Beyond Pain (18 page)

Not
quite
a stage, but Lex was turning it into one. For once, Six couldn't look away.

The hem of Rachel's tank top rucked up, baring pale skin as Lex cupped her shoulder beneath the fabric. "Soft and sweet. You've tried to harden up, but that's not you."

Rachel swayed and blinked before clearing her throat. "Isn't it?"

No, it wasn't her. Six could see it a mile off, a gentleness wrapped around her that no one else possessed, not even Noelle, with all her city innocence and open affection. Maybe that was why watching Rachel on the stage was so difficult--something that precious should be cherished, not thrown to the wolves, naked and unprotected.

She was protected now, with Lex in front of her and Dallas sprawled behind, and Six had no doubt the man was aware of everything. Of Lex and Rachel, of the area beyond their circle of light, of every possible variable. Hell, he probably knew how many breaths Six had taken since she sat down.

Not enough to keep her head clear. She exhaled gustily and slid her fingers over Bren's leg in search of his hand.

He wrapped it around hers, leaned closer, and whispered, "Anytime you need to go, say the word."

Lex smoothed her fingers toward Rachel's breasts, and Six shivered as she imagined the phantom touch on her own skin. Not Lex's hands, though. Bren's, work-roughened and sure, scraping sensation in their wake. "As long as they want us watching--"

On the dais, Rachel hissed in a breath as Lex stripped off the tank top she wore, exposing her to sight as well as touch. "Is this what you like?" She accompanied the question with a gentle sweep of her thumb over Rachel's nipple. "This?" A quick flick of the hardened peak.

Even Six could see she wanted more. Dallas apparently agreed. His laughter rolled across the room, low and lazy, as he stretched out his legs. "I think she likes it rougher, darling. Those sweet nipples are aching to be pinched. Make her lick your fingers first."

"Yes, sir." Lex traced her fingers over Rachel's mouth but pulled them back just a little when she parted her lips. Her tongue darted out, but she still had to chase after Lex's hand.

She licked Lex's fingertips slowly, leaving them wet and glistening. "Like that?"

"Mmm, so obedient." Instead of dropping her hand, Lex wound it into Rachel's hair with a wicked grin. "But I like to misbehave." Then she dipped her head and sucked one pink nipple into her mouth.

Dallas laughed again, watching with no hint of disapproval. Six fidgeted on the couch, as if that would change the fact that her nipples were tight enough to ache.

And she was starting to ache other places, too.

She didn't
have
to imagine Bren's mouth on her nipple. She could summon the sensation from memory--the rough suction, the hint of teeth, the way it shot pleasure straight to her clit. And he was right there beside her, his body warm and hard against her left side. He seemed relaxed, his expression remaining the same even when Lex switched to Rachel's other nipple and yanked at the woman's jeans.

A moment later, she slipped her hand into the denim and straightened just in time to catch Rachel's ragged moan with her open mouth.

Bren shifted beside Six, his hand stroking over hers.

Her focus narrowed to those precious inches of skin. Dallas was talking again, saying something about fingers and making Rachel come, but even the most obscene words tripping out of his mouth couldn't compete with Bren tracing a leisurely path from her knuckles to her nails and back.

She wet her suddenly dry lips and whispered the first thing that popped into her head, anything that would distract her from how badly she needed him to stroke her everywhere else. "Lex isn't very obedient."

"No." The side of Bren's hand brushed her thigh. "But Dallas likes it."

That didn't make sense. Nothing made sense about these men and their indulgent idea of dominance. Dallas had tried to explain it at the first party she'd attended, claiming he didn't need to prove he was the strongest, because his people trusted him to make life good.

He didn't bully, he seduced.

Just like Bren. "You said you like being dominant, too."

"It's what I am," he corrected. "I've tried to submit. It doesn't work."

Submit.
The word still tightened her chest with fear, and not the kind she liked, the kind that heightened an experience. This lodged in her throat like a lump of tears, no matter how hard she fought it down.

In the darkness, watching Rachel writhe on Lex's fingers, everything seemed a little surreal. Distant enough for Six to whisper her confession. "I don't know what submission means here, but I'm scared I won't be able to give it to you."

"It doesn't mean one thing to everyone." He nodded to the dais. "Watch."

Rachel shuddered and made a frustrated noise as Lex slowed the pace of her hand. "Don't stop," she begged. "Let me come--"

"Shh." Lex licked a delicate line of ink tracking across Rachel's collarbone. "Not this quick, honey. Up and down a couple times first. You'll come so hard you can't see straight. Right, Declan?"

"Mmm." Dallas and Lex exchanged a look, and he smiled as he stroked his thumb along his belt. "Why don't you get her out of those pants so we can do the first time up right?"

"Hear that, honey?" Lex bit Rachel's earlobe and shoved the loosened jeans off her hips. "We."

Another shudder, and she clung to Lex's shoulders as she stepped free of the denim and her white lace panties. "We?"

"Dallas can't let me have all the fun." Her voice lowered to an inviting whisper as she pushed her still-wet fingers between Rachel's lips. "You have no idea how deep he can fuck a woman."

Jesus
Christ
.

"Slow, I think." Lex spoke lazily, her words matching the rhythm of her fingers. "Until you get off at least once. Then I want to watch him ride you so hard you can't even scream."

Rachel groaned and twisted one trembling hand in Lex's T-shirt so roughly the thin cotton tore.

"Uh-uh. I didn't say you could take her clothes off." Dallas patted the arm of the couch. "Darling?"

Lex steered Rachel to the end of the couch and bent her over it. The position put her face-to-face with Dallas, and she braced one hand on his chest. Six held her breath until her lungs burned, but she couldn't
breathe
. There was something terrifyingly intense about this moment, about Rachel, naked and vulnerable, bent between two clothed bodies, as open and helpless as she'd ever been on the stage.

Dallas touched Rachel's cheek, so gentle Six's breath exploded from her in a relieved sigh that almost drowned out his words. "You wanna be a good girl, darling?"

"I want--" The words cut off in a cry as Lex bent and licked the small of her back. "I want to be good."

He rewarded Rachel with a smile and slipped his hand into her hair.

The first time he'd fucked her, Bren had grasped Six's hair the same way. Now, she reached up to the braid coiled around her head, and she half-wished she'd taken it down so she could feel that tingle in her scalp.

Bren took over, pulling it down easily and without a word. He unraveled the braid the same way, with silent, practiced ease. Twisted locks of hair tumbled around her face and over her shoulders, tickling her throat as he eased his fingers through the strands.

It was hotter than the hand-holding.

Lex smoothed both hands up Rachel's back and down again, over the swell of her bare ass. "Legs apart, honey," she murmured, rubbing her knuckles over the outer lips of Rachel's pussy.

She obeyed with a whimper, coming off the floor onto her tiptoes, and Six felt the first stirrings of envy. What would it be like to trust so effortlessly? Even when Dallas guided Rachel's cheek to his thigh, leaving her balanced precariously--her ass in the air, her legs spread wide enough to bare her completely to Lex's touch--she looked so damn unconcerned. Starving to get off, maybe, but not the least bit worried about anything else.

"She makes it look easy." Six pressed her thigh more firmly against Bren's.

"Yeah." He took her hand and brought it to his mouth for a slow kiss.

"She's wet." Lex paused long enough to drag her shirt over her head and let it fall to the floor. "Already wet enough for my fingers, if you want me to fuck her."

"Bring her up," Dallas ordered, stroking Rachel's spine with his free hand. "But not all the way, not yet. She's putting on a show, after all."

There was no way Dallas could see them in the darkness, not with the lights glaring down on the dais, but for one moment it felt like he was staring straight at Six as his thumb followed the curve of Rachel's ass. "You want to give everyone a good show, don't you, honey?"

Her desperate nod turned into a shudder as Lex rocked her hand, sliding her fingers deep. She pulled them free to circle Rachel's clit, then did it all over again. One thrust, followed by a slow, wet tease.

Rachel fidgeted helplessly, arching her back and trying to move against Lex's hand until Dallas pinned her in place with a palm on the small of her back.

It was too much for Six. The shamelessness of it all, the intensity, and Bren's lips were still touching her skin, kindling a fire she didn't know how to manage.

She clenched her thighs together and closed her eyes, but that only made it worse. Rachel was panting and moaning, and Dallas whispered filthy encouragement to Lex, things like
is her pussy as sweet as she is?
and
let me see you lick the taste of her off your fingers
.

Too easy to imagine those words directed at Bren, and herself in Rachel's place. It was a fantasy she shouldn't want. Pinned,
bound
, trapped while he worked her and worked her, used his fingers and his tongue and tricks she couldn't imagine, because her part of Sector Three wasn't the kind of place where people sat around dreaming up ways to get a woman off.

God, Bren probably knew them all.

Rachel cried out--sudden, strangled, hoarse--and Lex moaned. "Ride it. Squeeze my fucking fingers and ride it."

Bren exhaled sharply against the back of Six's hand. His mouth opened, and his tongue flicked over her skin.

Biting back a moan, Six slammed her head against the back of the couch. It was a struggle not to lift her hips in a silent plea. She was so turned on, so wet, so
empty
--

"Give her another one," Dallas rasped, the rough tone twisting Six's brain into knots. So she spun it into her fantasy, made it Bren's voice against her ear, demanding she take more.

Leave it to her to need a fantasy with the real thing right next to her, but she couldn't ask. She couldn't even unclench her jaw, or she'd whimper.

A soft tug--Bren's free hand on the zipper of her leather pants.

Her nails scraped the leather cushion as she struggled for breath. "I don't know what I'm doing."

"I do." He pulled the zipper down slowly, the sound eclipsed by another volley of sharp moans from the dais. "Open your eyes and watch them fuck her."

It was more than a command. It was
permission
, and her eyelids drifted open in time to watch Dallas pin Rachel's arms behind her back, his hand massive around her slender wrists. Her expression was pure pleasure, lips parted, eyes clenched shut, and it felt like a lesson.

Trust led to bliss.

Lex kissed the back of Dallas's wrist and reached for her own pants. "Did you know she got drunk once and told me she'd always kinda wanted to have sex with me?" She paused. "
Kinda.
What's that all about?"

Dallas chuckled and stroked Rachel's hair with his free hand. "Not everyone is as forward as you, Lexie."

And that was all Six heard, because Bren's fingertips grazed the bare skin of her abdomen, and it was her turn to lift her hips in a futile attempt to nudge a caress where she needed it.

"Relax," Bren whispered. "Trust me to give it to you."

Trusting wasn't the same thing as relaxing. Hell, it felt like the opposite, her hands clenching as she concentrated on stilling her movements, on waiting for his touch.

She tried not to be jealous that
Rachel
was writhing as much as Dallas's grip on her wrists would allow. Freedom by restraint, a concept that had made no fucking sense until this moment, where holding herself motionless seemed like the hardest thing she'd ever done.

Her body trembled, but she trusted him, and as Lex tugged Dallas's pants open, freeing his cock to press against Rachel's lips, Bren eased his hand lower.

Lower, parting her beneath the leather until his finger brushed her clit.

Glancing contact, too gentle to do anything but twist her into tighter knots, but she still hissed out a breath and let her head fall back, staring blindly at the darkness above them as Dallas's low voice drifted past her. "That's right, honey. Lex is gonna get a good grip on your hair and show you just how I like it."

The murmurs subsided, replaced by the distinct, wet sounds of an enthusiastic blowjob, and Bren teased Six with an even lighter touch.

Her hips began to move, and she groaned and stilled again. "My body's not listening to me."

"Maybe it doesn't follow orders well." His thumb swept over her hipbone.

A lower moan broke through the silence, and Six rolled her head to one side, her gaze swinging automatically back to the stage. Dallas was the one making the noise this time, as Lex and Rachel kissed around the head of his cock until their mouths met in a joyful tangle of clashing tongues.

He still had Rachel pinned in place, and Six wanted to squirm along with her as Lex twisted her fingers in the blonde's hair and guided her to take his cock deeper.

Six wet her lips and skated her nails over Bren's arm. "Doesn't look like Rachel's body follows orders, either, but that's not stopping Dallas."

"Because he knows what she wants." His hand eased lower. "They both do, or they wouldn't have started this."

Rachel's lips slid down Dallas's shaft until they bumped the fist Lex had curled around the base, and the visual was so raw Six gave up. She pushed her hips up toward Bren's hand, and hissed in a relieved breath at the momentary pressure. "Well, it's fucking hot."