Lessons In Corruption (The Fallen Men Series Book 1)

by Giana Darling

  “You won’t return my phone calls or my emails so I decided to see you in person,” he said as if he was the most reasonable person on the planet and I was a shrew. “I have a very important client dinner to attend at the end of the month just outside of town here and I thought you could accompany me. I even bought you a new dress.”

  I seethed. Visions of punching William in his clean-shaven throat, slamming his head into Georgie’s half-moon-shaped desk until his perfect head was bloodied, swam through my mind like shark-infested waters.

  The audience, Georgie and now Shawn Walters, one of the Math teachers, were now both avidly watching and kept me from acting upon my baser instincts.

  Thus, I cleared my throat of fire and said, “I’ve mailed you the divorce papers four times now, William. I see you every other week at court-mandated couple’s counseling for exactly this reason, so that we can talk about our problems is an appropriate venue. What in the world would make you think that the middle of the day at my place of work would be a good time to discuss the dissolution of our marriage?”

  It was William’s turn to frown. “Cressida, there is no need to speak so harshly.”

  Oh my God. I was this close to tearing out my hair and I freaking loved my big head of hair.

  I took a deep breath as I vaguely registered two more people slipping into the room.

  “I’m sorry if it seems like I’m angry though, to be honest, it is almost undoubtedly because I am angry. I do not appreciate being ambushed at my place of work,” I told him in what I felt was, irrefutably, a calm tone.

  “You tell him, girl!” Tayline chorused from where she suddenly stood with Georgia, Shawn and Rainbow behind the desk.

  I shot her a look but she only raised her hands in the air in the universal sign for ‘preach.’ Giving up on her before smoke came out of my ears, I turned back to William and made my voice sweet because I knew honey worked better than vinegar with men like my ex.

  “Why don’t we go outside? We can speak more privately there.”

  He hesitated, which was smart because I was being tame with our audience but would absolutely not be if I were alone with him. I decided to take the decision from him and immediately pushed through the door that led to the teacher’s parking lot. A moment later, William followed. I knew if I cared to look that the little grouping left inside would have their noses pressed to the windows but I focused on William instead.

  “Seriously, what were you thinking coming here and making a scene like this at my school?” I asked, my anger still starch through my muscles but the hurt was creeping in, wrinkling my resolve.

  Did he really care for me so little?

  “I wasn’t the one making a scene. I merely wanted to speak with you, Cressida. You didn’t give me the chance at Christmas and those sessions are a joke. I wanted to give you a chance to tell me what you think went wrong in our marriage so that I can attempt to fix it with you,” he said.

  It was a good response. Or it would have been if I hadn’t had the exact same conversation with him a good twenty to thirty times before.

  I ran a hand through my hair and tried to find my inner zen. “I honestly don’t know what to say to you anymore, though. I don’t love you, William.”

  He stared at me for a long moment before he nodded curtly. “I understand that I work a lot—”

  “It wasn’t about the work,” I practically growled. “You can’t give me what I need anymore.”

  He snorted. “There are very few things that I can’t afford to give you.”

  “For Pete’s sake, I don’t mean financially. I mean emotionally, sexually.”

  “You’re just going through something right now. In another six months, you’ll be begging me to let you back into the house,” William said for the umpteenth time; he just kept extending the timeframe it would take for me to return to him.

  “I won’t,” I said gently, stepping forward to touch his arm lightly.

  His huge dark brown eyes stared down at me, confused and belligerent. “You’re being ridiculous. You have to know that I can’t give you any money when you’re acting like this. It wouldn’t be fiscally responsible of me to support your mid-life crisis.”

  “Quarter-life,” I corrected automatically, just like I had that morning with my mother.

  “You know I have this big merger coming up and your mother is almost literally sick with worry every day that you keep up this charade,” he pushed, driving the bamboo slivers further and further under my nails.

  “Stop it, William. Now, you’re just trying to be mean.”

  “She’s going to the doctor next week. Your father is very worried,” he continued with the same infuriating calm.

  “I said stop it,” I hissed, stepping closer and up on my toes so I could try to get in his face.

  “No, not until you come home. You think I don’t care, Cressida? I’ll show you just how much I care if I have to tie you up and lock you in our bleeding closet,” William said, again, calm as can be.

  A shiver worked itself up my spine like a creepy, crawly thing.

  “You good, teach?” A new, hoarse voice said from behind me.

  Normally, I tried not to curse but I felt that the arrival of Zeus freaking Garro warranted it.

  “Fuck.”

  “Cressida?” William asked, instantly straightening and moving into me so he could place his hand in a possession of ownership on my waist. “Do you know that… man?”

  “Better question is, does she know you?” Zeus demanded, stepping into my line of sight.

  He was wearing his leather cut over a skintight white t-shirt that defined his abs in a way that was somehow more indecent than being totally bare-chested. The purity of the shirt contrasted beautifully with the plethora of black outlined feathers that wrapped around his biceps and upper forearms like the tips of angel wings and the other tattoos that crept up his neck under his beard. He looked like a menacing, badass biker; the villain in this bizarre scene.

  Instead, I knew he was the demon on a black hog come to save me from my knight in shining armor. Unconsciously, I took a step away from William and closer to Zeus. Sensing this, the biker snagged me by the wrist and tugged me forward so that I fell in beside him.

  “Yes, William,” I said although Zeus’s actions had rendered it unnecessary. “I know him. This is Zeus, um, Garro.” I turned my head up to look at the man looming over me and winced slightly. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know your real name.”

  Zeus stared down at me for a long beat as if he wasn’t certain if I was human or alien. Then he said, “Zeus is my name on the streets and in the books now, teach. Don’t sweat it. Now, tell me what’s goin’ on, yeah?”

  I sighed heavily, waved my hand in a very shocked William’s direction and explained, “This is my soon to be ex-husband. He would already be my ex-husband if he agreed to sign our very fair divorce papers but instead, he’s holding our joint account hostage until I go back to him.”

  I watched Zeus’s face go from diamond hard to graphene, the hardest material in the world. I thought for a moment that he might just be the hardest man in the world and I wondered what I’d done bringing a man like him into this conflict with my husband.

  My fears gave way to shock when he slung a weighty arm around my shoulders and kissed, kissed, my temple.

  “Ah, the one you told me about last night before bed,” he said.

  I blinked.

  William blinked.

  Zeus continued to speak, “Knew he was a fuckin’ piece of shit caught in your tire treads, darlin’, but didn’t think he’d be low enough to show up at the school to fuck with you.”

  “Me either,” I squawked when he squeezed me to prompt a response.

  He jerked his chin up at William. “You listen to this and you listen like your life fuckin’ depends on it because, Willie boy, it fuckin’ does. This lady is now with a Garro man and in case you’re so stupid you don’t know what that means, I’ll let you know. She belon
gs to The Fallen MC and no one fucks with The Fallen. Not even soon-to-be-ex-husbands with wallets bigger than their tiny pricks who think they can blackmail a woman into bein’ with ‘em.”

  “Oh my God,” I said with the last of the breath left in my lungs.

  I tried to inhale but choked on my inability to understand what was happening and started to cough. Zeus (not so helpfully) thumped me on the back with a mighty fist.

  “Are you actually saying that you’re dating my wife?” William confirmed, his jaw unhinged with the weight of his doubt. “That my wife of eight years, the same woman who won’t watch sex scenes in romantic comedies and who hasn’t spoken with her brother in the nearly nine years since he went to jail because he’s a convict, that same woman, is involved with a notorious motorcycle gang?”

  “Club,” I croaked out at the same time that Zeus corrected him too.

  We shared a weird little smile.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. So, if you’re ‘bout done here, you can let Cressida go back to work and you can go back to whatever cage you came from and keep livin’ your narrow fuckin’ life,” Zeus ordered.

  William stared at him.

  I stared at him.

  Zeus moved.

  He used the arm around my shoulders to swing me into his front and then he tilted his head towards me so all William (and the nosey folks in the office) could see was his riot of crumpled, shoulder length brown waves. It probably looked exactly like he was giving me a big kiss. Instead, he pressed his lips close to my ear and said, “Just claimed ya, teach. Hope to fuck my son knows what he’s doin’.”

  “I, I don’t know what, I mean…” I tried to say but King lifted a hand and pressed it gently over my mouth.

  “Don’t lie to me, teach. Wouldn’ta helped you if I didn’t think you were a good woman. Now, I want you to step back when I let you go, look at me with stars in those beautiful brown eyes and then hightail it back into your classroom. Yeah?”

  His eyes were so close to me I could see the loops of different blues and grays that made up his irises. Unlike King’s who’s were perforated and so pale a blue they glowed just like Arctic ice, Zeus’s were ringed like the trunk of an old tree. They were wise eyes despite their brutality and before I could overthink it, I nodded my acquiescence to his demands.

  We broke apart, I looked up at him dazedly (not really an act as I was seriously bemused) and then with one last sidelong look at a ruffled William, I hightailed it to my classroom. Only when I was at the doors to the Humanities building did I look back to see Zeus leaning against his massive Harley with his arms crossed over his chest, watching as William’s car peeled out of the lot.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I jolted out of my thoughts at the rumbling, annoyed sound of King’s voice. He stood in front of my table in the library office. It was surrounded on two sides by glass walls so I could see the students working quietly at their tables. Now, King was the only one left in the lull between class time and after-school study sessions. It wasn’t lost on me that our lovely librarian, Harry Reynard, had left me the office in peace when he’d realized I needed a little alone time.

  It had been a long twenty-four hours, the longest of my life, so I didn’t hate myself too much for assigning a last minute in-class essay on Paradise Lost in my last period English class just so I could have fifty minutes to figure out what had happened in the parking lot between my estranged husband, the President of The Fallen MC and little ole’ me.

  Even after the class ended, I hadn’t figured it out.

  The silver lining of this was that I didn’t feel awkward around King even though I should have been blushing and fidgeting like a shy schoolgirl after what I’d let him do to me this time yesterday afternoon.

  Still, I thrill of anxiety and the delicious echo of pleasure pulsed through me and tightened my nipples at being in the same room alone with him. King’s eyes ducked down to the sight but, surprisingly, his frown remained.

  “What are you talking about? I dismissed class, you can take a walk or something before detention starts in ten minutes,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.

  Well, King, William showed up at school to make a scene but don’t worry, your crazy hot, insanely scary dad stepped in and, I think, claimed me like a piece of property so that my ex wouldn’t fuck with me anymore. That’s what’s wrong.

  King’s eyebrows locked together, casting deep shadows over his glacial eyes. “Don’t give me that bullshit. Something’s been up your ass all day and I wanna know what it is.”

  “How is that any of your business?”

  A sneer twisted his beautiful mouth as he leaned forward on my desk, cornering me like a predator would his prey. “‘Cause if you tell me, I’ll take care of it for you.”

  Gosh freaking darn it, I did not have the strength to deal with his strangely endearing brand of biker sweetness today. “King not only is it not your job as a student to take care of anything for me except your homework, I am also incredibly uncomfortable with the idea of you ‘taking care of’ anyone.”

  Hurt flickered across his features, brief but stunning and wrong like a midnight eclipse.

  “Just ‘cause I’m the son of The Fallen doesn’t mean I take care of every problem with my fists.”

  Shame rose in my throat, a bitter and nauseating cocktail. He had never given me any indication that he would deal with his problems like that and especially after our heart to heart yesterday about people judging him as a brainless, violent thug, I felt sick for jumping to that conclusion.

  “I’m sorry,” I said with my aching heart between my lips.

  When he didn’t move, I placed a hand on one of his fists and ran my fingers lightly over the golden hair across his knuckles.

  “That was wrong of me,” I continued softly. “I spoke hastily but honestly, it had nothing to do with my real impression of you.”

  “Yeah, and what’s that impression like?” he asked, leaning down closer so that the tendons and muscles in his arms popped out in stark relief.

  I licked my lips because I couldn’t lick him.

  King’s eyes tingled like bee venom over my mouth.

  My eyes skittered to the door and back to him.

  Taking that as the sign it was, he reached out to slide his palm around the back of my neck under the thick fall of my hair. It felt oddly vulnerable, his big palm wrapped around my slender neck against my hummingbird pulse, his fingers slotted between the vertebrae of my spine effectively locking me in stasis so I was forced to look into his eyes and nowhere else.

  “Tell me,” he urged.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “I think King Kyle Garro is a man who plays at being a boy to dupe the dumb, a predator to scare the weak and a pretty boy to manipulate the trite.”

  His eyes flashed and a low rumble worked through his throat. “And how do I act with Cressida Irons? Who am I to her?”

  “You’re a King who makes her want to be his rough and tumble Queen,” I breathed out before I could stop myself, our whispered conversation lending a confessional tone to our words.

  I couldn’t lie. I didn’t want to.

  Damn the consequences.

  “Screw detention, come with me right fuckin’ now,” King ordered roughly but it was the edge of desperation in his voice that had me dutifully following him.

  It was only when he moved towards the labyrinthine rows of books in the back of the library and not the door that I came down from my King-induced high.

  “No way am I doing anything with you in the freaking library.” I tried to tug my hand out of his hold with both of mine to no avail. “King!”

  He ignored me until we were in the sweet, paper scented depths of the library, sequestered away in Row WXYZ.

  “Oh my God,” I gasped as King turned on me.

  He slammed me up against the shelves, anchoring me to the rows of books with his lean hips. His growl vibrated against my lips as he took my wrists in one of hi
s big hands and pinned them above my head.

  Before I could regain my breath, I tasted his. His mouth claimed me, searing the secret his apple poem had promised me into the delicate skin on the inside of my lower lip. He bit me there, scraped his teeth over it again and again until I writhed against him.

  He broke away with a snarl to say, “You think just ‘cause you’re the teacher, I gotta follow your rules? Well, you’re wrong, babe. Between you and me, I’m the fuckin’ authority figure. If I gotta fuck you in the library to show you what’s what, I’m only too happy to fucking oblige.”

  I licked my dry lips, fighting to remind myself why I should say no to this, to this inappropriate man in this highly inappropriate place but my sex was throbbing a heavy, steady beat that scrambled my good intentions. I rubbed my sticky inner thighs together to try to alleviate the ache but King stopped me by kicking my legs further apart with one booted foot. Before I could protest, his hand was between my legs, slapping the bare skin of my wet inner thigh so hard it stung then cupping my entire mound in his huge palm.

  “This cunt is wet because of me. It’s exactly my depravity, my wrongness that gets these sweet juices flowing. You like me bossing your sweet ass around, don’t you?”

  “No,” I said, but it came out breathy.

  There was a haze around everything but King, his hand on my cunt, his breath on my face and his eyes, those huge pale blue moon eyes, boring into my face, daring me to lie to him.

  They flashed at my blatant untruth. I gasped as two of his thick, callused fingers plunged beneath the placket of my underwear and curled inside me, pressing hard against my front wall. My knees collapsed at the intensity so that the only thing holding me upright was the strong hand pinning my wrists and the two fingers impaling me.

  “You want to be dirty with me, Miss Irons,” he taunted me, drawing his tongue down the edge of my jaw until he reached me chin. I gasped when he nipped it between his teeth. “Can feel your pussy tighten around my fingers when I talk this to you. Looks like I’m fulfilling two fantasies by fuckin’ my hot as fuck teach in the stacks.”