After the Fall: The Fallen Men, #4

by Darling, Giana

  He looked skeptical, but I couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t much to hang our fuckin’ hopes on.

  “Careful, boy. Don’t need you in ’ere with me, not when you got a weddin’ comin’ soon.”

  “Cress and I were thinkin’ we’d postpone that,” I admitted.

  “Like fuck you will.” He scowled, leanin’ forward so his nose was near pressed to the glass. “You listen to me, King. Why do ya think I married Lou while she was almost dyin’ in a hospital bed? ’Cause life proves to us again and again it’s too fuckin’ short and we can’t account for shit that might happen to us. You love that woman the way you do, the way I love mine, like you’ll die you don’t have her in your sight, under your touch, then you fuckin’ marry her like you planned. Don’t punish yourself just ’cause I’m being punished in ’ere. The time for your sacrifice will come one day, though, fuck me, I hope it doesn’t, and when it does, you want people to stop livin’ just ’cause you got dealt a shit hand? Solidarity like that means shit. Don’t need you to suffer ’cause I suffer. Need you to live and love ’cause I don’t got the means. You hear me?”

  Fuck, if I didn’t. “Yeah, I get you. Thing you don’t get is, won’t be much of a celebration without you there with us.”

  Walker fussed in his sleep and smoothed a hand over his tiny, downy head. Loved the weight of him in my arms, loved his namesake, and loved knowin’ if anyone could live up to hype of my lost Mute, it’d be my baby brother.

  “Look at you with him,” Zeus croaked, then cleared his throat of emotion. “Ready to be a husband and a dad, King. Don’t take that away from yourself and don’t take it away from me. You think there’s anythin’ more rewardin’ for a father than seein’ his kids happy? I gotta be in here? That’s what’ll keep me goin’, knowin’ your livin’ free and livin’ good.”

  “Wish I’d done like I wanted and dragged us all down the mountain to get married the day I proposed in city hall,” I grumbled.

  He laughed again, just a hard exclamation of sound. “Fuck, take after your father, boy. But do it now and do it well, wanna hear all about it if I’m still in ’ere when it happens.”

  “White suggested against gettin’ the trial moved up. Said we only have evidence against us right now, and they’d move you farther away to a proper prison if they found you guilty. Harder to overturn a sentence from a jury than pre-trial incarceration.”

  “Yeah,” he said, as if it wasn’t whacked he was in there in the first place. “You know what it’s like, Ford Mountain Correctional is basically a holiday.”

  I bit my lip against sayin’ shit because I did know. I’d been kept there briefly in my senior year of high school after Warren, a high school teacher who was now dead, had planted drugs in my locker. In my opinion, Ford Mountain was not a fuckin’ vacation.

  Z must’ve read the tension in my face because he leaned forward again, hooked my eyes on the silver bait in his gaze, and spoke serious, “Day you met Cressida Irons, you came home with fuckin’ stars in your eyes and you remember what you told me?”

  Of course, I remembered. It was the day I found myself just as much as the day I found Cress. Man didn’t forget anythin’ about a day like that.

  “Told you I’d met my woman.”

  “Yeah. Told me point blank you’d met your woman and when I asked what the fuck you meant, you said you’d dreamed of a woman all your life and didn’t know ’er face until you saw her ’cross Mac’s parking lot.”

  I swallowed thickly, rememberin’ it all.

  There wasn’t a moment that I fell in love, the tumbling sensation that turns the stomach and has you grasping at thin air to brace yourself against something that will not recede. No, that came later.

  At first, there was a loss.

  Of breath through my nose and air in my mouth. Of the metronome beat of my pulse and the strength in my spine.

  It was disorientating for only long enough to shock me like icy water, and then everything returned to normal.

  I breathed, I spoke, I beat, and I stood strong.

  But everything had shifted this infinitesimal bit. The cadence of my breath, my speech, and my heart had shifted from a perfunctory tone to something deeper, something rhythmic that moved more than my body.

  Whatever force had moved me through life before had shifted, and it had shifted to her.

  A tilt of gravity that indicated a future fall, but for the moment, it only left me slightly changed, but changed enough to note it and note the cause for it.

  Her.

  “Yeah,” I finally said, voice thick in my throat. “I remember.”

  “You marry that woman, King,” he warned me. “You marry her for you, and you marry her for me ’cause I love that woman, and I love ’er for you. Nothin’ would make me happier, even stuck in ’ere, than you givin’ her our Garro name.”

  “She might not go for it,” I said because it was true.

  Cress loved my dad near as much as I did.

  “You bring her in, and I’ll talk to her.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, lookin’ every inch the biker Prez even locked up and decked out in orange.

  “Hear ya.”

  “And about the vote, I get what you’re not sayin’, and I get why you wanted the position for yourself. It’d make sense one day, it’s meant to be one day, but the club is a democracy, and I’m not gonna interfere in that. If brothers voted Buck, he’s it.” He paused, devilry sparkin’ in his. “But a man’s gotta do what he thinks best, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed with an answering satanic smile. “And there’s nothin’ I wouldn’t do for this family and for you. Hope you get that.”

  “Not a day goes by I don’t.”

  * * *

  Apples.

  The entire cabin smelled of apples and cinnamon when I dragged my tired ass through the door of Shamble Wood later that day after droppin’ Lou and the kids off back home. The scent revived me like smellin’ salts, and even though a minute before I would’a said nothin’ could make me smile after visitin’ my dad in prison, the sight of Cress rockin’ out to the Zac Brown Band on the radio, singin’ into a wooden spoon at Shadow who looked incredibly unimpressed with her from where he sat on the counter, made me burst straight through to laughter.

  When I finished, she was standin’ in the middle of the kitchen with that smile of hers she made just for me, somethin’ like exaltation in the curve of that pretty, pouty mouth.

  “Babe,” I said, still chucklin’ as I moved forward to take her in my arms. “You are such a dork.”

  She tossed her hair and scowled at me, but the hands that wrapped around my waist said she wasn’t mad about my gentle teasin’.

  “I’m a biker babe, King, I have to rock out when the spirit moves me,” she corrected primly.

  “Whatever you say.”

  Her mouth tasted sweet and hot with fruit and spice, so I ate at it until the sweetness faded on my tongue. When I pulled back, she swayed, eyes closed, lips swollen, and I instantly went hard at the sight of her eagerness for more.

  “Made me some pie?” I asked her, kissin’ the tip of her nose. The spring sun had brought out the freckles on it, and they were cute as fuck.

  “Mmhmm, for a picnic.”

  “Babe, got so much shit to do…you know how much chaos is goin’ down at the club. Got plans to use Paula to our advantage tonight.”

  “Okay, but after our picnic. We need to have some fun, King. You’re not Atlas, you don’t need to bear the entire weight of our world on your shoulders. Let someone else take up the mantle for the afternoon and come away with me. You taught me what happiness was, and now it’s my turn to give it back to you.”

  “My girl’s sweet,” I muttered, feelin’ it like a toothache. “But if you want me to have some fun, why don’t you lose the dress and I’ll fuck you right here on the floor? We can have a picnic right on the carpet after to recuperate.”

  Her eyes flared, desire catchin’ the brown and turnin’
it gold, but she still shook her head. “I want to be on the back of your bike with you, and I want to go back to the cliff, if that’s okay? It’s gorgeous, and it’s been a minute since we just let ourselves experience some beauty.”

  “Experience it every mornin’ I wake up next to you,” I argued, kissin’ down her neck and palmin’ her ass through the silk of her white polka dot dress.

  “Stop trying to seduce me and put the food in the saddlebags. I’ll grab the pie.” She shoved me back and flounced over to the fridge, bendin’ low so I got a glimpse of the little white panties coverin’ her sex.

  “Fine, but I’m eatin’ dessert first,” I growled, landin’ my palm on the curve of her ass. “And I don’t mean the pie.”

  But she was right about needin’ to let go of all the chaos for a beat and just fuckin’ live again. Felt the relief as soon as my Harley rumbled to life beneath me and Cress’s arms twined around my belly, her sweet form pressed groin to cheek against my leather cut.

  This was it, the peace in the chaos, just havin’ the road under my tires, my woman at my back, and the fresh ocean air whippin’ through my hair.

  I hollered as we drove down the winding road just to feel the noise catch in the wind, and Cress mimicked me, unwrappin’ her arms to toss them up for a moment just to feel the edge of danger and know she was alive.

  When we pulled up to the dead-end road and the path to the cliff, I felt lighter than I had in weeks. I snagged an arm around my woman’s waist as she got off the bike and tugged her back to me, kissing the smile off her face.

  “Thank you,” I told her, nuzzlin’ into the soft valley between her breasts. “Needed this more than I knew. Needed you.”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” she quipped easily, runnin’ her hands through my hair. “I can’t help much with the strategy talk and the biker stuff, but I can make you smile.”

  “That’s the damn truth.”

  She tugged her fingers in my mane so I was forced to look up into her wicked smile.

  “What was it you once said? Happiness is streaking bare-assed naked down the wet sand, drinking too much, and laughing too loud? Well…” She stepped back with a cheeky giggle and started to undo the buttons on her dress. “There’s beer and champagne in the bags, and I thought, wouldn’t it be fun…” She toed off her shoes and let the opened torso of her dress fall to her waist, baring her sweet tits, nipples furled in the cool breeze. “If we played a little game.”

  “Yeah?” I asked, the word a growl as my eyes tracked over her. She shimmied her hips, and the dress slipped off, pooling at her feet to reveal she wasn’t wearin’ any underwear.

  She leaned forward to brace her hands on my thighs and spoke against my lips. “If you get naked too and catch me before I make it to the cliffs, you can have me any way you want to take me.”

  And with a nip at my bottom lip, she was off, hair flyin’, plump ass jigglin’ as she took off into the bushes, her laughter followin’ like an invitation.

  One I took without hesitation.

  Shucked my clothes in thirty seconds flat, grabbed the bag of food in one hand, and charged after her, catchin’ a glimpse of sun-kissed hair through the greenery. The ground was soft and verdant beneath my feet, the air so sweet it tasted like melted saltwater taffy on my tongue as I drank it down.

  It felt fuckin’ good to rip across the earth after her, so good I started laughin’ even before I gained on her, even before I growled just to hear her scream, even before I snatched her little waist right before the middle of the cliff top and sent us both tumblin’ down.

  We were both laughin’ too hard to kiss, rollin’ in the silken grass for a minute before we calmed down, me on top of her, hands pinned to the ground above her head.

  She giggled up at me; eyes so bright with ardent adoration they hit me like a punch to the chest.

  “Hey honey,” she said softly. “Good to see that smile again.”

  I dipped down to run my nose along hers. “What would I do without you?”

  “You’ll never have to know,” she promised, then squirmed a little, rubbin’ the points of her breasts through my chest hair. “Now, what’re you gonna do to me?”

  Sitting back on my heels, I reached over for the bag I’d dropped in my pursuit of her. I dragged it onto my lap and dug out the bottle of champagne.

  “Think we should make a toast to our wedding,” I announced as I started to unwind the wrapping.

  Cress writhed in anticipation as I popped the cork and held the bottle over his lips as it frothed over, letting the sweet liquid slide down her throat.

  I moved, straddlin’ her chest so that my cock loomed over her face. Fisting the base, I drew the wet tip across her lips, watched as her greedy tongue darted out, tryin’ to catch a taste of me. I cupped the back of her head in one hand to better the angle and pressed the head to her lips.

  “Open up, babe,” I urged. “Remind me how much you love to take me down your throat.”

  She hummed long and low, vibratin’ around me as she sucked my crown, swirlin’ her tongue like I was an ice cream cone.

  The sight of her like that, the lady gone to harlot just for me, set my blood to boiling. It was heady, the power of it, to see a woman step beyond her inhibitions to please you and please herself.

  “Touch yourself while you suck me,” I ordered huskily as she laved my shaft with her pink tongue. “Want you drippin’ in the grass by the time I’m ready to fuck you.”

  She moaned because my woman loved my filthy mouth.

  I tipped the champagne again, carefully pouring it down my cock so it spilled into her mouth. The carbonation buzzed against my skin, and I cursed viciously as she sucked hard, wanton slurping sounds coming from her eager mouth.

  “So gorgeous sucking my cock like that,” I told her, thrusting in and out shallowly just to watch her cheeks hollow and fill with my flesh. “Love it when you worship my dick like that.”

  “I do,” she panted, pulling off to press a kiss to the tip, then lick it hard with the flat of her tongue. “Sometimes, I feel like a fanatic. When I get my hands on you, your taste in my mouth, my name on your lips, I could overdose on devout ecstasy.”

  I drew my cock in and out of her mouth, forcing her to keep it open wantonly, loving the power she gave me in lettin’ me use her like that.

  The base of my spine tingled, and my balls drew up, warnin’ me I was goin’ spill more than champagne in her mouth if I indulged any longer. So, I pulled out and off her, leanin’ on my forearms in the grass between her legs.

  “Spread those pretty legs wider,” I ordered as I popped the cork and tipped the heavy bottle over her beautiful skin. “I have a thirst for somethin’ sweeter than champagne.”

  She shivered at the cold, then gasped at the feel of my warm tongue lappin’ it up, following a drop all the way down to her sex where I baptized her with more sparkling wine.

  “Smell like flowers and taste like honey,” I rasped as I moved my tongue down the seam of her groin and then up the other side. She squirmed, so I banded a hand over her hips. “Keep still while I drink my fill.”

  But she came almost as soon as I wrapped my lips around her clit and sucked, buckin’ her hips and tearin’ out the grass between her clenchin’ fingers. I surged up before she was done, thrustin’ into her still ripplin’ sex and drivin’ her climax higher.

  The feel of her in my arms like that, completely givin’ herself over to the pleasure that I gave her was better than any artificial high or drink, richer than ambrosia.

  “Love comin’ inside you knowin’ there’s no protection against makin’ a baby together,” I whispered in her ear as she spasmed around me. “Want to come in you so deep, you feel it in your womb.”

  “God, King, yes,” she screamed, her throat straining, head thrown back, hair spillin’ over the grass as she came again right on the heels of the first, her orgasm wrackin’ through her and into me so I had no choice but to join her.

  B
urrowing my head in her neck, I clamped my teeth over her neck, tongue to her flutterin’ pulse, and spilled myself inside her with a savage growl.

  I flopped to my back and dragged her over me, our skin slick with sweat and sticky with the dregs of champagne, the rest of the bottle abandoned, liquid lost to the earth, but I didn’t care for the drunk of booze after the intoxication of fucking my woman in the grass as elemental as Adam and Eve.

  Tangled together, naked and free in the clearin’ over the ocean, only the sound of sea birds and water shatterin’ on rock to punctuate the silence, I wondered if this was paradise or as close to it as a human could get.

  Cress nuzzled into my chest, peeling open her heavy eyes to look at me. “Being pure is so overrated.”

  Laughter coursed through me so hard, I shouted it to the sky. “Jesus, babe, you are too fuckin’ cute.”

  “It’s true. Why would you ever forgo pleasure like that?”

  “Beats me, but I didn’t grow up the way you did with God watchin’ your every step.”

  She pursed her lips. “This is true. I guess, now, I just don’t care if God is watching. If I were him, I’d have ripped open the sky to get a peek at what goes on between us in bed.”

  “Corrupted through and through. From pious good girl to thinkin’ God’s a big ole perv.”

  She laughed, and the sound moved over me warmer than the sun.

  We lay there for a long time, chattin’ and then readin’ from The Prince, arguing playfully over the semantics of power and possession, but the conversation turned, as it was probably always goin’ to, to the club and SS Danner.

  “I can’t help feeling so badly for Susan,” she murmured, drawing imaginary illustrations over the raised topography of my abs. “Can you imagine what it must be like to realize the man you once loved has turned into a man only worthy of hate?”

  “Couldn’t have happened to a better woman too. She used to treat us just like her grandkids. Remember H.R.’s birthday like it was yesterday, Susan bakin’ the cake in the middle of the night so she wouldn’t see it, the smile on her face when Harleigh Rose actually gave her a hug in thanks. She’s always been a good woman.”