After the Fall: The Fallen Men, #4 Read online

  “I’m going to fuckin’ kill them,” King growled as he stalked around the bookstore to survey the damage. “God-fuckin’-dammit, but they’re gettin’ ballsy. This shit needs to end, and it needs to end fuckin’ now.”

  Zeus cursed under his breath. “Babies comin’, cops diggin’, ’serkers circlin’… fuck me, but can’t we have a goddamn minute’a peace for once in our lives?”

  “Not the life you chose,” I said softly as he righted a heavy display case like it weighed nothing. “Not the life we chose,” I corrected.

  “Nah, but still, got a hot as fuck woman at home and babies to prepare for. Rather be there than here cleanin’ up the pigs’ mess.”

  “Rather be takin’ ya for dinner at Donavon’s like we planned. Now I gotta find a way to send those fuckers a message not to fuck with my woman,” King grumbled, stalkin’ to me with a look in his eye that I recognized from the nights he came home from riding or fighting, when that pale blue went near white with banked savagery he could only expend between my legs.

  “The boys like to go to The Lotus,” Nova said, referring to the strip club The Fallen had purchased a few years ago, around the time Zeus and Lou found each other again. “Think we can sort somethin’ out.”

  It was hours later, after King returned home from “deliverin’ a message” to Ormand and Peters that left his knuckles bruised and split over the bone, after he’d taken out his lingering savagery on my body in ways I couldn’t innumerate or speak about without blushing, my pussy sore, ass pleasantly aching, his body crushed onto mine like a paperweight to hold me in place so he could love me even while he slept.

  But I couldn’t sleep.

  There was something tangling in my gut, twisting and mangled that set my belly to aching, and I couldn’t figure out what it was.

  Only that the situation with Harleigh Rose was distressing me. She had been my friend and family for almost half a decade, and now, when I wanted to share the news that I would finally be her sister-in-law, but she was absent, so removed from our lives it was almost as if she didn’t exist anymore.

  I strained to reach my phone on the bedside table from under King’s warm weight and used my finger to pull it closer so I could pull up my text messages.

  Cressida: Okay, remind me why I love tequila again? I went out with the brothers to celebrate Bat’s birthday, and now it’s the morning after, and I couldn’t tell you anything that happened. We missed you by the way.

  Cressida: H.R. honey, please call me back or even text. I have something exciting to tell you, and I don’t want to do it over the phone. Can I come visit?

  Cressida: It’s the opening of Paradise Found today, and I wish you were here. I know you’ve got a lot to deal with, so don’t worry…just thinking of you, wishing I had your sass and spirit to light up my day and erase my nerves. Hope you’re doing well, my love.

  Cressida: I love you.

  Cressida: Still love you. Here if you need me for anything, even if you don’t want me to tell King about it. I have you, girl, if you’ll let me.

  Each message was sent days apart without a response. I couldn’t even tell if she’d read them, which was somehow worse because I wanted her to at least know how much she was on my mind.

  Then as if I’d conjured the devil himself by saying his name, a text appeared from an unknown number and I knew, even before I opened it, who it would be.

  Harleigh Rose: Cress, I need you to come and do it fast. 4195 Spruce Road in Vancouver. Come alone. I need to explain things to you. I’m worried something might happen to me or Lionel Danner.

  My heart lurched into a sprint, trying to hurdle over my ribs and out my chest.

  “King,” I said, pushing back the soft tangle of his hair and shaking his shoulder. “Get up, get up now.”

  His eyes slowly peeled open revealing that blue I loved so much, and the moment he saw my face, he went alert.

  “What’s up?”

  I sucked in a deep breath through my teeth, and said, “Follow me down the mountain. Harleigh Rose just texted, and I think she’s in some serious crap.”

  Cressida

  * * *

  A lot had happened in the past few weeks, and by a lot, I meant a whack ton in the way only biker lives could reel. Harleigh Rose had stabbed Lionel Danner in the chest. It was a truth that felt wrong in my head, like I’d been hypnotized to think that way when my gut said different. But it was true. When I’d gone down the mountain to the address she’d texted, I didn’t find Harleigh Rose in the suburban home. Instead, through the wide-open door, laying sprawled on the kitchen floor in a pool of warm blood, I’d found Danner, barely conscious and bleeding savagely from a large wound in his upper left chest.

  I’d called 911 and then King, who was waiting around the corner so I could at least give the allusion I’d obeyed Harleigh Rose’s orders, and then set about trying to save Danner’s life.

  We got the story from him days later, when he’d come to enough to talk about the tragedy. Apparently, after Reaper Holt, the Prez of the Berserkers MC had threatened to kidnap, rape, and possibly kill Loulou to cut Zeus off at the knees, H.R. had decided to take it upon herself to help Danner and Wrath take down the club. He didn’t know why she’d stabbed him, only that she must have had a damn good reason for doing so because they were madly in love with each other.

  I didn’t know who was more surprised, him or the club, when Zeus decided that Danner was worthy of not only our respect, but his daughter’s love. There was no drama or fallout. Only a quiet talk between the two men who had raised Harleigh Rose and King and then a mutual, warm kind of acceptance. With everything going on, I think they both realized drama over a happy relationship was small potatoes. Though, spending time with Lion as he recovered, it was easy to see that the knife might not have pierced his heart, but his separation from Harleigh Rose had. She was in deep with the Berserkers in a way that meant she would either end their organization entirely or end up dead.

  It was a strange and horrible thing to watch men of action who felt duty-bound to protect their women at all costs be forced to do nothing. At this point, they could only watch closely and wait to see what the fallout would be so they could swoop in to pick up the pieces where they might fall. Zeus was irritable, a bear woken from hibernation but unable to hunt, and Loulou was worse, the hormones raging inside her as she neared her due date so that she could laugh or cry at the drop of a hat. I’d never felt the club so on edge before. Brothers bickered with brothers, Old Ladies were essentially banned from the compound, and Ares was forced to stay with Nova’s family, the Booth’s, just in case full-scale gang war broke out at a moment’s notice.

  To make matters so much more heartbreaking, we discovered some of the details surrounding what had happened to Wrath and Kylie. She had been killed as retribution for Wrath’s betrayal of the Berserkers, and on learning about her murder, Wrath had soon followed, killed by the very men who had sworn brotherhood to him. Danner said there was a slim chance they’d kept him barely alive somewhere to torture, but King and I weren’t holding our breath. No one had known about King’s connection with him, and we kept it that way, only Eugene, King, and I planted two markers in the ground at Eugene’s cabin so they could be metaphorically laid at rest together. I hope they found their peace in the afterlife because they had been so brutally robbed from it on earth.

  They were dark weeks, bleak like the winter sky, a low ceiling that hung too close to our heads. Paradise Found was thriving, Shadow was a constant source of delight and had taken to draping himself over my shoulders as I read or puttered around the house, and Ares, as always, brought a level of happiness to our lives with his quiet intensity and tenderness.

  But it felt like the calm before a tropical storm was predicted to roll through Entrance and raze it to the ground.

  Today was the only day in over a month that everyone seemed to be in good spirits and that was because it was the night of our engagement party.

  I still
remembered my first biker party down to every detail. It was the moment I embraced the woman I wanted to be and the man I wanted to be with for the rest of my life. The club’s Old Ladies and Harleigh Rose with her best friend, Lila, had taken me to the mecca of biker stores, Revved & Ready, to pick out new wicked cool clothes. Now, those clothes were a staple of my closet, one side filled with the feminine, almost old-fashioned clothes I loved to wear to work, and the other side a mix of denim, leather, and graphic tees. That was who I was, I’d found out, leather and lace, badass and romantic.

  It was a duality that worked for me and worked for King because that paradox was echoed in his own soul.

  Now, four years later, I was an old hat at being an Old Lady, and the party that raged around me felt right and normal. Heckler was making out with two women in the corner near the dart board while Boner hustled people for cash over pool. Lou was there, so massively pregnant even three weeks out from her due date that I worried she would pop them out given the slightest provocation. Her mother was there too, a not infrequent visitor to the club, wearing pearls and leather jacket like a lady gone bad, and she was laughing at Smoke as he mimicked shooting a shotgun for some story he was telling.

  Old Sam, the owner of the record shop King and Harleigh Rose loved, was there with his wife, Rainbow, and Tayline were there arguing with Benny, Carson, and Wiseguy over darts, and even Susan Hobbs, Danner’s estranged wife and the woman who had taken in the Garro siblings when Zeus was in prison, sat at the bar talking to the Fallen cop, Officer Hutchinson.

  Riley Gibson was there too, looking faintly awkward and out of place, but smiling as he drank with Axe-Man and the biker showed him the hatchet he kept dangling from his belt. King had insisted on inviting him as a show of faith and gratitude for a supposed tip-off he’d given the club. I was surprised by that because Gibson was the kind of clean-cut man who seemed hard-nosed about the law and abiding it, but I knew how the club had a way of flipping our perceptions on their head.

  Lila was there too with Cleo, looking absolutely gorgeous as she always did these days, caramel skin exposed at her taut belly, tattooed flowers blooming all over her hips and up under the bared skin under her breasts. She wasn’t smiling, and I knew it was because her fiancé refused to be there, hating the club has he did, and more, because Nova was sitting at the bar with a biker bunny on the counter, doing shots out of her belly button with Ransom.

  It was funny to sit on King’s lap, idly listening to him shoot the shit with Curtains, Lab-Rat, and Bat, happier than anyone had a right to be living their happily ever after, and watch the women I loved struggle after their own Prince Charming in leather.

  I didn’t think Nova and Lila would end up together even though they were thick as thieves and so perfectly suited it seemed almost ignominious that they wouldn’t. Lila was engaged to a civilian, someone outside of the club, who hated the club, and Nova was Nova. The most beautiful man any of us had met in real life and also the most afraid of real commitment.

  The pair who seemed more likely to engage in some kind of relationship was, of all people, Bea and Priest.

  She followed him. It was something she did. Something she’d done since she was fourteen and introduced to the dark side of life through her sister’s love for the ex-con president of an outlaw motorcycle club. It was an odd sight, a pretty little slip of a blonde who looked more angel than human shadowing a stone-cold killer as if he was the god she was born to revere.

  Priest pretended not to notice, and he was good at it. He was good at everything I’d ever seen him do, including endeavouring to be the least human man on the planet. But there were these glimpses, like sunlight through storm clouds, that broke apart his stoic features and turned him into something still not quite human, but otherworldly, demonic perhaps while Bea was angelic. There were an odd sort of yin and yang, and to me, at least, now well versed in the areas between black and white, they seemed well suited.

  Not that Priest would ever give into those flashes of desire I saw like lightning streaks across his face. Not that Loulou or Zeus would allow the overly protected Bea to engage in anything whatsoever with their barely leashed beast.

  But I got Bea. I saw how she could be so compelled by the darkness and mysteries of Priest, and I felt sorry for her that nothing would ever come of her unrequited affections.

  Zeus and Lion were both absent, on a trip to Vancouver to check in, of all people, with Honey Yves’ uncle who might have a tip on the Berserkers outfit. It sucked not to have Harleigh Rose and Zeus there, the two who had adopted me as soon as King had even batted an eye my way, but at least Zeus had more than made up for it by giving King and me our engagement present before he left; King’s new cut replete with the patch “Road Captain” and the full Fallen colours on the back, and a leather jacket for me too, only this one said “Property of Garro.”

  “She’ll come out on top. It’s H.R., if anyone can take on an entire MC, it’s my sister. Trust me,” King murmured in my ear, using his nose to push the hair back so he could nibble on my lobe. “Sorry it’s weighin’ on you, babe. Gotta know, it’s doin’ the same to me.”

  “No one’s fault. I just miss her, you know? And I’m worried about her. The Berserkers aren’t like The Fallen. I’ve only ever heard bad things. Even Wrath hates them.”

  “Not many clubs like The Fallen, Cress. It’ll be good, babe. Now, can you try to relax and enjoy the party? I’m thinkin’ it’s time for tequila, so you’ll be amenable when I drag you to my back room and have my way with you.”

  Heat instantly sparked between my legs and send desire curling up my spine. I wrapped my arms around his neck to press closer. “You don’t need tequila to seduce me.”

  “Nah, don’t reckon I do,” he agreed before taking my mouth.

  A flash of tossed black hair caught my eye, dragging my gaze to the woman who’d just passed me, ass swaying in tiny cutoffs that displayed the bottom half of her butt cheeks. She was pretty even from behind, but something about her resonated with me like a bad note poorly struck. She looked, for a moment, like Paula. The crazy ass biker bitch I’d had a cat fight with in the clubhouse at my first biker party here four years ago. It still burned that she’d been the one to take King’s virginity, and I knew I must’ve been seeing things because after that night, she’d been banished from the club forever.

  But the thought of seeing her felt like a straight shot of poison to my veins, and I shivered as I tried to purge her from my mind while King’s attention was distracted by Lab-Rat who was making a cocktail of rum, tequila, Fireball, and cough syrup.

  There was a loud clearing of a throat, and then someone started pounding on the bar. It was Nova, who, once he got everyone’s attention, preened like a peacock and climbed on top of the wooden bar with his beer held aloft.

  “We’re here tonight to celebrate the King, our newborn Fallen brother, and his beautiful Queenie, who in my humble opinion is way too good for that guy’s ugly mug.” Everyone laughed drunkenly, even King whose laughter was only stopped by my kiss. “Not a man who believes in love and fairy-tale crap, but I am a man who believes in the love’a those two. Never seen anythin’ like it, outside’a Lou and Z, and I doubt I will again. ’Bout time you put a fuckin’ ring on her finger ’fore she ran off with Boner.” The biker in question hooted, jumped up on the pool table, and cupped his crotch to an audience of laughter. “Nah, but really, it’s gotta be said, and I can’t believe I’m the one doin’ it, but here goes. To King and Cress, the future King and Queen of The Fallen MC.”

  The roar of cheers rattled the windows and shook the floor as everyone shouted, jeered, and stomped their feet for us.

  King stood, keeping me in his arms, hands under my ass even as he addressed the club. “Seein’ as you all were part’a me wooin’ Cress by fixin’ up that dump that used to be Shamble Wood Cottage, thank you, brothers, for helpin’ me convince this woman to take a chance on a guy she never would’a thought she’d want to keep.”
r />   “Guy?” Boner called out. “You were a fuckin’ boy back then!”

  A blush fired my cheeks as everyone laughed, including King.

  “What can I say? Saw her, wanted her, took her and that was the end of that,” King declared arrogantly and then chuckled into my scowling face. “Just lucky she agreed to be wife.”

  “Here, fuckin’ here!” Bat called. “Now, fuckin’ kiss her so we can get back to drinkin’.”

  King’s laughter tasted sweet in my mouth as he took mine, kissing me so thoroughly I forgot we were being watched by a group of bikers until a few of them hooted and wolf whistled.

  I broke away, but King only let me go so far with his hand firm on the back of my neck. “Not a long engagement, babe. You sure that you’re cool with that.”

  I grinned, buzzed on the maple syrup bourbon sours Eugene made especially for me. “Tomorrow couldn’t be too soon.”

  “I’m so happy for you two,” Loulou said, waddling over with her big belly bared by a black cropped tee that read “Biker Mama” in red script over her swollen breasts. She looked so ready to pop; it was a wonder she could stand. Also, she was crying big, pretty tears that freely rolled down her face as she leaned over her belly to hug me.

  “I’m sorry, I’m a mess,” she complained, dashing at her wet cheeks as King wrapped an arm around her and tucked her into his side. “These damned babies put pressure on all of my insides, so I swear, I even feel it in my tear ducts.”

  “Sure,” King agreed easily even though he rolled his eyes at me over her head. “It’s just the pressure you’re feelin’.”

  “Exactly.”

  I giggled behind my hand and then palmed the skin stretched tight as a drum over her warm belly. “How are my little niece and nephew you doing?”

  There was a ripple like a current sucking out the tide under my hand, and I gasped at the same time Loulou winced.