Cyrus (The Henchmen MC 9)

"Fuuuck, and she blushes too?" he asked, sitting back in his chair, clutching a hand to his heart. "It's just too much."

Pretty sure there was no way to actually respond to that, my gaze fell to my cup, seeing where Jazzy had scrawled my name all fancy on the side. I envied that. I had chicken scratch writing; my mind was always moving too fast for my hand to catch up.

Then, suddenly, the vibe around us seemed to shift, and I felt the table wobble slightly as Cyrus' arms crossed on it. Curious, my gaze went upward to see him watching me with those hypnotic eyes of his. The smile had fallen. His gaze was thoughtful.

"What?" I asked when I couldn't take it anymore.

His head shook a little. "I've known a lot of women," he started oddly.

"I don't doubt that," I blurted out unexpectedly. Geez. That sounded really suggestive too. What was wrong with me? "Sorry, that was..." I trailed off at the sound of his chuckle, though, finding the sound somehow moved through my skin and into my veins, flowing all through me in a way I wasn't sure I had ever felt before.

"No, that was honest," he said, brushing off my apology. "I have a sister. I have female friends. And I have women I date, women I fuck, women I try to date and fuck," he admitted, going on even as my cheeks must have been beet red all the way to my hairline.

Okay, so I wasn't some prude or some goody-goody.

I wasn't much for cursing, but that was just a habit that lasted from when I was a kid, and my mother telling me not to use those kinds of words. It just kind of... stuck.

That being said, my sister, mom, brothers, extended family, they all had vocabularies that would make a sailor blush.

And, well, I do like me a good smutty book. They even used the 'f' word quite frequently to talk about sex.

It never bothered me.

But sitting across a very small table looking at a very attractive man using that word, yeah, it was oddly arousing. And, well, the idea that any of that might be evident in my face was incredibly embarrassing.

"Okay," I murmured when he stopped there.

"Christ," he said, shaking his head at himself. At my shocking back at the almost violent sound of his voice, he sighed. "I don't like this, but you're not the kind of woman I can fuck."

Oh.

Ouch.

Okay, so I didn't exactly have some inflated opinion of myself. I understood that I wasn't the kind of woman a man saw and immediately thought of taking home. That just wasn't the look I had or the vibe I gave off.

But I had feelings. I had an ego as much as anyone else. And that sentence instantly bruised the hell out of it.

"No, don't," he said, looking crestfallen himself. "I didn't mean it like that, angel," he said. And, darn if that endearment didn't do something fluttery to my heart and, um, somewhere much lower. Why? I had no idea. But that was what happened. "I just meant... I'm, what would be a good word here?"

"A slut," Gala chimed in as she passed, not even pausing, just giving her two cents, as was her nature.

"She's not wrong," he admitted, not missing a beat. "I'm not a relationship guy, a settling down guy. I fuck around. I don't make promises."

"Ah, okay?" I said, unsure why he was even telling me that. To rub some salt, vinegar, and nail polish remover in the wound? He was a slut who liked to get a wide variety of women, but I simply wasn't one of those women? How heartless was he? Geez.

"The thing is, I know who I am. And the women I fuck around with know exactly what kind of man I am. And they're cool with it. You, honey, you wouldn't be cool with it. You're not the kind of woman a man fucks and fucks over and kicks to the fucking curb. That's not you. You're too fucking good for that."

Oh.

Well then.

This time, the fluttery sensation wasn't nearly as unwelcome.

"I mean, you don't even know me though," I supplied, almost a little offended that he would assume something about me, even if what he assumed was definitely spot-on.

"Reese, sweetheart, you blush like a goddamn schoolgirl when I mention fucking. You looked like you wanted to bolt when Sugar eye-fucked you. And you spent almost an hour in the back, being a complete wallflower, looking like you wanted to be anywhere but here. On top of that, you got a purse full of books, and a job that suggests you aren't out partying all the fucking time and getting laid. You're just not a fuck around girl. Tell me I'm wrong."

I took a breath, nodding slightly. "You're not wrong," I admitted.