Beyond Control(61)

His way of providing her an escape. If she couldn't walk out the door, she could still stop him.

As soon as she touched the hilt, Dallas was on her.

It was harder and different and more than the night she'd stripped off his collar. Rough hands, intense kisses, his mouth slanting over hers as he immobilized her with an unforgiving grip in her hair. But it wasn't angry. It wasn't punishment.

It was hunger, pure and simple. Unchecked, uncontrolled desire, spilling out of him without finesse or thought, drowning her in the truth of how much he wanted her. How much he needed her.

This was what she couldn't walk away from, the reason she'd stay, no matter what. Her longing reflected in the trembling clench of his fingers.

Lex let the knife clatter to the table and wrapped her arms around his neck.

Groaning, he slid his hands down to her thighs and hoisted her against him. "I can't do this without you. I can't be Dallas without Lex."

The night had driven that home already. "We can't wind up hating each other, either. The damn sector won't survive it."

"I know. I know." One hand caught her hair and dragged her head back again. "If you can't stay and be Lex, I'll be Declan and go. Anywhere you want, anywhere you can be happy. None of this is worth a damn if you're not here."

The world stopped. He couldn't do it, could never give up what he wanted so much and had worked so hard to build--and yet there was no deception on his face, just an earnestness that almost hurt to see.

He'd leave it all. For her.

"I want you to be happy," she whispered. "With Four, with the gang. With me."

His grip relaxed in her hair, shifting to cradle the back of her head as he turned and set her on the workbench. The knife glinted a few inches away from her fingers as he lifted his other hand to her cheek. "With you. That's the only way I'll ever be happy, Lex. I thought it didn't matter if you left, that it couldn't matter, but I'm a goddamn liar. I'm too f*cking selfish to stay here and suffer like some noble f*cking martyr. They're my people, but you're everything."

Power was one thing, but his people were another entirely. "You need them, too. But that's okay. So do I."

Dallas exhaled and rested his forehead against hers. "Yeah, okay. Maybe I need them. That's what's gotta change, isn't it? No more lying. Not to you, and not to myself."

"No more," she agreed. But he wasn't the only one who'd hidden things, from himself or her. "If you can do that, so can I. Because I love you."

"I've always loved you." A shudder worked through him, and he pulled her closer. "I've always wanted you. They don't have a word for how much I need you. Everything good I am, everything good I've ever done...it's all you. You make me a king. Without you, I'm just another psychotic thug."

She framed his face with her hands and kissed him through a laugh. "I hope I don't make the thug in you disappear completely. I like him."

His answering laugh was low, relieved--and a little dangerous. Cuffing one of her wrists with his fingers, he dragged her hand down until it covered the hilt of the knife. "How much do you like him?"

Enough to give him what he needed, forever. Even if that meant promising violence to keep him from crossing her lines. She closed her hand around the handle of the knife. "Enough to stop him if it's too much."

He stroked a warm path down the side of her neck before gripping her throat, his hand settling high enough to tilt her chin back. "You're worth getting a little cut up. Just don't stab anything you'll want in working order later."

"Smartass."

He just laughed. He was still laughing when he snapped the braided straps on her tank top and jerked the fabric free of her breasts. He caught one nipple in his mouth and sucked hard, the edge of his teeth scraping her flesh.

Lex abandoned the knife and scratched her nails across his bare back with a shiver. "I saw you in that cage. Thinking about this."

"No you didn't." He lifted his head, giving her the full impact of his half-crazed eyes. Need and triumph and bloodlust, and he licked his lips as he thumbed her damp nipple, as if the taste of her lingered on his mouth. "I was thinking about you on your knees, so hot for my cock you'd suck it all night long. Because I'm a psychotic thug and a goddamn barbarian."

"And a horny bastard." She skated her fingers around his rib cage and reached for his belt buckle.

He let her get his belt open before stepping back to lean against the side of one of his favorite cars, a sleek little pre-Flare antique he'd lovingly restored with years of tinkering. Spreading his arms along the roof of the vehicle, he grinned lazily at her. "You can bring the knife with you if you want. It's f*cking hot."

Instead, she left it on the worktable and walked toward him. "I used to do this all the time. Right here in the garage, remember?"

"Your mouth isn't the sort of thing a man forgets, love."

"So you've told me." She slipped to her knees and looked up at him, unable to resist rubbing her palm over the hard bulge beneath his fly. "Sometimes I think you don't even care how it feels, you just want to see it. Me, on my knees, with my lips sliding around your cock."

He inhaled sharply as his eyelids drooped. "It doesn't suck."

"Then watch me." Her voice dropped to a yearning whisper as she tugged at his zipper. He had to know what this did to her, being able to wrap her hand around him and hear his breath catch. To see every muscle in his body tense when she freed him from his pants, to hear him groan when she stroked him.

"Only one thing could improve the view," he rasped as she licked small circles around the head of his cock.

She squeezed his shaft and lifted her head. "What's that, honey?"

He bared his teeth in a feral smile. "Ink. Marks."

"Ink." Her nipples tightened as heat rushed through her to settle between her thighs. "Tell me what you want. And try not to scratch the car." She took him deep but not hard, gripping the base of his shaft as she sucked him lightly.

"Fuck." His hand fell to the back of her head, impatient desperation clear in the hard press of his fingertips. "Matching ink, you and me. Something fitting for a king and queen. For Dallas and Lex."

She hummed, the image already forming in her mind--an early version of the O'Kane symbol, stripped down and simple, with a crown for each of them.

Beautiful. Right. She sucked harder, flicking her tongue against him.

"And I want your name on my skin," he continued. "Yours. Alexa."

His fantasy, and she couldn't fulfill it without words. She pulled away and coaxed another curse from him with one smooth glide of her fist. "And your name on me. Do you want everyone to see it...or just you?"

"Just me." The words were a growl. "Declan is yours."

"Mine." She licked him again, base to tip, and moaned.

Growling, he thumped his free hand against the car hard enough to rattle it. "Quit teasing, or I swear to Christ--"

Her heart skipped and stuttered as hunger seized her. "You'll what?"

He tugged at her hair and leaned down. "You give me my fantasy, or I'm gonna give you yours. And you know which one I'm talking about."

It should be here, in the garage, surrounded by the scents of motor oil and tire rubber and metal. This was where she'd watched him work on the salvaged cars, listened to him talk about his grand plans for the gang. Where she'd first begun to wonder if there was a place in all of it for her.

Her fantasy and his. They'd have both.

She took him again, closing her eyes with abandon when he thrust against her mouth with a ragged groan. "That's right." He threaded both hands through her hair to hold her in place. "You like it like this. Dirty and rough, getting f*cked by a man who wants you so bad he'll risk all your sharp edges. Who f*cking loves your sharp edges."

Because he had them, too, the quiet, sneaky kind that would cut you before you realized what was happening. Lex knew that now.

And it didn't matter. All she gave a damn about was her people, her family. Her man. She'd fight to protect and love them all, even if she had to fight them.

Or herself.

She reached up to grip his ass, and he hissed as his head fell back. "I know you wanna suck me off. It gets you hot, doesn't it? Deciding when I come." He thrust forward, pushing deep enough to choke her. "Which one of us is in control now? I never f*cking know."

She didn't need to breathe. She'd never need anything else, ever. Just this.

He surrounded her, overwhelming her. Sweat and leather and whiskey and even the metallic scent of blood, from where his bruised knuckles lay wrapped beneath strands of her hair. When the world began to swim he drew back, stroked her hair and said that she was beautiful, that her mouth made him crazy, just long enough for her to catch her breath before rocking forward again.