Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men, #6)

by Darling, Giana

  “Love you, back,” I shouted through my giggles before she put me down.

  When we went back to dancing, we did it holding hands.

  At some point, a tingle of awareness nestled at the base of my spine, then ran icy fingers up my hot back. I opened my eyes to half-mast, half-drunk on peach bourbon smashes and the heady bass of Bishop Briggs’ “Dead Man’s Arms”. Lazily, I swept my eyes over the crowd of churning bodies, moving over the sight of Lila in Nova’s arms with sudden excitement.

  If Nova was here now, did any of the other brothers come with him?

  Nova caught my eye as he hauled Lila up into his arms and minutely shook his head before devouring his woman’s eager mouth. I looked away, disappointment a bitter tang on the back of my tongue. I looked to the left to see Harleigh Rose being bent over Lion’s arm as he attacked her mouth and squeezed his big hand high on her thigh.

  I closed my eyes again, my focus lost, the high of the music and my sisterhood collapsing around my feet.

  “I’m going to the bathroom,” I shouted at Cleo as she spun gracefully beside me.

  She frowned, tossing her sweaty light brown hair out of her eyes. “I’ll come with!”

  I shook my head, darting forward to kiss her sweat-damp cheek. “I just need a minute, okay? I’ll be right back.”

  She bit her lip but nodded hesitantly, concern in her big grey eyes.

  I ignored it, pushing through the crowd toward the bathroom, suddenly feeling emotional. How was it possible that amid all this humanity, I felt so wretched with loneliness?

  It was simple, really.

  I was obsessed, addicted really, to one man, and I always felt off-balance without his presence nearby, even in those years before he truly noticed me. It was as if he was gravity tethering my dreamy soul to reality, grounding my romanticism in truth, casting shadow and depth to my light.

  Clearly, the drink was making me maudlin.

  There was a line up to the girl’s washroom, so I delved further down the hall and turned the corner, searching for the handicap option. It was tucked just beside an emergency escape, and I was grateful when I found it unoccupied.

  I closed the door, flipped the lock, and braced my hands on the basin as I stared into the mirror. I didn’t wear much makeup, but my gloss was eaten off my lips, and the mascara on my lashes smeared beneath my eyes. My hair was a fluffy mess of curls around my face, giving me a girly, almost childish air when paired with my outfit.

  I wasn’t the bombshell my sister was, the badass queen like Harleigh Rose, the bohemian beauty of Lila, or the elegant Disney princess that was Cressida.

  I was just me.

  But then I imagined Priest behind me, his stern, unsmiling mouth in that lush, dark red beard, his unruly hair pulled into a messy bun at the back of his neck, his tattooed fingers wrapped around my throat like the sexiest accessory, and I thought, maybe, me was a good thing to be.

  There was a sharp judder at the door as someone tried the handle and found it locked.

  “Occupied,” I called out, turning on the tap to wash my hands.

  Another fierce rattle of the metal handle.

  “Occupied!” I shouted again.

  Silence.

  I adjusted my breasts in my crop top and flashed my reflection a sunny smile I didn’t feel. How could I be so desolate with yearning when I’d just seen Priest one day ago? Was it because I’d given him my virginity? I didn’t think so. Even though I’d been raised to believe sex was meant for a husband and wife, I didn’t subscribe wholesale to every Christian belief. I believed in gay marriage, in a woman’s right to choose, and in having sex when you felt beautiful and brave enough to engage in that intimacy with someone you believed was worthy.

  I stared down at the pink ribbon I had tied on my right wrist and remembered the way Priest had tied it around my hands, binding them at my back so he could use me as he wanted.

  Heat coiled low in my stomach and spread down my thighs.

  I wanted him to wrap that ribbon around my throat just a little too tight. I wanted the tip of his knife against my skin cutting his name into my body to show his ownership over it.

  Because he did own me, body and soul. The only thing I’d never known for sure was if we would be compatible in bed, and after last night, I was sure all of my darkest, most deviant fantasies could only be met and surpassed by the older enforcer with cruel hands and wicked eyes.

  There was a loud crack against the door behind me as if someone had been pushed into the frame. I whirled around, my heart in my throat, hoping everything was okay outside.

  Another massive bang shook the flimsy door but was timed perfectly with the bass of the loud music, so it blended with the melody. I doubt anyone around the corner farther down the hall would hear the cacophony.

  I realized as my breath clogged in my lungs that someone was trying to get inside.

  Instantly, my heart set to racing, sweat breaking out over every inch of my skin. There wasn’t much in the handicap stall to use as a weapon, but I was grateful as ever for the double-edged blade Priest had given me that I wore fixed to my upper thigh beneath my fishnets.

  My fingers fumbled to break open the mesh to get to the knife as there was another bang against the door. The handle fell off from the inside, leaving a hole through to the exterior. In it, I could see the black-clad body of a man.

  A second later, the door swung open on softly creaking hinges. The sound sent shivers scuttling down my spine.

  I looked up through my hair as the man entered, his face obscured in the shadows of his hood. My numb fingers tore through the fishnet, but the knife clattered to the floor between my feet.

  There was a split second that dragged out in slow motion as we both stared at the discarded knife.

  And then we moved.

  I ducked down to grab the knife securely in one hand just as he lunged across the space. One of his hands yanked me by the hair so viciously, I yelped, but I was already bringing the knife up to thrust it hard into his left thigh. A vicious curse tore from his mouth, but he wasn’t deterred. I tried to pull the knife from his clenched muscle, but my fingers were slick with blood. They slipped off the carved wooden handle as he hauled me to my feet and backhanded me hard across the face.

  Pain fizzed through my head, white and blinding.

  There was the odd sensation of my body being moved easily without my consent, my brain momentarily disconnected from my body.

  I came back into it with a jarring, painful suddenness that robbed me of breath.

  He’d lifted me onto the basin, the porcelain cold against my bare ass under the skirt. He was fumbling with my fishnet tights to get at my sex.

  Resolve solidified every molecule in my body with vicious intent. Taking advantage of his momentary distraction, I leaned forward and clamped the bottom of his ear between my teeth. He tried to jerk away, which dislodged me from the sink and sent me sliding to my feet.

  The extra force of my fall tore the bottom off his ear, lobe and cartilage, like a ripping stack of paper. The wet sound of it tearing was sickening, the splash of blood a rush of moisture like sea spray against my face. The taste of iron flooded my mouth, but I didn’t spit it out immediately, too crazed with panic and self-preservation to care about the sluice of blood down my cheeks and chest.

  My attacker staggered back, his hood dislodged so that a strange face glared back at me. I blinked, a little shocked because I’d assumed I would know my attacker; statistics stated that most people were assaulted by those they knew.

  But this was some random white man with a shaved head and a tidy beard. He didn’t look particularly scary, minus the blood coating the hand held to his semi-severed ear.

  He just looked like a man I wouldn’t gaze twice at on the street.

  Then his face transformed, his teeth curling back on a growl as he lunged for me again, one bloody hand grasping and the other holding a knife I hadn’t seen before.

  His gait was awkward wit
h the knife in his thigh, but I had no weapon, and I was cornered.

  Fear crystalized my sight, turning everything into high definition, vivid motion. I wondered, calmly, if this was how I was going to die. If this was it, it, it, and I was going to be dead, dead, dead.

  Before he could reach me, though, he drew up short, eyes blown wide open, torso frozen and arched like a bow with tension. There was a stomach-turning, wet squelch and then the point of a massive knife protruded from his inner right shoulder. I watched it twist, watched my attacker gurgle and actually squeak with pain before he crumpled to the ground unconscious.

  Behind him in the shadows of the open door stood Priest.

  Bea

  A sob boiled up my throat, but I caught it in my hand as I stood, staring wide-eyed at my unlikely hero.

  Priest was cloaked in darkness, only the end of his Roman nose and the steep edge of his taut jaw and high cheekbone caught in the artificial red light of the exit sign just behind him in the hall. He looked like an avenging demon as likely to slay you as to help you, dangerous and on edge despite his calm demeanor.

  But something was in the wait between us, a vibrating energy like a plucked guitar string that sang through my blood.

  He took one step forward, pried the knife from my attacker’s back, checked his pulse, then stepped over his prone body to get to me. His body moved so sinuously—a heavily muscled, grace-greased machine.

  My mouth went dry, and my hand shook where it was still pressed to my blood-coated mouth.

  He stopped only inches away, the tips of my leather heels against his leather boots. He wasn’t breathing hard, but I could see the way his firm mouth parted over his breath, the way his chest moved beneath the familiar, stiff material of his Fallen cut. I soaked up every inch of him, counting the countless freckles on his cheeks above the beard, drawing the shape of his straight eyebrows and the exact angle of his square chin. Just the sight of him soothed the flapping, anxious bird of angry fear attempting to take flight in my belly on broken wings.

  I sucked in a harsh gulp of iron-poisoned air as he slowly lifted his hand and took mine from my mouth. Every inch of me held precariously still as if I was being sniffed by a wild animal when he drew a thick, calloused finger along my already swelling cheekbone, then down to the corner of my mouth where he gently smeared the crying blood onto my lips like a morbid gloss. His gaze intensified as his thumb parted my lips, and the piece of my attacker’s ear, still tucked into my cheek, became visible. Reminded of it, I spat the hunk of flesh out onto the floor to my side. Something in his posture changed, his body tightening and angling toward me.

  Slowly, he turned his head to look at the prone body of the man he’d stabbed, noting the bloody mess at the side of his ear. When his gaze returned to mine, it pinned me as readily as bindings at my hands and feet.

  Something flashed between us, a lightning bolt of lust catching fire to the blood-soaked room.

  And then he was kissing me.

  Kissingmekissingme.

  Kissing me so hard I couldn’t breathe, and I didn’t want to. His hand was still at my mouth, tugging it open with a thumb pressed into the skin beneath my lower lips. I flicked my tongue over it, tasting the salty tang of his skin, the metallic bite of another man’s blood.

  It shouldn’t have been sexy.

  It was wrong, maybe even disgusting.

  But it lit something in me I’d unconsciously been building into the makings of a bonfire for a long, long time.

  I moaned and clawed at his leather clad shoulders, my leg hooking around his leg so I could climb him like a jungle gym. I was desperate for him, this man who was at once a hero and a villain, who was death to so many but so life-affirming for me. I needed him in me, on me, around me. I wanted him to fucking consume me.

  He met my franticness with ease, that hand out of my mouth sliding down to my throat where he pressed hard into my jugular, I knew, to confirm my heartbeat. In his own way, he was frantic too, though more controlled, always more controlled than me.

  His grip bit into my hip as he plastered me to the length of his body, grinding me into his thigh so I could have some friction against my clenching pussy.

  It was wrong to be so turned on, to want sex more than my next breath after almost being assaulted and raped, after ripping off half of my attacker’s ear, the remnants of his blood still on my chin, sucked away by Priest’s mouth on my lips.

  Instead, it was mind-blowingly hot.

  I loved knowing the man we’d beaten was at our feet. I loved feeling like any future obstacle between us would meet the same fate.

  My eager hands fumbled with Priest’s belt but couldn’t work it quickly enough for either of us. With a fierce growl, Priest tore his mouth from mine, finally faintly breathless. He stared hard at the sight of the blood on my skin, of his macabre tombstone tattooed hand on my throat.

  “Fuck,” he cursed in a low, panty-melting growl. “Even blood looks good on you.”

  “I need you,” I begged, beyond the point of shame. Every learned thing I’d once known about purity and sin forgotten in the firestorm of a lust only Priest could bring. “Please.”

  His hand spasmed on my throat. I’d never seen eyes at once so pale a green and so dark, the iris ringed in black, the inside verdant as freshly watered grass. “I fuck you, I’m gonna fuck you hard. Need to mark you after that motherfucker tried to take what’s mine.”

  “If I’m yours, you can take me any way you want,” I promised, arching into his tight grip on my neck, rubbing myself shamelessly on his thigh while I groped the iron pipe of his hard cock at the fly of his jeans. “And Priest? I might look like an innocent little girl, but my fantasies have always been dark, sinful, and rough.”

  I gasped sharply as Priest flipped me around and bent me firmly over the basin. My hair hung in my face as I braced my forearms on the sink, spreading my thighs wide as he flipped up my skirt. There was the snick of his switchblade as he jerked it open, then the cold edge of the blade was pressed to the inside of my thigh. I watched Priest’s face in the mirror as he watched his knife cut through the fishnet, slicing a line from thigh to thigh between my legs, and then a muscle in his jaw leaping as he carefully slid the metal beneath the placket of my ruffle-edged panties. The fabric whispered open as it parted under the sharp edge where he drew it up the crease between my ass cheeks.

  Cool air wafted over my fevered, wet flesh, drawing my attention to just how ready and throbbing I was for him. The ache of that morning was back like a blaring alarm, warning me I would combust without him inside me just as I would combust with him seated to the hilt.

  His hand was rough with callouses against my cheek as he palmed it easily in one mighty hand, squeezing and massaging it roughly before giving it a little smack. When I only moaned and rocked back into him, he spanked me hard in sharp, staccato bursts of heat to each swell. Vaguely, I noticed the clang of his belt coming undone and the harsh rasp of a zipper undoing, but the beat of blood in my ears and that resonant smack of flesh consumed me.

  “Holy God,” I gasped as I thrust back into him. “Oh, my God.”

  “There’s no God in this house of worship,” Priest rasped, collecting my hair in his free hand to wrap it once, twice around his fist. He pulled me back by it like reins so I was staring at him in the mirror, back arched, ass tipped and exposed for him.

  His grin was a dark, blood-red slice across his face. “Only the devil.”

  And then the burning heat of his cock was at my entrance, thrusting inside my sensitive flesh so savagely, I belted out a ragged scream.

  “Better than fuckin’ heaven and earth,” Priest ground out in that gravelly Irish voice as he pounded me into the sink, palming one ass cheek open slightly so he could watch his cock slide in and out of me. “Such a tight little pussy stretched around my cock.”

  I whimpered, heat gathering at every sensual point of my body—in the furl of my nipples and the swollen weight of my breasts, at the back
s of my knees, and in pulse at my throat. I’d never felt anything like this tight, hot twining between my legs.

  Only the sun had ever kissed me there, the sun and the air and the cool touch of water. For nineteen years, nature had been my only lover, a shy thing, tentative and teasing. Priest was none of those things. He was anti-matter, sucking me up ruthlessly and refusing to spit me out, eating away at my edges until I was all core, all sensation. Heat and energy coiled up like a new planet blazing beside his black, fathomless depths.

  This was better, this devastating intensity that razed me to the very ground of my soul. It was better than any poetry, better than any daydreams. It was too visceral to put into words, so I did not try.

  I only moaned and thrashed and focused on the nearly painful pump of that thick, steel cock inside my newly taken body.

  “Gonna fuck you every day now,” Priest threatened like it wasn’t the only promise it seemed I’d ever wanted to hear. “Gonna fuck you so hard and so long that you can’t walk right feelin’ the absence of me in your cunt. You’re gonna call me if it’s been too long, beggin’ me for a fix. You’ll be so addicted to the brand’a me on your body, you’ll do anything I ask, won’t you, Little Shadow? Sweet, little girl gone wanton just for me.”

  “Yes,” I hissed so long I lost my breath and couldn’t find a way to gather it again. Instead, I started to pant loudly, chasing air and chasing my orgasm. “Oh, oh, Priest, oh my, fuck, I’m going to…to…” I couldn’t say, the words tangled up in my misfiring mind as fireworks started to pop and fizz in my belly.

  “You’re gonna come for your Priest,” he finished as he yanked my hair so tightly tears sprang to my eyes and simultaneously landed another stinging slap to my ass. “Come all over my dick, pretty girl, and watch me as I come inside you. Want you to see exactly who owns this ass.”

  I met his eyes beneath the dark, knotted brow, noted the sheen of sweat on his regal brow, and came as soon as I saw the blood gathered at the edge of his mouth, the way his tongue flicked out to taste it.