Beyond Shame (3 page)

Her mother had been afraid of the dark, but Noelle had never shared that anxiety. Still, she felt a twinge of it now as she wet her lips and spoke. "Lights, twenty percent?" She turned it into a question out of instinct, and her answer was more darkness.

No, no one out in the sectors would rely on computers for something pre-Flare technology could handle just fine with far less expense. Which meant she had to stumble out of bed and find a light switch. How deliciously uncivilized.

The cement floor was cool under her bare feet, and rough. No plush carpets softened the hard expanse, only a rug half hidden by the bed that had folded out of the couch. Noelle skirted the edge of the mattress with halting steps and blinked into the gloom, trying to make out the shapes around her.

She stumbled a little as she worked her way around the room, but eventually her questing fingers encountered a switch. Turning it on flooded the room with low, diffuse light, something that made everything visible enough but kept the corners shadowed and the room itself...intimate.

Or maybe it only seemed that way because of the bed. All of Lex's furniture was nice, but her bed dominated one side of the room, piled with sleek cushions and luxurious sheets that could have easily belonged in Noelle's bedroom back home. High quality, expensive—and utterly out of place surrounded by unadorned brick walls and cement floors.

There were four doors Noelle could see. One opened out into the hallway, and another she thought might be the closet. Hoping one of the remaining two led to a bathroom, she opened the one closest to her and found a treasure trove instead.

This second room was smaller and contained only a table and a pair of chairs. But the walls were covered in art—not the digital kind displayed on the enormous plasma screens currently popular in Eden, but pre-Flare masterpieces. Hypnotized, Noelle moved to stand in front of the closest painting, an Impressionist piece in a gilded frame.

This close, she could smell the slightly musty scent of the canvas and paint, could see the individual brushstrokes. She touched a faded red rose petal and marveled at the subtle ridges of the paint, three-dimensional and
vivid
in a way nothing in Eden was, not anymore.

Lex spoke sharply from the doorway. "That's probably older than anything you've ever owned. You might want to stop pawing it."

Noelle stumbled, shoving her hands behind her back as if that would change what was already done. "I'm sorry. I've never seen anything like it outside of textbooks. I was just—" What? Snooping? No explanation was adequate.

"Having a look around. I get it." Lex dropped her black knapsack in the corner and began to peel off the high-collared jacket she wore. "It was a gift. The Renoir, I mean."

Noelle tugged at the hem of her borrowed T-shirt, self-conscious about her bare legs. "It's beautiful. Priceless. Someone must think very highly of you."

The woman snorted and turned toward a small sliding door on the far wall. "It cost money. Some people have more of that than they know what to do with."

Lex seemed to be one of them. Noelle tried not to be nosy, but the open closet door revealed tangled piles of jewelry and sculptures mixed with electronics that must have been smuggled from the city at great cost. She even saw one or two sleek weapons—guns, honest-to-God
guns
, something she'd rarely seen within the walls of Eden, and never anywhere but in the hands of the military police.

Noelle turned her attention back to the painting, back to Lex's words. People—men—with more money than they knew what to do with. Eden had its share of those. More than its share. "I'm familiar with people like that. They think they can buy anything. Or anyone." And in her experience, they usually could.

"No, not—" Lex stowed her bag and faced Noelle. "You can't buy people here with money, especially women. You buy them with security, safety, all the things that have always been true in societies where men hold the power. But we hold power, too. Remember that—there are things we have, things we can offer. Things they need."

Noelle couldn't imagine that any of the men here gave a damn about the things she'd been raised and trained to do. Organizing and managing a household, hosting elaborate dinner parties where she smiled at important city leaders and used her mother's encyclopedic knowledge of their foibles and vanities to flatter them into agreeable moods.

Noelle gripped the hem of her shirt again. "I don't have much to offer the men here. Except..." If she couldn't even choke out the word, how was she supposed to offer them sex?

"Fucking is the least of it," Lex muttered. "Everyone has a couple of holes a guy can stick his dick in. The important stuff is all above the neck."

It felt like her entire body had flushed, but Noelle fought past self-consciousness. "What's the important stuff?"

"Using your brain, baby girl. There's nothing you need to know about anyone that you can't figure out in ten seconds flat." She beckoned. "Follow me."

Lex walked into the bedroom, flicked on another lamp on the nightstand and sat on the bed, crossing her legs. "Now—how do you get under my skin? What do I like?"

During the course of their acquaintance, Lex had shouted at Jasper, whose formidable presence weakened Noelle's knees, and had snapped just as viciously at Dallas O'Kane, a figure of criminal legend. Everyone in Sector Four lived or died by Dallas's whim—Lex had admitted as much when she'd said he made the laws here.

But she'd yelled at him, and she hadn't shown fear. Noelle sank to the edge of the bed and rubbed her fingers over the expensive duvet. She thought about the priceless art, the silken sheets and the closet full of valuables hidden away like a treasure instead of displayed proudly, the way her father's friends showed off the things they bought with their vast wealth.

"You like beautiful things, but you don't need them to make you feel important." She smiled a little shyly. "Maybe you have a soft spot for things that get thrown away."

Lex laughed. "The last part's true." Her amusement faded. "Dallas gave me the paintings."

Noelle wet her lips. "Are you and Dallas—" Did people marry in the sectors? In Eden, marriage was a sacrament, but nothing sacred was likely to survive in the slums. "—together?"

"What do you think? If he had me already, would he be dropping thousands on pretty presents to catch my eye?"

"Perhaps not." She tilted her head and regarded Lex, searching for the meaning beneath the words. "Is that the only power we have? Not being caught?" The thought turned Lex's blithe freedom into its own sort of cage.

"No. It's your first lesson." Lex brushed Noelle's hair back behind her ear. "It's not like in the city. Belonging to someone isn't the endgame, the point where they're allowed to get lazy. It's a beginning, one you have to be damn sure you want."

Her skin prickled under the other woman's touch. Not sexual arousal, not exactly, but a sensual pleasure she'd only begun to crave when she'd started spending time with people who violated the social taboo forbidding unnecessary physical contact.

"Thank you," she blurted out, leaning in to Lex's touch. "For convincing Dallas to give me a chance. I'll learn anything I need to learn. I can't go to the communes—they're even worse than Eden."

"You'd go if you had to, and you'd be all right. Trust me, honey.
That
is the important thing."

To Noelle's everlasting humiliation, her eyes burned. She blinked them twice before realizing there was no stopping it, then squeezed them shut as the first tear slipped free. "I didn't really think my family would throw me away. I only wanted to feel something. I know I was privileged, that I must seem like a spoiled city brat..." Her chest felt
tight
, as if all the weight of Eden's claustrophobic expectations were closing in on her again.

"Are you kidding me?" Lex pulled her into a hug and made soothing noises. "No offense, baby girl, but I wouldn't have had your life there for anything."

Her tears soaked Lex's shirt, but the answer was there, just beyond reach. "Why?" Noelle didn't even know what she was asking. Why wouldn't Lex want her life? Why hadn't it been enough for
her
? Why had she thrown it all away?

Lex answered them all with three words. "You weren't free," she said. "You can be here, you know. Dallas talks big about shit, but he's never forced a woman to do anything she didn't want. Remember that too, Noelle."

"I don't know what I want. I don't know
anything
."

"That's why you try things. Eventually, you stumble across the ones that make you happy." Lex kissed her cheek. "And you learn. Everything anyone tells you, file it away in that brain of yours."

She could do that. She'd always been mind-hungry, devouring everything in her parents' digital library before going so far as to learn how to circumvent tablet security to gain access to the more restricted titles, old books from a time before fear and morality had swallowed everything. "I'm good at remembering things."

Lex patted her back. "Go crawl in bed, honey. I'd let you stay in mine, but I don't think you really want to."

She rather did, and not just because the sheets would feel heavenly against her skin. Touching Lex meant having an anchor instead of being cast adrift in the darkness that would soon envelop the room.

But she'd already cried and laid her soul bare. Enough humiliation for one lifetime, let alone a single evening. She slipped from Lex's enormous bed and crawled back onto the lumpy mattress that folded out of the couch. "Can you help me find a job tomorrow?"

"We'll see, all right?"

It was as close to a promise as she was likely to get. Noelle settled her head against the pillow and closed her eyes, feeling more hopeful than she had in...forever, maybe. "Thank you, Lex."

The lamp clicked off, followed by the overhead lights. Clothing rustled in the darkness, and a light flared, illuminating the space closest to the couch. "Here," Lex murmured, setting the tiny round lamp on the end table near Noelle's head.

The glow was just enough to paint Lex's features in intriguing shadows, but not so bright that it would give Noelle trouble sleeping. "I guess you only needed ten seconds to figure me out," she said, trying to turn the words into a joke.

"Maybe a little more. Get me drunk sometime, and I'll tell you what I figured out."

How convenient it would be to have Lex explain Noelle's own secrets to her. Then she wouldn't have to bother to learn them herself. "As soon as you'll let me drink."

"Uh-huh. Good night, Noelle."

Lex

She didn't ask Dallas for much, never had, but she'd ask him for this.

Lex leaned against the side of the car. "She doesn't have anyone, and she's helpless. Tossing her out on her ass would just be
wrong
."

Under the hood, Dallas grunted as metal clanged on metal. "Eden spits out a dozen like her a week, love. That's what happens when you only give reproductive drugs to the righteous. They pop out ignorant, helpless babies like it's a contest to see who can produce the most useless human being."

"She has a name, you know." Lex reached out to trace the shell of his ear. "And if she were really useless, she'd be crying in a heap on my bedroom floor."

Dallas spared her a look, turning his head just enough to bite the tip of her finger. "Don't tell me she's not damn close to it."

"A couple weeks, okay? Give her a chance. She'll probably blow you once or twice and then settle down, make one of the guys very, very happy."

He snorted and focused on the old car's engine again. "That girl couldn't spit out the word fornication without turning fifteen shades of red. What the hell happened after I left? I miss a hot time?"

Not even close, but the spark was there. The hunger. Lex could practically taste it. "She wants to be a little bad. How is she going to do that on a peanut farm or whatever?"

Sighing, Dallas straightened and tossed aside the wrench. "Are you seeing what's really there, Lexie? Or what you want to see?"

As if he knew the first damn thing about what she wanted. "Easy way to find out. You throwing a party tonight?"

"I was, yeah." He wiped his hands on a rag and rubbed his thumb over her lower lip, a clear sign that his thoughts had shifted from cars to sex. "You think she could survive it?"

"One way to find out." He still tasted like motor oil and metal. Lex licked the pad of his thumb and wrapped her fingers around his belt buckle. "Are you saving your strength for later?"

"My strength doesn't need saving, love. Not with you around."

His jeans were already tightening across the hard bulge of his cock. Lex kept hold of his belt and pulled him toward the back door of the warehouse.

Inside, she reached under his shirt and traced circles over his chest while her vision adjusted to the near darkness of the back hall. Dallas leaned against the wall and watched her through narrowed eyes. "Don't think I'm not on to you, girl."

She tensed, but only for a moment, before unbuckling his belt. "What do you mean?"

He caught her wrist with one hand and her chin with the other. "Don't get on your knees for this. If you're that damn taken with the girl, she can stay. Hell, have Ace give her the full wrist cuffs if you want."

Relief warred with anger. He hadn't really figured her out, that secret part of her with all its insane desires. But the fact that he thought she'd use her body, her mouth, as currency, pissed her off plenty.

Lex still had one hand free, and she slapped him with it. "I'm not a whore. Not even for you."

She'd seen Dallas kill men for less, but he only growled and caught her other wrist. "Everyone's a whore for me
except
you. It gets goddamn tedious."

She could barely think with his fingers wrapped around her wrists, trapping her and yet careful not to squeeze tight. "Liar. You need me to keep your head on straight. Just one person you can't buy."

His laugh swept over her. "Sweet, silly bitch. The whores are the tedious ones."