Beyond Shame

skin.

Her breasts spilled free, unbound and heavy. She twisted so hard that Ace grabbed her forearm with a warning noise, but she couldn’t sit still. Her pulse pounded in her ears and between her legs. She was painfully aware of her clitoris, of the way it seemed as hard and hungry as her nipples.

If he cut off her skirt, she might come from that alone.

But he folded the knife and put it away. “Stay still, honey. The longer it takes, the longer you wait.”

“Jasper—”

Before he could say anything, Ace tweaked her nipple, pinching hard enough to force her breath out in a moan. “Jesus, she’s hot for it,” he murmured as he went back to the tattoo. “One more line, honey, and then we’ll play with you.”

“She’ll want the cuffs too.” Jas sounded certain.

“That so?” Ace drawled.

As if there was any question. Noelle felt as if every day stripped away a layer of numbness, a layer of respectability. The girl who’d stumbled out of Eden might have bowed beneath the hard work and endless rules of the commune.

The girl she wanted to become could only live here, in the darkness of the sector slums. “Yes. I want cuffs.”

Ace hummed. “What do you say, Jasper? How much more can she take without someone working her off?”

He stroked the same nipple Ace had tweaked, a gentle touch instead of a rough one. “Not long. Finish blacking out the bar, and we’ll give her a break, make her come. Then you can start on the rest.”

Noelle groaned and rocked on the seat, so hungry she didn’t care if she looked shameless. “Have you two done this a lot? Tied a girl up and made her listen to you talk dirty about what you were going to do to her?”

“Oh, she’s cute, Jas. She thinks we’ve been talking dirty.”

“Ace isn’t dirty,” Jas observed conversationally as his hand drifted down, over the waistband of her skirt. “He’s obscene.”

Lower. Lower. If she thought it hard enough, maybe he’d slide his fingers over her wet panties and realize how close she was to shaking to pieces. “What’s the difference?”

Ace finished the final line with a flourish and reached out to catch her chin, forcing her to look at him. “Dirty’s saying I’m going to make you come. Obscene’s saying I’m going to spread your pretty pink pussy lips open and spank your clit until you come all over my face.”

Oh God.

Jas chuckled softly. “Obscene makes for quite a show, doesn’t it, Noelle?”

Obscene made her clench tight in anticipation. Not even embarrassment could banish the entrancing image, though her imagination put Jasper between her knees. His hand opening her, his fingers delivering punishment and pleasure.

She wet her lips and closed her eyes. “I like it.”

The hem of her skirt inched higher on her thighs. “How much?” Jas asked.

Saying it shouldn’t be any worse than enjoying it, but she had to force the words out in a raspy, self- conscious whisper. “Enough to beg you to—to touch my pussy. Either of you. Both of you.”

“Enough to trust us to take care of you, no matter what?”

“Yes. Yes.” And it wasn’t a lie. Even Ace’s irritating princesses and crude flirting didn’t bother her when Jasper so obviously ruled over his friend. And she trusted Jasper. With everything.

Jas’s hand slid higher under her skirt, almost distracting her from the stab of discomfort as Ace smoothed some sort of gel over the inside of her wrist.

She felt like the surface of the family’s garden fountain before the workers turned on the water in the morning. Still and dark, a smooth mirror that would erupt in endless waves with a single touch.

One touch. She could have arched her body off the chair and found his fingers. Instead, she let her eyes drift open and stared up at Jasper. Waiting. Needing.

He licked her lips and fused his mouth to hers.

It wasn’t the right sort of touch, but she melted into it anyway, moaning against his lips as she strained toward him. She barely felt Ace’s fingers stroking down her arms, because everything was Jas. His lips, his tongue, the scrape of his beard, the promise of everything he’d give her.

“Open,” he whispered again, into her mouth, and she didn’t know if he meant for him or for Ace, so she parted her lips and slid her knees wide.

It was Ace who shoved her skirt up, and Ace who groaned. “You’ve got to be shitting me. Who bought her the fucking white ruffled panties?”

She couldn’t answer with Jasper’s tongue in her mouth, but if it hadn’t been there, she could only have managed pleas. Her clit pulsed, ached with a ferocity she hadn’t imagined possible. If Ace would simply touch her…

But he didn’t. He swept his fingers along the insides of her trembling thighs and laughed when she squirmed. “Should I rip ’em, Jas? Or do you want to cut these off too?”

Jas pulled away far enough to answer. “Neither. Leave them around her ankles.”

“Yeah, I’d want to keep them around too.” Ace urged her hips up, and Noelle lifted her body as much as she could with her arms bound immobile.

The reminder of helplessness sharpened her need, and she whimpered and rubbed shamelessly against Jasper. “Please, Jas. Please make him touch me. I want to come—I need to.”

Ace settled his hands on her knees and pressed them wide before tracing back to her sex. “Now, Jasper?”

“Now.”

Noelle tensed, dizzy with anticipation, but Ace moved just his thumbs, stroking her folds before parting them. She was held open in every sense of the word, her arms flung wide, her knees forced apart, her most intimate places utterly on display.

It should have been humiliating. In the one second she had to think, she hated that it wasn’t, hated herself for her deviance.

Ace’s mouth closed over her clit, and he sucked so roughly she screamed at the shock of it with the last air she had before orgasm crashed into her, tearing everything else apart. She screamed and she shook, her entire body tensing and releasing with each wave, and distantly she heard Ace’s groan of approval, felt his fingers twisting and stroking, landing on her clit in stinging little slaps that dragged her from the hollow of one wave to the peak of the next.

She must have begged for mercy. She must have, because the pleasure faded and she found herself limp and trembling, Ace grinning up at her—no, not her. He was grinning at Jasper. “Shit, man. I barely got started.”

“Go easy.” Jas dragged the backs of his fingers down the inside of her thigh. “Soft.”

Ace chuckled and pushed her knees even wider, like he was holding her open for Jasper. “Your girl likes hard just fine, brother. Maybe too much.”

“Not for long. She’ll be finished.” Jasper’s hand trailed lower, fingertips brushing the drenched inner lips of her pussy. “She has to keep up for a while yet if you’re doing her cuffs today.”

Noelle shuddered and met Jasper’s eyes. “Cuffs,” she whispered, turning the words into a challenge. A reminder that he’d promised her freedom, for all that she was bound and helpless. “I want them today. Now. While you touch me.”

“Today,” he agreed, moving his fingers slowly. He stroked her, slicked through her wetness, and teased her with the promise of how much better it would feel when he pushed those fingers inside.

She was so fixated on Jasper’s touch that she didn’t realize Ace had moved until a drawer rattled behind her. “I bet she’d like these.”

Jasper reached out, and Ace dropped two metal circles into his hand. No, not circles—rings with jeweled crossbars through them. Only when Jas pulled the bars apart and let them fly together with a metallic clack did she realize they must be magnetized.