Beyond Shame (23 page)

So he released her throat and gathered her arms behind her back. "Lex could suck me instead. And we could hold you right here, like this. Waiting."

"Lick me," she choked out, twisting desperately in his grip. "Please, please."

Dallas laughed and rubbed his fingers between Lex's legs, working her pussy while Noelle watched in tortured frustration. "You can do better than that, kitten."

Noelle sucked in a breath and slammed her head back against Jasper's shoulder, her entire body convulsing as the words burst out of her in a ragged cry. "Fuck my pussy, fuck it with your cock, I want it, I want to be fucked and—and sucked and
please
—"

He gave her one slow thrust as Dallas let go of Lex. "I go first," the woman whispered huskily before lowering her mouth again.

Every exploring, teasing lick made Noelle jerk against Jasper's chest. He held her still, and by the time Lex finally moaned and focused her attentions, Noelle had started rocking her hips, obviously desperate for a more intense touch, a specific sensation.

More.

Dallas swept up the lube and trickled it onto Lex's ass without warning her. "Don't be greedy, love. Give Jasper a turn."

She kissed her way up the center of Noelle's body, pausing to swirl her tongue around one hard, puckered nipple. "I
am
greedy." Then she dropped her hands to grip Noelle's hips and kissed her, driving her tongue past her lips.

Noelle whimpered, straining against Jasper's grasp to get closer. When her head tilted, their lips slipped apart enough to show Jasper a flash of tangled tongues, Noelle chasing Lex back into her mouth with an aggression that would have been impossible to imagine a few short days ago.

He gritted his teeth, locked one arm around Noelle, and resumed his rocking motions. Deep but not easy, angling his hips with every thrust and grunting as her body clasped his, slick and hot.

The bed dipped as Dallas knelt behind Lex. He gathered her wrists, coaxing them from Noelle's body. She broke the kiss, tilting her head to his as he cuffed her hands behind her back.

A laugh, heady and drunk, as Lex rubbed her cheek against Dallas's. "I lied.
Now
it's my turn."

"Maybe it's mine," he rumbled, slicking his hand down to tease her clit. "Everyone's had someone's face in their lap but me."

"You get cranky when you're horny." She closed her eyes and circled her hips under his hand.

With his other hand, Dallas reached out to pinch one of Noelle's nipples, tugging at it until she cried out and jerked in Jasper's arms. "Why don't we let them fuck, then, and see what we can do about it?"

In minutes, the two of them would be too wrapped up to notice anything. Jasper pulled free of Noelle's body and eased her to the bed, coaxing her onto her back. "Look at me."

She blinked twice before her gaze focused on his, already reaching for him. She clutched at his shoulders and tugged, trying to draw him closer. "I don't want it to be over."

The night had to end. "We'll just start again," he promised, sliding into the cradle of her hips.

Her brow furrowed and her lips pursed as she lifted her hips, grinding her pussy against his cock. "You're not inside me," she protested. "Are you going to make me beg?"

As much as she seemed to like the idea, he shook his head. "I can't right now." He reached down and held her still as he drove into her again.

Noelle cried out. Her legs tangled around his hips, her fingers curled around his shoulders, even her lips wrapped around his name as her pussy tightened, her pleasure driving his. He hooked his arms under her legs, pushing her knees toward her chest, and began to ride her.

The first time he hit her G-spot she sobbed his name, her nails pricking his shoulders, and started begging. Not as coherent as the words Dallas might have demanded, but plenty filthy. She pled for his cock, begged him to drive it deep, to take her, fuck her, and each time he slammed home the words broke a little more, until she was making choked noises as she teetered on the edge.

His entire body pulsed with need, the kind that prickled over his skin and narrowed his world to
Noelle
. Jasper cupped her shoulders and moved faster, harder, ignoring the Siren call of release as he commanded her to come. "Now."

"I can't—" The protest died with his next thrust. Her eyes squeezed shut and she twisted, digging her head back into the bed as the first tremors of orgasm began with her clenching pussy.

One more thrust and she came, screaming.

A fucking earthquake couldn't have kept him from following her in a rush of heat that scalded him from the inside out, stripped away the last of his defenses. He shuddered above her,
in
her, spilling as she contracted around him, milking his cock.

She kept shuddering even after he stilled, whimpering every time an aftershock shivered through her. Her lips moved, mumbling the same hoarse sounds over and over. "Oh, God...oh my
God
."

Jasper let her legs down and rolled so that Noelle was on top of him. Her hair spilled across his shoulders as she panted openmouthed against his chest, every breath out accompanied by a twitch of her hips. "Jasper..."

"Shh." Words were for other things, things that didn't matter just yet. Right here, right now, they didn't need anything else.

Chapter Fourteen

"Rachel!"

Dallas's roar was so out of place in the afternoon emptiness of the Broken Circle that Noelle nearly dropped the glass she was wiping clean.

Next to her, Rachel sighed and slung her towel over her shoulder. "How can I help you, Dallas?"

Scowling, he dumped one of the most outdated computing tablets Noelle had ever seen onto the scuffed bar. The LCD screen was cracked at one edge, but Dallas's ire seemed directed at the screen itself, which had locked down into the sterile
Insufficient Access
placeholder.

Dallas jabbed one wide finger at the tablet with a snarl. "You're the fucking mechanical genius. How do I keep this thing connected?"

"Do we have to go over this again?" Rachel picked up the tablet. "Mechanical. Machines. I'm as shitty with tech as you are."

"Smartass." Dallas glanced at Noelle, and the tiny quirk of his lips was all it took to bring color rushing to her cheeks. He'd been long gone by the time she'd woken up in his bed that morning, but she wasn't sure she'd
ever
be able to look at him without blushing again.

From the smug look in his eyes, he knew it. He liked it. That pricked her growing pride just enough to bring up her chin. "Can I look at it?"

Rachel passed it over. "It's better off in anyone's hands but mine."

Noelle flipped the tablet over and squinted at the model number before sliding her fingers along the edge to find the nearly invisible latch that released the back. "This is an older version that's mostly been replaced by new tablets with better wireless integrity. The signal's not really supposed to be broadcast outside of Eden, though, so I'm surprised it's been working at all."

She eased off the back panel and glanced at Dallas, who was staring at her with narrow-eyed assessment. "It only works about half the time."

"Because it's set to access the broadcast tower nearest to whoever officially registered it before it was sold on the black market." It only took a little wiggle to pop the power supply free. She unplugged the battery and waited for the tablet to reset. "Wireless is restricted by neighborhood, partly to keep the best equipment for the richest families, but mostly because they can't do much better than that without satellites. And those were all destroyed by the storms."

Dallas was staring at her like she'd started speaking gibberish. Rachel heaved another sigh, poured a glass of whiskey, and slid it across the bar until it bumped his hand.

Ignoring his disbelief, Noelle reconnected the power and reassembled the tablet before flipping it over. "You just need to know how to fool the tablet into giving you administrative access. They fixed this workaround in the newer models..."

She pulled up the settings screen and inputted the code every rich kid in Eden learned by the time they were twelve. Most wealthy families had old tech piled up in storage rooms or junk closets, and having a backup tablet meant the difference between privacy and constant parental monitoring. Of course, most of the other kids she knew had hacked tablets to gain access to restricted video games or pre-Flare entertainment programs. She'd craved unfettered access to Eden's digital library—and she'd gotten it.

Once she bypassed security, it only took a minute to set the tablet up to connect to the nearest signal tower. "There. That should work in any sector, as long as you're within a half mile or so of the city walls. Beyond that, I don't know."

Dallas accepted the tablet and stared at it in perplexed silence.

Rachel leaned over the bar to look at the screen, then burst out laughing and punched him in the arm. "You got schooled, son."

"Bite me, Rachel." He dropped the tablet and leveled a threatening finger at Noelle. "You've been holding out on me, sweetheart. Would've been nice to know I had some kind of hacker under my roof—unless you don't want to use those skills to help the family for some reason."

Stung past caution by the unfairness of the accusation, Noelle retorted, "In my peer group, I'm considered barely proficient. I didn't think it was relevant."

Dallas tipped back the shot Rachel had poured him and shook his head. "Women. You're all impossible."

The blonde refilled his glass. "Don't be a dick. It's unbecoming."

He grumbled something Noelle was glad she couldn't understand and drained the shot glass again before sighing. "Fine. I should have figured they'd be dumping tech in your cradle."

They had, but not out of any desire to see her excel at it. The mandatory classes on raising healthy, moral children all stressed the necessity of minimizing a child's dependence on tactile affection, even in the form of toys or stuffed animals. Tech could enrich the mind without weakening the body...or so the theory went. Her parents had been particularly zealous adherents, for all the good it had done them.

Dallas was still watching her, so she shrugged and went back to polishing glasses. The patrons weren't likely to care if there was dirt or grime as long as the liquor was pure, but some of those perfect hostess lessons had stuck harder than others. "I'm also good at planning dinner parties," she said tartly. "I know the names, positions, and politics of every powerful man in the city, along with their food allergies. I'm filled with useless knowledge."

"Nothing useless about knowing a man's weakness," he drawled.

"I said allergies, not—" She snapped her teeth together, and Dallas grinned. Not the sexy, knowing smile from before, but a cold, ruthless one that curled his lips but left his eyes frozen and empty.

Rolling around naked in Dallas O'Kane's bed might have stripped away a level of intimidation, but she'd do well to remember that he was still a cold-blooded criminal, a man who killed to protect his business interests as quickly as he killed to protect himself.

He slid his shot glass back to Rachel before sweeping up the tablet. "Breathe, kitten. I'm not going to turn you into a culinary assassin. Not this week, anyway. But someday soon, we may have a talk about what else is rattling around behind your big eyes, hmm?"

She couldn't gather enough wits to answer, but Dallas didn't seem to think it was necessary, anyway. He winked at Rachel and departed with the tablet clutched in one big hand. It wouldn't occur to him to wait for Noelle to make up her mind, because she'd made a promise when Ace wrapped the ink around her wrists.

O'Kane above all else. The gang came first.

This time, Rachel refilled the glass and pressed it into Noelle's hand. "Don't let him get to you. If you were still someone off the street, maybe he'd really be pissed. But you're an O'Kane now. He might be irritated, but it'll blow over."

Her fingers trembled a little as she lifted the glass. The whiskey still burned on its way down, but she didn't choke like she had the first time she'd tried it, and the warmth that seeped into her limbs helped her breathe easier. "I didn't realize," she admitted. "I just assumed everyone in Eden..." Too late, she bit back the thoughtless words. Rachel was from Eden too. "I'm sorry."

"Forget it. He has no problem assuming
I
know everything about technology because I'm from the city. If he wasn't a bastard who couldn't see past your tits, he could have bothered to think the same about you."

Noelle reached for the whiskey bottle with a laugh that felt like Rachel's tone—edged with bitterness. "I don't think it has anything to do with my tits. I think Dallas knows exactly what I was raised to be—decorative and helpless. Useless outside of Eden. I'm as surprised as he is to find out I'm not."

"Hey, don't." Rachel grabbed Noelle's shoulder and turned her around. "Knock it off. You're not helpless. I never thought you were."

That seemed impossible. If she hadn't been helpless, she'd never have stumbled across Jasper to begin with. "I feel like I am."

"You're not." Rachel's dark eyes hardened. "Damn Dallas, and damn Jasper too. They'd let you keep thinking it if they had their way, I bet."

Defensiveness stirred, but not for herself or Dallas. "Jasper's not like that. Why would he want me to be useless and needy?"

Rachel relented with a shake of her head. "He wouldn't. I'm sorry. I'm just being an asshole."

"No, you're not." Noelle caught Rachel's hands. "There are men who would. Jasper... He's not one of them. Right?"

"No, it's Dallas," she muttered. "He pisses me off sometimes."

Because he looked at Noelle and only saw her tits? Or because he looked at Rachel and didn't seem to see hers at all? Noelle would guess the latter—there was a decidedly asexual affection in the way Dallas treated Rachel, although
asexual
wasn't a word she'd ever thought to associate with Dallas O'Kane.

Smoothing her thumbs over Rachel's hands, she lowered her voice to a whisper. "He's a powerful man. Powerful men can be incredibly blind, and incredibly stupid. Even the smart ones."