Lessons In Corruption (The Fallen Men Series Book 1)

by Giana Darling

  I trailed my fingers lightly over the ladder of square abdominal muscles on his lower stomach and thought about last night. Sex in the kitchen was something I’d never done before but I was thinking now that it should become a staple. There was something so dirty about fucking on the counter, in such a mundane, family place. I knew I’d never be able to cook in it again without thinking of King’s hot mouth between my legs, his fingers inside me preparing me for his big dick.

  A shivered rippled through me as I looked back up at his face to find his eyes open under heavy lids, watching me.

  “Mornin’, Queen, enjoying the view?” he asked in a sleep-roughened voice.

  I blushed but tried to shrug casually. “If I’m going to hell, I might as well enjoy the view.”

  His eyes turned sharper than a knife’s edge at my words. “Don’t do it, Cressida, not this mornin’.”

  “Do what?”

  “Make this thing we got goin’ shameful.”

  I nibbled my bottom lip but kept my hand smoothly stroking his chest to soften my words. “I don’t regret last night, honey, but you have to realize that what we’re doing, what I am doing, is wrong. It’s a hard adjustment for me to make after a lifetime of struggling to be good and pure.”

  King dislodged me as he sat up abruptly, pushed himself back against the headboard and plucked me out of the sheets to set me in a straddle over his lap. I could feel his morning wood between my thighs but his priority was tucking the blankets around my naked hips so that I wouldn’t be cold in my poorly insulated room.

  So sweet, my biker.

  “Purity is a social trap,” he started to explain after he had us both settled in how he wanted. “No one is ever pure to everyone and I guarantee you that no one that pure is happy. Happiness is streaking bare-assed naked down the wet sand into the wet waves, it’s drinkin’ too much and laughin’ too loud with your friends, it’s lovin’ so hard you want to devour the flesh, soul and mind of another person. None of that is fuckin’ pure and all of it is fuckin’ sublime.”

  He leaned in to frame my face with his big hands. “The only thing dirty about this is the people who will try to shame you. You do not need to be pure or ordinary to be good, babe. You just need to live and love without guilt and I swear to you, you’ll leave the world a better place than you entered it.”

  Jesus, he was such a poet.

  “Okay, King,” I said, because in the moment, I believed he was right.

  He stared hard at me to assure himself that I was telling the truth before he said, “Good. You with me then?”

  “Yeah, I’m with you,” I whispered softly, returning his gesture by framing his handsome face in my hands. I pressed a gentle, open-mouthed kiss to his lips. “But we’ve got to have rules.”

  “You can take the teacher outta the classroom but you can’t take the teacher outta the girl, eh?” King laughed into the crook of my neck before he pressed a kiss behind my ear.

  I shoved at his shoulder but I was smiling. “I’m serious, King! We can’t just date.”

  “Who says I wanna date?”

  I froze, my eyes widening until I felt like my eyeballs would fall out. Had I read every single signal wrong? Was I jeopardizing my career and my reputation for a good roll in the hay (correction: a super life-changing roll in very awesome hay)?

  King’s loud hoot and subsequent laughter jerked me from my horrified thoughts.

  “You asshole,” I cried, thumping him on the chest and shoulders with my fists. “You complete dick! I can’t believe you’d joke about something like that.”

  Still laughing, he rolled us until he had me pressed on my back in the bed. My anger immediately fled as he licked then bit at my neck. “Love you riled, babe. Nothing better than seeing my girl’s whiskey eyes lit up and alive.”

  “Meanie,” I grumbled but my heart wasn’t in it because it was his, tucked away safely and securely in a place only he could find.

  “Totally,” he agreed, biting down hard over my jugular in a way that had me wet in an instant.

  “King,” I gasped. “We were going to talk about the rules.”

  “Yeah, okay, babe. Rule one: no talking when I’m inside you unless it’s about how good it feels, yeah?”

  “You aren’t even inside me… oh!” I said, then shut up because rule number one was a rule I could get behind.

  Later, after sex so awesome it made my toes curl so hard they cramped, and a shower where, I kid you not, King washed my hair for me after washing other more intimate places very thoroughly, I was in the kitchen with my head in the fridge trying to decide what to feed King. He’d disappeared after the shower but I knew he was somewhere around the house because his Harley was still out front and I knew he wouldn’t leave without saying anything.

  I was deciding between granola and yogurt and bran cereal when hands clamped over my hips and King stuck his face into the fridge beside mine.

  “Find treasure or somethin’, babe?”

  I laughed. “I’m trying to decide what to make you for breakfast.”

  “I want pie.”

  I tipped my head to look up over my shoulder at him. “What?”

  “Pie,” he repeated before kissing me hard and moving away from me. “Apple pie.”

  I closed the fridge and turned to lean against it with my hands on my hips as I watched him cross to the dock station I had on the counter under my ancient microwave. He began tinkering with my old iPod, his lip between his teeth as he scrolled through my music.

  “King, apple pie for breakfast isn’t a thing,” I informed him.

  “Sure it is, you make it for me,” was his illogical but somewhat rational reply.

  A giggle rose in my throat but I swallowed it down. “What are you, twelve? Adults eat real food for breakfast, not dessert.”

  King didn’t shift his head up to look at me but he shot me a sidelong glance that burned through me. “You need me to show you again how much of a man I am, babe? Remember, I’m eighteen, I can go all day and all fuckin’ night, you need me too.”

  He watched me shiver with arrogant satisfaction before he added, “Do a better job of it if I had pie.”

  I threw up my hands as I gave into laughter. “Okay, fine, I’ll make you pie but we have to go out for apples.”

  He didn’t respond. Instead, he plugged in my iPod and Elvis Presley’s Burnin’ Love came over the speakers, one of my all-time favorite songs. He’d known I loved Elvis but I loved even more that he’d put on that particular song this morning. I opened my mouth to say so but he had already disappeared out the side door into the garden.

  I shook my head at him but couldn’t stop smiling as I pulled out the butter, lard, salt and flour to make the crust.

  Minutes later, I heard the screen door slam and looked over my shoulder to see King amble into the kitchen carrying a small crate filled with different apple varietals. When I frowned up at him, he shrugged.

  “Apples,” he said inanely.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Why do you have a box of apples on hand?”

  He cocked his head at me like I was the one being silly. “Babe, I give you an apple a day. I gotta stock up. It’s cool and dark in my trunk so I keep ‘em in there.”

  I blinked and blinked, trying to stop the flood of tears threatening to drown me.

  “Cress, it’s not a big deal, babe. All the best students give their favorite teachers apples, yeah?” he joked.

  I shook my head unable to speak because I didn’t want to dissolve into tears our first morning together.

  “Besides, you smell like ‘em. Ever since I got you on the back of my bike that first night at the bar, I’ve been obsessed with them.”

  “God, you’re perfect,” I blurted out.

  King laughed, dropped the crate on the counter and caught me around the waist to hug me from behind, burying his face in my apple scented hair. “Only for you, babe.”

  I sniffed back the tears but allowed myself to sink back into his hol
d for a moment before I shooed him away so I could finish the crust.

  He poured us both coffees before he jumped up on the counter beside me to keep me company while I rolled out the dough. I loved having him close, loved having him reach out randomly to claim a kiss or rub flour off my face. We talked about his brothers in The Fallen, who were crazy but I’d learned last night that it was mostly in a good way. I asked him why he didn’t have any tattoos, and he’d laughed when he told me that there wasn’t anything he liked enough that he wanted it permanently on his skin. I made the filling while the crust rested in the fridge, making salted caramel to add into the apples, an idea that King reward with a long, deep kiss.

  I had so much fun just hanging out with him that when there was a knock at my front door, I didn’t even think about going to answer it. It seemed like a normal, if beyond fantastic, morning between a customary couple.

  “Babe, you sure you should answer that?” King called when I was already halfway to the door at the left end of the kitchen.

  I halted immediately, turned to survey the student sitting (deliciously) bare chested on my counter then to look down at my outfit, which consisted of a short, pretty rose embroidered robe.

  “Probably not,” I grinned at him. “Whoever it is will just go away when I don’t answer.”

  “Good. C’mere and give me your mouth,” King ordered with a crooked grin.

  I skipped over to him, which made him laugh, planted my hands on his strong thighs and jumped up slightly to lay a big one on him.

  “Not so fast,” he said, grabbing me by the hips so that he could hold me suspended in the air over the ground.

  I sighed at the manly act before he took advantage of my parted lips and kissed me thoroughly.

  Another knock sounded on the door but I didn’t think of it because I was busy kissing a god. It was minutes later that I registered someone calling, “Cressida, I know you’re in there and I’m not leaving until you let me in.”

  King’s hand immediately spasmed on my hips and I wrenched myself back in his hold so I could stare at him in horror.

  William was at the door.

  “I’m dreaming,” I told myself. “This is not real.”

  “It’s real, babe,” King growled.

  “Ohmigawd, ohmigawd, ohmigawd,” I chanted, unable to move and tied to the tracks as the train barreled towards me.

  “Cressida, babe,” King’s voice cut through my panic. “Listen to me. Answer the door and get rid of him. If he doesn’t go, I’ll sort it out, yeah?”

  “You can’t,” I said, my voice in an octave I’d never heard before. “He can’t see you here. He thinks I’m dating your freaking father and you’re my freaking student!”

  “Deep fuckin’ breath right now, babe. If you freak out, I’ll rage out and we can’t have me killin’ your ex-husband, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed because I definitely didn’t want him to go to prison even if I kinda sorted wanted to see him beat William up.

  “We’re going to get through this together. It’s super fuckin’ bad timin’ because I had plans to eat my apple pie then eat you but we’ll put those on hold. I’m not trippin’ about being here. I’m glad because I’m gonna help you get rid of ‘im for fuckin’ good. Now, go answer the door,” he pressed a firm kiss to my mouth like a punctuation mark and hopped off the counter.

  I waited for him to disappear somewhere in the house, taking the time to breath deep and get my shit together.

  “Cressida,” William called again from behind the door.

  “You can do this,” I told myself. “You are a strong, independent women and you can do this.”

  I started towards the door then paused and rubbed my hands over my face. “You’re also a shameless harlot who just spent the night boning the gorgeous much-younger man who, along with his father, is ‘fixin’’ to do something about the husband currently demanding entry to your house while said younger man is hiding somewhere inside it.”

  Another knock at the door and a hissed, “Answer the fuckin’ thing, babe,” from somewhere else in the house.

  “Ohmigawd, I’m so going to hell,” I mumbled.

  Then I opened the door.

  And to my continued horror, it wasn’t just William who stood before me, but also my mother.

  “Well, it’s about time. It’s inconceivable that you would leave guests out on the stoop to freeze to death while you dawdled around inside. My goodness, it’s nearly eleven o’clock, what are you doing still in your robe?” Phoebe Garrison said as she pushed past me and into my home.

  I stood dumbly in the door, my eyes locked on William and my father as they retrieved something from the car and made their way towards me.

  Oh my fucking GOD!

  “Cressida, please don’t tell me you’re making pie for breakfast?” my mother called from inside.

  My eyes darted between the approaching men and the mother currently rummaging in my house and I made the quick decision to focus on the worse threat. I dashed inside to find her opening and closing all my cupboards.

  “You told me this place was charming,” she accused me but didn’t stop her snooping. “It’s an absolute sty.”

  “It’s a work in progress,” I defended. “As you may remember, I didn’t have any money when I left William.”

  “Yes, I remember. So how exactly did you afford even this pile of kindling?” Phoebe asked me, finally turning to pin her eyes on me.

  They were my eyes staring at me, which I’d always found comforting but now I found it incredibly perturbing because they looked at me with the same judgmental condemnation that I knew I’d used my entire life on people like King and his brothers. It gave me a stomach ache to think about it.

  I also couldn’t tell my mother that I had taken money from Lysander because, to my parent’s knowledge, I had excommunicated him from the family church years ago.

  So, instead, I went on the offensive.

  “What are you doing here, mother? I seem to remember you saying something about never visiting me here because you didn’t want me to get use to the idea.”

  Her lips pursed but William and my dad entered the kitchen before she could lecture me about my rudeness.

  “Princess,” my dad called out as soon as he saw me. I was in his arms in the next second, his cigar and newsprint scent as familiar to me as my own.

  Peter Garrison was not a bad man, but he was a simple one and that was in and of itself a bad thing. He got up every morning at six a.m., read the entire Globe & Mail newspaper back to front then went to work at UBC where he taught the same six courses every year in the Classics department, then he was home to mum and dinner on the table by six-thirty p.m. after which he spent the night working or reading in his study. Simple life. Simple man. And, in his eyes, simple relationship with his daughter.

  He loved me very much but he didn’t understand me and it was beyond his capabilities to try.

  So, I hugged him back and enjoyed my brief moment of peace in my daddy’s arms.

  “Why aren’t you dressed yet, it’s nearly eleven o’clock?” William asked me, echoing my mother’s words as he waited his turn to press a kiss to my cheek.

  I accepted it but took a large step back when he was finished. “Why are you here at eleven o’clock on a Sunday? Why are you here at all?”

  He blinked at me. “You wouldn’t come home and then when I saw you with that awful biker man, I knew I had to take matters into my own hands.”

  “So you brought my parents and ambushed me on a Sunday?” I asked acerbically.

  “Yes,” he stated.

  “I could hit you right now,” I gritted out between my teeth.

  “Cressida Phillipa Irons, do not speak to your husband like that! I know I taught you better,” my mother rebuked me even as she unloaded the groceries that the men had brought inside.

  “Mum, why are there groceries that I didn’t buy in my house?” I asked, in a surprisingly calm voice.

 
How in the world was I going to get them to leave when they were very clearly settling in? I thought of King somewhere in my house and anxiety spiked my blood like lead poisoning.

  “We’re having Sunday dinner here because you refuse to come home,” she said into the oven as she checked its cleanliness (found it sorely lacking) and preset the temperature.

  “No, you are not. I don’t go to your house for family dinners anymore because it is no longer my home,” I cried.

  Childish rage and frustration built inside me ready to stomp its feet and throw its fists in the air. The reversion made sense if only because they made me feel like a child, helpless against their ‘adult’ mandates of superiority, as if my opinion wasn’t valid given my age.

  When I thought about it like that, it made sense that I’d been drawn to a (much) younger man. I was tired of old people and their stuck in the mud ways.

  “You need to leave,” I ordered.

  No one listened to me.

  In fact, my dad was already taking his beer from a cooler that they’d also brought in from the car, the same one he and William used every Saturday when they went fishing. Without heeding my order, he descended the four shallow steps separating the kitchen from the living room and took a seat on my cracked leather couch.

  “Not bad,” he mumbled, patting the cushions.

  My mother continued to set out the ingredients for what looked like a real turkey dinner and William just stood there staring at me as if he was waiting for me to perform.

  Oh, I’d perform all right, but I was certain he wouldn’t like the show.

  I opened my mouth to throw a tantrum, perversely looking forward to it, when the low distant rumble of a motorcycle sounded in the distance.

  “I’m waiting for you to tell me what you were doing with that criminal,” William prompted me.

  “How do you even know he’s a criminal?” I shot back. “Just because he has tattoos and rides a bike doesn’t mean he’s done anything illegal.”

  “He’s the President of The Fallen MC, of course he’s a criminal. If you knew even half the things I knew about him, you’d run back to me and beg me to keep you,” he returned.