Beyond Pain

by Kit Rocha

  "God, how long does this take?" Ace demanded as the fourth hour rolled around. He'd given up making jokes and was sprawled in a chair next to Six, staring broodingly at the door.

  She patted him on the arm. "I'm sure everything's fine. I've seen it take all night."

  Ace shuddered. "Flash'll pound us into the ground one after another if it takes much longer."

  Lex shoved another beer into his hands. "Relax. Doc's under strict orders--nothing goes sideways. This kid's an O'Kane."

  "Still, maybe I should go check on--"

  "No." Noelle wrapped both arms around Ace's neck and rested her chin on his head. "Amira doesn't need everyone hovering, and Jas can handle Flash. But you're adorable when you're worried, Ace."

  He scowled. "Oh, shut up, princess."

  It drew a round of laughs, and Six grinned. Bren found himself matching her expression as he wove his fingers with hers and gave her a reassuring squeeze.

  Lex caught his eye and winked, though her amusement faded as Dallas walked in from the back office, tablet in hand.

  He shook his head slightly at Lex before pointing to Bren. "I need you for a minute."

  Trouble. He recognized the look on Dallas's face even before he released Six and followed his boss to a quieter corner. "What is it?"

  "Word from Three." He tilted the tablet, showing the curt message. "Emma's suggestion worked. Noah surfaced. And reading between the lines, he's pissed."

  "About us looking for him?"

  "Could be." He glanced across the room, his gaze settling on the cluster of O'Kanes. "Could be he'd take any mention of Emma as a threat. Lex thinks there's some history there, and I don't want this whole thing blowing up in our face. I need you to meet him and explain the situation."

  Which likely meant heading over into Sector Three, or at least to neutral ground. "What do you want me to offer him?"

  "Money for services. And if he asks to see Emma instead..."

  She would have made the offer to unearth this Noah character, even if he presented a personal danger to her. She was an O'Kane--she'd do whatever the gang needed, and trust them to keep her safe. "If he asks after her, I'll tell him he has to see her here, and only after he meets with you and Lex."

  "If you think he's more trouble than he's worth?" Dallas met his gaze, eyes serious. Unyielding. "You take care of it."

  The real reason Bren was the best choice to take the meeting. His involvement in Three aside, he was uniquely suited to tackling the potential danger this hacker represented. "Quick and clean," he promised. "If I have to."

  "Good." His lips twisted into a grimace. "From what Doc tells me, you can leave now and still maybe show back up before this kid does. Which is good, because we'll all be taking turns sitting on Flash by then."

  "Doc's got plenty of drugs. If he can't find anything in his case, make him front Flash some shit from his personal stash."

  Dallas's laugh was far from amused. "Just as long as he's not dipping into it while he's taking care of our girl."

  The man had seemed sober, the surest sign that his rampant death wish apparently didn't involve having Dallas dump him in a shallow grave for endangering Amira and her baby. "Don't worry, I think he's straight tonight."

  "Damn well better be. I only got so much time for crazy motherfuckers--" A wail from beyond the room drifted through the walls, and Dallas started before breaking into a wide grin. "Well, thank fucking God."

  Relieved murmurs gave way to cheers as people laughed and hugged, already toasting the newest O'Kane. Then the door at the far end of the room swung open, and the celebration halted as Jasper walked in.

  He grinned, an expression at odds with the fresh shiner darkening one eye. "It's a girl."

  "A girl." Dallas clapped Bren on the shoulder. "You got this? Lex and I have to check on Amira and Flash."

  "Yes, sir."

  Bren stopped beside Six to squeeze her shoulder and whisper in her ear. "Got to run an errand. I'll be back soon, though."

  She tensed as she peered up at him. "Everything okay?"

  No need to borrow trouble. Coop's voice rang in his ears, and for the first time Bren understood the warning. So he smiled and tucked her hair behind her ear. "Yeah. I'll see you soon."

  Smiling, she grazed his jaw with a quick, shy kiss. No one was paying attention--there was too much excitement for that--but even if they had been watching, Six didn't seem to care. She only blushed softly, with no uncomfortable squirming, no hiding.

  Damn, he hoped he didn't have to kill that motherfucker from Three. A life just had begun, and it seemed wrong to end another so soon, with the baby's first indignant cries still ringing in his ears.

  Besides, nothing stood to upset the fragile balance he and Six had found like executing a hit on someone from her old sector. Especially someone she actually liked.

  Scarlet's directions to the meeting site were something out of a pre-Flare spy movie--He'll meet you under the bridge. Come alone.

  By itself, the location was enough to make Bren nervous. At one point, the bridge had served as an overpass, part of the system of shipping roads that ran in and out of the city. One end had disintegrated in the sector bombings, rendering it unserviceable, but Wilson Trent had found other uses for it--namely hanging people he felt had betrayed him, letting them swing from the girders as a reminder and a warning.

  The place was quiet, and the bits of frayed rope still swinging above him only heightened its sinister air. A thin layer of fog clung to the ground, swirling around the plants that had burst up through the concrete in a ghostly dance.

  The whole place gave him the goddamned creeps.

  "Brendan Donnelly." The rough voice echoed off stone, and Bren tilted his head, trying to pinpoint his location. "Former military police, burned for falsifying evidence. All those years working for the smartest men in Eden, and they never realized you were a fake from the start."

  Bren turned just as Noah Lennox materialized out of the darkness. "Did you know I was coming, or have you memorized dossiers on all the O'Kanes?"

  "Not all." Noah stopped a few paces away and offered a smile that would have chilled even Dallas. "Only those of you with a digital footprint, real or fabricated."

  "I certainly have one of those," Bren agreed.

  Noah met the words with silence, tense beneath his battered leather jacket. He was tall and lean, built more like Ace than Bren, with the kind of deceptive strength that might fool someone into thinking he wasn't a threat.

  Bren knew better.

  After another moment of studying him, Noah narrowed his eyes. "Where's Emma?"

  "I was told to come alone."

  The man gritted his teeth. "I know what the note said. I want to know where she is."

  Bren shrugged. "She's back in Four."

  "Guest or hostage?"

  "Member." He held up his wrist and flashed his ink. "She's an O'Kane."

  "Bullshit."

  For all the force of his denial, Noah Lennox looked rattled, and Bren pressed the advantage. "You can see her any time you want--back on the compound, after you meet up with Dallas and Lex."

  "Then what did--?" Noah bit off the question and ran a hand through his short red hair. "Fuck. If this isn't about her, then what the hell does O'Kane want?"

  "Scarlet didn't tell you?"

  "She said you want intel, but..." His gaze drifted to the side. "Tell me what you want to know. When I've got it, I'll send word. But I won't hand it over until after I've seen Emma."

  The quiet confidence of the demand raised the hairs on the back of Bren's neck. "Who backed Wilson Trent's play to kill Dallas and take over Sector Four?"

  Noah laughed abruptly. "Oh, just that. That doesn't come cheap."

  "You can take the job or leave it, Lennox." Bren hesitated. Playing the hard line was smart if the guy was a creeper from Emma's past, but if he really had simply been a friend of her brother's... "She's all right, you know. She's doing okay."

  "Is she safe?" />
  A deceptively straightforward question, edged with lethal challenge as well as hope. "I saw her right before I left. She was having a drink with the others."

  Noah seemed to process that. "How serious is O'Kane about cleaning house over here?"

  "Pretty goddamn serious."

  "Then we'll be in touch." The man vanished into the fog.

  Bren rubbed his temples and headed back toward his bike. No new answers about Trent, but putting Lennox on the trail was progress.

  It didn't answer Dallas's other questions, the ones about Emma's relationship to this elusive hacker. Ace could get the truth out of her easily enough, though Bren was starting to think it didn't matter. For all Noah Lennox's intensity and mystery, he didn't act like a man driven to reclaim something he'd lost and believed to be rightfully his.

  Then again, maybe that was the point. He'd asked all the right questions, shown just the right amount of concern for her well-being--like a man telling the truth, or a consummate sociopath.

  So which was he?

  Chapter Fourteen

  The note was simple, so simple she struggled with only a few of the words, mostly due to Bren's harsh, slanted handwriting. Abrupt and efficient as he was, the note directed her to climb the stairs at the end of the hallway.

  Mysterious.

  Most of the O'Kanes lived in converted rooms on the first floor of the building. In fact, Six had only been upstairs on the nights Dallas threw his extravagant parties. She hesitated on the stairs, trying to imagine what the next one would be like. All those naked bodies, all that pleasure. For once, she'd feel free to watch, to take in the joy and the lust and let her imagination run wild.

  Until Bren dragged her someplace quiet and fucked her cross-eyed.

  With that thought sparking a flutter in her belly, she followed the directions up the stairs, past the party room, and down a narrow corridor toward one corner of the building. The hall ended in a simple wooden door, slightly ajar.

  Anything could be on the other side, but in her gut she already knew. Bren, and Ace, and God knew what else. Whips and chains and all those things she'd never thought much about until she'd started thinking about Bren and what he might do with them.

  What he might want her to do with them.

  She took a deep breath to settle her nerves before pushing open the door. Inside, Bren was sprawled on a huge cushion in the middle of the floor, a drink held loosely in one hand.

  He was the only familiar thing about the room.

  Since he was watching her, assessing her reactions, she lingered in the doorway and took it in slowly--the chains along the wall and hanging from the ceiling, the oddly shaped furniture whose purposes she couldn't quite figure out, and the solid wooden shelves along the far wall, where Ace stood testing the weight of a leather flogger.

  If the party room was expansive debauchery, this room was...distilled. The hard liquor of fucking. Sin on the rocks.

  Bren nodded to the couch behind the cushion. "Sit."

  She took her time pulling the door shut, but that click did more than shut out the world. It triggered something inside her, something that recognized this moment for what it was.

  This wasn't simply another night in his room or hers or even Ace's. This was a stolen moment, set apart from the others. A fantasy, where reality could be what they wanted, with no past or future or baggage or worries, just now.

  Her heart beating faster, she crossed to the couch and sank down on the middle of it.

  Bren lifted his glass to his lips for a leisurely sip. "We have some things to talk over, starting with the basics. Who touches you?"

  Six glanced at Ace, who gave her his wickedest smile in return, the one that had sent panic racing through her in the past. It still made her nervous, but the good kind, the kind that shivered over her skin with the same prickling pleasure as Bren's fist in her hair.

  She wet her lips and returned her attention to Bren. "Would you let him touch me?"

  It was Bren's turn to smile. "No."

  "Harsh, brother." Ace didn't seem upset as he ran the flogger's tails over his fingers. "But I don't think she minds."

  Six didn't realize she was smiling too until she tried pressing her lips together. Bren was watching her, so intent, so protective, and she couldn't help it. "He gets a little possessive," she murmured, nudging his leg with her foot.

  Bren nudged her back. "So do you. Ace might not have much to do tonight with his hands. Or his mouth."

  But Ace would have to wield the whips, and for one moment, that did make her jealous. Anything her body wanted, Bren found a way to supply, but he had needs she couldn't meet.

  Yet. "I want him to show me how."

  "You mean the flogger." It wasn't a question.

  She still answered. "If you'll let me. If you want me to."

  He held her gaze--and licked his lips. "Ace?"

  "It's her night, brother. Hers and yours. I'll show her anything you want me to." The words were more serious than any she'd ever heard from the man, so solemn her gaze jumped to him again. He'd picked up a different flogger, one with wider tails. "But I did bring the deerskin, in case you want it."

  Bren rose slowly, set his glass aside, and reached for her. He combed his fingers through her hair, pulling just a little, and kissed her cheek. "Deerskin is soft," he murmured. "You should know what it feels like before Ace shows you how to use one."

  She shivered and turned into his cheek, inhaling shakily. "I thought you weren't going to let Ace touch me. Or is that different?"

  Bren hummed softly. "If you were like Noelle--if this was sex for you--then I'd want to be the one to give it to you. But the leather doesn't fit in my hands like it does in Ace's. He can show you better."

  "It doesn't have to be about pain," Ace said, his voice closer than it had been. "Some people like the adrenaline. Lex is like that. It gets her warmed up, floating, but it doesn't get her off."

  Adrenaline. God knew Six had a thing for that, like the illicitness of fucking where she might get caught, or the dangerous thrill of Bren's hand around her throat, cutting off her air. So careful, so controlled that it didn't feel like danger, not exactly, but she'd come so hard she'd been woozy for hours.

  She lifted a hand to touch Bren's cheek. "What will you do while he's flogging me?"

  "We talked about how it can be part of sex or separate," he whispered. "Which do you want it to be?"

  It was an impossible question to answer, because she still couldn't imagine it. "I don't know if I want to keep them separate, or if I'll be able to."

  "Hey, fighter-girl." The couch sank as Ace settled next to her, close but not touching. "Anything you want to try is okay, anything you don't is off the table. Bren and I understand the rules in this room. He's the boss. That's it, start to finish. If something I do gets you wet and tingly? Well, that's because he told me to do it. You don't even have to remember I'm here."

  She turned just enough to study him, but nothing in his dark eyes or easy expression indicated distress. Being considered an extension of Bren's will didn't seem to bother him, but that didn't make it fair. "You really don't mind?"

  "Not even a little." Ace winked. "I can't promise not to get hot watching the two of you, but I know plenty of girls who'll be more than happy you sent me over already warmed up."

  Bren shifted on the couch, sliding his hand down her back. "Yes or no?"

  Curiosity might have been enough to motivate her, but this was more than that. More than Ace's jokes about tingles, though sitting between them with the promise of lust in the air was enough to set anyone squirming. Bren was offering her a peek into himself, a chance to experience something as profoundly important to him as her little bolthole in Three was to her.

  She had meticulously strung Christmas lights. He had this. Pain.

  Meeting Bren's eyes, she nodded. "Yes."

  "If you want it to stop--any of it--you say so."

  Her smile widened. "Not a problem."

&nb
sp; "And if you don't want it to stop..." Bren's fingers spread wide at the small of her back. "It's like the man said. What I say goes, and you have to trust me to make you feel good."

  Saying no came easily to her. Yes was still new, but not as new as the knowledge that her consent mattered. They'd moved past some invisible line where Bren was willing to serve as caretaker for her body, a body she didn't know how to own. It had become hers, in a way she'd never understood was possible, and he never wanted to take it away.

  He wanted something more precious, something she'd always guarded closely even though it was so shattered she didn't know where all the fragments had ended up.

  Her fragile, wounded heart beat too fast, and she knew when she opened her mouth that she was offering it to him. If she was lucky, he'd be too distracted to realize it was busted until she'd jammed enough of the pieces back together to make it worth a damn. "I trust you."

  She barely got the words out before his mouth descended on hers, quick and hard. He pulled her up, into his lap, her hips nestled to his as he slid his hands into her hair, and her heart slammed into her rib cage so violently it was amazing it didn't break all over again.

  The first rush of pleasure from his mouth knocked her senses sideways, and it wasn't until she was closing her teeth on his lower lip that she remembered they weren't alone. Pressing her forehead to Bren's, she tilted her face enough to catch a glimpse of Ace, sprawled against the corner of the couch a few feet away.

  He met her gaze with a slow smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made her stomach flip-flop. "Don't mind me," he murmured, stretching his legs out in a way that made it impossible not to notice his dick straining his fly. It could have been lewd, except that Ace didn't leer or rub at himself like a creeper. He stared at them, obviously turned on by their pleasure, his eyes full of as much fond affection as hot lust.

  Being watched wasn't so bad when the person watching just wanted to see you get off.

  Shuddering, she turned back to Bren and licked his lower lip until he eased his hands under her shirt. He cupped her breasts, flicking her nipples with his thumbs, and she couldn't hold back a moan of protest. "Harder."