Beyond Jealousy (28 page)

It wasn't smooth. Christ knew he didn't have Ace's practice--he didn't even have
Rachel's
practice--but from the stunned expression on Ace's face, it wasn't going to take finesse. Just passion and enthusiasm, and he had plenty of both.

He had attention to detail, too. He'd already begun to map Rachel's responses. Now he made note of Ace's, cataloging how fast and how deep, when he should suck and how firm a grip he should use. And Ace didn't speak, but he was still talking, with hissed groans and grunts, with the free hand that dropped to Cruz's head, fingers pressing hard against his scalp.

Next time would be better. He'd know how Ace liked to be touched, and Rachel would be there, too. Maybe chained, forced to watch, getting wetter and wetter as she watched Ace's cock disappear into Cruz's mouth.

The fantasy spun out as easy as breathing, and with Ace's harsh words echoing in his skull, he made himself revel in every detail with the same loving attention he was lavishing on Ace's cock.

Rachel--naked, her arms above her head, her legs spread wide. Decorated, because Cruz could see the appeal now that Ace had opened his eyes to it. Jewelry sparkling from her tight nipples, her clit, her ass. But nothing in her pussy, because she'd be watching Ace's cock, watching Cruz slick his tongue up and down, just like he was doing now, watching him suck the head until it glistened, and she'd feel empty, needy. Desperate to have him inside her.

But that was Cruz's fantasy. Hers would be deeper, darker. Ace and his flogger, driving her outside herself when pain bled to pleasure. And people watching--that was what she needed most. An audience, someone to witness her vulnerability, her submission, her bliss.

Maybe Ace was right, and they were still relying on him to push them where they knew they wanted to be. But he wasn't a corrupter, slinking into their lives and forcing them into sin. He was a liberator, reaching inside them to draw out what they really needed.

Just like he did when he laid someone's ink.

That
was Ace's purpose--pulling truth from darkness and giving it form. A thankless job sometimes, especially when someone wasn't ready to face that truth. So Cruz sucked and stroked until Ace lost it and came with a stuttered groan, then rose with Ace's taste lingering on his tongue and wrapped both of their hands around his own straining cock.

"I'll tell you what I want to do," he rasped, pressing his forehead to Ace's as the first shiver of pleasure whispered up his spine. "And you don't need to make it okay."

He only got half of the fantasy out before Ace made him come, but improvising would be part of the fun.

Ace could usually finish a back piece in a few marathon sessions, but Zan would be the exception. Not because he couldn't take the pain--the man could sit like a stone through shit that had badass cage-fighters punking out after a few hours--but because his back was so massively
huge
.

The scope of the project made Zan the perfect distraction while Dallas was facing off with Liam Riley. Ace rarely involved himself in political shit anyway, and Zan was like Flash--his idea of diplomacy was shooting someone in the face instead of the back.

Sometimes Ace missed the days where that was the only kind of diplomacy the O'Kanes had to worry about. Political power was all well and good, but there was a refreshing honesty about solving your problems with your fists or your gun.

And if he told himself that enough times, maybe he wouldn't feel like he was hiding from Rachel's daddy.

"I'll have to sketch this one first," Ace said, rolling his stool around so he could see Zan's face. "It's just too much to design and outline in one session. We'll nail down what you want today, though."

"Just don't leave me hanging with something that looks stupid half-finished," Zan grumbled, then grinned. "And make sure you spell everything right, for fuck's sake."

Ace laughed and flipped open a sketchpad. "Like you'd notice."

"I have mirrors, and I can read backwards." He paused. "And if that doesn't work, I'll get Rachel to check it out for me."

So they'd been a
thing
long enough for the teasing to start. Ace had been waiting, watching his O'Kane brothers and sisters circle. No one would poke at something fragile and risk damaging it, but they'd sure as fuck give him hell if things looked solid from the outside.

Ace's insecurities felt more ridiculous by the day, so he flashed a smile and did what he always did. Played it cool. "You gonna make her choose between your back and my dick? I don't like your odds, brother."

Zan laughed. "Neither do I, Santana. Neither do I."

At least he had that going for him--a dick so legendary, no one doubted its power. "So tell me what you had in mind for--"

Zan tensed before the bells over the front door jingled, and somehow Ace knew who it would be. Because it was the last thing he could handle right now, and because it was fucking inevitable--his past had to roll back over him eventually.

He spun his stool and found himself staring at Liam Riley.

The man removed his hat to reveal impeccably trimmed black hair shot with gray, especially at the temples. "Mr. Santana."

Liam didn't look much like Rachel, not in the obvious ways. His hair was darker, his features sharper. Harder. And it didn't matter that they shared the same remarkable eye color--meeting Liam Riley's gaze brought back the conversation he'd had with Cruz after their shower.

Do you believe her father didn't do it?

I believe she needs to believe that. But I can think of three perfectly reasonable justifications Liam Riley could have for arranging his daughter's kidnapping. Removing her as a potential hostage before he starts a war. Getting her out of the crossfire without tipping Dallas off to an upcoming fight. Or using her kidnapping as an excuse to start one.

So you think he
did
?

It's not that. Honestly, it doesn't seem like Riley's style. But that has nothing to do with whether he's capable of it.

Looking into Liam Riley's cold, hard eyes, Ace wondered if Cruz had gone far enough. Even his reasons had assumed Liam wouldn't take unnecessary risks with Rachel's safety. Ace still remembered the trembling girl whose bar code he had obliterated, removing her chance to return to the safety of Eden line by line because this man had valued his business over his daughter.

They were all giving Rachel's dad too much fucking credit.

"Forgive the intrusion," Liam said with a pointed look. "May we speak? Privately."

Zan hadn't moved. Probably wouldn't without Ace's signal, and for a second he toyed with the idea of letting him sit there, a wall of surly-tempered muscle at his back. It would piss his visitor off, that was for sure.

That would make it easier. Pissing Rachel's father off in advance, so he could pretend whatever came next wasn't about him.

Ace jerked his head toward the door. "Why don't you go find some food, Zan? Bring me back something, too. This won't take long."

"Sure thing, Ace." Zan moved slowly, lingering at the door for just a moment before letting it swing shut behind him.

Liam smiled a little. "I have to hand it to O'Kane. That's one area in which he excels--instilling loyalty in his men."

"Being worthy of loyalty is always a good start."

"So it is." Liam laid his hat on one of the rolling carts that held ink and supplies. "But I suppose your statement was more of a veiled insult than an observation of truth."

"Fair enough." Ace rocked to his feet, bringing himself eye level with Liam. "Maybe I should cut through the bullshit, then. You wouldn't be here if you didn't know."

"About you and Rachel. And Lorenzo Cruz, evidently."

"Evidently." Ace quirked an eyebrow. "Is he getting a father/son talk, too?"

"No bullshit, huh?" Liam looked around the room before turning the same critical eye on Ace, his veneer of polite civility gone. "You're a wreck, kid. You always have been, and I'm not talking about the whoring. Everyone's got to eat, and a man does what he has to do. But you're
messy
, Santana. Wherever you go, you leave a trail of broken shit behind you."

It was just what he'd asked for, the truth laid out between them. And what was he supposed to do? Deny it? His biggest claim to fame in Eden was destroying marriages--sometimes even ones he'd never touched. "Hazard of the business. Doesn't matter if you're selling sex or drugs or booze. Vice is messy."

"True. And, unless my daughter is paying you to warm her bed, utterly beside the point."

"Then what is your point? Because mine was that I left that shit behind me."

"Maybe you tried. Maybe you even got it done." Liam's jaw clenched. "But Rachel deserves more than maybes."

It wasn't supposed to hurt. He'd expected it, practically provoked it. No father from Eden could possibly approve of an O'Kane, and this father was never going to approve of him.

It wasn't supposed to hurt. But then, he wasn't supposed to agree.

"Rachel deserves everything she wants," Ace said, spacing out the words, making them as clear and sharp as the pain in his chest. "And that's what I'm going to give her, whether you like it or not."

"And when it ends?" Liam asked softly. "This is her home--as you say, whether I like it or not."

When it ends.
He had to fight back against the words, because if he didn't, it meant he believed those, too. "Maybe you should be more worried about what you'll do when it doesn't."

The man sighed and picked up his hat. "You don't get it, kid. I don't hate you. I pity you." His voice turned to steel. "But I love my daughter more. If you hurt her, I will kill you."

Ace let him get to the door before asking the last question, the one that would drive the knife home and twist it until he bled out. "Is that what you told Cruz?"

Liam paused with his hand on the push bar and barely turned his head. "Why would I?" Then the bell jingled as he shoved through the door.

The first time Lili saw her father hit her mother, she was fifteen.

Exactly fifteen, in fact, because it had been the evening of her birthday. She'd sacrificed the chance of a morning spent with her new piano--an extravagant gift that had arrived the previous evening--to supervise her six younger brothers and sisters while her exhausted mother oversaw the preparations for the evening's fancy dinner.

Lili would have just as soon skipped the party and the cake in favor of letting her mother stay in bed. The poor woman had a three-week-old daughter and a body worn down by constant pregnancy, but Lili had never seen her counter her husband's wishes. If the leader of Sector Five wanted to celebrate his eldest child's birthday by enacting some touching farce with the family he barely knew, Anna Fleming would make it happen.

And she had. The Fleming family sat down with its patriarch, who had invited three of his business partners--and a cadre of tattooed bodyguards who lined the walls as if Mac was in danger from his own family.

It happened over wine, before the cake. Her father had asked her to play them a song on her new piano, because the one thing he'd always encouraged was her music. He liked the conceit of having a talented, cultured daughter, as if it meant a damn when that daughter had never left the security of his fenced-in estate. But she'd obliged, because that was the only time she felt alive. The moment her fingers found the keys, the ivory cool under her fingers, her heart beating faster in anticipation of that first note.

It hadn't been perfect. The keys felt different than the piano she'd learned on, but even the missed notes hadn't bothered her, not when the sound was so rich, so full. She'd fallen into it, unaware that her father had risen and crossed to her side. Not until the last note echoed in the room, and he shattered the peace of her spell by dropping a heavy hand to her shoulder.

But when she looked up, her father was beaming at his second-in-command, a humorless man in his mid-thirties who oversaw all of the Fleming factories. "See what a prize I'm giving you, Logan?"

That was how Lili learned who her husband would be.

Her fifteenth birthday had taught her many things. That gifts were traps, and that getting older meant adding to the list of things you had to endure. It taught her that her father could backhand the mother of his children so hard he split her lip and bruised her jaw, and no one would twitch so much as a finger to help her up from the floor--especially if she deserved the blow for daring to suggest fifteen was too young for marriage.

But it was during the weeks leading up to her wedding that Lili and her mother both learned the most important lesson of Sector Five: no husband was unbearable when you had unlimited access to drugs.

Lili kept hers lined up next to the kitchen sink in neatly labeled bottles, the end result of five years' worth of experimentation in the best ways to detach. Nothing addictive, of course--it would be incredibly gauche for her to dabble in the common drugs her husband and father peddled on the street--but a single pill from the right bottle could grant sleepy peace or pleasant indifference or even icy numbness.