Cyrus (The Henchmen MC 9)

"It wasn't meant as an apology."

"What was it meant as then?"

"A... grand gesture," he announced with his trademark boyish smile, all charm, and it was impossible not to be at least a little impacted by it.

I snorted slightly. "I think eighty-thousand dollars would be considered grand," I agreed.

He deflated somewhat at that, shoulders going slack, smile falling. "It wasn't about the money. It was about you getting the teen center you wanted. Fuck the money."

He stood, moving closer to me.

And I did it.

It was knee-jerk.

I didn't even think about it.

I retreated.

And not just a foot or two.

I went back a good ten feet until the side of my car stopped any more retreating. If I hadn't bumped into it, I might have kept going. As pathetic as that was.

She startles like a mouse. I had overheard Tig say that about me once. It wasn't exactly wrong.

And Cy, well, he just kept coming.

He stopped only when his toes were almost touching mine; his body was hardly a hair away from mine. His hand raised slowly, and the flashback to the night in the library was enough to steal my air, to make my belly plummet in a way that was both exciting and terrifying, somehow at the same time.

Because, quite frankly, I couldn't take a round two.

I didn't have it in me.

Maybe that made me sound weak and pathetic, but so be it.

"This," he started as his other hand raised, and both moved up and out to frame my face, settling with a delicateness that a man his size shouldn't have been capable of, but it seemed to come as naturally as his smile, "is my apology," he went on, head ducking slightly, his seaglass eyes on mine. "I never should have just disappeared like that. It was a shitty move, and I know, whether you'd admit it to me or not, it hurt. And I don't think I've ever been sorrier for anything in my life than I am about that. I'm fucking sorry, angel."

The lump in my throat actually hurt. My eyes teared, and I had to drop my gaze toward his beard to avoid that being seen.

"It's okay."

"No," he objected, voice firm, but somehow soft at the same time as his fingers slipped under my jaw to put pressure, and force my head back up, "it's not," he finished as his gaze found mine. And, despite some frantic blinking, one of the traitorous tears slipped to slide down my cheek. His thumb moved out, stroking the wetness away. "This is all the proof I need to know that it wasn't okay."

Then, well, darn but... sweet things made me cry, okay?

It was something I generally managed to keep to myself, except for around family who purposefully bought the sappiest cards they could for me on holidays, just to make fun of the waterworks. And, so what, maybe I totally cried at the happy scenes in books too. But that was in private. No one knew about that.

I got to keep my sappy side to myself.

Until right then when the tears just started flowing.

"Aw, fuck," Cyrus said, voice low as his hands dropped my face, one dropping low, then wrapping tightly around my lower back, the other doing the same thing with my shoulders, pulling me forward, and crushing me into his chest.

We'd been friendly before, pushing at each other. He bumped my shoulders with his, his hips with mine; he'd dropped an arm down on my shoulders, making my body crunch down a few inches under the weight.

But that was it.

For a man so comfortable with physical contact, evidenced by the way he hugged any woman he crossed whom he knew when we had been out together, he'd simply never given me anything even resembling a hug.

And this, well, it was the mother of all hugs.

His arms held me tightly enough to make breathing difficult, but that was fine, because I was pretty sure I stopped breathing the second my body hit his. My face was buried in his neck, his beard a soft, yet scratchy thing on the side of my face. His heartbeat was a steady, strong thing against my chest.

Then, well, it would be impossible not to notice some other things. Some not-so-friendlike things.

Like how my breasts were crushed to his firm chest. Like how his hips were aligned with mine. Like how the fingers on the arm across my lower back were almost touching my butt.

Like how if I raised my head, maybe, just maybe, he would drop his slightly. And seal his lips over mine.

The tears dried as a newer feeling took over the sentimentality. It was the jumping pulse points in my temples, throat, wrists, lower. It was the swelling of my breasts; it was the hardening of my nipples; it was the heavy weight on my lower stomach; it was the way my panties were getting wetter by the second.