Ace had finished the outline already, and Jasper winced as soon as his friend turned away to switch out his equipment. “Are you off your game today? This hurts like hell.”
“Is that the tattoo or your balls?”
“My balls are fine. Wanna check?”
Ace made an amused noise. “No, thanks. Unlike you, I was smart enough to get a ride or two last night.”
“And who said I wasn’t?” Noelle wasn’t ready for it, not remotely—after spending the morning with her, he was more sure of that than ever—but she didn’t have his dick on a chain, either.
“Dom.” Ace swiped his shoulder and set the needle against skin. “He’s talking shit to anyone who’ll listen.”
Dom was a mean motherfucker who had the brawn but not the brains to rise up as one of Dallas’s more trusted men, and it ate at him like a cancer. “He talks a lot of shit about a lot of stuff.” Jasper paused. “What’s he saying?”
“That you’ve got a limp dick and no spine. Bastard’s just pissed because the girls cut him off. Which is what happens if you don’t bother to make sure they have a good time.”
Limp dick, no spine—meaningless, unimaginative words, easy to brush aside. But while Dom posed no threat to Jasper, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t apply himself wholeheartedly to harassing Noelle. “If he has such a beef with me, we should hash it out in the cage.”
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?”
“They all like to be the first to plow some virgin soil, that’s for sure.” Rachel brushed her short blonde hair out of her eyes and stuck a cigarette between her lips.
Noelle’s worry that Jasper was taking pity on her vanished, replaced with the gnawing fear that he’d only find her interesting while she was mostly innocent.
So what? There were other men. She could be like Lex, free to touch whatever man she wanted. Or she could be like Rachel and earn her keep working the bar. “You weren’t at the party last night. Do you not go to them?”
“Sometimes. I usually sit out the action, though. Have a drink and watch the show.”
Noelle felt her cheeks warm. “You don’t agree with Lex about having fun with the men?”
Rachel laughed. “Lex is Lex, though most of the women around here enjoy it too. I don’t know—it’s enough for me to know that I could, if that makes sense.”
Why couldn’t that be enough for her? Probably for the same reason she was here in the first place. Some twisted, broken need inside her that pushed her to risk everything. “Are you waiting for the right person?”
The woman chuckled and picked up the shot she’d poured. “Yeah, maybe I am.”
Noelle gestured to it. “Can I try that?”
“Sure.” Rachel handed it over.
It burned going down and brought tears to her eyes. Noelle wheezed out a breath and wondered if her throat was actually dissolving. “Okay, the alcohol I was arrested for drinking? Most definitely watered down.” Her idea of drunk was probably as inadequate as her idea of orgasm.
The quiet amusement was back on Rachel’s face, sparkling in her eyes. “Stick around. This place is like that—intense.”
“Does it ever stop feeling…?” Noelle shook her head and set down the glass. “Feeling. That’s it. I feel so much right now, I don’t know what to do.”
That sobered the blonde, who straightened with a faint frown. “Why would you ever want to stop feeling?”
“No, I don’t want to,” she said quickly. “But intense is the right word. It’s so intense, all the time, and I don’t know if this is what life is, or if there’s something wrong with me.”
“Give it time,” Rachel advised. “You’ll figure it out soon enough.”
As if it mattered either way. The Broken Circle held a seductive promise, with its dark corners and smoky scent. Sometimes she thought she was a little high just from being here, like she could close her eyes and float.
Or she could open them and make choices, the first of her pampered, silly life. “Will you show me how to make that other drink again?”
“Anything you want to see.” Rachel began to gather the ingredients. “You going to the fights tonight? I was thinking about it, but I have a side job to get on. Maybe later?”
Fights. Violence was almost as taboo as sex in Eden. “Jasper mentioned that, but why are they fighting? Did something happen?”
“Yeah, they’re breathing.” The blonde rolled her eyes. “Why don’t they fight? To settle scores, win respect, blow off steam. Make the chicks’ panties fall off, that’s a big one.”
“I’ve never seen a fight. Is it really that compelling?”
“Depends. I’ll admit, there’s something to be said for sweaty, half-naked guys beating the shit out of each other. A certain…” Rachel’s lips curved in a tiny smile. “Animal appeal?”
Noelle tried to imagine it. Jas, stripped to the waist, fighting. Raw, unchecked violence. Fists against flesh, all of that power realized. “I guess I can see that.”
“I guess you can. Tonight, after closing. Main warehouse over on Sixth.”
“If you want, I could cover the bar for a while so you can do your other job.” She’d probably fumble half the orders, but no one seemed to care once the girls started dancing. “Then we could go over to the warehouse together.”
“Thanks, but it shouldn’t take long.” Rachel finished pouring the liquor and added a dash of bitters. “The generator over at the parlor’s been acting wonky, so I told Ace I’d fix it up.”
The name was naggingly familiar. “Ace… The one with all the tattoos?”
“That’s him. He does good work.” Rachel held up her wrist, where you could barely tell the cuff of ink obscured a city bar code. Then she turned and lifted her shirt, revealing two lotus flowers, one at the small of her back and the other between her shoulder blades, both connected by a tangle of vines.
As tempting as it was to reach out and trace one of the lifelike vines, Noelle kept her hands to herself. “That’s gorgeous. But didn’t it hurt?”
“At first. After a while, I don’t even think I was conscious anymore.”
“It hurt that much?”
Rachel laughed and took another drag from her cigarette. “No wonder Lex has taken to calling you baby girl.”
Heat rose in Noelle’s cheeks, bringing the first rush of humiliation with it. She didn’t know which stung worse—knowing everyone thought she was stupid, or knowing they were right. “I must seem ridiculous to you.”
“No.” The woman slid an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “You’ve got a lot of living to do, that’s all. You want to come to the parlor with me? I’ll be finished before you know it, and we can go watch Jas kick the shit out of someone. He never loses, you know.”
Living. Most emphatically not what she’d been doing in Eden. Noelle reached for the remaining glass and knocked it back. It still burned its way down her throat and kicked in her stomach, but she liked the tingles that followed. She was warm. Loose.
She was living. “I’d like that.”