Lessons In Corruption (The Fallen Men Series Book 1)

by Giana Darling

  “How do you know anything about him, at all?” I asked, curiosity warring with my rage.

  William blanched slightly and I wandered if it was because he’d hired a PI to tail me.

  My God, I hoped not.

  “I’m a lawyer, Cressida, I know these things,” he said vaguely. “I’m not here to argue with you, anyway. I’m here to talk you into coming back home with me.”

  “If you wanted to talk to me about that, you could have waited until our session next Friday,” I retorted. “Right now, I really want all of you to leave.”

  “We were concerned about you, Cressida,” my mother chimed in. I shouldn’t have been shocked to see her in the red and white checked and frilled apron that she wore whenever she cooked at home. Of course, she’d brought it with her. In less than ten minutes, she’d somehow yet effectively made me a guest in my own house.

  The growl of the motorcycle was louder now, coming down the seaside road to my driveway. I didn’t know what King had done exactly, but I knew he’d called in reinforcements.

  Knowing this, I said, “Fine, but you should know that I have company coming over for dinner. They should be here soon.”

  Immediately, three heads turned to look at me.

  “Company?” William and my mother said at the same time.

  “Do they like Jeopardy?” my dad asked, because priorities.

  “Yes, company. No, dad, I’m absolutely certain that they do not like Jeopardy.”

  We were all silent as the sound of tires pulling down the driveway became distinguishable.

  My mum turned to me with an expression of horror, her hand at her heart. “Please tell me that isn’t the horrible biker William told us you’re dating?”

  As if on cue, there was loud rap at the door before it pushed open to reveal Zeus and, to my utter confusion, a fully dressed King. My mouth dropped open at the sight of them but my jaw completely unhinged when an absolutely stunning, streaky blonde teenager followed in behind them and I got my first look at the youngest Garro.

  As one, my family blinked at King’s.

  I opened my mouth to say something, though I didn’t know if my acting skills were up to playing whatever part they expected me to play, when King stalked forward to stand beside me. As he did, the blonde girl moved to my other side, throwing me a little wink as she jumped up on the counter and snagged an apple from the crate King had left out.

  “Hey, babe,” Zeus rumbled in a voice very similar to the sound of his revving motorcycle. “Who the fuck are the old folks?” Before I could answer, he turned to William. “And why the fuck are you in my woman’s house, Willie boy? Thought I warned you to stay away.”

  “We, I’m, you…” my mother stuttered as her brain overloaded with fear.

  “Mother,” I beamed at her as Zeus joined our united front. “This is Zeus Garro and his two children, King and Harleigh Rose.”

  “Sup?” Harleigh Rose nodded at my mum and spoke through the apple she was noisily masticating.

  King just crossed his arms and glared at them. Unconsciously, I moved closer so I could press my shoulder against him.

  “Cressida,” William started, his face set as he took a step forward to show the biker family suddenly inhabiting my kitchen that they didn’t intimidate him. “Your parents and I came all the way up to this podunk town to spend the day with you. As I told you before, your mother is literally sick with worry. The least you can do is respect us enough to send these…” he struggled for a word, “people away so we can spend time healing.”

  “Healing?” King repeated incredulously. “Your wife left you and you cut her off from your joint accounts and from her fuckin’ parents. While you were married, you made her feel like a whore and a neglected housewife. Have you seen her, buddy? She’s a fuckin’ knockout and you ignore her? I think it’s you who needs some goddamn healing in the head.”

  “Preach,” Harleigh Rose said, lifting her hands in the air.

  I felt like I’d been dropped into an episode of Family Feud.

  There was a long standoff where I was seriously unsure if a fight was going to break out (this vibe emanated from the Garro family) or if the police were going to be called (my family).

  It occurred to me then that I was the pinnacle of the situation and hiding behind the Garro family was cowardly. I wanted to do it anyway, I’d been playing dead for years, following the path of least resistance and always doing what I was told. Because I was a dork, I’d always wished vampires were real but now more than ever, I wished I could die and be reborn as a Garro, someone wicked in ways both smart and cruel, selfish just enough to get ahead and take what you wanted, and beautiful in strange ways that echoed both inside and out.

  So, I stepped away from the biker family at my back and into the middle of the silent war so that I could die that metaphorical death. Appropriately or not, I couldn’t decide, Sympathy For The Devil played over the speakers as I took my stand.

  “William, I want you to leave. I’m sorry that you can’t understand why I don’t want to be with you but I feel that I’ve done my best since the beginning to tell you why that was and you seem to be incapable of empathizing with me. I want a divorce. I will say it again and again until my dying breath. Even if you refuse to sign the papers, I will never come back to you or the life we had. My life is here in Entrance now and, honestly, I don’t think I’m the kind of person you’d like anymore.”

  “Clearly,” he agreed firmly. “But marriage isn’t something that you just end on a whim, Cressida. We’ve been together for eight years. Everyone says we are the perfect couple and we are, can’t you see that? Doesn’t that mean something to you?”

  “Unfortunately for us both, it doesn’t mean much,” I admitted softly. I knew he wouldn’t agree with me.

  I turned to my mum who was wringing her hands in front of her and darting her eyes back and forth between King and Zeus. Honestly, I got it. I’d never seen them side by side and I was grateful that they were behind me because they were a distracting duo. Of course, my mother was probably imagining all the ways they could kill her while a normal woman would be driven to distraction by all the ways they could do her, but it was kind of the same thing.

  “I would love it if you wanted to stay and get to know my new friends but I understand that this is hard for you. I’ve been dependent on you my entire life, even when I was with William, so I can give you the time to adjust if you need it. That said, I need you to understand that this ‘pile of kindling’ and these ‘bikers’ are my life now and I. Am. Happy. In fact, I’m happier than I’ve ever been. So, if you need to go then please do, because they are staying.”

  I crossed my arms and, like a boy band following the lead singer, the Garros crossed their arms in unison behind me.

  My family hesitated a beat too long because King lunged forward, snapping his teeth and barked at William, “Beat it before I beat you.”

  As one, my parents and William collected their belongings and headed out the door without a backwards look. I watched from the window over the sink as my mother hesitated by the car, her hand on my father’s shoulder, probably wondering if it was safe for me to be alone with criminals. Whatever it was, my father closed it down and they got into the car and took off.

  “Fuck,” I whispered brokenly as soon as their car disappeared up the steep drive.

  Immediately, King pressed against my back and his arms looped around me tighter than rope. “I got you,” he murmured.

  I turned into him and burst into tears.

  Dimly, I was aware of Harleigh Rose and Zeus moving into the living room to give us a modicum of privacy, but I was too busy soaking the front of King’s tee to mind.

  “They don’t deserve your tears, babe, but if you gotta cry, do it now and get it out. Don’t want you to do it alone,” King murmured.

  I cried harder.

  What in the world had I done to deserve a man like him?

  And what in the world had I done to deserve
meeting him as his freaking teacher?

  “Okay, time to stop now,” King ordered after a good five minutes.

  “Okay,” I sniffed but didn’t take my head from the front of his shirt because I had snot trailing from both nostrils.

  With firm but gentle hands, he pried me from his shirt, stared down into my disgusting face and then leaned over to rip off a piece of paper towel. I took it from him and blew my nose slightly turned away from him. When I turned back he was smiling at me and I knew he was going to tease before he said, “’S a good thing I slept with you last night and you showed me how sweet you can be between the sheets, otherwise I’d probably be out the door after the fuckin’ Stepford family standoff.” He shuddered dramatically. “Don’t know how you lived with ‘em for so long, babe.”

  “I was one of them, King,” I acknowledged. “I still kind of am. I’m so beyond grateful to your family for white knighting me out of that situation but there’s still a part of me that they reared that says you guys are criminals and it’s scary for me to be a part of that, especially after my brother went to prison when I was eighteen.” King’s face widened then creased in surprise. “And there’s another part of me that William created that doesn’t even understand why you’d be into me in the first place. You’re eighteen years old with your entire life ahead of you. You are so smart and gorgeous and charming… Why in the world would you choose to hitch your wagon to me?”

  “Maybe because you’re fuckin’ adorable when you say things like ‘hitch your wagon’ and ‘for Pete’s sake’ like you’re from 19th century England,” he joked.

  When I only smiled weakly, he raked a hand through the hair I’d tousled myself only that morning and hoisted me onto the counter. He spread my legs with his thighs and put his hand in its place on the back of my neck.

  “Don’t like to explain myself at all, let alone more than once so listen close, Cress babe, because I’ll only tell you the one time. I saw a woman across a parking lot in September. It was fuckin’ hot as sweaty balls that day, could barely see across the asphalt through the heat waves but I saw you and you saw me. Don’t know what you saw but I saw a fuckin’ babe. All that sun-kissed hair and huge eyes—couldn’t tell the color—but could tell they’d suck me in and devour me whole. Little slip of a thing starin’ at a biker like you had the right to me, like you’d climb on the back of my bike, on the top of my dick and ride ‘til you couldn’t take it anymore.

  Saw you in class months later and this woman I’d been obsessin’ over was supposed to be my goddamn teacher? No fuckin’ way. Not before I’d fucked you.” I flinched but he caught my reeling chin between his fingers and laid an open-mouthed kiss across my closed mouth, coaxing the seam of my lips open until he could touch his tongue to mine. “Then I kissed you and I’m tellin’ you, I could never sell a drug headier than your kiss. I was already hooked but that was the reel.”

  “King,” I breathed.

  But he continued, “Got shit for it when I was a kid but I’m a romantic. Read fuckin’ Wuthering Heights when I was eight and got hooked on the classics. Always knew I’d meet a girl, want her, take her and keep her forever. That would be it for me.” He shrugged like he was telling me what he wanted to eat for supper. “Didn’t expect it to happen when I was eighteen but you roll with the punches, ya know?”

  “I know you’re being sweet but you’re also freaking me out,” I admitted.

  King nodded. “You asked, I answered. Don’t ask me questions that you don’t want an answer to, Cressida, warning you right now. I’ll always give it to you straight. It’s on you to be careful with that, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, thinking that I wasn’t ready, after all of that, to ask him about his current or future dealings in The Fallen MC.

  “You were good today, brave with them,” he praised, bending his knees slightly so he could look me level in the eye. “Sexy as hell and super badass.”

  “Yeah?” I asked, brightening because I’d always wanted to be sexy and cool but didn’t think I had it in me.

  “I’ll show you just how sexy I thought it was later,” he promised, pushing his hard length firmer against my sex, barely covered by my parted robe and nightgown beneath.

  I gasped and grounded myself against him, watched his eyes flash like lightening then did it again just to see the same reaction.

  “Dad, H.R.?” he called out to his family. “Gotta talk to Cressida alone for a bit. She’s real torn up about all the family drama and shit. You cool to hang?”

  Zeus just laughed.

  Harleigh Rose popped her head up over the couch to frown at her brother. “Fine but be quick about it, yeah? I haven’t even really met the woman yet.”

  “Might take a while, H.R., she’s really riled up,” King responded with a wicked grin.

  I opened my mouth to scold him for being so freaking obvious but a screech came out instead when he tipped me off the counter and over his shoulder. He walked out of the room with me kicking and giggling until he gave me a brisk swat on the ass. Then, after he dropped me down on my unmade bed, he set about riling me up even more.

  “Take it.”

  God.

  I thought I already was taking it.

  But as King rotated his hips against my ass, I realized that he hadn’t even begun to fuck me. His fingers curled over my waist, tilting my bottom up from the bed even as the rest of his hard body pressed me into the mattress. His cock hit something in me that lit up my body like a Christmas wonderland.

  “Oh my God,” I cried into the mattress, aware that King’s family was waiting for us downstairs and that technically the stairs that led to my attic room didn’t have a door.

  “Wanna hear it, babe,” he grunted, lifting his lean hips so his dragged agonizingly slow out of my clutching heat.

  “Oh God, please make me take your cock,” I panted, looking over my shoulder to see him watching his cock as he pushed it slowly back into my eager pussy, as he ground his hips against me. “God, that’s so hot.”

  “No God in this bedroom, Cress. Call me what I am: your King,” he growled, rearing up to catch a fistful of my hair and jerk my head back.

  His lips descended over my neck and he sucked hard at the base of it. Distantly, I was aware that he was marking me, hurting me, but I loved it so much, I couldn’t bring myself to stop him. I wanted to turn my body into one of his poems, an ode to me written in my skin and bones.

  He started slamming into me, fucking me so hard his thighs slapped loudly against my ass, his hands around my hips started to bruise. A black hole of pleasure grew in my mind, sucking up any thoughts or worries, leaving behind ever-expanding bliss.

  “Look so fuckin’ pretty taken my cock,” King grunted into my ear. “Look even better comin’ all around it.”

  His hand went from my thigh down to the tamed curls between my thighs. He pressed the heel of his palm against the skin there while two fingers rubbed hard, tight circles over my slippery clit.

  “It’s not enough until I hurt you, is it, babe?” he crooned into my ear.

  A flush erupted across my skin, turning my already flaming skin to ash. “Yes,” I whispered.

  In the next second, he reared back onto his knees, lifting my hips high in the air so that I was on all fours. The second after that, his huge hand landed on my ass with a resounding thwack. I rocked forward from the impact of the punishing slaps and his brutal thrusts as he beat me with both of them simultaneously.

  “Yes,” I hissed, fisting my hands in the sheets so I could slam back onto him.

  I was so close to climaxing it set my teeth on edge.

  All it took was King wrapping my hair around his fist like a leash and jarring me so I sat back down against his cock and he could thrust up into me, his lips on my ear growling, “Mine,” to finish me off.

  Seconds later, he followed with a hoarse shout that may have been my favorite sound in the entire world.

  We collapsed, his weight heavy and delicious on to
p of me.

  “Better than any fantasy,” he muttered after a few minutes of recovery.

  “You’re awfully sweet for a biker,” I teased him.

  He rolled off me slightly to land a hard smack to my sore ass. “Did I or did I not just fuck you senseless while spankin’ that fine ass?”

  I snorted. “Crude.”

  “True.”

  I turned my head lazily to find him smiling at me. I smiled back.

  “Dad and H.R. are downstairs,” he reminded me. “Gotta get showered and ready for the day, babe. Got things to do.”

  “Oh God, I can’t believe your dad and your sister know we just had sex,” I groaned into the mattress.

  King’s hand slid from the top of my head to my tailbone in a languid show of possession. “Don’t mind they know I’m fuckin’ you.”

  “You’re my freaking student,” I cried, rolling over so I could toss my hands dramatically into the air.

  “Yeah,” he agreed easily.

  “King,” I said, utterly exasperated with both of us. “What the fuck am I doing?”

  “You’re livin’.”

  “Does living mean feeling like you’re constantly on the edge of making the wrong decision?”

  “Yeup.”

  “Do you ever get used to that?”

  King cupped my face, his thumb swiping across my cheekbone. “No, you don’t.”

  I sighed gustily. “I think I need therapy.”

  His smirk was small but tender, as if he thought I was a dork but an endearing one. “Surprised you don’t need it more, comin’ from a family like yours.”

  “Yeah, that’s fair,” I said.

  “Now, you gotta get showered so you and H.R. can start cookin’ that huge ass turkey your folks let behind.”

  “And what are you and Zeus going to be doing while the women cook?” I asked with a raised brow. “This isn’t the fifties you know and I just spent the last eight years cooking dinner every night for William, with special family dinners every, single Sunday. Besides, I didn’t ask you and your family to stay. I appreciate you calling in the troops to help me, I really do, but it would be… I don’t know, super weird for us to all have Sunday family dinner together.”