Beyond Control(5)

It was all still empty. Shallow sensation, and nothing compared to the way Rachel could warm his body with just her smile. She knew him, talked to him. Liked him. Accepting one of the beers, he smiled back. "Can we get out of here? I need to cool off."

She glanced down at the motionless man on the mat with an exaggerated wince. "Sure. I don't think Dom'll mind."

Dom would be lucky to get that knee under him in the next hour, and Cruz couldn't stir an ounce of guilt as he stepped from the cage and swept up a towel. "Maybe outside?"

She folded her fingers around his. "I know a place."

Rachel pulled him through the crowd and down a back hall, which was thumping with music and lit with red light. The darker corners writhed with moans and flashes of bare skin, people who preferred a little privacy over the open main floor. To Cruz, even the shadows seemed criminally indiscreet, but he was starting to suspect most of Sector Four considered sex less fun behind closed doors.

"This way," she murmured, staring straight ahead until they reached the end of the hall--and a door that led out onto a set of pitted exterior stairs.

Cruz followed her up three flights and found himself on the roof of one of the tallest buildings in the sector. In the darkness, he could see twinkling lights for what seemed like miles in either direction. "Not a lot of original buildings in this quadrant, are there?"

"No." Rachel leaned against the low wall edging the roof. "When I used to look out toward the sectors when I was a kid, all I could think was how dark they were. Now it all seems so bright."

"They're a lot brighter than they used to be." He tossed the towel over his shoulder and leaned next to her, close enough to brush her arm with his own. "I used to see them from the air. They flew us in one weekend a month for classes inside the city, but only at night."

She looked up at him, her eyes brilliant in the moonlight. "Do you miss it?"

It wasn't the first time someone had asked him the question, but it was the first time he really thought about the answer. A lock of blonde hair slipped across her forehead, and he echoed a gesture he'd seen once, reaching up to tuck it behind her ear. The cook at the training base had always done that when his wife's hair escaped its braid, but Cruz had never understood why brushing it back made the man smile.

He got it now. An excuse to touch, affection, and the warmth that came from being trusted with something precious.

He gave her the same in return--the truth. "I don't know. Some of it. I miss flying. No chance anyone in the sectors will get the resources together to get a helicopter or plane off the ground in our lifetime."

"You never know." Her breath blew over his skin as she turned her face into his hand.

He knew. He knew it the way he did most things--because it fell within the parameters of knowledge necessary to complete certain mission objectives. He could recite the dangers each sector represented and list the tools and materials each required to obtain or build various weapons, but he didn't know how to contain the feeling of this woman's face cradled against his hand.

Unacceptable. He wasn't the only one whose pulse raced when she smiled. Bren had warned him of as much the first time he'd caught Cruz's gaze following Rachel across a room. The gang's tattoo artist had been circling, sizing up Rachel like a fortification he wasn't sure he could storm, but Cruz had crashed into the middle of the game before Ace made his move.

And now this. It felt like racing toward a target, knowing that stumbling could give your enemy the lead. Ace was the one with the experience wooing women. He wouldn't be thinking about mission objectives and weapons if he had Rachel alone on a rooftop, nuzzling his hand.

Cruz moved his thumb to touch the corner of her mouth and trace the full bow of her lower lip. "I don't miss it right now."

"Good." She stretched up on her toes, but even that only brought her mouth in line with his throat, and her lips brushed his collarbone. Heat threatened to consume him. His blood boiled and his dick hardened.

A thousand things he could do to her rose up from that dark place inside him, all the things the men he'd worked for had condemned in rough, angry voices before slinking into the shadows to indulge themselves with men and women who couldn't say no.

He didn't want any of those things, not yet. Tonight, he wanted to be soft, slow. He wanted to kiss her knees weak and know what it felt like to have her tremble between him and the wall. Carefully, he cupped the back of her head. "Look at me."

She was already shaking, but she met his eyes boldly, without shying away, and it hit him almost as hard as her touch. People in Eden never really looked at each other. Not like this, open and without shame, daring the other person to see into them, through them.

Cruz didn't want anyone seeing through him, so he was the one who broke, sweeping down to catch her mouth with his own.

She made an encouraging noise in the back of her throat as her lips parted and her hands slipped around him to tease just under the waistband of his jeans. A heartbeat later, her tongue touched his.

The darkness rolled up again. He could have her. Turn her around, bend her over the low wall, and f*ck her fast and hard until her screams floated all the way to Sector Three. He could urge her to her knees, twist all that shiny blonde hair around his fist and find out if she still stared at him, open and brave, while he pushed his cock between her lips and jerked off in her mouth.

No. Kisses. He concentrated on kissing her, licking her, learning the taste of her lips and what made her moan. He'd do this right. Slow and hot and respectful, with no stumbling. Not when he could feel Ace dogging every step, waiting for him to fail.





Chapter Three



No one knew how to put on a party like Lex. Hell, no one knew how to put on a show like Lex.

The party room had never been subtle, because Dallas had never been a subtle man. It was a room furnished for sin--for one kind in particular--and he spared no expense in indulging this vice. He'd built a playground for adults, with a hundred accessories to spice up sex and every surface begging to be defiled.

Lex had turned that blatant offer into a silken promise. Dallas wasn't sure how--something with the softer lighting, new decorations. Hard leather benches with heavy D-rings were now buried in soft cushions, the sumptuous fabrics alongside the harsh silver chains somehow a perfect celebration of the couple of honor.

Noelle and Jasper were enthroned next to Dallas on the plush couch that dominated the raised dais. Jasper looked smug as hell in leather and denim, and Noelle was taunting every man in the room with a frilly scrap of white lace that bared endless skin, framed her gorgeous tits, and showed off the intricate black tattoo wrapped around her throat.

Ace had outdone himself with that one, working Jasper's name into a delicate web of lacy curls that looked like an expensive choker from ten feet away. Every time Dallas glanced to his left, Jasper was staring at the damn thing like a dying man catching a glimpse of salvation.

Jealousy formed an ugly knot in Dallas's gut, especially with Lex holding down the opposite end of the couch, sleekly beautiful in a little red dress and acting like Dallas didn't f*cking exist.

That was fine. That was just f*cking fine. Dallas could have any woman in the room on her knees for him by twitching a damn finger. For all the soft-focus lighting and pretty hors d'oeuvres, the night would devolve into f*cking soon enough, and that would take the edge off his temper.

It was an O'Kane party, after all.

Noelle's soft laughter washed over him from where she leaned away from Jasper, her head tucked close to Lex's. Dallas nudged his friend. "How you holding up, old man?"

Jasper finished his drink before answering. "Parties aren't my thing. But this is Noelle's night."

Dallas eyed the fresh ink on the inside of Jasper's arm. Noelle's name, in Ace's inimitable style. "Not just hers."

Jasper followed his gaze and nodded, though his words contradicted Dallas's. "The ink is mine. The party's hers."

That, Dallas supposed, wasn't worth arguing. People had been drifting up to the dais all evening long with congratulations and gifts, and most of it had been heaped on a glowing Noelle. "Fair enough."

Movement at the door caught Dallas's eye--Bren, with his seemingly ever-present shadow trailing him. Jasper was Dallas's right-hand man, and Brendan Donnelly was Jas's mirror. The strong, silent man who stood at Dallas's left, his cold-blooded intellect a good balance for Jasper's more tempered compassion.

The girl hovering just behind Bren's left shoulder might as well have been Noelle's mirror. They'd come under Dallas's protection within a week of one another, but Noelle had fallen from the privileged grace of the city, and Six--if the girl had another name, she refused to give it--had been dragged out of the hell of Sector Three. Noelle was sweet softness in white ruffles, and Six was nothing but wary, hard edges and baggy clothes that covered her from her chin to her borrowed boots.