Good Gone Bad (The Fallen Men 3)

Later, after we’d showered, after Danner made me ride his face to three orgasms, his fingers in my pussy and my ass so that I fucked back against them every time I bucked my hips, after Hero had jumped up on the bed so he was pressed against me on one side and Danner the other, Danner took me in his arms and laid it out for me.

“Need you to understand something for me,” he murmured, his voice gentle but his tone firm in a way that I knew his words were going to hurt me. “I get that you’re a wild thing and fuck me, but I love that about you. Got no desire to tame you anywhere but in the bedroom and even there, I’m willing to fight for it. But I need you to recognize that every time you put yourself in danger is a time that I’m either going to join you there or be unable to get to you despite my best efforts. If something happens to you ’cause I wasn’t there to protect you, you’re condemning me to a life of disability. I don’t mean physically, Rosie, what I mean is, if you die, I’ll go on breathing, but I won’t go on livin’ ’cause the most beautiful part of my life would have ceased to exist.”

He squeezed me gently as I burrowed into the crook of his neck, trying to hide from the beauty and pain of his words. But he wouldn’t let me. He was everywhere, his body wrapped around me, a section of his lion’s heart entwined with mine, his phantom touch in my pussy. I couldn’t escape the terrifying fact that what he said was very, very true.

“If I do make it to you,” he continued, his hand brushing through my hair, his voice devastatingly casual as if what he said was only obvious. “You also need to know, I’m happy to die for you. If that’s what you need somewhere deep inside, to know that at least someone in your life loves you better than anyone else, that they would sacrifice themselves without fucking blinking if there was even a one percent greater chance of you surviving, then I can give that to you. Keep livin’ reckless, keep throwin’ yourself into situations not knowing and not totally carin’ if you survive. But like I said, you need to know that I do care, very much. I care enough to die for it.”

I was crying again, for what felt like the dozenth time in the past few weeks after years of dry eyes.

It wasn’t that I was unloved, because I was. My family loved me so beautifully that sometimes I ached with affection for them, my heart too burdened by the weight of my regard for them that it didn’t beat right.

It was that I knew how gorgeous love could be because I felt it and I saw the romantic glow of it between King and Cress, Dad and Loulou, even old Buck and Maja, but I’d never had that for myself. And it killed me to admit it, even to myself, but under all that thorny sassy and steely confidence, I sheltered the tender, greedy heart of a romantic.

And for years that heart had yearned for love, not just from anyone, but him, the man who held me wrapped tight in his strong arms. It had seemed like such an impossibility my entire life until he came blasting back into my life, ever the hero, saving me from myself with Cricket just as he had been saving me from myself all my life.

The reality of being his hit me between the eyes. I could feel the warmth in my chest as Lion’s golden love slid over the cracks of strain and longing in my broken clay heart and healed it, made it so much more beautiful than any other heart could be because I was the only one in the world with a love so bright and kind and strong as his.

“You with me, Rosie?” he said after long minutes of allowing me to digest it.

I nodded then tipped my head so I could kiss his strong throat, my lips sealed to his pulse.

He squeezed me gently again and confirmed, “You going to be careful for me?”

I nodded again, sliding my legs between his so I could cuddle even closer. “I mean I’ll look both ways before I cross the street and I won’t get in the middle of an ambush again, but I can’t promise I won’t get into some trouble. I’m, ah, pretty sure it’s just in my nature.”

He laughed into my hand. “Yeah, rebel. My good girl in bed, and my bad girl outside, can’t say I don’t love it.”

“Good,” I whispered, because as much as I’d yearned to be good like him my whole life, I knew I was too biker, too Garro and too me to ever shy away from danger if it meant something important was on the line.