"That's just pain. You scratch your skin and it confuses all the nerves, scrambles them so they can't feel the itch anymore."
"I didn't know that." She shivered, tickling where her arm brushed his, and changed the subject so abruptly he wasn't sure he'd heard her right at first. "You can fuck me if you want to."
Bren blinked at her. Instead of an invitation, it felt more like paying the executioner before laying your head on his chopping block. "Don't take this the wrong way, but if you really wanted to fuck me, you wouldn't need to tell me it was okay."
She winced and looked away. "I don't know if I want to fuck," she admitted after an awkward moment. "But I don't mind it. And the fucking comes with other stuff here. Everyone's always touching."
Comfort. Connection. "If that's what you want, ask for that. I'll give it to you."
It took her two deep breaths and a wary glance at him to form the words, and they came in a whisper. "Do you mind? If you don't want to..."
He pulled her close with one arm, wrapping it around her body as he moved her in front of him. Her body nestled against his, curvy and strong. He stroked his other hand down her arm and whispered in her ear. "Watch."
Ace had moved on to fucking the blonde on stage. She moaned and thrashed fitfully against her bindings, more so every time Ace slammed deep and paused to work her reddened shoulders with the flogger. He had a sense of theatrics suited to the stage, and a finely tuned understanding of the woman beneath him.
Six squirmed, goose bumps rising beneath Bren's fingers. "I believe you now. She's...definitely not faking."
"Not even a little."
"And you like watching?"
"I like pleasure." Her skin heated, and he slowed his strokes. "Everything about it."
"Oh." A sound, caught somewhere between a gasp and a moan. On the stage, Ace's blonde tipped over the edge into a screaming orgasm, and Six turned her cheek toward Bren's shoulder and closed her eyes.
As if she couldn't watch.
But that was okay. He soothed her with a soft noise and whispered the promise he'd made himself, the one he kept giving her over and over. "Plenty of time."
Chapter Twenty
No one had ever really understood Dallas's reluctance to screw one of the women in the gang. Oh, they pretended to, nodded and smiled, but most of them thought he was fucking crazy for not riding every willing girl who crawled into his lap. God knew there were some smoking hot ladies sporting his ink, but aside from Lex, he'd never been all that tempted.
The guys didn't think he was crazy anymore.
Word spread. He didn't know how, but it always did. The first whispers had popped up the moment Lex set foot outside his room without the collar, and they'd swelled from there. By the next morning, everyone in the gang knew that Lex and Dallas were fighting, and not in their usual way.
Dallas had expected the girls to turn on him. He hadn't anticipated how cold they could get, but their disapproval didn't shock him. The number of men who'd joined them in expressing protective anger did.
Maybe it shouldn't have. Lex championed the women, to be sure, but she was just as prominent a presence in the men's lives. She was the one who dealt with all the details that made life comfortable, the one who kept everyone happy and healthy and harmoniously fucking at frequent parties.
In retrospect, he probably should have expected the men to turn on him first.
The worst part was agreeing with them. He had fucked up. He'd told Lex all the wrong things at exactly the wrong time. Trying to keep his plan from her had been a fool's game. It might have worked before, when they'd lived parallel lives, but not now that they were all tangled up in each other day and night.
Well. They had been.
The knock on his door startled him so much he clenched his fist and snapped a pencil in half. No one had willingly gotten within ten damn feet of him all day--the ones that weren't pissed at him were wary of his temper--which made him wonder what the hell could drive someone into his domain. "Come in!"
The door popped open, and Dylan Jordan strolled into his office. "Good evening to you too, O'Kane."
"Doc." A chill shivered down Dallas's spine as he studied the