Beyond Jealousy

by Kit Rocha

Cruz couldn't offer her a tattoo, but he'd count three hundred a bargain if it kept him out of his rooms and clear of any awkward apologies. "I'll stay, if you don't mind."

  She arched one eyebrow. "Jesus Christ. What did they do, fuck right in front of you?"

  Only practice kept him from flinching, and he took a drag from the cigarette to cover his momentary discomfort. Exhaling, he watched the smoke drift upwards. "You're blunt. I don't know if that's refreshing or irritating."

  "If you want me to stroke your ego, too, it'll cost you way more." But she grimaced. "I could've warned you, though. Ace and Rachel. That's some sort of crazy, epic shit right there."

  "That's what everyone says," Cruz agreed, turning to study her more closely. Jeni worked shows at the Broken Circle, but she wasn't an O'Kane. A position like that gave someone a good vantage point for observation--familiar but invisible. Trusted, but not intimate. "If they're so epic, why haven't they been a thing forever?"

  Jeni's eyes locked with his. "You'd have to know Ace. More importantly, you'd have to know what he used to do before he joined up with Dallas."

  Most of Eden knew of Ace, though fewer people would associate Alexander Santana with Dallas O'Kane's tattoo artist. "I know some of it. He slept with a lot of prominent women in Eden and broke up a few marriages when their husbands discovered the paintings he'd given them."

  One corner of her mouth ticked up in a rueful smile. "Slept with them? Sure, he did--after they paid him. He was a high-class whore, sweetheart, and those proper Eden ladies chewed him up and spit him out."

  Maybe it should have surprised him, but it was only a more pragmatic assessment of what most people in Eden thought--that Ace had seduced those women into being his patrons, trading sex for access to a comfortable life and high quality art supplies.

  That had been scandalous enough, in part because his rumored lovers had already made similar bargains with their husbands. In Eden, it was a woman's place to exchange infrequent access to her body for the comforts of a secure life, making Alexander Santana a disruption to the natural balance of power.

  Cruz rolled over to stub out the cigarette as a few more pieces of the puzzle slipped into place. "Jared and Gia. That's how he knows them?"

  "Yeah. They all had the same mentor, Eladio."

  "And the good ladies of Eden don't chew Jared up?"

  "He can hold his own." Her smile faded. "He's not like Ace. He's not looking for love."

  Ace would be the first to turn the words into a joke, one about how artists fell in love every day before noon and got their hearts broken by dinner. Cruz could never tell how much truth lay beneath the words, and that bothered him. Once upon a time, assessing motivation had been easy for him.

  Or maybe it had only seemed that way because he'd always been objective.

  "Rachel probably knows," he murmured, rolling onto his side so he could study Jeni's expression. "She's from Eden, too. Those sculpted paintings he used to do are infamous."

  She hesitated. "I don't know Rachel very well, just from around the club and backstage, but she seems pretty open. I think maybe she can't read Ace because she doesn't get how much he's hiding. She expects everything to be on the level, and it's not."

  "But you know Ace?"

  "Enough to know he plays it off, but he's got some fucked-up shit going on."

  Cruz caught a strand of her disheveled hair and wrapped it around his finger. "If you were me, what would you do?"

  She held his gaze. "You want pretty words to make you feel better?"

  Pretty words wouldn't make him feel better. "I like you blunt."

  "Then I'd run like hell. Get as far away from both of them as possible, before they could break my heart." Jeni finished her cigarette and passed it to him to crush out. "But that's Ace's move, right? He's scared out of his mind, Rachel's oblivious... Let's face it, you might be the only one who can take them in hand and make something happen."

  Take them in hand. Simple words. Filthy ones. They wouldn't have seemed possible even a couple months ago, but he'd crossed so many lines. He'd betrayed his oaths, turned his back on his city, killed his former commanding officer.

  This was nothing. A little fucking, and what was more harmless than that in Sector Four, the carnal playground of Dallas O'Kane? Rachel and Ace had been on a collision course since long before he'd met them. If he didn't want to end up left behind, he had to be between them when they finally crashed together.

  The last hour before dawn was a dangerous time for anyone to be out and about in the sectors, even a man wearing O'Kane ink.

  Ace didn't give a shit.

  Jared's house might have been in what passed for the nicer part of Sector Four, but you could split the difference between nice and slums and come up with two big hands full of nothing. Even here, close to Eden and the well-patrolled brothel neighborhood, Ace kept his attention focused and his hand close to his gun.

  He turned the corner and bit back a frustrated curse. A silent black car with tinted windows idled in the street, which meant there was nothing to do but lean back against the building and pull out a cigarette. He knew Jared always shooed his clients out before dawn, but tonight, with the wind biting through his jacket and his guts twisted in knots, Ace wasn't feeling patient.

  He'd never understood how Jared could entertain Eden's richest adulteresses in his own bed before rolling over for a peaceful night's sleep. Ace had always gone into the city, meeting in secret apartments or sometimes in their own beds under the noses of their oblivious husbands. It was easier that way, easier not to get too attached. Easier to remember that fucking them to their first real orgasm might put wide-eyed adoration in their eyes for a few weeks, but he was still the paid help.

  The front door opened as Ace discarded his cigarette, and he watched from the shadows as a rumpled Jared dropped a kiss to an equally rumpled brunette's cheek before leaning against the doorjamb. The brunette swayed a little as she walked to the car, her giddy flush a sharp contrast to the stone-faced man who climbed out to open the door for her.

  She paused, glancing over her shoulder, and Ace bit back an amused snort. Jared was still on, playing the moment for all it was worth--barefoot with his shirt hanging open to reveal a perfectly sculpted body, ignoring the bitter temperature to present a flawless picture of lazy contentment. The pretty brunette would carry that last glimpse of him into her flustered dreams and be calling him again before the week was out.

  No wonder the bastard was so fucking rich.

  The car pulled away. Jared glanced at Ace with a rueful laugh before clutching his shirt around him with a shiver. "Goddamn, it's cold. My nipples could cut glass."

  Ace should probably summon a leer for that--it wasn't like he hadn't had his hands and mouth all over Jared's nipples and every other damn part of him--but the swiftness of the transition set him off balance. "Then it's a good thing you put them away. You gonna watch until her car makes it through the gates, or can we go inside?"

  "She'll be fine." Jared jerked his head toward the dim interior of his apartment. "Make yourself at home."

  Yeah, the woman would be fine. Some dumb fucker had rolled one of Jared's clients on her way back to the city a couple years ago, thinking she'd be an easy mark and that Jared wouldn't care if it happened away from his street.

  And he hadn't seemed to--until a week later. The thief had been celebrating by trying to find the bottom of a bottle of pricey O'Kane bourbon when Jared strolled into the bar and caved in his skull with a crowbar.

  Another quality Gia and Jared had in spades that Ace had always lacked. He'd killed a lot of fuckers out of protective rage and self-defense, and more than a few in stone-cold vengeance, but he'd never been good at practical ruthlessness.

  Inside, Jared waved him toward the couch and poured two stout drinks. "Should we pretend you were just in the neighborhood?"

  "Like I don't always come crawling over here before dawn for the same fucked-up reason?"

  "In recent memory? Ye
s." The reason was always the same, even when the catalyst changed. Ace came to Jared because he was safe. Because he'd been there for most of Ace's life, charging ahead and excelling at every challenge while Ace foundered behind. But Jared had never abandoned him. He was the one who'd walked away and found a home and a family with Dallas O'Kane.

  Ace knocked back the liquor just to feel the burn. "I was so busy trying not to break Rachel's heart that I didn't see it shatter. I've been walking on the pieces for months, grinding them into fucking dust."

  Jared watched him, his eyes shadowed with sympathy. "That sucks."

  It drove a choked laugh from him, one that warped somewhere in his chest and came out as a pained noise. Everything inside him was pain, and he didn't know how to let it out. "Yeah. Yeah, it fucking sucks."

  "All that time, and she didn't say anything? Kick your ass, cry at you, something?"

  "She started running around with Cruz," Ace ground out, tossing the glass to the couch cushion so he could shove both hands into his hair. It was like everything after that night had split into two worlds--hers built on the agony of rejection, his twisted by the pain of watching her pick someone else.

  They'd been living alternate lives, crossing just close enough to grind salt into the wounds because neither thought the other was bleeding.

  "We've had this conversation before," Jared chided gently. "She hooked up with Cruz. She also dropped him. And instead of asking her why, you picked him up."

  He hadn't meant to, not at first. Jasper had stepped up to take some of the weight of the sector off Dallas's shoulders, and Dallas had shuffled Cruz into the empty space at Ace's side with a stern command to put aside their personal shit and get the work done. The gang came first.

  And then... Emotional decisions. Muddled rationalizations. He had vague memories of spewing some of them on this couch, drunk off his ass and trying to convince Jared he was in control of the situation. That he had a plan.

  He hadn't been lying to his friend. He'd been lying to himself. He'd been lying for months, because the truth was fucking terrifying. "I have no goddamn idea what I'm doing."

  "That's a start." Jared retrieved his empty glass and refilled it. "I'm guessing you talked to her."

  The memory of her mouth surfaced, her lips parted, her tongue slicking against his, bold and hungry but still nervous. Open, the way she always was, brave even in the face of her own terror. "Yeah. We talked."

  "And?"

  "And I need to..." Ace waved a hand at Jared. "Fuck, man. I need to do something. Make a move. Not making one hasn't kept me from hurting her."

  Jared shrugged. "You don't sound too sure about it."

  Because he'd started to make a move last night, and she'd bolted. "She's nervous now, because I fucked up. And wooing skittish women is your specialty. I like the ones ready to take a running leap onto my dick."

  Jared choked on his whiskey. "I'm not sure what you want me to tell you, since she's in love with you already. She didn't get that way because of pretty tricks. She fell for you."

  He asked Jared the question he couldn't ask Rachel, because it would have sounded mocking or condescending or, worst of all, fragile and terrified. "Why?"

  "Love is blind, right? I mean, I think you're swell, but it wouldn't matter if you were the biggest fucking asshole left on planet Earth." He shrugged. "Why her? What's so great about Rachel?"

  Ace stiffened, more irritated than he wanted to admit, even if all Jared had done was turn the question around. It felt like an insult, one he wanted to answer with a little brotherly face-punching, but Jared was watching him, waiting for a response.

  Except the truth might be as harsh as a fist to the face, because the thing that had first entranced him about Rachel was the thing that terrified him. "She's not like us. She never learned how to lie."

  But Jared only nodded. "Makes sense. It was never your favorite part of the job."

  Maybe not, but maybe he was still lying to himself. It wasn't like all the other women in his life had been experts at deception. Some had been as guileless as Rachel. Some had been smart and some had been funny, and others still had given him big eyes while being both. And he loved women. He loved the filthy temptresses and the newly, earnestly horny and the women who fucked for money. Rachel wasn't special because they were less...

  She was special because they were all fucking amazing, and she still felt like more.

  There was no one trait, no logical reason. Nothing he could point to and say, This, this makes her better than those other women. No defining moment where his honest lust for everything she represented had slipped over the line into this gnawing, obsessive hunger he couldn't escape.

  She was a work of art. Jared saw the paint and the canvas and a few pleasant shapes. Ace felt the earth move.

  Jared made a soft noise of indulgent amusement. "A rhetorical question," he declared. "All I meant was that you may never know her reasons, and does it really matter? Unless you doubt what she feels, that is."

  He might have, if the hurt in her eyes hadn't been so damn real. "I guess not."

  "Don't even start. I've seen her look at you." Jared paused and tilted his head. "What about Cruz?"

  The question stopped him cold. He'd been running on adrenaline, on the horror of realizing what he'd done to Rachel, and fucking hell. Hurting the man would be like sinking a knife into the back of a brother. Worse, because somewhere in all those muddled rationalizations, Cruz had started looking like more than paint splattered across a canvas, too.

  No matter which way he turned, he was crushing something fragile. "I don't know."

  "But you need to figure it out."

  Yeah, he really did. And maybe, for once, he needed to make a decision while he wasn't strung out on booze and self-indulgent angst. Ace drained his drink and slumped back on the couch. "It'd be great if you'd go get stupid over some sweet little piece of ass. Then you could be the idiot for a while."

  Jared grinned. "I have my idiotic moments. I keep them to myself, that's all."

  "Come on, brother. Solidarity. Tell me one."

  Silence. Then a rough sigh. "I fell in love once. It didn't work. That's why I don't recommend it."

  Ace had never seen evidence of it in all the years he'd known Jared--but then, he might not have. That was the one lesson they'd all learned, even Ace--you showed the world your strengths because they earned you respect, and your flaws because they earned you trust. But your weaknesses you held tight in your heart.

  Gia struggled to remember she couldn't rescue every wounded woman she stumbled across. Ace couldn't stand seeing hookers mistreated, because paying for someone's body didn't give you the right to leave marks on their heart and soul. And Jared didn't trust himself with feelings, as if he was convinced that dropping his pragmatism for a few moments would end in an emotional bender he'd never survive.

  They were all broken, right along the lines drawn by their respective fucked-up childhoods, and for the first time in his life he didn't envy Jared. Because whatever was going on between him and Rachel and Cruz hurt like hell, but the pain was a pinprick compared to the satisfaction when Cruz growled his name or Rachel whimpered it.

  If he could just figure out a way for both of them to do it at the same time, they could tear his heart out of his chest and burn it to ash, and he'd still go to hell happy.

  Chapter Five

  Avoiding Ace was easy. Avoiding Cruz turned out to be harder.

  When Rachel edged through the warehouse door, she almost dropped the box of bottles she held. She managed to catch them--barely--between her hip and the doorjamb, then stood there stupidly as Cruz did one-armed pushups in the center of the cage. His torso gleamed with sweat under the harsh lights, and his dark hair clung to his temples. He grunted softly with every push off the rough concrete, a noise that made her stomach clench and the back of her neck prickle.

  She considered turning around and walking back out, liquor restocking be damned. But fuck that--she was
an O'Kane, dammit. She wasn't a coward, not even when presented with this. So she got a better grip on the box and let the door slam shut behind her. "Good morning."

  He looked up without breaking his rhythm. "Rachel. Need some help?"

  The situation was too ridiculous for words. An ill-advised laugh bubbled up in her chest, and she bit her lip. "I wouldn't dream of interrupting your incredibly difficult workout, not when you're making it look so stupidly easy."

  His mouth quirked. Barely a smile, but the warmth in his eyes had more than her neck prickling. "Let me finish this set, and I'll haul boxes for you."

  "You don't have to."

  He polished off five more pushups in quick succession before rocking to his knees. "I want to."

  A bead of sweat rolled down the center of his chest. Rachel dropped the box on the bar with a clatter. "I'm just making sure everything's topped off before the party in a couple of days."

  Cruz hopped out of the cage, snagging a towel tossed over the door on his way by. "That's right. Six is drinking in. And Jade, too?"

  "Yeah. Should be a good time."

  "Hey."

  She paused with her hand around a bottle of tequila and looked up at him. He stood there, watching her, his hands locked around both ends of the towel around his neck. "What?"

  He met her eyes squarely, and the warmth was still there, but so was something else. Something darker, that dangerous edge she'd never seen in him until she'd tried to shove him away for his own good. "You don't have to keep running from me. If you and Ace have a thing now..."

  Oh God, he must have heard something, even seen them. "It's not like that. He and I have always had a thing--just like you and me. It's always there, no matter what."

  After a moment, he nodded. "I know how much it hurts to be pulled in opposite directions. I don't want that for you."

  "But you can't stop it." No one could, not since the beginning. Maybe not even then. "It's not about what you've done or might do, Cruz. It's about who you are. What it does to me when you--"

  She bit off the words, but he wouldn't let her hold them back. "When I do what, Rachel?"