Welcome to the Dark Side (The Fallen Men 2)

King was frownin’. “A job? At a fuckin’ high school basketball game?” He laughed, lookin’ at me as he did it to confirm that Mute was bein’ ridiculous.

Mute was never ridiculous and, un-fuckin’-fortunately, he never lied.

“Gotta keep an eye on Foxy,” he said, lookin’ over at his charge as she did a fuckin’ backflip on the opposite side of the gym.

“Foxy?” King and Cress both said at the same time.

It woulda been funny if I was in the mood to find the situation funny.

I closed my eyes and pressed my palms to ’em ’cause I knew what was comin’.

“Louise Lafayette,” Mute explained, pointing at her. “The one with gold hair and gold skin and blue eyes like Barbie.”

God, the kid never talked and now he was fuckin’ Shakespeare.

I opened my eyes and peered between my fingers to see Cress lookin’ at me like a fuckin’ pedophile and King’s mouth wide open enough to swallow a Quarter Pounder without chewin’.

I sighed, dropped my hands and shot Mute a look. “You do that on purpose or is this one of those things you can’t help doin’?”

Mute blinked at me.

No fuckin’ help there, then.

“Zeus, please do not tell me you’re sleeping with Louise Lafayette,” Cressida breathed. “She’s a kid!”

“Cress babe,” King muttered, sittin’ down beside her in a—useless—effort to control his woman. “Think ’fore you speak.”

“She a kid like King was a kid when you two started fuckin’?” I asked blandly, adjustin’ one of the skull rings on my finger where it’d gone crooked from finger-fuckin’ Lou twenty minutes before.

I brought my fingers to my nose and caught the salted caramel scent of her. Tried to focus on that insteada bein’ annoyed with Cress.

“That was—” Cress opened and closed her mouth. “That was different and you know it!”

“You know shit about it bein’ different,” I told ’er. “Careful here, Cress.”

“Queenie,” King said, firm. “Let Dad explain.”

She rolled her lips under for a second, tryin’ to reign in her sass.

No surprise, she failed.

“No, seriously, what the hell, Zeus? Louise is the seventeen-year-old daughter of the mayor! A man, I don’t have to remind you, who just last year held a freaking town meeting in an attempt to run The Fallen MC and, more specifically you, out of this town.”

“Memory works fine,” I told her between my teeth.

Didn’t want to scare her, didn’t want to ’cause even more of a scene than we were already makin’. Lou needed to finish high school ’fore we went public in her mainstream society. We didn’t need my son’s woman outing us in the middle of a fuckin’ high school basketball game.

“I’m trying really hard not to say something I can’t take back, but Zeus, help me understand how this isn’t wrong?” she begged me, her eyes wild with caged accusations.

She’d been raised by parents so stuck in the mud, they were permanently rooted in it and their stifled, judgmental ways. I knew it, I’d witnessed it and defended her from it then watched her grow away from bein’ that herself, so told myself to calm down even as the anger rolled through me like thunder lookin’ for a place to land.

I leaned toward her, closer than was necessary but I needed the threat to be real for her and I didn’t want to use my hands.

“Listen here, teach. I met you, you were a repressed sad little woman livin’ a life you hated and the only thing you wanted, the only thing that could take you outta that, was my boy. Why do you think I gave you the go-ahead to fuck your student, to stand beside my son? ’Cause I’m a rebel and I didn’t give a fuck either way. How ’bout fuck no? How ’bout I knew what it was like to want someone younger, to want someone so fuckin’ forbidden it made you dark and corrupt even to thinka having ’em? I know love when I see it and you think I got that from bein’ with my fuckin’ ex-wife? No fuckin’ way. I know that shit ’cause I helped raise a little girl with the soul of a fuckin’ angel and when she turned into a woman and still somehow had that fuckin’ soul after everythin’ she’d been through and I got the chance to hold that kinda woman in my arms, you think I was nuts enough not to take it?”

Cress blinked at me.

King did too, his face slack and younger lookin’ than I’d seen it in a long time.

Mute looked satisfied, his arms crossed over his chest and a hint of a fuckin’ smile round his mouth.

Yeah, the bastard had done it on fuckin’ purpose.

“Sometimes, Cress, you’re even younger than my son,” I told her with a disappointed frown.

She gasped slightly and leaned back into King who banded an arm around her hips and dragged her the rest of the way into his lap.