Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men 6)

It was, without a doubt, the single sexiest act I had ever witnessed. I felt like a voyeur standing in the kitchen of a family home lusting after the seventeen-year-old girl with a cloud of white gold hair as bright as a halo around her face as she sweetly ate a piece of fruit.

Then she did something very few people have ever successfully done.

She surprised me.

I watched with my head slightly cocked, alert like a bird braced for flight, as she sauntered across the tile on light, dancing feet with toes tipped in pink. She didn’t make eye contact with me, and it was carefully done. The way someone avoided the eyes of a potentially dangerous animal even as they were drawn closer.

She used that knife, now licked clean, to pierce a piece of fruit and casually, just a lazy rotation of elbow and wrist, extend it my way.

I stared at the peach, the glisten of it mimicked on Bea’s pale mouth. If there had ever before been a moment that felt more like a crossroads, one of those intensely crucial decisions in life when sound and time slow to a molasses crawl, I couldn’t remember it.

The peach had become some forbidden fruit, like Eve’s lusted after apple.

I did not believe in signs, omens, or myths, religious or otherwise. I believed in the power of action and base desire.

And even though I knew it was an idiotic idea, I wanted to taste the same fruit that glossed Beatrice Lafayette’s bowed lips.

So I folded my large, cold hand over her wrist, prompting her to flinch slightly with fright or anticipation. Her eyes flashed to mine, fleeting and silvered like a fish caught in a net, struggling to escape. I let her look into my own gaze, let her see the echoing dark there, and then I leaned forward to pry the peach off the blade with my teeth.

She sucked in a barely perceptible breath and watched as I tipped my head back to release the morsel into my mouth.

Without chewing, I gently took the knife from her and punctured the soft belly of another piece before relinquishing the blade back to her control. To feed her would have been too much, but at that moment, to watch as she ate the same thing at the same time as I did felt excruciatingly intimate.

The feeling scoured through me, fraying my nerves until I felt exposed.

I was not a man who chose to emote.

This was not me.

But I stood there for another moment as I chewed and swallowed in tandem with Bea, and when I turned abruptly on my heel and left the house without another word, I did it with an elevated heart rate.

So, that was it.

The moment I finally saw Beatrice Lafayette and the obsession officially began.

But that was all before she kissed me.

Kissed. Me.

A wry smile tugged the edge of my lips as I thought about her surprising audacity and courage. Such a little thing and so brave, so willing to plunge headfirst into deep, dark waters.

It stirred something inside me to know she believed I was worth something, worth that bravery.

Worth kindness.

It was stupid, the thoughts of an untried little girl speculating innocently at those things she knew lived under her bed in the night. I wondered, somewhat viciously, how she might react if I actually reached out and grabbed her around that slight, frilly sock-clad ankle one day and dragged her down to my depths.

My cock jerked at the thought.

Inwardly, I clamped down on my forbidden fantasies, striving to find that ocean of calm, unfeeling solace that lived in the center of my soul. It irritated me that Bea could rouse such waves in it. It made me want to rage against something that wasn’t her, something bigger than both of us that some might have called God or fate or something useless like that.

“Priest, brother,” King muttered, knocking his fist into my own where it rested on the massive table. “What’s on your mind?”

I looked up to see everyone watching me and knew I’d been asked a question about the topic at hand. My brain ran through the last five minutes, searching for answers.

“Don’t see how what goes on up at the rez is any of our business,” I finally said as my memory conjured up what I’d been listening to with half an ear. “The Thunderbird Squad has never been a problem for the club, but they’ve never been a fuckin’ friend either.”

A handful of brothers nodded, thinking, no doubt, of the past ten years and all the shit we’d dealt with alone. Where was the T-Squad when Ventura was selling women, when Staff Sergeant Danner was running wild with his corrupt force?

“They got their own problems out there,” Zeus acknowledged as he crossed his huge hands, rings gleaming in the low light. “The rez is separate from Entrance, from the province even. We don’t know what shit they got goin’ there, and I betcha they don’t have a single fuckin’ clue what we’ve been through down ’ere.”