Beyond Possession (Beyond #5.5) (8 page)

"I know." Dallas pressed a kiss to Lex's temple and released her. "Get out of here, woman. I'm supposed to be kicking this bastard's ass."

She turned her head and sank her teeth into his upper arm.

The crazy bastard laughed. "Unless you had other plans?"

"I might." She glanced at Zan again, but her words were for her lover. "You think I should let him in my closet?"

Dallas tilted his head. "You got anything good in there? For her, I mean."

"I could." She seemed to consider that for a moment. "Then again, some women want more intangible things."

It must have been a private joke, because Dallas laughed and swatted her hip. "And some women prefer knives. But not every man wants to get stabbed as foreplay, Lexie love."

Intangible things. Like independence, self-reliance, all those things people thought they could take away, never realizing they would always be a part of you. He wondered if Tatiana even knew.

Zan shook off the thought and squinted at Lex. "If she liked stuff, she'd still be in Gia's bed."

"An excellent point."

"But she's not." Dallas smoothed his thumb over Lex's jaw, slow and soft. "That's the key to the whole thing, isn't it? They don't run because of what you're giving them. They run because of all the things you're not."

Lex grinned and patted his cheek. "You two don't even need me around."

"I learned it all from you."

A bolt of jealousy shot through Zan, and he covered it quickly by clearing his throat. "Man, sometimes being around you two is like watching my parents make out."

"Bite your tongue," Dallas retorted, but he released Lex with one last caress. "I'm not
that
old. And I'm about to prove it."

Lex hummed. "Good luck." She pivoted on one heel and headed off toward the front door.

And Dallas watched her the whole damn way.

When he turned back, his expression was still gentle around the edges. Lex could be cunning when the occasion called for it, but Zan had known Dallas for a long time, and the man had always had his own brand of cunning. What he'd learned from Lex was something else, something that had made him a better—and more dangerous—leader.

Empathy.

"You never answered," he said softly. "I know how far you'll go for the gang. How far will you go for this girl?"

"What's the real question?"

"Would you keep her, if she let you?"

He didn't need to think about that at all. "Yes. But she wouldn't let me," he added. "Tatiana won't be kept. Even if she was exactly where she wanted to be, where she
would
be—if she thought she was being kept, she would leave."

Dallas rolled his shoulders slowly, his eyes unfocused. "I let them walk away, you know. When Stone's organization fell apart, I almost put his kids on a bus—to the communes or the mountains, just out of the way. I wanted to make them someone else's problem."

Zan barely remembered the aftermath of the showdown with Stone. Still,
barely
was more than he wanted.

His brother Hunter had always been the strong one. After their parents' deaths, he'd been the one to hold their tiny family together, scraping out a meager living on the streets of Sector Four. He'd protected Zan, and Zan had idolized him. So when Hunter had thrown in behind the upstart bootlegger known as Dallas O'Kane, Zan gladly went along for the ride, because his big brother had never steered him wrong.

Then he died fighting Stone's men, and Zan's world had fallen apart. Every truth he'd ever known, gone in an instant, and the only thing left was O'Kane. The man with the vision. The man Hunter had trusted enough to die for.

"I don't remember much about back then," Zan confessed. "But I know Hunter believed in this, and so do I."

"Your brother was a good friend. A good man." Dallas's gaze swung to Zan. "He understood that a leader who has to abuse his power just to prove he has it isn't a fucking leader at all. That's why we wanted to take down Stone. And that's the kind of power your girl grew up with, the abusive kind. Remember that."

"It's hard to forget." Tatiana reminded him of it every time she looked at him, and it made his chest hurt.

"I know."

Yeah. The trick would be getting Tatiana to recognize the difference between a man who wanted to control her...and one who wanted to protect her.

Tatiana always closed early one day a week. It gave her time to get ahead on the products that took more time to prepare, the meticulous soaps and carefully packaged lotions that sold in Eden's fancy boutiques.

It had taken her two years to crack Eden, and even then it was through so many middlemen that her profit margins were whittled to nothing. So she worked longer hours, made deals. Free cleaning supplies for any food cart willing to render cooking fat for her. Credit in her shop for anyone who brought in ashes so she could make her own lye water.

It had been hard at first. People had been cold. They remembered Tatiana Stone, her father's doted-upon princess, the girl who wore jewels and fur coats while they shivered and starved. Some of the people most loyal to Dallas had delighted in trying to humiliate her.

Trying to.

After years of her father's rages and those first few terrifying months after his fall, it took more than a little hazing to wound her spirit. She'd risen before dawn, leaving Catalina asleep in bed, and had trudged from shop to shop. She'd gotten on her knees to scrape the ashes from their fireplaces and chimneys while they smirked behind their hands. She'd stumbled home aching and smudged with soot, the Cinderella of Sector Four who'd already shunned her fairy godmother when she wouldn't let Gia keep her as a pet.

But it had paid off. Day by day, she'd earned their grudging respect. They stopped smirking, stopped shunning her. Stuart had been the first to strike a deal, but once he relented, everyone loyal to the O'Kanes followed swiftly behind. People began to barter with her. To shop at her store. To welcome her as one of them.

And she could lose it all in a heartbeat if she took one wrong step.

God, she already had. She'd fucked an O'Kane. Not even a nice, clean fuck—she'd opened that box of frustrated desire, all the power and submission that belonged in a stable, trusting relationship instead of an illicit one-night stand.

Gia would have smacked her ass good for that. Or hell, maybe not. It wasn't as if Tatiana hadn't been her usual too-demanding self. No patient obedience or placid vulnerability, only selfish hunger that still hadn't faded, because she couldn't shake the feel of him.

She was like those sad old-timers, hooked on O'Kane whiskey and rationalizing all the ways that one drink wasn't a bad thing. One drink to heat the blood on a cold night. One to drive away an ache in the bones. Just one more sip. One more taste.

Until someone caught Zan creeping out of her bedroom and every person who'd ever supported her father started whispering that she was an O'Kane whore. They didn't need power to destroy Tatiana's life. The only person they needed was curled up in Wallace's bed, dreaming of being a princess again.

So today she wouldn't think about Zan and his big, warm hands and his big, hard body. She'd think about soap and profit margins and how the batch she was pouring might be the most valuable yet.

Color had been the key to cracking the Eden market. In the sectors, most people just wanted function. Soap that got them clean, lotion that soothed dry skin, salves that helped sore muscles.

But practicality wasn't enough to open the fancy pocketbooks in Eden. They wanted things to be beautiful, too. So she'd improvised, experimented. The results were spread out before her—twenty pounds of rose-scented soap in her largest mold, with row after row of alternating colors across the top.

This was the tricky part. Each stripe of color had to be precise, but she had to make them all before the soap solidified too much. Because the final touch was to swirl the colors together in an intricate, dizzying pattern by dragging a board with a few dozen nails pounded through it back and forth through the liquid soap.

That was the part Eden paid for, that thin layer of color that added nothing of substance but quadrupled her asking price. Of course, the store owners turned around and charged their customers even more, but this was the best Tatiana could hope for. It wasn't like she could lure the fancy women of Eden down to a sector market to do their shopping.

It was something. And God, she needed a victory today.

She'd finished the lines of color and eased the board with its sharp, shining nails into place when the bell above her office door jingled. It was out of place, and it took her a second to realize why—she'd locked all of the doors before coming into her workroom.

She lunged for the pistol on her side table, but that took a second too long. A meaty arm looped around her waist and dragged her back.

"Shh." A hand that smelled of dirt and grease clamped over her mouth. "Just want to talk, princess."

The voice was familiar. One of the vicious bastards who had followed her father—and followed Wallace, now. Buzz had been too cowardly to fight alongside his so-called brothers, but he'd been quick enough to come after
her
in the aftermath, eager to take a pass at the boss's no-longer-untouchable daughter.

She'd been softer back then. Still grieving, terrified. Still convinced that O'Kane would turn on her at any moment, so she couldn't afford to alienate the only people who might feel loyalty to her. So she'd only stabbed Buzz a little.

That was a mistake she wouldn't be repeating.

"That's it," he breathed. "A nice chat never hurt anybody."

Icy calm flooded her veins. She had her knife in her boot and plenty of makeshift weapons within reach, but he was bigger than her and stronger than her. Timing mattered. So she went still and resisted the temptation to bite off a few of those fingers covering her mouth.

For now.

"You gonna scream?" He didn't sound entirely displeased by the possibility.

Fucking pervert. He'd like having an excuse to gag her, one that fit whatever story he was already telling himself to make him into the hero of this scenario. Punishing Stone's disloyal daughter, putting her in her place. Funny how the only way they could ever come up with to do either usually involved their dicks.

Or maybe he didn't give a shit about being a hero. Maybe he just wanted to hurt her.

She shook her head, slow and careful, and he dropped his hand from her mouth, grazing her collarbone and the upper curve of her breast as she jerked away. "Talk, Buzz."

He leaned against her worktable, his casual stance belied by the tension in his shoulders. "Got a message for you, princess."

"Then let's hear it."

"Wallace wants you to play nice with your sister." Buzz's eyes gleamed. "The fighting makes her
sad
."

It made Tatiana sad, too. What it didn't make her was stupid. "Wallace doesn't give a shit about my sister."

Buzz snorted out a laugh. "See, that's what he means, I guess. Not very nice."

She took a step to the right, putting a little space between them. "Fine. I'll go see her tomorrow. I'll play nice."

He followed her. "That's good to hear."

The position put him between her and the gun—another mistake she wouldn't make again—but another step brought her within reach of her worktable. "You don't want to do this, Buzz."

His expression hardened. "Relax, princess. This isn't that kind of visit."

"So leave. I got the message."

"Don't be so fucking rude." Buzz picked up a stirring stick and turned it over in his hands. "There's more to the message. Well, it's more like an offer."

She didn't want to hear anything Wallace had to offer, but she knew she had to listen. She had to know how bad it was—and how much worse it could be. "And that is?"

"You could take her place," he answered casually.

Wallace was an idiot. A cruel, sadistic idiot. And still, for one moment, she was tempted. It would solve plenty of her problems. Catalina would see him for the opportunistic fool he was—and once she was safely away, Tatiana could cut his throat in his sleep.

Except Catalina would never forgive her. And there was just as good a chance of Wallace trying to stick a knife—or something else—in her.

Buzz was watching her with anticipatory glee, like he knew her answer and couldn't wait to hear it. That wasn't good. "And if I turn him down?"

"Now, why would you want to do something stupid like that?"

She shifted her weight, letting her fingers brush the soap mold. "Tell Wallace that if he wants to offer me something, he should do it himself."

"Like Dallas O'Kane, you mean?"

Ice crept through her veins, with fear hard on its heels. But she hid it. She was good at hiding it. "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about."

Buzz's creepy veneer of fake, good-natured cheer melted away. "You think you're so much smarter than everyone else, but guess what, princess? We all know."

She thought about Zan coming around, always coming around. Checking on her. Watching her. Maybe she'd been a fool to try to hide an affair. Maybe they all assumed she'd been fucking him for years.

She still denied it, even though her lips had gone numb. "You don't know shit. And you need to leave. Now."

He leaned closer, his breath hot and fetid. "Make me, bitch."

She could wait for him to take the first swing. A softer woman might have. A woman like that fantasy Zan had created of her, one who was sweet outside the bedroom and needed a hero to swoop in and save her.

Tatiana didn't need a hero. She had a board with three dozen nails sticking out of it.

She angled her body away, like she was flinching, because he'd like that. He'd get off on the idea of scaring her, and she needed to distract him. She needed enough room to do this properly.

Buzz leaned closer. Tatiana closed her fist around the board and swung—hard.

He roared in pain, waving one arm wildly. Tatiana tried to duck but couldn't relinquish the board. The back of his hand cracked across her face, smarting tears into her eyes, and she ignored it. The nails had embedded themselves in his side, which had to sting like a bitch, but it wasn't enough.