Lessons in Corruption (The Fallen Men 1)

Everyone laughed so I took the moment to quietly tell Rainbow, “He was a no show in my class today.”

“No way. Did you tell the Headmaster?”

I shook my head, biting my lip. “I wondered if maybe he got confused with his schedule. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially with all this talk about him and his father. He probably feels unwelcome enough.”

“You’re a softie, eh?”

“Twenty bucks says that Tay hooks up with her biker again,” Warren said as he sneered down at pretty, little Tayline.

She glowered at him but the blush riding high on her cheeks ruined it. “Fuck off.”

“Hasn’t asked you to go steady yet then, eh?”

Even I frowned because Warren was being nasty, searching for a soft spot to poke at. I didn’t know this ‘biker’ but it was obviously a sensitive subject.

“Back off, Warren,” Rainbow hissed.

“Seriously,” said Georgie, our receptionist and an adorable middle-aged woman with bouncy blonde curls.

Tayline didn’t care for their protection. She bared her little teeth, leaning forward so that she was almost falling off her stool. “Careful now. I may just call up that biker and get him to remind you why we treat The Fallen with respect and more than a little bit of fear in Entrance.”

“Oooh, I’m so scared,” Warren laughed and a couple of his buddies, the Biology and Gym teachers, laughed with him.

Tayline leaned back on her stool, her face cast in the shadows of the low lit bar, and spoke softly, “You should be.”

A shiver worked its way down my spine. I was easily spooked these days but even though I realized that, it did nothing to waylay my terror.

I knew of The Fallen MC, obviously. Everyone in British Columbia, on the west coast of both Canada and the USA, in all of the United Kingdom, knew of The Fallen. They were the modern day warlords of those lands, the men who created their own rules and held ironclad rule over the rest of us. The police had tried for years to close them down but had given in to a tentative understanding when nothing, not since their inception in 1960, had brought them low. They were known and feared but they were not brutal the way some of the motorcycle clubs in Texas and the east were. The public shootings, pile-ups of dead bodies and poorly hidden marauding were a thing of the past. Their power was so absolute in BC that they ruled without contention.

I knew all of this because I did my research before moving to Entrance and because my brother was into a lot of bad stuff but he had never, not once, been stupid enough to get involved with The Fallen.

I found it hard to believe that pretty little Tayline was involved with an outlaw but I thought of the blond king from the parking lot so many months ago, his aura of menace and totalitarian-like control. He was the most attractive man I had ever laid eyes on, in no small part because of his unlawfulness.

As if sensing my thoughts, Tay pushed her stool closer to mine as the conversation resumed around us.

“You look interested, princess,” she said with a sly kind of smile. “Have you ever had a biker before? I have to say, you don’t look like the type but I don’t know you well enough to see what’s beneath the prettiness you’ve got going.”

I stayed silent because what she said annoyed me but I didn’t have enough experience to offer a scathing retort.

Tayline softened visibly, shedding the animosity that she’d shrouded herself in when Warren was attacking her. “I’m sorry. Cy is a touchy subject for me. My best friend is a cop. My kind of, sorta boyfriend is a one percenter. You can see how it’s a source of contention.”

“I can.” I hesitated. “Why do it then?”

She stared off into the distance for a long moment. “A man without respect for the law is not a man without respect for anything. All that intensity, that devotion, is channeled towards other things, mostly their people; the brotherhood, family, their women. You can’t experience anything like it until you’ve had it.”

I swallowed thickly, surprised by the shiver of want in my bones. “A difficult thing to give up then.”

“Yes,” she agreed softly.

We were quiet for a moment before she broke free of her contemplation to slam back the rest of her beer. She smacked her lips, wiped her wet mouth with the back of one hand and announced that the next round was on her.

I watched her go to the bar, which was when I noticed the blond king leaning against the far end, one booted foot crossed over the other. He was watching me in a way that said he had been watching me for a while. His handsomeness hooked painfully in my gut, pulling me towards him inexorably. I coveted that beauty; it filled me with greed and possessiveness. My hands itched to walk the cliff-like drop of his steep cheekbones, to shove themselves into the thick, kinky mess of his golden hair.