Chapter Eleven

Jasper was halfway into a bottle when someone pounded on his door. Noelle's voice followed, low and intent. "Please let me in. I forgot to put on pants."

Of course. Groaning, he rubbed a hand over his face and opened the door. "What the fuck are you doing with no pants on?"

"Bren put me to bed." She ducked under his arm without waiting for an invitation, padding into his room on bare feet. "I got up after he was gone, but I've never been to your room before. I knocked on three wrong doors."

Jesus Christ, she was in her underwear, tiny black panties that bared more than half of her ass. "Well, here you are. What do you want?"

She wandered over to his punching bag and traced her fingers over the leather. "This is the first time we've been alone together. In private, I mean. You never touch me when we're alone together, only in front of other people."

He'd thought it the most expedient way to cut through the inexperience she sometimes wore like armor. "You don't like it?"

"I like it when you touch me in front of other people." She wandered around the punching bag, dragging her hand across it until she'd made a full circle and was facing him. She was still drunk, sleepy-eyed and loose-tongued, and she kept talking, raw truth tumbling past her lips. "I like it more than I feel like I should. Sometimes I wish you'd just tell me I'm bad. Take me over your knee and spank me and let me pretend I'm atoning for my sins instead of committing a new one by wanting your hand on my ass until it's all I can think about."

Maybe it wasn't a hurdle to get past, an obstacle to surmount. Maybe Ace was right, and the punishment was part of her pleasure. "Bend over the table."

Her breathing hitched. "Don't tease me."

He swept his arm across the table, shoving his keys, wallet, and books to the floor. "Now, Noelle."

Wide-eyed, she crossed the room and bent forward until her elbows rested on the table. Her scant tank top slid up her spine, revealing the generous curve of her hips and how skimpy her panties really were.

He took another swig of whiskey and set the bottle aside. "Is this what you want?" he asked, teasing his fingertips above the top edge of her panties. "For me to spank your ass until you can't sit down, tell you how naughty you are for wanting it?"

"Yes," she whispered. "Only you don't want me to feel dirty. I can't even do this right."

"I don't want you to believe everything those bastards in the city told you. But if you like it..." He scratched her skin lightly and dragged her panties down. "If you really like it, Noelle, I'll punish you."

She shifted her weight uncertainly. "I don't know why I want it. I don't know how to find out without doing it."

He stared down at her pale skin, but he didn't touch her again until he hit her, his palm smacking hard against her flesh. Noelle gasped, sucking in air before releasing it in a hungry, helpless little noise.

Instead of slapping her this time, he wound his other hand in her hair and pulled her head back. "What do you like about it? Tell me."

"I don't know," she whispered, scraping her nails over the table. "It hurts, but not really. And I don't--" She bit her lip.

He slid his hand around to the front of her throat. "You don't what?"

She swallowed. "I don't have to feel guilty for liking the shame, because that's the point."

All twisted up, and he'd been a fool to think he could unravel it. "Why can't you just like it?"

Noelle let out a frustrated noise and arched up on her toes, practically wiggling her ass at him. "Maybe I could if you'd do it."

And he'd do it...if she just liked it. He'd had lovers who got off on pain before, but never one who used it as an excuse. "I didn't say you could move."

Noelle scoffed, no trace of the shy, demure little city girl left in her eyes as she glared back at him. She was drunk enough to throw caution to the wind and she did, taunting him. "What are you going to do? Spank me?"

He leaned over her, frustration twining with anger. "You'd like that, wouldn't you? Is that your plan? Push me until I'm really pissed? Until I lose control?"

Her spine stiffened. She tore her gaze from his, fixing it on the wall instead. "No. I don't want you mad at me."

Jasper laid his hand on her ass and squeezed the reddened skin.

She trembled in reaction, but she didn't look at him. "Do you have to be angry to want this?"

"To really want to punish you, yes. Otherwise, it's just another thing that gets you off." He slapped her ass again. "If you like it, I'll do it." Another blow. "I'll do anything. But I want to know why."

"I don't know," she panted and squirmed. She spread her arms wide, palms flat on the table, as if she needed to balance herself to stay standing. "It should be punishment, but it's not. That's the part I like."

"What does that mean to you? That you're dirty, Noelle? That there's something wrong with you?" If he slid his hand down, he knew he'd find her thighs slick, her pussy swollen. "That there's something wrong with me?"

"Not with you." The words were too fiercely protective to be anything but the truth. But the fight went out of her in the next moment, and she dropped her cheek to the table. "But maybe there is something wrong with me. I don't like things even though they feel shameful. I like them more because of it."

So close. "Why, sweetheart?"

She barely whispered the answer. "Because it feels good."

"Would it feel as good if you weren't ashamed?"

"How can I tell?"

The question was so earnest that it left him with only one answer. "I don't know."

Sighing, she rocked up on her toes again. "Help me find out? Please?"

He couldn't, not if he had a hope in hell of keeping his own head on straight during all of it. "If you trust me, I have an idea."

She whimpered. "Does your idea mean I have to go back to my own bed all--all wet and aching and frustrated?"

"No." He kissed her shoulder and backed away. "Turn around and sit on the table."

"I trust you." She kicked free of her panties before sliding onto the table with her knees tucked primly together. "I don't need the other stuff. If you don't like it, if you don't want it, it's okay--"

"Open your legs."

Her teeth snapped together and her cheeks flushed, but she spread her legs wide. "Should I take off my shirt too?"

Jasper had to drag his gaze up to her face. "That depends. If you were alone in your room, would you take it off? Play with your pretty little nipples?"

"No," she said after a moment's hesitation. "If I started doing that in Lex's room, I don't think I'd be alone for long."

He couldn't help his bark of laughter. "No, I guess you wouldn't." Her nipples were hard under the thin fabric. "Leave it on. Touch yourself."

"What?" She sounded shocked--scandalized--but her hand was already drifting toward her breast. "You mean...touch my nipples?"

Her bewildered shock tightened his balls, made them ache. "For starters. Then we'll move on to everything else."

After another breathless moment, she obeyed, closing her thumb and her middle finger around one bud. Her gaze stayed fixed on his as she pinched and tugged until a moan escaped her.

"You like it hard," he murmured. "I remember."

She nodded and brought her other hand into play, mirroring the movements of the first. "I thought of asking Ace if I could keep those little magnetic rings, but I didn't think I'd be able to survive the teasing."

"That's the whole point." Jasper nodded to her spread legs. "Lower, Noelle. Show me how you touch your pussy too."

"I've never touched it like you do," she admitted, sliding her hand down. She brushed her fingers over the dark curls there before inching the very tip of her middle finger over the hood of her clit in a tiny circle. Her eyelids drooped as she repeated the caress. "Just like this."

He felt an answering tug, a tingle at the base of his spine. "Do it again."

She caught her plump lower lip between her teeth and obeyed. It was a light, shy touch, one that barely counted, but this time she didn't stop. She edged her fingers lower, parting her swollen folds as she explored tentatively. "I liked your fingers inside me."

"Gonna try yours now?"

She did, leaning back to brace her weight on one hand as she pushed two fingers inside. A slow, wicked smile curved her lips. "Not as good. Too small. Too short."

Jasper caught his breath. "You have more fingers."

"Show me." She worked a third finger into her pussy in spite of the words, moaning when she thrust them deep. "Why won't you touch me? Don't you want me when we're alone?"

He dropped into a chair to keep from crossing to the table. "You're drunk, sweetheart, and I have my rules."

"I don't understand them. I'm doing everything you tell me to. My hands might as well be yours, except they're not as good."

Maybe she was right. He nodded to the bedroom. "Bed's through there. I'll take the couch."

Shock painted her features, followed swiftly by mortification. She stumbled off the table and snatched up her panties, and by the time she dragged them up her legs she was shaking.

Her next stop would be the door. Jasper shot across the space between them and grasped her upper arms. "If you don't see the difference between me touching you and what was happening, that means there is no difference. I shouldn't have been doing it."

"Why is it always so easy for you to stop?" The question tore free, ragged and edged with honest pain. "I must want you so much more than you want me. I'm like one of Ace's groupies, needy and pathetic."

He wanted to shake her. "Because I don't get to lose control. If I lose control, people die. Things go wrong." Her hair brushed the back of his hand, and he couldn't resist running his fingers through it. "You'd get hurt."

He saw the moment the words penetrated, the moment she not only understood but believed. Her eyes widened, and she pressed both hands to his bare chest, fingers splayed wide. "Don't you get tired of it? Having to be in control, having to protect me?"

"Yes and no." He tugged at her hair, then indulged himself by stroking his fingers over her cheek. "In the long run, it's worth it."

She absorbed that in silence as she turned her face into his palm. Her lips tickled the heel of his thumb in a ghost of a kiss. "Don't make me sleep alone. I won't try to do anything, just...hold me? Please?"

"Noelle..."

Something wet brushed his palm. Tears. "I don't understand the rules here. I'm trying. I swear I'm trying."

She was crying. Fuck. Jasper folded her in his arms. "Stay. I want you to. I can keep my hands to myself."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to--" She swiped at her cheeks angrily, dashing away tears. "I should go. I don't want to stay like this."

"This is why you should stay," he argued. "Not sex, not like this. But being here is okay."

She shivered and leaned closer, rested her forehead against his shoulder. "When I was ten, one of my tutors gave me a kitten. I only had her for a few hours before my father came home, but I fell in love with her. She would nuzzle my cheek and climb all over me... I had something to cuddle."

Jasper hooked his arm under her legs and picked her up. "Your dad made you get rid of her?"

"My father got rid of her, and then he got rid of the tutor, too. They told me at dinner, and when I cried, my mother slapped me so hard she split my lip. She said decent ladies don't cry, because tears are how wicked women make righteous men doubt their convictions."

A heartbreaking moment, and the saddest part was that it had to have been one of many, a string of confusion and shame. "I'm sorry, sweetheart."

She rubbed her cheek against his chest with a sigh. "I don't want to manipulate you. I just don't want to be alone, and I don't want to be with anyone else."

"Shh. Right now, it's time to sleep it off." He eased his bedroom door open with his foot.

Noelle huffed. "I wish you were drunk. Then you'd tell me things about you."

Oh, if only she realized. "I am a little drunk." He eased her onto his bed and tumbled after her. "What do you want to know?"

She seemed to consider the question with adorable gravity as she wiggled into a comfortable position with her cheek resting on his arm and her hand over his heart. "Where are you from?" she asked finally. "Eden, or the sectors?"

"Neither. I grew up on a farm east of here."

"In the communes?"

Nothing so sterile or acceptable. "A private operation. We grew corn for the distilleries, along with some other things."

"Oh, one of the illegal farms," she murmured sleepily. "We're not supposed to know about those. In Eden they tell us that nothing can live outside the communes, that the land can't support people. But I heard my father arguing with a partner once about whether or not to send the military police to shut one down. I think some of the councilmen pay to support private farms so they won't have to worry about rationing during the lean harvest years."

If they did, they relied on outfits more reputable than the one Jasper had worked. "My parents dropped me off when I was ten," he told her. "An apprenticeship, they all called it, but the only thing I learned was how to survive. I guess that's a trade all by itself these days, though."

Noelle lifted up onto her elbow and peered down at him. "They left you when you were ten?"

He couldn't meet her gaze. "Had to get to work."

She laid her palm over his cheek, her skin soft and warm above his beard. "That must have been so hard. And terrifying."

The farm had housed kids even younger, children who couldn't handle the backbreaking work. "I'd still be there if Robbins--the man who ran the place--hadn't traded me to Dallas to settle a debt."

"How old were you then?"

"Twenty-two." And Dallas had been in the beginning stages of building an empire.

The curling ends of Noelle's hair tickled his throat as she kissed his temple. "I'm glad he took you. You're worth more than any debt."

"That's what he thought, I guess. He still made me work it off, though--one year." After that, he'd been free to go, but where? Sector Four was as good a place as any, even before he'd proven himself loyal to the O'Kanes.

She settled close to his side but kept her fingers pressed to his cheek, absently stroking his beard. "You're all so strong. You've been through terrible things and you still live. I don't think I ever realized how numb I was until they threw me away. Like I was a shadow of a person."

She felt good cuddled against him, so good it dulled the razor's edge of the lust. "Sometimes...you have to hit bottom before you can figure out where to go."

"I've been slipping for a while. Ever since--" She broke off, tensing. When she continued, her words were lower. More intense. "My father had started negotiations for me to marry. After that, nothing mattered. I didn't care if I was ruined. I thought my father would cover it up to save face but all of the important men would know, and no one would have me after that."

"There are worse things than being alone on your own terms." Though maybe not in the city.

"I thought so, too. I knew my father would restrict me to the house for a few years to keep me from harming the family's reputation, but I didn't mind that. I'd have had access to a desk and the city's library. But then something else happened."

Jasper's stomach clenched. "What?"

As if she felt his tension, she made a soothing noise and stroked his chest. "Somewhere between deciding to let that boy touch me and getting arrested for fornication, I woke up. Even if my father had kept me in the city, I wouldn't have been happy locked up alone with my books anymore. I know I'm all tangled up inside, and I know it bothers you...but I'm sure about one thing. I'm not made to be untouched and alone."

Nobody was, least of all a woman as filled with life and curiosity and desire as Noelle. "I know what you mean." He kissed the top of her head. "Sleep. You're gonna feel like shit in the morning."

"Don't care." With a sigh of satisfaction, she squirmed closer. "At least I'll feel."

He waited until her breathing began to slow to whisper, "Me too."