If he cut off her skirt, she might come from that alone.
But he folded the knife and put it away. “Stay still, honey. The longer it takes, the longer you wait.”
“Jasper—”
Before he could say anything, Ace tweaked her nipple, pinching hard enough to force her breath out in a moan. “Jesus, she’s hot for it,” he murmured as he went back to the tattoo. “One more line, honey, and then we’ll play with you.”
“She’ll want the cuffs too.” Jas sounded certain.
“That so?” Ace drawled.
As if there was any question. Noelle felt as if every day stripped away a layer of numbness, a layer of respectability. The girl who’d stumbled out of Eden might have bowed beneath the hard work and endless rules of the commune.
The girl she wanted to become could only live here, in the darkness of the sector slums. “Yes. I want cuffs.”
Ace hummed. “What do you say, Jasper? How much more can she take without someone working her off?”
He stroked the same nipple Ace had tweaked, a gentle touch instead of a rough one. “Not long. Finish blacking out the bar, and we’ll give her a break, make her come. Then you can start on the rest.”
Noelle groaned and rocked on the seat, so hungry she didn’t care if she looked shameless. “Have you two done this a lot? Tied a girl up and made her listen to you talk dirty about what you were going to do to her?”
“Oh, she’s cute, Jas. She thinks we’ve been talking dirty.”
“Ace isn’t dirty,” Jas observed conversationally as his hand drifted down, over the waistband of her skirt. “He’s obscene.”
Lower. Lower. If she thought it hard enough, maybe he’d slide his fingers over her wet panties and realize how close she was to shaking to pieces. “What’s the difference?”
Ace finished the final line with a flourish and reached out to catch her chin, forcing her to look at him. “Dirty’s saying I’m going to make you come. Obscene’s saying I’m going to spread your pretty pink pussy lips open and spank your clit until you come all over my face.”
Oh God.
Jas chuckled softly. “Obscene makes for quite a show, doesn’t it, Noelle?”
Obscene made her clench tight in anticipation. Not even embarrassment could banish the entrancing image, though her imagination put Jasper between her knees. His hand opening her, his fingers delivering punishment and pleasure.
She wet her lips and closed her eyes. “I like it.”
The hem of her skirt inched higher on her thighs. “How much?” Jas asked.
Saying it shouldn’t be any worse than enjoying it, but she had to force the words out in a raspy, self-conscious whisper. “Enough to beg you to—to touch my pussy. Either of you. Both of you.”
“Enough to trust us to take care of you, no matter what?”
“Yes. Yes.” And it wasn’t a lie. Even Ace’s irritating princesses and crude flirting didn’t bother her when Jasper so obviously ruled over his friend. And she trusted Jasper. With everything.
Jas’s hand slid higher under her skirt, almost distracting her from the stab of discomfort as Ace smoothed some sort of gel over the inside of her wrist.
She felt like the surface of the family’s garden fountain before the workers turned on the water in the morning. Still and dark, a smooth mirror that would erupt in endless waves with a single touch.
One touch. She could have arched her body off the chair and found his fingers. Instead, she let her eyes drift open and stared up at Jasper. Waiting. Needing.
He licked her lips and fused his mouth to hers.
It wasn’t the right sort of touch, but she melted into it anyway, moaning against his lips as she strained toward him. She barely felt Ace’s fingers stroking down her arms, because everything was Jas. His lips, his tongue, the scrape of his beard, the promise of everything he’d give her.
“Open,” he whispered again, into her mouth, and she didn’t know if he meant for him or for Ace, so she parted her lips and slid her knees wide.
It was Ace who shoved her skirt up, and Ace who groaned. “You’ve got to be shitting me. Who bought her the fucking white ruffled panties?”
She couldn’t answer with Jasper’s tongue in her mouth, but if it hadn’t been there, she could only have managed pleas. Her clit pulsed, ached with a ferocity she hadn’t imagined possible. If Ace would simply touch her...
But he didn’t. He swept his fingers along the insides of her trembling thighs and laughed when she squirmed. “Should I rip ’em, Jas? Or do you want to cut these off too?”
Jas pulled away far enough to answer. “Neither. Leave them around her ankles.”
“Yeah, I’d want to keep them around too.” Ace urged her hips up, and Noelle lifted her body as much as she could with her arms bound immobile.
The reminder of helplessness sharpened her need, and she whimpered and rubbed shamelessly against Jasper. “Please, Jas. Please make him touch me. I want to come—I need to.”
Ace settled his hands on her knees and pressed them wide before tracing back to her sex. “Now, Jasper?”
“Now.”
Noelle tensed, dizzy with anticipation, but Ace moved just his thumbs, stroking her folds before parting them. She was held open in every sense of the word, her arms flung wide, her knees forced apart, her most intimate places utterly on display.
It should have been humiliating. In the one second she had to think, she hated that it wasn’t, hated herself for her deviance.
Ace’s mouth closed over her clit, and he sucked so roughly she screamed at the shock of it with the last air she had before orgasm crashed into her, tearing everything else apart. She screamed and she shook, her entire body tensing and releasing with each wave, and distantly she heard Ace’s groan of approval, felt his fingers twisting and stroking, landing on her clit in stinging little slaps that dragged her from the hollow of one wave to the peak of the next.
She must have begged for mercy. She must have, because the pleasure faded and she found herself limp and trembling, Ace grinning up at her—no, not her. He was grinning at Jasper. “Shit, man. I barely got started.”
“Go easy.” Jas dragged the backs of his fingers down the inside of her thigh. “Soft.”
Ace chuckled and pushed her knees even wider, like he was holding her open for Jasper. “Your girl likes hard just fine, brother. Maybe too much.”
“Not for long. She’ll be finished.” Jasper’s hand trailed lower, fingertips brushing the drenched inner lips of her pussy. “She has to keep up for a while yet if you’re doing her cuffs today.”
Noelle shuddered and met Jasper’s eyes. “Cuffs,” she whispered, turning the words into a challenge. A reminder that he’d promised her freedom, for all that she was bound and helpless. “I want them today. Now. While you touch me.”
“Today,” he agreed, moving his fingers slowly. He stroked her, slicked through her wetness, and teased her with the promise of how much better it would feel when he pushed those fingers inside.
She was so fixated on Jasper’s touch that she didn’t realize Ace had moved until a drawer rattled behind her. “I bet she’d like these.”
Jasper reached out, and Ace dropped two metal circles into his hand. No, not circles—rings with jeweled crossbars through them. Only when Jas pulled the bars apart and let them fly together with a metallic clack did she realize they must be magnetized.
As to their purpose... Her mind stumbled over the likeliest possibility. Memory supplied an image of the woman at Dallas’s party, the one whose shamelessly bare breasts had been adorned by sparkling jewelry.
Imagining the sensitive tip of her nipple pinched between cool metal set Noelle to squirming again. “Is that...?”
Jas answered by bending his head and tonguing her nipple, drawing a gasp from her as her flesh puckered. “They go like this,” he murmured, situating the first ring around her nipple.
The bars snapped tight, and she hissed as pain bloomed for a moment. Only a
moment; the pinch wasn’t strong enough to do more than ache in a way that made her heart pound. She forced her gaze to his and wet her lips. “The other, too? Please?”
“Told you,” Ace muttered. “Such a bad girl.”
“Maybe.” Jasper pinched her other nipple before putting the ring in place, then slipped his fingers down to brush her clit. “What else do you want, sweetheart?”
She wanted him. She wanted to come. She wanted to belong in this life, where the shame burned away and nothing but giddy pleasure remained. “I want my cuffs.”
“You’ll get them.” He pushed one finger inside her and curled it, stroking over that sensitive spot that sparked a feeling too intense to be called pleasure. Pressure, maybe, and a desperate hunger for more that had her voice breaking on a plea.
Ace’s voice rumbled close to her ear. “Maybe I’ll give you your cuffs while you’re riding Jasper’s hand. Would you like that, princess? Do you want him to feel your pussy clench around his fingers? He’ll know how hot the needles get you. He knows how hot this is getting you right now. I bet you’re squeezing him so tight he’s imagining you all hot and wet around his dick.”
“She wouldn’t be still,” Jasper whispered. “She’s fighting the restraints right now.” He pulled his finger free only to return along with a second, thrusting deep.
Noelle let her head fall back as the stretch drove a moan from her. What a picture she must make—bound, spread wide, her clothing sliced away and her body writhing under the intoxicating mixture of pleasure and pain. Anyone could walk in and watch her work her hips up and down, and that pushed her tension to a dizzying peak.
It wasn’t bad enough that she wanted to be defiled. She wanted people to watch. “I’m so bad,” she whispered, voice slipping into a moan as she teetered on the edge of release. “I’m dirty.”
Jasper shook his head, his jaw tight. “If it were shameful, you think I’d do this to you?” He moved his hand faster, his fingers fucking in and out of her with firm strokes.
No. Ace would. Dallas might. But Jasper was so careful with her. So controlled, so deliberate, coaxing her forward one step at a time as he stripped away her defenses. She could trust that it wasn’t disgraceful.
But trusting wasn’t feeling. She struggled against the straps, panted at the bite of leather, and groaned at the pinch of steel. When his broad fingers slammed into her one last time and she came screaming, she felt dirty, crude and broken and so, so good. Humiliation and pleasure twisted together, fed on one another until the illicitness felt better than the physical release.
He stopped thrusting and curled his fingers, making firm little rhythmic motions inside her as Ace bumped his thumbs against the metal rings pinching her nipples in painful, beautiful counterpoint.
Jasper’s voice rasped over her. “Again.”
“I can’t,” she protested, a stupid thing to do when fluttery spasms were already driving her higher, but it couldn’t be possible to feel so much, so fast. “I can’t.”
Ace’s hand closed in her hair and twisted roughly. Another layer of confused sensation, and she whimpered as he flicked one of her nipples. “Sweet little liar. If I were you, brother, I’d make her come two more times for every lie.”
“Just once.” Jasper licked her jaw, her lower lip, and then nudged Ace’s fingers aside to tease his tongue over her nipple.
It burned, and then she burned, propelled beyond herself for one exhilarating, wild moment. No shame, no guilt...no body. Just floating bliss and him, and she stopped fighting and rode the first of a dozen waves.
Up and up and no down, no end. Not until fingers stroked her cheek and a rumble shook her, and she realized she was wrapped in a blanket and cradled against his chest. Blinking, she let her head fall back and caught sight of Ace watching them with an oddly intense look, one she swore was jealousy.
It vanished a moment later as he smiled. “There you go, Jas. Your girl’s drifting down.”
“Beautiful.” Jasper stroked her hair, brushing the tangled, damp strands away from her forehead.
The gentleness made her shiver. She turned her face toward his palm and closed her eyes. “I don’t know what happened.”
“Before or after we made you come?”
She laughed. “After. And maybe while.”
“You took a little trip, sweetheart.” Jasper kissed the spot just behind her ear. “Now Ace is going to ink your cuffs.”
“But you took me out of the chair.” And she felt no pressing desire to leave the warm cocoon of his embrace.
Ace snorted out a laugh. “Under the circumstances, I’ll make do. For all I know it’s going to send you flying again, and your big, dumb brute will rip my balls off if he can’t pet and cuddle you.”
Jasper kicked the footplate. “Less talk, more work.”
They were situated so it was easy enough for Noelle to squirm her arm out of the blankets and lay it down for Ace. He winked at her before bending to his work, and Noelle looked away with the first prick of the needles.
It barely registered as pain, just a buzzing that vibrated through her, and she closed her eyes with a humming sigh. “What happens after this?”
“You get ready for tonight.” Jasper smiled against her cheek. “Every time Ace lays O’Kane ink, we have a party.”
“What kind of party?”
“Not like the one in Dallas’s rooms. We drink, and we celebrate the fact that there’s another one of us.”
“Fun.” She was floating again, floating on his voice and the warmth of his body and the sweet kiss of pain that was its own sort of claiming. Jasper was claiming her. Dallas’s mark and Ace’s ink, but every jab of the needle plunging into her skin was Jas, binding her to the gang, binding her to him. “Don’t let me go.”
“I won’t, Noelle.”
Dallas
O’Kane Liquor prospered through hard work, and that work had to be done every day, even when Dallas’s right-hand man was wandering around like a pussy-whipped fool. Not that an outsider would be likely to notice the change in Jasper’s stony expression, but Dallas had known his friend too long. Noelle was a sweet little piece of ass, and Jasper was well and bloody hooked.
Even now a tiny smile played around the edges of the other man’s mouth. At least Bren looked like his usual violent self. In five minutes, the door across the room would open, spilling out reluctant allies who could become enemies with damn near no provocation. Dallas had picked the meeting point this time, an abandoned bar on the border between the third and fourth sectors. Everyone was less twitchy in neutral territory, but violence had broken out before—and would again.
But hopefully not today. “So is your girl ready for her big welcome party, Jas?” Dallas asked.
“Yeah, bandaged wrists and all.” Jasper arched an eyebrow. “Having second thoughts about letting her in so fast?”
He’d left second thoughts behind the day the girl had stumbled into Jasper. Tonight, he was having fifteenth thoughts. “Just counting the days until you mark her.”
That straightened out the edges of the man’s smile. “We’ll see.”
At least the bastard was glaring, and none too soon. Footsteps shuffled in the hallway, and Dallas nodded to Bren and Jas before relaxing into a deceptively casual sprawl that left his hand close to the gun strapped to his thigh. “Here we go.”
Wilson Trent always glared, and today was no exception. He walked in, followed by four of his men, and surveyed the room before taking a seat. “O’Kane.”
“Trent.” The other leader had brought more than the customary two lieutenants for backup, but it was the tightness around his eyes that told Dallas they were treading close to a trap. Trent’s glare seemed too forced, too fixed. Anticipation hung in the air, so thick Dallas could taste it.
Fuck. The bastard was going to play one of his games.
He confirmed the suspicion a heartbeat later. “I’m surprised you didn’t just send your men tonight. Word in the sectors is you’ve got
your hands full playing daddy over in Four.”
Damn Jasper, and damn Lex too. They’d plucked a girl off the street like shining heroes, and everyone smelled weakness. “Never too busy for you, Trent,” Dallas replied mildly, trusting Jasper to keep a leash on his temper for the words that followed. “But we can talk about the new girl if you want. Big eyes, tight little pussy. Ever defiled one of Eden’s angels? They start out shocked, but if you break ’em in right, they’ll beg for cock.”
Trent shrugged one shoulder. “What new girl? I was talking about that dancer—” He turned to the muscle on his left. “What’s her name, again?”
“Alexa,” the man rumbled.
“That’s the one.”
Lies. They reeked of deception, but Dallas couldn’t blink. Couldn’t flinch, couldn’t stir so much as an eyelash and give them the impression Lex meant a damn thing to him. He certainly couldn’t cut out the man’s tongue for daring to say her name.
Watching him bleed and cry would brighten up Dallas’s shitty day, though.
He hadn’t gotten this far without being as good at lying as he was at spotting liars, so he smiled. “Lex is a hell of a dancer. Not too easy to shock, though, if that’s your thing.”
Trent lifted one hand and signaled his men. “I brought her something. Figured you could deliver it for me.”
It took everything in Dallas not to tense as the door opened again. A feminine growl of outrage preceded the unmistakable sound of an open palm cracking against skin, and he put it together with Trent’s taunting question about Noelle—and it had been about her, before the bastard had wiggled the knife for a weak spot—and saw the shape of the trap.
So he wasn’t surprised when one of Trent’s men dragged a struggling brunette into the room. She was a sleek creature, curves over muscles and shapely legs shown off by a skimpy miniskirt. Her leather bra matched. So did the cuffs that trapped her wrists together and the collar around her throat. Her cheek bore a vivid handprint, but she seemed unsubdued. When the man dragging her jerked the chain connecting her collar to her cuffs, she snarled and spit on him.
A Ride or Die Kind of Love Page 108
