Beyond Shame (5 page)

"When we get back, we're all going to have a drink and think of a good way to break the news about the busted headlight to Dallas."

Noelle couldn't carry a tray worth a damn.

Not that it mattered much. Lex had poured her into a pair of leather pants that hugged her ass and a halter top that only precariously covered her tits. Jasper caught himself staring, watching for the inevitable moment when the slinky silver fabric would shift just a
little
too far.

"We're stuck with her," Dallas drawled next to him. "We might as well ink your waif now. Lex went and got attached, and now she'll take my dick off if I kick the girl to the curb."

Dallas wasn't scared of Lex, not for a second, which meant something more like sentimentality—or mercy—motivated him. "She's trying. After a day, that's about all you can ask."

"Yeah, she's trying." Dallas ignored the women gyrating on stage and watched Noelle smile at two customers as she set drinks in front of them. "And she's a little lost lamb in a den of wolves."

The other waitress who'd been training her, Rachel, joined Noelle in animated conversation with the customers, and Jasper finally looked down into his glass. "Maybe Lex'll keep her."

"Unlikely." Dallas stirred his drink. "If it'll bother you when the men start fighting over her, you better get straight. Because that girl wants it, and when she gets around to admitting it, the boys are gonna give it to her."

Jasper didn't have time for a woman, much less one with big eyes who would expect
things
. "What, you don't like her?"

A shrug. "She's got a nice ass. Pretty mouth. I like the idea of Lex teaching her how to give head. But I'm not in the market for a keeper."

Jasper let his gaze stray back to Noelle. "Neither am I."

As if she could feel his gaze, she glanced up and smiled, an open expression edged with a hint of shyness. An unwitting invitation.

Dallas snorted. "That one's in the market to keep
you
."

How could she be? "She doesn't know me, and a day isn't long enough to know what it's like around here, either."

"She doesn't know shit about shit," Dallas agreed. "But you're her bloody fucking savior, and good for you. What I don't need is you beating the other men bloody outside of the cage 'cause you're a jealous motherfucker. So hit it or quit it."

"You're a humorless bastard. When did you get so cranky?"

"Times are tough in the slums of paradise. Politics are heating up in the city."

Politics. Jasper hated them, thought about them as little as possible, and even that effort was reserved for the careful dance of power between the gangs that ruled the sectors. He never thought about the shit going down in the city. "Uh-huh."

Dallas huffed out a laugh and rose, glass in hand. "You suck at pretending to give a shit, Jas. I'm going to go find someone who'll suck at something more interesting."

Nothing went on at the Broken Circle without Dallas's approval, explicit or not. "If I kept her—and that's a big if—it wouldn't be because she has no place to go. I'd rather help her out as a friend than rope her into something she doesn't understand."

"I'm not fucking heartless. She can stay, and you and Lex can be responsible for her." Dallas hit him with a stern look. "But don't make a habit of this. I can't take in every stray the city kicks out."

True, and Jasper had seen him flat-out ignore people a lot more pathetic than Miss Cunningham. Whatever was driving him to tolerate Noelle probably had more to do with Lex than his compassion. "Yes, sir."

Dallas strode away, stopping to say something to Rachel and Noelle. Noelle looked at the stage and transferred her tray to Rachel's more competent hands.

Then she turned and wove a path through the tables, heading directly for Jasper.

He pulled out a chair and nodded to it. "Taking a break?"

She slipped into the seat, and for a moment he thought the halter was going to lose its grip on her breasts. "Dallas told me I should watch the show with you."

"I'm sure he did."

Her cheeks colored. "You don't want me to?"

"He's testing you," Jasper explained. Testing them both was more like it, but she didn't need to know that. "He wants to see if watching makes you run and hide."

"It might make me squirm and blush," she admitted, eyeing the stage. "But if I was prone to running and hiding from sex, I wouldn't be here."

"If all sexual encounters were equally shocking, you'd be set," he murmured. "But there's shit that goes on up there that
I
never saw before I joined up."

"Really?" Her eyes widened, their blue faded to smoky gray in the dim lights. "Like what?"

"Depends on the night. This? It's just a little dancing, some making out for show." He stretched his arm across the back of her chair and motioned to the curtain behind the front half of the stage. "There's a raised section back there they use for the real action. Most nights, it's two or three of the girls getting it on."

"Oh." Still wide-eyed, but she didn't look appalled. She leaned back, and her curly, unbound hair tickled across his arm. "It's kind of hot," she whispered, watching the current dancer swivel her hips. "That's what I used to dream about. Being that free. Not having to hide."

Or maybe her fantasies were simply that. "If you want to see what that freedom's like, you'll have the perfect chance tonight. Dallas is having a party after hours."

She tore her gaze from the dancer and studied him. "The parties are like that?"

He'd have to lay it out for her. "Some people are paired off, but they're not hard to spot. They have the collars, you know, or ink. Everyone else just wants to get off. You can join in or you can watch, but that's pretty much all it is. Wall-to-wall fucking."

Her top was so slinky he saw her nipples stiffen under the fabric. "That's the sort of party we were trying to have when I got arrested. None of us were very good at it. People who are good at it don't last long in Eden."

"Yeah? Well, remember—it's optional."

She slid her hand onto his thigh, awkward instead of smooth. Her fingers dug in, and her expression was more earnest than sultry. "Are you going to be there?"

"I'd planned on it." But that wasn't what she was really asking—and it wasn't what he wanted to say, either. "You want to go with me, Noelle?"

Shivering, she swayed toward him. "Do you think I'm a harlot?"

She could
not
be serious. "No. I think maybe you're a lady who likes to fuck."

Noelle's lips twitched. A laugh bubbled up, and she jerked her hand from his leg to cover her mouth. "You say it so easily, like it's not the same thing at all."

"Because it's not. No one here is going to think you're a bad person." Seeing her mouth covered was a travesty, so he pried her fingers away and rubbed his thumb over her lower lip. "I'll show you tonight, and you'll see."

She wet her lower lip, her tongue flicking over the tip of his thumb. "I've only done it once," she admitted in a husky whisper. "They caught us the other night before I made it to the actual fornicating."

Practically the virgin everyone would assume she was, and the big guy was right. The other men would be fighting to get balls-deep in her by the end of the night. "Tonight, you can watch," he said evenly, a fucking miracle when she was already licking him.

"With you?"

Her chest heaved with every breath, and Jasper flicked the material aside just enough to catch a hint of one pink nipple. "Yeah, with me."

She gasped, and this time she licked his thumb on purpose. "But no sex?"

"No sex." If he could manage it.

A tiny frown tugged at her lips. "Why not?"

"Because first I've got to figure out how to give it to you."

She shivered again and looked down. Her hair spilled forward to hide her face, but not before he saw her blush. "Maybe I'll get some ideas tonight."

Or she'd run screaming, thinking a simple life in the communes might not be a bad idea, after all. "We'll see, sweetheart. We'll see."

Chapter Four

No one here's going to think you're a bad person.

Noelle smoothed her fingertips over the white lace clinging to her curves. Lex's dress drew tight across her breasts, which were shamelessly on display above the plunging neckline. She was taller than Lex, too—or maybe the dress was supposed to brush her legs at mid-thigh and flash her ruffled panties if she bent forward too far.

How could anyone claim she wasn't at least a
little
bit of a bad person?

By being a gang member, of course.
Bad was probably relative in the slums, where men killed without consequence. No laws but the ones Dallas made, that was what Lex had told her, so she wasn't breaking any rules by dressing in scandalous lace and waiting for Jas to bring her to a party full of fornicat—

"Sex," she whispered. Out loud, because hearing the word made it more real. Fornication was a sin, a law, a meaningless concept in a place without either.

She was going to a party full of sex.
Real
sex. Dirty, experienced sex, not the fumblings of sheltered virgins drunk on smuggled moonshine, taking their cues from descrambled vintage pornography.

"Ready?" Jasper's voice rumbled through the darkened hallway, and he slowed as he approached. "You look nice."

Dirty and experienced. That was what he looked like in his dark clothing and shining silver chains. He filled the hallway, shoulders so broad she felt small and curiously vulnerable. Curious because it wasn't frightening, because she liked imagining herself tucked against his chest, utterly at his mercy.

He'd said something, and here she was, staring at him, concocting fantasies when a reality she couldn't imagine already awaited her. "Thank you," she said as her cheeks warmed. "Lex let me borrow something to wear."

"Yeah." He smiled and gestured to the ruffled hem. "It looks better on you."

It had been one of the few things in the closet Noelle could imagine wearing in front of people without dying of embarrassment. "So it's okay for the party?"

He took her hand and nodded toward the other end of the hall, where a door led through to the stairs. "Most people's clothes end up in a pile pretty fast. We sort 'em out later."

Could he feel her tremble? "And this sort of thing happens all the time?"

"Once a week." He urged her ahead of him with a hand at the small of her back. "Sometimes more if everyone needs to blow off steam."

His fingers burned. She could feel each one pressing against her through the thin fabric, each so far apart that it emphasized the massive size of his hand. She wobbled on her borrowed heels as she climbed the steps.

Sounds of the party reached her before they got to the top of the stairs. She turned to the right and saw another hallway leading to an open doorway, and through that—

Skin. The lighting was dim, but she could still make out a naked woman standing just inside, the endless expanse of pale skin interrupted only by the tattoos at her wrists and throat and the jewelry dangling from her—

Noelle wet her lips and jerked her gaze away, but it was too late. Lace scraped her sensitive nipples, and she couldn't help but imagine how much more maddening it would be to have them pinched by silver hoops as chains and jewelry swung freely, tugging with every movement.

And she thought her earrings were daring.

"Hear them already?" Jasper spoke low in her ear, and the pressure of his hand at her back increased. "Go in, Noelle. Or do you want to stand here for a minute and see if what you can imagine is filthier?"

She felt hollowed out and hungry. This was the curiosity that had led her to make friends with the wrong girls at school, the interest that had brought her to a dark room with a young man who'd pretended to know what he was doing. He'd fumbled under her dress with clumsy fingers for twenty minutes without getting her as hot as Jasper's voice tickling over her ear.

Maybe he thought she wanted to run, that she was as cowardly as she was ignorant. Stubbornness forced her forward, obeying that heavy pressure at the small of her back. "I can't imagine much, unless you're going to give me ideas."

Before he could answer, Lex stuck her head through the doorway. "You're late, honey. I was about to start without you."

"Start?" Start
what
? She looked back at Jasper for an answer.

He raised an eyebrow. "Tonight?"

Lex grinned slowly. "Unless there's some reason she shouldn't." She reached out and grasped a flounce of lace, pulling Noelle forward. "I'll show you the secret to keeping all these bastards on their knees. Jas can watch."

He caught her dress too, his hand twisting tight in the fabric. "You don't have to do anything but watch, either. Remember that."

Noelle imagined them tugging on her dress until it ripped in two. It was oddly thrilling, being trapped between them, Jasper's hard body at her back, Lex's softness a match for her own. She could imagine kissing Lex like the girls in the movies had kissed, while Jasper's hands roved her body, fingers stroking, teasing, taking...