Lessons In Corruption: A Student/Teacher Romance (The Fallen Men Book 1)
Lessons In Corruption: Chapter 19

For the eighth morning in a row, I woke up beside King. Or rather, I was sprawled diagonally across him as if he were an island salvation in the midst of a mattress ocean. One of his long arms held me on to him, anchored over my shoulders by the hand that twined in the hair at the base of my neck. Even in sleep, he held me like he would never let me go.

I lay there beside a man-boy I never should have known and loved him secretly, desperately with every atom of my being. I’d loved him since the moment my eyes had landed on him in the grocery store parking lot and since then, he’d not only given me more than enough reasons to continue to love him, but also the means to begin to love my life.

Before King (B.K.), I’d enjoyed my books, going on long quiet walks through Stanley Park and hanging out with my parents.

A freaking pathetic list.

Now, I loved riding on the back of King’s black and chrome customized Harley Davidson with my breasts to his leather jacket and my hair to the wind. I loved feeling his hands on my skin tuning and revving my engine with his sometimes rough but always-reverent touch. I loved the biker babes and the rest of the Garro clan, the least traditional family I had never interacted with and also, somehow, the most genuine. I loved my students, sweet Benny and misunderstood Carson, beautiful but broken Louise and even Talia and her crew of beautiful but vain girlfriends. They all trusted me to teach them and to love them from afar so even though teaching had never been my original dream, I found myself loving even that.

King had arrived in my life like an angel fallen from heaven and ascended from hell, like my own real-life Satan who whispered rebellion in my ear so winningly I had no choice but to answer his call.

I didn’t know if Eve was happy in the end, uprooted in her new life and new world with Adam, but I knew I would be if that future was available to me.

“Shut up,” King croaked.

I propped my elbow on his chest, placed my face in my hand and stared down at him. “I’m being quiet.”

“’Bout as quiet as a souped-up Mustang drivin’ down the Sea to Sky,” he muttered without opening his eyes.

“Are you saying I breathe loudly or something?”

“I’m sayin’ never heard someone think as loud as you.”

I glared at him, and feeling it, he opened one sleep-heavy eye to see it.

He grinned.

I glared harder.

Then he chuckled, a low sound so deep that moved under me like shifting tectonic plates. I hung on tight and waited for it to pass, liking the way his laughter felt and that I kept discovering new ways to appreciate it.

“Time?” he asked, closing his eyes again but shifting to align me front to front over top of him.

I abandoned my position to press my cheek to his lightly furred chest, tuck my arms under his back and up over his shoulders. His workingman hands abraded the skin at the base of my spine just over my ass as he stroked me in lazy whorls.

“Early, we’ve got an hour and a half before school,” I told him.

We rode in together sometimes, but not always. I’d objected at first because it seemed blatantly inappropriate to go to school with the same teenage lover that I taught in fifth period English, but King had pointed out that everyone thought I was dating his father so it wouldn’t be odd to catch a ride with him in the morning as we were going to the same place. To keep it safe, sometimes other bikers would take me in. Nova volunteered for the job most of the time, which made King especially grumpy, but so did Zeus, Priest, a quiet but beautiful man who didn’t ever speak to me unless it was to confirm a question I’d asked, and, surprisingly, Buck. The latter drove an absolutely enormous motorcycle with tall, swooping handlebars called ‘ape bars’ and the engine growled so loudly, I wore earplugs even under my helmet. I loved riding with him though because he told me stories about King and even Zeus, whom I was surprised to learn was only thirty-four, growing up. We also always made a point to stop at Honey Bear Café and Bakery so Buck could get his daily donut and I could get a coffee.

“Good, I’m takin’ you to school today,” King mumbled.

“Okay,” I said, smiling against his heartbeat. I may have loved going to school with Buck because he was kind of making it his duty to be my ‘biker Dad’ but there was nothing better than riding with King.

“Get up and get ready, babe. I’ll be up soon,” he ordered sleepily because I needed more time to get ready than he did, given he was a man who rolled out of bed, took a two-minute shower (that is, if I wasn’t in it) and left.

I pressed a long kiss to the skin over his heart, infusing the moment with every single ounce of forbidden love I felt for him. Suddenly wanting to cry, I broke away and hustled into the bathroom.

My morning routine consisted of a short shower to wash and shave (a daily necessity now that I had King in my bed every night) and about thirty minutes to blow dry my hair, put on my minimal face of makeup and dress. I stood in my closet trying to pick out a dress or skirt (pants were harder to get off in a hurry if King wanted me during detention, which he often did and I just as often gave into because I was weak and he was hot) when I noticed how the small walk-in had changed in the last week.

A surprisingly neat stack of clean t-shirts, all in neutral colors, sat beside a pair of well-loved once-white-now-kinda grey sneakers that King used when he went running every day, usually right after school. Beside those, there was a not-so-neat pile of dirty laundry, men’s boxer briefs, again in neutrals, gym socks and his black mechanic’s onesie with Hephaestus Auto stitched on the pocket.

King had invaded my closet.

It did not bother me.

I was a neat person by training; William and my parents were as close to OCD as you could get without being formally diagnosed. But the sight of King’s mess cluttering my closet floor made my heart warm and throb like an open wound. I was a masochist so I poured salt into it by reminding myself that one way or another, this affair would end. Probably in disaster, but definitely, when he either went off to UBC or patched into The Fallen. I was realistic. No freshman university student wanted a girlfriend, let alone a twenty-sex-year-old divorcee, and no hardcore biker would want Miss Irons as an ‘old lady’.

I slipped on a light blue cotton button up dress and a matching headband with a little daisy on it. I caught sight of myself in the full-length mirror as I made to leave and frowned at my reflection. I looked like a freaking grade school teacher—adorable, yeah—but in no way equipped to deal with a biker. Biting my lip, I looked down at the matching cardigan in my hand, dropped it to the floor and grabbed the little black leather jacket I’d bought with Harleigh Rose the other day at Ready & Revved. It was a little incongruous but somehow it looked cute and I decided the bizarre contrast perfectly suited the new me.

I was reading Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance when King joined me in the kitchen a few minutes later. He immediately moved to the coffee pot to pour himself a cup using one of my bookish mugs that illustrated the snitch from Harry Potter and said ‘I’m a catch.’ It was so fitting, I giggled behind my own coffee cup.

His school dress shirt was still unbuttoned, revealing a tanned column of muscular torso that made my mouth water. He scratched at the abs, caught me staring and smirked.

“No time for a quickie this mornin’, babe. ‘Less you want to suck me off real quick?”

I blushed but tossed my book at him. “You are such a twerp.”

He caught the book easily in the hand not carrying the coffee and shook his head at me. “You need to start cursin’, Cress. You teach high school, not elementary school.”

I ignored him, plucked my book from his hand when he came over to the table to grab one of the bagels I’d put out for us, and went back to reading.

He laughed. “Like your choice of readin’, babe. Like that you’re finally tryin’ to understand.”

I shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal when inside, I was happy dancing that he’d noticed I was making an effort. “It’s a classic. It was remiss of me not to have read it already.”

A loud pounding at the door made us both freeze. I looked to King but he was already up buttoning up his shirt and moving towards the window over the sink so he could peer around the bushes at whoever stood at the door.

“Huge ass man at your door, Cress,” he said. “Do I need to get my gun?”

“You have a gun?” I asked, because that’s what seemed important at the moment.

He slanted me a look. “Got more than one. I’ll take you to Smoke’s Range one day and teach you how to shoot so you can defend yourself when I’m not around. For now, tell me if havin’ a huge ass man at your door is something usual for you.”

I thought about it for about two seconds before I was shooting out of my chair and wrenching open the front door.

“Sander?” I asked, my hands flying over my dropped mouth as I took in the sight of my ‘huge ass’ brother.

His handsome face was black and blue. Twin bruises ringed his beautiful dark eyes and another marred his scruffy jaw. His lip was cut and when I reached out to snag his hands, so were his knuckles.

It wasn’t, unfortunately, unusual for Lysander to show up at my door bruised and bloodied. Like I’d said, he lived a tough life and didn’t seem to be able to get shot of it. So, I was prepared for the sight of him.

“Come in, come in,” I urged him, gently tugging on his hand when he hesitated.

I settled him at the little table in the breakfast nook and smoothed back his hair so I could press a kiss to his forehead. “Just going to grab the first aid kit, I’ll be right back.”

He looked up at me with deep, dark eyes that seemed to me like the exact color of sadness. When he nodded, I hurried down the hall in the opposite direction to grab the kit under the powder room sink.

“Babe, you gonna tell me what the fuck is going on?” King asked as I swept back into the kitchen and straight to my brother.

I halted in opening the metal box and whirled to face him. “Oh God, um, right. I guess, well, King, this is my brother Lysander Garrison. Sander, this is King.”

“King Kyle Garro,” my brother clarified, speaking tenderly through his swollen mouth.

He shot me an eloquent look, part hurt and part frustration. It had been weeks since he’d asked me to secure him a job at Hephaestus Auto, and I hadn’t forgotten, but it wasn’t as easily said as it was done. I didn’t know why he wanted a job there and know that I actually knew Zeus and his clan of kids and bikers, I wasn’t sure if I felt comfortable foisting my sketchy brother off on them.

“Seems you have the advantage,” King said, his voice pitched low in that badass biker tone he used when he was pissed. “Only heard about you for the first time a few days ago and I was under the impression you were still locked up.”

Shit.

Both men shot me looks of glittering betrayal, as if I’d plunged knives into their backs.

“Be grateful. Normally, she doesn’t tell anyone about her fuck-up older brother,” Sander said finally, but his posture had shifted from pained and tired to straight-backed.

Tension thrummed through my small kitchen for the second time in less than a week.

“Sander, you are not a fuck up,” I began, moving forward with my initial act of tending to him. As I was pulling out the gauze, the instant ice packs and the hydrogen peroxide gel, I told King. “I don’t really talk about Sander because he’s private. Seeing as I’m, um, dating you, I realize that maybe I should have told you more about him.”

Sander grunted at both my words and his pain as I pressed the ice pack to his jaw. “Don’t need anyone knowing my shit.”

“Tough fuckin’ luck,” King snapped.

He was leaning against the kitchen counter across from us in his school uniform minus the striped tie and navy blue blazer. It occurred to me that he should look like a schoolboy waiting for a ride to class. Instead, he looked like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a creature of violence and instincts and sex wrapped up in shiny packaging meant to make him innocent. Instead, it amplified his threat.

“What’s your beef?” King asked.

Sander glared at me as he reluctantly answered. “Second degree murder.”

King’s eyebrow rose as he coolly appraised the other man. “Bum charge?”

“No,” my brother shifted uncomfortable as I gently tended to his cut knuckles. “Did it, did my time for six years and got out for good behavior.”

“Why are you showin’ up at Cress’ door first thing in the morning lookin’ like you’ve been run over from a sixteen-wheeler?”

I was glad King had asked the question because I was dying to know the answer.

“Got caught cheating at cards at Lake Edge Casino,” he grumbled with a shrug. “Shit at cards and shit at cheating so it was a dumb idea but I needed the money. It’s not easy replaceing work when you’re an ex-con.”

I carefully tied the gauze off and tied it at the backs of his hands then placed a kiss on each of his big palms. “So sorry, Sander,” I murmured quietly.

He used one of those hands to cup my cheek for just a second before he dropped them back between his spread thighs. It was his way of telling me that he didn’t have any regrets.

“How much do you need?” I asked, still soft because I didn’t want to ask King to leave but I didn’t want him around for this particular conversation either.

Lysander had been my secret, my responsibility and my cross to bear for so long that I almost wasn’t ready to share him with anyone else.

“No,” King’s voice cracked across the floor between us harsher than the flick of a whip. “You are not givin’ him any of your hard-earned fuckin’ money, babe. You barely have any as it is.”

“King,” I hissed, because Lysander didn’t know that.

“The fuck?” my brother asked, his injured hands coming out to grab my waist when I tried to pull away from him.

“Get your hands off her,” King growled.

“Okay, okay, let’s lower the testosterone in the room for a second,” I suggested brightly, my nerves translating strangely into faux confidence.

“What is he talking about, princess?” Lysander asked me.

It occurred to me that I no longer liked the nickname that, ironically given their differences and estrangement, both my father and brother used on me. Queen and Queenie sounded so much better.

“William took my name off our joint accounts so I was left with nothing when I asked him for a divorce. It was why I had to ask you for the loan,” I admitted.

“You told me that situation was temporary,” Lysander accused, getting to his feet but swaying when he reached his full height.

“You’re sayin’ you care? From what I understand, seein’ you here right now askin’ for money, you’re just as bad as her scumbag ex,” King snarled.

I pushed him firmly back into the seat and held out a hand to an advancing King. “Stop it, both of you! King, go to the counter and lean on your freaking hands. I do not need you punching my brother when he’s clearly already received his beating for the day. Sander, calm down, you’re probably concussed and I don’t need to be dragging your heavy ass to the emergency room before I go to school. Which, by the way, King and I have to be at in forty-five minutes so we need to wrap this up because he also has a present for me, and no way am I missing out on that because you can’t cheat at cards!”

They both blinked at me and when a glared at each of them in turn they finally did as they were told.

“William has turned out to be, unfortunately, more than just a total bore, he’s a complete asshole,” I told my brother but quickly looked at King to see him smiling at my choice of curse word. “I was really lucky to have my job at Entrance Bay Academy already because, honestly, dad got it for me through his connections. It’s enough to live on but I wanted a place for myself and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get any money from William so, I asked you for the loan. I’m sorry if it put you out. You told me you were doing well and I believed you.”

I had. Lysander had started to be the one to treat me to dinners, to pay for my ticket to the movies and he’d even got me a really cool necklace with grim reaper etched on a silver medallion. I’d never worn it because it didn’t really suit me but the thought was lovely.

It was stupid of me though. I should have known by now, looks could be deceiving and just because he’d seemed to have more money, nicer things, didn’t mean he actually had the money.

I wondered where it had come from but that wasn’t the point of this conversation and was better delved into when King wasn’t there to witness it.

“I offered you the money,” Sander grumbled. “You couldn’t have known. I was working’ down on Vancouver Island for a bit but I wanted to move back here when you left William.” My heart ached with love for him as he shrugged like a grumpy bear. “Harder to replace work than I thought it would be.”

“That’s why you asked for a job at Hephaestus Auto,” I concluded.

He nodded. “Heard about it through the grapevine. They aren’t afraid to hire ex-cons there and I’m good with my hands.”

“Honey,” I said moving forward to hug the only man who had ever really loved me. “You could have told me that.”

“Yeah,” he admitted gruffly. “Cause too many problems for you as it is.”

“I caused the worst one,” I retorted.

“Shut up, Cress.”

“Okay, Sander.”

We hugged it out for a long minute, our hearts beating in tandem the way they always did. We were two completely different people who came from a set of parents who were in turn completely different from us, but we loved each other despite of or maybe because of those divergences.

I pulled away to say, “Don’t want to see you get beat up anymore, okay? I have some cash on hand.” I always did just in case he needed it. “Wait a second okay?”

He nodded but his eyes cut over my shoulder to King. I ignored that and made my way upstairs to my bedroom where I kept Lysander’s emergency cash hidden in an old leather boot in my walk-in closet.

I knew without turning around when King entered the doorframe.

“I’m giving him the money, King.”

“Not happy ‘bout it, Cress babe, but I understand why you feel you gotta do it.”

I fell out of my crouch so my knees hit the carpet and I could turn my torso to look at him. “You do?”

His long, rangy form entirely filled the entry as he lifted both arms to hook his hands over the doorframe. The pose made his body into a piece of art, defined by ropes and lengths of hard, flat muscles from his pectorals to his groin, which peeked out from his shirt tails like sexual promise.

“I do. He’s your brother and you feel you owe him loyalty. The Fallen operates on that kind of faith, so trust me, I get it. What I don’t get and what I am one hundred percent not okay with, babe, is not knowing shit about his circumstances or how he affects your life. He comes to you for fuckin’ money? He gave you the cash to buy this house? Don’t like that, Cress. That guy fuckin’ scream bad news.”

I didn’t say anything as I rooted around in the boot heel for the wad of money then, replaceing it, tugged it free with a yank that send me flying backwards. King caught me before I hit the ground.

I looked back at him from upside down and said, “Thank you.”

He put me back down, stood back and slipped his hands in his pockets. “I’m this close to bein’ pissed off.”

“Okay, I get that.”

I did. His badass biker sense of morals told him that he was the man and I was the woman, therefore he needed to protect me and it was my job to let him. I hadn’t told him about Lysander and his terminal bad luck so he’d been caught unawares by a large, beaten up man on the front stoop of my house and he’d had no idea how to deal with it.

He nodded curtly, evaded my hand when I offered it to him but followed close behind me as I went back downstairs to my brother.

I gave the money to my brother without a word and watched him painfully swallow his proud before he pocketed it.

“I’ve got to get going, honey.”

“He’s goin’ with us,” King said from behind me.

I spun towards him. “What?”

He ignored me and locked eyes on my brother. “You want a job, I’ll get you a job. Want you around to keep my eye on you. My dad’s a fuckin’ brute so if you think you can pull a fast one of him, think a-fuckin’-gain. You want a chance, you get in your car and follow me and Cress to Hephaestus right now.”

God, in that moment, I loved King more than I’d ever loved anything. Even Elvis and Satan. Combined.

Surprisingly, Lysander grew pale and hesitated. “Wouldn’t want to put you out, you dating my sister and all. Looks serious.”

Before I could respond, King was handing me my school bag, shouldering his backpack and tucking me under his arm. “It is. Wouldn’t give you a chance otherwise. My Queen cares about you, I’ll make an exception.”

“To what?” I asked.

“To my rule. Don’t get involved with liars.”

My eyes flashed as I fought the instinct to defend my brother but Sander surprised me again by standing up carefully and saying, “Let’s go.”

We arrived at the characteristically busy garage, which I’d also learned was the biker’s base, something called the compound where they also had a clubhouse, the low brick building to the right of the business that had that wicked cool graffiti image of The Fallen logo spray painted on it. Immediately, the guys called out to us as we swung off the bike. From the corner of my eye, I saw Lysander’s beat up Ford truck pull through the open chain link gate.

“Wanna deal with this myself, babe,” King told me as he took my helmet off for me.

I nodded. “I’m okay with that. I’ll just go in and drop off the cookies for the guys.”

I’d made the men chocolate chip cookies the night before while I’d been waiting for King to get off work at the garage. He’d mentioned before that Maja was currently the Queen of the old ladies because she was Buck’s old lady and Buck was VP. If Zeus had a woman, it would be her or, if King had a woman, it could be her. There was no divine right to the Presidency of The Fallen, you had to work hard for that honor—bleed, sweat and let blood for your club—but there was something to be said about a biker family, especially one whose ancestors had founded the mother chapter. From what I understood, this fact coupled with King’s renowned intellect, made most brothers think that he would one day take the gavel from Zeus. Even though King wasn’t sure what he wanted to do when he graduated, I wanted to make sure the bikers liked me (just in case).

I waved at a few of them while they worked on super fly cars as I made my way into the office.

“Mornin’, Queenie,” Nova greeted me as he leaned over the front desk talking to a gorgeous woman with big, curled black hair and a va-va-voom body that put my elfin form to shame.

“Ah, so you’re the famous teacher,” she drawled with an insincere smile. “Heard the Garro men are stickin’ their necks out for ya.”

Nova snorted. “Don’t think it’s any skin off the Prez’s back to pretend to be datin’ a woman as fine as Queenie.”

Her eyes studied me from head to toe but she remained unsatisfied. I had the feeling she wanted to stare at me under a microscope until she could identify every single strand of my flawed DNA. Of course, I didn’t think someone like her would know how to use a microscope even if she had one, so I didn’t worry about it too much.

“Just came to drop off some cookies for you hardworking biker boys.” I put the big Tupperware on the desk and evaded Nova’s arm as it lassoed out to catch me around the waist.

In the last week, he’d been caught being too familiar with me by both King and other brothers but even after King had threatened him with castration, Nova didn’t seemed to be fazed. So, I was careful around him even though I knew he was harmless.

“Names Paula,” the awful woman from behind the front desk told me with a saccharine smile. “I’m a real good friend of King’s.”

Violence ignited in my belly, great gusts of hatred billowing up my throat tasting like ash in my mouth.

“Name’s Cressida,” I mimicked her with an equally sweet smile. “I’m King’s old lady.”

Her lips thinned instantly and she turned to Nova as if he’d betrayed her. “She’s what?”

The biker shrugged, rolling an unlit cigarette between his pink, pink lips. “You heard ‘er.”

“The fuck?” she asked.

“We do,” I agreed, nodding somberly. “A lot.”

Nova burst out laughing but Paula turned beet red. I decided to cut out while I was ahead and waved at the biker as I turned to leave.

“Can’t wait to see you at the party this weekend, Queenie,” Paula sneered at my back. “We can really get to know each other then.”

I let the glass door shut with a slam behind me and made my way over to Bat, who was working alone on a bike out front. We spoke while I surreptitiously kept an eye on the side wrought iron fire escape that led up to Zeus’s loft-like office overlooking the garage bays from inside the massive warehouse.

Bat was a good guy. He was married to a ‘Grade A bitch’ (according to Harleigh Rose who was my biker life encyclopedia) but he loved his twin boys more than anything and he talked about them all the time. I was going to meet them at the BBQ and I couldn’t wait because they sounded like badass bikers in the making. He entertained me with stories about their antics on the weekend, how they’d stolen a poor neighbor’s bike, painted it with chrome paint they’d begged their dad to bring home from the shop, and tricked it out with a bell shaped like a skull, and then they’d anonymously put it back in the kid’s yard.

My heart melted into a puddle.

So, I was in a good mood when I heard King call my name from across the asphalt.

I wouldn’t be when I turned around to see him standing beside a little white Honda Civic with a black hood.

“Like it?” he shouted when my gaze landed on it.

“Um, sure?”

Bat chuckled as he stood up and wiped his hands on the rag he kept in his back pocket. “Queenie, it’s your car.”

“No,” I said slowly. “My car is a dirty white Honda Civic from 1989.”

“Get your sweet ass over here, babe,” King called again, his body halfway in the driver’s seat with his torso hanging over the opened door.

Reluctantly, I made my way across the lot as most of the men abandoned whatever work they were doing to step into the spring sunshine and watch the unfolding drama.

And I was fairly sure the situation that was unfolding would involve drama because I was not happy.

King didn’t seem to pick up on that as he jumped off the car and rounded the hood; already talking about what he’d done to the car, how he’d modified it so it could go from zero to sixty in under thirty seconds, that he’d added a sunroof but also updated the A/C so it would actually work and how he’d put seat warmers in so I wouldn’t be cold on the drive to school in the winters.

It was badass biker sweet again, which was too bad because I needed to say what I needed to say and he was most definitely not going to be happy about.

“King,” I murmured, aware of our audience. “Stop.”

He paused in his excited ramblings, his gorgeous face the picture of Christmas morning joy. I loved that doing something nice for me made him so happy, loved how boyish he was in his enthusiasm for the project.

I told him so then added, “But I told you before I even brought my car in, I cannot afford repairs, let alone all this extra car bling.”

His lips twitched, fighting back a smile. “Babe, the ‘car bling’ was necessary. You’re dating a Garro. There is no way a Garro would let his woman drive around in a piece of shit car. You’re lucky I could work with what you had. Thought about takin’ her to the junker.”

“You thought about taking Betty Sue to the junker?” I repeated, in a significantly higher voice than King had.

Finally, his expression flickered. “Yeah, like I said, it’s a piece of shit. But some of the guys helped me in their spare time and now it fuckin’ purrs, babe.”

“That’s great, King. Hopefully you can get a good price from it.”

“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?” he demanded, affecting the same stance as me but with a lot more intimidation factor. We faced off with our arms crossed and feet braced apart like sailors on rocky waters.

“I told you, I can’t afford whatever plastic surgery you’ve given Betty Sue! You knew that so I don’t understand why you felt the need to go behind my back, keep me from my only method of transportation for weeks and pour thousands of dollars of my nonexistent money to my car.” I’d forgotten about our audience even though they’d crowded closer, and my voice had risen to a near shout.

“And I told you, I can’t have my woman drivin’ a piece of shit car,” King returned, badass biker voice in full force. “And if you try for one fuckin’ second to argue with me about being my woman, Cress, I swear to fuckin’ Christ that I’ll take you on the hood of this fuckin’ car just to prove it.”

The idea gave me full body shivers but I ignored them to forge on. “You are suddenly so shallow that you care about what my car looks like?”

A low growl rumbled up from the depths of his throat before he exploded. “It’s a fuckin’ death trap, Cressida! You want me to be okay with you drivin’ a fuckin’ death trap then you are insane.”

“And you’re insane for completely changing my car without talking to me about it. You were supposed to give it a fucking tune up, for Christ’s sake, King. Now I can barely even recognize her.” It was true. Betty Sue was looked brand new with shiny paint and those cool wheel rims that spin the opposite way when you drive.

Actually, looking at her, she looked pretty cool.

“I was doin’ somethin’ nice for you. You’re tellin’ me I gotta get you to sign off on it every time I wanna do somethin’ nice for you, Cress, you’ll replace I don’t fuckin’ do it anymore.”

I shifted my gaze back to the man-boy in front of me and realized that I’d hurt his feelings. His cut-glass cheekbones were flushed with rage, his pose hardened-biker-at-war but those glacial eyes were cracked through with hard lines of pain.

My stomach clenched as the invisible fist of my self-hatred battered against it.

“King,” I murmured softly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that I was unhappy about the gesture. It’s easily the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. It’s only one of the many things you’ve done to try to make me happy in the last few weeks and I didn’t mean to throw it in your face like this.” I moved forward to try to lie my hand against his crossed arms but he moved back out of reach. The move burned through me, worsened when I heard female laughter behind me.

“I reacted instinctively,” I continued quietly. “It’s important for me to pay my own way bow. Men have been buying my things nearly all my life. It’s more than that too; I don’t want to feel like I owe you and I don’t want you to feel like you need to get my shit together for me.”

“Haven’t realized this yet, you’re crazy, but I like to get your shit handled for you,” King muttered. “Haven’t realized this part either, but you left all that Stepford housewife shit behind and entered my world. And in that world, men take care of their fuckin’ women because it’s their duty and fuckin’ pleasure, whether those women need protecting or not. There’s something you need, Queen, it’s your King who provides it for you. You don’t like that, you need to learn to eat it.”

It wasn’t his nicest speech to date or even his most eloquent, but there was something about standing in the middle of bikers on their compound with their one-day King that made his words especially poignant. He’d introduced me to this world, I’d unwittingly already become a part of it and only now was I consciously coming to face to face with that reality.

As far as misogynistic biker behavior went, King’s philosophy wasn’t all bad.

I told him so, quietly, just for him.

I was looking for it, so I saw the flash of humor before his eyes clouded over once again.

“Gonna be late for school. The keys are in the ignition. Was going to drive with you but think it’s best I catch up with you later,” he said.

“King,” I tried again.

But he was already brushing past me, his shoulder hitting my arm like gunshot. I reeled back from the pain of blatant dismissal and watched him climb aboard his bike, rev the engine twice and peel loudly out of the lot.

“Blow job,” Skell said, suddenly in front of my unseeing eyes as I stared after King.

I hadn’t spoken to the Latin biker since the day I’d dropped off my car and he’d called me a piece of ass.

“Excuse me?”

“Offer him a blow job. He’ll forgive you soon’s your mouth’s wrapped around his dick. First off, it’s just bad sense to fight with a bitch when her teeth are that close to your junk. And really, no man can stay mad at a woman with his cock in her mouth.”

I blinked at him.

“Think about it,” he suggested with a friendly pat on the back before he ambled off after the others.

King barely spoke in our third period History class and looked at me all of three times. Our fight tortured me all day, especially because I’d driven Betty Sue 2.0 to school and she was a dream. The seats were redone in pale pink leather that matched the rose gold accents on the dashboard and gearshift. It could have been trashy but it was so utterly classy and exactly what I would have wanted if I’d ever thought about ‘pimping’ my ride.

So, I decided to take Skell’s advice.

First, just before the IB English class with King in sixth period that day, I went to the restroom and removed my panties. Then I changed my lesson plan so that half of the students went to the library to work on their final papers about Paradise Lost while the rest stayed in the classroom to practice their one-on-one oral presentations with me in preparation for their IB oral exams.

I made King go first. He barely acknowledged me as he walked to the chair I’d set across from mine between my desk and the white board. I didn’t mind. The other kids, quietly working on their laptops while they waited, did not look up while King began his presentation. It was excellent, but of course, he was naturally brilliant with straight As in all of his classes, and one of the perks of being the English teacher’s lover was being able to practice your presentation with her in bed.

I waited until he was about a minute into it before I spread my legs to either side of my wide desk chair. King sensed the movement, his eyes flickering up before he could catch himself. I felt the nibble and reeled him in by flicking my loose skirt up with my thumb so he could see the tops of my black lace topped stockings and my bare pussy.

He didn’t move an inch but a sharp intake of air through his teeth gave him away.

When he started talking again, I ran my hands on the insides of my thighs, teasing both of us even though I was already wet.

“Satan is the tragic hero of Paradise Lost,” King recited as I dipped two fingers inside of me, drew out my juices at painted my clit with them. “He’s undoubtedly charismatic, which is how he rallies the fallen angels to continue to rebel against the so-called tyranny of God even after their hellacious defeat in the Angelic War, and he’s cunning, the primary example being his manipulation of Eve with her apple. His confidence in these abilities is exactly that which makes him weak. His pride is his hamartia, meaning it leads to his eventual banishment.”

His voice had groan hoarse, his breathing erratic as I continued to touch myself for him, poorly hidden by just my desk from the roomful of students. It was nerve wracking in a way that pumped the blood through my body on overdrive. My skin felt too tight, my eyes hot in my head and my breathing loud. The thrill of being caught felt good but it felt delicious to know that I affected him, and even better, when his leaned forward with his forearms on his knees to stare intently at the scene between my thighs.

“The irony is,” he continued, “the reader can empathize with Satan in a manner that they can’t with God. He is a ‘plurality of meanings,’ a ‘multifaceted’ presence that speaks to the complexity of basic human nature. No one person is good or evil, and paradoxically Satan, the character who is traditionally meant to embody all that is bad in the world, is the one to illustrate how natural it is to be at conflict with both, to embody the two.”

He paused, reached out to grab my slippery clit between the knuckles of his fore and middle fingers and clamped down hard. My head flew back against the seat a he continued talking, his voice drowning out the minute sounds I tamped down as I rode out my orgasm.

I kept my eyes open and on his as they seared me with a promise, a dirty implied oath to fuck me later with his tongue, teeth and hands but maybe not his cock because I didn’t deserve it after this morning. I wanted to moan but instead, I smiled shakily at him.

He adjusted himself slightly in his uniform pants, leaned back in his seat, stuck his two knuckles in his mouth to suck off my cum, and stood up to walk back to his seat, done with his presentation and with me.

Somehow, I managed to sit through the rest of class without getting up because I knew there was a wet spot on the skirt of my dress. King stayed in his seat until the last person left the classroom after the bell and then finally lifted his head to glare at me.

“Shut up, lock the door and come here. Detention is in session.”

I swallowed thickly but did as I was told. When I’d pulled the curtain down over the door, I stayed there facing it. There was something about his anger that made me feel completely, provocatively, under his control.

“Turn around.”

I did.

“No come’ere,” King ordered, his eyes sparkling with anger.

I’d never seen him angry before. Lust shot through me like Cupid and his stupid bow were watching from the eaves of my classroom.

King watched me shiver and his eyes melted from ice to liquid. He patted the small desktop attached to his seat.

“Come fuckin’ here, Miss Irons,” he repeated.

My eyes shot to the door of the classroom. The door was locked and the little paper curtain was doing its job, but still someone could come by. If they found my door locked they’d wonder why. It wasn’t unheard of, but it certainly warranted an explanation.

“Don’t like repeatin’ myself,” King growled out.

I was walking towards him before I could make the conscious decision not to. My flared skirt was slippery against the laminate wood desktop so I braced my hands on his shoulders as I hopped up. Before I could get settled, King was putting my calves on his shoulders so he had an unobstructed view of my bare pussy.

“You were a bitch today,” King told me harshly. “A bitter shrew I didn’t even recognize. Think it’s time for you to show me some sweet so I remember why it is I put up with you.”

I knew he was angry and that he had a reason to be, but I couldn’t stop the blush of mortification and the prickle of defensive anger that ignited somewhere in the base of my belly and tangled with the lust that was kindled there.

“King,” I tried.

His gaze cut up from between my thighs and sliced into me. “Do it.”

I dropped to my elbows, readjusting myself so I didn’t fall of the small table and delicately pulled my skirt up over my groin. His eyes marked each minute movement of my fingers as they crawled down my naked folds.

“You’re wet already,” he told me.

He didn’t have to.

I overflowed like a river in spring, my fingers running laps in the current.

“Show me,” he ordered.

I spread my lips open for he could see the depth of my depravity. He could make my pussy glisten for him just by being a badass biker asshole. I didn’t know if it said good things about me, but I didn’t care.

“Fuckin’ gorgeous,” he said before he reached out to run two fingers down my slit.

My eyes fell to half-mast and stayed there, weighed by the image of King sitting between my legs like a proprietor evaluating his goods. He was so sexy he didn’t seem real. His golden curls were pushed back from his face in a sloppy man bun, a few curls springing out to rest of his ears and in his heartbreaker face. Every time he touched me with his eyes, lips or hands I felt absurdly awed, as if it was a fallen angel that sat between my thighs and not just a man.

He leaned forward to rest his cheek on my inner thigh, his gruff voice abrading the tender skin as he said, “Get yourself ready for my cock.”

My fingers dipped into the well of ink and scrolled over my shiny folds, drawing a flourish over my clit. I felt free and powerful spread out for him, showcasing my wares to their best advantage so that he would want to take advantage of them.

His hot breath brushed my sensitive skin but it was the feel of his eyes on me as I dipped two then two fingers inside myself that made my back arch off the table. The movement lifted my pussy closer to him and I heard him drag in a deep drag of my scent.

“Sweeter than apple pie,” he praised.

I moaned for him.

“Don’t got all day though, babe. You’re gonna come for me, fast and hard, then I’m going to clean you up with tongue.”

I panted as his words sent electric shocks through my system. “What about you?”

“Holdin’ out for tonight,” he muttered, staring fixedly on my fingers as they churned in and out of my sloppy cunt.

I gasped as his rough hand slid up my silky thigh before he sunk two thick fingers inside me. His fingers stroked my own as he began to pump in and out of me. It was a tight fight, four fingers stretching me wide, his and mine. Together we fucked my pussy until I was so wet, it leaked down my crack and soaked the desk beneath me.

“Feel good?” he asked.

“So full,” I panted.

His head descended and two seconds later, my clit was clasped tightly between his lips. He sucked, flicked his tongue like a whip strike against the tender flesh.

I came apart at the seams. My fingers stopped moving inside my clenching sex but King kept coaxing my orgasm higher and higher, pressing his palm hard against my pubis so the pressure was nearly unbearable.

“King,” I groaned over and over, my breathing coming out in sobbing burst.

My legs flailed over his shoulders. He bit down hard on my thigh and I screamed. It was too much; I was drowning beneath the onslaught, my breath stuttering in my lungs.

But King wasn’t done.

He slipped a finger down the slippery line of my ass and rubbed at my asshole.

“Gonna take this,” he growled, sliding the digit smoothly inside me. “Soon.”

“Please,” I sobbed as sensation pounded into me.

I was caught in the riptide, floundering over and over again. The last of my control broke loose and I gave into the descending darkness with a stammering last gasp.

When I opened my eyes again, some minutes later, King was gently easing our fingers out of my body and gathering my limp body into his lap. I was sprawled over the desk and his chair like a used rag, wrung out and used up.

I felt wonderful.

“Wow,” I breathed as I snuggled into his arms.

He chuckled and rubbed his cheek over my hair.

“What’s tonight?” I asked because I could feel his erection like titanium steel against my ass.

He pulled back to look down at me imperviously. “Tonight, you’re the student and I’m the teacher.”

I tried to swallow my gasp and choked a little.

“Pigtails, knee socks, and those sexy white cotton panties you like to wear under a little skirt.”

“Let me guess, a plaid skirt?”

“Doesn’t matter, babe. It’ll be flipped up when I get you bent over the desk about two seconds after I get my hands on you.”

“Ohmigawd,” I murmured.

Even though I’d had the orgasm to end all orgasms just a few minutes before, I felt my swollen sex tingle at the thought of his fantasy.

“You’re going to kill me,” I groaned.

He shrugged, jostling my entire body. “Die a happy woman.”

“That’s for sure,” I agreed. “I should update my will, just in case.”

His body jostled me again as he laughed.

I was so consumed by the sound that at first, I didn’t process the horrible cry and subsequent crash as something fell heavily against the locker outside the classroom.

King was on his feet immediately, his pants already done up. I stood dumbly as he took my face in his hands, bruised my mouth with a kiss and said in a no-nonsense badass biker going to work kind of tone, “Stay in here and locked the door behind me.”

Then he was opening the door and darting into the hallway.

It took me about thirty seconds to follow him.

When I rounded the corner, it was to see King with his forearm against Carson Eriksson’s throat. The jock was a big guy, stockier than my blond king from his football and soccer playing, yet King had him dangling off the ground and he was currently snarling into his face.

That occupied me for all of two seconds before I noticed the boy on the ground writhing in the midst of a seizure. Another second more and I realized it was my beloved Benny.

I was on my knees beside him the second after that. All the staff at Entrance Bay Academy were required to take first aid training every year but panic was overloading my system, the adrenaline obliterating everything I’d been taught, so I just kneeled, helplessly stroking his sweaty hair back while he convulsed. Visions of my bachelorette party swam through my head; Marcus Whitman bleeding out in my arms while Lysander tried to get rid of his gun and the police sirens began to call from down the street.

“Queenie,” King barked over his shoulder at me. “Cradle his head, pull his belt off and put the strap in his mouth so he doesn’t bite off his tongue, then call 911.”

King’s familiar voice kicked me into gear, triggering the natural obedience that sat deep in the heart of my psyche while also reminding me that I was more than capable of dealing with this calamity.

Calmly, I followed his commands. Benny’s paroxysms weren’t as violent as they had been even thirty seconds ago but his hair was soaked through with cold sweat and his beautiful lips were purple. He was unresponsive when I tried to speak with him, which nearly made sheer terror overtake me again but then Warren was in the hallway, his cell phone to his ear calling the ambulance.

Vaguely, I listened to King as I stroked Benny’s sweet, clammy forehead.

“What the fuck did you give him?” he ground out.

He sounded horrible, menacing and full of violent fury like one of Satan’s vengeful angels. There was a sound of clanging metal as King proved his wrath by slamming Carson back against the lockers.

“I don’t know, man. The guy said it was just some Ecstasy or some shit like that,” Carson whimpered through his tears.

I didn’t want to look away from Benny’s face because it was the only way I could monitor his thin, reedy breaths but I had no trouble imagining the petrifaction on Carson’s face.

Another rattling clang. “Who’d you get it from?”

“I don’t know! Some guy at Evergreen Gas.”

“What the fuck were you thinkin’ doin’ random drugs on fuckin’ campus?” King growled.

Carson’s pause was long and full of something heavy and dark.

Another crash as King threw him brutally against the metal at his back. “Fuckin’ talk. That kid is laid low because of you and I want to know why.”

“We hook up, okay?” Carson admitted in a broken whisper that ended on a sob. “We meet up at the gas station and usually drive around or come back to campus to replace a quiet place to hook-up because I don’t want anyone knowing we do that shit together, okay?”

Somehow, even through my already considerable shock and horror at the situation, this surprised me and not in a good way. Tears pricked the backs of my eyes as I leaned down to kiss a now still and unconscious Benny’s forehead.

“My sweet Benny, why didn’t you tell me?” I whispered.

He must have been so confused and excited about his secret hook-up with one of the hottest guys at EBA. It made me furious that Carson would subject sweet, loving Benny to secrecy and gross hook ups but it made me want to literally (and I was an English teacher so I really did mean literally) kill Carson to know that he’d given Benny drugs.

“And the drugs?” King continued, totally unfazed, totally focused on getting the information he needed.

“I don’t know, I heard that it made sex better,” Carson mumbled.

“Fucking pathetic,” King spat out.

There was a spluttering sound and I imagined that King was pressing his arm harder across Carson’s throat.

I wanted him to keep it there until Carson couldn’t breathe anymore.

“Cressida, the police said they’ll be here in ten minutes tops,” Warren said to me as he took a crouch beside us.

I looked up briefly to see his eyes wide and his skin pale as he stared down at the prone Benito.

“He’s such a good kid,” I whispered and only realized that I was crying when tears slipped into my open mouth.

“He’s going to be okay,” Warren assured me, but he didn’t sound sure.

“Is he?” Carson croaked out.

“Shut the fuck up,” King roared into his face. “You think you deserve to breathe, let alone talk when you got that kid fuckin’ overdosing in a goddamn hallway? You’re lucky I don’t put your cowardly ass in the hospital too.”

“King,” I murmured quietly.

He heard, though, and just like he had done with me, my voice brought him calm.

Flashbacks toyed with the edges of my vision as the sound of sirens came from down the street.