Beyond Shame

the adhesive at the end and sealed it in place with a kiss to the coarse fabric. “I don’t like it when you bleed.”

He smiled, slow and hot. “Liar.”

It wasn’t the blood that stirred her, but the fact that he was whole. Hard against her, so vital, so alive… “I don’t like it when you bleed,” she repeated, kissing the warm skin above the bandage. “I like it when you win.”

“That I believe.” He slipped his arms around her and kissed her again. Slow and warm and wet, his tongue working past her lips to stroke the inside of her mouth, each deep caress tugging at things low in her body.

In minutes, she was squirming in his lap. “We could go back to your room,” she offered against his lips. “I can like more of you.”

“We could do that.” Jasper trailed his mouth to her jaw, then to the spot below her ear. “Or we could stay here. Dallas went to find Lex.”

Memory rose, a fractured piece with no beginning or end, just the feeling of Jasper at her back and Lex crushed against her chest, and Dallas smiling as he gripped Lex’s hips. All of them moving together, grinding, swaying…

She shuddered and tilted her head back. “You don’t mind?”

“No.” He nipped at the front of her throat and soothed the bite with his tongue. “You want me, but you want them too. Tonight’s the night we find out how much. How far.”

Not a night for saying no, then. Hopefully not a night where he’d want her to. But she could draw one line. “I have a condition.”

His hands traced up her back. “What?”

She sank both hands into his hair and adopted the firmest, fiercest look she could manage. She was an O’Kane woman. She could say these words. “I want you to fuck me tonight.”

Jasper shifted beneath her, his arousal as evident from his heated gaze as from the growing hardness of his cock. “Say it again.”

“I want you to fuck me.” She rocked against him, wishing she’d worn a skirt instead of her jeans. Something easy to jerk out of the way, because she’d spent too many nights going to bed frustrated, and she thought she might be able to chase her pleasure just like this…if he let her. “Promise you will.”

“I’ll fuck you,” he whispered. “I promise, Noelle.”

“No cheating. No technically. You have to really do it.” She released his hair and gripped her shirt instead, tearing it over her head, leaving her hair a disheveled mess. Her bra was the only one she actually owned, the only one not borrowed from Lex, a clever bit of lace and wire that pressed her breasts together and up, and the way Jasper’s gaze lingered made it worth every credit. “You promise?” she asked again, while she had his attention and the advantage.

He dragged her arms behind her back, pinning them above the swell of her ass. “I’ll fuck you,” he answered in a rough murmur.

Maybe Lex had been right. The more she demanded, the more he gave her exactly what she’d wanted all along. She wiggled a little, enough to trigger that delicious sense of helplessness without the risk that he might mistake her squirming for actual struggles.

Trapped. Finally. Noelle wet her lips and summoned another challenging glare. “Tell me how. Tell me the dirty details. The obscene ones.”

“No.” He hefted her against his chest and rose.

Her heart skipped, slamming against her rib cage as her breath caught. “Tell me,” she snarled—or tried to snarl, only without air it came out as a gasp, a begging plea that used up all the oxygen she had left.

He didn’t answer. He dropped her on her knees on one side of that odd, two-sided bench and bent her over the center section of it. He pulled at her jeans, drawing the button and zipper free in one hard yank. Her heart started pounding, her pulse throbbing everywhere. She could hear the blood rushing in her ears, could feel it between her legs, an ache that wouldn’t go unanswered this time.

She tilted her head to toss her hair from her face and blinked at the wide metal rings affixed to the opposite side of the bench. They were clever, nearly invisible unless you knew to look for them, but once she did she found more on the sides. “What is this thing?”

Jasper’s nails scratched her skin as he pushed her jeans and her panties down. “Ask Dallas. He’ll show you.”

Oh God, this was familiar, too. The bite of the bench against her stomach, the scrape of fabric over her thighs, that heady mixture of anticipation and helplessness that came from being exposed. Last time she’d wanted too much—or too fast—and it had twisted into disappointment.

Not a mistake she wanted to repeat, so she tried to shove away anticipation and focus on his words. “Dallas isn’t here. Can you show me?”

“Sure he can.” Lex closed the door behind her and smiled at Noelle. “I know where the cuffs and chains are.”

Cuffs and chains.

Yes.

She was drunker now than she’d been last night, drunk on the possibility of having everything she wanted at her fingertips. Smiling, she spread her arms wide across the back of the bench, her fingertips inches from the rings. “Then maybe you should show me.”

Lex dragged two leather cuffs and a thick length of chain from the bedside table drawer and walked over. She leaned in to kiss Jasper with a pink flash of tongue, then unhooked Noelle’s bra. “We don’t want to rip this.”

Dazed by the sudden tangle of emotions, Noelle let Lex coax the fabric down her arms. Seeing another woman kissing Jasper should have made her jealous. Maybe it had, a little, but only a dull niggle that tasted as much of what she should have felt as what she really did. Arousal. Belonging. She wanted them to kiss. Kiss each other, kiss her—one got her as hot as the other, because no one would be left on the outside and wanting. Not this time.

Lex tossed aside the bra and stood there, her hands on the bench, and she didn’t move them until Jasper said, “Touch her before you put on the cuffs.” Then she lifted her hands to Noelle’s face as Jasper slid his lower, drawing the denim all the way down.

Noelle shivered and met Lex’s eyes. “Kiss me?”

Lex tipped her head back and drew her thumb across Noelle’s bottom lip before licking it. The sensual shock lasted only a moment before a greater one overtook it—Jasper’s tongue across the small of her back.

“That’s right,” Lex murmured and kissed her, her mouth open and seeking. Wet warmth and the tang of liquor, and Noelle moaned into the other woman’s mouth as Jasper slipped off her shoes and her jeans and spread her legs wide.

He molded his hand to her pussy, cupping her before easing one finger over her clit.

She cried out against Lex’s lips as the jolt of pleasure jerked her entire body. It was too much, too fast, the kind of overwhelming sensation that had her using the leverage of the bench to squirm her hips up and away from such direct contact.

Jasper pushed her back down with a firm hand on her hips. “Chain her.”

Lex broke the kiss and buckled the first cuff around Noelle’s wrist. “What made you pick the bench?” she asked softly.

“It was the closest—” She yanked against the chain as Jasper’s finger brushed her clit again. The sound was breathtaking, the rattle of iron and the kiss of it sliding over leather. Noelle whimpered and uselessly tried to twitch her hips out of Jasper’s grip. “I didn’t pick it on purpose.”

Lex fastened the second cuff and ran her thumb over it. “If you like this, you’ll be glad. So glad.” She took a step back and started unbuttoning her shirt.

It wasn’t a show, not like when Lex danced on the stage, but Noelle couldn’t tear her eyes away as fabric teased apart, baring tawny skin stretched over sleek muscle and intriguing curves.

She wasn’t wearing a bra. Naked from the waist up, she moved closer, until one nipple hovered near Noelle’s mouth. Jasper reached out, curled his fingers in the top of Lex’s skirt, and dragged her across the remaining space.

Not a verbal order, but a command nonetheless. Noelle swiped her tongue experimentally across Lex’s peaked nipple. It hardened under her touch, even more when she closed her lips around it and sucked hard.