Chapter Fourteen

"Rachel!"

Dallas's roar was so out of place in the afternoon emptiness of the Broken Circle that Noelle nearly dropped the glass she was wiping clean.

Next to her, Rachel sighed and slung her towel over her shoulder. "How can I help you, Dallas?"

Scowling, he dumped one of the most outdated computing tablets Noelle had ever seen onto the scuffed bar. The LCD screen was cracked at one edge, but Dallas's ire seemed directed at the screen itself, which had locked down into the sterile Insufficient Access placeholder.

Dallas jabbed one wide finger at the tablet with a snarl. "You're the fucking mechanical genius. How do I keep this thing connected?"

"Do we have to go over this again?" Rachel picked up the tablet. "Mechanical. Machines. I'm as shitty with tech as you are."

"Smartass." Dallas glanced at Noelle, and the tiny quirk of his lips was all it took to bring color rushing to her cheeks. He'd been long gone by the time she'd woken up in his bed that morning, but she wasn't sure she'd ever be able to look at him without blushing again.

From the smug look in his eyes, he knew it. He liked it. That pricked her growing pride just enough to bring up her chin. "Can I look at it?"

Rachel passed it over. "It's better off in anyone's hands but mine."

Noelle flipped the tablet over and squinted at the model number before sliding her fingers along the edge to find the nearly invisible latch that released the back. "This is an older version that's mostly been replaced by new tablets with better wireless integrity. The signal's not really supposed to be broadcast outside of Eden, though, so I'm surprised it's been working at all."

She eased off the back panel and glanced at Dallas, who was staring at her with narrow-eyed assessment. "It only works about half the time."

"Because it's set to access the broadcast tower nearest to whoever officially registered it before it was sold on the black market." It only took a little wiggle to pop the power supply free. She unplugged the battery and waited for the tablet to reset. "Wireless is restricted by neighborhood, partly to keep the best equipment for the richest families, but mostly because they can't do much better than that without satellites. And those were all destroyed by the storms."

Dallas was staring at her like she'd started speaking gibberish. Rachel heaved another sigh, poured a glass of whiskey, and slid it across the bar until it bumped his hand.

Ignoring his disbelief, Noelle reconnected the power and reassembled the tablet before flipping it over. "You just need to know how to fool the tablet into giving you administrative access. They fixed this workaround in the newer models..."

She pulled up the settings screen and inputted the code every rich kid in Eden learned by the time they were twelve. Most wealthy families had old tech piled up in storage rooms or junk closets, and having a backup tablet meant the difference between privacy and constant parental monitoring. Of course, most of the other kids she knew had hacked tablets to gain access to restricted video games or pre-Flare entertainment programs. She'd craved unfettered access to Eden's digital library--and she'd gotten it.

Once she bypassed security, it only took a minute to set the tablet up to connect to the nearest signal tower. "There. That should work in any sector, as long as you're within a half mile or so of the city walls. Beyond that, I don't know."

Dallas accepted the tablet and stared at it in perplexed silence.

Rachel leaned over the bar to look at the screen, then burst out laughing and punched him in the arm. "You got schooled, son."

"Bite me, Rachel." He dropped the tablet and leveled a threatening finger at Noelle. "You've been holding out on me, sweetheart. Would've been nice to know I had some kind of hacker under my roof--unless you don't want to use those skills to help the family for some reason."

Stung past caution by the unfairness of the accusation, Noelle retorted, "In my peer group, I'm considered barely proficient. I didn't think it was relevant."

Dallas tipped back the shot Rachel had poured him and shook his head. "Women. You're all impossible."

The blonde refilled his glass. "Don't be a dick. It's unbecoming."

He grumbled something Noelle was glad she couldn't understand and drained the shot glass again before sighing. "Fine. I should have figured they'd be dumping tech in your cradle."

They had, but not out of any desire to see her excel at it. The mandatory classes on raising healthy, moral children all stressed the necessity of minimizing a child's dependence on tactile affection, even in the form of toys or stuffed animals. Tech could enrich the mind without weakening the body...or so the theory went. Her parents had been particularly zealous adherents, for all the good it had done them.

Dallas was still watching her, so she shrugged and went back to polishing glasses. The patrons weren't likely to care if there was dirt or grime as long as the liquor was pure, but some of those perfect hostess lessons had stuck harder than others. "I'm also good at planning dinner parties," she said tartly. "I know the names, positions, and politics of every powerful man in the city, along with their food allergies. I'm filled with useless knowledge."

"Nothing useless about knowing a man's weakness," he drawled.

"I said allergies, not--" She snapped her teeth together, and Dallas grinned. Not the sexy, knowing smile from before, but a cold, ruthless one that curled his lips but left his eyes frozen and empty.

Rolling around naked in Dallas O'Kane's bed might have stripped away a level of intimidation, but she'd do well to remember that he was still a cold-blooded criminal, a man who killed to protect his business interests as quickly as he killed to protect himself.

He slid his shot glass back to Rachel before sweeping up the tablet. "Breathe, kitten. I'm not going to turn you into a culinary assassin. Not this week, anyway. But someday soon, we may have a talk about what else is rattling around behind your big eyes, hmm?"

She couldn't gather enough wits to answer, but Dallas didn't seem to think it was necessary, anyway. He winked at Rachel and departed with the tablet clutched in one big hand. It wouldn't occur to him to wait for Noelle to make up her mind, because she'd made a promise when Ace wrapped the ink around her wrists.

O'Kane above all else. The gang came first.

This time, Rachel refilled the glass and pressed it into Noelle's hand. "Don't let him get to you. If you were still someone off the street, maybe he'd really be pissed. But you're an O'Kane now. He might be irritated, but it'll blow over."

Her fingers trembled a little as she lifted the glass. The whiskey still burned on its way down, but she didn't choke like she had the first time she'd tried it, and the warmth that seeped into her limbs helped her breathe easier. "I didn't realize," she admitted. "I just assumed everyone in Eden..." Too late, she bit back the thoughtless words. Rachel was from Eden too. "I'm sorry."

"Forget it. He has no problem assuming I know everything about technology because I'm from the city. If he wasn't a bastard who couldn't see past your tits, he could have bothered to think the same about you."

Noelle reached for the whiskey bottle with a laugh that felt like Rachel's tone--edged with bitterness. "I don't think it has anything to do with my tits. I think Dallas knows exactly what I was raised to be--decorative and helpless. Useless outside of Eden. I'm as surprised as he is to find out I'm not."

"Hey, don't." Rachel grabbed Noelle's shoulder and turned her around. "Knock it off. You're not helpless. I never thought you were."

That seemed impossible. If she hadn't been helpless, she'd never have stumbled across Jasper to begin with. "I feel like I am."

"You're not." Rachel's dark eyes hardened. "Damn Dallas, and damn Jasper too. They'd let you keep thinking it if they had their way, I bet."

Defensiveness stirred, but not for herself or Dallas. "Jasper's not like that. Why would he want me to be useless and needy?"

Rachel relented with a shake of her head. "He wouldn't. I'm sorry. I'm just being an asshole."

"No, you're not." Noelle caught Rachel's hands. "There are men who would. Jasper... He's not one of them. Right?"

"No, it's Dallas," she muttered. "He pisses me off sometimes."

Because he looked at Noelle and only saw her tits? Or because he looked at Rachel and didn't seem to see hers at all? Noelle would guess the latter--there was a decidedly asexual affection in the way Dallas treated Rachel, although asexual wasn't a word she'd ever thought to associate with Dallas O'Kane.

Smoothing her thumbs over Rachel's hands, she lowered her voice to a whisper. "He's a powerful man. Powerful men can be incredibly blind, and incredibly stupid. Even the smart ones."

"Yeah." Rachel squared her shoulders and smiled ruefully. "They can also be incredibly not worth the drama. Lex can have him."

Lex would have him--of that, Noelle was certain. Whether the two would survive the experience was another question. "I don't envy her that challenge."

"Neither do I." Rachel paused. "Not anymore."

But she had, and Noelle couldn't blame her. Dallas could be hypnotic. There had been times the previous night where she'd felt guilty over how strongly she responded to his laughing commands, shamed that she could find him so arousing. He was a force of nature, overpowering and irresistible.

And distant. Noelle's attraction to Jasper was already melting into a delicious blend of craving and affection, a need that couldn't be filled by sex alone, no matter how obscene. She was starting to want his company as much as his touch, the quiet moments where he smiled and teased her, where he held her.

Noelle squeezed Rachel's hands in understanding. "It's different here, isn't it? Different than it is in Eden, yes...but different from how it was before the Flares, too. The way people come together. What you give and what you're supposed to hold back."

"I don't know." Rachel pulled free and lifted another rack of glasses onto the bar. "I try not to overthink it. Like...if I just sit back and let whatever happens happen, then it'll make sense."

"Does it work?"

She met Noelle's gaze with another almost sheepish smile. "If you have to ask, I think you already know the answer."

No. No, it couldn't possibly work. Not in a place like this, where intimacy between lovers could be withheld as surely as it was in Eden. The O'Kanes gave their bodies freely enough, their affection. You could be family or fucking or both, but wasn't that what Lex had tried to explain to her? That thing she wanted too fast, the thing she offered along with her body.

She didn't have a word for it, but she knew what it was. Too much trust. A yearning for possession that went both ways. Hope that what you had would never change.

Maybe it was love.

»»» § «««

The unsettled feeling from that afternoon hadn't gone away.

Noelle stared unseeing at her own reflection, only vaguely aware of the rote movements as she dragged a brush through her hair. Lex's vanity was another oddity in a room filled with oddities, beautifully restored and covered with silver-backed hairbrushes and expensive glass bottles that wouldn't have been out of place in Eden. Some had undoubtedly been gifts from Dallas, but Noelle had yet to see Lex touch any of it. She kept her makeup, lotions, and perfumes in utilitarian containers cluttering up her bathroom sink, out of sight behind the closed door.

The vanity was a stage. A scene as carefully set as the vast bed and its lush pillows--the romanticized version of a woman's private domain, with the messy reality tucked away.

The fact that Noelle felt more at home in the polished, empty fantasy than she did anywhere else wasn't flattering or reassuring. If she unfocused her eyes a little and let her mind drift, she could be back in her own bedroom, a room filled with empty tokens and an empty girl being groomed as Eden's flawless, unrealistic version of a woman.

Decorative and hollow.

What a horrible, hateful ideal.

Lex lay with her head pillowed on her arms, watching. Finally, she made a sleepy noise of amusement. "One hundred strokes before bedtime. Do they teach you that in Eden too?"

"Yes." Blinking, Noelle shifted her gaze to Lex's reflection in the mirror. "Do they teach you that in the sectors?"

"Mmm, Sector Two. That's where I'm from." She closed her eyes. "'It's all in the presentation, Alexa. A woman must never be herself.'"

The words could have come from her mother's lips. "So it's not so different from Eden, there."

"In some ways." Lex sat up and reached for a cigarette. "My mentor at the training house was stone cold. Makes Dallas look like a fucking saint."

"Training house?" She wanted to snatch the words back the moment they left her mouth, because of course there was only one thing they could be training Lex to do in the sectors, and it didn't have anything to do with hosting dinner parties.

"You haven't heard what they do out in Two?" Lex took a deep drag off her cigarette. "They buy up pretty little things, train 'em just right. Sell 'em to all the rich old men looking to corrupt some innocent darling who isn't too innocent to suck their balls on occasion."

Noelle clenched the brush until she could feel each individual swirl of the handle's carvings digging into her skin. "I'm sorry. That's--" Horrifying. Degrading. And the fact that she could recognize that and understand it only made her craving for corruption and a little degradation at Jasper's hands that much more twisted. "I'm sorry."

"For what? I didn't stick around for that shit. I ran away."

"Good." Noelle said it forcefully, trying to hide her confusion from Lex. She set down the brush and dragged her hair over her shoulder to braid it, watching her fingers so she wouldn't have to meet Lex's eyes. "Is that what men really want? Someone they can corrupt?"

"Depends on the guy." Lex crushed her cigarette, slipped from the bed, and walked into the bathroom. The water cut on a moment later, and she ducked back out, her toothbrush in her hand. "In Sector Two, the rich men buy girls as companions--gay or straight, whether they want one or not. They have to if they want to fit in."

Noelle had almost grown accustomed to Lex's casual nudity, but it was different tonight. Different because she'd had her face between Lex's thighs, because she'd felt pleasure at her touch. It was impossible to figure out the boundaries now, which was why she was still seated at the vanity, fiddling with her hair. Would it be a rejection to climb onto the couch after she'd slept tangled between Jasper and Lex? Or an invitation she didn't understand to crawl into the vast comfort of Lex's own bed?

She did the cowardly thing and stayed put, carefully smoothing each strand of hair into its place in her braid as she rested her gaze safely on her own hands. "I knew the sectors were all different, but I hadn't realized how different. Are they all like that? Each its own little world?"

"Kind of. Three's not so different from us, and Six and Seven are a lot alike."

"It's so much to learn." With the end of her hair tied off, Noelle had no choice but to look up. "I'm still trying to understand the rules here."

One corner of Lex's mouth quirked up. "Is that why you've been sitting at my vanity for way too long, looking nervous as hell? You don't know if you're supposed to sleep with me?"

Yes, trying to hide things from Lex was pointless. Noelle flushed but refused to look away. "Mostly, yes."

Lex gestured to the bed. "Are you unsure about whether or not you're invited, or concerned that I might try to fuck you?"

"Try?" Noelle wrinkled her nose. "You'd succeed. I just...don't know the rules. You know, with Jasper? With me? If he expects..." She was afraid to finish the sentence, afraid to see sympathy in Lex's eyes. For all Noelle knew, Jasper was in bed with another woman right now. It didn't feel like something he'd do...but he hadn't come to Lex's room, wondering where she was, either.

"If he expects...?" Lex asked leadingly, then stuck the toothbrush in her mouth.

She didn't know if Lex honestly didn't understand, or was forcing her to say it. "If he expects me to be...faithful." That made her sound like a loyal pet, but she didn't know a better word. Surely monogamous couldn't apply, not when most of their sexual encounters had involved other people. "He's said some things, but not exactly about that."

Lex rinsed her mouth and then the toothbrush. "What'd he do, tell you not to mess around with anyone else?"

"Not exactly," she repeated, remembering the night of the fight. He'd come on her face and she'd been so wet she ached when he told her to keep her fingers out of her panties. She'd spent half the night pressing her thighs together and listening to Lex's breathing, as turned on by the command and denial as she had been by touching him.

It wasn't explanation enough. Lex was still watching her, so Noelle clutched at the hem of her T-shirt. "The night before I got my cuffs, he told me not to touch myself."

Lex's brows drew together in a stormy frown that slowly smoothed into an expression of understanding. "Oh--not without him." She wrinkled her nose again, this time with a laugh. "Damn, that's hot. I'm impressed."

A little of the tension knotting Noelle faded, even as her cheeks burned. "It was hotter than I expected it to be. And then the next day..." She shivered. "That was the most I'd ever felt, until last night."

"I didn't know he had it in him." Lex flipped off the bathroom light, climbed back into bed, and patted the mattress beside her. "No wonder you're spinning."

Switching off the vanity light plunged the room into darkness, but just enough light snuck under the door to the hall for Noelle to navigate to the bed. Lex's features were a vague outline mostly in shadow, and knowing hers would be similarly shadowed made it easier to talk. "Sometimes he talks like he wants to own me. And that shouldn't be okay. I shouldn't like it, because that's what they wanted to do in Eden. Own me."

"Does it feel the same?"

"No. But does that matter? Isn't it still being trapped, in the end?"

"Maybe." Lex traced a gentle fingertip over the ink encircling Noelle's wrist. "You're an O'Kane now, for good or bad. Does that make you feel sad and stifled?"

"No. A little nervous, maybe." She told Lex what had happened with Dallas at the bar, and admitted what she hadn't told Rachel. "The more I thought about it, the more I realized how much I do know. Things my mother taught me so I'd be able to help my father and my future husband, things that could hurt the important men in Eden. Not just allergies, but secrets. Scandals. Dreams that they'll compromise for, and weaknesses in their families that a smart woman could exploit."

"Or a smart man, like Dallas."

"Or a smart man." Noelle caught Lex's hand and twined their fingers together. "They're not all corrupt. One or two of the councilmen try, and even the bad ones... Their wives and children are as helpless as I was. I don't want to hurt people unless it means protecting us."

"Oh, honey. I know." Her fingers tightened around Noelle's. "At some point, he's going to ask, though. It's bound to happen."

She swallowed and closed her eyes. "I'll have to tell him, won't I? I made a promise."

"You wouldn't want to try to lie," Lex agreed quietly. "Especially if he came to you for information like that, because he wouldn't do it unless he had no other choice."

"I don't want to lie. I want to trust him." And that was the crux of it, the part that felt foolish and hopelessly ingenuous. "I want to tell him everything and believe he wouldn't hurt anyone who didn't deserve it, not unless he had no other choice. Does that make me stupid?"

"Not stupid. An optimist." Lex nestled closer, curling up behind Noelle. "You don't know yet. How hard Dallas has to work to keep life around here the way it is."

As comforting as Lex's warm body was, Noelle missed the heavy press of Jasper's arm. Both nights she'd slept with him, he'd tossed it over her body, pinning her in place with an unconscious sort of possessiveness. She didn't have to be pressed tightly to his side to wallow in his warmth because he exuded heat.

She hadn't seen him since that morning, and she missed him. "I guess the men work hard. The women too, I mean...but the guys seem to be gone a lot."

"They're around more than you think." Lex laughed and nuzzled the back of Noelle's neck. "You don't have to wait for him to come to you, you know. If you want him, go get him."

Noelle bit her lower lip. "What if there's someone else in his bed?"

"Do you suspect there is, or do you want me to tell you if that's how Jasper operates?"

"Is it?"

"No."

Noelle exhaled and clung to Lex's hand. "Go get him? Just like that?"

"Just like that."

It could work. Maybe it would even help. All the questions about her ability to say no might matter less to Jasper if she was busily, aggressively saying yes.

First she had to figure out how. "Lex?"

Lex rubbed Noelle's arm. "Yeah?"

"Will you teach me to dance?"

"Sure, if you want. You don't like hauling drinks?"

Noelle laughed. "I don't mind it. And I don't know if I'll be any good at dancing, but I want to learn how to be like you. Sexy and strong and seductive. Proud of it."

But Lex only snorted. "It's all in the presentation, remember?"

"Then you can help me with that too." Lex wouldn't see her flushed cheeks and smile, but she could probably hear the amusement and embarrassment in Noelle's voice. "I apparently have a lot to learn about where jewelry goes."

"Short answer? Wherever you want to put it."

"Lex!"

"What?" She laughed. "It's true."

Tomorrow, Noelle would find some jewelry. Maybe she'd even let Lex show her how to wear each piece--or where. If Jasper had a problem with that, he'd have to do something about it.

Like claim her for good.