We all burst into cackling laughter. Harleigh Rose was still there despite being severely underage but she wasn’t drinking and apparently, no one cared even if she did because Maja had offered to grab her a beer or cider when we ordered our first round. It was clear that Eugene’s was a biker-friendly bar, but I wondered how they got away with things like that with the police.
“Buck may be an old coot now but let me tell you, that man is hung like a horse. Used to be in the early days, I’d walk around bow-legged. That’s why the old timers call me Bow-bow.”
I giggled. “And they gave Buck his name because he was your bucking bronco?”
Maja slapped her hand against the table and hollered with laughter before she answered, “Nah, though I fucking love that. He’s called Buck because his idiot brother shot him with a rifle when they were teens and he’s still got buckshot lodged in his ass.”
I covered my mouth with both hands so I wouldn’t spit out the sip of cocktail I’d just imbued.
“They’re crazy cool, eh?” Harleigh Rose whispered as she pressed harder into my side.
She had been beside me the entire night, constantly involving me in conversation, touching my hair or grabbing my hand frequently. Despite her cheeriness, I noticed the way she hung on to each ounce of female affection these ladies showed each other and I loved that she’d taken an immediate liking to me. I didn’t know if it was weird for a twenty-six-year-old and a fourteen-year-old to be friends, but I had a feeling the deed was already done and I wanted to do nothing but blow the ink dry on the dotted line.
“Crazy cool,” I affirmed in a conspiratorial whisper.
She beamed at me.
“You know, I left William the same day I saw King in the parking lot of Mac’s Grocer for the first time,” I said into the ensuing silence.
The whiskey had made me uncharacteristically communicative.
The girls loved it.
I didn’t know if I’d be as big a fan in the morning.
“Fuck off,” Hannah said, because she was coarse but also awesome.
“No, seriously,” I laughed nervously but I’d already committed to telling them. “I was getting groceries and thinking about how my night was going to be the same as every other night I’d had for the last eight years, make William dinner, read then go to bed, only since I’d started working again, we’d probably have an awkward conversation added in about how I shouldn’t have started working again. I didn’t even realize how boring and sad I was until I saw him and Mute intimidate some preppy college guys.”
I shrugged and frowned into the bottom of my empty glass when I went to take another sip. “Saw him and it hit me between the eyes like a lightning strike. Even if I never saw him again after that, he would always be the guy who changed my life.”
“Wow,” Cleo sighed with her head on her hands. “That’s so romantic.”
“Be more romantic if my woman actually said shit like that to my face instead of gabbing about it with her girls.”
I froze with my empty glass halfway to my mouth (I’d been about to lick the remnants of sweet and sour foam from the inside rim). The women at the table, all loose with liquor and easy with good friendship, grew alert.
“King,” I said in a voice that was more breath than sound as I turned to find him standing beside our big booth table.
He was wearing an indecently tight round neck tee as he usually did when he wasn’t in uniform, and his rumpled halo of gold hair was down around his broad shoulders. The way he stood with his hands in his back pockets presented the insane breadth of his chest like a billboard for male beauty and I licked my lips at the sight of it. When I brought my eyes back up to his, they practically glowed in the dark like the neon blues light art behind him.
“Time to go, babe,” he ordered darkly.
I gulped loudly and lowered my glass to the table. “I think, um, we were all going to get another drink.”
“Darlin’,” Lila said as she tried to hide her smile, “your man wants to go, you go.”
Instantly, I frowned. “What if I want to stay? I’m having fun and I’ve never had real girlfriends before. I like it.”
Collectively, the hard but beautiful faces of the biker babes, Tay (who was somehow only a pseudo biker babe), and Harleigh Rose (who was too young and bright to be hard) softened in empathy.
The sight of it burned down my throat whiskey hot. I wasn’t sure if it was a good feeling or bad.
“We’ll be here, you need another girl’s night,” Cleo said, reaching across the table to give my hand a squeeze.
“And we’ll be seeing you Friday at the BBQ in that smokin’ hot new outfit,” Hannah added with a waggle of her tattooed eyebrows. “You see it, King, won’t want your woman to leave the house.”
“Definitely time to go, Queen,” King repeated, his impatience fraying at the edges like rope.
I had the ridiculous urge to ask him to bind my body with his rope-like words, to bend it and secure into new shapes using just the weight of that tone. Desire must have flashed across my face because he was reaching over Tayline to lift me forcibly out of my seat.
I let him because I loved the way he did it, like I was nothing but a feather. He settled me on my feet, snagged my purse and coat from Tayline’s outstretched hands then settled one arm over me. Every time he did that, it felt like a mantle of power across my shoulders.
“Careful,” I said even though I loved the gesture, because we were in public even though we were outside of town at the biker bar.
His lips twitched. “You don’t want to be careful,”
I rubbed my legs together to relieve the sudden ache between them.
“Right,” he said with a nod.
I watched him drop my stuff into Tayline’s lap again and then his arms were around me, one banded across my back and the other in its spot under my hair.
“Been four hours and I already miss this fuckin’ mouth,” he muttered before he close his lips over my mouth and ate at it.
Lust rushed through my veins, enlivened by the alcohol I’d consumed. I was drunk on my new favorite cocktail, Canadian maple syrup, Canadian rye whiskey and the seriously delicious taste of all-Canadian guy.
Only when my knees softened like butter and I almost fell against him did King pull away from me. Without releasing his hold, he turned to our table of avid spectators and said, “Thanks for takin’ care of my woman. Tryin’ to keep her, so it means a lot you took her under your wing.”
“Okay, cue the swoon,” Cleo sighed, her eyelashes fluttering like fans.
“Even I have to admit, that was pretty sweet,” Harleigh Rose allowed with a little wink sent my way.
“Okay, bye!” I said so loudly it was a shout because suddenly I was the one eager to leave.
The ladies laughed at me as I tugged my badass biker guy out of the bar and into the night. We were both so preoccupied, we didn’t notice the unfamiliar bikers hanging out in the corner of the parking lot as we swung on to King’s bike, but they sure noticed us.
For the eighth morning in a row, I woke up beside King. Or rather, I was sprawled diagonally across him as if he were an island salvation in the midst of a mattress ocean. One of his long arms held me on to him, anchored over my shoulders by the hand that twined in the hair at the base of my neck. Even in sleep, he held me like he would never let me go.
I lay there beside a man-boy I never should have known and loved him secretly, desperately with every atom of my being. I’d loved him since the moment my eyes had landed on him in the grocery store parking lot and since then, he’d not only given me more than enough reasons to continue to love him, but also the means to begin to love my life.
Before King (B.K.), I’d enjoyed my books, going on long quiet walks through Stanley Park and hanging out with my parents.
A freaking pathetic list.
Now, I loved riding on the back of King’s black and chrome customized Harley Davidson with my breasts to his leather jacket and my
hair to the wind. I loved feeling his hands on my skin tuning and revving my engine with his sometimes rough but always-reverent touch. I loved the biker babes and the rest of the Garro clan, the least traditional family I had never interacted with and also, somehow, the most genuine. I loved my students, sweet Benny and misunderstood Carson, beautiful but broken Louise and even Talia and her crew of beautiful but vain girlfriends. They all trusted me to teach them and to love them from afar so even though teaching had never been my original dream, I found myself loving even that.
King had arrived in my life like an angel fallen from heaven and ascended from hell, like my own real-life Satan who whispered rebellion in my ear so winningly I had no choice but to answer his call.
I didn’t know if Eve was happy in the end, uprooted in her new life and new world with Adam, but I knew I would be if that future was available to me.
“Shut up,” King croaked.
I propped my elbow on his chest, placed my face in my hand and stared down at him. “I’m being quiet.”
“’Bout as quiet as a souped-up Mustang drivin’ down the Sea to Sky,” he muttered without opening his eyes.
“Are you saying I breathe loudly or something?”
“I’m sayin’ never heard someone think as loud as you.”
I glared at him, and feeling it, he opened one sleep-heavy eye to see it.
He grinned.
I glared harder.
Then he chuckled, a low sound so deep that moved under me like shifting tectonic plates. I hung on tight and waited for it to pass, liking the way his laughter felt and that I kept discovering new ways to appreciate it.
“Time?” he asked, closing his eyes again but shifting to align me front to front over top of him.
I abandoned my position to press my cheek to his lightly furred chest, tuck my arms under his back and up over his shoulders. His workingman hands abraded the skin at the base of my spine just over my ass as he stroked me in lazy whorls.
“Early, we’ve got an hour and a half before school,” I told him.
We rode in together sometimes, but not always. I’d objected at first because it seemed blatantly inappropriate to go to school with the same teenage lover that I taught in fifth period English, but King had pointed out that everyone thought I was dating his father so it wouldn’t be odd to catch a ride with him in the morning as we were going to the same place. To keep it safe, sometimes other bikers would take me in. Nova volunteered for the job most of the time, which made King especially grumpy, but so did Zeus, Priest, a quiet but beautiful man who didn’t ever speak to me unless it was to confirm a question I’d asked, and, surprisingly, Buck. The latter drove an absolutely enormous motorcycle with tall, swooping handlebars called ‘ape bars’ and the engine growled so loudly, I wore earplugs even under my helmet. I loved riding with him though because he told me stories about King and even Zeus, whom I was surprised to learn was only thirty-four, growing up. We also always made a point to stop at Honey Bear Café and Bakery so Buck could get his daily donut and I could get a coffee.
“Good, I’m takin’ you to school today,” King mumbled.
“Okay,” I said, smiling against his heartbeat. I may have loved going to school with Buck because he was kind of making it his duty to be my ‘biker Dad’ but there was nothing better than riding with King.
“Get up and get ready, babe. I’ll be up soon,” he ordered sleepily because I needed more time to get ready than he did, given he was a man who rolled out of bed, took a two-minute shower (that is, if I wasn’t in it) and left.
I pressed a long kiss to the skin over his heart, infusing the moment with every single ounce of forbidden love I felt for him. Suddenly wanting to cry, I broke away and hustled into the bathroom.
My morning routine consisted of a short shower to wash and shave (a daily necessity now that I had King in my bed every night) and about thirty minutes to blow dry my hair, put on my minimal face of makeup and dress. I stood in my closet trying to pick out a dress or skirt (pants were harder to get off in a hurry if King wanted me during detention, which he often did and I just as often gave into because I was weak and he was hot) when I noticed how the small walk-in had changed in the last week.
A surprisingly neat stack of clean t-shirts, all in neutral colors, sat beside a pair of well-loved once-white-now-kinda grey sneakers that King used when he went running every day, usually right after school. Beside those, there was a not-so-neat pile of dirty laundry, men’s boxer briefs, again in neutrals, gym socks and his black mechanic’s onesie with Hephaestus Auto stitched on the pocket.
King had invaded my closet.
It did not bother me.
I was a neat person by training; William and my parents were as close to OCD as you could get without being formally diagnosed. But the sight of King’s mess cluttering my closet floor made my heart warm and throb like an open wound. I was a masochist so I poured salt into it by reminding myself that one way or another, this affair would end. Probably in disaster, but definitely, when he either went off to UBC or patched into The Fallen. I was realistic. No freshman university student wanted a girlfriend, let alone a twenty-sex-year-old divorcee, and no hardcore biker would want Miss Irons as an ‘old lady’.
I slipped on a light blue cotton button up dress and a matching headband with a little daisy on it. I caught sight of myself in the full-length mirror as I made to leave and frowned at my reflection. I looked like a freaking grade school teacher—adorable, yeah—but in no way equipped to deal with a biker. Biting my lip, I looked down at the matching cardigan in my hand, dropped it to the floor and grabbed the little black leather jacket I’d bought with Harleigh Rose the other day at Ready & Revved. It was a little incongruous but somehow it looked cute and I decided the bizarre contrast perfectly suited the new me.
I was reading Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance when King joined me in the kitchen a few minutes later. He immediately moved to the coffee pot to pour himself a cup using one of my bookish mugs that illustrated the snitch from Harry Potter and said ‘I’m a catch.’ It was so fitting, I giggled behind my own coffee cup.
His school dress shirt was still unbuttoned, revealing a tanned column of muscular torso that made my mouth water. He scratched at the abs, caught me staring and smirked.
“No time for a quickie this mornin’, babe. ‘Less you want to suck me off real quick?”
I blushed but tossed my book at him. “You are such a twerp.”
He caught the book easily in the hand not carrying the coffee and shook his head at me. “You need to start cursin’, Cress. You teach high school, not elementary school.”
I ignored him, plucked my book from his hand when he came over to the table to grab one of the bagels I’d put out for us, and went back to reading.
He laughed. “Like your choice of readin’, babe. Like that you’re finally tryin’ to understand.”
I shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal when inside, I was happy dancing that he’d noticed I was making an effort. “It’s a classic. It was remiss of me not to have read it already.”
A loud pounding at the door made us both freeze. I looked to King but he was already up buttoning up his shirt and moving towards the window over the sink so he could peer around the bushes at whoever stood at the door.
“Huge ass man at your door, Cress,” he said. “Do I need to get my gun?”
“You have a gun?” I asked, because that’s what seemed important at the moment.
He slanted me a look. “Got more than one. I’ll take you to Smoke’s Range one day and teach you how to shoot so you can defend yourself when I’m not around. For now, tell me if havin’ a huge ass man at your door is something usual for you.”
I thought about it for about two seconds before I was shooting out of my chair and wrenching open the front door.
“Sander?” I asked, my hands flying over my dropped mouth as I took in the sight of my ‘huge ass’ brother.
His handsome face was black
and blue. Twin bruises ringed his beautiful dark eyes and another marred his scruffy jaw. His lip was cut and when I reached out to snag his hands, so were his knuckles.
It wasn’t, unfortunately, unusual for Lysander to show up at my door bruised and bloodied. Like I’d said, he lived a tough life and didn’t seem to be able to get shot of it. So, I was prepared for the sight of him.
“Come in, come in,” I urged him, gently tugging on his hand when he hesitated.
I settled him at the little table in the breakfast nook and smoothed back his hair so I could press a kiss to his forehead. “Just going to grab the first aid kit, I’ll be right back.”
He looked up at me with deep, dark eyes that seemed to me like the exact color of sadness. When he nodded, I hurried down the hall in the opposite direction to grab the kit under the powder room sink.
“Babe, you gonna tell me what the fuck is going on?” King asked as I swept back into the kitchen and straight to my brother.
I halted in opening the metal box and whirled to face him. “Oh God, um, right. I guess, well, King, this is my brother Lysander Garrison. Sander, this is King.”
“King Kyle Garro,” my brother clarified, speaking tenderly through his swollen mouth.
He shot me an eloquent look, part hurt and part frustration. It had been weeks since he’d asked me to secure him a job at Hephaestus Auto, and I hadn’t forgotten, but it wasn’t as easily said as it was done. I didn’t know why he wanted a job there and know that I actually knew Zeus and his clan of kids and bikers, I wasn’t sure if I felt comfortable foisting my sketchy brother off on them.
“Seems you have the advantage,” King said, his voice pitched low in that badass biker tone he used when he was pissed. “Only heard about you for the first time a few days ago and I was under the impression you were still locked up.”
Shit.
Both men shot me looks of glittering betrayal, as if I’d plunged knives into their backs.
“Be grateful. Normally, she doesn’t tell anyone about her fuck-up older brother,” Sander said finally, but his posture had shifted from pained and tired to straight-backed.
Lessons In Corruption (The Fallen Men Series Book 1) Page 20