FIFTEEN
Reese
Shit.
Yes, this was one of those rare occasions where that kind of language was called for.
Shit.
Yep, it even deserved repeating.
See, I knew I would have to tell him eventually. Of course. Actually, it was in my plans after I met his people, especially his brother. Reeve had been absent from the swarm of men that had come up to me.
And they had swarmed.
Like bees to a blooming flower.
It was weird.
I was so used to being invisible that I guess I never really realized how much I truly depended on that.
Because I was wholly unprepared to have six men close in on me at once. To be fair, they all offered me kind smiles and introductions.
"Baby girl," the dark-haired, grey-eyed one I had met at She's Bean Around greeted me first. "We've met. I'm Sugar."
"Like 'how you get so fly,'" I agreed, though I still didn't have the slightest clue what that meant.
"I never did catch your name."
"Reese," I offered, giving him a smile that in no way reached my eyes.
"And, mami, we met too." That was Roderick, who had introduced himself almost as soon as I got out of my car, seeming to materialize out of nowhere. Ninja skills, that guy had. Plus, he was stupidly good-looking. He was the perfect face (and body) for some hot, steamy, latin love story.
"Roderick," I agreed with a nod, taking a breath, finding a small bit of comfort in at least knowing some peoples' names, as odd as that was.
"And, pet, I'm Virgin," another of the men said, drawing my attention both because his voice was a deep, hypnotic sound, but also because the word 'virgin' caught my attention. I turned to see another of Cy's biker friends from that night in the coffeeshop - a tall, solid, dark-skinned, dark-eyed man with absolutely perfect chiseled bone structure.
Yep, I decided right away, he could be a leading man as well.
"Nice to meet you," I forced out even though my mouth felt dry as sandpaper at having to be the absolute focus of their attention.
"Honey," I heard from behind me, half-turning to find the man Cash had sicced on me, Lazarus, reaching across the bar, holding out a much-needed bottle of water. "Breathe," he added, giving me an encouraging smile as I twisted off the top, and took a small sip.
I took in a deep breath as I noticed someone else watching me. "Hey love," he said as soon as my eyes fell on him.
And, well, yeah, he would totally make a good leading man too. What was it with these bikers? How were they all so good-looking in completely different ways?
This man had a voice that was meant to melt panties. It was all rocks and glass and deep and, ugh, yeah, it was good. The looks matched too. He was foreign-looking, though I didn't know enough about that kind of thing to place it. He had long, dark hair that he kept up by the crown of his head, and a beard to match. He was tall. And while he was strong, he was not quite as large as some of his associates. Actually, he had a body similar to Cy's - built, but thin.
"Um... hi," I said, feeling oddly intimidated by him for no reason other than there was something in his eyes that just seemed that way to me.
"You're the one who brought that fucking dog to heel," another voice called, making me turn to see a man whose face was in various stages of messed up. Scratch marks here; black eye there.
"Pagan!" a woman yelled from a few feet away, giving me a sympathetic smile and eye roll that seemed to scream men, right?
From there, it was several questions that all seemed to have the same 'really? Cy?' tone to them, for which I was amused, but also offended.
Luckily, Cyrus popped back in just a couple minutes later.
Well, not so luckily.
Because now he knew that I had been keeping secrets from him. True, they weren't earth-shattering secrets, just things I didn't feel the need to bring up when we were just friends, and certainly didn't want to drudge up when we were having such a good time in the city.
I was going to get there eventually, I swear.
But I had, at least, planned a way to sort of ease him into it.
Cash, apparently, did not have such a plan.
I turned my head to where he walked inside, small-eyeing him because I felt comfortable enough with him to do so. He gave me a half-smile and head-shake back that seemed to imply that I should have done the job myself.
He was right too, darn it.
I just... I knew it would have been better coming from me.
Now Cy was looking at me with curiosity, but also a small bit of hurt in his eyes.
"Cy, I..."
"I know that piece of shit outside when I see it," Reign's voice called out of nowhere.
I mean, my car truly was a bit of a, ah, deathtrap. But, jeez, they weren't sparing my feelings at all about it.
"Hey Reign," I said as he came into view, giving me a half-smile and brow raise until he realized that Cy's arm was around me.
Then his face went deathly serious.
"Ree," he said, giving me a chin-jerk, then boring holes into Cyrus.
"I had no idea until Cash told me two minutes ago," Cyrus announced before Reign could even say what we both knew he was going to say.
"No idea about what?" Sugar asked, looking around, obviously not liking being out of the loop.
"Reese here," Reign said, giving me a look that said he didn't know what game I was playing, but that he didn't approve. And that look coming from a man like Reign, let me tell you, it was pee-your-pants scary. "Is the littlest sister to both of the previous two leaders of the Third Street gang. And my money is on them having no fucking idea that she is dating a Henchmen. Don't think they'd approve," he added, looking at me. "Right, babe?"
Honestly, I had no idea.
Maybe that was why I was kind of stalling in telling them about Cyrus. They were protective, sure, maybe even homicidally over-protective, but they also wanted me to be happy. If Cyrus made me happy, wasn't that enough reason for them to accept him? Or was a guy in his profession simply a 'hell no' to them? Hypocritical, sure, but I could maybe see that as well. Also, if they knew who Cyrus was - and they usually kept pretty good tabs on the players in town - then they likely knew his reputation with women. That did not bode well for me either.
I mean, I'm a grown woman. I can date who I want to date. Even if they didn't approve. But that didn't mean that their disapproval wouldn't suck. In all my years, I was pretty sure I had never done anything that they didn't approve of. The weight of that would weigh heavily on me, and I didn't want that to affect my relationship with Cyrus.
Kenzi, when I told her, hadn't done the protective older-sister thing at first, just listened, just said I was desperately in need of a lay, claimed I might need to get down there and clear out the cobwebs first. You know, teasing stuff. But when she had been getting ready to leave, she had stopped, turned, and told me to be careful, not to get in too deep too fast.
When I texted her to tell her about the trip to New York, and asked her to feed Knightley, she had said she would feed the "big-eyed freak" and then added a minute later "#getyourfreakon."
But Kenzi had been in the business of making mistakes with men. She learned what she wanted and needed through trial and error. She understood that I needed that freedom as well.
Brothers, well, they didn't exactly think that way, did they?
"You would have to ask them," I shot back, my discomfort making me sound a bit bolder than I actually felt.
Reign was the kind of man who respected a comeback like that, though, so he nodded his chin at me before turning to Cy. "Words later," he said, then moved away.
I swear, that order sent a shiver through my body and it wasn't even meant for me. Feeling it, Cy gave me a squeeze, then started moving toward the side, shouldering gravel-voiced man whose name I hadn't caught out of the way. "I'm gonna go show Ree my room. When we come back out, it'd be nice if you guys didn't corner her like a bunch of starving dogs faced with a steak."
With that, I was being led through the clubhouse that was, surprisingly, pretty well kept and clean, though it was definitely all-man. We walked past a door that led into a kitchen, and moved down a hall of doors. One, it seemed, for each member of the club. What would they do when their numbers got larger again?
We went almost all the way to the end of the hall before Cyrus reached to open a door, ushering me inside as he flicked on the lights.
And I finally, finally got to see what Cy's place looked like. Because Cyrus, I found out while we small-talked over dinner in the city, didn't keep an apartment. He had no reason to. He needed to be at the compound most of the time, so what was the point of moving away?
That being said, I always felt like someone's personal space said a lot about them. Kenzi's room had always been stylish and feminine. Paine's place had always been manly, but super comfortable. Enzo's apartments were always very streamlined and almost obsessively neat. My mom's house was full of our old school pictures, and art created by Kenzi and Paine who had skills at that which I never possessed. But she did have a big picture of the intricate Pemberley scene I had colored out of an adult coloring book when I was eighteen. My place had a lot of books.
Cyrus, well, it was surprising, but also completely right at the same time.
The walls were a deep, but somehow light, soothing blue color. The bed was maybe a queen, with a plain wooden headboard, and a striped blue and white comforter. Above his bed were three shelves, lined with various pictures of his family when they were all younger, smiling faces of him, his sister, and brother, as well as a father who, unlike the current Henchmen, screamed "biker" with his long, stringy hair, leather pants, and chain necklace. At the foot of his bed was a small, understated couch where his guitar was placed, a notebook sitting open on the other cushion, his neat, small handwriting scribbled all over the lined pages. Across from that against the wall near the door was a dresser with a TV on top and an 8-in-1 gray turntable where he had a pile of vinyl, CDs, and two separate iPods.
Family. Music. And soothing blue.
Somehow it perfectly described him.
At the end of the room was a door that led to a small bathroom with a white sink cabinet in front of a large mirror, a shower stall, and the expected toilet.
Nowhere were there any windows.
It had actually never occurred to me before, no matter how many times I had passed The Henchmen compound in my life, that there was not a single window in the place. Except, of course, in more recent times, that giant glass room thing overlooking not only the grounds, but half the town as well.
Okay, so maybe I had thought a time or two about how that was the absolutely ideal reading spot. All you needed was an air pot for your coffee, a little LED camping lantern, and a good book. You could read under the stars. It was very romantic.
"Ree," Cy's voice called.
"Yeah?" I asked, a bit distracted by my own thoughts.
"Why didn't you tell me about your brothers?"
Oh, right.
I turned, shaking my head. "I was going to tell you. It just... there was no reason to when we were just friends, and then, I don't know, everything happened so fast. And I didn't want to ruin a perfect weekend talking about how they would likely not approve of this and... what?" I asked as a smile pulled at his lips.
"Perfect weekend, huh?"
"Oh please," I snorted. "You know that was the ultimate getaway for me."
"Yeah," he agreed, all easy-going boyish charm again. "I kinda did."
"I don't remember if I ever thanked you," I realized suddenly.
"You did," he said, making my belly unclench. "Last night. Then again this morning... maybe again in a couple minutes..."
"That's not what I meant!" I objected with a laugh.
"No?" he asked, pretending to be genuinely confused as he pulled the front of my body against his, his hands moving down my back to sink into my butt. "Are you sure?"
Oh, man.
Trying to think straight when he was looking at me like that was going to be an, ah, challenge to say the least.
But we needed to talk.
At least it felt like things were still unsettled.
"Cy," I said, trying for reasonable, putting my hand on his chest to keep him from ducking his head to claim my lips like I was sure he was about to. "Don't you want to know more about..."
"What you sound like with my cock buried in your wet pussy while you try not to be loud because there are ten other people hanging around the compound right now?" he supplied for me. "Yes, I really would like to know more about that."
Then, hand be damned, he sealed his lips to mine, moving us backward toward the bed.
But no.
At the last minute, Cyrus turned, turning me as well, then dropping down on the couch, but pressing his hands into my hips to keep me standing. He smiled at my questioning look as he reached for his button and zip. "I can get the fun parts out without taking my pants off," he supplied with a wicked grin as he grabbed his cock, and stroked it while raking his eyes up and down my legs.
Feeling just the teensiest bit insecure, I reached to pull down my pants and panties, then moved to straddle him as he pulled out a condom to protect us.
He looked up when he was done, eyes heavy, as far gone as I felt already, even though that was insane, even though it had only been the better part of one day since I had felt him.
"Ride me, Ree," he demanded.
I didn't need more than that.
I put a hand on his shoulder to balance myself better, then slowly lowered myself down onto him, muscles tightening around the invasion, feeling a bit like my body was welcoming him back.
I guess, in a way, it was.
But then he was buried deep, and there was no more thinking, just feeling, just rocking against him, just burying my face in his neck to muffle the whimpers that were escaping even though I was biting hard into my lower lip to try to keep them in.
I was nearly there when, suddenly, his forearms were slipping under my knees, and he was moving to gain his feet.
Surprised, I let out a yelp as my arms went around his neck, holding on for dear life.
I wasn't a big girl per se, but I wasn't dainty either.
Being picked up was a novelty.
But there Cyrus was doing it, like I weighed nothing.
I had thought he was going to take me to the bed, to lay me down, to slam into me like he had that morning, to maybe cut off my air like he had as well.
Yet, once he was on his feet, he didn't move.
He just stood there, watching me with the most wicked little smile I had ever seen on his lips as his arms cocked my legs up further, until my knees were in almost to his underarms.
Then he started doing it.
I was too shocked to even react for a moment, not sure how it was even possible, how he had the upper body strength to pull it off.
But he was doing it.
He was using his arms to drag my body up and down his body, impaling me on his cock while his body remained still.
It was only maybe two or three seconds of wonder, though, before I realized how unspeakably intense the sensation was from that angle.
My arms wrapped tighter around the back of his neck as he started dragging me harder, faster, his cock hitting spots I was sure I had never felt before, the angle making all kinds of unexperienced sensations suddenly possible.
And, in my excitement to experience something new, I forgot all about being quiet, crying out his name loudly enough for the whole compound to hear as the orgasm slammed through me violently, making my entire body start to shake instantaneously.
But Cy wasn't done with me.
He turned, even as the waves kept crashing through me, walking back toward the bed, then dropping me down. Before I could even suck in a breath, he was flipping me onto my belly, reaching under me to yank my hips up toward him, then slamming deep before I could even feel a twinge of self-consciousness about how my biggest insecurity was perfectly on display to him with this new position.
One of his hands dug into my hip. The other tracked up my spine to slip into the hair at the base of my neck, grabbing, and pulling back hard enough to make my head arch almost all the way back, the pain/pleasure mix something heady, something completely overwhelming as he started to fuck me hard, his cock seeming to hit even deeper with this position.
Then, when I was too far gone to even care about divots, stretch marks, or anything of the sort, his bare, calloused palm started slamming down hard on my cheek, making my body jolt in surprise even as a tightening started in my core, showing me yet another side of my desire I hadn't known existed before.
It was fast. Too fast.
I had never really been one for multiple orgasms at all, let alone through sex. But there was no denying that I was almost there as his hand landed one hard, final smack before his body curled over mine, his hand yanking my hair to the side, then his other hand closing around my throat again just as the orgasm ripped through me, pressing in just hard enough to make crying out as loudly as we both knew I would impossible.
When I was spent, collapsing forward, he let me, releasing my hair as he buried deep, and came with my name on his lips.
His knees hit the edge of the bed as he sucked in a deep breath, reaching down to sink his fingers into my hip, giving it a little squeeze, before he pulled out of me to walk to the bathroom.
I scooted up on the bed, climbing under the covers, my butt kind of burning as it scraped across the sheets from the spanking I hadn't been expecting, but certainly found just as hot as it was in all those eroticas I had read.
Cy came back a moment later, sliding under the sheets, and pulling me to his chest for a change.
"You okay?" he asked, fingertips gliding over the skin of my back, making a shiver course through me. "That was unexpectedly, ah..."
"Intense?" I supplied, knowing it was the right word for me. "Yes, I'm fine. Amazing, actually."
"Yeah, I'm pretty amazing, I know," he agreed, deadpan, making me turn my head up to find him smiling down, making me let out a laugh. "You're pretty amazing too, Ree," he added, but this time he wasn't smiling; he was as serious as I had ever seen him. "And let's just decide that whatever comes our way - be they annoying bikers who can't mind their own business, or your big, scary brothers, we just deal with it as it shows up. There's no use harping on it until it is actually a problem."
That wasn't exactly my go-to method. I was a harper. I harped hard. But, somehow, in his arms, body tired, mind a little fuzzy with all the feel-good hormones, I felt like just this once, I could maybe not harp.
I could take things as they came.
I didn't know, though, that what was coming the following morning wasn't some annoying bikers who couldn't mind their own business or even my big, scary brothers.
Oh, no.
What came the next morning was possibly even scarier.
It was the girls club.
--
I woke up to a frantic pounding on the door, making me spring up in bed, completely disoriented by my surroundings as I tried to wipe the sleep from my eyes.
The slamming just kept coming, and I was acutely aware that I was still completely naked, and that the spot beside me was empty.
Cyrus had left.
Maybe to get me a cup of coffee.
Maybe that was him at the door.
But why would he be knocking like that.
My stomach clenched hard as I dropped onto my belly, reaching for Cy's discarded shirt from the night before, slipping it on, worried that if whoever was there didn't get an answer soon, they would just barge right in on my nakedness.
"Ree!" a female voice called through the door. "Ree, you don't have a lot of time," it added, making me realize I knew that voice. But it didn't belong in The Henchmen compound.
Yanking the shirt down to make sure it covered my behind, I flew off the bed and toward the door, pulling it open to find her standing there.
My brother's girl, Elsie.
"Elsie, what are you doing here?" I whisper-hissed at her.
"The girls club is coming. And I mean now. So you need to get some pants on. I only got here first because I cut Janie off, and got her stuck at the light."
"Wait... what?" I asked, not awake - or caffeinated - enough to fully grasp what she was saying, or, you know, how Elsie managed to look absolutely flawless at eight o'clock in the morning in her tight gray business dress, five-inch nude heels, styled blonde hair, and made-up eyes. What time did she get up in the morning?
Elsie gave me a smile, pushing into the room to close the door. "Where are the pants you were, oh here," she said, finding them, balling them up, and tossing them at me. "Put these on. Brush your teeth. Splash some cold water on your face. You have T-minus two minutes before they all burst through that front door."
If anyone was going to be bursting, I definitely did not want to literally be caught with my pants down. I threw myself into the bathroom, stashing my panties in Cy's hamper because I wasn't going to be wearing those two days in a row, and shimmied into my leggings. "Why are they coming here?" I asked as I rummaged through his drawers to find a spare toothbrush and his tube of paste that was in a weird sweet mint flavor that I felt said something about him. Like those freaks with their cinnamon toothpaste. How many hours until that stuff wore off so you could drink your coffee?
"Word is out about you and Cy," she called back and I could hear clicking as she moved around like, maybe, she was cleaning up the clothes scattered about, making me realize that I was braless. I was suddenly somewhat thankful that I didn't have a whole lot on top to worry about. "Which you and I need to talk about. How could you not tell me? You told Kenzi!"
"Kenzi caught me," I admitted, walking out, trying to finger-comb my hair into some kind of order. "Wait, did you tell..."
"I'm not giving up your secrets, Ree, but you know that the longer you keep this from them, the more questions they are going to have about why. And I don't think..." she trailed off as a chorus of female voices came from the main room.
"I'm not ready for this." I dropped down on the edge of the bed, staring at the door like some three-headed beast was going to barge in.
"None of us ever are," she agreed, sitting down beside me. "But you're part of the club now, so there is no avoiding this."
As the voices came down the hall, I heard another one that was distinctly familiar. "Wait, Alex knew and didn't try to warn me?"
Elsie gave me a brow lift and half-smile. "Come on. You know Alex. She likely thought it would be fun to catch you off-guard."
"And Amelia?" I asked, feeling betrayed by half my people.
"She has a group session this morning actually. She will be completely in the dark until one of us gets ahold of her sometime later today. But aside from her and Summer, obviously, everyone else is here."
And with that, they were.
There was one short knock before the door pushed open. "What if she isn't dressed?" a pretty blonde asked even as the others moved inside.
There they were.
The girls club.
In all their varied glory.
"Damn it Else," Alex grumbled, shaking her head. "You ruined the surprise."
"She wasn't even awake yet, Al," Elsie shot back.
"They burst in on me once too," the blonde who had tried to knock and stop everyone informed me, looking apologetic.
"What? Like we're the Inquisition here to burn you at the stake for having PMS or some shit?" a short, slight, black-haired, tattoo-covered woman asked, rolling her brilliant blue eyes. "We just wanted to meet her, Penny."
"That's Janie, or as many of us call her, Jstorm," another woman said, moving forward from the group. She was tall and fit, but stacked, with long medium-blonde hair, and brown eyes, wearing sage green utility pants and a long-sleeve white tee.
"And I'm Lo. Now for the rest of our ragtag group of various pains in the ass," she went on, giving me a smile. "We have, Maze with the purple hair. She is with Repo. Then there is Penny who is with Duke," she explained, motioning to the woman who had tried to champion my cause.
"Amelia isn't here. Elsie, you obviously know. There is Mina," she said, gesturing toward a woman with exotic Asian, but something else too, features, dressed similarly to Lo. "She works for me at Hailstorm, and is with Renny. There is Bethany," she went on, waving toward a woman with a delicate face and short, shiny black hair. "She's with Laz." Laz, I was sure, was short for Lazarus, who had given me the water the night before. "And then that is Kennedy," she concluded, waving toward the pretty blonde who had told Roderick to leave me alone the night before. And you," she went on, "are Reese."
All eyes on me, I had to answer, so I swallowed hard, and nodded. "I'm Reese."
"Okay," Maze, the one with brilliant purple hair interjected. "I am just going to go ahead and ask what we're all thinking. Cyrus? How? I mean, seriously," she said, coming closer. "How?"
"How what?"
"How did you get that flirt to settle down? Don't get me wrong," she went on when I went to open my mouth. "We all love Cyrus. Actually, he is like the big brother in our group. He has crashed more than a few girls club nights. And has been a voice of reason when some people are being irrational."
"I was not being irrational!" Alex insisted.
"How did I know that she meant you, even without her saying it?" I asked, shooting Alex a teasing smirk. We had bonded over many a Sunday dinner since she settled down with Paine's best friend Breaker.
"Hey, I am perfectly reasonable," she said, lips twitching with her lie.
"Only when everyone else agrees with you," I shot back.
"Well, duh," she laughed, moving over to drop down on the bed on the other side of me. "And you never answered the question."
"Which question?" I asked, head spinning a little with the multitude of new voices and faces around me.
"How you got Cy to settle down," Maze reminded me.
"Oh, ah. I don't know exactly. It wasn't like I, you know, tried to rope him in or anything like that."
"Again, duh," Alex said, nudging my shoulder. "We just want the story, Ree. The curiosity is killing us all."
"We met at She's Bean Around after he did a set. He came up and talked to me."
"Laying it on thick, I'm sure," Lo said, smirking.
"No. Not at all, actually. He said that he wanted to be friends because he knew he wasn't supposed to, ah, touch a girl like me. So, then we were friends."
"Oh, come on! This is Cyrus we're talking about here," Bethany said, shaking her head.
"Actually, though," Kennedy chimed in, "I can totally see him offering you friendship. He's a pretty good friend."
"He totally was."
"Except," Lo prompted.
"I had a crush," I admitted with a shrug. "Then one night, he came to see me at work..."
"She is a librarian," Elsie supplied for me.
"And he picked up one of the books," I started, leaving out that the filthy erotica was mine, "and started reading an, ah, explicit scene aloud."
"Oh, a fucking scene?" Lo asked, eyes going bright.
"Lo loves romance novels," Janie explained, scrunching up her face.
"And Janie is a book snob," Lo shot back, small-eyeing her friend. "Anyway, continue..."
"Then we, um, almost kissed. We were interrupted, though. And he ran off... and I didn't hear from him for five weeks."
"Wait... what?" Mina jumped in for the first time. "Five weeks? What was the possible reason for that?"
"I guess because he felt like he didn't..." I trailed off, unsure how to word it in a way that didn't make me sound kind of arrogant or something.
"Deserve a girl like you," Elsie supplied, giving me a smile. "To be fair, I'm not sure he actually does."
"Well, you might get sure if you hear what he did over the weekend for her," Kennedy said, smiling at me. "Reeve blabbed to Pagan, and Pagan told me," she explained.
"What'd he do for you?" Elsie asked, head tipped to the side. "I thought Kenz said she was watching your fish so you could go to some book convention."
"Yeah," Alex piped in. "But when has Reese ever gone out of town on her own before, Else?"
"Fair point."
"He took you to Bookjam, didn't he?" Lo asked, clearly a reader, as was Janie, which, well, made them awesome people in my book.
"He did," I agreed, not able to hold back the smile that made my cheeks hurt. "And he didn't complain once as I browsed around all day. And he took me to all the cool spots in the city. And, yeah, it was the best vacation ever."
"Cy did good," Lo agreed, nodding. Likely, as a book lover herself, understanding how awesome it was to spend a whole day around books.
"So this is like super new," Bethany concluded. "This is your first day back, right?"
"Ah, yeah."
"This is pretty cool, I gotta say," Maze said. "To watch him go all moon-eyed? I know the guys were ribbing him something fierce for a month about it. I guess we all know why now. He was missing you. And that's just the cutest damn thing."
Okay, maybe I shouldn't have been, but I was totally happy to hear that. Quite frankly, I had been on an emotional rollercoaster that entire month-plus, and it almost made me feel better about it knowing that he hadn't been out living it up either.
"Aw look at Maze going all sappy," Janie teased, giving her a smirk.
"So," Elsie announced, slapping her hand down on my knee, "you've met her. We heard about how they got together. We can leave her alone now, right?"
True, there was a small part of her argument that likely had a lot to do with needing to get to work, but a bigger part of it was her simply trying to stand up for me, knowing I wasn't a 'crowd person,' and that even if I did have to face them, I preferred to be prepared.
"We barely got to know her," Maze complained.
"Well, she can come Sunday, and you guys can grill her," Lo offered, giving me an apologetic smile, knowing, it seemed, that they would be doing just that. Grilling me.
"What's Sunday?"
"We do a brunch as many times a month as we can," Bethany offered.
"It used to be things on a whim," Janie added. "But then we all started having kids, and the only time we could all seem to get away at once was in the early morning hours on Sunday when the kids are sleeping in and don't notice we're all gone."
"So Sunday at seven-thirty, yeah, I know," Kennedy said with a lip curl. "It's an obscene hour, but if you don't show, they are going to sic Alex on you."
"You'd only be missing a few tufts of hair," Alex promised with a grin as she patted the side of my head.
"Okay. Sunday at seven-thirty."
"Oh, at that place that used to be the best twenty-four-hour diner and is now a mediocre breakfast place," Lo explained as she started shuffling the other women toward the door. "It was nice to meet you, Reese."
"See?" Alex said when they were all gone. "That wasn't so bad."
It really wasn't. And I had to admit, the idea of maybe having some more friends in my life was intriguing. Maybe I wasn't one-hundred percent convinced that I was going to fit in like the rest of them, but anything was possible if shy, bookish me was suddenly dating some hot, bearded, outlaw biker, right?
"You have work in half an hour, don't you?" Elsie asked as she moved to stand, adjusting her dress back into place.
Oh, God.
Work.
I totally forgot work even existed.
I guess vacation did that sometimes.
And, you know, world-class sex too.
"Oh shoot," I gasped, jumping up, nearly toppling Alex in the process. "Ah, I need a shirt and... what are you doing? Those are Cy's drawers," I objected as Alex hopped up, and went into one.
"I'm assuming you have a bra here somewhere. You can just toss on one of his tees since you are going to throw a sweater over it anyway," she explained, tossing it at me.
Figuring she was right, I took the shirt, and found my shoes, realizing I was just going to have to go without panties that whole day since there was nothing I could do about that whole situation in half an hour. Especially since I needed to drop by She's Bean Around to grab some coffee because I knew Barb was going to be fit to be tied about my short notice of vacation, and there wasn't enough caffeine in the world to tolerate that, but I was going to test that theory.
"Ladies!" Cy's voice said suddenly, making me jump and turn to find him standing there, all awake and perfect already even though it was early. "You came to visit little ole me? I'm flattered," he said, giving Elsie a kiss on the cheek. "Nice dress," he informed her.
"I'm stealing one of those," Alex declared, meaning one of the coffees in the tray in his hands. Alex, it was widely known, was a huge caffeine addict. She blamed the late nights tracking down what kind of twisted porn some lady's husband was into.
"Yeah, take this one," he said, even though there were only two in the tray, I imagine, one for him and one for me. "This one is blueberry," he added tapping his finger on the front one. "With an extra shot since I know Barb is gonna be on her ass today."
"You really are dreamy," Alex said, voice dripping with sarcasm, but because I knew her as well as I did, I knew she actually meant that; she actually appreciated that he was someone who thought ahead like that, that he was someone who was going to be thoughtful to me. "See you Sunday," Alex declared. "You know, both times."
With that little nugget, she was out the door, making me realize for the first time just how busy my Sundays were going to be from now on. Girls club brunch followed by cooking and Sunday dinner? There wouldn't be time to read a page, let alone the book and a half I used to manage on weekend days.
Somehow, though, I was actually kind of okay with that.
"I have to get going too," Elsie declared, giving Cy a smile.
"Thanks for the heads-up, Else. I really appreciated that."
"Anytime," she said on her way out.
"You gave Alex your coffee," I said oddly as the door closed and we were alone again.
"You ever try keeping Alex from her coffee? I'd be missing a vital organ," he quipped, only half-joking. "So, you got ambushed by the girls club, huh?" he asked as he took my coffee out of the holder, and held it out to me.
Greedy for a little kick, I took a long sip. "It wasn't that bad."
"They're good chicks. I know you just like being prepared. I'd have tried to slow them down if I were around, but at least you got that part over with."
"I have to get to work," I grumbled.
"Mhmm," he agreed, moving to me, taking my hips, and pulling me against his body. "We can't say good morning like we are supposed to." Even the mention of it made my sex tighten in anticipation. "So I will have to fuck you twice later," he added, smile wicked. "Your place this time?"
Realizing suddenly exactly how loud I had been the night before in a club full of bikers, ah, yeah, I was pretty sure it would be my place from then on.
"Sounds good."
"I'll listen to you bitch for an hour about Barb first," he promised.
"Sounds even better," I agreed, kissing him back for a short moment after his lips claimed mine.
"Alright, go finish getting done so I can walk you to your car, and give you a big, embarrassing kiss right out front for anyone to see."
He totally did that too.
And I was riding the high of it all through work, Barb's ranting and raving just barely registering as I went about my work, my mind focused on what was coming after, who would be waiting for me at home.
For the first time, that 'who' was not actually a fictional character.
And it was pretty darn exciting.