Lessons In Corruption (The Fallen Men Series Book 1) Read online

  Copyright © 2017 Giana Darling

  Edited by Amber Hodge.

  Cover Design by Najla Qambar

  Cover Model Preston Trites

  Cover Photographer Tlaloc Villarreal

  Formatting by Stacey at Champagne Book Design

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Dedication

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  Five.

  Six.

  Seven.

  Eight.

  Nine.

  Ten.

  Eleven.

  Twelve.

  Thirteen.

  Fourteen.

  Fifteen.

  Sixteen.

  Seventeen.

  Eighteen.

  Nineteen.

  Twenty.

  Twenty-One.

  Twenty-Two.

  Twenty-Three.

  Twenty-Four.

  Twenty-Five.

  Twenty-Six.

  Twenty-Seven.

  Epilogue.

  Playlist

  The Affair (The Evolution Of Sin #1) Excerpt

  Thanks Etc.

  About Giana Darling

  “For so I created them free, and free they must remain.”

  John Milton, Paradise Lost.

  To ‘Armie’ Michelle Armstrong.

  For making me laugh when I wanted to cry, for listening to my tales of woe and exclamations of love, but most of all, for making me feel safe.

  I saw him in a parking lot when I was picking up groceries. Not the most romantic place to fall in love at first sight but I guess you can’t choose these things.

  He had grease on his face. My eyes zoomed in on the smear of motor oil, the aggressive slash of his cheekbones protruding almost brutally under his tanned skin so that they created a hollow in his cheeks. His features were so striking they were almost gaunt, nearly too severe as to be unattractive, mean even. Instead, the softness of his full, surprisingly pink mouth and the honeyed-coloured hair that fell in a touchable mess of curls and waves to his broad shoulders and the way his head was currently tipped back, corded throat exposed and deliciously brown, to laugh at the sky as if he was actually born to laugh and only laugh…none of that was mean.

  I stood in the parking lot looking at him through the heat waves in the unusual late summer heat. My plastic grocery bags were probably melted to the asphalt, the ice cream long gone to soup.

  I’d been there a while already, watching him.

  He was across the lot beside a row of intimidating and gorgeous motorcycles, talking to another biker. His narrow hips leaned sideways across the seat of one, one booted foot propped up. He wore old jeans, also with grease on them, and a white t-shirt, somehow clean, that fit his wide shoulders and small waist indecently well. He looked young, maybe even a few years younger than me, but I only guessed that because while his structure was large, his muscles hung on him slightly like he hadn’t quite grown into his bones.

  Idly, I wondered if he was too young.

  Not so idly, I decided that I didn’t care.

  His attention was drawn to the group of college-aged kids who pulled up in a shiny convertible, their brightly coloured polo shirts and wrinkled khakis dead giveaways even if their gelled hair and studied swagger hadn’t given them away already. They were chuckling as they reached the two motorcycle men I’d been watching and it struck me that compared to the newcomers, there was no way the sexy blond I’d been lusting after was young. He carried himself well, regally even, like a king. A king at home in a grocery store parking lot, his throne the worn seat of an enormous Harley.

  I watched without blinking as he greeted the crew, his expression neutral and his body relaxed and casual in a way that tried to veil the strength of his build and failed.

  There was something about his pose that was predatory, a hunter inviting his prey closer. A couple of the college kids fidgeted, suddenly uneasy, but their leader strode forward after a brief hesitation and extended his hand.

  The blond king stared at the hand but didn’t take it. Instead, he said something that made the fidgeting increase.

  I wished I were close enough to hear what he said. Not just the words but also the tone of his voice. I wondered if it was deep and smooth, an outpouring of honey, or the gravel of a man who spoke from his diaphragm, from the bottomless well of confidence and testosterone at the base of him.

  The kids were more than nervous now. The leader, one step ahead of the others, visibly shrank as his explanation, accompanied by increasingly more agitated hand gestures, seemed to fall on deaf ears.

  After a long minute of his babbling, he stopped and was met with silence.

  The quiet weighed so heavily, I felt it from across the lot where I lurked by my car.

  The blond king’s sidekick, or rather henchman seemed like a more fitting word for the frankly colossal, dark-haired friend beside him, stepped forward.

  Just one step.

  Not even a large one. But I could see how that one movement hit the college crew like a nuclear blast wave. They reeled back as a unit; even their leader took a huge step backwards, his mouth fluid with rushed words of apology.

  They had obviously fucked up.

  I didn’t know how.

  And for the first time in my life, watching a potentially dangerous situation unfold, I wanted to know.

  I wanted to be a part of it.

  To stand beside the blond king and be his rough and tumble queen.

  I shivered as I watched the men before him cower, his loyal friend at his back. Slowly, because he was clearly a man who knew the impact of his physique and how to wield the sharp edge of power like a literal dagger, the blond king rolled out of his slouched position on his bike and into his full height.

  The sight of him unraveling like that made my mouth go dry and other, private, places go wet.

  It had a different effect on the college kids. They listened to what he had to say like men being read their last rites, clinging to any hope he could give them, desperate for salvation.

  He gave it to them. Not much, but a shred of something to hold on to because as one they practically genuflected before sprint-walking back to their fancy silver car parked on the street.

  Blond king and henchman remained frozen in position until the car was out of sight before they clicked back into movement. Simultaneously, they turned, staring at each other for a few long seconds before the laughter started.

  He laughed and the sound carried perfectly to my ear. It was a clear, bright noise. Not a chuckle, a guffaw or a mumbled hahah. Each vibration erupted from his throat like a pure note, round and loud and defined by unblemished joy.

  It was the best thing I had ever heard.

  I gasped lightly as his joy burned through me and, as if he heard it, his head turned my way. We were too far away to truly lock eyes but it felt like we did. His friend said something to him but the blond object of my instant obsession ignored him. For the first time since I not
iced him, his face fell into somberness and his jaw tightened.

  I may have loved him from the moment I saw him but he clearly did not feel the same.

  In fact, if the way he abruptly cut away from me was any indication, throwing one long leg over the seat of a huge chrome bike and revving the engine before I could even think to tear my eyes away, he may have even hated me on first sight.

  Paralyzed, I watched him peel out of the lot with his buddy. It hurt. Which was insane because I didn’t even know the man and more importantly, I refused to be taken in by a pretty face.

  The last time that had happened, someone had died.

  I pulled myself together, collecting the grocery detritus that spilled out of some of the melted bags and moved to my car. It was hot as hell in the compact sedan, the leather seats nearly burned the skin off my bottom when I sat down. I got back out of the car and manually cranked open all of the windows before I started the drive home.

  Home was a sweet white-shingled house in the quiet residential area of Dunbar in Vancouver where real estate prices were crazy and desperate housewives were a real thing. My husband had grown up in the ritzy grove about eighteen years before I’d been born and grown up in the house next to his. Everyone ohed and ahed over our little love story, the older neighbor falling for the quiet girl next door.

  Once, I’d done the same.

  Now, as I rolled up the asphalt drive and saw William’s car parked in the garage, I felt only dread.

  “I’m home,” I called when I opened the door.

  I didn’t want to say the words, but William liked the ritual. He liked it more when he came home to me already in the house, dinner on the stove and a smile on my face, but I’d gone back to work this year after three years of staying at home waiting for kids to come when none ever did. I loved working at Entrance Bay Academy, one of the most prestigious schools in the province, but William thought it was unnecessary. We had enough money, he said, and things around the house grew neglected in my absence, especially when you added on my hour-long commute there and back to the small town north of Vancouver that harbored the school. We had no children and no pets, a housekeeper with a more than mild form of OCD who came to the house once a week. I didn’t notice much of a difference but I didn’t say anything. This was because William wasn’t a fighter in the traditional sense. He didn’t yell or accuse, bruise with his actions or words. Instead, he disappeared.

  His office became a black hole, a great devourer of not only my husband but our potential conflict and our possible resolution. Every fight we could have had lingered in the spaces between his leather-bound law books, under the edges of the Persian carpet. Sometimes, when he was late returning home, I would sit in his big wingback leather chair deep in the heart of his office and I would close my eyes. Only then could I find relief in my imaginations, yell at him the way I wanted to so many days and so many nights across so many years.

  We’d married when I was eighteen and he was thirty-six. I was head over heels in love with the curl in his mostly black, slightly graying hair, his incredible manliness next to the boys that hung around me in school. I was infatuated with him, with how I looked beside him in pictures, so young and pretty under his distinguished arm. I’d known him my whole life so he was safe but also, I thought, not safe, older and worldlier and, I hoped, dirtier than me. There were so many things an older man could teach a naive girl. I used to touch myself at night imagining the things he would do to me, the ways he could make me pleasure him.

  Sadly, I still did.

  “Beautiful,” William said, smiling at me warmly from where he read in a deep armchair in the sitting area off the kitchen.

  He presented me with a cheek to kiss, which I did diligently.

  Every time I did, I wished he would grab me, haul me over his lap and lay into my ass with the flat off his palm.

  I had these aggressive sexual fantasies often. Wishing that his sweet gesture smoothing back my hair was his fingers digging deep into the strands to puppeteer my head back and forth over his erection. Switching out our separate showers before bed with a shared one, where I bent double with my hands around my ankles as he pounded into me and the water pounded against us both.

  I’d tried at first, a long time ago, to make these fantasies realities, but William wasn’t interested.

  I knew this, I did, but I was more than a little hot from the blond guy in the parking lot, the way he had commanded those men without even lifting a finger. It was only too easy to imagine the way he might command me if given the chance.

  It was him that I had to blame for my actions.

  I dumped my messenger bag beside William’s chair and dropped to my knees between his legs.

  “Cressida…” he warned softly.

  He couldn’t even scold me properly.

  I ignored him.

  My hands slid up his stiffly held legs until they found his belt and made quick work of undoing it. His cock was soft in its nest of hair but I pulled it into the light as if it was a revelation. It was silky in my mouth and easy to swallow.

  William’s hand hit the top of my head but didn’t grab me, didn’t even push me away.

  “Cressida, really…” he protested again.

  He didn’t like oral sex. He liked vaginal sex: missionary, me on top or sometimes, if I forced him, doggy style.

  I sucked him hard until basic biology took over and he grew in my mouth. I slammed my head down his shaft, taking him into my throat and loving the way it made me want to gag.

  “Damn it,” William said, not because it felt good, though it did, or because he liked it but because he didn’t want to like it.

  I didn’t care. I squeezed my eyes shut tightly as I jacked the base of him and imagined the way the blond king may have held my head down until I groaned and gagged around him. How he might have praised me for taking him so deep and pleasuring him so well.

  Instead, I got, “I’m going to come and I don’t want to do it in your mouth.”

  “Please?” I panted against his dick, my tongue trailing out to lick over his crown.

  It was his turn to squeeze his eyes shut. His legs shook as he orgasmed, his semen landing in my open mouth and over my cheeks. It took him harshly, wrung him up dry and useless afterwards like a used napkin in his chair.

  I leaned back on my haunches and wiped my mouth clean with my tongue and then the back of my hand. My pussy throbbed but I knew he wouldn’t touch it so I didn’t try to make him. Sex was for the dark hours and I was already in violation of his unspoken code of sexual conduct.

  I knew what his reaction would be but, since I was a glutton for punishment, I waited patiently on my knees for him to recuperate. To open his eyes and pierce me with their disappointed, confused condemnation. He reached forward to touch my cheek softly as he asked me, “Why do you degrade yourself like that, Cressie? I don’t need that.”

  I closed my eyes against the hot prickle of tears that threatened to elucidate my shame and leaned into his hand so that he would think I was sorry. In a way, I was, because I knew he didn’t need that to love me. William loved me in a beautiful way, the way one might love a perfectly formed rose, a sentimental trinket. But he didn’t love me in the way I needed, the way I’d wanted secretly since I was old enough to feel a heartbeat in my groin, the way one animal loved another.

  “I’ll make dinner,” I said quietly, unfolding from my knees and going into the kitchen.

  “That sounds nice,” William agreed, easily forgiving me for my exploitation.

  He efficiently did up his pants and went back to the book he was reading while I uncovered the Shepherd’s Pie I’d already prepped the morning.

  Our night continued from there in a normal way—happy, trivial conversation about our days over mashed potato-topped meat and veg, an hour or so of reading side by side in front of the fire because we didn’t own a TV and then our nightly, separate showers before going to bed. We didn’t have sex. We rarely did anymore because th
e doctors had said that the odds of William having children were slim and my husband was of the mind that sex was for a purpose, not recreation.

  So, I lay next to him in our beautiful house long into the night until it was the darkest of the evening hours. Only then did I quietly turn onto my back, lift my nightgown and sink my fingers into my burning hot pussy. I came in under two minutes with my clit pinched between my fingers and another two shoved deep inside, thinking of the sexy young blond king and how he would rule me if I were his queen. It was the hardest I had come in years, maybe ever, and right on its heels came the tears. I cried silently and long into my pillow until it was steeped in salty wet and I was steeped deeply in shame. It was in all two hundred and six of my bones, so entangled with my molecules it was an essential strand of my DNA. I’d been living with it since I was pubescent teenage girl and I was so tired of it.

  I was tired of boredom. The monotony of my loving husband and our life together, the hamster wheel of our social life with shallow suburban moneyed folk and the irrefutable fact that I was not attracted to my husband.

  I lay in the dark for what seemed like an eternity, dissecting my thoughts like an academic at a conference. Slowly, with no discernable evolution, I was furious.

  I was a twenty-six-year-old woman acting like a depressed middle-aged housewife. I had decades ahead of me still to live, to live a life where excitement, spontaneity and change could be a constant. Why was I lying in the dark like a victim? Because I was ashamed that my perfect life and husband didn’t make me happy?

  Pathetic.

  Then, I wondered if I really was. William loved me because I was beautiful and obedient, because he had trained me to be this way since I was an impressionable girl. He did not love the side of me that was scratching and wailing to break free of the social constraints he’d bound me in so beautifully for years. It was the part of me that wanted to lie, steal and cheat; to sin a little every day and gorge myself on a steady diet of thrills. That side would bring the Irons name shame and the most important thing to William was his wealth and reputation.