Lex. I want it." He snapped the lighter shut to emphasize his point before starting to roll a second cigarette. "Sometimes I'll want you to give it to me. Sometimes I'll want to take it. You need to be right with both."
It pulled the air out of her lungs. Part of her wanted to blame it on the smooth tobacco smoke, but she couldn't, not with her attention riveted to the lines of his face as he stared down at the paper in his hand.
Control. Oh, how she'd hungered to let go for a little while, to have Dallas hold it all, but the way he spoke proved he didn't know. Maybe not how much, or maybe not at all.
She opened her mouth to say something, anything remotely coherent. Instead, she sucked in a rough, ragged breath.
He lifted the second cigarette, and his gaze flicked to hers as he drew his tongue along the edge of the rolling paper, licking it like a lover.
"I don't know if I can give it," she said in a rush. "Not entirely. But you can take it. Me."
After a pause, he nodded. "Here's what we're going to do. You're going to take a day and think. Really think. And then you're going to tell me what you like, what you don't like, and what's straight-up off-limits."
There were no such things as boundaries, no limits when it came to Dallas. "And if I don't need a day?"
He lit his own cigarette and exhaled toward the ceiling. "Take it anyway. Seriously consider it--for me."
"You want me to...what? Make a list?"
"Yes," he said without hesitation. "An honest one."
"Of things I don't want you to do." Jesus, it'd take her all day to think of one. "All right. You, too."
He smiled and nodded, then changed the subject. "Tell me what you've heard about Sector Three."
"What everyone's heard--that it's falling apart. Wilson Trent may have been a piss-poor leader, but he was a leader. Now they don't have anybody calling the shots." Lex tilted her head. "You're not thinking of staging a takeover, are you? The other sector leaders might not want Three and all its problems, but if it looks like you're expanding your power base, they'll flip their shit. Guaranteed."
"It'd mean going back to late nights and double shifts," he admitted. "The money might not make up for it at first, especially if we have to bring in new bodies to hold the territory. And we'll need real friendly neighbors in Two and Five." He paused. "So, no. No takeover. Not yet, anyway."
Lex stiffened. "I wouldn't count on Two. Cerys is only real friendly when it serves her purposes. And who the hell knows what Mac Fleming's doing half the time over in Five."
"He's cooking drugs," Dallas replied, his mouth twisting around his distaste. "Getting as rich as we are too, and maybe richer, since he plays both sides. Medicinal and recreational."
Dallas hadn't minded availing himself of Fleming's regenerative technology when Lex and Noelle had both had bullet holes in them. "He keeps to himself. No reason to cause trouble--but no reason to throw in and back you on anything, either."
Clamping his cigarette between his lips, Dallas shoved everything on his desk to one side with a careless sweep of his arm and unrolled a meticulously sketched map of Eden and the surrounding sectors. The city walls formed a near-perfect circle in the middle, with the eight main roads out of the city thrusting out like spokes on a wheel.
Dallas thumped an ashtray down in the corner near Sector Seven to secure the edge and frowned at the map. "Mad brought back some updates," he muttered around the cigarette as he jabbed his finger at an area marked with fresh ink in a slightly darker color. "Seven's in trouble. Eden seized two-thirds of their fields. Mad thinks the city's building more wind farms."
Lex rose and bent over the map, bracing her elbows on two of the other curled edges. "The ones they've already got plus the solar arrays aren't enough?"
Dallas bit off a bitter laugh. "Probably. But hell, what are a few potato farms compared to the ladies in Eden getting to use their fancy hair dryers whenever they want?"
No wonder people had been flooding into Sector Six and pushing outward, toward the wide, empty spaces away from the city. "I wonder what Eight'll do when Seven empties."
"Eight's always tricky." Dallas traced his finger over the manufacturing district that made up a healthy part of that sector.