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

  It was totally and completely fucked up.

  The Cressida I was didn’t live to scare people, she didn’t even live to intimidate people. I helped old ladies cross the street, I baked cookies for my neighbors and sat with students when they needed a good cry. I did this because I was a good person.

  Only, King made me want to be not such a great person.

  He made me want to indulge in all things that had tempted Eve: sex, gluttony and larceny. King was my apple, my Satan, my ultimate fall from grace.

  And as I stood there riveted by his cruel power, I hated myself.

  “Fuck, okay, I didn’t hear about him, all right? He found me at Evergreen Gas Station. Said if I wanted to find him again, that’s where he would be. But I didn’t, okay? His shit is nowhere near as good as yours,” Carson was babbling.

  But I was done, on fire with shame and scrambling to put out the flames.

  So, I made a rash decision.

  I stormed out of the bushes.

  Or, at least, I tried to storm.

  But I was wearing impractical but utterly beautiful high-heeled leather boots that made my legs in their olive green riding pants look awesome, so I tripped. Badly. I fell through the bushes and onto my hands and knees just behind the trio who all turned their heads to witness my disgrace.

  “Mrs. Irons?” Carson croaked, half mortified and half thrilled because he recognized that I was his savior even if I was doing a really terrible job of it.

  Embarrassment lit my skin like a second-degree burn but I righted myself with minimal awkwardness and fisted my hands on my hips. “Yes, Carson, Mrs. Irons. The same Mrs. Irons who has just witnessed a drug deal and an attack against another student on school grounds.”

  Carson’s hope drained from his face as he realized that he too was in trouble. King and Mute didn’t move.

  “Drop your arm from Mr. Gentry’s throat, Mr. Garro and you both come with me. As for you,” I turned to Mute, “I’d get out of here before I have to find out who you are and what you’re doing here and then call your parents.”

  I watched through my indignity fury as Mute’s mean face relaxed enough to twitch just barely into a smile. “Sure thing, Miss Irons.”

  My mouth fell open as he turned on his heel, jerked his chin at King and ambled out of sight around the building. Rage built even brighter inside me as I realized that King had told his friend about me.

  “Gentlemen,” I practically screeched. “Follow me to the Headmaster’s Office.”

  Entrance Bay Academy was one of the top ten prep schools in the country and as such, it was ludicrously expensive to attend and boasted a gorgeous campus. Headmaster Adams’ office was probably the nicest office I had ever seen in my life, and William was a lawyer so I’d seen a lot of them. The lower half of the walls were paneled in deep mahogany wood with navy blue paint on the rest, the other school colors reflected in the yellow accent pillows on the leather couch and the emerald green curtains and lush grey green rugs. Adams himself sat in an enormous wing-backed, tufted leather chair with, I kid you not, a pipe growing cold in its placeholder on his empirical desk.

  He suited the room. It was more than just his grey and green tweed blazer with the elbow patches and his beautifully maintained moustache. He oozed authority and social elegance. He was large, having once been young and fit whereas now he was old and soft over a layer of lingering muscle. His great big cloud of white hair was parted to reveal his florid scalp and he was taken with crossing his hands over his chest like some kind of academic Santa Claus.

  I quite liked him. He was easy for me to read and even easier for me to please because he was the type of man my father and William had been.

  I did not like him at the moment, as he scowled at me from under his fuzzy eyebrows.

  “You’ve put me in quite the position, Mrs. Irons,” he said finally, after studying me for several moments.

  I didn’t understand how it had come to this. I’d arrived, irate, with a terrified Carson and an unflappable King in tow, explained how things had unfolded to the Headmaster then I had been promptly ordered to wait in the reception while he spoke first with both of them, and then individually to each.

  Now, he had beckoned me back into his office and I felt very much like a naughty child once more called into my father’s study.

  “You see,” Adams continued, “Carson Gentry’s mother is sisters with Mayor Lafayette’s wife and his father owns half of this town. It would be unfortunate if I had to telephone them about this little mishap as they contribute annually and generously to this school.”

  “Headmaster—” I started.

  He lifted a single finger and wagged it. “Now, I agree there must be something done about Mr. Garro. Normally, I would suspend him at the very least but his father has made it quite clear that he expects Kyle to be treated with above normal reverence.”

  “’S not above normal anything,” the deepest voice I’d ever heard sounded from over my shoulder. “My boy fucked up, fine. Strike one. You want ‘im out of your prissy little school because you think my boy is beneath you when the truth is, he’s fuckin’ better than us all.”

  I swiveled in my seat, eager beyond belief to match the voice to the name.

  Zeus Garro filled the doorway the way I knew he would and still he took my breath away. Not like King did, with his sheer beauty, but because Zeus was the biggest, scariest man I’d ever laid eyes on.

  He was at least six-foot-five, quilted with muscles so dense that I’d break my finger if I poked him, I was certain of it. Like his son, he had a riot of curly, wavy hair but it was longer and darker, brown at the roots lightening to sun soaked golden at the ends. It was touchable hair that gave him a ‘just fucked’ quality that didn’t help dampen his incredible sexual charisma. He had a lush mouth surrounded by a short, well-groomed beard, and thick lashed eyes just a shade more silver than King’s. He should have been beautiful, a kind of gorgeous that you could have cried over. Instead, the hard set of his jaw, the bumps in his strong nose that denoted it at least twice or thrice broken, and the hard glint in those icy eyes turned me to stone with fear.

  Zeus Garro was not someone you fucked with.

  And it was clear as he moved his enormous, tattooed bulk through the elegant room to stand before the desk with crossed arms that he felt Headmaster Adams was trying to fuck with him.

  Adrenaline kicked into gear through my blood and brought me to that dark place of joy as I waited for him to rip into Adams.

  I wasn’t disappointed.

  “Mr. Garro, you have to understand that Kyle was trying to sell drugs to a student,” Adams began righteously.

  “The fuck he was,” Zeus growled. He tipped his head my way without looking at me. “She tell you that?”

  “Well, of course!”

  Zeus swiveled his head my way in a move so smooth and menacing that it made goose bumps break out over my skin. “You tell him that?”

  I swallowed. “Technically, I told him that Carson was trying to buy drugs but King didn’t seem to be selling any.”

  This appeared to be the right thing to say. I was grateful for this for two reasons. One was that as soon as I’d been told to wait in the reception, I regretted turning King in. He was clearly doing something he shouldn’t have been but I really didn’t believe he deserved to be expelled for it. Not just because I’d grown accustomed to wearing his gaze like a crown or because I lived for his apple poems or because no one else had ever made me feel so alive. Truly, King deserved to be at EBA because he was incredibly smart and gifted, capable of going to one of the best universities and away from his criminal family. He deserved that opportunity and I couldn’t stand the thought of being the one to take it away from him.

  The other reason I was grateful for my quick thinking response, was that, as I’d said, Zeus terrified me and I very much did not want him to kill me (something that I was certain he was capable of meting out with his bare hands).

  Zeus squint
ed at me before his face relaxed slightly and I noticed that the crow’s feet beside his eyes radiated in pale lines, saved from his deep tan because he spent all his considerable time outdoors squinting into the sun. It was a surprisingly attractive detail, and one that made him more human to me. I wasn’t sure if I liked him or not, could one like the President of a known criminal enterprise? But I loved that he was going to bat for his son and I loved that he was flustering the normally imperturbable Headmaster Adams.

  “Right. As I understand it, Adams, my boy was merely trying to stop the spread of drug use at this school. That Gentry bastard approached him lookin’ to score just because King rides a bike and King was tryin’ to turn the kid to the right path.”

  I tried, with all my might, not to burst out laughing at the load of crock he was spewing. Somehow, even though my belly ached with the effort, I succeeded.

  “He was bein’ a social justice warrior,” Zeus added for effect.

  I covered my snort with a cough.

  Zeus clapped me helpfully on the back.

  Headmaster Adams, it seemed, didn’t know what to do with this information. He sat with his mouth open and his brow furrowed, staring at the MC President as if he had two heads.

  So, I jumped into the fray, leaning forward to smile softly at him. “Be that as it may, there was the matter of King being rough with Carson, which is inexcusable at EBA. Therefore, I suggest that King be given detention for the rest of the trimester to pay penance and learn from his mistakes.”

  “Fuck that,” Zeus barked, but it was just that, all bark and no bite.

  He shot me a look out of the corner of his eyes that I knew meant he was pleased with me, that we had somehow ended up on the same team protecting King.

  “Excellent idea, Mrs. Irons,” Adams declared, recovering enough to slam his fist on the desk with authority. “Kyle needs to understand that he is at EBA now, a school of higher education and decorum. Rough housing and violence will not be tolerated. So, detention with Mrs. Irons every day after school for the next four weeks of the semester.”

  “What?” I squeaked even as Zeus slammed his own palm down on Adams’ desk, jolting both the Headmaster and myself in our seats, “Done.”

  “But Headmaster Adams, I don’t oversee detention,” I pointed out.

  “You don’t,” he agreed. “But I know you could use the extra money and you are already here until five every day at least, helping the other students. Kyle may complete his homework silently while you conduct your study sessions.”

  No, no, no.

  How did this happen?

  Zeus stared at me out of the corner of his gaze, assessing me with that eye more thorough than anyone ever had out of two. I held still, barely breathing under his scrutiny and at the thought of having even more time with King, especially if it was one on one.

  “From what I hear, Miss Irons, you’ll set my boy straight about his behavior and have him actin’ like a gentleman in no time.”

  I swallowed thickly as Zeus nodded curtly at the Headmaster and swaggered (that really was the only word for it) out the doors.

  It couldn’t be explained, the way I wanted him. It felt unnatural, beyond a craving, more like a possession, some alien force taking control of my body, urging me to do things that I knew were morally corrupt, socially unsound. It was already overwhelming to be in the same room with him day after day, as he was in two of my grade twelve classes. I was not looking forward to that afternoon after school when we would have our first detention together.

  Sweat beaded like a crown of shame on my forehead as I sat in my sixth period English class, consumed with my internal struggle.

  Don’t look at him too often.

  Don’t walk past his desk.

  Again.

  Okay, this would be the last time.

  The struggle was very real and my only relief came from knowing that he was experiencing the same thing. I was the focus of this class, his contemplation based on the angled slope of my breasts beneath my silk blouse, the exact shade of each strand in my long cascade of golden brown hair. I knew this because his eyes had become an accessory I wore with pride, a necklace I wore pressed tight to my throat, hot and heavy on the exposed skill above my décolletage.

  Also, I knew because he told me so.

  With his apple poems, but also in the margins of his tests, across entire pages of his notebook where he drew beautiful little sketches of me, fragments of my person so that only someone well acquainted with me would recognize their likeness. I knew even as I sat at my desk while the students wrote poems as a creative writing exercise, that his lean, strong fingers were tracing the tip of his pencil around the lines of my face.

  “All right,” I stood up to address the class. “Who is ready to share?”

  I smiled when Benny’s hand shot into the air. He had been particularly motivated since King joined our classes.

  I was strangely shocked to see King’s hand up, lazily propped on the edge of his small desk. He participated frequently in class discussions, especially during our Paradise Lost unit, but I hadn’t expected him to be willing to share his poetic side to a greater audience than me. For some reason, it made my heart pang.

  So, even though I knew it was a bad idea, I found myself calling on him to read. Our eyes clashed as I did so, the impact so tangible that I was sure the class heard the crackling clang of electric chemistry between us. King smiled that long, slow curl of the lips that unwound something inside me, before he stood up.

  “Why don’t you read the poem for us, then we will question you as a class about your intentions?” I suggested, somewhat breathily.

  He nodded and didn’t take his burning gaze off of me as he began to recite his poem.

  “A secret in her smile

  Tucked in a rosy furl

  I want to pull it out with my teeth

  Soothe the paper cut with my tongue

  Dip in the well of her blood and write

  My own secret on her lips

  So that every time she talks

  Every lick of those lips

  And drag of breath through her mouth

  She feels me

  Her tongue scrapes the scar of my secret on the inside of her pout

  And she can’t deny the truth of it

  Of me

  Of us

  I’ve branded her with it

  She’s mine.”

  The silence in the class was impenetrable. It cloaked me in faux privacy, enabled me to indulge in a moment of pure, unadulterated awe and lust. There was no doubt in my mind that King was speaking about me. The glittering ice blue of his eyes shone on me spotlight bright. I fidgeted nervously under his possessive regard, fiddling with my left ring finger where my wedding and engagement bands used to rest.

  The girls in my class had collectively lost their breath to him, their pheromones heating in the small room so that the cloying scent of their adolescent sweet perfume grew stronger.

  Seventeen-year-old girls, and I was no better.

  In fact, I was significantly worse.

  I’d been a married woman, lived enough years to control my baser instincts, especially after William had successfully cauterized them for so long.

  Yet, there I stood in front of my classroom, thighs rubbing together, nipples beaded under my shirt and pulse throbbing like strobe lights, calling King to claim me, to take me like I knew he wanted to.

  As if reading my salacious thoughts, King sank back into his chair and winked at me. “So, whaddya think, teach?”

  I was grateful for the reminder that I was, indeed, his teacher.

  “Interesting, King, I’ll give you that. But why don’t we see what your classmates have to say?”

  Immediately, nearly everyone’s hands flooded the air.

  King chuckled and slouched further back in his seat, a lazy smirk on his face. “Well, look at that, at least someone liked it.”

  Talia laughed and flounced over to King from her seat on
the other side of the room. With an ease that belayed their familiarity, she flopped into his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  “You are so silly. Of course, I liked it,” she crooned to him as she pressed a kiss to his cheek.

  I wasn’t sure who looked more devastated, Benny or myself. My breath froze in my lungs, the iced air expanding until my lungs ached.

  King smiled fondly at Talia but gently urged her off of his lap. “Wasn’t about you, sweets. You’re not the only beautiful girl around here, you know.”

  Sweets. He had a nickname for all the girls. Sweets was more unique than babe, it was probably unique to her and he called every random girl who rode on the back of his bike, babe.

  She giggled. “Whatever, handsome.”

  I pursed my lips and forced my posture straighter. This was fine, good, even. King was a teenager, he should be with another teenager. It made sense. Plus, they were both lovely blondes. They would look good together.

  Yes, I was happy. It was nice to see two students link up and find joy in each other.

  Bullshit, crazy Cressida raged inside the cage of my ribs, shaking them so violently that my breath began to rattle in and out of my mouth. He’s yours!

  He wasn’t, had never been and wouldn’t ever be.

  Still, rage burned through my veins turning blood to hot lead.

  Talia caught the expression on my face and laughed lightly as she settled back in her seat. “Sorry, Mrs. Irons. I’m sure you get me though, he’s so hawt.”

  I did get her.

  “No worries, Talia,” I said drily as I turned away to sit behind my desk again, needing the space. “Next time try to control yourself though, okay?”

  I could feel King’s eyes on me, the necklace now a choker of barbed wire around my throat but I refused to look at him for the rest of the class.

  Unfortunately, our class was sixth period so King stayed in his seat while everyone else left the classroom. Talia lingered for a few minutes, leaning against his desk so that her breasts were in his face but I was able to ignore them fairly well as Maya stayed behind to ask me a question about her Paradise Lost final paper. I continued to ignore him when both girls left, the door closing with a sinister snick behind them.