Free Beyond Possession (Beyond #5.5) by Kit Rocha

smirked behind their hands. She'd stumbled home aching and smudged with soot, the Cinderella of Sector Four who'd already shunned her fairy godmother when she wouldn't let Gia keep her as a pet.
    But it had paid off. Day by day, she'd earned their grudging respect. They stopped smirking, stopped shunning her. Stuart had been the first to strike a deal, but once he relented, everyone loyal to the O'Kanes followed swiftly behind. People began to barter with her. To shop at her store. To welcome her as one of them.
    And she could lose it all in a heartbeat if she took one wrong step.
    God, she already had. She'd fucked an O'Kane. Not even a nice, clean fuck—she'd opened that box of frustrated desire, all the power and submission that belonged in a stable, trusting relationship instead of an illicit one-night stand.
    Gia would have smacked her ass good for that. Or hell, maybe not. It wasn't as if Tatiana hadn't been her usual too-demanding self. No patient obedience or placid vulnerability, only selfish hunger that still hadn't faded, because she couldn't shake the feel of him.
    She was like those sad old-timers, hooked on O'Kane whiskey and rationalizing all the ways that one drink wasn't a bad thing. One drink to heat the blood on a cold night. One to drive away an ache in the bones. Just one more sip. One more taste.
    Until someone caught Zan creeping out of her bedroom and every person who'd ever supported her father started whispering that she was an O'Kane whore. They didn't need power to destroy Tatiana's life. The only person they needed was curled up in Wallace's bed, dreaming of being a princess again.
    So today she wouldn't think about Zan and his big, warm hands and his big, hard body. She'd think about soap and profit margins and how the batch she was pouring might be the most valuable yet.
    Color had been the key to cracking the Eden market. In the sectors, most people just wanted function. Soap that got them clean, lotion that soothed dry skin, salves that helped sore muscles.
    But practicality wasn't enough to open the fancy pocketbooks in Eden. They wanted things to be beautiful, too. So she'd improvised, experimented. The results were spread out before her—twenty pounds of rose-scented soap in her largest mold, with row after row of alternating colors across the top.
    This was the tricky part. Each stripe of color had to be precise, but she had to make them all before the soap solidified too much. Because the final touch was to swirl the colors together in an intricate, dizzying pattern by dragging a board with a few dozen nails pounded through it back and forth through the liquid soap.
    That was the part Eden paid for, that thin layer of color that added nothing of substance but quadrupled her asking price. Of course, the store owners turned around and charged their customers even more, but this was the best Tatiana could hope for. It wasn't like she could lure the fancy women of Eden down to a sector market to do their shopping.
    It was something. And God, she needed a victory today.
    She'd finished the lines of color and eased the board with its sharp, shining nails into place when the bell above her office door jingled. It was out of place, and it took her a second to realize why—she'd locked all of the doors before coming into her workroom.
    She lunged for the pistol on her side table, but that took a second too long. A meaty arm looped around her waist and dragged her back.
    "Shh." A hand that smelled of dirt and grease clamped over her mouth. "Just want to talk, princess."
    The voice was familiar. One of the vicious bastards who had followed her father—and followed Wallace, now. Buzz had been too cowardly to fight alongside his so-called brothers, but he'd been quick enough to come after her in the aftermath, eager to take a pass at the boss's no-longer-untouchable daughter.
    She'd been softer back then. Still grieving, terrified. Still convinced that O'Kane would turn on her at any moment, so she