Welcome to the Dark Side: A Forbidden Romance (The Fallen Men Book 2)

I had a plan.

It had been a long week of spending time with Zeus again and it was, by far, the best week of my life. I’d spent an evening at Eugene’s Bar with a bunch of the brothers and met more of them, including two guys I didn’t like much, Blackjack and the creepy, silent copper haired man named Priest who I recognized as the man who’d told me to stop watching The Fallen Compound years ago. They both gave me the creeps because they always watched Zeus or me with inscrutable expressions on their faces, so it was impossible to tell what they were thinking.

I didn’t linger on it though, because I loved everyone else and was beyond thrilled to see Lila again, she’d embraced me as if I was a long-lost sister. The bar was epic, the same style as the clubhouse and when I’d asked Z about it, he’d explained that the massive man who owned the bar was also an artist specializing in graffiti art and neon signage.

I’d done tequila shots with Lab-Rat, a huge blond Viking named Axe-Man and Bat, who was no-nonsense but had taken a shine to me. A brother named Boner had taught me how to play pool like a pro even though when I’d challenged Zeus to a match, he’d wiped the floor with me and done it laughing.

Mute was my constant shadow and one I found I loved. I liked his largeness, his quietness, and the way he lumbered in a manner that was somehow graceful. I never would have told him to his face, but he reminded me somewhat of Frankenstein’s monster, a creature made for violence with a surprising kindness of spirit. It was fairly obvious to me that he was on the autistic spectrum though at the low end, and I was happy that he was forced to come with me three times a week to the Autism Centre. He and Sammy were quickly becoming best friends and Sammy had asked me just yesterday to help him draw up another best friendship contract for his new biker bff to sign.

I was spending less time as Louise. Dance classes were still a priority, but everything else I ducked out of as much as I could. Reece was patient with me, the cheerleading squad as well, and my teachers offered to give me extensions on my work even though I stayed up late to finish it each night. I was taking advantage of their pity while I could because December was drawing nearer with each cold day and with it would come more chemo and the end of my stamina.

So, I’d decided to take action while I could.

I waited until the club was empty in the wee hours of Saturday night.

It didn’t take long.

As soon as the performers were done, everyone cleaned up quick and left to parties or bed, or the special kinda parties that take place in a bed. No one wanted to hang around an empty stripclub.

But I knew Zeus would be there, sitting in his black velvet booth finishing the end of a cigarette, maybe talking to one of his brothers.

That there would be other people to witness my scene didn’t concern me.

I was too preoccupied with the thought of Zeus, of his burning eyes on me, scoring every inch of my skin in invisible ink that branded me as his.

The music kicked up because my girl Ruby promised to turn it on before she high tailed it out of there.

It was my moment to make a very serious point.

I wasn’t a little girl anymore.

I was a woman, one with dark thoughts and deviant desires. There was no changing the tapestry of my psyche now. Whether it had been the violence of the shooting, the rigidity of Lafayette family rules or something intrinsic to my DNA, I craved the darkness.

Even more, I craved the god who ruled from it.

I knew he’d been hyper aware of me all week. His resolve was eroding and he needed only one final push. I couldn’t touch him but I was serious about making him want to touch me.

The swell of AC/DC’s “Sink the Pink” spilled through the huge room hot and slick as whiskey from a barrel. I waited for my cue, took a deep breath to calm my spastic heart and then strutted out onto the lacquered black stage in my wicked cool, clear plastic platform high heels.

I couldn’t see the audience because of the pale blue, pink and white spotlights shining down on the stage, but I was grateful for it. I may have been a classically trained ballerina but I was a virgin about to do a strip-tease for the Lord of the Damned and I didn’t need any distractions.

Besides, I could feel his eyes on me like dark tunnels channeling through the light.

I closed my eyes as I hit center stage, took a deep breath to find that cavern of peace music always unlocked in my psyche and then, I moved.

My body dropped to the stage as the beat did, knees bent but closed, before I swung upright with my spine arched so the long length of my hair swished against the top of my ass.

Again.

This time legs opened, hand dipped into the shadowed crevice cast by the harsh lights between each thigh. Just a tease, a flutter of my fingers disappearing before I shot up again. The beat controlled me, shoved me to the ground with my knees turned out farther, my little frilly skirt flipped up enough to show the frilly white thong barely covering my sex beneath it.

On the next drop, I thrust my knees apart with my hands, trailing my fingers up from the insides of my knees to the edge of those girly panties. I imagined Zeus’s eyes mapping the path of my fingers, noting each valley and hill of my topography so that later he could explore it himself.

The pulse of the music was inside me now, at the center of my groin and the tips of my breasts. I stood again then spun away, my skirt rippling up to show a glimpse of my ass before I bent over with my legs straight and hands on the floor. The hem of my skirt tickled the bottom edge of my ass cheeks as I swayed my hips side to side and then sinuously took one leg off the ground and then the other. Standing on my hands for a moment, skirt flipped up, breasts precariously close to spilling out of my bra, I took a deep, steadying breath before bringing my legs down again on the other side. Right beside the pole.

I may not have been a stripper, but I’d been around long enough to pick up some tricks of the trade amid giggles and tequila shots with the girls after a slow night. So I knew how to plant my hands against the bottom of the pole, turn vertical to the ground and swing upside down again, this time off the ground, the pole and my body one long, unbroken line.

Sweat beaded on my brow as, achingly slowly, I let my legs fall apart into a horizontal split. With a quick, careful flick of my wrist, my skirt fluttered to the ground and I hung from the pole like a blasphemous Christmas ornament, rampant with corrupted symbolism, the virgin laying prostrate on an altar of sin in wicked offering.

With my heart pounding in my ears, I wrapped my legs around the pole tight enough to support my weight and flipped my torso up. It was an extremely uncomfortable position but I’d watched Ruby do it for months and knew how effective it could be when a woman thrust her chest forward and with an insignificant flick of her fingers, sent her bra parting down the middle.

I could feel the hot light and even hotter eyes of the men in my audience sear the tender skin of my breasts. The large, red sequined pasties I wore concealed my nipples but caught the light in a way that made my breasts look even more voluptuous, Pictionary definitions of sin.

My mind had stopped being the mind of a girl long ago, maybe when I woke up that morning in the hospital with a bullet hole in my bones and cancer in my blood. But my body had been a woman’s body for a few years now too, generously rounded curves all finished in a creamy satin that shone like fresh-water pearls in the pink light.

Abruptly, the music stopped and an indecipherable shout heralded the return of the main lights. I slid from the pole on muscle memory, eyes blinking against the sudden change from harsh spotlight to warm overhead glow.

“Fuckin’ out,” Zeus roared like a thunderclap from where he sat in his booth.

He didn’t have to repeat himself.

Mute held the side door open as Nova and Bat slid out of his booth, the former with a quick but uncharacteristically uneasy smile sent my way while Curtains, Boner and Priest appeared from the control room and hustled past the stage without casting even a flicker of a glance my way.

“Good fuckin’ luck, girl,” Boner muttered before he was out of earshot.

I crossed my arms over my mostly bare breasts and watched everyone depart.

“Get down here,” Zeus ordered.

“Fuck you,” I shot back, infuriated by his anger. “You can boss around your bikers but not me.”

He prowled forward quick and lethal as a great black panther as he came for me. I was distracted enough that I didn’t take the time to back away like I should have. When he hit the end of the stage and lashed out with one huge paw to snap me around the hip and tip me over the stage, free-falling onto his shoulder, I screamed.

He spanked me with one hand as the other kept me secured in the fireman’s carry. “Quiet.”

I slammed my fists against the iron wall of his back. “Let me down, you oaf!”

“Need to stay?” Mute asked in his stilted, rough voice.

“Yes!” I cried out at the same time Zeus growled, “No. Leave and lock the door behind you.”

A violent shudder tore across my skin at that threat.

“Be outside just in case,” Mute said after a few seconds, a slight warning in his voice.

It warmed me to know he was concerned about me just as it frightened me that he had reason to be concerned.

Zeus might have nodded but we were moving again toward his booth and when he deposited me roughly across the slick red surface, we were alone. I tried to get up but he was there, looming over me like the devil. His full mouth was twisted into a braided pink rope as he stared down at me, his silver eyes eclipsed by the deep shadow of his furrowed brows.

I jumped as his hand came slamming to the table beside my head. He leaned into it, his muscles bulging as he leaned down low, so low I could taste his whiskey-flavored breath in my panting mouth.

“Is this what you wanted, little girl? You wanted to see what would happen to a room fulla men when you took your clothes off? Wanted to see ’em pant and lust after ya?”

I whimpered because his big, hot body was nearly pressed to mine and the small sliver of space he kept between us was just as exciting as full-body contact. Without meaning to, I arched into that space, my nipples scraping along the thin fabric of his tee over the hard muscle beneath.

He planted a hand on my lower belly to still me, his rough fingers splaying slowly across the entire naked span of my hips.

“You know what I saw up there? Not your tits or your ass, not the way you worked that pole like you were born to dance. Nah, not me, little girl, because I ain’t just some man to you. Saw the scar just here.” His fingers abraded my skin as he arrowed his hand up, between my breasts so it could rest just above one tit, over my rioting heart, on top of my puckered gunshot scar.

“Saw all this hair,” he said in that dark, delicious growl that vibrated through his hand and against my skin as he moved it up my neck to tug menacingly at my locks. “Remembered the way you worried ’bout losin’ it all, how fuckin’ thrilled you were to have it back. See you stayed true and haven’t cut it since. Like the length, like the colour, but like the weight of it more ’cause I know what it means to ya.”

I didn’t understand what he was doing. His position was threatening, and he was clearly angry with me, but his hand on me was sexual, driving me wild as his fingers rhythmically released and tugged on my hair, as his thumb swiped up and down across my jugular.

And he was reminding me of our history as if it mattered to him, as if he ached with memories just as much as I did. Which couldn’t be true, or he wouldn’t have ignored me for the past three weeks.

“What are you doing?” I whispered, staring up at him with wide, unblinking eyes.

He dipped even closer so that his lips whispered across my own and his thick-lashed crazy-beautiful eyes were the only things I saw. “Seducin’ ya properly.”

“What?”

I gasped as his teeth nipped into my lower lip and rasped over it. “You heard me.”

“I…” I swallowed. “You’re fucking me.”

His chuckle was hot against the bare skin of my neck as he tilted my head with the hand in my hair and bit sharply at the junction of my throat and shoulder. He smiled against my skin as I trembled.

“No, but I fuckin’ well plan on it. You wanted me to touch you, Lou, you wanted to tempt the fuckin’ beast? Well, here he is. Now, tell me has anyone been inside this young, fresh pussy, Lou?” he asked me in a way that suggested the answer had better well be no. “Anyone stretched you so much it burned but ya loved it anyway?”

I was panting loudly already but when one of his big, hot hands clamped over my panty-covered sex and he ground the heel of his palm against my clit, I struggled for breath.

“Answer me.”

I felt his command down to my bones because he had helped form me. His words in ink on paper were my Bible, his attention my place of meditation and his hands on my skin? The same hands I’d dreamt of every day for a decade. That I’d prayed for with more fervency than any virtues I’d been told to worship at church. They were my ultimate blessing.

My mind rolled like a loose marble in my sexed-up head but I still found the nerve to say, “Why don’t you find out for yourself?”

A snarl rolled up from his gut, through his barrel chest and into the air between us. I stared into his eyes as they stormed, whipped up like a sky at siege with itself.

“Remember you asked for this, little girl,” Zeus ordered, his face savage with desire and all I could see as he leaned over me. “You begged me to touch your pretty young pussy and now I’m not going to stop until your cum is drippin’ from my fingers like honey.”

His strong fingers tightened around my neck as I strained against him. Pinned against the table top like a butterfly, splayed open by the width of his hips between my legs and held down by the hand at my throat and the other pressed deeply into the sensitive place above my pubic bone. I was utterly helpless, held captive by a man with warning labels sewn into the very lining of his soul.

And I wanted him so badly, I shook with it.

“I dare you to try,” I taunted, poking the bear just to see what it would do.

A wicked grin cut across his face. “You say my name when you come.”

I opened my mouth to refute his arrogance but the sharp sound of fabric rending and the slight pain around my hips distracted me.

He’d torn off my underwear.

My fingers curled around his rocky biceps instinctually, just in time for me to brace against the first touch of his blunt, thick fingertips to my shamefully wet sex.

He hummed his approval low in his throat. “So wet. You like the thought of me finger-fuckin’ you on this table, in the middle a this club? Betcha wish there was someone to watch, to see how goddamn magnificent you’ll be when you break apart at the seams.”

I groaned as he slid his entire hand over my sex, up and down so that my wetness spread everywhere, all over his fingers, from one side of my groin to the other and all the way over my asshole. It should have been embarrassing to have him play with my arousal like that but I loved the sloppy sounds my pussy made under his touch, the way he trailed his index finger deeper to play over my entrance and his thumb lagged behind to brush hard at my clit.

He hadn’t even penetrated me yet and I was shaking.

“Wanna feel this pussy leakin’ all over my dick while you work it,” he rasped in such a low rumble it was nearly indecipherable. “Wanna see your face as you struggle to take alla me in this tight cunt. Tell me, Lou, when I first break through, will you cry pretty tears for me?”

“Fuck,” I cursed as one finger swirled at my entrance, deeper and deeper with each pass until he was at the thin barrier. Panting but unable to give in without one last barb, I said, “You don’t like it when I cry.”

“New rule. You’re allowed to cry when I claim you as mine.”

“Zeus.” I squirmed under his firm hold as another finger joined the first and thrust shallowly in and out of my sloppy pussy. “Please, take me.”

His chuckle wafted across my mouth as he bit into my bottom lip again. “No fuckin’ way the first time I’m takin’ my girl is on a table in the middle of this fuckin’ club. ‘Sides, you gotta earn my cock, little girl.”

“And how do I do that?” I whined as his calloused thumb rubbed tight, firm circles into my clit, working my orgasm to the surface like a cork from a bottle.

I was going to burst open, rational thought evaporated and blood carbonated with pleasure as my cum spilled forth against those sinfully thick fingers playing between my thighs.

“Show me how fuckin’ gorgeous you are when you come all over my hand,” he said.

And just like that, I broke apart. The orgasm crashed through me like a great wave, pulling everything that I was into its wake until I shattered and spilled between the junction of my thighs, against the great boulder of the hand against my sex.

I had orgasmed before, both with Reece and by myself at home in the dark hours of the night with only girlish thoughts of Zeus to lead me there.

This was so much better than that.

I lay spent and boneless against the table, twitching slightly in the aftermath, pussy pulsing against his hand as he shifted to cup his big palm over my sex.

I jerked when he gave it two quick, gentle pats and said, “Good girl.”

Fuck me but that was hot.

Using the little energy I had left, I went into a crunch so I could watch him as he brought a wet thumb to his mouth and smeared my cum against his lower lip before sucking it into his mouth.

“Fuckin’ delicious,” he groaned.

“Please let me touch you now.”

His heavy-lidded eyes studied me splayed out on the table for him for a long minute before he reached down and carted me into his arms. Immediately, I wrapped myself tight around him even though I could feel my sex drench his tee where I pressed against him. I shoved my face into his neck, breathing deeply of his forest-and-tobacco scent, and I struggled not to cry.

One hand supported my ass while the other dove into my hair, twined it around his fingers and held me close.

After everything, the vulnerability of dancing for him, the overpowering sensation of breaking open against him, it was this hug that sank my heart to him forever.

There was no going back now.

I’d made a deal with the devil, tasted his brand of sin in hell and as the fables always said, once you indulged in the food of the underworld, you were stuck in its depths forever.

“Stuck with me,” I croaked, trying to be brave and strong and unmoved but completely unable to because how often does a girl live a dream come true?

He turned his lips into my hair and kissed me. “It’s you who’s stuck with me, little warrior. Not lettin’ you go now. Not fuckin’ ever.”

“Good.”

His chuckle vibrated through my body. “Not as easy as all that, jailbait.”

I pulled back from him enough to say, “The age of consent in the province is sixteen years old unless you’re an authority figure. You can’t go to jail because of me. Not again.”

His face softened into something so beautiful it made my breath catch and my heart stop beating. It reminded me that I hadn’t told him about the cancer coming back, about how I had chemo coming up. It reminded me that I didn’t want to because I was finally a woman to him, whole and sexy and filled with promise.

I wasn’t going to be the destroyer of my dreams.

“Wasn’t your fault, Lou, and even if it was, gotta say, I’d do it again. If I have to kill every single fuckin’ man on this goddamn planet to be with you, Lou, you better believe that I fuckin’ will and I’ll do it with a fuckin’ smile.”

I wish I’d known back then that his words would be tested again and again over the next few months and that, in the end, death would stalk me anyway.