Beyond Jealousy (2 page)

"Fuck. Fuck, fuck
fuck
." Ace cupped her cheeks, a warmth on her skin that lingered for only a heartbeat before vanishing. "Ignore me, angel. You're sweet and you're perfect and Cruz is in love with you. You're both too good for the likes of me, so don't cry."

The only thing that hurt worse than his censure was his pity. Desperate for escape from both, Rachel stumbled blindly toward the door. Any place was better than standing in front of Ace, hearing awful, hurtful words spill from her lips, when all she'd ever wanted was--

It doesn't matter.
She repeated it like a mantra, a tiny whisper under her breath until she was outside, her breath puffing out into the frigid night air. She was heading in the wrong direction, toward the warehouses instead of the living quarters, but she didn't give a damn.

She had to get away.

It wasn't difficult to track down Rachel. Cruz had successfully stalked more elusive prey across far more expansive terrain, and had done so with less intimate knowledge of his quarry. When Rachel was rattled, she fled to higher ground, to fresh air and open skies.

So he wasn't surprised to find her on the roof. She sat with her back to the low wall edging the rooftop, a nearly empty bottle nestled between her knees. "Emergency tequila," she explained, holding the bottle aloft. Her teeth chattered, and her lips were several shades darker than their usual pink. "To keep me warm."

Liquor didn't work that way. It opened the capillaries, flushed the skin with what seemed like a rush of warmth, but in the end it only hastened the loss of body heat. Especially now, when they were well on their way to winter. It got cold in the desert at night, and for all that Eden had fought to hide the fact with irrigation and reservoirs and carefully cultivated greenery, that was exactly where they were.

"Here," he said, slipping out of his jacket. His blood was still pumping from the fight, but the icy wind cut easily through his thin T-shirt. He could only imagine how chilled she was, huddled against the stone.

He dropped the jacket around her shoulders, and she relaxed into the fabric with a soft moan. "You're so warm. And I'm so stupid. I shouldn't have come up here, but now I can't leave."

It didn't make sense, but she was so wasted it probably shouldn't. Rachel could match any O'Kane drink for drink, which made him wonder how full that bottle had been when she'd come up here. She might have even started drinking while he was in the cage, before he'd claimed victory only to discover a guilt-stricken Ace hitting the whiskey hard enough for it to hit back.

It wasn't a surprise that the two people he cared for most couldn't exchange two words without shredding each other to ribbons. That had been his life forever--the agony of divided loyalties. His orders or his conscience, the sectors or Eden...

Rachel or Ace.

Ace would have to fend for himself tonight. Cruz crouched and held out a hand. "Share the tequila?"

"Take it. My head is spinning." She passed him the bottle, then pressed her palms over her closed eyes. "You talked to Ace."

"He didn't have much to say." It wasn't a lie, because Cruz hadn't needed words to know. The pain in Ace's expression had told him who, and enough of what. Only a fight with Rachel could put
that
look in the man's eyes.

She changed the subject. "Congratulations on your win. That's a record, you know. I hope you were smart enough to bet on yourself and clean up."

"I've got some cash now, yeah."

She leaned her head back against the brick. "Good."

"Rachel, honey. It's too damn cold to be out here. Why don't you go back to your room?"

"I don't want to be alone." Her eyes fluttered open and fixed on him. "Up here, I'm killing time. If I go home, I'm alone."

The offer hung heavy on the tip of his tongue, but he bit it back. It would be too easy to cross this line. He'd crossed so many others lately, stumbling across them in blind pursuit of pleasure.

He could stumble into her, too, but not like this. Not drunk and sad and shivering from the cold. His words had to be careful, precise. Comfort with no hidden strings, no temptation. "You don't have to be alone. There are plenty of places you could crash tonight."

She smiled--slow, with no hint of amusement. "Everyone feels sorry for me these days."

"I don't think that's true."

"Maybe not. Fine." She reached out. "If you're not going to let me sit here and feel sorry for myself, the least you can do is help me up."

Now it was safe to smile as he straightened and took her hand. "You promise to go somewhere warm, and I'll let you brood all night long."

"I don't
want
to." She tripped over her feet and pitched against him, bracing her free hand on his chest. "I don't know what else to do. This isn't how things were supposed to turn out."

His lines always blurred when she put her hands on him. But this was the first time she'd touched him since he'd killed Russell Miller, and that had been a turning point. The moment he'd given up on some impossible idea of being a hero.

Of being
her
hero.

He gripped her shoulders to steady her and ignored the way even that small contact stirred arousal. "Turn out? That's awfully final."

Her fingers tightened in his shirt. "Yes, it is."

Careful.
"Your life's not over. Anything could happen tomorrow. You and I both know that better than most."

She looked up at him, her expression serious. Her eyes clear. "I'm glad you're happy. Doubt anything else, but not that, okay?"

He wasn't happy. He was falling, losing himself in vice because fucking and fighting were the only things that gave him a taste of pleasure. But she looked so somber, so fucking
sad
that only a monster would take that small comfort from her. "All right."

She huffed out a laugh and hid her face against his chest. "You're a terrible liar. Just wretched."

It wasn't funny, but his lips twitched as he gave himself permission to touch her hair. He'd missed running his fingers through it, feeling the slippery blonde strands slide over his skin. It was longer than it had been during their brief time together, long enough that he could imagine wrapping it around his fist--

No.
"I'm actually a damn good liar," he said, mostly to distract himself. "Just not with you, I guess."

"Not with me." She arched closer, rubbing her cheek against his shirt. "I miss you."

"Yeah?" His heart kicked into his throat--an amazing fucking feat with all the blood rushing to his cock.

But Rachel didn't respond, and she wasn't just leaning into him for support anymore. He allowed himself a single sigh before scooping her off her feet. She barely murmured as her head tucked itself neatly under his chin.

She'd be feeling the tequila tomorrow, and chances were good she wouldn't remember a damn thing she'd said to him tonight. That was the only reason he let himself speak at all as he carried her toward the stairs.

"I miss you, too."

Jade didn't like the needles.

Not that she gave any sign--she endured being tattooed with a quiet stoicism practiced enough to be depressing--but Ace knew women. He knew their bodies and all the ways they could tense and tremble, especially when pain was involved.

Jade didn't like the needles, and he didn't like putting the hurt on a woman who already seemed terrifyingly fragile. "You still with me, honey? Last thing I want is a gorgeous lady bursting into tears in my chair."

The corners of her mouth twitched in a whisper of a smile. "You're right, Trix. He's a flirt."

"Told you." The redhead leaned over, bracing her elbows on the table. "It looks good, Jade. Real good."

Usually Trix leaning over anything made for a banner day. The redhead had a killer rack and a wardrobe meant to show it off, and Ace had always enjoyed ogling her tits.

Today, he was too hung over to summon more than a sad echo of his usual grin. "So, you two like to talk about me, huh?"

"Don't start," Trix advised. "You were drunk as shit last night. Even if we wanted to bask in your attentions today, you'd be no good to either of us."

"Baby, I'm an O'Kane. My drunk attentions would still rock your world."

"So I hear."

It was Trix at her sultriest, flashing a knowing gaze and a teasing pout, and he supposed he was lucky she was still talking to him at all. The O'Kane women were harder to get between than an Eden virgin's thighs, which meant he'd been getting a lot of cold shoulders since he'd pissed off Rachel.

Last night sure as hell wasn't gonna fix that.

Swiping the spot he'd just been working on, Ace spent a moment admiring the clean lines swirling across Jade's brown skin. The O'Kane emblem was always the centerpiece of a member's cuffs, but the framing had to fit the person. Trix's were among his favorite--lace and swooping curves, just like her--but something sassy and flirty wouldn't work with Jade.

She was elegant, and she was tough. Lex had hauled the woman out of Sector Five, drugged out of her skull and so past addicted that even Doc hadn't thought she'd pull through. Her fragility was skin-deep at best, an illusion that would fade as her health came back.

No lace for her. Nothing delicate. Strong roots twining around the emblem and twisting down, forming an unshakable base. Strong branches rising above, dotted by tiny leaves. He'd spent most of a sleepless night sketching it, and a good part of the morning refining it.

Yeah, he'd been drunk off his ass, but he was still a fucking genius.

Jade tensed as he started the next line, her stoicism wavering, and Ace filled the silence quickly. "So, there must be a party in the offing. Noah and Six haven't had their big O'Kane welcome yet, and now you'll be needing one, too." He shot Trix a meaningful look--
Help me distract her
--before resuming his work.

Trix winked and stroked Jade's hair back from her forehead. "You and Ace should help me convince Scarlet to get her band out here for it. Her bass player's delicious."

"
She's
delicious," Ace replied, flashing Trix a teasing grin. "Better watch out, Trixie-girl. I bet you're just her type. I heard she likes her girls all pretty and curvy."

Trix blushed. "She's too into power games for me, thanks."

"Everything's a power game," Jade murmured. "Sometimes we don't realize we're playing, and sometimes we're not playing the game we thought...but if there's trust, there's power. And if there's no trust, it's just a more dangerous version of the game."

Trix propped her chin on one hand. "Do you really believe that?"

"Mmm. That's all my training was, at the heart of it. Learning to recognize what game a person wanted to play, even if he didn't know it himself."

An elegant way to put it, but Sector Two trained their courtesans to be refined and clever. Ace's mentor had tailored his lessons to his student, and Ace had learned the blunt version.
Almost nobody knows what they really want. Figure it out before they do, and you own them.

Great advice, if you could follow it. The two people he'd trained with had. Jared and Gia could spend five minutes with anyone, man
or
woman, and know a half-dozen paths straight to their soul. Ace had always preferred games where the rules were set in advance--games where they had to be set in advance, because you couldn't play them if everyone wasn't on board.

Maybe if he'd studied better, he'd know what games Rachel wanted to play.

"What if you love someone?"

Jade hesitated, and Ace glanced up in time to catch a flicker of sadness before she schooled her features again. "I imagine it's a much scarier game with far higher stakes."

He had blunt words for that concept, too--
too fucking much to lose.
They were the words that pounded through his skull every time he pictured Rachel tied to his bed, naked and hungry and
his
.

Or, more often than not lately,
theirs
.

His fantasies about her had never been tame, but they'd flown off the rails since the night he'd gone down on Cruz. That was as far as they'd taken things that night, though they'd tag-teamed Jeni so hard she'd been incoherent with glee for a straight fucking week. She kept begging him to bring Cruz back for another round, but Ace couldn't do it. He couldn't fucking do it.

He wanted Rachel between them. Rachel helping him suck Cruz's dick. Rachel wrapped in chains, bound immobile and groaning around Cruz's cock as Ace laid stripe after stripe of pink across her creamy skin. And that was just the warm-up, the foreplay. They were both shaky-legged innocents, barely dipping their toes into carnal vice. He could drag them into the deep end so fast, so hard.

Too fucking much to lose.

So damn much to gain.

A soft touch on the back of his neck. "Ace?"

Starting, he swiped at Jade's wrist and repositioned her hand for his next set of lines. "What, I'm making art here."

Frowning, Trix stroked her thumb just above his collar again. "You seem worried. Did you hear about Ford?"

Jade sucked in a breath when the needles pierced her skin, but she covered it with a question. "Ford? I don't think I've met him."