Instead, he slipped his hand into her hair and yanked her down for a rough kiss. The pounding of her heart shifted from fear to exhilaration as she slapped one hand on his shoulder to keep her balance.
Even that didn’t help when he dragged her into his lap and pressed the slim tube of healing gel into her hand. “This and you. That’s what I need.”
She had to catch her breath as she twisted the top off the tube. “How did this happen?”
Jasper growled. “Some bastard got this bright idea to blow Dallas up. We stopped him. Had a little bit of a fight, though.”
Her hand trembled, and it took another breath to steady it enough to apply the healing gel to the long, shallow cut. Blood had dried on his skin, bisecting the flesh left bare of ink, in some places looking like artwork of its own.
“You all could have died,” she whispered as the truth of that fact hit her hard in the gut. The cage fights, those were manufactured danger, violence in controlled form. Tonight had been real.
“We smelled the trap,” Jasper countered. “We had it, solid. No reason for you to worry.”
She frowned. “You’re bleeding.”
“That happens more often than you’d think out here.”
“Then I get to worry if I want to.” She dropped the gel back into the kit and found a precut bandage. His muscles were so large that it only wrapped around his arm twice, and she stripped away the protective panel from the adhesive at the end and sealed it in place with a kiss to the coarse fabric. “I don’t like it when you bleed.”
He smiled, slow and hot. “Liar.”
It wasn’t the blood that stirred her, but the fact that he was whole. Hard against her, so vital, so alive... “I don’t like it when you bleed,” she repeated, kissing the warm skin above the bandage. “I like it when you win.”
“That I believe.” He slipped his arms around her and kissed her again. Slow and warm and wet, his tongue working past her lips to stroke the inside of her mouth, each deep caress tugging at things low in her body.
In minutes, she was squirming in his lap. “We could go back to your room,” she offered against his lips. “I can like more of you.”
“We could do that.” Jasper trailed his mouth to her jaw, then to the spot below her ear. “Or we could stay here. Dallas went to find Lex.”
Memory rose, a fractured piece with no beginning or end, just the feeling of Jasper at her back and Lex crushed against her chest, and Dallas smiling as he gripped Lex’s hips. All of them moving together, grinding, swaying...
She shuddered and tilted her head back. “You don’t mind?”
“No.” He nipped at the front of her throat and soothed the bite with his tongue. “You want me, but you want them too. Tonight’s the night we find out how much. How far.”
Not a night for saying no, then. Hopefully not a night where he’d want her to. But she could draw one line. “I have a condition.”
His hands traced up her back. “What?”
She sank both hands into his hair and adopted the firmest, fiercest look she could manage. She was an O’Kane woman. She could say these words. “I want you to fuck me tonight.”
Jasper shifted beneath her, his arousal as evident from his heated gaze as from the growing hardness of his cock. “Say it again.”
“I want you to fuck me.” She rocked against him, wishing she’d worn a skirt instead of her jeans. Something easy to jerk out of the way, because she’d spent too many nights going to bed frustrated, and she thought she might be able to chase her pleasure just like this…if he let her. “Promise you will.”
“I’ll fuck you,” he whispered. “I promise, Noelle.”
“No cheating. No technically. You have to really do it.” She released his hair and gripped her shirt instead, tearing it over her head, leaving her hair a disheveled mess. Her bra was the only one she actually owned, the only one not borrowed from Lex, a clever bit of lace and wire that pressed her breasts together and up, and the way Jasper’s gaze lingered made it worth every credit. “You promise?” she asked again, while she had his attention and the advantage.
He dragged her arms behind her back, pinning them above the swell of her ass. “I’ll fuck you,” he answered in a rough murmur.
Maybe Lex had been right. The more she demanded, the more he gave her exactly what she’d wanted all along. She wiggled a little, enough to trigger that delicious sense of helplessness without the risk that he might mistake her squirming for actual struggles.
Trapped. Finally. Noelle wet her lips and summoned another challenging glare. “Tell me how. Tell me the dirty details. The obscene ones.”
“No.” He hefted her against his chest and rose.
Her heart skipped, slamming against her rib cage as her breath caught. “Tell me,” she snarled—or tried to snarl, only without air it came out as a gasp, a begging plea that used up all the oxygen she had left.
He didn’t answer. He dropped her on her knees on one side of that odd, two-sided bench and bent her over the center section of it. He pulled at her jeans, drawing the button and zipper free in one hard yank. Her heart started pounding, her pulse throbbing everywhere. She could hear the blood rushing in her ears, could feel it between her legs, an ache that wouldn’t go unanswered this time.
She tilted her head to toss her hair from her face and blinked at the wide metal rings affixed to the opposite side of the bench. They were clever, nearly invisible unless you knew to look for them, but once she did she found more on the sides. “What is this thing?”
Jasper’s nails scratched her skin as he pushed her jeans and her panties down. “Ask Dallas. He’ll show you.”
Oh God, this was familiar, too. The bite of the bench against her stomach, the scrape of fabric over her thighs, that heady mixture of anticipation and helplessness that came from being exposed. Last time she’d wanted too much—or too fast—and it had twisted into disappointment.
Not a mistake she wanted to repeat, so she tried to shove away anticipation and focus on his words. “Dallas isn’t here. Can you show me?”
“Sure he can.” Lex closed the door behind her and smiled at Noelle. “I know where the cuffs and chains are.”
Cuffs and chains.
Yes.
She was drunker now than she’d been last night, drunk on the possibility of having everything she wanted at her fingertips. Smiling, she spread her arms wide across the back of the bench, her fingertips inches from the rings. “Then maybe you should show me.”
Lex dragged two leather cuffs and a thick length of chain from the bedside table drawer and walked over. She leaned in to kiss Jasper with a pink flash of tongue, then unhooked Noelle’s bra. “We don’t want to rip this.”
Dazed by the sudden tangle of emotions, Noelle let Lex coax the fabric down her arms. Seeing another woman kissing Jasper should have made her jealous. Maybe it had, a little, but only a dull niggle that tasted as much of what she should have felt as what she really did. Arousal. Belonging. She wanted them to kiss. Kiss each other, kiss her—one got her as hot as the other, because no one would be left on the outside and wanting. Not this time.
Lex tossed aside the bra and stood there, her hands on the bench, and she didn’t move them until Jasper said, “Touch her before you put on the cuffs.” Then she lifted her hands to Noelle’s face as Jasper slid his lower, drawing the denim all the way down.
Noelle shivered and met Lex’s eyes. “Kiss me?”
Lex tipped her head back and drew her thumb across Noelle’s bottom lip before licking it. The sensual shock lasted only a moment before a greater one overtook it—Jasper’s tongue across the small of her back.
“That’s right,” Lex murmured and kissed her, her mouth open and seeking. Wet warmth and the tang of liquor, and Noelle moaned into the other woman’s mouth as Jasper slipped off her shoes and her jeans and spread her legs wide.
He molded his hand to her pussy, cupping her before easing one finger over her clit.
She cried
out against Lex’s lips as the jolt of pleasure jerked her entire body. It was too much, too fast, the kind of overwhelming sensation that had her using the leverage of the bench to squirm her hips up and away from such direct contact.
Jasper pushed her back down with a firm hand on her hips. “Chain her.”
Lex broke the kiss and buckled the first cuff around Noelle’s wrist. “What made you pick the bench?” she asked softly.
“It was the closest—” She yanked against the chain as Jasper’s finger brushed her clit again. The sound was breathtaking, the rattle of iron and the kiss of it sliding over leather. Noelle whimpered and uselessly tried to twitch her hips out of Jasper’s grip. “I didn’t pick it on purpose.”
Lex fastened the second cuff and ran her thumb over it. “If you like this, you’ll be glad. So glad.” She took a step back and started unbuttoning her shirt.
It wasn’t a show, not like when Lex danced on the stage, but Noelle couldn’t tear her eyes away as fabric teased apart, baring tawny skin stretched over sleek muscle and intriguing curves.
She wasn’t wearing a bra. Naked from the waist up, she moved closer, until one nipple hovered near Noelle’s mouth. Jasper reached out, curled his fingers in the top of Lex’s skirt, and dragged her across the remaining space.
Not a verbal order, but a command nonetheless. Noelle swiped her tongue experimentally across Lex’s peaked nipple. It hardened under her touch, even more when she closed her lips around it and sucked hard.
Jasper slipped his fingers away from Noelle’s clit to thrust two inside her. Wide and stretching but shallow, only to the first knuckle. “Show me your tongue. I want to watch you lick her.”
She was having too much fun listening to Lex make satisfied little noises, and she liked the way Jasper growled when she challenged him. Ignoring the aching demands of her body, she paused only long enough to say, “I’m busy,” before catching Lex’s nipple again, this time with a wicked smile.
“Lex?”
She shivered and moaned, even arched her back before meeting Jasper’s gaze. When she did, she twisted her hand in Noelle’s hair and jerked her head to one side, forcing her mouth open.
It hurt, hurt in the good way that started as pain and dissolved somewhere between her brain and the juncture of her thighs, where her inner muscles squeezed tight on Jasper’s fingers as her entire body seized for one long shudder.
Someday she’d ask if it was meant to be a reward, part of the game and something they enjoyed as much as she did. Someday when she wasn’t floating on the illicit thrill of closing her eyes and parting her lips in newly earned obedience.
“You like that, don’t you?” Lex’s voice was thick with desire.
A rhetorical question. It had to be, because the words hadn’t yet died in the air when Jasper drove his fingers deep into Noelle, all the way in, and rocked them inside her.
This time there was nothing to muffle the sound, not of her cries and not of metal slapping against leather as she tried to rear up. Lex hadn’t left much slack in the chains, and Jasper’s hand at her lower back kept her hips pinned.
No retreat, no leverage, nothing to do but twitch as his blunt fingertips massaged inside her, moving in a seeking pattern that made little sense until he brushed something that brought her thighs together as she whimpered and fought to rock away.
Noelle hadn’t heard the door open, but Dallas’s low chuckle drifted over her. “You got her over the bench and didn’t bother tying her legs? Lexie love, get me the rope. The silk one.”
“I don’t know where it is,” she said lazily.
“Liar.” His reply was every bit as easy, but the hand he wove in Lex’s hair made her grip on Noelle seem gentle by comparison. He fisted the strands and hauled her up from the bench with a roughness that made Noelle’s heart pound as Lex’s eyes clenched shut. Dallas licked the shell of her ear. “The silk rope, Lex. And maybe the pearls, too. You know which ones.”
After an eternity, she nodded. “I know.”
He released her hair and swatted her hip. “Go.” Then he turned to Jasper—and Noelle. Her cheeks warmed under his amused, appreciative gaze, especially when he stepped forward to brush a fingertip down her jaw. “Do you like pearls, kitten?”
There had to be more to the question, unless Dallas’s enjoyment of buying Lex jewelry extended to draping her in it while they had sex. But trying to determine what that more might be was impossible with Jasper’s fingers so deep inside that she could barely draw breath. Her thighs ached from clenching together, but she couldn’t make her body relax, not when every instinct conspired to protect her from the agonizing pleasure she craved.
Jasper whispered against the naked curve of her hip. “Settle down, honey, and answer him.”
She shuddered and nodded. “Yes. I like pearls.”
“Good.” Dallas circled the bench and smoothed one work-roughened hand over her hip and down to the back of her thigh. “Can you get her knees apart, Jas? Or do you need a little help coaxing her to open up?”
“She’ll open for me.” Jasper eased his fingers free of her body to urge her legs wide again, and apparently he could do what she couldn’t—demand her body’s obedience.
Lex came back with strands of pearls and two lengths of silk rope. She wound the rope loosely around Dallas’s neck and nuzzled his temple. “Are the pearls for her or me?”
“Maybe both.” Dallas winked and tossed one of the ropes to Jasper before wrapping the other around Noelle’s thigh. She shivered as much at the touch of his hands as the rope sliding over her skin. He looped it carefully around her leg, just above the knee, and threaded it through one of the iron rings. “Tell her what’s special about the pearls, Lex.”
She teased the end of one strand over Noelle’s bare back. “If she tells me what Jasper did with his fingers that nearly flipped her off this bench.”
Noelle didn’t know how to describe it, didn’t know the words, though they had to exist. Something that powerful must have a name, a name spoken in hoarse whispers and broken pleas. “He—he touched me. Someplace inside me.”
“Your G-spot.” Lex sounded sure as she rubbed a few of the pearls over Noelle’s skin in rhythmic circles. “If he can do that with his fingers, imagine what he could do with these.”
“In—inside—” Instinct tried to pull her legs together again, but the ropes held snug, tied firmly to the base of the bench. She truly was helpless this time, her body spread wide and primed to explode, and all she could manage was a throaty, hungry moan.
Jasper leaned over her, his chest bare now and pressed to her back. “You want it, sweetheart?”
It would drive her beyond herself, fracture her world. She panted for breath, every gasp chafing her nipples against the supple leather, but before she could form a reply, Dallas stepped into view again and smiled. “Hardly a fair question when she can barely imagine what you’re offering.” Dallas lifted a second strand of pearls from Lex’s grasp, letting it trail down to reveal several feet of round, shiny beads strung tightly together. “Why don’t we show her, Lex?”
She toyed with the short hem of her skirt. “Right here?” She sat sideways on the unoccupied side of the bench. It left Noelle hovering over her, and Lex tilted her head back, rubbed her cheek against the leather.
Dallas laughed. “Naked. You want to give her a good view, don’t you?” He didn’t wait for an answer—Noelle was starting to notice that he never really seemed to expect one, as if he couldn’t imagine a world where he wasn’t obeyed—and tugged at her skirt as he winked at Noelle. “I heard you were watching pre-Flare porn before you got booted from the city. Do you like to watch people fuck, kitten?”
Like was the perfect word for how she’d felt about those scratchy videos. Like. A pale, numb word for the sorts of pale, numb feelings she’d had in Eden. Safe feelings, without the ability to cut as deep as her passion for Jasper, but likewise unable to evoke a fraction of the tangled, wild sensations twisting her into kn
ots.
“I liked the porn,” she told him, wiggling to feel the ropes dig into her flesh. Sharp, raw...so good. “I think I could love watching people fuck.”
Lex laughed, low and a little drunk, just like Noelle felt. “Dallas isn’t going to fuck me, baby girl. Not the way you think of it.”
“Lots of ways to fuck,” Dallas countered. He caught Lex’s hips and tipped her back on the wide seat, her hair spilling off the end as he hooked his fingers into the waistband of her skirt. In the next moment, he slid her skirt and panties both down her legs, a smooth motion that left Lex sprawled naked—and Noelle wondering how much practice it took to get that good at stripping women to their skin.
Lex caught her breath and gripped the chain that bound Noelle, rattling it in the rings that anchored it. “There are those wide eyes again, Jas.”
He chuckled, his breath blowing across the back of Noelle’s neck. “I think that’s what you like most, Lex.”
Dallas made a rumbling sound, a laugh that didn’t quite form but lingered in his chest instead. One broad hand closed around Lex’s ankle, the one closest to the bench, and he dragged her leg up until Noelle could have craned her head and kissed the other woman’s shin.
That didn’t seem to be his intention, though. He checked where Lex’s thigh brushed Noelle’s arm and adjusted the angle a little before nodding to Jasper. “Right about here will give our girl a nice view.”
Jasper wrapped one huge hand around Lex’s calf, his thumb stroking over her skin, and dropped his other hand to Noelle’s hip. “Watch,” he whispered.
She barely had a choice, but that wasn’t what drew her gaze to Dallas’s hand as he tracked his fingers down Lex’s leg to her pussy. He used the blunt tip of his middle finger to part her folds, teasing his way up to brush around her clit before working his way lower and deeper. As Lex arched off the bench with a shaky moan, Dallas spread her other thigh wide and buried his finger in her body with a satisfied growl. “She’s already so fucking wet. You two get her running hot.”
A Ride or Die Kind of Love Page 114