Caution to the Wind (The Fallen Men, #7)

by Giana Darling

“You don’t have to return or even like my feelings for you, but I will not be ashamed of the way I feel. You’re my white knight, and it doesn’t matter if you’re too old or too outlaw or too whatever else you want to throw at me. I know in my bones that I’ll always feel this way about you. You see me, Henning, even when I feel invisible, even when I want desperately to remain unseen. That might not mean anything to you, but it means everything to me.”

“Don’t romanticize me. I’m a fuckin’ outlaw biker, for fuck’s sake, Mei.”

“An off-white knight, then,” I agreed, but my chin canted even higher in the air so I could look down my nose at him as I reiterated. “But still my off-white knight.”

“My love for you isn’t conditional on you loving me back,” I told him even though my heart hurt, my head hurt, my very soul hurt. “So this won’t ruin anything between us unless you want it to. I hope you don’t. I know I’ll never be yours that way, but having you in my life is better than nothing. I…I don’t have many people I love, and I’ve already lost too many.”

I could forgive her for thinkin’ she was in love with me ’cause the love we shared was so difficult to put in a properly labelled box. Still, nothin’ would come from it.

His broad forehead tipped down to press to mine, and he closed his eyes, a pained expression on his rough-hewn features. And I knew he’d never love me the way I loved him. Like I was the oxygen he needed to breathe. But at least he loved me like this. Like losing me would be living with half a lung.

“I’d pay any price for you,” he whispered fiercely, his blood-soaked hands clutching at my face so hard it almost hurt. “Is that enough love for you, Rocky?”

This was why I loved him, because there was nothing he wouldn’t do for those he loved.

I didn’t even know then that it would be the last time I saw Henning Axelsen for eight long years, and the next time I did see him, he’d hate me just as much as he’d once loved me.

A distant part of my brain noticed she’d grown into a real beauty. The knock-you-down-drag-your-heart-straight-outta-your-chest kinda beautiful no red-blooded man could resist. Mei Zhen Marchand in the fuckin’ flesh.

You fell in love with someone because they felt like the only person who could see through your skin and bones straight down to the soul, and even knowing all of you––the good, the bad, the motherfucking ugly––they still accepted you.

“I’d die for her just as happily as I’d die for you. No amount of time will ever change that. And no amount of hate.”

I still loved him. That man was more than a man to me and always would be because he was also my hero, and no matter what ending they got, the mythological Jason and Hercules, the superheroes Batman and Spider-Man, they lived on eternally for the impact of their good deeds. And Henning’s goodness lived on inside me. I’d grown around it.

“How long will it be before he finds out I’m dating Jiang Kuan?”

Beneath the beauty, she was one of the most dangerous people I’d ever known. She’d even proven it last night by findin’ a way to flip me over her damn back. It was just my goddam luck that I found that sexy as fuck.

“If you’ve stayed friends with him over some mis-fuckin’-guided attempt to get justice for Kate, I swear to fuckin’ God, Mei, I’ll turn you over my knee and tan your ass so hard you won’t be able to sit for a goddamn year

“That’s ’cause you were used to dealin’ with a softer man. There ain’t nothin’ soft about me now, and you’d do well to remember it.”

“Fuck, you’re the most dangerous thing I’ve ever known,”

I sucked in a breath as our eyes met and locked… He looked like he hated me. No, that wasn’t strong enough. He looked like I’d killed every dream he’d ever had. Like I’d betrayed him irrevocably. Like he couldn’t stand the sight of me.

the truth was he might have been the hero in my story, but I’d always be the girl who’d made his a tragedy. Nothing would change that. Not finding Kate’s killers, not loving and caring for Cleo. Not even fucking him the way I’d fantasized about for years.

But I was officially done pining after Henning Axelsen. He was dead and buried inside a man I didn’t know and didn’t love named Axe-Man.

“I’m not just any woman,” she corrected with almost a wince. “No,” I agreed, runnin’ my thumb down her square jawline so I could pinch her chin and force her to meet my eyes. “You’ve never been just any woman. We might not be…friends anymore, Mei, but once, you were family. Once, I went to prison happy to think I’d given you a chance at a beautiful life. One I believed to my bones you deserved. Don’t know why you stopped talkin’ to me, and honest to fuck, I don’t wanna know anymore. We don’t hafta open up those old wounds. Right now, this mornin’, you’re a woman I’ve cared about who needs carin’ for, and that’s all there is to it.”

“You want me to fuck the truth outta you, don’t you?”

“I thought you weren’t going to touch me again?”

“I thought you couldn’t stand the sight of me.”

“I can’t. Even though you stabbed me through the fuckin’ heart, it can’t fuckin’ forget how to care about you. Even with my blood on your teeth, I can’t fight the mad urge to kiss you. Maybe especially with my blood on your teeth, your little claws in my chest. I’ve always had the bad habit of wantin’ what wasn’t good for me.”

“You’re still a fuckin’ liar with a mouth full of sharp teeth and secrets. I hate you, Mei, but I got this madness in me that wants you anyway.

This anger I got wants to take pieces outta you with my words and my teeth. Bruises you ’cause I want you to hurt and mark you ’cause some damn dumb part of me remembers what it was like when you were mine.”

“I was never yours like this,” I countered. “You ...

“But you’re not a kid anymore, and I wanna fuck ’til you forget all the goddamn lies. I wanna punish your tight cunt with my cock and all this pretty skin with my teeth. I wanna destroy you like you destroyed me.”

“So do it,” I dared, baring my teeth at him, his blood still stuck in the grooves. “Show me how much you hate me. I can take it.”

“You wanna fuck me?” he asked, his voice cold, so arctic it shot shivers across my skin. “You wanna prove you can handle me? Take off your clothes and do it nice and slow.”

“You little thief,” he snarled, tracing another design up to the lower curve of my small breast before he harshly pinched my nipple and toppled me to the bed. “You have me all fuckin’ over you.”

“You don’t want to be spanked; you want to be fucked until you can’t remember your own goddamn name. ’Til you forget every single inch of yourself and all the bad things you’ve done.”

“Tell me you want me,” I whispered as my cunt clenched down on him, and I quivered on the edge of release. “Please.”

Goddamn you, but yeah, I want you. Never want to stop fuckin’ this pretty, perfect cunt. You’re so fuckin’ dangerous ’cause you make me so fuckin’ weak, Rocky.”

Fuck, that was hot. Being pinned down by his big hands while he inked whatever he wanted into my skin. Like he owned me. Like I was his to do what he wanted with.

“Stay still while I fuck you,” he reprimanded when I automatically started gyrating on his hand. “Show me you can be a good girl.”

“Love seein’ my ink on you,” he admitted on a groan as he tunneled in and out. “Love it way too fuckin’ much I got carried away puttin’ my mark on you.”

“I want whatever mark you want to give me,” I confessed as I pushed back with every thrust, mindless enough with pleasure to be honest. “With your tattoo gun, your teeth, your tongue, your cock. I’ve always wanted to be your canvas.”

“You might hate me when you see what I marked you as,” he admitted, voice tight, hands even tighter on my hips as he drove harder and harder into my clenching heat. “But I don’t fuckin’ care. You got your teeth and claws in me, it’s only fair I got my ink on you. Even when I hate you, you’re mine.”

Property of the Off-White Knight in the same small black, gothic writing of the tattoos love and loss on his knuckles.

The human heart was a sadistic thing. Somehow, the same woman I’d hated had become the only woman my battered heart felt whole and enlivened by.

“You killed my wife, and you just threatened my woman,”

It was an odd moment to realize Mei Zhen’s ironclad hold over me. But somethin’ like love surged through me at those wicked, cruel words. It was the sensation of bein’ seen at your very worst and not bein’ found wantin’. No, it was the exact opposite. It was bein’ seein’ at your worst, on the precipe of burnin’ down the whole world for selfish reasons, and bein’ encouraged to take your fill.

No one had ever seen the darkness in me and enjoyed it. Not like Mei.

Mei saw it all, the bad and the ugly, and she still thought I was good. She always had.

She looked like an angel of death, something dangerous and capable, someone whose very kiss might be lethal. And it was. Lethal to my willpower.

I wanted her to burn me down to ash and raise me up like a phoenix, reborn in the fires of her all-consumin’ love.

It was reckless to be loved like that and love like that in return. And I’d made myself into a calculated man. One based in the head, not the heart or the gut. But for once in my life, I wanted to take a risk for myself. I wanted to be selfish and fuck the consequences. I wanted Mei, and I didn’t care about anythin’ else.