Lessons In Corruption (The Fallen Men Series Book 1)

by Giana Darling

  The Sea to Sky highway was a windy ribbon of pavement that followed the edge of the coastline. It was beautiful, especially as the sun winked out behind the mountains and spilled vibrant pinks and oranges across the sky. It was also freaking terrifying. King took us around the corners so fast that we were close enough to the pavement on one side that I could have touched it easily.

  “King,” I tried to shout, but my voice was breathless with fear.

  His laughter rumbled through him and against my chest. It warmed me against the cool lash of wind streaking past me, through my hair and over my skin. It made me realize how good the air smelled, so sharp and fresh. I could feel my heart acutely in my chest, the way my breath churned through my lungs and escaped in excited puffs through my open lips. I felt alive, utterly recklessly, beautifully alive.

  “This is great!” I shouted into the wind.

  King laughed harder.

  We rode for a long time, until my butt ached and my thighs burned.

  “Feel the burn?” King shouted over his shoulder at me.

  I did, in more ways than one with my body pressed so close to his. I could feel the muscles shifting in his back, rolling like waves against the shore of my pelvis.

  “Yes,” I laughed.

  “Wouldn’t want to ride you too hard,” he yelled back.

  I buried my face in his back so that he could feel my laughter against his body.

  We finally pulled off to a bar on the side of the highway, tucked away in an artificial clearing between a thick copse of evergreens. It was a long, low rectangle of poorly painted turquoise wood panels with a small sign above the door that read Eugene’s in neon pink lights. I squinted at the old school movie theatre sign that had the words, “When life gives you lemons, grab the tequila,” slotted into it.

  “You play pool?” King asked as he easily swung off the bike and spun to face me.

  He moved with such vitality it was like watching an athlete play his sport, with a grace and energy that took my breath away. I was relatively sure I could watch him play ping-pong and find it utterly captivating.

  I gasped when he stepped forward to pluck me off the bike and set me on my high heels.

  My legs wobbled as if I’d been at sea when I took my first few steps. King chuckled as he slid in to wrap an arm around my waist.

  “Steady on,” he teased.

  “I’m perfectly capable of walking by myself,” I sniffed.

  His free hand firmly gripped the back of my neck so that I was forced to look up at him. It was a possessive, overtly familiar gesture, but I had the feeling that King was a man who took what he wanted.

  And for some insane reason, at the moment, that seemed to be me.

  “Maybe I just wanted an excuse to take you in my arms,” he whispered huskily, dipping down so that his lips were so, so close to mine.

  “You don’t seem like the type of guy who needs an excuse,” I breathed, my sass lost to the desire that flared at his proximity.

  His eyes flashed and he tugged me close with a jerk that had our bodies flushed together thigh to thigh, groin to groin, chest to chest. I shuddered against him as his hand slid from my hip over across the small of my back to the opposite side of my ass and gave it a squeeze.

  “Thank you for reminding me,” he said before he kissed me.

  He swallowed my gasp with his lips and filled my open mouth with his skilled, silken tongue. His taste erupted in my mouth, a combination of hot, sweet cinnamon candies and a flavor uniquely his own. I groaned and he swallowed that too. When my knees grew softer than warm butter, he banded a strong arm around my waist to keep me propped up.

  When he finally broke away, I kept my eyes closed, lips open and damp, savoring every last minute of the kiss even as it dissipated like a melting candy on my tongue.

  “Good?” he asked with a grin when I finally opened my eyes.

  “Awesome,” I breathed. “I freaking loved that.”

  “The kiss or the ride?”

  “Um, both?” I’d seen kisses in movies that looked pretty impressive but they should’ve hired King to show them how it was really done. My knees were still shot, or at least I told myself they were so that I had an excuse to keep my hands fisted in his tee.

  “Yeah?” His grin expanded, impossible bright. “Cool.”

  “Yeah, cool,” I said, unable to do anything but grin back at him like a fool.

  “So, pool. You play?”

  “Never,” I admitted.

  I was seriously pathetic.

  But King only continued to beam down at me. His excitement was so contagious that it obliterated my momentary self-hatred.

  “Glad to be the one to teach ya, babe.”

  “Me too.”

  He chuckled as he pulled me tight into his left side under the long reach of his arm slung across my shoulders. I fit perfectly there, small in the crook of his long, strong body, cradled there like I already meant something to him. He smelled like heaven, like fresh air and laundry. I dragged a deep breath into my lungs and giggled when he stared down at me with a raised eyebrow.

  I shrugged a shoulder, trying to play it off. “You smell amazing.”

  “So do you, babe, but I’ve known you ‘bout an hour so I was gonna wait to sniff you that obviously until at least the second date.”

  I choked because I was embarrassed but I laughed because he’d just improved on perfection by being funny on top of everything else. He tugged me even closer as we walked across the lot, either because he wanted me closer or because he was aware that walking on gravel in high heels was as seriously precarious exercise. Either way, it made me want to swoon.

  “Now that we’ve passed that beginner shit, I’m warning you, I’m going to have my nose at your throat a lot taking hits of that sugar and spice smell you got going.”

  I laughed as he pushed open the door to the dark bar. Music rushed out to meet us, wrapping me in one of my favorite Elvis songs, Jailhouse Rock, that made me want to dance.

  “Fan of the King?” my mysterious biker asked me as he ushered me over to the bar.

  “My dream vacation is to go to Graceland,” I said in answer.

  He laughed. “Glad to hear you got good taste in music, babe.”

  I nodded absently but my mind was busy processing the scenery.

  The interior of the bar was warm but not unbearable and tinged blue, green and pink from the wickedly cool neon light art that hung around the one huge room. Smack dab in the middle of the space was an enormous wooden bar, brightly coloured and beautifully artistic graffiti scrawled across the base of it while the large podium in the middle was shelved with row after row of liquors and shining glassware. To the left was a kind of gaming area with two burgundy red felt pool tables, three dart boards, a Pac-man arcade game that I immediately had to play and two of those mini basketball hoop arcade games that I’d only ever seen at the fair. On the other side, a small raised stage that was currently empty and most of the seating, and a little dance floor between the tables and the stage. The walls were black with those cool neon lights twisted into an assortment of images like guitars, flamingos and also cool sayings like “wild at heart” and, the biggest one across the main wall behind the bar that said, “shut up and drink.”

  It was, without a doubt, the coolest place I’d ever been to.

  “Wow,” I mumbled as King led us directly to the bar.

  He grinned as he once again lifted me by the hips to place me on a stool. “Cool, right?”

  “Very,” I agreed.

  “What can I get you?” he asked, leaning in so that I was caged between the bar and his long, lean body by the arm he braced on the counter.

  I tried not to sniff him again but it was hard.

  “Gin and tonic?”

  “Is that a question or your drink order?” he asked me, eyebrow raised.

  “Um,” I hedged. William had always ordered my drinks for me. If it was a casual before-dinner drink, it was always a gin and ton
ic; if we were at dinner, it was always wine or champagne. “I don’t really know what I like. I don’t drink very often.”

  His right eyebrow joined the left high on his forehead. “You’re how old? By the time I was fifteen, I knew I was a beer and whiskey man through and fuckin’ through.”

  “That’s early,” I pointed out, to take the spotlight off of me. “You know you are six times more likely to develop alcoholism if you drink before the age of 15.”

  He smirked. “Only addiction I got is to bikes, books and babes.”

  “Books?”

  He laughed that gorgeous laugh right into my face. “You judgin’ a book by its cover?”

  I blushed. “Sorry, a lifetime of shallowness has left me a little judgmental. I’m trying to change that.”

  “Now you surprise me,” he peered at me, fingering a lock of my pin-straight hair and rubbing it between his fingers. “Pretty like a fuckin’ princess but smart like a queen.”

  An enormous man, taller and broader than anyone I had ever seen in my life, appeared in front of us so quietly it was as if he had materialized there. He wore his long, glossy black hair tied back in a thick, messy man bun at the base of his brown neck, his plaid black and red shirt rolled up haphazardly over quilted forearms the size of one of my calves. The features he held in stern repose were roughly cut, a bump from a once or twice broken nose, cliffy cheekbones and a jaw so squared it created right angles under his ears. Even his mouth was hard, flat lined over a dimpled, scruffy chin and his eyes, though thickly lashed, were a flat brown. He was a brute, the poster child for the Canadian outback.

  “Eugene,” King greeted warmly. “Sup?”

  The man, inexplicably and horribly named Eugene, grunted in response.

  King didn’t seem perturbed by the bartender’s lack of social grace. He angled towards the bar but slid a hand under my hair at the tender skin on the back of my neck and squeezed possessively.

  “Listen, man, this lady doesn’t know her drink preference yet, if you can fuckin’ believe it. Do me a favor and bring us a selection of cocktails and beers you think she might like?”

  “Sweet, sour, bitter or clean?” Eugene asked, leaning his trunk-like arms against the bar so he could look me in the eye. I tried not to flinch when I saw the sheer size of his hands. They were enormous, more animal than human. I had no doubt he could crush me with those hands if he wanted to.

  “Um, not too sweet, sour and smoky, maybe?” I answered, still staring at those paws.

  They flexed and then clenched into a fist the size of a baby’s head. My gaze snapped up to his to find him grinning, but even that expression was vaguely terrifying because it looked unused and awkward on his all-man face.

  “Skittish one you got there, King,” he rumbled in a deep rough-edged voice.

  King chuckled. “She’s new.”

  “Yeah, to Entrance?”

  “To livin’.”

  Eugene pursed his lips and finally locked eyes with me. I was surprised by the intensity of his gaze, the scrutiny that made me feel he was giving me a full up-and-down even though he only looked direct into my eyes. He was turning me inside out to make sure I was good enough for his buddy. I let him, even though it made me squirm, because I liked that King had someone looking out for him.

  “Good woman,” Eugene finally noted, somberly and academically as if he was reciting his doctorate thesis to the board. “Deserves a good man.”

  I frowned at his odd emphasis on the word ‘man’ and so did King. He growled low in his throat, a sound that made me embarrassingly hot.

  “If you’re gonna cock block me, get someone else to make our fuckin’ drinks.”

  “No one’ll make ‘em better than me.”

  “She wouldn’t know the difference.”

  My head swiveled back and forth between them like I was watching a tennis match but a deep unease flickered at the back of my thoughts, a candle flame trying to illuminate the things that lurked in the dark.

  King finished the stare-off by turning to me, blocking Eugene from my sight. Without thinking, I reached up to tug on a lone, perfectly formed curl in his riot of kinky and straight hair.

  I felt his irritation fall away as he watched me watch the slide of his silky locks between my fingers.

  “You wanna play with me, babe?” he asked.

  I knew he was referring to pool, but it sounded like he could have been referring to something else, something more. A little thrill of fear and anticipation zipped up my spine.

  “Can we do some shots first?” I asked.

  He raised his brows at me. “You done ‘em before?”

  “Once,” I said.

  I’d done shots the one night I’d tried to deviate from my life path, at my bachelorette party thrown by my brother for just the two of us. The night I’d learned not to let my inner deviant out to play.

  “Eugene, give us two shots of tequila too,” King called out without taking his eyes off me, then said, “I’ll let you get tipsy, babe, but just enough to loosen you up. You know how to do a tequila shooter?”

  “Lime and salt, right?”

  He grinned at me as the shots were put in front of us with a salt shaker and a bowl of limes.

  “First you lick,” he said, picking up my left hand and locking eyes with me as he licked a sinuous path along the back of my palm between my thumb and forefinger. “Then you salt. Get your shot in the other hand just like that. Good. Then, lick the salt, slam the shot and finish with the lime. Ready?”

  I hesitated because Eugene was watching me and chuckling and a few other patrons towards the end of the bar were openly staring at the grown woman who had never done a tequila shot.

  “You got this, babe. Trust me, this is good tequila and the burn is even better. Why don’t you let me show you how it’s done first, yeah?”

  I nodded, relieved because I didn’t want to make a fool of myself in front of the regulars.

  King’s smirk turned mischievous as he sunk his hand through my hair to the back of my neck and tugged me towards him. Once I was near enough, he threaded his fingers through the locks at the nape of my neck and tugged to the side so that the left side of my neck was exposed. I stopped breathing when he ducked down to run his nose over the skin there.

  “Told you I’d have my nose at your throat,” he reminded me. His voice was rough like wheels over gravel but his tongue was silken as it darted out to run the same path his nose had just done down my neck.

  I shivered violently, which made him laugh against my cool wet skin.

  “Watch me,” he ordered as he leaned back to grab his shot.

  He didn’t have to. I was certain I could spend the rest of my life watching him and never get tired. My weird compulsion lent me new understanding towards reality TV. Watching beautiful people live was definitely something I could get behind.

  King gently tilted my head and sprinkled salt on my wet skin, then swayed forward to languidly lick it off. I sighed into his bright mass of hair, unable to stop myself from running my hands through the side available to me. How a man could have hair that soft was beyond me.

  I waited until he slammed back the shot and sank his teeth somewhat erotically into the fruit, before I asked my question.

  “Do you deep condition or what?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Deep condition your hair,” I explained patiently. “It’s so soft.”

  “Ugh, babe, I’m a man.”

  “Yes,” I said, because I was very aware of that. “A man with seriously soft hair. I need to know what conditioner you use so I can get some for myself.”

  “Babe,” he said slowly, deliberately. “I’m a man. You seriously think I use conditioner?”

  “Yes, but specifically deep conditioner,” I explained. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have hair softer than Vicuna cashmere.”

  “What the fuck is Vicuna cashmere?” King asked, laughing, leaning back to prop his elbows on the bar so that he could rest comf
ortably between my legs but not touch me, close but not crowding.

  “It’s the finest cashmere in the world. So, don’t tell me you don’t use deep conditioner, King. We just met and lying doesn’t make a good first impression.”

  He stared at me for a long minute and I stared back, my eyebrows raised and lids narrowed in a modified version of my No Nonsense Teacher expression. Finally, he blinked and burst out laughing.

  I tried to be annoyed but couldn’t. His laugh was seriously the best thing I’d ever heard.

  “King,” I protested, but he was already leaning forward to wrap his arms around me, cocooning me in his laughter.

  It was awesome.

  When he quieted, he pulled back just enough to look down at me with sparkling eyes. “You’re hilarious babe, you know that?”

  “I was serious.”

  He chuckled again, shaking his head as if I was too much. “Take your shot and let’s play pool. Winner gets a kiss, yeah?”

  “That means loser gets a kiss, too,” I pointed out.

  King winked at me. “Perfect.”

  It was after another tequila shot, three cocktails (a gin and tonic, something called a Moscow Mule that was fabulous and a cosmo martini that I thought tasted like liquid sugar, so yuck) and a Blue Buck beer for me and just the one shot and a beer for King.

  It was after I’d lost at pool four times but kicked ass at Mrs. Pac-Man and after I’d met some of the regulars, all of them old men except for a nerdy ginger-haired guy working on his computer named, inexplicably, Curtains.

  It was, in all, after the best date and probably best night of my life, and King and I were heading back to Entrance because it was well past midnight and I had school the next morning.

  The happiness I felt drove me to distraction, which was why it took me a moment to distinguish the new sound from the rushing wind, the gun of the motorcycle and the increasingly loud vibration of machines against pavement as they gained ground. Before I could make sense of it, they surrounded us.