by Kit Rocha
Her breath seized in her lungs, and Emma reminded herself that Noah Lennox would never hurt her. Then again, he would never put his hand around her throat, or fuck her like he couldn't stay out of her for one more heartbeat before losing his mind.
What she knew of Noah Lennox didn't seem to be true anymore, and all bets were off.
She took a slow, deep breath. "You take care of it like you plan on taking care of Fleming?"
"Or like I took care of Clara Danforth."
Emma turned her head as far as possible, and she could still barely see his face out of the corner of her eye. "What did you do to her?"
His breath fell hot against her cheek. "Special Tasks made her disappear tonight. She'll be lost in an Eden holding cell while they try to figure out how she managed to run a credit counterfeiting operation out of her store."
Clara was a hard woman, mercenary. She'd never had a kind word for Emma, but she'd never raised an angry hand to her, either. "Why?"
"Because she lied to me." Noah gripped her chin and tilted her head back until she could see his brutal, furious expression. "I paid for you and some bastard who probably never existed to start a new life in the mountains. You were supposed to be gone, and the whole fucking time you were right here where Fleming could have laid hands on you, could have hurt you, and I never would have known. Not until he wanted me to."
Emma's stomach churned. There was too much information in the words--Noah had cared enough to keep tabs on her, to watch out for her, to pay for her way out of hell. But it was the unspoken meaning lurking below it all that tore at her heart.
He said because she lied, but what he really meant was because she gave me hope.
"I'm sorry," Emma rasped. "Stealing is reason enough, but that-- I'm sorry."
He shuddered. "Don't. Don't understand. I ruined a woman's life."
But Emma's own anger built until it spilled over into hot tears. "It's not the money. What did she do, make shit up? She lied to you, and she never once told me that you gave a damn. Not even when I left."
He spun her around with a tortured noise, dragging her into his arms with her head tucked under his chin. "I sent her money every month. For room and board, extra for art supplies. I wouldn't have left you there at all, but Fleming was after me. Fuck, he still is."
"Then it's my turn." He'd left a helpless child, a woman who couldn't protect herself. That wasn't who she was anymore. "Stay. If he comes at you, we'll show him what happens when he crosses the line with an O'Kane."
Noah exhaled, his body tense and rigid against hers. "It's more complicated than that. Fleming isn't just another thug. He could call a meeting of the sector heads and demand Dallas hand me over. And that'd be bad."
"Dallas wouldn't do it. Not only for my sake, but because he wants you here."
"Of course he does," Noah said dryly, his hands fisting on her back. "Everyone wants what I can do. But if Fleming can't have me, he'll make sure no one can."
She arched an eyebrow. "Over my dead body."
A growl rumbled through his chest and left his lips on a snarl as he forced her head back. "Don't you fucking joke about that."
Her eyes locked with his, and it wasn't until that moment that she realized the truth--it hadn't been a joke, not entirely. "Nothing's going to happen to me."
"No." He backed her toward the wall, letting her thump against it gently before sliding down her body. Even on his knees he looked fierce, his hands pressed to the wall on either side of her hips, strong arms penning her in place. "Nothing's going to happen to you. Not tonight, and not ever."
Her knees went weak. "You won't let it."
"No." His gaze swept up her body to burn into her. "Nothing bad. If you want something good to happen, you have to ask for it."
"Like if I want you to stay?" She nudged his side with her foot. "Not here in Sector Four. In my room, just for tonight."
"Is that all you want?" He caught her ankle and guided her foot back to the floor before letting his fingers glide up the back of her leg. "Because I was thinking about a few other ways I could show you what sort of man I am."
"What are you gonna do--throw me over the bed? Fuck me in the ass?" She shifted against the wall, rubbing her leg against his hand. "Tie me up?"
"Probably all three at once." His hand reached the back of her knee, and he folded his fingers on her inner thigh and tugged, forcing her legs apart. "But not yet. Hold yourself open for me."
"The girls in Five said you were rude as hell." She parted her pussy lips, teased the top end of the metal barbell she wore with her middle finger, and bit her lip when he growled approval and licked her fingertip.
"Emmaline Cibulski," he murmured, gazing up at her. "Were you asking them about me, or listening to the gossip?"
"I wanted to know." What he liked, what he did. Whether he'd ever do it to her.
He gripped her thigh to hold her in place and leaned closer. "What did you find out?"
Emma had to try twice just to get the words past her lips. "That you don't do anything halfway. That if a woman says yes to you, she'd better mean it. And that saying yes is worth it." As open and revealed as she was, it was easy to take it farther. All the way. "That's what the nicer girls said. The not-so-nice ones liked to make fun of me."
He made a low, angry sound that vibrated against her. "You should have told me."
The need to comfort him trumped everything else, so she slid to her knees in front of him and cupped his face. "I couldn't tell you then, and it doesn't matter now. Those things don't hurt me anymore."
Still frowning, he studied her face for a tense moment before lifting his hands to hers. "I never wanted you to hurt at all. You were always the bright spot in my world."
Four years. She'd spent four years in pain, and all because she'd never heard these words. But trusting them now--so damn wild, and so damn fast...
Emma shook her head. "It's late, and you're spun. You need sleep."
He smiled again, that warm, soft smile that had been hers alone. "Still bossing me around, huh?"
Her stomach fluttered. "Someone has to take care of you."
"Is that not what I've been doing?"
She couldn't even lie, not with the image of his flat, hopeless expression so fresh in her mind. "Not just surviving, Noah. Everything else."
An amused noise escaped him, something torn between a snort and a laugh. "You know how crazy that sounds? In most of the other sectors, survival's as good as it gets. Hard to imagine something more."
Her own lips tugged up in response, so the kiss she brushed over the corner of his mouth was more like a smile. "Welcome to Sector Four."
Chapter Three
He knew it was a nightmare, because he'd relived it a hundred times.
That didn't make it any easier to wake up.
Cib's hands were shaking. Noah watched him try to light his cigarette, the flame always jerking away from the tip at the last second. He finally managed it, then sat back to run those same trembling fingers through his dark, spiky hair. "Matty says Fleming's got extra shipments this month. Sector runs."
"Fuck, Cib. Sector runs are dangerous." The words tumbled out of his mouth--not the ones he'd said that night, but close enough. He'd muttered a hundred variations, and it always ended the same way.
Wake up, Lennox. Wake up.
"But they pay." Cib hopped off the crate and started to pace the width of the alley, kicking trash out of his path. "I need something big, man, or I'm never gonna get my sister out of this shithole."
"I told you I'm working on it. That place in the mountains will take all of us, but they need goods or cash up front--"
But Cib wasn't listening. He never did. "Gotta settle some debts, too. Nothing bad."
It was a lie. There were always more debts than Cib admitted to, big ones that explained his nervous energy and bloodshot eyes. Noah hadn't seen it then, hadn't wanted to see it. He'd needed to believe his friend was too smart to snort Mac Fleming's needlessl
y addictive products up his nose.
Noah didn't ask the question that had come next, but it wouldn't be his worst nightmare if that could make a damn bit of difference.
"The, uh--" Cib licked his cracked lips. "Last week's deliveries here in Five hit a snag. Me and Klein, we got--" He laughed, forced and fake. "We got rolled by a couple of assholes. They took it all, the money and the drugs. Everything we were holding for Fleming."
More bullshit. Transparent bullshit, lies Noah hadn't been able to ignore, because if anyone had stolen Fleming's drugs within the boundaries of Sector Five, he would have sent his chief enforcer to tear the sector apart--and tear the sorry bastard's arms from his body.
"How much, Cib?"
Instead of a number, an answer, his best friend muttered the words that spun the scene down deeper into terror. "You know, uh, I've been thinking. And I had this sort of idea..."
Panic gripped Noah, the sick dread of what was coming, and even in a hazy fucking dream he knew it would be worse this time. Worse because something had happened, something had changed--
"Emmy likes you." Cib wouldn't look at him, but he wouldn't stop, either. "She really, really likes you, man."
Wake up. Wake the fuck up. Goddamn it.
"Hell." Cib laughed again, shrill and damning. "I think she might lov--"
The street shattered around him, falling away as Noah lunged out of bed, his panting breaths too loud in the darkness. A sharp moment of disorientation vanished when Emma murmured a muffled protest behind him.
He tensed, waiting for any sound to indicate she'd woken up, but her breathing settled back into an even rhythm, and he scrubbed his hands over his face as if that would erase the lingering horror.
At least he'd woken up before the real nightmare kicked in. Cib's voice, shaking with desperation and a starving edge that couldn't have really existed, because surely Noah would have noticed. Guilt played with the memory, adding a hundred clues he should have caught, torturing him with his failure night after fucking night.
He swept up his pants and shirt by feel and pulled them on as his eyes adjusted to the thin light coming from beneath the door. Emma had twisted in her sleep, twining the sheets around one calf and leaving most of her naked body bare. Her tattoos were indistinct shadows weaving intriguing patterns over her skin, unfamiliar enough to shake him out of the past.
She wasn't the same girl she'd been, and he still didn't know if that was a good thing. He could have scared the old Emma off with a little roughness or some dirty talk. This one had taken both in stride before promising to protect him.
Of course, if he really wanted to get rid of her, all he had to do was tell her the truth about how his nightmare ended.
Shuddering, Noah grabbed his boots and slipped into the hallway. It was early--too early for a bunch of people who drank and fucked into the wee hours of the morning, apparently--but he'd barely gotten his laces tied when the redhead he'd seen tending bar the previous night turned the corner.
Something about her features nagged at him, a familiarity he couldn't quite place. Odd, because she wasn't the kind of woman a man forgot--tall and built, with killer curves she dressed to full advantage.
She slowed to a stop before smiling. "You sneaking out, Noah?"
It wasn't a stretch to imagine that the O'Kanes knew who he was, but something about the teasing edge to the words brought that familiarity crashing in on him, and he was suddenly sure he'd heard her say his name before, with that same husky laughter beneath it.
No, not laughter. The last time that voice had spoken his name, it had trembled with the disconnected dreaminess of someone stoned out of her mind.
He snapped his gaze back to her face and imagined her leaner, paler. Her cheekbones stark beneath sunken eyes, all those healthy curves gone. "Tracy?"
"In the flesh." She rested a hand on her hip and tilted her head. "A little more of it these days. How are you?"
"Surprised. You were pretty...stuck." A nice word for how he'd last seen her, shaking for a hit, willing to do damn near anything to get one. Only one thing had kept her out of the brothels, off the streets, separated her from a hundred other junkies--special treatment from Fleming's chief enforcer.
Finn hadn't bothered with rules or explanations, not where Tracy was concerned. She got her drugs from him, full stop. Anyone who tried to trade her flesh for a fix lost whatever body part they'd laid on her. The only moron dumb enough to try it twice had disappeared.
Some of the really strung-out girls had called it romantic. For Noah, it had been a cautionary tale, one ground deeper into his psyche every time Tracy crawled out of Finn's lap, flying high and oblivious to the self-loathing in the man's eyes.
"Stuck," she echoed softly. "That's one way to put it. Not anymore, though." She looked away. "You and Emma working things out?"
"Tracy--"
"It's Trix now."
He couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at the nickname. "Trix."
"Hey, truth in advertising, right?" She nodded past him, to Emma's door. "She's asked me some things. About stuff I guess you didn't tell her."
Jesus Christ. Tracy--Trix--had lived at ground zero, in the sick, rotting heart of Fleming's empire. Tucked into Finn's pocket, she could have heard anything. Everything. "How much does she know about what her brother did?"
"Some about the drugs." Trix caught his eye with a pointed look. "Nothing about the money."
"Good." It came out too forceful, and he modulated his tone. "She doesn't need to know, all right? Anything Cib might have done or said--that was the drugs, not her brother. There's no damn reason to take him away from her."
"I wouldn't," Trix retorted. "But she'll find out eventually. Neither of us can stop that, not unless you plan on razing Sector Five."
"Not entirely."
Understanding washed over her face. "So that's why you're here. I thought--" She shook her head. "Never mind."
He could see the truth in her eyes. She'd thought he'd come back for Emma, because she'd known him before he'd locked away emotion and affection out of necessity. "Did everyone know?"
Trix stared at him for a long, hard second, then shrugged wearily. "Emma didn't."
It was a struggle not to grind his teeth. "I'm more worried about people who might hurt her to get to me. If they figure it out..."
"They'll know where to hit you," she agreed with a nod. "People around here wouldn't say anything. She's wearing O'Kane ink now."
He wanted to believe it was that simple, but O'Kane and Fleming represented two sides of the same criminal coin. They peddled their respective vices with such dedication that people had dubbed the wide road separating their sectors Sin Street. Brothels and gambling houses of varying classes lined both sides, with the road marking the invisible line between booze and drugs.
Both were quick paths to oblivion, and both destroyed lives. But Fleming turned his hand to legitimate business, too, producing medications essential to a comfortable life in Eden. He should have been the one with the power and the influence, not a glorified bootlegger with a reputation for being too distracted by his dick to care about politics.
Noah studied Trix's face again. "You've seen both sides. Is she safe here?"
The woman's matter-of-fact expression softened into sympathy. "Mac Fleming is scared shitless of Dallas O'Kane. That's as safe as it gets out here in the sectors, wouldn't you say?"
That depended on why he was so damn scary--but the pride in Trix's eyes said enough. Plenty of men in Five obeyed Fleming out of fear or greed or desperation, but precious few looked at him with any sort of fondness.
If O'Kane's men were half as loyal to him as the women seemed to be, he had himself a tidy little army that would do more than kill for him. They'd die for him, or maybe even for each other.
Maybe even for Emma.
"Yeah," he said, ignoring the hollow ache in his chest. It should have been a weight off his shoulders, one less thing holding him back from achieving his goal. "It
sounds pretty damn safe."
"Doesn't mean she doesn't need you," Trix said softly.
Living underground away from people had made him fucking careless with his feelings. Noah hardened his expression and forced a shrug. "It'd be better for her if she didn't. Like you said. The truth always comes out."
"Yeah." She glanced down the hall. "You cutting out?"
He deserved the judgment in her voice. It was damn tempting to pick up and run, past the boundaries of the sectors, past the communes where people toiled to provide bread for Eden's fancy tables. There were places out there. The mountain communities, other cities. The world had ground to a halt, but people kept going. They always kept going.
If he cared at all for Emma, he'd do it. Make this a clean cut, instead of coming back to dig under her skin, just so he could steal a few more memories before she learned enough to drive him away. "I need a few things from Three, some tech and a couple changes of clothes. I'll be back."
Trix hummed and continued her walk down the hall. "I'll see you then."
Hard to say if she believed him, but shit, he didn't even know if he believed himself. After a shower and a change of clothes, he wouldn't be able to smell Emma on his skin anymore, and maybe that would give him the strength to do the right thing.
Or maybe it would only leave him crazy at the loss, and that much more determined to come back and lose himself in her all over again.
When Emma woke up, Noah was gone.
She stared at the empty, rumpled spot on her bed for what seemed like forever, her mind spinning in a million different directions, always coming back to the same gut-clenching fact.
He'd never said he would stay past the night.
Finally, she dragged herself out of bed and hit the shower. Standing under the steaming spray did little to ease the ache in her chest, but at least it cleared her head. He'd left her before, and she'd handled it. She wasn't a child anymore, nineteen years old and huddled at the back door of Clara's shop, fighting tears as she watched Noah melt into the night.
