Beyond Shame

So, in the end, Lex was right. There were no guarantees, no easy ways. She could float through this, too, like she’d floated through life, floated through rebellion. Jasper might take her. If he didn’t, someone else could. She could be kept, marked, trapped in all the ways Eden had made her.

Maybe the secret was to make a choice.

Leaning over, she pressed a kiss to Amira’s cheek. “Thank you. I mean it.”

“Don’t thank me,” she demurred. “It’s all you. Remember that.”

“Remember what?” a deep voice rumbled behind them. Flash bent down to kiss Amira before resting his hip against the arm of the couch. His hand fell to the back of her neck, a protective gesture he barely seemed aware of. “You girls up to no good, I hope?”

“Hardly. Just some hot and heavy gossip.” Amira wrapped her arm around his thigh, as absentminded and possessive as his hand on her neck.

“A guy can dream.” He dragged his fingers through her hair. “I’ve got a little bit before my fight’s up, baby. Came to check on you.”

She rolled her eyes and swatted at his hand. “I’m the same as I was twenty minutes ago. I’ve been sitting on a couch, for Christ’s sake.”

“That’s our cue.” Nessa hopped up and dragged Noelle after her. “He’ll just get more and more annoying until we move so he can cuddle her.”

Flash’s glare was so growly, so grumpy, that Noelle broke out laughing. That earned her a glower of her own, but Flash circled the couch to claim their spot, and it was impossible not to melt when he eased Amira into his lap and wrapped both arms around her. One of his hands dropped to the curve of her belly, and his surliness evaporated.

Staying felt like intruding, so Noelle smiled. “I’m going to dance. I’ll be back later.”

Amira didn’t look up. “Bye.”

Nessa giggled and pulled Noelle out onto the floor. Rachel caught sight of them and tipped her head. “Over here.”

Ace swung his arms wide to pull the three of them into a laughing, hip-grinding tangle of limbs. “Who’s the luckiest bastard in Sector Four? I got all the hot O’Kane girls to myself.”

“Not all of them.” Rachel shifted closer, sliding one hand into his hair, and licked the corner of his mouth.

For the first time since Noelle had met him, Ace seemed at a loss for words. The easy rhythm of his hips faltered, and she was close enough to hear his groan, low and hungry, the realest sound she’d ever caught slipping past his lips.

Amazingly, with that one little touch, Rachel had damn near brought him to his knees.

Lex was definitely right. Noelle had to make her choice and make her move.

Soon.

Dallas

He’d been all of nine years old the day his mother had taught him the lesson that would define his life.

Life on the farm had been hard. The world his mother had known had been dead for a decade, but she’d never curled in on herself like so many of the weak and the terrified. Nineteen years old when the lights went out, she’d given birth to him six months later and had held on to her little scrap of Texas at the point of a shotgun, more than willing to kill to defend her son and the people who relied on her wits and strength.

She could be cold-blooded, his mother, but she didn’t believe in waste. Rage could give a body the strength to survive in a world gone mad, but not if it was unleashed without care. So the afternoon she’d caught him in a hair-pulling brawl with a boy half again his size, she hadn’t taken the other boy to task. No, she’d dragged Dallas to the nearest trough by the scruff of his neck, dunked him in the water until he sputtered, and hauled him to the barn to take out his fury on the woodpile.

Get angry, she’d told him, on that afternoon and a dozen times after it. Get angry, and then make something out of it. Don’t fight unless you have no choice, and even then you don’t waste time. You end it quick.

So he had. Every day of his adult life, it seemed, he’d gotten angry. And he’d turned that anger into a business, and then a gang, and then a whole fucking sector that he ruled over as absolutely as his mother had over her little ranch. She’d never held as many lives in her hands as he did, but her advice still fit. It worked.

Most of the time.

She’d never known him as an adult. She’d never known Lex, a woman who could make him so damn furious it was amazing he hadn’t taken over all the sectors by now. He’d watched her waltz out of the warehouse with two hulking cage fighters. Rubbing them in his face.

You don’t own me. She might as well have screamed it. And he couldn’t so much as blink a fucking eye, because he didn’t own her. Dallas fucking O’Kane couldn’t be seen wanting something he couldn’t have, because Dallas O’Kane could have anything he wanted.

“Make something out of it,” he grumbled, kicking open the door to the workshop. Salvaged lumber lined one wall in towering stacks, mismatched boards from demolished buildings. Someone had pounded out the nails and cut them into manageable pieces, all stacked, waiting to be burned with the O’Kane logo and turned into crates for packing bottles of moonshine.

On the other side of the room, Bren was already bent over the wide worktable. Dallas supposed he should have expected that, too. “Bren.”

“Sir.” He tucked a pencil behind one ear before looking up. “Ready to get to work?”

“You bet.” Dallas closed the door and strode to the table. “Might as well knock out enough crates for the next shipment, eh?”

Bren made a wordless noise of agreement and reached for the measured stack of boards. He fired up the band saw, its whir even louder than the jumble of thoughts racing around in Dallas’s brain.

Not that it kept the damn things from racing. Sometimes Bren’s silence was a blessing, but right now Dallas would take any distraction from the image of Lex dragging her new playthings out of the warehouse.

He couldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing she’d gotten to him, or she’d do it all the damn time. And that thought had him driving the first nail into wood hard enough to split the board. “Fuck.”

Bren shut down the saw and tossed the last of the cut pieces of wood onto the table. “Question.”

Thank God. “Yeah?”

“If it bothers you, why let it go on?”

If Bren found the situation perplexing enough to bring it up, shit really had gotten out of control. If it had been anyone else, Dallas would have brushed it off, but Bren was closer to him than anyone but Jasper—and Jasper wouldn’t have had to ask the question. He already understood the answer on a gut level.

Bren needed to learn it. “If I start treating women like Wilson Trent does, what the fuck hope do they have with the rest of you?”

“No, I mean—” Bren barked out a laugh, more self-deprecation than humor. “I guess there really aren’t many ways to handle it.”

“For you, there might be. For me…” Dallas shrugged and reached for a new board. “It’s not always good to be king.”

“I see.” Bren busied himself with fitting four cut pieces together to form the bottom of a crate.

Sometimes it was hard to tell if the man was biting his tongue or had moved on. “If you’ve got something to say…”

Bren smiled faintly. “Is that my position? Court jester? I get to safely say whatever the hell I want because someone has to speak truth to the king?”

“Trusted lieutenant,” Dallas corrected softly. “You and Jas both. He won’t let me get too hard, and you can’t let me get too stupid.”

The man braced both fists on the table and stared down at its cluttered surface. “Never known you to be