Riding for a Fall (Get Your Rocks Off Book 2) Read online

  Riding for a Fall

  Sam Hall

  Contents

  Description

  Author Note

  If you are related to me

  Trigger Warning

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  What next?

  Stalk me!

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Riding for a Fall

  Riding for a Fall © Sam Hall 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except for in the case of brief quotations for the use in critical articles or reviews.

  Cover art and design by Mibl Art

  The characters and events depicted in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Created with Vellum

  Description

  Freed from her neurological condition and the suffocating attention of her parents, Kira is a whole new woman, literally. And now she’s on tour with her favourite band, travelling across foreign countries and recording what she sees with the gorgeous Marlow by her side. So, it all should be smooth sailing, right?

  Instead she’s thrust into a complex political world where everything is about power and a misstep could be your last. Kira’s no closer to discovering what the mysterious Aen is, or why he’s so interested in her. The tawny Johnno brings with him his own baggage: his band, with every single one of them focussed on one thing: her. She’s gone from fragile human to resilient, somehow powerful fae, but why does everyone want a bite?

  So, who does she let close?

  Join Kira as she navigates this brand new world and in the process of discovering the fae world and how it works, discovers a whole lot more than she bargained for about herself.

  This is book two in a brand new steamy reverse harem series from the author of the Pack Heat series. If you love hot, why choose romance with sexy fae men and a lot of MM, you’ll love Riding for a Fall.

  Author Note

  This book is written in Australian English, which is a weird lovechild of British and American English. We tend to spell things the way the Brits do (expect a lot more u’s), yet also use American slang and swear more than both combined.

  While many people have gone over this book, trying to find all the typos and other mistakes, they just keep on popping up like bloody rabbits. If you spot one, don’t report it to Amazon, drop me an email at the below address so I can fix the issue.

  [email protected]

  Also I’ve played fast and loose with Canon camera’s actual capabilities, so if you’re a gear head, don’t write me cranky emails about what they actually do. It’s a fantasy book. ;)

  If you are related to me

  Fam, you wanna nope on out of this one, for sure. The kink is gonna get real. Seriously, I can never come home again if you read this. Abort! Abort! :P

  This one goes out to Katie, Samantha S and Richelle. Each of you has patiently listened to me ramble complete shit, talked me off ledges and taught me a whole lot. Thanks ladies, couldn’t do it without you!

  Trigger Warning

  This is a difficult book in some ways. While I don’t think it fits the bully category, there are elements of that definitely seem bully adjacent. So keeping that in mind, this will be a challenging book for some people.

  To reassure you, this is not a ‘pour maggots on the MC while trying to get her to suicide’ type bully, but what I was interested in with this series, was exploring ambiguity with the male leads. Are they good or bad guys? Are they her lovers, her enemies or both? That will be a continual theme thought out the whole series. You’ll have to read to the end to find out where they stand, for now.

  1

  “How are you feeling?”

  We lay on the bed in the hotel the morning we were due to embark on the tour. I leaned up and kissed Marlow by way of an answer. I didn’t want to put it into words, hear the crack in my voice as I described something that I thought I’d never have to deal with again. I felt clear as a bell now, despite only just waking up, but that pain. My kiss didn’t seem to ease any of Marlow’s concerns. He stroked a hand over my forehead and down my cheek, those eyes seeing way too much as he studied my face.

  “Kira?”

  “I feel good, really good. That was scary, whatever the hell it was yesterday, but I don’t feel any of it now. My head’s clear, my neck isn’t tight…”

  “It’s OK,” he said, pulling me against him so that my head rested on his arm. I was never, ever going to get used to looking at him. I so wanted to photograph the way his skin turned to a deep amber in the filtered light coming through the curtains. I smoothed the sheets back from his chest, my brows twitching as I tried to memorise every bloody shape there, storing it away for later, then I moved until I sat next to him and stroked the raw silk of his skin. “I’m not your father. You don’t have to report to me. I was just worried.”

  But you will, I thought. People always fell in two camps—those who felt like I was a burden that needed to be cared for, and those who walked away from damaged goods. My heart seized in my chest as I considered him doing either of those things. His hands went to my hips as I straddled his, but I felt an urgency he probably didn’t, his eyes still heavy with sleep. I bent down, letting my hair trail across his skin before pressing my mouth to his.

  I wanted to hold this, bottle this, preserve the way his lips felt against mine, the increasingly harsh bite of his fingers at my waist as my slick cunt rubbed along his morning wood. I wanted to swallow those rapid breaths, those low moans to save for later once he’d gone. I wanted to retain every damn bit of him inside that I could. Starting now.

  “Kira!” he cried as I pulled the sheet away. I needed to see every damn inch of him. He grabbed at me as I slid down, then in a low, swooping movement, I licked my taste and his off his throbbing cock.

  “Jesus fuck!” he yelped as my fingers closed around him, lifting that rigid length and then covering the head with my mouth. My lips bruised on the crown as I pouted so the softness engulfed him, then I suckled on the tip, drawing less and less coherent cries from him. His fingers dug into the bedcovers, the muscles tight and trembling as I licked him like he was my favourite treat, outlining every ridge and crevice, the flat of my tongue sweeping the taste of him that seeped from his slit over and over.

  Marlow begged, for more, for me to stop, it seemed to vary. The quite natural concern for me warred with the sensations I was pulling from his body, until it appeared getting a blow job won. I readied myself to try and work as much of his thick length down my throat, when there was a knock on the door.

  I heard Marlow’s hiss of frustration as both our heads jerked up.

  “Hey, it’s Johnno,” the muffled voice said on the other side. “Sorry for interrupting, but we’re all due to do a morning briefing with the band in about half an hour. I’ve brought coffee.”

  I didn’t want coffee, or at least, not the liquid kind. I looked Marlow over with a possessive eye. He’d been given to me, he was mine to touch and please. I wanted to see him come apart, completely and u
tterly vulnerable as I worked him with my throat. He seemed to sense this and got up off the bed, his eyes molten before shaking his head and deliberately backing away from what I was so obviously offering.

  “I want this,” he said, wrapping his arms around me. “I want you so fucking much, but we’ve gotta get out there. Tours are like a machine, and they break down if all the cogs aren’t working. Jennifer’s been covering for me…”

  Fuck, Jen. I felt a sharp pang of guilt as I realised I’d spent my first night on foreign soil without even a text for her.

  “And she’ll be dying to see you. Let’s go out, have a coffee and a quick bite, and then head down to this meeting, yeah?”

  “It’s not going to be like this again for a while, is it?” I said, looking back at the bed.

  He shrugged with that same bittersweet smile of his. “Not for a bit. Love’s something you snatch when you can on tour. I’ll find you. Trust me, I’ll find you.”

  Love.

  The word dropped down inside me like a stone, and when I looked back at him, I saw a mirror of what I thought my face would look like. His eyes were wide, like he’d massively fucked up and hadn’t realised until now. Like he was looking down on the consequences of his fumble, aghast at what he’d done. He looked completely stricken, but I reached for his hand. His fingers tightened, his expression softening until I saw something I’d never expected to see in the eyes of another. It was big, vast, a whole undiscovered country of feeling inside him, one that matched my own. There was another knock on the door, but that didn’t stop me from rising up, touching his face, his lips.

  “I shouldn’t have said that,” he whispered.

  “I’ll carry that with me all day,” I said, and slid a hand over his heart.

  “Damn…” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t let you go out into this. You’re gonna need—”

  We both growled when we heard the last knock.

  “We’ll talk about this more, later, yeah?” he said, waiting until I nodded before pulling away and yanking on some clothes. He tossed some for me on the bed, along with some very nice leather Chuck Taylor’s before opening the door. Johnno looked through the gap at me, frozen with the two coffee cups in hand. Then I did something I would never have believed possible.

  I was already naked, so that cat was out of the bag, and from the descriptions of the preceptor-novitiate relationship, it was going to get sexual between Johnno and me. So I got off the bed, his eyes scouring my body as I drew closer until my hands went around one of the coffees. I remembered his words as I leant in, brushing a kiss across his cheek—that he didn’t feel vulnerable when naked, and I saw why. The usual hangups and worries about my appearance didn’t seem to register as fae, particularly as it had changed so much. To be blunt, this was the best I’d ever looked, and there was a pleasure to be had from watching his eyes grow heavily lidded as they soaked up everything that was on show. I liked the raspy sound of his breath, the tiny step forward he took as I sipped the drink. His skin started to glow faintly the longer I stood there, something I wanted to reach out and touch.

  Instead I said, “Do I have time for a shower?”

  “What? Oh yeah, if you’re quick.”

  “So are you going to fill me in on what to expect?”

  “What? In the shower?”

  That wasn’t what I’d intended, figuring a brief elevator conference would work, but I met those molten gold eyes and couldn’t resist.

  “Yeah, sure, if that works for you.”

  I had to glance at myself in the bathroom mirror as I walked past, not sure who the hell was doing the driving, as it wasn’t me. Or it wasn’t the old me. That dream, that pain, whoever that guy was. I should’ve been talking about that, quizzing him about what that could have meant, but I didn’t. That was for future Kira to worry about. What was left of my humanity had a little scream about that, trying desperately to alert me to all the possible dangers I could be ignoring, but I didn’t feel anxious. I felt horny, proud, and was enjoying the deliciousness of Johnno sitting down on the closed toilet seat, coffee now discarded, as all his focus was on me.

  I felt powerful, and lightning strike Kira wasn’t a part of that. “So what should I expect at the briefing?” I asked.

  It took him a second to come back to the conversation as I ducked under the showerhead, grabbed the soap, and got to work. I wanted to make this a whole sensual show, a completely foreign idea before this point, but the clock was ticking.

  “Um…yeah, the briefing. It’s basically a court session every morning. Liam runs it. If we ever get independent, he’s the one tagged to become lord. The day’s business is discussed, decisions are made, and if you can’t be bothered to go, then you don’t get to be a part of the decision making process. Which is probably why they didn’t tell you about it.”

  “Of course.” I squeezed shampoo into my hand and worked it into my hair. “And I’m guessing I’m going to be one of the topics of discussion?”

  “You’re going to be talked about a lot for a while, Kira.” My eyes jerked to him as I heard a combination of desire and pain in his voice. I frowned. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I’d thought we were just playing right now, a little tit for his tat on the night of the party. “It’s OK,” he said with a twisted smile. “New blood always gets attention. Where do you fit? How powerful are you? Who are your allies? Are you going to push anyone out when you take your place? Someone like you, you’ll shake things up in Hartley.”

  I rinsed off quickly, but when I opened my eyes and went to step out of the shower, I found Johnno standing there with a towel held out. I reached for it, but he shook his head.

  “Let me,” he said.

  I nodded, moving closer so he could slide the thick fabric over my body, taking his time, no matter the urgency of the meeting. My heart started to beat faster as he got lower down, his smile flickering when he saw an answering glow on my skin.

  “What is that?” I said, looking at my now slightly phosphorescent arm.

  “It’s energy. We create and can use energy for magic.” He twisted his fingers in a complicated motion, and a little shower of sparks appeared, dropping onto the floor and my skin, each one leaving a searing little kiss wherever they touched.

  “And I can do that?”

  “We think so. It’s your scent. It’s really intense and complex.” He watched me balk at that. It sounded like I stank or something. “It’s like the most gorgeous perfume, but there’s lots of… It’s hard to explain to someone who’s new to this. Look, come here.” I quirked an eyebrow. We were pretty damn close as it was. He tossed the towel away and then pulled up his shirt. “Focus here, on my sternum.” His hand moved slowly to rest on my shoulder, and there it was—that glow again. I felt more of those explosive little stinging nips on my skin as the sparks started again.

  “Ohhh…” I gasped, the bites soon turning to something else. I looked up as I felt licks of pleasure shoot through my body, and the smell of Johnno went from clean, soapy male to so much more.

  I felt almost like I’d entered an alternate realm, one full of smoky wood and musk so sweet, my mouth began to water. There were wafts of cinnamon and amber, and the taste of burnt caramel. The cloud of his scent turned tangible, like it was brushing against my skin. I found myself open mouthed and gasping when it started to fade, and he seemed inordinately pleased by my reaction.

  “That’s what you get from me?”

  “More, I think, if everyone’s reactions are something to go on. You can’t smell yourself, so it’s always a guess. Look, it’s a big complex thing, but we need to get to this meeting. I’ll be putting forward that time has to be made for your training. Hartley wants you as a power source, but that’ll mean nothing if we don’t give you some skills to use.”

  He was probably as surprised as I was when I reached up and kissed him lightly. “I want to do more than that,” I said as I stepped back. “I feel you and Marlow on my lips after we’re separated, and I
want to kiss you again to deepen that. I can feel it in my skin, a need to see what your hands would feel like on my body without a towel as a mediator. Is that part of this too? This preceptor, fae, bond, confusing thing that I don’t understand?”

  “Training,” Johnno rasped out. “Definitely need to make training a priority. Now put some clothes on before I do exactly as you say.”

  2

  “Ready, my flower?” Aen said as we stood at the doorway of the hotel conference room The Changelings had taken over for the morning. A breakfast buffet lined one wall with people milling around it.

  “Not yet,” I said, but he reached down to take my hand and gave it a squeeze. Johnno had gone before us, the vanguard of what was no doubt going to be a battle between me and the band.

  “You need food. What happened last night—”

  “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “Your exertions and the truly appalling fare they had on that plane mean you need to be fed. Sit down, and I will bring you something nourishing.”