Ace snorted. “Do it. Make everyone’s night.”
No. He wouldn’t give the man the satisfaction of answering his cowardly challenge, but if Dom came at him, spoiling for a fight, he’d get one. “Everyone going to the warehouse tonight?”
“Probably, as long as nothing goes down with Sector Three. I’m hitting my stops early tonight.” Ace moved the shader to a new spot.
Jasper clenched his jaw as fresh pain welled. He could handle getting punched in the head better than he could handle these damn needles sometimes. “You need backup?”
“Nah. Bren’s coming with me.”
“The two of you aren’t likely to run into trouble.” Jasper bared his teeth. “Unless you want to. We can take Dom along, settle things nice and uncivilized in an alley. Who’d miss him?”
Ace grinned. “Not even his mama.”
Another time—and with a little more reason. Jasper glanced down at the red heart emerging on his chest. “Make it bloodier. Truth in advertising.”
“Yeah, you and your bleeding heart.” His friend sounded amused. “What’s next? Gonna rescue some kittens?”
A foregone conclusion, apparently, that he’d mark Noelle. A done deal. “She was horrified last night. Would you saddle yourself with an old lady who’s ashamed of fucking?”
Ace choked on a laugh. “Shame I’ll give you, brother, but the only thing that girl’s horrified by is how much she gets off on being a bad little girl. If you don’t want her, I’ll spank the shame right out of her.” He paused for a moment. “Or maybe I’ll watch Lex do it.”
If Jasper could be sure that Noelle was only struggling with the novelty of exploring her sexuality, he’d mark her. “Maybe it’s just new. We’ll see. And I do plan to see.”
“Is that your way of telling me to keep my dick out of her?”
“It’s my way of saying tread lightly.” Jasper lifted an eyebrow. “Some of ’em aren’t quick fucks unless you push them, and she doesn’t need to be pushed.”
“Bleeding fucking heart,” Ace muttered, returning his attention to the tattoo. “You know, her father’s directly responsible for making our lives hell. Has it occurred to you that’s the real reason Dallas is keeping her around? You might not want to get too attached.”
For information, perhaps. Anything more sinister and Lex would kill him—and Dallas knew it. “Or it’s all the more reason for me to look out for her.”
The lights above them flickered, and Ace bit off a curse. “I think the back generator’s acting up again. Need to get a grease monkey out here to look at it.”
“That’ll take forever. Have Rachel knock off her shift early and check it out.”
“Rachel can’t stand the sight of my face. Maybe you should ask.”
Jasper sighed. “You wouldn’t have this problem if you weren’t such a fucking jerk.”
Ace seemed unperturbed. “Could be worse. I could be Dom.”
“Barely worse.”
“That’s the blue balls talking.”
“Shithead.” Jasper stretched his neck, trying to ease a little of the trapped feeling he always got sitting in the chair too long. “Make sure you put healing gel on the tat. Maybe I’ll go out with you and Bren tonight before the fights, after all. Clear my head.”
“Hey, man, if you want to. We’ve got liquor deliveries to make to those dives west of the market district, and then we need to collect protection money from the brothel.”
Work. A task that could consume his attention as well as anything else. “I’m in.”
Ace swiped at Jasper’s chest again and paused to consider the bleeding heart taking shape there. “I still have to fill in your princess’s bar code. Think she’s going to faint on me?”
Jasper remembered her skin heating under his hand the night before, how soaking wet her pussy had been after one smack on the ass. She’d liked having her hair pulled, liked the commands as much as the touches and tongues.
Did she get off on other kinds of pain too? Would having the needles thrust into her delicate skin over and over get her as hot? He could picture the black vinyl seat, slick and shiny with the evidence of her unbearable arousal. They’d have to strap her down to stop her squirming, but once they had, he could put his face between her thighs, fuck her with his tongue while Ace obliterated the bar code, her last link to the city that hadn’t wanted her.
He wanted her.
“I’ll bring her in,” he muttered. Better he be there—just in case.
Three days outside Eden, and her old life seemed like a dream.
Noelle leaned against the bar and watched Rachel swirl alcohol into a shot glass, the other woman’s movements practiced and effortless. The scent of liquor was amazing, sharp and heady. Every moment in the sectors was so real, gritty and hard, smashing into her numbed senses. She’d eaten at the most expensive restaurants in Eden, but nothing had tasted as rich as the charred grilled cheese sandwich the grumpy cook had shoved on her before the bar opened.
Three days, and she still hadn’t grieved.
It had to be partly shock. The trauma of going from jail to the streets to drugged out of her mind. But when she tried to picture her bedroom at home, she didn’t miss the luxuries. Showers with endless hot water, electricity that came from underground wires rather than loud, smoke-spitting generators. Instead she remembered the locks on her windows. The cameras that tracked her every movement. The guards. The rules. Her father’s endless sermons.
Her father’s endless rage.
Shivering, she banished his face from her memory and concentrated on Rachel’s movements. “You came from Eden too, didn’t you?”
“Yep. I doubt we ever ran in the same circles, though.” The blonde smiled impishly. “I was solidly middle class.”
Noelle tried to return the smile. “My acquaintances were limited mostly to the families of my father’s political allies. We had bodyguards with us whenever we left the house—I always thought they were there to keep us from being exposed to dangerous ideas or people.”
“Dallas has meat shields go everywhere with him here, but it’s mostly to keep people from blowing his head off. Your boy Jasper’s one of them, you know.”
Your boy. Another inexplicable discovery. Jasper had hardly said two words to her that weren’t about sex, and she was infatuated with him. Or maybe she wanted to believe it was him and not the way he made her feel, dirty and fulfilled all at once.
And yet… “I don’t think he’s my boy. He won’t even…you know.”
Rachel dumped ice into another, larger glass. “Won’t what? Fuck you?”
“Yeah.” Noelle had expected it at Dallas’s party. She’d wanted it, after he’d made her come. But he hadn’t let her open his pants, not even to try Lex’s tricks on him. And he’d left her after their shopping excursion with nothing more than a kiss. “I don’t know, maybe he feels sorry for me because I almost passed out at his feet.”
“Mm-hmm.” Rachel held up another bottle. “Whiskey, our most popular. Never water it unless they ask you to—Dallas’s orders.”
“All right.” She consigned that bit of information to memory and wondered what she’d have to forget to keep it there. “How do you remember all the recipes? Practice?”
“Mostly.” Rachel set down the bottle and leaned her hip against the bar. “A good trick? If you don’t know how to make something, tilt your head, smile, maybe laugh a little, and admit it. Huge tips.”
“Really?” Noelle started to tilt her head and then caught herself. She’d seen Jasper’s eyes narrow with tight hunger when she tilted her head and confessed ignorance about some sexual matter. “Oh. The men like us to be a little clueless, don’t they?”