Free Beyond Shame by Kit Rocha

generator's acting up again. Need to get a grease monkey out here to look at it."
    "That'll take forever. Have Rachel knock off her shift early and check it out."
    "Rachel can't stand the sight of my face. Maybe you should ask."
    Jasper sighed. "You wouldn't have this problem if you weren't such a fucking jerk ."
    Ace seemed unperturbed. "Could be worse. I could be Dom."
    "Barely worse."
    "That's the blue balls talking."
    "Shithead." Jasper stretched his neck, trying to ease a little of the trapped feeling he always got sitting in the chair too long. "Make sure you put healing gel on the tat. Maybe I'll go out with you and Bren tonight before the fights, after all. Clear my head."
    "Hey, man, if you want to. We've got liquor deliveries to make to those dives west of the market district, and then we need to collect protection money from the brothel."
    Work. A task that could consume his attention as well as anything else. "I'm in."
    Ace swiped at Jasper's chest again and paused to consider the bleeding heart taking shape there. "I still have to fill in your princess's bar code. Think she's going to faint on me?"
    Jasper remembered her skin heating under his hand the night before, how soaking wet her pussy had been after one smack on the ass. She'd liked having her hair pulled, liked the commands as much as the touches and tongues.
    Did she get off on other kinds of pain too? Would having the needles thrust into her delicate skin over and over get her as hot? He could picture the black vinyl seat, slick and shiny with the evidence of her unbearable arousal. They'd have to strap her down to stop her squirming, but once they had, he could put his face between her thighs, fuck her with his tongue while Ace obliterated the bar code, her last link to the city that hadn't wanted her.
    He wanted her.
    "I'll bring her in," he muttered. Better he be there—just in case.

    Three days outside Eden, and her old life seemed like a dream.
    Noelle leaned against the bar and watched Rachel swirl alcohol into a shot glass, the other woman's movements practiced and effortless. The scent of liquor was amazing, sharp and heady. Every moment in the sectors was so real , gritty and hard, smashing into her numbed senses. She'd eaten at the most expensive restaurants in Eden, but nothing had tasted as rich as the charred grilled cheese sandwich the grumpy cook had shoved on her before the bar opened.
    Three days, and she still hadn't grieved.
    It had to be partly shock. The trauma of going from jail to the streets to drugged out of her mind. But when she tried to picture her bedroom at home, she didn't miss the luxuries. Showers with endless hot water, electricity that came from underground wires rather than loud, smoke-spitting generators. Instead she remembered the locks on her windows. The cameras that tracked her every movement. The guards. The rules. Her father's endless sermons.
    Her father's endless rage.
    Shivering, she banished his face from her memory and concentrated on Rachel's movements. "You came from Eden too, didn't you?"
    "Yep. I doubt we ever ran in the same circles, though." The blonde smiled impishly. "I was solidly middle class."
    Noelle tried to return the smile. "My acquaintances were limited mostly to the families of my father's political allies. We had bodyguards with us whenever we left the house—I always thought they were there to keep us from being exposed to dangerous ideas or people."
    "Dallas has meat shields go everywhere with him here, but it's mostly to keep people from blowing his head off. Your boy Jasper's one of them, you know."
    Your boy. Another inexplicable discovery. Jasper had hardly said two words to her that weren't about sex, and she was infatuated with him. Or maybe she wanted to believe it was him and not the way he made her feel, dirty and fulfilled all at once.
    And yet... "I don't think he's my boy. He won't even...you know."
    Rachel dumped ice into another, larger glass. "Won't what? Fuck