HER CURVY SIN & SECRETS

STEEL

College is terrible; cheap cologne, dreams, and desperation all rolled up in ramen noodles and late-night regrets. I wasn't like the rest of them. Most had something. I had nothing. Orphanage kid who became adopted son of the sheriff. I know how fast the world will devour you if you don't beat it to the punch.

I was never destined to be here, least of all leading anything. But over the course of a semester, I wore the captain's band as if it were forever. Soccer was not a game to me; it was war with lines demarcating the battlefield and the referee's whistle a call to battle and I always played to win.

My name? Steel. Not the one I was baptized with, but one I'd earned. Today the president of Vikings MC, then just a nineteen-year-old junior attempting to bulldoze his way through a college business degree with more tattoos than textbooks.

And then she walked in.

It was orientation day, summer before last. The campus was warm and buzzing, freshmen rolling in with big eyes and bigger dreams than comprehension. I wasn't supposed to be paying attention. Already had girls waiting like a damn parade. But I felt it; her arrival caught me before her outline did.

She walked in wearing sin in sunshine form – curvy, red hair, blue-eyed, and so fucking gorgeous she didn't have a place within our reality. Her hips swiveled as if temptation had performed on stage herself. The boys started to whisper, dripping like they never laid eyes on a girl.

"Bro... that's sin walking," one of the soccer boys complained beside me.

The nickname stuck before she gave her own.

Liza.

First-year design and fine art student. Seventeen years old and not yet legal.

And the moment she batted that sweet-as-pie, clueless smile at the welcome booth, I was cooked. This girl was going to be the force that would destroy every rule I had set for myself.

I was stuck between the boys by this time. "She's out of bounds. I'm claiming dibs."

They insulted me first, but one look from me and they sliced that shit in two seconds.

"Come on, Steel, this isn't high school," one of them tried.

"Right. You boys should know better." I snarled behind her, jaws clenched. "She's mine. She just doesn't know it yet."

I followed her across the entire campus, like she was a mystery I had yet to unravel. She didn't look my way. Not yet. But I could sense something. A pull. Like she'd been created for me, shaped by whatever twisted joke the universe had up its sleeve.

It turned out it wasn't a joke, Destiny.

And destiny's a cruel mistress.

I didn't realize then her name wasn't actually just Liza, that it was also Angel Mark and that one time, in high school, I'd had her heart in my coarse-skinned palms.

I didn't realize she'd vanish one day, taking with her more than her memory.

And I would not have known eighteen years later my feet would be standing in front of dead ringer replicas of her twin babies, and she would have some other guy's last name and a diamond engagement ring he hadn't worked for.

But on that day, in that heat of summer with her captive in my sights and her curves storming through my blood, I made the decision that would turn the world around.

Sin was mine and I never relinquished what's rightfully mine.

I didn't wait.

The next day, I followed her to Art and Design class like a creep, all the way to the pillar, arms crossed, biker-cut jacket around my broad frame. She left with her sketchbook clutched against her body, side-glancing the hallways as if evading something or someone.

"Hey, Liza."

Nothing.

She walked past me like I was invisible. No glance. No spare moment. I wasn't used to that. Girls flung themselves in my way, ready to take the kind of risk that I represented. But her? She didn't even see me.

I couldn't tell if I was enraged or amazed.

So I continued on.

Went three days in a row without being responded to. I offered her my seat at the coffee shop. Attempted small talk in the hallway. Went so far as to leave a compliment on the raven drawing I saw sticking out of her folder.

Nothing yet.

That was until Thursday when everything changed.

I was on my way to the gym for soccer practice, so I cut through the back hallway behind the arts wing. It was quiet there, too quiet.

And then I heard it.

A muffled "No".

Low, desperate, trembling.

I stood frozen, all senses at the ready. The kind of "no" that gets adrenaline pumping through your veins.

I followed the sound and burst through the door at the end of the hallway.

She was.Liza.with her back to the wall, held down by one of the Fine Arts profs. The son of a bitch had his hand over her mouth and his other hand was pulling up her skirt, threatening her like the goddamn coward that he was.

I did not think so.

I tackled him, fist to his jaw so hard he knocked into the easel racks and fell like a bag of garbage.

Liza stepped back, breathing hard, tears running down her face, blouse ripped at the collar.

"You okay?" I snarled, voice sore and raw, chest heaving.

She shook her head but didn't say anything. Her eyes were big. haunted.

I touched her gently. "Hey... you're safe. I've got you."

She withstood it. Barely. My hand wrapped around hers, holding her in place.

Campus security arrived. Hadn't much to say. Just flipped over the scumball and had my arm wrapped around her the entire time. She didn't let go.

Later, on the admin building steps, during sunset, she spoke up.

"I know who you are."

I looked at her. Her voice was low but firm now. "You do?

She nodded. "We went to the same high school. I was a freshman when you were a senior. You were already in trouble with the sheriff for driving without a license and fighting the principal's son."

I laughed. "Sounds about right."

"You don't remember me?"

I glanced at her face. Something flashed. A memory. A bashful pair of eyes behind thick glasses, always sketching in the corner at lunch.

"Wait. You're-"

"Angel Mark," she said. "But I'm Liza now."

I took a breath.

Angel Mark.

Her.

The one girl I'd been intimidated by in high school. Of course I remembered but pretended not to. The one I'd catch glancing at me when she didn't even realize I was staring. The one I wanted to talk to but never did because I was too wrapped up in my own mess.

My heart tightened. "You were the one with the small raven tattoo on your sketchbook."

She blinked. "You remembered that?"

"Yeah." I smiled, softer than I meant to. "I remember you."

For the first time since she'd appeared on campus, she smiled back. A trace, but it was enough. Enough to be aware that whatever the devil this was, it was only just beginning.

I wasn't going to let her get away from me this time.

LIZA

Everyone thinks the beautiful ones have it easy. Like, that beauty is like armour or something. But it's not. Sometimes it's a target, a package and beautiful embroidery covering invisible scars while you wave through it all, smiling brazenly even while broken just to avoid anything tampering with the image of perfection the world has of you at all times.

I discovered that at a young age.

You walk down the corridor with hips that sashay too far, curves that refuse to fit neatly into polite bounds, and suddenly everyone has a name for you. Temptation. Distraction. Sin.

I never asked for that. I just wanted to be invisible and map my world in silence.

It failed.

Not then. Today.

And certainly not when Steel-Steel-looked at me like that.

Like I was something more or less than the name they called me.

As if I were a mermaid.

When he saved me that day, I was already hanging by a thread. That prof... I'd always known he creeped me out the first day. The way his gaze lingered on me too long, the way his hand rested on my back without reason. I should have spoken up about him. I didn't. Some part of me believed no one would ever listen to me. Or, worse, that they would blame me.

But Steel?

He came out of nowhere like a storm I was not expecting.

The look in his eyes when he knocked that thug out was not just anger. It was ownership. Like the idea of somebody laying hands on me without me wanting it provoked something deep in his very heart.

Nobody ever did that for me before.

Nobody's ever looked at me like this.

Then, later, I should have been frightened of him. He's a threat-I've heard the gossip. Tattoos, a leather jacket, riding a behemoth of a motorcycle and giving commands to the Vikings like royalty. But perched on the stairs with him as the sun dropped below the admin building, I did not feel threatened.

I felt safe.

And that terrified me more than anything.

"Angel Mark," he'd said deliberately, savouring my name after all those years of silence.

I hadn't heard that name in ages. It used to be soft and hopeful-sounding. But that version of me got lost a long time ago.

I reminded myself to leave. To suit up. But then he smiled at me.

Not the smug, arrogant smile that everyone describes him wearing like a mask. No, this was not like that. This was different. Sincerely, Almost shy. Like he was afraid to breathe too hard and ruin the moment.

And so, bit by bit, my defenses crumbled.

We started talking more. At first, I just lost things. He'd walk me to class, get me coffee with the wrong name written on the cup intentionally, and come to my art presentations even when I didn't ask him to.

He made me laugh.

He made me want to talk again.

I learnt about him too. Like how he grew up in an orphanage until the sheriff adopted him. How he never quite felt like he belonged, even when he was a soccer team captain. Loyalty was the one thing that mattered most to him because he never had any as a child.

I could see it in the way he gazed at me. Protective. Curious. Gentle, even when he didn't say a word.

One evening, I asked him why he kept showing up.

He rested against his bike, arms folded, wind blowing on his shirt, speaking in a low voice.

"Because I blew my chance once. I'm not going to do it again."

My heart missed a beat.

Because while we never spoke in high school, he paid attention to me. And I paid attention to him too.

The angry boy who fought against everyone.

The one who walked the halls as if defying someone to touch his boils.

And maybe that's what this is-two battered souls feeling something familiar in one another.

A beginning we never realised we needed.

Or maybe something we've always longed for.

They started coming for me in whispers first.

Catty comments down the hall, obligatory smiles twisted across lip-glossed lips.

"Enjoy it while it lasts," a girl snarled at the lockers. "Steel gets bored quickly."

"Did he tell you he was with Madison last semester? Or Ava the semester before that?"

I never replied. I never did. But the words burrowed into my skin like needles.

Steel wasn't just popular-he was in demand. Almost worshipped on campus. Soccer team captain, biker king, strolling Original Sin with a jawline that appeared chiselled by gods. I wasn't blind. I knew he was gawked at. I knew a decent half of the women on campus would crawl if he so much as looked at them.

So why me?

Even my best friend, Catalina, warned me.

"Liza", she said to me one night as we sat in the dorm courtyard. "I love you, but you need to be realistic. Guys like him don't settle. They experiment. And you're just the latest flavour."

I hoped she was wrong.

But that seed of doubt? It rooted itself deep.

Until Steel came along. Every time.

When he caught one of the girls "accidentally" pushing my sketchpad into the fountain, he wasted no time. Pulled her aside, voice firm but as cold as a blade.

"Touch her stuff again, and I'll see to it you never walk this campus feeling secure."

And when I ghosted him for a day, unaware, drowning in voices that were not my own, he hunted me down behind the studio building.

Sat beside me for a minute without uttering a word before speaking in a low voice, "If I scare you off, I'll leave. But if it's them causing you to question us... I'll spend every damn day proving them wrong."

I turned to face him then, my throat lodged in my chest.

"I don't know how to do this," I gasped.

Steel's calloused fingers wrapped around mine like a vow.

"Then we learn together. But I'm not going anywhere, Sin. Not unless you tell me to."

And with that, the cloudy mood dissipated.

The uncertainty dulled.

Because no matter how hard the world boomed, Steel was louder. Not with words-but with presence. Action. Complacency.

I was still learning how to trust.

But Steel?

He made me want to.

SIN

It was a sunny day at the library when his dad, the sheriff came looking for me;

"Angel Mark?

I tensed. He wasn't looking at me like others did-starving, teasing, curious. No. His eyes were calculated. Heavily weighted. Guarded in a way that had me thinking this wouldn't be one of those quick chats.

"Angel Mark?" he echoed, deep, determined voice.

My throat constricted. No one other than Steel ever called me that anymore.

"Yes, sir," I breathed.

He looked at me for an incredibly long time before nodding to the benches. "Walk with me?"

I walked alongside him, heart thudding.

We sat down, a silence drawn between us. He spoke finally, his words picked with care.

"See, my son matters to me. He's my son. Not biologically, but by choice. I saved him from a system that would have eaten him and spat him out. I've spent years ensuring he had a shot at something better than what he deserved."

I nodded, fingers twisting in my lap. "I know."

He sighed, his gaze out at the horizon. "He's got potential. Potential he doesn't realize. He's smart. He's a good friend. He could do something with his life, something good. But he's also self-sabotaging. He feels everything so deeply, so quickly. And then there's you..."

He turned to me then, his eyes sharp but not unkind. ".you're a distraction."

It was a hard word to hear, but I didn't budge.

"I don't mean it meanly," he continued quickly. "I see that you do care about him. And he cares about you, too. But the world doesn't stop turning because you two hit it off. He does have a future, Sin. A good one. And I can't let anything jeopardize it and him. Not even you."

I took a deep breath, pressing the pain down. He wasn't wrong. I'd thought as much late at night when fear crept in.

"You think I'll destroy him," I said softly.

I believe you'll steal his focus," the sheriff stated. "And he can't pay that price. Not now. Not when everything is laid out before him. Steel's heart is. dangerous when it becomes attached. He'd incinerate the whole world for you if you asked him to. And while that would sound romantic-it isn't. It might cost him everything.".

His words should have cut deeper, but all I felt... was comprehension. Because this wasn't jealousy. Or malice. This was love. Fear on the part of a father.

I sat there for a long time, then leaned forward to whisper, "So you want me to leave him."

The sheriff's jaw tightened. "I want him safe. I want him to be stable. If that means you are stepping back. then yes."

The sheriff's words hung in the air between us, heavier than the dropping sun.

I gazed at my hands, chipped black polish on my fingernails in small moons of abandonment. My heart wasn't racing the way I'd thought it would be. It was level. Sad, yes. But level.

Because I knew.

He wasn't attacking me. He wasn't speaking things to me that the rest of the world said. He wasn't telling me that I wasn't good enough because he was angry.

He was afraid. For his son.

And this fear, I knew.

"You love him," I said finally, speaking almost too soft.

The sheriff's jaw pushed forward, his eyes glancing away towards the horizon. "More than anything."

I nodded once, slowly. "Then I understand."

He blinked, surprised. "You... do?"

I smiled, small and genuine and tired. "Most people stare at me like I'm the problem. The danger. The temptation. You're not the first person to tell me I'll ruin someone's life. But you're the first person to do so because you want to protect him, not because you hate me."

His forehead furrowed, the sharp planes of his face softening. "Sin-

I raised my hand. "It's okay. You don't have to tell me. I understand Steel is everything to you. I see it in your eyes the way you look at him. And... you're right. He would destroy the world for me if I asked him. That frightens me too."

The sheriff took a breath, his shoulders relaxing by a fraction.

Silence between us, broken only by the drone of distant traffic and the cry of a bird in the fading light.

Finally, I said, "Do you believe that I care nothing about his future?"

The sheriff's gaze flicked back to me, more acute.

I didn't give him time to respond. "Because I do. I love him more than I love myself. Maybe too much. And the last thing I want, the very last thing I want, is to be the reason he loses what you've worked so hard to give him."

He looked at me then, really looked at me, as if weighing every single word.

"You're not like I imagined," he admitted.

I giggled softly, but too snappishly for what I'd intended. "People usually tell me that after I've already disappointed them."

He shook his head. "No. That's not it. I was expecting you to rant. To dig in. To tell me I had no conception of what I was saying."

I shrugged. "What would I do? You know him better than I do. You were the one who brought him up. You gave him something no one else could. Of course you're going to want what's best for him."

The sheriff rested back on the bench, his expression still. For a long time, neither of us spoke.

Then he leaned forward, speaking quietly, "I don't hate you, Sin. I want you to understand that. But when it comes to Steel, I can't play games. He's been burned enough. If you're going to be in his life, you have to understand the weight of it."

I swallowed convulsively, my throat closing down.

"I do," I said flatly.

I was awake that night, in my bed and looking up at the ceiling of my dorm room. Catalina slept before me, her headphones still emitting a soft glow. The sheriff's words rang in my mind.

A distraction.

He'd burn the world for you.

If you're in his life, understand the weight of it.

I shifted over, pressing my face into the pillow. I didn't cry-not because I wasn't in pain, but because the hurt was too intense to be cried out.

The truth was, the sheriff wasn't wrong.

Steel scared me sometimes. Not him, not what he was-but the intensity of what he felt. When he looked at me, it was like everything else in existence didn't matter any longer. That kind of adoration had the power to save me or kill us both.

And I didn't want to be the one to cause his tomorrow to go up in flames.

But here's the thing nobody tells you: when somebody like Steel chooses you, really chooses you, leaving isn't simple. It's not just closing a door. It's taking away a piece of you.

I thought about how his hand encircled mine. How his laughter burst open something inside me that I thought was dead. How he'd said, "I'm not going, Sin. Not unless you want me to."

How could I ever manage to tell him to?

The following morning, I bumped into him outside the studio, leaning against his bike as he always was, slouching black jacket loose, hair blowing in the morning gusts. His eyes twinkled at the sight of me.

"Hey, Angel."

My chest constricted at the name. I walked towards him, forcing my steps to be even.

You okay?" he asked, regarding me in that same way he always did, like he could see past the lie I was about to tell.

I swallowed. "Yeah. Just. exhausted."

He tilted his head, unconvinced. "Tired of me already?"

I tried to smile, but it wavered. "Never."

Steel wrapped his fingers around my hand, tracing his thumb across my knuckles like he'd done a million times before. "Then what is it?

I stalled, the sheriff's words echoing in my head. A distraction. Don't let him ruin his future for you.

But looking into Steel's eyes, I knew I couldn't say it. Not yet. Not when the prospect of pushing him away was like cutting off my own oxygen.

"Nothing," I breathed eventually. "I just... needed to see you."

And God, how his face softened at that... it nearly destroyed me.

Because I knew then. No matter what the sheriff said, as logical as it was, I wasn't yet prepared to let him go.

Not yet.

Perhaps never.

Later that evening, I sat alone in the courtyard, sketchbook in my lap. The sheriff's words still weighed heavily on me, but I remembered something Steel had told me.

"If I scare you off, I'll leave. But if it's them... I'll prove them wrong."

Maybe this was another test. Another voice trying to tell me that I wasn't good enough.

But with a difference. The others were from spite or indifference.

This was from love.

And that made it harder.

But as I outlined Steel's face to memory-the messy hair, the scar under his jaw, the way that his eyes always seemed to hold secrets-I knew something.

If I left, I'd be proving every rumor true. That I wasn't strong enough. That I wasn't worth risking.

But if I didn't.

If I stayed, then Steel would not simply destroy the world for me, perhaps we'd save ourselves.