Good Gone Bad (The Fallen Men, #3)

by Giana Darling

I was a storm of calamity, cast adrift on a sea of black doings and loosely drawn rebel rules. He was an old growth oak with roots sunk deep into rich earth, limbs stretching wide across the sky, standing sentry across centuries as the world toiled away beneath its leaves.

I could whip around that kind of man, cause hurricanes with my spirit, quake the earth with my tempers, but none of it mattered. He would remain untouched no matter what I did, no matter what anyone did.

“Rosie? Tell me what’s happening.”

A sob bloomed in my throat, the petals clogging my airway and the thorns tearing up my throat as I choked on the wet rose of his name for me. Rosie.

“Lion,” I gasped

I’d know Lionel Danner anywhere, anytime even if I was blind, deaf, and struck dumb.

“What the fuck did that piece of shit do to you?”

“’Cause you don’t distract me with those pretty blues, I’m going to murder that piece of shit all over again for whatever he did that made you feel the need to stick a blade in his neck.”

“You think I don’t know that under all that thorny sass you got a heart as tender as a budded rose, you can think again,”

My heart was imprisoned by his, regardless of his lack of interest.

I was the rare kind of man that fed off fear, that relished the challenge of conquering the beast and making it submit to me in the end.

Man, those Garro men were whipped.

But because underneath Harleigh Rose’s crown of thorns and venom laced tongue, she was as tender as a fresh bloom and I hated that she would now carry the weight of taking a life.

I tried not to spend too much time near the Garros because each time I did, my moral compass went haywire in the face of their magnetism.

“No one ever taught you a woman doesn’t have to act like a man to be powerful, did they? Us women, we got more power in our pinky finger than most men hope to wield in their entire lives. And a part of that power is supporting your sisters, believing them when they confess and supporting them when they fall. Shame,”

Ever since I could remember, Danner and I occupied our own space together, a separate frequency of sound bubbled up around us so that it was us and only us who understood the other.

“Looks like her name, beautiful as a rose. Mind those thorns though, yeah? I have a feelin’ they might getcha in the end.”

Coming to blows with someone over me was basically the equivalent of handing me a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates.

How is it possible, when all it takes is insinuation to set you on fire, that you’ve got so much dead in your eyes?”

“Tell me, rebel, how I should react when my beautiful, dilapidated rose wants to put herself in another dangerous situation when she stills wears the mark on her skin of the last one?”

“I can take care of myself,”

“Know it. Also know, you’re not alone, not ever with the kinda family you got. Don’t know when you stopped countin’ me as one of them, but I’m gonna take care of you too, Rosie.”

“Not in charge of you,”

“Never have been, though can’t say, Rosie, that the idea of it hasn’t crossed my mind. Takin’ all that wild and leashing it, breaking it under a firm, calm hand… yeah,” he drawled. “Thought about it.”

“Not in charge of you, but as I said, I’m gonna look out for you even if you don’t like it.

“Who the fuck did that to you?” he demanded.

He squinted at me, his eyes greener than traffic lights, encouraging me to go, go, go and tell him all my secrets.

Danner’s hand wrapped securely around my throat, a necklace of possession I wished I could brand into the skin there.

It was weird to hear Danner speak in biker contractions just as much as it sent a tingle of arousal shooting between my legs. God, he looked like sex on legs in that leather jacket.

he chose a huge chest piece with this lion roaring over his heart caged by a thicket of these roses and thorns,”

I refused to look his way. If I did, all my well-maintained walls would crumble and all that remained would be me in my basest form, weak and tender and his.

“Fuck me, you’re trouble. Have been since the day I saw you,”

“You could tempt a saint into sinning.”

“Wouldn’t bet on that. I haven’t succeeded yet.”

“I’m no saint.”

“Wanting you was never the issue.”

You’re a man, you want a woman, you fuckin’ take her if she wants you back.”

But I followed him. I followed him, because I had all my life and I knew I always would.

“You want proof you drive me fucking crazy,”

one hand at the back of my head to cushion it from the wall

“You need me to do something stupid like kiss your sweet mouth in the back of this shit bar while men who’d be happy to kill us are steps away just to prove to you I’d do an...

“Anythin’ for you, Rosie,”

Danner tore his mouth from mine but didn’t pull away. Instead, instinctively, he curled over me, the hand at my head pressed me under his chin, his back forming a broad shield between me and whatever threat he thought we faced.

Was it wrong that one day, I wished he would drop off the deep end of sanity for good and fall right into my arms?

“You always throw up thorns the second I get close to the heart of you.”

I wasn’t the good girl to his good guy and I never would be.

If Lionel Danner wanted me, he’d have to come to me, over to the dark side where outlaws ruled, sinning was routine, and love was blind. He’d have to be the bad boy to my bad girl.

“You are in so much trouble,” he murmured to me as he passed by. “And I think you’re finally fucking old enough to feel the real pain of my displeasure.”

“I’ll break up with her tonight if you promise to be in my bed, ready to be punished by ten.”

I loved that I gave him lightness to combat his somber spirit, that he weighted my wild impulses just enough to give me cause to think before I acted. We were such opposites, but so beautiful paired.