by Kit Rocha
She'd expected to miss the way men averted their eyes when she tagged along behind Bren. She'd expected to miss knowing that he'd be a silent wall between her and the rest of the gang, with their curious eyes and their friendly, puppy-dog eagerness. She'd even expected to miss these sessions, the chance to burn through her lingering rage and learn at the same time.
She hadn't expected this weird, tight feeling in her chest, and how much worse it got when he smiled.
Hell, she'd missed him. A lot.
One of those smiles curved his lips now. "You're pulling your punches. Afraid you're going to mess up my pretty face?"
He didn't have a pretty face, not like some of the men. Mad and Ace and even Dallas, when he wasn't scowling. Bren's face was rough, all flat, hard lines and crooked angles, like a dozen bar fights had already tried to mess it up but had only made it more appealing.
Appealing. Fuck, she was obsessing over his crooked nose like some soft city idiot. Six tried to summon her usual glower, but it felt wrong, because the corners of her mouth kept fighting to pull up. "Someone beat me to it."
"Pun intended?" He lunged then, grabbing her hand and spinning in an attempt to twist her arm up behind her back. Pivoting with him, she attempted to break his grip by rotating her wrist, but he knew how to press close and kill the leverage she needed. So she kept going, twirling in a dizzy circle as she shifted her balance and freed up one heel to drive toward his ankle.
He caught her leg with his other arm, hooking his elbow under her knee and pulling it high. Pulling her off balance.
Christ, he was fast. Squirming only toppled her back against his chest, and her only play there was the back of her head against his nose.
So she took it.
"Fuck." He released her and stumbled back, his hiss of pain turning into a laugh. "That hurt, sweetheart."
"You should have stopped me," she chided, uncomfortable with the flutter of worry in her stomach. She turned to examine his face, but he was smiling through the thin trickle of blood trailing from one nostril.
"I deserved it," he said simply.
"Yeah, a little." Her skin still prickled with awareness, the heightened sense of focus that always came with a fight. She could feel his phantom warmth at her back, the memory of his chest, pressed tight against her, and she hated how much she missed that. Clenching her fingers, she buried confusion under action and lunged at him.
Not a graceful attack, and he defended easily, spilling her to the mat beneath him. "You have to take time to think," he whispered, his lips against her ear.
The prickling changed to tingles, and she rasped in a hoarse breath. She didn't like being under him--not when it meant she'd lost--but she didn't hate it as much as she should have. The stinging of her pride was balanced by a deeper satisfaction at his skill.
She'd learn from Bren. She'd get better. And, in the meantime, nothing would touch her because he was magnificently dangerous.
She had to swallow twice to make her voice sound natural. "Speed's the only advantage I have. I need to learn to think faster."
"Couldn't hurt." He shifted his weight and rose on his knees. "But you're being hard on yourself. Fighting me isn't really fair."
"That's why I want to do it." She missed more than some vague impression of warmth this time. She missed the solid weight of him, the feeling of being surrounded on all sides. "I need to learn."
"And I'll teach you. You know that, right?"
She wet her lips, unsure what he was asking. There was suddenly no safe place to rest her gaze, not with him still straddling her hips and her own disobedient body beginning to take a keen interest in his. "You are teaching me. It's helping."
He climbed to his feet. "It's not just fighting. It's understanding when you have to, and when you don't."
"I guess. You have weird rules here. Do any of the other women fight at all?"
He brushed that aside with a shake of his head. "I mean who you might have to fight. You're treating all this like an immediate mission goal. Like you're in danger here." A quick nod indicated the cavernous warehouse around them. "Here on the compound."
There was no safe answer to that. The people here were his friends, his brothers. For all the wary respect in their eyes when they watched him, there was also affection. That was as foreign to her as the idea of women having each other's backs because of some crazy devotion to the idea of sisterhood. So she shrugged and stared at his boots. "I guess."
He watched her intently. "Those lessons are important to learn, too."
"I can't--" She clenched her hands until her ragged nails bit into her palms. "He told me it was safe to stop fighting."
"Trent." There was no doubt in Bren's voice, no question.
At least she wouldn't have to say his name. "He didn't lie, not really. It was safe to stop fighting. He just never bothered to tell me how much worse it would be when he got bored of keeping me safe."
Bren closed both hands around hers and tugged her to her feet. "Tomorrow," he whispered. "Same time. We'll fight harder."
No words urging her to trust, or chiding her for not being able to. Just an offer, the only one that could possibly help. Her heart lurched into her throat, and she spent an endless forever standing there, trembling with the urge to lean in. It wouldn't be hard. Just one step. Only one.
If she did, she could steal a little more of that warmth. Maybe he'd wrap his arms around her. She'd seen him hug others, the back-slapping hugs between the men, the softer, lingering hugs for the women. His arms were thick with hard muscles and solid flesh. He'd had them around her enough times in practice, but never like this. Just two people, standing oh so close, trading warmth and comfort and the air between them.
Her heart hammered hard enough to make the room throb with it as she eased his hands apart and stepped between his arms. He stood there for a moment, unmoving, then slid his arms around her with a low sigh.
This was a different hug than the others she'd seen. His arms barely touched her, their strength held in reserve. He was giving her a way out, the chance to retreat, and that was what made her press forward.
His breath stirred her hair, and he rubbed the back of her shoulder gently. "You'll be all right. Someday."
"Someday," she echoed, surprised at her own tone. She almost sounded like she agreed with him.
Chapter Thirteen
Maybe she should have known better, but the last thing Lex expected was for Dallas to waltz right into her room without even fucking knocking.
Her heart shuddered and then started to pound as he stood in the open bathroom door, his gaze tracing every bit of naked skin visible above the water of her bath. Smiling slowly, he dropped one hand to his belt and quirked an eyebrow. "Got room for one more in that tub?"
The question might have ruined the fantasy of intrusion--if he'd meant it as a question at all. Dallas owned everything, and that ownership showed in every easy line of his body.
The steaming water sloshed as Lex lifted one leg to rest on the edge of the tub. "We might have to get close."
"That better be a promise." He'd already discarded his boots somewhere, and the rest of his clothing ended up in a messy pile twenty seconds later. He prowled over to sink his hand into her hair, tangling the damp strands around his fingers as he leaned down to kiss her once, hard. "Scoot forward," he said against her lips.
He slipped into the tub behind her, driving the water level up almost to the lip of the ancient porcelain tub, and Lex leaned back against his chest. "Did you want something, O'Kane?"
"Needed to tell you I won't be around tonight." He splayed his hand across her abdomen under the water, right over the ink spelling out his name. "Jas and I are meeting up with some guys from Three."
"Routine shit, or is something going down?"
"Just testing the waters. Trent had a few men who kept their heads low and seemed half reasonable. I think I can talk them into making themselves useful."
"Ah." Lex dipped one hand under
the water to stroke his leg, then raked her nails over his skin. "I wouldn't have cried myself to sleep because you weren't here to hold my hand."
He chuckled against her ear. "No, you probably would've crawled into Noelle's bed to keep her warm. You still can, if you want, but only if you tell me everything you do to her afterwards."
"Dirty fucker," Lex breathed. "She's been expanding her sweet little horizons lately, you know. She'd probably be on me, not the other way around."
"Oh yeah?" Dallas gathered her hair in his free hand and twisted it aside, leaving the back of her neck vulnerable to the warmth of his breath. "No wonder Jas is so fucking smug. He doesn't have to imagine it, does he? He's been watching."
"Jealousy's an ugly thing." She kept her voice light in spite of the dangerous heat curling through her belly.
"Is it?" The hand in her hair jerked tight without warning, craning her head to the side. He licked her throat with a low laugh that prickled over her skin. "I don't believe you."
He probably shouldn't, either. "So tell me what you want to see."
"Hard to pick." He trailed his fingers up between her breasts to cup her throat, replacing the collar she'd set aside before climbing into the bath. "You're hot when you're topping Noelle, and I get hotter imagining how I'll tame you. But you know what's even better?"
When she shifted in his grip, his fingers slipped over her skin with a delicious, wet friction. "What's that?"
"Watching you come."
The moment when pleasure stripped away control. Watching a lover succumb to that rush turned her on too, fast and fierce. "I've come for you plenty, just in the last few days alone."
He bit her this time, closing his teeth on the spot where her shoulder met her throat. "No such thing as plenty. When it comes to you and orgasms, Lexie love, it's never enough."
"Uh-huh. So what are you gonna do about that?"
"What do you want me to do about it?" Low words, straddling the line between promise and threat. "Give me a fantasy. A nice, filthy one."
She rarely considered it. Other people's fantasies were enough, especially since Lex had been taught how to cater to them. She fulfilled them, and everyone had fun. Simple enough.
But this wasn't simple at all. Dallas was asking for a piece of her, a revelation that could tell him so, so much, and the end result was the same as if she carried a thousand fantasies locked away in her mind. She shied away. "I haven't really thought about it."
"Bullshit." There was the threat, in the hard-edged word and the slight tightening of his hand around her throat. "Everyone has fantasies. You can tell me to go fuck myself, but don't lie."
"I haven't thought about it." She swallowed hard beneath his hand. "Mine aren't important, that's what I learned. It's crap, but even the stupid lessons die hard sometimes."
Silence. His chest rose and fell against her back in three ragged breaths before he growled something she couldn't understand and curled both arms around her. "Christ, Lex. That lesson needs to die now."
"It isn't--" Her throat ached, not from his fingers but from the gentle touch, a tenderness at odds with his rough words. "I would have lied to you. That much is true."
"I know, but don't think admitting it's gonna get you off the hook." He drew her more snugly against his chest. "You're stuck here until you cough up a lurid fantasy. And no cheating by telling me something you think I want to hear, or I'll just make you start over."
"You know one," she whispered. "Don't tell me you forgot already."
"Still cheating. You've got to say it out loud. Admit it. Own it. That's part of the journey." His voice dropped to a rasping whisper as he pressed his lips to her ear again. "Want me to go first?"
She held her breath and nodded.
"Fight night," he said. "That's where it starts. I haven't hit the cage in years, but I do in my fantasy. I kick the shit out of some asshole, and there you are. Sometimes you blow me right there, on your knees in the cage, and sometimes you taunt me. You dare me to take you, and I do. Just shove up your skirt and fuck you up against the bars with half the sector watching."
He never fucked his women in public. He might mess around with the fight groupies or the women in the gang--even Lex herself--but when it came to the ones he'd collared, everything went down behind closed doors.
She could imagine it, though, hot and frantic and so, so sweet. His hands under her ass and steel biting into her back with every hard, mind-blowing thrust.
"Yeah, you're seeing it now." Laughter and smug arrogance lurked beneath his words. He stroked his fingers up her side and stopped just shy of her breast. "Though I'm only getting started. A good fantasy is in the details. Like how you're not wearing panties, and your pussy's so fucking wet when I slide into you. How I pin your hands to the bars of the cage and make you admit that watching me fight got you that damn hot, and you want the whole sector to know it."
Her blood thrummed in her veins, both racing like mad and lingering with the heaviness of arousal. "I like it."
"Good to know," he drawled, his cock heavy and erect against the small of her back. "So now it's your turn. And take a page out of my book, love. That fantasy was all about me. I wanna hear one that's all about you."
The real challenge, since too many of her half-formed fantasies revolved around him. "A party," she murmured finally. "We're celebrating something, and everyone's horny. Starving. But you won't let them touch each other until they touch me."
"Yeah?" Rough fingertips grazed her inner thigh. "A good start, but pretty light on the details."
"I'm not finished." She closed her eyes and focused on the lapping water. "They're supposed to tie me up, but no one can find anything, so they hold me down instead. Wrists and ankles, even my knees while they're pulling my legs apart." The image throbbed through her, driving her legs open under Dallas's fingers. "That's when they start. Their hands first, then their mouths."
He slid his fingers over her pussy, parting her outer lips as his middle finger teased her entrance. "Do you struggle?"
"At first. Until they get their tongues in on the action." Lex arched her hips. "My neck, my nipples. My clit. Everywhere you tell them to lick me."
"That's what I'm doing?" Pleasure sparked as he worked his finger in and out in a slow rhythm. "Telling them what to do?"
"Everyone belongs to you. The woman pulling my hair and sucking my nipples. The men fighting over who gets to fuck me with his fingers and tongue." Her voice slipped into a husky whisper. "Especially me. That's what they're doing, Dallas. Getting me ready."
His breathing hitched. "Ready for what?"
"For you to fuck me so hard I can't stand up afterwards."
Groaning, he touched her clit. Lightly at first, just enough to make her squirm, but when she tried to push closer, he moved his hand with her hips. "How well did they prepare you? What if I want to fuck more than your pussy? Did someone get your ass all slick and ready, maybe decorate you with one of those jeweled plugs you love so much?"
"Ready, yes." Her ears were buzzing now, dampening the sound of her own voice. "But nothing inside me you didn't tell them to put there."
One hand stayed between her thighs. The other slid up her body, wet fingers clamping over a nipple to tug and twist, sparking her banked arousal into flame. "It's your fantasy, honey. What do I do? Do I tell them to fill you with toys and suck your clit until you're sobbing? Or do I not even let them use their fingers? Do I tell them I want your pussy nice and tight when I ram my dick into it?"
There was only one thing she could see when she closed her eyes--Dallas, blazing with jealous, possessive lust. "Fingers," she managed faintly. "But barely. You don't like it. You don't want anything in me but you."
"Do they hold you down for me?" He accompanied the words with the firm touch she'd been dying for, fingers moving in rough, quick circles over her clit as the water splashed around them. "Do they hold you open? Or am I so possessive I won't let them do anything but watch?"
Fuck. Fuck
. "You let them, but only because you know it'll make me come again and again."
"Is that what'd do it?" Hot breath against her ear. Strong fingers between her legs. He stroked and teased and kept whispering filthy words, each one a promise. "Ace and Mad pinning your hands. Jasper and Noelle holding your knees apart while I fuck you. Everyone watching you take my cock, every fucking inch of it, and listening to you beg for me to fuck you harder."
Every word was another caress, a promise. Her nipples ached, and sweat sheened her skin under the water and steam. "I need you to want me so much you can't stand it. Can't even stop."
He whispered three words that sent her crashing toward the edge. "I already do."
As much as she did. Too much. Lex turned in his arms and fit her hips to his--easy as breathing, like there'd never been a time when her body hadn't known exactly how to take his. "Now?"
Water cascaded over the edge of the tub as he laughed and thrust up into her. "We're gonna trash your bathroom."
The hard, sudden stretch stole her breath and her witty rejoinder, so she yanked his hair and bucked her hips. His laugh was lower, with an edge this time, one that sharpened as he dug his fingertips into her waist and ground against her.
Lex shuddered. "Tell me another one. One more fantasy."
"Just one?" Something dark stirred behind his eyes. "Mine starts where yours did. Except there's a blindfold. And chains."
"You want to lock me up?"
"Mmm." He pressed his thumb to her clit again. "I will chain you up, love. Soon. Only question is where and how."
She couldn't hold back her pleasure--or her plea. "Yes." The first tiny waves trembled through her, and she welcomed them. Rode them higher. "Any way you want, baby."
"Fuck." His head fell back as he arched, sloshing more water around them.
The brink. He was right there with her, maybe always had been, and it was enough to shake loose what was left of her control. Enough to tumble her into the sort of ecstasy that left her clinging to the only solid thing in the storm surrounding her.
Dallas.
As if she'd said his name out loud, he answered with a groan of release.
