the city or the sectors or out in the goddamn wilderness. They had desires, and forbidding those desires didn't diminish them. It just turned them into vice.

  There was good money to be made in catering to those vices--liquor and women, chief among them. Rachel's father had been content to let sector leaders supply what he considered the harder markets. He'd only allied himself with Dallas because his own products, the beer and other malts, sold to the same customers, and it made sense to work together.

  Beer. Against her mother's wishes, Rachel had been making it since she was ten years old. In the grand scheme of things, it seemed so harmless, and yet Six's words held truth. It was against the law, and that made it dangerous.

  She shook herself and set aside the useless broom. "That's how I wound up here," she told Six. "Special Tasks busted a joint shipment--Riley brew and O'Kane liquor. My father couldn't risk admitting to the partnership, because our whole damn family would have been exiled."

  "Hypocrites," Zan grumbled, folding his beefy arms over his chest. "Like those stiffs in Eden thought you were the damn ringleader. They just wanted to hit your dad hard enough to scare him into line, but not so hard he stopped making all that beer they pretend to hate."

  "Pretty much. Not that it matters." Only a fool would overlook how lucky she'd been. "I never fit in there, anyway. I'm happier here."

  "Who wouldn't be?" Six asked, passing the rum to Zan. "Eden's like living in jail, and all the other Sectors are pits. Except One, I guess. Don't meet many people who ran away from One."

  "Just Mad," Zan said, his rough face twisted into a thoughtful look. "Not that it matters to the people who live there. People in One stop him on the street and ask him to bless their fucking babies and shit."

  "To them, he's royalty," Rachel mused. "Here, he can just be--"

  "Mad." Trix rose as he walked in through the door behind the stage, Bren at his heels. "How did it go?"

  "About as expected." Mad slapped Bren on the shoulder and propelled him toward the bar--and Six. "We're all in one piece, more or less. Jas has a split lip and a few bruises for Noelle to fuss over, and Cruz got winged, but he just needed some med-gel to be good as new."

  "Winged?" With Cruz, it could mean anything from a flesh wound to a fucking amputation. "He got shot?"

  Mad winced. "A graze, sweetheart. Barely shot at all."

  The sudden burst of adrenaline began to subside, leaving Rachel's hands shaking. "Right. Barely."

  "He'll be just fine," Mad assured her. "Ace was looking for you. I think they're in Cruz's room."

  "Thanks." She paused long enough to peer down at a nasty scrape on Mad's hand. "Get Trix to look after that, okay?"

  He kis
sed the top of Rachel's head with a rumbling laugh. "Go make yourself feel better."

  She couldn't settle down until she'd checked Cruz out herself, until she saw his injuries were really as minor as Mad claimed. That goal held her attention so completely that she was out the door, through the back, and hurrying past the garage before the import of the rest of Mad's words hit her.

  Ace was looking for her. And they were in Cruz's room.

  A fresh wave of nervousness assailed her. She'd given them an implicit promise, but she'd been too wrapped up in worry for their safety to really consider what would happen if--when--they took her up on it. And there was no time now to center herself. To think.

  By the time she raised her hand to knock on Cruz's door, she was shaking again.

  Ace dragged open the door and hauled her inside without so much as a greeting. "Thank God you're here. He was about to stomp over me to go find you, and I can't talk any sense into the bastard."

  Cruz stood in the middle of the room, his T-shirt bloody and torn over a six-inch span on his side. He looked irritated more than anything, annoyed and frowning.

  "Mad said..." But the words died on her tongue as she reached for him, pulling his shirt up his rib cage until she could see the already-healed skin beneath. "Does anything hurt? Did you crack any ribs?"

  "No." He caught both of her hands and glared at Ace over her shoulder. "He wasted time slapping med-gel all over me."

  "That doesn't sound like a waste to me," she argued.

  "We get it, brother. You're tough." Ace's voice came from just behind her, only a moment before his hands slid around her waist. "I'm sure she's impressed."

  She turned to face him. He seemed unscathed, though a little disheveled and a lot exasperated. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine, angel." He smiled and tugged at her hips, forcing her to rock against him. "Unlike some people, I don't charge armed men. I shoot them in the face, like God intended."

  Cruz made a choked noise of amusement, so Rachel tilted her head back against his chest. "It's not funny," she whispered. "If Mad hadn't told me you were fine and that Ace was with you..."