The Fallen Men

He was 18. The heir to a notorious, criminal MC. And my student. There was no way I could get involved. No way I could stay involved. Then, no way I could get out alive.

I was a good girl. I ate my vegetables, volunteered at the local autism centre, and sat in the front pew of church every Sunday. Then, I got cancer. What the hell kind of reward was that for a boring life well lived? I was a 17-year-old paradigm of virtue, and I was tired of it. So, when I finally ran into the man I'd been writing to since he saved my life as a little girl and he offered to show me the dark side of life before I left it for good, I said yes.

They say one action doesn’t define you. I killed a man. Stabbed him in the neck and licked the blood off my lips after I did it. Still, one action doesn’t define you. I could have called anyone. My father, the Prez of The Fallen MC, our family lawyer, my best friend, Lila, or my brother, King. I didn’t. Instead, I called Lionel Danner, the police officer renowned for taking down the Nightstalkers MC.

I was settin’ up to live a good life, the kinda life I’d fought hard to deserve. With a good woman - the best woman - at my side, a degree under my belt, and the whole world at my feet, I was livin’ the kinda happily ever after usually denied the rebellious and the criminal. I’d turned my back on that kinda life, thinkin’ I needed that clean, wholesome kinda happy. Then the devil came dressed in the wings of an angel and took someone from me. And I realized I was wrong. There was no clean and wholesome for a man like me with poetry in his heart and outlaw in his blood.

I was a goner as girl to a man they called Casanova for a reason. He would never love me, at least not the way I needed him to. I tried to move on. But I couldn’t turn my back on him or The Fallen MC. So when they needed me most, I offered the only thing of value I could use to help them. My body. And when helping them meant putting my life on the line, Nova had to decide just how much he was willing to do to get me out alive.

The Irish enforcer for The Fallen Men MC is everything good girls are taught to stay away from. Only, I found myself inexorably drawn into his dark gravitational pull. I wanted to know what it would be like to walk beside the human personification of Death and hold his hand, feel his kiss, and maybe even earn his undying love. But Priest McKenna is older, cold as ice, and notoriously unfeeling.

I fell in love with my best friend's dad when I was seventeen. He seemed like some kind of heathen god, big enough to kill a man with his bare hands, tattooed with bright, bold images, and weathered by time and a short stint in prison. Blind to the consequences, I made a mistake that ran him out of town and ruined his life. Now, he's back after all these years––hating me more than the day he left.