Wetting her lips, Noelle fell into step next to Rachel. “Ace said Dallas and Jasper were on their way. Should I wait?”
She shook her head. “They got hung up with work. They’ll be along later.”
The gang came first. That was the rule she’d tacitly accepted when she let Ace etch the O’Kane symbols into her skin, which meant facing the gathering group of too many smiling men with a stiff back and a raised chin. She would pretend she was Lex, unperturbed by their lecherous stares and the frank appreciation in their hungry gazes.
Hell, maybe she’d kiss one of them. Or more than one. She was a free woman now. She was an O’Kane. Her body belonged to her, and if Jasper wanted claim over it, he’d have to put his mark around her throat.
Jasper leaned against the wall and stared at the woman in the chair. She stared back, impassive, heedless of the heavy chains that bound her. “Is that necessary?” he asked. “We’re smack in the center of Sector Four now. Where would she go?”
Bren mirrored Jasper’s stance with a grin. “She wouldn’t run. She would, however, bite your face off, given half a chance. Wouldn’t you, sweetheart?”
“Why would I bite his face off when yours is right there?” Six bared her teeth and, judging by the focused fury in her eyes, her rage was for Bren alone.
Bren shrugged. “I don’t know—variety?”
“Fuck variety.” Her gaze slid to Jasper. “Are you here to hold me down while he fucks me? Or is that your job?”
Under the taunt lay a very real fear. Dismissing it would be cruel, but so would taunting her in return. Jasper settled for shaking his head.
His restraint didn’t soothe her. Her hands fisted, and she jerked against the chains for the first time, like his unwillingness to abuse her frightened her more than the threat of violence could. “This is some sick shit. Why the hell are you—?”
“Enough,” Dallas said from behind Jasper. “Lex?”
Lex’s heels clicked on the floor as she walked to the center of the room. “Why bother? She’s not going to believe me. Where she’s from, there are plenty of women who’ll sell each other out for a little security.”
Dallas sighed. “Could you pretend for a fucking second that I’m the boss and try?”
“Words are just words. You can tell someone you’re a saint while you’re stabbing a kitten. Does saying it make it true?”
Six sneered at them, her lips twisted in disgust. “What, you haul some poor bitch in here to yell at you and I’m supposed to believe I’m in a fucking paradise because you don’t beat her face in? Did you write all the lines for her, or does she come up with them on her own?”
“See?” Lex knelt and stared up at the new arrival. “They screwed her up so bad she doesn’t know what to think.”
“I’m not screwed up,” Six snarled, but even Jasper could hear the desperation under the words. Her rough façade was cracking, and with it, her composure. “I’m one of the strong ones. I survived, and I don’t need your pity.”
“Oh, I don’t pity you. I kinda think they shouldn’t have brought you back here. You’re trouble.”
That brought the woman’s teeth together with an audible clack. She studied Lex, as if trying to figure out how the words could be a trap. Next to Jasper, Dallas opened his mouth and then shut it again without saying a word, watching the two women instead.
After a long silence, Six tilted her head. “I can’t tell if you’re all damn good liars or just fucking crazy.”
“See?” Bren straightened off the wall and walked around behind her. “Told you she was smart.” The chain rattled as he unlocked it and then let it clatter to the floor.
Dallas tensed, and Jasper knew it was taking all of his self-control not to haul Lex away from potential danger. Six seemed to notice too. “He’d snap my neck if I laid a finger on you, wouldn’t he?”
“Dallas? Probably.” Lex smiled slowly. “Unless I got to you first.”
Bren laid his hands on Six’s shoulders. “You want to hurt Wilson Trent?”
She carefully untangled herself from the chains. “I want to hurt Wilson Trent. But I’m not going to spill my guts and trust you not to dump me in the river when I’m done.”
Jasper couldn’t fault her for that. “Fair enough. What do you know about the drop tomorrow? We figure Trent’s got plans for us. Ugly ones.”
She studied each of them before turning just enough to stare at Bren’s hand resting on her shoulder. “I’ll tell him.”
Bren nodded slowly. “What do you say, Dallas?”
“We’ll be in the hall,” Dallas replied, inclining his head toward the door. “Talk fast, sweetheart. We’re late to a party.”
Jasper crossed his arms over his chest. “You sure you want to be alone with the face-biter, Bren?”
He made a dismissive noise and stroked the backs of his fingers absently down the length of Six’s hair. “We’re past that. If I piss her off, I think she’ll at least give me a good warning punch first.”
She jerked her head away from him. “Touch me again and I’ll bite your fucking hand off.”
“See? When she figures out I’m not going to maul her, we’ll be fine.”
Lex didn’t move for a long moment, then rose. “Tread lightly, sweetheart. They’re not going to hurt you unless they have to...but I’m not as nice as they are.”
“That’s enough, Lex,” Dallas said, stepping forward to rest a hand on her hip. “You and Jasper go to the party. You shouldn’t miss your girl’s big moment.”
She took a single step back, another, and then relented with an annoyed exhalation. “Yes, sir.”
The door slammed behind her, and Jasper rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Her girl?”
Dallas snorted. “I was talking to both of you. If you plan on making any grand gestures, I suggest you get there before Lex does.”
“She wouldn’t.” Not even someone with Lex’s sexual appetites would try to snatch up Noelle when her attention was so obviously focused elsewhere.
“I give you five minutes, tops, before Noelle’s drinking her shots straight from Lex’s luscious lips.”
That wouldn’t do. Jasper headed for the door—and told himself he was rushing for Noelle’s sake, not his own.
He didn’t believe it either.
Chapter Ten
The process, as Rachel explained it, was simple—drink a shot, then celebrate with the other O’Kanes gathered around the makeshift bar. Eight shots, eight passes around the cheering crowd.
The liquor ranged from the really cheap moonshine apparently favored in the other sectors to an exquisite, high-end single malt whiskey—which explained how Dallas could afford to throw pre-Flare artwork at Lex like it was nothing.
The whiskey burned smooth all the way down, worth every penny Dallas charged, and Noelle barely had time to lift the empty glass triumphantly above her head before someone dragged her into the crowd. Lips landed on her cheek. Someone else swept her into a hug. The redheaded stranger from Dallas’s party snatched her away from Amira and planted a kiss right on her lips before passing her on to the next person in the circle with a grin.
So it went, all the way around the circle. Kisses, hugs, a few pats on the shoulder and one or two on the hip, but all fond and good-natured instead of lascivious. Ace got her last and sent her back to Rachel with a swat on the ass.
Noelle still held the shot glass in one hand, so she slammed it on the table upside down and laughed. “Do I do that every time?”
“Do what?” Rachel asked innocently as she handed over another shot. “Vodka’s up. Next is the tequila, so pace yourself.”
Sound advice, but Noelle downed the vodka and dropped the shot glass this time before she was whisked away by the revelers. Her skin tingled more this time around, and she was laughing by the time she reached the table again.
The tequila made her cough, but she drank all of that, too, before spinning into the crowd with a triumphant noise that felt right. Ace grinned and claime
d his kiss before passing her along. It took longer, the hugs lingering and the kisses coming in twos and threes.
She was only halfway around the circle when the dizzy warmth crept from her stomach up into her chest, which was right about when the latest man relinquished her quickly.
To Jasper.
He looked down at her with a half-smile and rubbed her bare upper arms. “Sorry I’m late.”
The warmth of his hands shot straight to her core, though that could have been the tequila, too. Or the vodka. Maybe the whiskey, making its presence known with a slow burn that turned her smile wickedly bold. “You missed two kisses. I gave them to Ace instead.”
“Hell yeah, she did,” Ace called from the opposite side of the circle. “You gonna come get them, brother?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Jasper tilted her head back with his fingers under her chin. “Three shots. Still steady on your feet?”
“Steady enough,” she lied, fidgeting under his unwavering gaze. He had a way of looking at her that made the rest of the room seem frozen, as if they couldn’t possibly be interrupting anything because nothing important would dare happen while his attention was fixed on her.
“Good.” He released her, but not before brushing his lips over hers. “Congratulations, sweetheart.”
No, that warmth wasn’t the liquor. It was all him, and it expanded to fill her as she leaned up to kiss him once more. “See you next time around,” she whispered against his mouth, then laughed and spun into the arms of the grinning man next to him.
She wasn’t steady on her feet by the time she came back around to Ace. He whirled her like a dancer, and the room kept on moving, dipping dizzily to the side before righting itself. She stumbled back toward Rachel and crashed into Jasper.
Again.
Blinking, Noelle pulled back to peer up at him. “Did you come to get your kisses from Ace?”
Jasper didn’t answer. Instead, he picked up the next shot Rachel had poured and tipped it back. Then he slipped an arm around Noelle’s waist, dragged her close, and bent his head to hers.
Liquor spilled across her tongue. Not the whole shot, not even most of it, but enough to give her the taste of it. His lips crushed against hers, hot and a little rough, the sensation a thousand times more intense with the entire gang forming a cheering, catcalling wall around them. She couldn’t forget that everyone was watching as he chased the booze with his tongue, and then she couldn’t care because he knew how to kiss her knees weak.
Lex’s voice cut through the cheers, close and wry. “That’s real subtle, Jas.”
Jas released Noelle, and she swung around to face Rachel. “That has to be cheating.”
“Not exactly,” she hedged. “Technically, you don’t have to finish every shot. Not by yourself, anyway.”
“Jasper just hung a big ‘no trespassing’ sign on you.” Lex wound her arm around Noelle’s shoulders. “Good thing I like to live dangerously.”
Jasper glared, and it was hotter than it should have been. His furrowed brow and his tight expression, all of him poised as if he’d snatch her out of Lex’s grip at a moment’s notice.
Smiling slowly, Noelle leaned in to the other woman. “He didn’t ask me if I wanted you to trespass.”
“Do you?” A whisper, and Lex’s breath stirred the hair curling against the side of Noelle’s neck.
Noelle wasn’t sure what made the decision for her. The vodka, maybe, or the tequila. Some bit of wildness buried deep inside her, only uncovered when liquor had burned everything else away.
The way Jasper’s gaze all but dared her to do it.
She only had to turn her head a little bit, and then Lex’s mouth was pressed against hers. Soft lips, more yielding than Jasper’s, and gentler. It seemed that way, at least, in the moment where Noelle could only kiss the other woman awkwardly, terrified it might be a mistake after all.
Lex licked her mouth and tilted her head to part Noelle’s lips with her tongue. Still soft, but no less demanding than Jasper’s kiss, especially when she eased Noelle down to sit on the edge of the table and inched a hand under her shirt to stroke her belly.
Then Lex broke the kiss with a slow smile and reached for the next shot on the table. “Gin,” she whispered huskily, pressing the glass into Jasper’s hand.
He growled. “You like to play with fire.” But he drained the shot, jerked Noelle’s head back by her hair, and fused his mouth to hers. Moaning, Noelle tangled her fingers in his shirt, clinging to him to try to keep her balance.
Even that wasn’t enough when Lex pressed parted lips to her throat, teeth closing lightly on her pulse as Jasper licked the taste of gin onto her tongue. This time, Noelle really had forgotten about everyone else until Ace shouted, “Fuck, Jasper, let her breathe!”
But breathing was overrated, and doubly so when Jasper nudged Lex out of the way to lick Noelle’s throat, soothing the ravaged skin. She grasped at his hair, tangling her fingers in the short strands as much as they’d allow as her heart beat its way toward her throat. “Aren’t you supposed to let everyone else congratulate me after each shot?”
“You eager to get up?” he asked, nudging Lex’s hips harder into the open vee of Noelle’s legs.
“Not really,” she managed in a shaky voice. It took another deep breath to strengthen her tone. “But I want to do it right. I want to belong.”
“That’s a done deal, baby girl.” Lex lifted Noelle’s hand and nodded to the fresh ink encircling her wrist and forearm. “You belong. You always will.”
The words hit her in a place the alcohol couldn’t, and she tilted her head back to stare up at Jasper. “Three more.”
Three more shots and three more kisses, each one dirtier than the last. By the time Jasper let her taste the abrasive, fiery moonshine from his mouth, Noelle had to wrap her legs around Lex’s thighs just to keep the room from spinning.
Lex laughed and reached around Noelle to brace her hands on the table, the movement rocking their hips together. “You’ve got to be drunk. It’d be wrong to put my hand in your pants now, wouldn’t it?”
Noelle didn’t care if Lex stripped her out of her pants entirely, as long as someone kept rocking against her. She stroked Lex’s cheek, contrasting the silky softness of the other woman’s skin to the alluring scratch of Jasper’s beard. “I hear music. Is there going to be dancing?”
“Do you want there to be?”
Noelle almost missed the question when Jasper shifted his hands from her waist to her breasts, his palms crushing the gauzy fabric of her shirt against her tightened nipples. Moaning, she tipped her head back. “Dance. I want to dance. Not like they do in the city, though.”
Lex hummed and tugged her off the table, out onto the floor. “I think I know what you want.”
Between one thumping bass beat and the next, Noelle found herself pressed against Lex, with Jasper close at her back. He dropped his hands to her hips, holding her steady as he ground against her.
Free. Sinful. Noelle swayed with the music, wrapping one arm around Lex and lifting the other to curl her hand around the back of Jasper’s neck. “I’m tingly.”
“Wasted’s what you are.” He laughed, his shirt brushing the skin left bare by the scant back of her blouse.
She had to be. Everything was far away, at a dreamlike distance, as if time bent around her. But touch—oh, touch was good. Jasper, hard at her back, and Lex, so soft, rubbing against her chest. Words didn’t need to stop at Noelle’s brain before tumbling past her lips. “This would be better if we were all naked.”
Dallas’s laugh rumbled over her as he loomed out of the darkness behind Lex. “I’ll say. Sorry I missed your big debut, kitten, but it looks like you’re well in hand.”
Lex sucked in a soft breath, one Noelle wouldn’t have noticed if they hadn’t been dancing so close. “The girl wants to move a little,” she whispered, tipping her head back on Dallas’s shoulder. “Surely Jas and I can handle that.”
Dallas
dropped an absent kiss to the top of Lex’s head and gripped her hips, mirroring the hold Jasper had on Noelle. The moment twisted easily to encompass their leader, and Noelle’s imagination conjured the four of them naked and moving together. Not so different from that first party, when she’d had her mouth around Dallas’s cock.
Cock. She was even thinking like an O’Kane now, foul in the silence of her own mind. She watched, still lost in that dreamy haze, as one of her hands drifted up all on its own. Over Lex’s neck and down, trailing across her breast. “You’re beautiful.”
“Look at you. So bold.” Lex shivered and circled her hips, grinding higher on Noelle’s thigh. “You want to climb on top of me sometime, you be my guest.”
Jasper groaned. “But not tonight.”
Noelle wiggled her ass against his hard erection. “You can’t stop me.”
“Don’t have to.” His thumb slipped under the top of her pants to brush her hipbone. “Tell her, Lex.”
“Hmm?” Lex arched into Noelle’s touch instead.
She couldn’t help but laugh. Lex wouldn’t pay attention to anything or anyone with Dallas grinding up against her, and the man knew it. He grinned at Noelle over Lex’s head, his dangerous eyes dark with amusement. “If you weren’t liable to pass out soon, kitten, I’d invite both of you back to my rooms for all of those wicked games you’re imagining. Some other time, hmm?”
Her good sense was still disconnected from her mouth. “I played a wicked game this morning,” she retorted, and the memory of Ace’s odd little nipple rings clamping tight gave her inspiration. The next time Lex arched into her touch, Noelle caught her nipple and pinched it.
The response was instantaneous. Lex gasped, her nipple hardening to a stiff point, but she twisted away from Noelle. “Better sleep it off, baby girl. Soon, you’ll get that wish I see dancing behind those big blue eyes.”
Dallas filled the empty space in front of Noelle and caught her chin. For a moment, she was frozen in place, trapped between Jasper’s unyielding bulk and Dallas’s dangerous strength.
A Ride or Die Kind of Love Page 110
