Lessons in Corruption (The Fallen Men 1)

“Need help putting this on?” he teased me as he handed over my nightie.

“Did you snoop through my things, King Garro?” I asked with faux indignation.

Truly, I was too tired to care and so attached to him after he’d gifted me with three consecutive, mind-blowing orgasms in a lifetime of mediocre sometimes but not always finishes with William, that he could have broken into my bank records, email and the tiny safe I kept tucked at the back of my closet and I still would have forgiven him.

He chuckled. “You have a spare toothbrush I can use?”

I blinked up at him, my levity forgotten. “A spare toothbrush?”

“Yeah, babe. Like the taste of you but I’d rather kiss you with a clean mouth before we head to bed.”

I blinked again. “Oh.”

It was a bad idea, him staying the night. I knew there were a lot of reasons for this, but for the life of me, my sex-addled brain couldn’t rummage them up.

“Under the sink in the blue plastic Tupperware,” I said instead of telling him to leave.

His resulting grin was wide, his lips even pinker than normal from kissing me so much. “Get into bed.”

“Okay,” I mumbled, scrubbing a hand over my freshly washed and moisturized face as I shuffled out of the bathroom.

It was strangely intimate to hear another person getting ready to join you in bed. I crawled beneath my pretty patchwork quilt and cream-colored sheets and put my pink facemask on my forehead in preparation for sleep. I felt awkward laying there waiting for him to join me. I’d never had a man other than my husband share a bed with me and I was suddenly conscious of all the ways I could embarrass myself in sleep. Did I snore, toss and turn, expose every dark secret I had (though there were few)?

I was still obsessing over it when King entered the room, flipped of the light and crawled onto the right side of the bed as if he’d been doing it all his life. My breath whooshed out as he snagged a strong arm around my middle and hauled me over to him, settling my body so that I lay mostly on top of him instead of the mattress.

“This can’t be comfortable for you,” I mumbled.

It was amazingly comfortable to me. I never could have known that a body made from marble could feel so good beneath my slight curves.

“Wouldn’t put you here if it wasn’t,” he responded.

“I need the facemask or else I wake up at the butt crack of dawn,” I explained. “And I don’t know because I’ve only ever slept with my ex-husband but I may snore or, I don’t know, fart in my sleep or something equally horrific so I apologize in advance and I won’t be offended if you want to go home.”

King’s hand stroked warm and heavy down my back and it was lulling me to sleep despite my anxieties.

“Doubt you do anything gross, Cress. You’re a fuckin’ lady if ever I met one.”

I tried to shrug but my position sprawled across him wasn’t conducive to it. “Just warning you.”

“How ‘bout I let you know in the morning if you’re anything other than fuckin’ adorable, yeah?”

“That’s fair,” I whispered, already half asleep.

King’s soft chuckle rustled my hair. He reached over to tilt my facemask down over my eyes for me and then fitted his hand in the groove of my hip as if it had been carved out just for him.

“Get some rest, babe. Gonna wanna have you in the morning too.”

“Perfect,” I tried to say, but I was already gone.

I woke up to the sound of thunder again.

Confusion and déjà vu disorientated me for a moment until I realized that this sound was far gentler than yesterday, far closer than the rumble of bikes had been then. I smiled before I was even consciously aware that the rumble in my ears was the low, gentle snores rolling through King’s chest.

Carefully, so I didn’t wake him up, I lifted my head to stare down at the gorgeous blond man in my bed. We had fallen asleep with my cheek to his chest, his arm around my waist to hold me tight to his side and I loved that we’d woken up in the same position, as if even in sleep our bodies were drawn together.

His face was breathtakingly beautiful in slumber, soft and boyish in a way that emphasized his youth. It should have made me disgusted to have an eighteen-year-old in my bed but it didn’t, not after last night. What boy took care of the woman he cared about like King did me? What boy dedicated his entire Saturday to doing her lawn work? What boy wrote such heartrending poems, discussed literature and history like an academic and looked so freaking manly in a tee and jeans?