“This thing? King, honey, seriously, we cannot have a thing,” I said softly, but even to me I sounded like a broken record.
“Yeah?” he crossed his arms over his chest and glared at me. It would have been funny, the idea of this gorgeous blond man sitting cross-legged and cross-armed naked in my bed trying to convince me to be with him. Any sane or insane woman would jump at the chance.
I know I did.
“Tell me why we can’t do this,” he dared me, as if he was asking me to debate something difficult, the ethics of capitalism or the merits of torture techniques in modern day interrogation.
“Um, okay. One, I’m your teacher and therefore in a position of power over you,” I ignored his ignoble snort, “so even though you are technically an adult,” another snort, “I can still very much be fired and raked over reputation-ruining coals if anyone finds out about us. Two, the age difference. I may have just gotten out of a mediocre marriage but that doesn’t mean I’m over the idea of having a husband and a family some day in the future. You’re eighteen and you have your whole life ahead of you. And finally, you’re seriously involved with a criminal organization and whether you decided to patch in or not, that will always be a significant part of your life seeing as your father is the President of The Fallen. I’m a soon-to-be divorcee who has only done three bad things in her life and doing them nearly gave me a heart attack!”
“What three things?” he asked, making me feel like he wasn’t really listening to me.
I counted them off on my fingers for him. “I took a drag of your dad’s cigarette yesterday. When I was eighteen, I accidently led a man on when I was really drunk at a bar. I slept with you.”
“Slept with me implies you’ve only done it once,” King pointed out reasonably. “I’ve been inside you four times in the last twenty-four hours and I had my tongue in you twice before that.”
“I think you’re missing the point,” I reminded him.
He shrugged one shoulder. “You always tell us in class to be specific so, I’m just sayin’, be specific.”
I rolled my eyes and leaned forward to punch him in one of his delicious pecs. “Do not use my own words against me!”
He snagged my wrist and tugged so that I toppled over onto him and he fell flat on his back. “I’ll do whatever I gotta do to get you to hear me. One, we’re careful. I’ll probably still fuck you at school because, babe, you bein’ my teacher is not a turn-off, but we’ll be careful. I know you need the job, I got it. Two, I may be a high school student but like I told you, I’m a man. We see where this goes and we like it, I’m into babies and in a way that’s more than just likin’ the idea of planting them in you.” He waggled his eyebrows and cupped my bare sex, still wet from our sex.
I shoved at his hand but only to distract myself from the thought of blonde, pale-eyed babies that looked exactly like King.
“As for the criminal stuff, I don’t got much to defend myself other than to say, I’m not asking you to push drugs or lie to the police or carry a gun. I’m asking you to trust that I won’t get you involved in any of that. But honestly, right now, I’m just askin’ you to give the life a try.”
I bit my lip as my thoughts spun fast and clunky like an overfull washing machine, churning our combined baggage over in my mind.
This was what I’d asked for, what I’d only dared to dream of for the last twenty some-odd-years. A life of adventure with a man strong enough to anchor me through it.
I looked up through my eyelashes at King and asked a question as my answer, “You think I’d look good in leather?”
He blinked then wrapped his arms tight around me and burst into laughter.
“Oh my God, that is totally smokin’ on you!” Harleigh Rose shouted at me even though I was only a meter away from her in the small change room of Revved & Ready Clothing.
I also did not think the tight leather mini dress with a V-neck that plunged down to my naval looked ‘totally smokin’ on me. I thought I looked like a poorly made blood sausage.
I told her so.
She laughed, but I’d already learned that, like her brother, Harleigh Rose loved to laugh and she did so freely, beautifully, with her mouth spread wide over her teeth and her hand pressed to her belly. She was only fourteen but she was already a knockout, with a huge head of streaky blonde hair, enormous eyes that were a deep, true blue, and legs so long they seemed to sprout from her ears. Now, if anyone could pull off the dress I was currently trying to wear, it would have been her.