Beyond Control(43)

Lex let go.

Above her, Dallas groaned. His mouth found her ear, teeth rough as they closed on the lobe, tongue wet and warm as he licked in time with his next demanding rock. "I'll give you everything," he promised, each word a panting rasp as his tempo increased. "Everyone. It's all yours, even me."

Especially him.

Lex was floating, awash in an incandescent heat that spread through her, all the way into her fingers and toes. It wasn't an orgasm--that, she could still feel building, growing stronger, like a voice lifting in a scream. This was warmth, safety, all the glimpses she'd allowed herself of what could be.

Dallas slipped one hand under her to cup the front of her shoulder. It shifted the angle of her hips, and one more thrust washed her away, drowning that warmth in a volcanic pleasure that curled her toes and went on and on, until he growled her name against the back of her shoulder and set his teeth in her skin as he came.





Chapter Sixteen



Most nights, Dallas would have been happy to collapse in a pile on his bed. Six people might have made for close quarters, but he'd slept in closer.

Tonight, he didn't even want Jas and Noelle around.

None of them seemed to mind. Lex was still trembling in his arms when Jasper rounded up the others and herded them out the door, undoubtedly to continue the party--or expand it.

Dallas's party was warm and pliant. Wobbly limbed, too, which was something he could relate to. Pride alone got him to his feet with Lex cradled to his chest, and the need to see to her carried him across the room. After laying her on the bed, he took a few moments to strip the leather cuffs from her wrists and ankles, rubbing softly at the red marks left from her struggles.

Her eyes remained shut, but a slow smile curved her lips. "You're petting me again."

Satisfied that she wasn't injured, Dallas kicked free of his pants and joined her on the bed. "I like petting you. Get used to it."

"Not a complaint." She rubbed one bare leg over his. "Just saying."

She was sated and relaxed, which was quickly becoming his favorite look on her. Her sleepy smile wasn't meant to charm or soothe him. It wasn't a mask. This was Lex, stripped of all that bullshit she'd learned in Two. Not trying to be anyone's fantasy.

It made her his.

He kissed the inside of her wrist. "You mind that I broke up the party?"

"Did you?" Her lashes finally fluttered up as she opened her eyes. "I'm half-conscious. They'll have more fun without me."

"I doubt that." He looped an arm around her waist and hauled her back until she was snuggled soft and warm against his chest. "But I'm done sharing you."

"For now, or forever?"

The game they were playing was too high stakes for lies, even little ones. "I don't know. For tonight, at least."

"I'd do it," she said quietly. "For you."

Those were the words he'd never expected to hear. Or maybe he had, but only wrenched from her, a grudging trade for some ambiguous promise he'd never been able to figure out. "You'd give it all up? Even Noelle?"

"I don't want to. Not because I have to have sex with her or anyone else, but..." Lex turned her head toward him, leaving him staring at her profile. "It makes me feel like you don't trust me. Like you think it means you mean less, or that I won't come back to you."

Of course she'd come back to him. That possibility never bothered him as much as the reasons she'd leave to begin with. The implication that he wasn't enough.

Easy to think. Admitting it out loud--shit. The thought alone made him cringe, so he shifted the conversation to something less embarrassing. "It's not about trust, but yeah. I get jealous. And not just over sex, love. I got jealous as hell when Gideon started running his mouth like you two have some big secret."

She exhaled a short laugh. "Only because of his cousin. Mad's been helping me funnel money into some of the other sectors, a little aid for people who need it."

Not the answer he'd been expecting. "Why don't I know about this?"

"Because of how I get the money."

In the earliest days--days when she was new to the gang and he was still wondering if she was a trap Cerys had set for him--he'd kept an eye on her. Followed her.

Watched her steal a whole lot of shit.

In the beginning, he'd thought it was about security. She had no reason to trust him, and anyone who'd come off the streets in Sector Three was liable to hoard anything they could get their hands on. Time had passed and Lex had taken ink, and the bouts of thievery had come to an end.

Or maybe they hadn't. He'd stopped watching so closely after she'd quietly paid off Cerys. That was another secret he wasn't supposed to know about, but it had been the turning point. The proof she wasn't a trap--or, if she was, that the endgame was so subtle and convoluted he'd never uncover it by shadowing her.

So he'd stopped, and he'd assumed she'd given up climbing through third-story windows in search of valuable items. After all, he gave her any f*cking thing she wanted.

The silence had stretched out uncomfortably, so Dallas shifted Lex in his arms until she was facing him. "You steal." Not quite a question.

She held his gaze unflinchingly. "Yes."

"From where?"

"Three, mostly. But I've been into Five and Six a few times."

Emotion churned in his gut, and he honestly didn't know if it was anger or fear. Three was bad enough, but at least he knew she could handle herself against lowlifes and thugs. Five, on the other hand...

He curled his hand around the back of her neck. "Do you know what Fleming does to pretty women who cross him?"

Her lips pressed together in a tense line. "I'm not stupid, Dallas. I know what I'm doing."

As if that made it okay. "Then what the hell could be worth risking your foolish f*cking neck?"

"I want to help." Her voice dropped, low and almost ashamed. "Most people don't get as lucky as I did."

Christ. He lifted her chin to force her to look at him. "Did you think I wouldn't let you?"

"No. But I didn't want you to feel like you needed to take over and do it for me, either."

He didn't know what was worse--that she assumed he would, or that he was half-convinced he wouldn't. It was the first lesson he'd learned growing up, the one that had always seemed to weigh heaviest on his mother's shoulders. You picked your people, and you held them close. You didn't have to go out of your way to hurt anyone else, but you couldn't save them all, either. It had been true on a tiny ranch in Texas, and it was true in the sectors surrounding Eden.

Lex had always given him too much f*cking credit--and it always made him want to try harder, to be worthy of it. "You do help. Jesus, Lex. You've changed the lives of every woman in this f*cking sector."

Her brows drew together in a frown, and she reached up to rub her thumbs over his cheeks. "But is it enough? I don't know anymore."

"We're about to change a few lives in Three, too. That's a quarter of the sectors, love. It's a lot."

Mollified, she pressed her forehead to his chin. "I swore Mad to secrecy. Dr. Jordan, too."

Doc didn't wear his ink, so he owed him no loyalty--nothing beyond what any man in Four showed him out of sheer practicality, anyway. But Mad... Dallas sighed as he sank his fingers into Lex's hair. He knew what Mad's defense would be, as if he'd already heard it. What, O'Kane? You want her out there without backup?

Dallas doubted she even knew how deep Mad's scars ran, but those old wounds made it easy for Dallas to understand his motivations. Mad had suffered the backlash that came from standing too close to power. He knew all the ways an enemy could use a hostage as leverage--and that the truest loyalty to any leader meant protecting them from the hard choices that followed.

Didn't mean Dallas wouldn't scream at him. But for now, he pressed a kiss to Lex's forehead. "They're big boys. Not your responsibility."

Her fingers brushed her throat, where her collar usually lay. "That's not exactly true anymore."

No, it wasn't. "Is that a weight you wanna carry, Lexie? You of all people know the state my shoulders are in most nights."

"Yeah, I do. Which is why I'd have to be a selfish ass to stick you with all the work."

He touched her collarbone, tracing his finger over the skin he planned to mark. Thick black ink, a design fit for a queen. The queen. "Do you trust me?"

Her eyes locked with his--for once, clear and unguarded. "Yes."

Finally.

His blood pumped fire through his veins as he splayed his fingers across her chest, his thumb canted toward one shoulder and his pinky brushing the other. She looked deceptively delicate in moments like this, small under his hand, but there was nothing fragile about the heart beating under his palm.