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

  “I do,” I agreed easily. “I am.”

  “Just a man, babe. Don’t forget it,” he reminded me, uncharacteristically somber.

  I frowned and reached up to smooth the little furrow between his own brows. “Never just a man, King. Not when you’re my man.”

  “Sap,” he accused laughingly, nipping at my fingers.

  “So says the man who writes me love poems nearly every day.”

  “So says the woman who thinks Satan is literature’s greatest man.”

  “He is.” I linked my arms around his neck and smiled. “Should we name our firstborn son after him, do you think?”

  King burst out laughing, and even though it was like looking into a supernova, I kept on watching right through it.

  Cressida

  * * *

  Before I found King and he changed my life, I lived for the written word. I meant that in an almost literal way. My life during those years was so dull, so incredibly uninspired that a far better alternative could always be found between the cloth-bound pages of a favourite book. By extension, bookstores became my second home, perhaps my real home, because I could be exactly who I was meant to be as a reader. I could be the wild, fierce heroine in Tamara Pierce novels or the witty, well-meaning star of Jane Austen’s love stories. I could travel the world the way I’d always wanted through the narratives of Bill Bryson and luxuriate in the lives of sensational men like the ones found in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fictional universes.

  Bookstores were a home for my troubled mind at a time when I had no safe harbour to develop who I truly wished myself to be.

  So it was no wonder it had always been a dream of mine to open my own.

  But it was a dream in the way I’d always imagined all my dreams to be; unattainable, a pretty thing to look at but up in the clouds so high that it could never possibly rain down to earth.

  Of course, that was all before I’d met my biker poet.

  The first time I mentioned opening a bookstore to King, he’d cocked his head, and said, “Cool. Let’s do it.”

  And he didn’t mean that in a condescending way, as if it was inconceivable that I hadn’t pursued that goal before, or in a domineering way the way my parents or my ex, William, might have acted. King said it nonchalantly, because for him, it was just that simple.

  If he wanted something, he took it.

  Which meant, in his beautiful brain, that if I wanted something, he would make it happen for me.

  So even though I made the decision to go back to university with him to earn my Master’s in English Literature, he still urged me every day to consider opening my store.

  And then when we graduated, and I wasn’t sure if I should continue as a professor at the University of British Columbia, he took the step I’d been too afraid to take.

  He bought me a storefront.

  It was on Main Street just a few blocks down from Entrance Bay Academy where we’d met, and right beside Honey Bear Café, my absolute favourite coffee shop in the province. Before we owned it, it had been an antique shop run by an elderly woman who passed away. It was dirty, run down, and need a whack ton of TLC.

  I loved it.

  Together, with help from the brothers, my old colleagues Rainbow and Tay from EBA, and our friends, Benny and Carson, we transformed the tired space into an absolutely beautiful literary oasis.

  Paradise Found Books was dark and moody in the way I imagined 18th century literary cafes to be, with deep leather chairs, brass sconces, and exposed brick. The only natural light came from the two enormous floor-to-ceiling windows in the front left corner of the shop, and the black trim beautifully highlighted all that warm red brick. It was broody and moody and absolutely, if I did say so myself, fabulous.

  And we were due to open next week.

  “Stop fussing. You’re giving me a headache,” Rainbow called out to me as I wiped a smudge off the huge windows in the corner of the store. “Seriously, woman, I’m tired just looking at you.”

  “You don’t want to go home too tired to have sex with King,” Tayline chimed in, popping her head around the corner of a bookcase to waggle her black brows at me. “Now, that would be a crying shame.”

  She and Rainbow snickered and then devolved into full blown belly laughter when Benny sighed dreamily and added, “Totally.”

  Carson rolled his eyes at his boyfriend and tugged him hard into his front. “You sayin’ I don’t keep you satisfied, Benny Benito?”

  The blush that coursed over his pale olive skin was vermillion, but he still leaned heavily into the taller man and batted his lashes at him. “Satisfied has nothing to do with it. King Kyle Garro is beauty incarnate, and you know it, even if you won’t admit it in front of Cress.” He dipped his head back to make eye contact with me. “Seriously, he’s told me before he’s a gay man with eyes, so of course, he thinks King’s hot as hell.”

  It was Carson’s turn to look uncomfortable, but we all laughed because it was rare we got one up on the ex-football star.

  I smiled at them as they ducked their heads close and whispered to each other. I’d taught them both as a teacher at EBA years ago, when Carson was your run-of-the-mill bully and Benny was fairly obviously the closet gay boy who bore the brunt of his negative attention. The whole situation had been a mess of miscommunications, Carson’s bigoted father, a drug-dealing teacher, and Benny nearly dying from an overdose, so seeing them together and happy now was a gift I knew they both cherished.

  I turned back to the windows and adjusted the pillows at the base of one window seat, surprised again at the turn my life had taken. If you had told me I’d ever be best friends with former students, let alone date one of them, I’d have called you crazy.

  “You are so cute I could gag,” Rainbow informed them testily as she shoved a stack of books into the display by the cashier.

  “You’re just becoming a bitter old shrew because you’re not getting any,” Tayline countered, sticking out her tongue at her best friend. “Seriously, when was the last time you got laid?”

  “None of your business, sprite.”

  “Only because you don’t have any business to share,” she countered.

  I laughed at them over the low rumble of “Good Times Roll” by The Cars playing over the surround speakers, and Rainbow shot me a withering glare for siding with Tay.

  I shrugged. “I’m sorry, Rainbow. She has a point.”

  The beautiful Korean woman sighed and slumped against the cash desk dramatically. “Don’t I know it. Why can’t one of your delicious alpha bikers take an interest in me, huh?”

  “Probably because you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,” I pointed out, thinking of all the times I’d brought Rainbow to one of the club barbecues or hang-outs at Eugene’s, and she’d deliver sass upon heaping layer of sass.

  She blew her bangs out of her face and winced. “I know. I get bitchy when I’m nervous, and those big, beautiful bikers? Who the hell wouldn’t be nervous around them?”

  “That’s fair,” Benny added as he moved away from Carson to finish sweeping the aisles. “I still stammer like a freak when one of them first starts talking to me.”

  “It’s adorable,” Carson assured him with a grin.

  “It’s lame.”

  “Anyone who thinks it’s lame can fuck off with it,” Carson countered with an easy shrug. “I think it’s cute as fuck.”

  “It is,” I agreed, just for the record, because Carson was really the only voice Benny needed to hear.

  He blushed that beautiful red and ducked his head behind a book.

  “I get bitchy when I’m hungry,” Tay admitted, getting back to Rainbow. “Cy thinks it’s adorable too.”

  “Cyclops actually said the word ‘adorable’?” Rainbow asked dubiously.

  Her skepticism was warranted. Matthew Broderick, aka Cyclops or Cy so called because he’d lost an eye saving Tayline years ago from human traffickers, was not the kind of man one would assume had words like ‘cut
e,’ ‘cuddly,’ or ‘adorable’ in his lexicon.

  But I was a woman claimed by a biker, so I knew the secret of all alpha men. If they found a woman worthy of their wild hearts, for that woman and that woman alone, he would be sweeter than any other kinda man.

  “He did.” Tay proved my point with a secret little smile.

  “Hard to believe when he almost ripped the head off Officer Ormand the other day,” Rainbow muttered.

  “What?” I asked, always alert to the goings-on of the police force in Entrance because they were always ultra-aware of us.

  Tay shot Rainbow a glare and then sighed. “It’s not that big a deal…Cy already reported in to Zeus about it.”

  “Yeah, well, you didn’t tell me,” I pointed out, fisting a hand on one hip and cocking the other. “What went down?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You know, you’ve gotten a whole lot bossier since being with King.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “If he’s going to be king one day, I have to be queen. What else would you expect?”

  “You’ve always looked more like a Disney princess than a biker queen.”

  “Looks can be deceiving,” I countered because I’d learned that the hard way back in my stupider days when I’d almost given up a shot at King just because he was involved with the club. “Now, fess up.”

  Collectively, we grouped around the little living room setup I had in front of the windows, sinking into the big, comfy leather couches and the twin armchairs to listen to Tay.

  “You know Ormand? He’s mid-forties, divorced, and a Canadian redneck if I ever saw one. He lives next door because he didn’t let his wife keep the house in the separation. Anyway, he’s always been a bit of a nosy parker, obviously because Cy comes and goes a lot, and any Entrance PD officer is going to keep an eye on that. Recently, he’s kind of upped the game. He has binoculars he uses from his bedroom to peer into my house, and he always comes out onto his porch when Cy shows up…it was all just male posturing nonsense, but I was driving home from school the other day and the fucker pulled me over for no reason. He was super aggressive with me, leaning into my open window and kind of berating me for being involved with The Fallen.”

  She shrugged, but I noticed the shaky quality of the breath she dragged into her lungs and knew the incident had unsettled her.

  “He pestered me for ten minutes, and then I threatened to call Cy and the boys to come pick me up if he wouldn’t stop harassing me. He was visibly angry, but he let me go.”

  “Whoa,” Benny said, his big eyes wrenched wide. “That had to be kinda scary.”

  “They’re upping the ante,” Carson noted grimly, looking at me.

  He’d started hanging around The Fallen, the first step before anyone was ever considered to prospect for them. I wasn’t sure if he hung out with the brothers just because he got on with them or if he honestly desired to patch in to the club. He had a degree in business from UBC, but so far, he hadn’t been able to get much work, and I worried he would join up for the wrong reasons.

  I nodded, though, biting my lip. The police had been inserting themselves more and more into our lives over the past few years since Javier Ventura became mayor.

  It seemed nearly impossible, but he was actually worse than our former mayor, Loulou Garro’s deceased father who was in bed with Javier’s Mexican cartel, Danner’s corrupt police force, and Warren’s high school drug ring.

  Somehow, the villain had become the town leader, and things continued to spiral out of control, as evidenced by the fact his wife, Irina, had set up an illegal pornography business outside of Entrance.

  “Be careful, okay?” I told Tayline, taking her hand in mine as she sat next to me. “Do what Cy says.”

  She snorted. “You sound like one of them.”

  I shrugged because I did, but it was for good reason. “We’re involved in a world where abductions, murders, and battery actually do happen to the people we love…I just want you to be careful if the police are going to give the brothers any more trouble. Everyone knows you and Cy are tight.”

  “Then that should go doubly for you,” she countered.

  I reached over to the end of the couch and produce the Sig Sauer handgun Zeus had given Harleigh Rose, Loulou, and me for Christmas last year. “Don’t worry, I’m always prepared.”

  “Mrs. Irons carries a gun?” Carson teased. “Colour me surprised.”

  “Miss Irons,” Benny corrected automatically and then giggled. “Soon-to-be Mrs. Garro, I hope.”

  Everyone looked at me expectantly. There was a niggle of unease in my belly like a worm borrowing into the earth, tunneling through my foundation of confidence. I shrugged and laughed lightly, awkwardly. “Don’t look at me. We’re in no rush to get married.”

  And we weren’t. Our lives were beautiful just as they were. I reminded myself of this every day, especially when I saw old friends from my past life in Vancouver getting married and having babies. There was always a pang in the base of my gut when I saw the gorgeous wedding dresses and celebrations, and those plump, wrinkled faces and little fists.

  As much as I had changed over the past few years, I was still a romantic traditionalist at heart, and I yearned for those things with a fierceness that sometimes took my breath away.

  “I call bullshit,” Rainbow announced as she rearranged her long, boney limbs in her chair. “I’ve seen your face every time we walk by a baby, and there’s no denying your womb basically melts at the sight. Plus, hate to break it to you, babe, but you’re not getting any younger.”

  “Hey!” Both Tayline and I protested because we were the same age.

  “Thirty is hardly ancient,” I argued even though I’d found a grey hair at my crown just last week and thrown a bit of a fit about it to King. I was lucky I had the kind of man who’d let me rant, then pressed a kiss to the top of my head, declaring me beautiful in all of my iterations.

  “Have you talked about it at all?” Benny ventured, trying to keep his eyes on me and failing as they slipped to the side where Caron sat in his own chair flipping with a furrowed brow through a non-fiction book called Vagina.

  I smiled at him because we were in the same tough spot. “Not really…I mean, we speak about the future all the time in kind of abstract ways. We want to name our daughter Eve if we have one, and we want a cat someday soon. We’ve always dreamed about going on our honeymoon to Alaska and driving up the coast on the bike together.” I sighed gustily and leaned my head back in the couch cushion to look at the beams in the ceiling, searching for answers. “At what point is it my responsibility to talk to him about it? Isn’t he supposed to be the one to ask me when he’s ready?”

  Everyone was quiet for a beat. None of us was married, and therefore, none of us really knew the answer to that question. I decided I would call Maja, Buck’s Old Lady and resident biker bitch guru, to hash things out.

  “I think no matter what, it’s important to remember the obvious. King loves you. Never seen a man love a woman so much and so openly as that boy loves his Queenie,” Tayline stated, curled up like a kitten with her head on Benny’s lap while he stroked her short hair. “You have a man who isn’t afraid to let you know every day how much you’re loved, and I think that’s even better than a marriage certificate.”

  “Preach,” Benny agreed softly.

  I had to agree with them, which was why, as I started to get back to work shelving the last of the books in the many rows of dark oak bookshelves, I felt ill at ease and almost ashamed of my lingering desire for more. Was I being greedy and ungrateful for wanting a ring and a ceremony when I already had more love than any one person should ever be entitled to?

  I was still mulling it over as I trailed my fingers over the books in the non-fiction section, letting the soft bindings and beautiful spines calm me. So I was not prepared when I pushed a book onto the shelf and something caught my sleeve from the other side.

  I gasped, then tugged to free it, thinking the fabric was caught on a book,
but then fingers wrapped around my wrist and tugged back, so that I was forced up against the shelf. Before I could struggle again, the hand was gone and a low chuckle wound around the corner of the stacks like tendrils of smoke.

  Seconds later, a long, hard body was pressing me to the bookcase.

  “’S your Prince Charming come to life,” King murmured, voice light and full of laughter as he nuzzled into my neck.

  “You scared me,” I scolded, but I was already losing breath to the desire burning up my core, and my voice was weak because of it. “What are you doing here?”

  “Was in the neighborhood and missed my woman, so I thought I’d drop in and steal a kiss…or two.”

  King’s rough fingertips skimmed along the side of my jaw and moved my thick sheets of hair over my shoulder to leave my neck bare to his questing kisses.

  “Fuck, always smell so good,” he moaned as he dragged his nose down my throat and the other hand wrapped around my opposite side to dive beneath my jeans and play at the top of my satin panties. “Feel so fuckin’ good too. Can’t ever take my hands off ya.”

  “I don’t want you to,” I admitted. “The second you touch me, I want more.”

  “I know. Can feel it in the skip of your pulse just here.” He tongued my neck where my heart beat like a percussion drum. “Feel it in the furl of your nipples.” His hand skated up my belly to my breast where he tweaked the peak with strong, relentless fingers and then arrowed it back down my jeans to frame my swollen clit between two fingers. “Feel it in the way you throb for me so damn quick. Tell me, babe, if I dipped a finger beneath these pretty satin panties, would you be soaked with want for me?”

  My head fell back to his shoulder, lips parted on a long exhale as if there wasn’t any more room in my body for air, only the hot weight of heady desire.

  “Yes, but honey, everyone is up front helping out. We can’t play back here.”

  I knew the moment I said it, it was the wrong way to handle the situation.