Chapter Two

"I can't believe you did this, you jackass."

The words pierced darkness and splintered agony behind her eyes. Noelle groaned and pressed her hand to her forehead, as if she could hold the pieces of her shattered skull together. And it had to be a shattered skull--nothing else would explain the pain knifing through her.

"I didn't have a choice," a gruff voice murmured. "If I'd left her out there--"

"Don't kid yourself," the woman interrupted. "You didn't do her any favors. Look at her, for Christ's sake. You should have put her on the first transport out to the communes."

Communes. The word dragged her fully out of confused darkness. The communes were horrifying places where farmers lived primitive lives of indentured servitude. No electricity or running water, only backbreaking labor from dawn to dusk and being bred until you died in childbirth. Her father had threatened her with an extended stay on the farms often enough to make her heart seize now. "No," she whispered, her voice cracking. "No communes."

A feminine hand pressed against the back of her neck. "Here, sit up and drink this."

Cold water splashed her lips, but hazy memories of the last drink she'd accepted made her pause. But she was parched...and helpless. The numbness of having lost everything melted into a hollow sort of trust, and she parted her lips and drank deeply before speaking. "Thank you."

"Sure, honey."

The man huffed out a sigh. "Lex--"

"Forget it." The woman tipped the cup to Noelle's lips again. "Let Dallas sort it out. He's the man in charge, isn't he?"

"I called him already."

"Good." Lex set down the cup and snapped her fingers in front of Noelle's face. "How many fingers?"

Noelle blinked and focused on the woman's fingers. "I'm not injured, just confused. Where am I?"

"Sector Four. The Broken Circle."

She'd heard of it. Who hadn't? The Broken Circle--the heart of sin, the club her friends spoke about in whispers because no one was brave enough to bribe an official for a pass into the sectors. The moonshine that had gotten them all arrested had been taboo enough.

"O'Kane Liquor," she whispered, remembering the black-and-white labels affixed to the bottles. "This is where it comes from." But how had she ended up here?

"Comes from a warehouse across the compound, actually, but close enough." The woman held out her hand. "I'm Lex."

"Noelle." The other woman's hand was soft but strong. She looked tough, even before Noelle struggled to sit up and caught sight of Lex's clothes--leather boots with stiletto heels and the kind of sleek, skimpy lingerie you couldn't find in Eden, not unless you bought it under the table from a black-market vendor. Noelle had never seen a person bare so much skin with so little concern, so little shame.

Lex lifted an eyebrow. "See what I mean, Jas? She's looking at me like I have two heads."

The man frowned--an expression that seemed habitual, if not permanent. "She's from the city."

Now that she was upright, Noelle could see him too. He filled the corner of the room with his bulk, made it seem smaller just with his presence. His clothing was as foreign as Lex's, everything cut from denim and leather and edged with silver and steel. His forearms were covered with ink, and the dark swaths snapped her disjointed memories into sharp clarity.

Being thrown from the city by a stone-faced guard.

The drugged juice and the man following her.

Stumbling into the arms of a gang member.

She forced her gaze to his. "You saved me."

His eyes widened in a flash of panic. "Uh, no. You fell on me."

But he'd caught her. He hadn't left her in the street, at the mercy of the predators prowling the sectors. He hadn't hurt her. And the panic in his gaze intrigued her--surely if he was the monster she'd been taught, he'd be eager to accept credit. To twist her gratitude into obligation, and then use that to place lurid, degrading demands on her. The kind she wasn't supposed to know about.

He hadn't done anything of the sort. He'd simply been kind, and that deserved kindness in return. "Thank you for catching me."

Lex covered her face with her hands and mumbled something under her breath.

The door slammed open hard enough to send Noelle's heart rocketing into her throat. A slightly older man stepped through, clad in a leather vest that bared tattooed arms, and pinned her rescuer with an irritated look. "Jasper, you're a pain in my ass."

He rose. "Come on, Dallas. You would've done the same damn thing."

"God willing, we'll never know." He leveled a finger at Noelle, the gesture somehow menacing and exasperated. "Three questions. You'll answer them honestly or I'll boot your ass back into the street."

She'd fared badly out there before, so Noelle laced her fingers together to hide their trembling. "Honest answers," she promised.

"Good." He flicked up one finger. "Is your father motherfucking Edwin Cunningham?"

Shame heated her cheeks even as pain sank claws in her chest. "Yes. Though he's probably already filing the paperwork to have me officially severed from the family."

A grunt. Dallas held up a second finger. "Your ID shows two offenses. What'd you get arrested for?"

Oh, no. She couldn't admit it in front of Lex, and certainly not in front of her rescuer. Jasper. Humiliation joined the mix of emotions churning in her middle as she stared at the floor and forced herself to answer. "Possession and consumption of alcohol and--" The word froze on her tongue. She had to whisper it. "Fornication."

Silence. Then Lex shook her head with a disgusted snort. "Bunch of dickless bastards." She turned on Dallas, her shoulders squared. "She can stay with me until she gets on her feet."

"That's the third question. Look at me, Noelle Cunningham." Compelled by his voice, she lifted her gaze to his. He had steely eyes, seductive and overpowering at once, and she had to fight to focus on his words. "Do you want me to put you on a bus out to the communes right now? If not, the best I can offer you is a week's probation under Lex. I'm not taking a poor little rich girl from Eden into this gang until I know she can handle it. So do you want a week of training, or do you want the bus?"

Two choices. Two lives. The farms would wear down her body. They had fertility drugs there, the kind that counteracted the contraceptives administered in Eden to prevent overpopulation. Resources were precious in the city--in the communes, babies were resources. Fornication wasn't a sin there, but sex was only acceptable as a means of making more strong bodies to work the land and make the farm owners rich. In Eden, they called it noble work. Honorable. Toil for the body to enrich the spirit, surely deserving of eternal reward.

None of the things that might happen to her body in the sectors would enrich her spirit. The gangs outside Eden knew a thousand ways to sin, and--according to Noelle's father--ten thousand ways to secure a place in Hell.

If she were righteous, there'd be only one possible choice.

If she were righteous, she'd still be in Eden. "I don't want to go to the communes."

"Fine." Dallas pointed at Lex. "She gets full fucking disclosure. If she's not willing to tend bar, clean house, or suck dick by the end of the week, she's gone."

"Fuck you," Lex shot back pleasantly.

"Hop on my cock anytime, love." He jabbed his finger at Jasper. "You, out. There's a shipment over at the warehouse that needs your attention."

"I'm on it." Jasper hesitated. "If she needs anything--"

"She won't," Lex interjected. "Now get out." When the door slammed behind him, Lex dropped to a chair across from Noelle. "You hanging out for all the gritty details, Dallas? I know you get off on it."

Dallas raked his gaze over them in a way that made Noelle think perhaps he was imagining them both naked--and enjoying it. He grinned slowly as he hauled open the door. "Another time. Have Ace fill in her bar code, but no cuffs. Not until she makes it through the week."

He snapped the door shut behind him, and Noelle let out a breath and tried to meet Lex's eyes without flinching. "You must all think I'm a ridiculous, naïve fool."

"Of course you are." Lex leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. "You're from the city. They won't let you be anything else."

No judgment, at least, and maybe even a little sympathy. "I tried to be something else. That probably makes me more of a fool."

"Only if you thought it'd work." Lex pulled a small etched silver case from her boot. "Not many rules. First one is, the group means more than anything. We survive because we stick together--no exceptions. If you join up, it won't be a free ride, but it'll be a good one."

Tend bar, clean house, or suck dick. Noelle stared down at her brightly patterned dress and traced a finger over one swirl. A dark craving dug its hooks into her as the fantasy formed, one where she wasn't responsible for the filthy things they commanded her to do. Surely it couldn't be a sin if she didn't have a choice. "I'd have to give them all sex?"

"Nope. You don't have to lay a finger on anyone, not if you don't want to. Get a job, work the club, whatever. The sex is a bonus, not an obligation."

Noelle was sick, twisted, because the only emotion she felt at hearing the words was vague disappointment--and crushing shame to cover it. "Oh. That's good."

Lex grimaced. "I thought you were into fornication. What a waste. Anyway, one of the runners managed to get his hands on some fertility drugs, and now he and his woman are having a baby. She used to wait tables at the club, so there's an open job there. Ever done that sort of thing?"

"No." Her mother would have slapped her hard enough to leave marks for a week if Noelle had breathed a word about working outside the house. "I can learn, though. I've read books about pre-Flare technology, and I'm a hard worker."

"Any dance lessons?"

Finally, a question she could answer in the affirmative. "From the time I was five."

"But none of them were on a pole, right?"

She shouldn't even know what the question meant. Pornography was every bit as illegal as liquor, but it was the only place in Eden to learn about a stripper pole. "No, not exactly."

Lex just nodded. "If you don't want to wait tables, we can show you a few things about stripping. There's a ton of credits in it. Not as much as the hardcore shows, though."

Surely she didn't mean... "Isn't that illegal?"

Lex paused in the act of lighting a cigarette, her lighter sparked and waiting. "Honey, you're not in Eden anymore. The only laws here are the ones Dallas hands down."

"I'm not in Eden anymore." The words hit her in the gut, stark and real, the first thing to come close to penetrating her creeping numbness. Her breath rattled out of her lungs, and she shuddered and fought to drag it back in. "I'm not--I'm not in Eden anymore."

"Oh shit." Lex tossed the unlit cigarette aside. "Hey, it's okay."

"No, I know." Noelle clutched at her silly dress and tried to force herself to breathe normally. She wasn't in Eden anymore, so she might as well avail herself of one of the advantages. "Can I have a drink?"

"No." Lex held up her hands. "I'm not an uptight bitch, but you were rolling pretty hard when you came in here. I don't want to accidentally kill you."

Of course. Stupid. Noelle closed her eyes. "You're right."

The other woman sighed. "Look, bottom line. No one's going to force you to do anything you don't want to do. You have to work, but you can keep all your clothes on while you do it. And don't fucking listen to Dallas--he won't set you out. Not if I ask him not to."

It was too much to process. The loss of everything Noelle had, everything she'd ever known, everything she was...and the tantalizing promise of freedom that made her want to hope when hope was an emotion she'd never learned how to feel. "I think I'm just overwhelmed, and maybe still fuzzy from whatever that man gave me."

"Then you need to rest." Lex crossed the room and pulled a pillow and a blanket out of the small closet by the bathroom. "Want something else to wear?"

Anything besides her fancy party dress. "A nightgown, maybe?"

"Uh, T-shirt?"

"All right." Noelle managed a smile. "No more layers and layers of modest clothing, I guess. That's a good thing, right?"

Lex handed her a folded bundle of white fabric. "It's whatever you make of it, honey. Whatever you want, it's all up to you."

What a terrifying thought. "The last time things were up to me, I got arrested."

"Then I guess it's all looking up from here, huh?"

"I hadn't thought of it that way." But maybe it was time she started.

»»» § «««

Noelle woke in darkness, disorienting in and of itself. She blinked up at the empty space above her and tightened her fingers around the blankets as her heart tried to hammer its way out of her chest.

She wasn't in Eden, that much was certain. Her bedroom had too many sources of illumination--the glow of the display panels that controlled the brightness and temperature in her suite, the soft light from the computer screen embedded in her desk, even the moon and streetlights shining through her gauzy curtains. Her family might live in the penthouse, far above street level, but Eden was a city of light. Too many of her parents' generation remembered the years of darkness, after the solar storms had plunged the world into chaos and shadow.

Her mother had been afraid of the dark, but Noelle had never shared that anxiety. Still, she felt a twinge of it now as she wet her lips and spoke. "Lights, twenty percent?" She turned it into a question out of instinct, and her answer was more darkness.

No, no one out in the sectors would rely on computers for something pre-Flare technology could handle just fine with far less expense. Which meant she had to stumble out of bed and find a light switch. How deliciously uncivilized.

The cement floor was cool under her bare feet, and rough. No plush carpets softened the hard expanse, only a rug half hidden by the bed that had folded out of the couch. Noelle skirted the edge of the mattress with halting steps and blinked into the gloom, trying to make out the shapes around her.

She stumbled a little as she worked her way around the room, but eventually her questing fingers encountered a switch. Turning it on flooded the room with low, diffuse light, something that made everything visible enough but kept the corners shadowed and the room itself...intimate.

Or maybe it only seemed that way because of the bed. All of Lex's furniture was nice, but her bed dominated one side of the room, piled with sleek cushions and luxurious sheets that could have easily belonged in Noelle's bedroom back home. High quality, expensive--and utterly out of place surrounded by unadorned brick walls and cement floors.

There were four doors Noelle could see. One opened out into the hallway, and another she thought might be the closet. Hoping one of the remaining two led to a bathroom, she opened the one closest to her and found a treasure trove instead.

This second room was smaller and contained only a table and a pair of chairs. But the walls were covered in art--not the digital kind displayed on the enormous plasma screens currently popular in Eden, but pre-Flare masterpieces. Hypnotized, Noelle moved to stand in front of the closest painting, an Impressionist piece in a gilded frame.

This close, she could smell the slightly musty scent of the canvas and paint, could see the individual brushstrokes. She touched a faded red rose petal and marveled at the subtle ridges of the paint, three-dimensional and vivid in a way nothing in Eden was, not anymore.

Lex spoke sharply from the doorway. "That's probably older than anything you've ever owned. You might want to stop pawing it."

Noelle stumbled, shoving her hands behind her back as if that would change what was already done. "I'm sorry. I've never seen anything like it outside of textbooks. I was just--" What? Snooping? No explanation was adequate.

"Having a look around. I get it." Lex dropped her black knapsack in the corner and began to peel off the high-collared jacket she wore. "It was a gift. The Renoir, I mean."

Noelle tugged at the hem of her borrowed T-shirt, self-conscious about her bare legs. "It's beautiful. Priceless. Someone must think very highly of you."

The woman snorted and turned toward a small sliding door on the far wall. "It cost money. Some people have more of that than they know what to do with."

Lex seemed to be one of them. Noelle tried not to be nosy, but the open closet door revealed tangled piles of jewelry and sculptures mixed with electronics that must have been smuggled from the city at great cost. She even saw one or two sleek weapons--guns, honest-to-God guns, something she'd rarely seen within the walls of Eden, and never anywhere but in the hands of the military police.

Noelle turned her attention back to the painting, back to Lex's words. People--men--with more money than they knew what to do with. Eden had its share of those. More than its share. "I'm familiar with people like that. They think they can buy anything. Or anyone." And in her experience, they usually could.

"No, not--" Lex stowed her bag and faced Noelle. "You can't buy people here with money, especially women. You buy them with security, safety, all the things that have always been true in societies where men hold the power. But we hold power, too. Remember that--there are things we have, things we can offer. Things they need."

Noelle couldn't imagine that any of the men here gave a damn about the things she'd been raised and trained to do. Organizing and managing a household, hosting elaborate dinner parties where she smiled at important city leaders and used her mother's encyclopedic knowledge of their foibles and vanities to flatter them into agreeable moods.

Noelle gripped the hem of her shirt again. "I don't have much to offer the men here. Except..." If she couldn't even choke out the word, how was she supposed to offer them sex?

"Fucking is the least of it," Lex muttered. "Everyone has a couple of holes a guy can stick his dick in. The important stuff is all above the neck."

It felt like her entire body had flushed, but Noelle fought past self-consciousness. "What's the important stuff?"

"Using your brain, baby girl. There's nothing you need to know about anyone that you can't figure out in ten seconds flat." She beckoned. "Follow me."

Lex walked into the bedroom, flicked on another lamp on the nightstand and sat on the bed, crossing her legs. "Now--how do you get under my skin? What do I like?"

During the course of their acquaintance, Lex had shouted at Jasper, whose formidable presence weakened Noelle's knees, and had snapped just as viciously at Dallas O'Kane, a figure of criminal legend. Everyone in Sector Four lived or died by Dallas's whim--Lex had admitted as much when she'd said he made the laws here.

But she'd yelled at him, and she hadn't shown fear. Noelle sank to the edge of the bed and rubbed her fingers over the expensive duvet. She thought about the priceless art, the silken sheets and the closet full of valuables hidden away like a treasure instead of displayed proudly, the way her father's friends showed off the things they bought with their vast wealth.

"You like beautiful things, but you don't need them to make you feel important." She smiled a little shyly. "Maybe you have a soft spot for things that get thrown away."

Lex laughed. "The last part's true." Her amusement faded. "Dallas gave me the paintings."

Noelle wet her lips. "Are you and Dallas--" Did people marry in the sectors? In Eden, marriage was a sacrament, but nothing sacred was likely to survive in the slums. "--together?"

"What do you think? If he had me already, would he be dropping thousands on pretty presents to catch my eye?"

"Perhaps not." She tilted her head and regarded Lex, searching for the meaning beneath the words. "Is that the only power we have? Not being caught?" The thought turned Lex's blithe freedom into its own sort of cage.

"No. It's your first lesson." Lex brushed Noelle's hair back behind her ear. "It's not like in the city. Belonging to someone isn't the endgame, the point where they're allowed to get lazy. It's a beginning, one you have to be damn sure you want."

Her skin prickled under the other woman's touch. Not sexual arousal, not exactly, but a sensual pleasure she'd only begun to crave when she'd started spending time with people who violated the social taboo forbidding unnecessary physical contact.

"Thank you," she blurted out, leaning in to Lex's touch. "For convincing Dallas to give me a chance. I'll learn anything I need to learn. I can't go to the communes--they're even worse than Eden."

"You'd go if you had to, and you'd be all right. Trust me, honey. That is the important thing."

To Noelle's everlasting humiliation, her eyes burned. She blinked them twice before realizing there was no stopping it, then squeezed them shut as the first tear slipped free. "I didn't really think my family would throw me away. I only wanted to feel something. I know I was privileged, that I must seem like a spoiled city brat..." Her chest felt tight, as if all the weight of Eden's claustrophobic expectations were closing in on her again.

"Are you kidding me?" Lex pulled her into a hug and made soothing noises. "No offense, baby girl, but I wouldn't have had your life there for anything."

Her tears soaked Lex's shirt, but the answer was there, just beyond reach. "Why?" Noelle didn't even know what she was asking. Why wouldn't Lex want her life? Why hadn't it been enough for her? Why had she thrown it all away?

Lex answered them all with three words. "You weren't free," she said. "You can be here, you know. Dallas talks big about shit, but he's never forced a woman to do anything she didn't want. Remember that too, Noelle."

"I don't know what I want. I don't know anything."

"That's why you try things. Eventually, you stumble across the ones that make you happy." Lex kissed her cheek. "And you learn. Everything anyone tells you, file it away in that brain of yours."

She could do that. She'd always been mind-hungry, devouring everything in her parents' digital library before going so far as to learn how to circumvent tablet security to gain access to the more restricted titles, old books from a time before fear and morality had swallowed everything. "I'm good at remembering things."

Lex patted her back. "Go crawl in bed, honey. I'd let you stay in mine, but I don't think you really want to."

She rather did, and not just because the sheets would feel heavenly against her skin. Touching Lex meant having an anchor instead of being cast adrift in the darkness that would soon envelop the room.

But she'd already cried and laid her soul bare. Enough humiliation for one lifetime, let alone a single evening. She slipped from Lex's enormous bed and crawled back onto the lumpy mattress that folded out of the couch. "Can you help me find a job tomorrow?"

"We'll see, all right?"

It was as close to a promise as she was likely to get. Noelle settled her head against the pillow and closed her eyes, feeling more hopeful than she had in...forever, maybe. "Thank you, Lex."

The lamp clicked off, followed by the overhead lights. Clothing rustled in the darkness, and a light flared, illuminating the space closest to the couch. "Here," Lex murmured, setting the tiny round lamp on the end table near Noelle's head.

The glow was just enough to paint Lex's features in intriguing shadows, but not so bright that it would give Noelle trouble sleeping. "I guess you only needed ten seconds to figure me out," she said, trying to turn the words into a joke.

"Maybe a little more. Get me drunk sometime, and I'll tell you what I figured out."

How convenient it would be to have Lex explain Noelle's own secrets to her. Then she wouldn't have to bother to learn them herself. "As soon as you'll let me drink."

"Uh-huh. Good night, Noelle."