The Garro’s lived off the main beach drive down a packed dirt road behind a chain link fence, overgrown sea grass and about five signs that warned of Danger, No Trespassing and Cross At Your Own Risk.
It wasn’t exactly a warm welcome but as Mute and I passed down the weaving road lined with parked cars, I looked around in awe at the surroundings. The ocean ran alongside the lane, the high tide line just a meter or two off the path. The blue water sparkled with fragments of shattered gold cast by the setting sun and the mountains cupping Entrance like a hand loomed up all around us, capped by snow and shrouded in perpetual mist.
I breathed the briny sea air into my lungs and then lost it all when we rounded a bend and caught sight of the house.
Zeus had built this one as well.
It was a pale wood clapboard house with thick slates around the windows and doors stained a darker wood. The roof had pale green tiles that blended in beautifully with the ocean at its side and the forest at its back. There was a wraparound porch with potted plants on it and a huge three-door garage built in the same style as the compact, two-story house.
I fucking loved it.
I was off the bike and running toward the painted forest green front door when it opened and Zeus stepped onto the porch, his feet bare beneath the frayed hem of his jeans and his torso snug in a criminally tight Henley the same colour as his pale grey eyes.
I launched myself up the stairs and into his arms.
He caught me easily with his hands splayed across my ass and planted a long, wet kiss on me before I could get a word out. When he was done with my mouth, I’d forgotten what I was going to say and blinked at him dazedly.
“How’s my girl?”
I stared into his grey eyes, cracked and lined like an ancient boulder over time. They were beautiful eyes thick-lashed under heavy brows, given character by that radiating fan of wrinkles to either side of them. I decided right then that I’d be happy to spend the rest of my life looking into those eyes.
“I think you dazzled her,” a well-known but surprising voice said from behind Zeus in the house. “King does it to me all the time, so I know.”
I peered around Zeus’s hair to confirm my suspicions and immediately jumped down to the ground as I yelled, “Miss Irons!”
She laughed as I used my entire body to move Zeus’s bulk out of the doorframe and then pulled my ex-teacher into a full body hug.
“What are you doing here?” I asked as I stepped away.
It was only then that I noticed what she was wearing.
Miss Irons had been a young and pretty teacher that wore sweet little dresses and feminine suit combinations like a classy secretary. Now she stood before me in jeans with the knees ripped out and a purple tee shirt with a crown emblazoned on it that said Queen. Her long golden brown hair was wild all around her in a way that said she’d arrived on the back of a bike and enjoyed the hell out of it and, not only that, she hadn’t bothered to fix her mane because she liked the windblown look of it.
Totally different woman.
I took a step back as I frowned at her.
She laughed lightly as she looked from me to Zeus, who stood leaning against the wall of his house with his arms and feet crossed, an unlit cigarette in his mouth. “I should have known it would be just as weird for her to see me as it would be for me to see her with you.”
Zeus pushed his tongue against the cig in his mouth but didn’t say anything and for another second, I got stuck on how goddamn sexy he looked standing there as the man of the house, cool and casual but potent with masculinity and harnessed power.
Miss Irons laughed again and hit Zeus in the shoulder like they were friends. “Totally dazzled by you. Way to go, Zeus.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “As if it’s that surprisin’.”
I couldn’t help myself when I rolled my eyes and said, “Yeah, you get dazzled first thing when you look at him but as soon as he opens his mouth, you come back to earth real quick.”
“Oh my God, you two are freaking adorable,” she breathed, her eyes sparkling with delight.
I felt like I was in the twilight zone.
“Queenie, you gotta start swearin’,” Nova said, appearing behind her.
The golden light of the sunset hit him full in the face and highlighted the utter perfection of his bone structure. I bet if I took a ruler and measured it out, his features would be exactly symmetrical.
“Seems dazzled enough by pretty boy,” Zeus grumbled.
Miss Irons or Queenie grinned and waved a dismissive hand through the air. “Oh come on now, you know any woman with eyes in her head is dazzled by Nova.”
“This is true,” Nova agreed with a wink and a rakish grin.
“Come ’ere, little warrior,” Zeus ordered with a glare at his brother.
I went without thinking under his arm and leaned hard into his side before reaching up to pluck the cigarette from his lips and put it between my own. It was a strangely intimate thing to do and I knew Zeus understood that when his hand cupped my hip and pulled me closer.
“So, are you with him?” I asked, pointing a finger between Nova and my old teacher. “Because there were these bizarre rumors about you sleeping with a student when you left. I told anyone who would listen that it was utter horseshit—”
I stopped talking when a motorcycle came roaring into the wide driveway and King Kyle Garro swung off his bike. He turned to grab the bag of ice strapped to the back, and then his long legs ate up the space as he came up the stairs to the porch. I thought distractedly that it was easy to get dazzled by The Fallen men. If women knew how fucking handsome bikers could be, it would blow their minds.
I was thinking this when King’s booted feet hit the landing, the ice hit it a second later and Miss Irons was hauled into his arms the second after that. He slid a hand to the back of her neck, banded the other over her hips and planted a hot, wet, super long kiss on my ex-teacher.
His ex-teacher.
“Um, okaaaaay,” I said slowly.
They kissed on.
Nova smirked at me. “They do this a lot.”
King pulled away from eating at her mouth but kept his face close to say, “How’s my Queen doin’?”
She sighed dreamily, clutching his wrists as they cupped her face. “Better now you’re back.”
Zeus snorted. “Boy went to get fuckin’ ice, woman. He didn’t go off to war.”
Miss Irons blushed fiercely but shot my man a sidelong look filled with sass. “Your women just run from Mute’s bike the second it stopped and jump into your waiting arms like you’d just returned from war?” she waited a beat for her point to sink in then grinned and placed a smacking kiss on King’s smiling lips. “That’s what I thought.”
“So obviously, the rumors were true,” I clarified drily.
Zeus’s body rumbled against mine with a deep chuckle.
King’s boyish smile was absurdly handsome with pride. “Better believe it. Worked fuckin’ hard to snag her, let me tell ya.”
She shoved him and then immediately followed him as he stepped back from the force of it and slotted herself into his side before looking at me. “Apparently, you’ve got yourself a Garro man so you can’t tell me you don’t get it.”
“Oh, I get it,” I said with a nod, tipping my head back so I could look up into Zeus’s rugged face. “I almost feel badly that there are no Garros left for anyone else.”