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

I spent the night at the hospital.

Benny’s family told me I didn’t have to stay but I could tell that Arturo and Anna Lucia, the proprietors of the fancy La Gustosa restaurant and Benito’s guardians after his parents died in a car accident a few years ago, were happy to have me sit with them. They both cried when they saw me, not because we had any special bond but because, apparently, Benny had told them about me. I started crying too when they wrapped me in their semolina-scented arms and prattled on about how much Benny loved me and how grateful they were that he felt he had someone to talk to.

So, we sat together, my hands in Anna Lucia’s, while Benny’s stomach was pumped and then he was given some kind of anti-fentanyl drug called Naloxone to mitigate the effects of the chemical already in his system. Apparently, the first few hours were the most dangerous in these kinds of situations so it was a relief when the clock struck midnight and Benny was still breathing.

King had disappeared at some point after giving a brief statement, which I grateful for both because I didn’t really want him mixed up with the police and because he would want to comfort me, I would want to accept that comfort and it was not the time or place for that to go down.

The police interviewed Carson but there were no legal consequences to his actions. This enraged me. How could my brother have been sent to jail for protecting me, and Carson didn’t even get a ticket when he’d nearly killed an innocent?

I was so angry that when Carson had the gall to walk up to the Bonanno’s to ask for an update on Benny, I took him aside myself.

We walked down the yellow-lit halls, our shoes clacking on the chipped linoleum floors. I wanted to get control over my anger before I opened my mouth but only mildly succeeded. We stopped at a vending machine and stared at it as if we would get something, as if it held the profound answers to all life’s important questions and we only had to press the right combinations of buttons to own them for ourselves.

“I didn’t know you were gay,” I started and somehow my voice was smooth, pretty casing over the hollow words. “I wish you’d felt comfortable talking to someone about it.”

“Dad’s a homophobe,” he muttered.

“That’s hard. Not a reason to treat the boy you like the way you have been, sneaking around with him like you’re ashamed of him, and it’s certainly not an excuse to give him drugs. Honestly, I can’t even imagine what you were thinking.”

Carson’s jaw ticked, his eyes laminated with tears. “I take it when I have sex with girls, makes it, uh, easier for me. I figured if I did it with Benny who I’m actually into, it would be amazing. Plus, I told him about doing it with girls and he got really jealous, wanted to give me the same thing even though I said I didn’t need it.”

“Shouldn’t have made him feel that way in the first place, Carson,” I said softly because he’d started to cry, silent tears of shame. “Shouldn’t have given into him either.”

“Yeah,” he croaked. “I know.”

“I think this is a wakeup call, buddy. You need to step up and be there for Benny while he gets better and you need to be open with everyone about who you got those drugs from.”

“I already told the police that it wasn’t one of The Fallen dealers,” he said quickly, his darting to me for the first time. “I know you’re dating Zeus Garro.”

I put my hand on his shoulder because I didn’t want him to be afraid of me because of that. “You’re not in trouble with them, Carson. It’s Benny you need to focus on. If you still can’t do right by him than you need to be man enough to tell him, okay?”

“I’ll do right by him,” he mumbled, looking to the floor for guidance.

“Your parents coming?” I asked because I knew his parents often worked and stayed down in Vancouver.

“Yeah,” he tipped his head with his eyes squeezed shut, tears leaking out from under them. “He’s gonna kill me.”

I didn’t want think of the kind of father who would make his son feel that way but it made it easier to empathize with Carson and I knew that he needed someone in his corner to prop him up while he got his feet beneath him again so he could move forward on the right path.

“You call me if you need me. I’ll come pick you,” I offered. “I’ll get you a hotel room or something, okay?”

He looked at me then, turned right into my face and stared right into my eyes. I let him search them with his frantic spotlight stare until he found what he needed to find and then, because I knew it was coming and even though I hated him for what he’d done to Benny, he was just a kid and he needed the comfort, I opened my arms to accept his hug when he drooped forward onto my shoulder and burst into tears.

His mother came into the hospital to pick him up and I spoke quietly to her about the events of the evening. She looked sick to her stomach about Carson’s fears because she knew her husband would freak out. I pretended not to notice the bruising she wore around both wrists like shackles and she promised me that she would take care of her son, even if it meant leaving her husband. From the frantic determination hardening her face, I knew she meant it.

After, I went back to sit with the two elderly Italian immigrants again and took up Anna Lucia’s hand.

Benny woke up at three in the morning and his grandparents let me see him. His throat was too sore to speak but I sat on the edge of his bed, stroking back his dark floppy hair and reading to him from the copy of Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance that I’d stuffed in my bag that morning. He fell asleep again shortly and, soon after, I followed, my head cocked uncomfortably against the orange plastic chair.

I woke up at seven o’clock, said goodbye to the Bonanno family and left the hospital to go home for a quick change of clothes before heading to school.

When I walked through the automatic glass doors to the parking lot, King was there, standing against his bike with his arms crossed and his eyes shut. I stopped mid-step, staring at his beautiful face, creased like bed sheets from a sleepless night tangled up in them.

Feeling my eyes on him, he looked up and right into them.

My breath left my body in a long whoosh and then I was sprinting across the driveway. He caught me without effort, braced and ready for my full body impact into his arms. I wrapped my arms and legs around him immediately, tighter than vines and just as unyielding. My face planted in his neck, in that fragrant spot just behind his ear where I could soothe myself with the scent of his hair, scented with fresh sea salted air, and the familiar warm laundry aroma of his clothes.

“Got you, Queenie,” he murmured, his hand diving under my hair to enclose the back of my neck in his hold. “Got you.”

I just clung to him, incapable of speech after the long night without sleep, after the long hours worrying about Benny. It was impossible in that moment to care if anyone we knew could see us embracing in the middle of the hospital parking lot.

All that mattered was being in King’s arms. I needed that feeling more than I needed my next breath of air. There were limits to the human body, five days without food, three without water. I’d just learned that mine was twenty-four hours without King.

“Let’s get you home, babe,” he murmured, gently peeling me off him so he could settle me in the ‘bitch seat’ on his bike.

As soon as he was situated, I slumped against him pressed groin to cheek on his back and wrapped myself around him again, even my legs, which I hitched up and over his thighs. It was a precarious position. I was entirely reliant on King to balance the weight of the back and keep me from tipping over but I didn’t care and apparently, neither did he.

When we reached Shamble Wood Cottage, it was obvious to me that he’d spent the night there even though I’d stayed at the hospital. The dishes we’d left in the sink the morning before were put away and there was a giant bouquet of flowers on the dining room that King told me were from Maja and Buck. There were fresh sheets on my bed, pale pink instead of cream, and it was made with all the little pillows I only bother with if I had company over.

King steered me into the bathroom, turned the shower to scalding and shucked off my clothes. I was numb to everything but his touch, which seared me each time it landed. I was tired of feeling so I shied away from it and was grateful when he shoved me into the shower but didn’t join me.

When I emerged there was pretty white polka dot red dress with a cream cardigan on the basin. The sound of King murmuring to someone on the phone in the other room filtered under the crack of the door but I ignored it and focused on pulling myself together.

I wore more makeup than usual, but a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do to feel pretty, especially on the bad days.

King stared at me long and hard when I finally left the bathroom, assessing my mindset, probably.

“I’m ready to go,” I told him, surprised by how hollow my voice sounded.

He strode forward, grabbed my hair hard in a fist and jerked my head back as he pressed himself hard against me. I gasped, instantly and inappropriately turned on by the gesture when I should be grieving.

“Know you’re hurting, my Queen,” he said softly despite his intractable expression and dominant stance. “But Benny is alive and gettin’ better in the hospital. You’ve got nothing to grieve for, you hear me? He’s alive. And that’s probably because you and me were foolin’ around in detention and overheard him. That asshole Carson didn’t have a fuckin’ clue what to do. You and me, babe, we helped Benny. That’s somethin’ you need to hold on to right now, not the bad stuff that happened last night, but the fact he’s okay and you helped see to that, yeah?”

King’s words coated my skin, sat on the surface of me for a long minute while I fought their meaning, tried to stay helplessly lost in overwhelming exhaustion and an overindulgence of empathy. When my eyes started to slide through him, he pulled harder on my hair and, when that didn’t work fast enough, he kissed me.

He kissed me the way little girls dream about being kissed at their weddings, the way teenagers like to see in movies. The way most grown women have given up on wishing for.

I lost myself to the kiss, to King’s strong hold on me, and when I emerged on the other side, I was once again the Cressida I’d been trying so hard to be.

King watched me with his moonshine eyes. “Good?”

I pressed my lips softly to his then spoke against them, “Thank you.”

“Told you, I got you, babe.”

“Now, I know it, King,” I replied, running one hand down his arm so we could link fingers.

“Ready for school?”

“You’ll be there, right?”

He grinned and squeezed my hand. “Until June 18th, babe.”

I laughed a little and it felt really good. “Then, yeah, babe, I’m ready.

Classes were going well. Everyone was deeply rattled by what had happened to Benny but very few students or faculty knew the full story, mostly because Carson Gentry’s family owned half the town and I was sure he had a part in keeping his son out of the narrative.

My IB English and History classes were especially subdued by the news but I put on movies in both classes so they could zone out and relax. Everything was going well until the end of the day when an announcement went out that there would be a town hall meeting at six that night, and that it was mandatory for both students and faculty to attend.

“Is that normal?” I asked Tayline and Rainbow as we had a cup of tea after school in the teacher’s lounge.

Before EBA, I never would have thought I’d enjoy hanging out in a teacher’s lounge but the Academy was superbly funded so the teachers enjoyed a mahogany-paneled, multi-room space on the ground floor of the Main Building that included a beautifully appointed kitchen, a full bathroom and an enormous lounge decorated with plush leather chairs and couches, plaid pillows in the school colors of navy blue, green and yellow, and a media center on the other side of the room from where we sat.

Our trio liked the window banquette tucked away at the narrow end of the communal area because it afforded us a grand view of the room (perfect for gossip target practice) but also the privacy we needed to properly talk (gossip).

“It’s happened twice before,” Rainbow answered after sharing a concerned look with Tay. “Once, after a kid went missing and the town pitched in to find him. That was probably, oh, twenty years ago? And then again when two girls at EBA got pregnant in the same year, this was probably 2010, and the pastor and his son, the mayor, joined forces to warn about the perils of sex before marriage.”

“Wow.”

Tayline nodded. “I’m telling you right now, it’s not going to go well for The Fallen.”

“It shouldn’t go well for them,” Warren cut in, appearing by our table with a suddenness that disturbed me. I wondered where he had been lurking to overhear our conversation. “They’ve been causing problems in Entrance for years.”

“Oh please,” Tay said while rolling her huge, chocolate brown eyes. “The Fallen have protected us from tons of crime. We have one of the lowest rates of drug abuse, drug-related crime and murder in small town Canada. It’s their protection that buys us that statistic.”

Warren was a handsome man, clean-cut and brunet with blue eyes in a way that most women liked, but when he looked at Tayline as he did then, eyes narrowed and mouth pursed over the sour lemon of thought perched on his tongue, I thought he was hideous.

“They’re thugs and they’ve been given free reign for too long this town. I’m a personal friend of Mayor Lafayette’s and I think you’ll find he has some very… persuasive things to say about your darling MC tonight.”

Rainbow snorted. “Come on, Warren. You grew up here same as me and Tay did. You know they aren’t bad guys.”

“Sure, that’s why Benito Bonanno is in the hospital after a drug overdose,” he quipped.

The blood drained from my face both at the reminder of last night’s horrors and at the reality of what Warren was saying. They were going to pin the accident on the MC.

I didn’t know what that meant for King or Zeus, but it couldn’t be good.

As it turned out, it wasn’t.

“We need to reaffirm governmental and legal authority in this town,” Mayor Lafayette preached later that night from his chestnut podium in Town Hall.

I’d never been to the massive ivy-covered brick building in the center of town. I wished I were there under more auspicious circumstances because everything about it was old and beautiful. Instead, I sat in one of the packed rows of the main auditorium listening to a tall, middle-aged man with great hair talk about the evils of the MC and the laziness of Entrance citizens in giving them free sovereignty over society.

“We have let these bikers run roughshod over our town for too long. It’s time to take it back from them,” he finished, which prompted an uneasy round of clapping.

It was uneasy, Tayline informed me from my right side, because The Fallen were actually great for the town. They supported local economy, kept drugs (hardcore ones at least) out of the city proper and brought a lot of foreign business into town because of the popularity of their custom car and motorcycle outfit. The MC had been unpopular until nearly ten years before, when the President who preceded Zeus tried to get into the narcotics game and, thankfully, failed.

“And how do you propose we do that, Mayor?” Stella stood up, her back ramrod straight and her voice hard. She was the owner of the diner in town. People loved her and respected her so they all listened to her, waiting to take their cue from her tone.

“We increase funding to the police department, for one,” Mayor Lafayette said with a winning smile. He gestured towards the lineup of policemen standing to his left side on the stage. They were all relatively young and absurdly beautiful. I knew the mayor himself had probably gone down to Entrance Bay Police station to hand-pick the prettiest cops for his dog and pony show.

“We will also be urging establishments to take down their ‘biker friendly’ signs,” the mayor continued.

“That’s horseshit,” someone called from the audience.

There was a chorus of agreement.

The mayor opened his mouth to respond when the old oak doors at the back of the hall swung open with an atmospheric creak and the bikers appeared.

Zeus led the small collection of The Fallen down the central red carpet, through the rows of civilians until he stopped directly at my row. The hushed interest of the congregation was thick around us as he put a hand on my shoulder before glaring at the people sitting in the row next to Tayline and me.

Immediately, they scrambled to their feet and moved towards the edges of the hall where the overflow of people remained standing.

“Scoot over, teach,” Zeus told me in his super badass biker growl.

I immediately did as I was told.

Harleigh Rose peered around her dad’s shoulder to grin at me. “Sup, Queenie?”

“Hey honey,” I whispered as she moved onto the wood bench beside me.

She took my hand immediately between two of her own. I felt the tremor in her hold and squeezed her tighter.

King nodded at me as he took his seat beside Zeus. His eyes were perforated with unease as Nova, Bat, Buck and Priest settled in after him. I wondered if it was because, in sitting with me so publically, they were inexorably linking me to the MC and given the current climate, King was worried about what that would mean for me, or if I would be angry over the display of ownership.

I wasn’t. My righteous fury had been ignited by the mayor’s witch-hunt against The Fallen. Not only did I want everyone to know where I stood, which was interminably beside the bikers, beside King, but also that I would tear into anyone who claimed they were involved with Benny’s incident.

“Yes, good to see you taking part in the community in a legal and civil manner, Mr. Garro,” Mayor Lafayette finally said, addressing the elephants that had stomped in the room on their loud motorcycle boots. “Maybe you’d like to say something about your part in the increase of narcotics in this town.”

“Mayor, this isn’t the time or the place,” a handsome blond policeman stepped forward to say quietly.

“Danner, if I wanted your opinion, I’d ask your daddy for it,” the mayor ground out.

Ouch. That was not only unnecessary but also cruel

I really didn’t like Mayor Lafayette.

“I’m happy to talk to folks, Mayor,” Zeus spoke clearly, loud enough to reach the far sides of the auditorium and not need a microphone. “They know I’m always up at Hephaestus Auto or at Eugene’s havin’ a beer. They got somethin’ to say, I’m around.”

“Do you have anything to say now that one of our children is in the hospital recovering from a drug-related incident?” the mayor said between his teeth.

Zeus affected a hurt expression. “Well, of course I feel for the boy and his family. Queenie,” he dropped his arm around Harleigh Rose so his fingers could sweep over my shoulder, “and my boy, King, were the ones to find him. Cress stayed at the hospital all night ‘cause she’s real close to the kid.”

“And your involvement?” the mayor prompted.

Officer Danner shifted uncomfortably behind me.

The auditorium was quiet as a gravesite, watching the standoff between the two leaders of their community.

A slow, predatory smile cut through Zeus’s harsh, handsome features. Light glinted off his teeth, set fire to his pale eyes so that he seemed like the Devil sitting in a church, daring God to smite him.

“Don’t got any involvement other than that, Mayor Lafayette, and don’t much appreciate your insinuation. I’m an active member in this community. I’m a business owner and a father. My daughter goes to Entrance Public and my son goes to EBA. I even pay my fuckin’ taxes on time each year. I hope you’re not insinuatin’ that just ‘cause I’m a member of a recreational motorcycle club, I’d be involved in somethin’ like drug distribution?”

“I think that’s exactly what he was insinuating, Zeus,” Stella said, still standing.

“You haven’t had problems with the MC in years, Benjamin,” an older man stood up to say.

“Yeah, well, we’re having them now, John,” someone else yelled out from behind us.

“You got questions for me, Sergeant,” Zeus said, his low voice undercutting the increasing chatter. “You come ask ‘em. This public fuckin’ defamation is grounds for me to sue the city.”

I pursed my lips because I wasn’t sure that was true but it seemed like a good threat.

The Staff Sergeant stepped forward from the lineup with his thumbs in the belt loops of his uniform. He was the officer in charge of the small RCMP outpost in town and from what I heard, he was a member of the old school policing mentality. He did not like Zeus or The Fallen and it was obvious by the displeasure that creased the plethora of lines across his face that this apathy had reached new heights.

“Trust me, I’ll find a way to get you into the station for some questions,” he promised darkly, leaning over Mayor Lafayette to speak into the microphone.

“We have a list of businesses who will no longer accept your bikers as clients,” the mayor added. “You might want to spread the word to the rest of your gang. Entrance is no longer putting up with drug dealers and ruffians. Until our streets are clean, you’re the ones we’re looking at.”

“Now,” Mayor Lafayette announced before Zeus could respond. “Let’s open the floor to questions.”

As chaos erupted around us, Zeus turned to his crew and said quietly, “You heard the motherfucker, we find whoever is selling kids fuckin’ fentanyl and we end this.”

A shiver ripped up my spine like something had taken a knife to my vertebrae. I locked eyes with King and saw the violence in his, the promise to enact the kind of retribution I’d only read about in novels or seen on TV. I didn’t feel in any way prepared to deal with the side of biker life, but it seemed I had to be ready whether I wanted to or not.

Nervously, I waited for King later that night in the second bedroom I’d made into a little office. The room was cold because the entire back wall of windows extended into the room and the insulation was poor, though King had mentioned bringing in a few of the brothers to help us fix it.

I shook my head at my use of the plural. Since I’d given into his sinful temptations, we hadn’t spent a single night apart. It was strange to spend so much domestic time with a man other than William. I’d known everything about my husband and had taken most of it for granted just as he did with me. I wanted to say it was something that happened gradually over time, but that obsessive passion that made even the little moments together glow like faceted jewels had never existed between us, not even when I was young and especially eager to please.

It was not this way with King. I was fascinated, time after time, by his nightly routine. Mostly, he didn’t have one. Each evening when he arrived at my house, always after me because he had club business and his job at Hephaestus to attend to after school, we did something different. One night, he stormed into the house, literally threw me over his shoulder and took me for a ride up and down the Sea to Sky Highway, all the way to Whistler and back. The next, he brought home burgers from Stella’s because he had remembered I wanted to try them, and we watched Sons Of Anarchy on Netflix because I’d told him I was doing research and it had made him laugh. One night, we went to Eugene’s and shot the shit (a term I learned from Tayline who was my biker babe guru) with some of the guys and their old ladies, including Maja, Lila and Skell’s woman, Winona (who was horrible, but I still felt badly for her because Skell was an animal and slept with anything in a skirt).

It was only just before bed that King succumbed to routine like a normal person and it was this that I loved to watch. He peeled out of his clothes in under twenty seconds as if once he had made the decision to undress, he couldn’t bear to have the clothes on him any longer. He always left them in the same corner of the closet (because he wasn’t a pig, he’d told me when I asked him about it) and then moved into the bathroom to brush and, I couldn’t believe it either, floss his teeth.

My badass biker king flossed his teeth.

It explained why he had such pretty canines but still, it always made me laugh to see him dutifully care for his teeth.

I was tugged from my contemplation as the screen door at the side of the house opened with a soft screech, then the main door after that. King never used the front door. When I’d asked him why, he explained that only guests use the front door. It was a weird philosophy but I kind of liked it.

“Cress, babe?” he called out.

Even in the two words, I could hear his frustration with the events of the last thirty-six hours. I wanted to take his burden away from him and I thought I had the perfect idea of how to do it, which was why I was perched on the edge of my desk in the freezing study.

“In here,” I called, my voice unintentionally husky with anticipation.

My heart palpitated unevenly as the steady thump of his boots grew closer. When he rounded the corner, I had to catch my breath at how stunning he was. The impact of his masculine beauty affected me the same way every time I saw him, if it was minutes, hours or days since I last laid eyes on him. He was just that beautiful, and I was just that sunk.

“What do we have here?” he asked, leaning against the doorframe in a grease-smeared tee and his favorite old blue jeans. His hair was in disarray, loose around his shoulders but so blond it glowed even in the low light from the single desk lamp I’d turned on.

I licked my lips at the thought of the game I’d set in motion.

“I came to talk to you about that extra credit you said I could earn,” I said, looking up at him through my eyelashes as I wiggled my hips coquettishly back and forth. The movement swished my little plaid skirt over the sensitive skin of my thighs and made me shiver.

He hadn’t specified plaid in his fantasy but I thought it was appropriate.

I watched his eyes crackle and burn, like fire caught in ice. They swept over my outfit from head to toe, taking in the tight blouse tied under my breasts, the knee-high, navy blue socks and little Mary Janes I wore because I didn’t own sexy heels. His gaze lingered over my pigtails, tied with navy blue ribbon into big bows at each end.

“Well, little Miss Irons, I’m not sure you’re up for the assignment. It’s quite… hard,” he said, humor and desire ripe in his voice.

I loved that about him, that he could make sex delicious as well as fun.

He walked with purpose around me to sit down in the chair behind the desk.

“Well, did you do as I asked?” he asked.

I fidgeted. “What do you mean, Mr. Garro?”

“Are you wearing panties?”

I swallowed. “No, sir, I’m sorry. I didn’t have any clean cotton panties so I thought it best I didn’t wear any at all.”

His face darkened, his beautiful mouth twisting into an ugly sneer that made my thighs quiver. “That’s very disappointing, Miss Irons. I’m going to have to punish you for that. You say you want extra credit but then you don’t come prepared… how does that show me that you’re committed to getting better grades?”

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered and I found that I was, desperately sorry and so eager to please that my mouth watered at the thought of how he might use me.

He sighed as if I were an annoying child. “Come here and lay across my lap.”

I shivered as I made my way to him and awkwardly placed myself over his groin. The feel of his thick cock under my belly made me wiggle against it.

“Be still,” he ordered as he flipped up my skirt to reveal my bare ass. He tsked, but his hand came out to rub over the naked globes. “Was really lookin’ forward to those panties.”

I bit my lip to keep from groaning when I saw him reach out to grab the wooden ruler I’d purposely left on the desk earlier.

He tested it on his palm, the harsh snap making me jump, and he chuckled.

“I’m going to spank you for each time you disobeyed me in class, Miss Irons. Do you remember how often that was?”

“I think it was twenty times,” I answered immediately.

“Hmm, don’t think so. Let’s try ten.”

The first crack of the wooden ruler slapped against my ass with a loud thwack. It rocked me forward against King’s erection in a delicious way that had me thursting for the next strike.

“Good fuckin’ girl,” he growled, losing his character as he beat back and forth over my ass cheeks with the wicked little ruler.

My ass was on fire by the time the tenth spank landed and I was about to beg King to fuck me, but he was already lifting me off his lap to stand before him.

He stared up at me with his desire bright eyes, a flush streaked high across his brutal cheekbones. “Take out my cock and ride me. Wanna see you fuck yourself on my cock.”

Immediately, my hands were at his belt and I was straddling his lap, hissing when I slammed myself down on his cock. I couldn’t take him all the way, a fact that made me writhe and moan helplessly on top of him.

“So fucking tight,” he gritted out, his hands going to my hips to help pull me up and down over him. “Need to loosen that tight little pussy. Want you to take me to the root.”

I threw my head back and moaned at his words. Eager to help, I wrapped my fingers in his thick hair as leverage to throw myself down on his thrust.

He reached up to play with my nipples, rolling them between his fingers.

“Harder,” I begged, riding him faster now.

His cock stretched me so full that my legs were already shaking with the need to come.

“God, harder,” I begged again then hissed when he reared up to bite hard on one nipple while we twisted the other in a tight pinch.

“Come in the next thirty seconds, I’ll give you that extra credit,” he ground out between biting my diamond hard peaks.

I made it there in ten.

I shrieked as I came hard all over his big cock, my legs shaking, pussy clenching against him like a vice.

“That’s it, come all over me, show me how much you love it,” he goaded me as I slammed my hips down over and over.

He slapped his hands over my ass, one at a time on each cheek. The pain made me cum harder, longer. I was sobbing, begging him to stop.

“No,” he laughed then pinched my clit tight between his fingers so that I shouted and another, smaller orgasm raced through me.

“Cress,” he shouted, slamming into me one last time as he found his own climax.

“Fuck,” I gasped after a few minutes, collapsing on top of him.

King ran his fingers soothingly over my tingly bottom and pressed kisses to my shoulders.

“Never would have thought, lookin’ as pretty as a royalty like you do with all that golden hair and those big, innocent eyes, in those sweet little teacher outfits that you’d fuck as hard as you do. Gotta say, babe, I fuckin’ love it.”

I smiled into his hair, my exhaustion making me honest. “Are you sure it’ll be enough to satisfy you? You’re a young stud. I’m keeping you from sowing your wild oats and all that.”

His laughed vibrated through me. “Don’t wanna make you mad when I got you all sweet in my lap but, babe, trust me, I sowed a ton of fuckin’ oats before I met you.”

I harrumphed, but his laugh eased the edge of my grumpiness. “Might get tired of me, is all I’m saying,” I mumbled, both embarrassed and sleepy.

His hands stroked up my back and wound me in a full body hug. “Might get tired but never of you.”

“Meant to tell you,” I said as my eyes drifted closed, secure enough in his arms to fall asleep like a baby. “William keeps calling me. He’s even leaving me messages at the front desk at EBA. Today there was a present on the front steps.”

“Did you open it?” he asked, now tense as a board beneath me.

I was too tired to do anything but move my hands lazily through his masses of soft, curly hair and hum. “So sleepy.”

“Where did you put it, Cress?” he demanded.

“’S in the kitchen,” I said but I was already mostly asleep.

I woke up again when he settled into bed, much later, beside me. The alarm clock read 3:43 in bold, green numbers.

“Where’d you go?” I whispered with my eyes closed as he dragged me across the sheets and settled me over his body like a second blanket.

His skin was cold and he smelled of the cold night outside.

“Just takin’ care of somethin’ that needed fixin’,” he told me in a voice that was hoarse, as if he’d been yelling.

“Did you leave the house?” I asked, frowning and wanting to talk about it but my eyes wouldn’t open and sleep was pulling me back into its deep embrace.

“No one sends my woman presents but me,” he murmured softly some minutes later, squeezing me tight and pressing a kiss to the top of my head.

But I was too far gone, so I didn’t respond.