Table of Contents
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EPILOGUE
DON'T FORGET!
ALSO BY JESSICA GADZIALA
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STALK HER!
Contents
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EPILOGUE
DON'T FORGET!
ALSO BY JESSICA GADZIALA
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STALK HER!
CYRUS
A Henchmen MC Novel
--
Jessica Gadziala
Copyright © 2017 Jessica Gadziala
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for brief quotations used in a book review.
"This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental."
Cover image credit: Shutterstock .com/Jaroslav Monchak
DEDICATION
To Sara Sutter. Because you help spread the word, but also because my Facebook feed would be utterly boring if it weren't for you.
#MemeQueen
ONE
Reese
Another Friday night, another book boyfriend.
I stopped counting at two-hundred. Which, let's face it, put me squarely within the parameters of a fictional slut. A shameless, insatiable one at that. I could take the hunky cowboy on the breakfast table in the wee hours of morning, followed by the surly private investigator in the stacks at the library, maybe have it soft and sweet with a marquis on the living room couch, and usually I would round that all out with a sweet-talking daddy dom in my bed before sleep would finally force my eyes away from the pages.
Oh, you know Reese; she's the one with her nose always buried in a book.
That would be how most people were likely to describe me if they remembered I was around at all.
Most people would be offended by being as easily looked over as a generic art print purchased at Pier 1, but me, yeah, I thrived in my quiet corners. It gave me the freedom to pull a book out of my purse without being worried that someone would think I was being anti-social or rude. It would save me from the complete and utter embarrassment that came from trying to have normal interactions with people who expected me to do something as horrifying as engaging in small talk.
It wasn't that I was an overly anxious person.
That would imply I came out of my fictional worlds long enough for real-life stressors to sink in.
Generally, I didn't.
I guess the best way to describe me would be - socially awkward or shy.
Whether I came to be the way I am was from being shy and awkward and therefore burying inside books, or because burrowing into books made me awkward and shy is impossible to tell. I fell into books younger than I could even remember. My mother claimed I started picking up words in the books she read around two, and that by the time I hit elementary school, I was already reading at a second-grade level.
My favorite memory as a kid was my grandmother taking me with her to a library and letting me get my very own card, watching me scribble my name in all-capital chicken scratch. From there, she led me past the main desk and into a sprawling window-laden room, the sun creating specks of dust in the air as kids milled around, sneakers lighting up on the vivid purple, blue, and green carpets. She gestured to the seemingly endless, low, wooden shelves and informed me that I could take home fifteen of them at a time. Fifteen. And that once I finished those, I could return them and take out another fifteen.
It was like winning the lottery.
The harder things got at home, the louder the fights, the more Mom cried over bills, the more trouble Paine got into, the more gray hairs Kenzi brought upon all the women in the house, the more that library became my sanctuary. I would walk there after school. I would take a random book off a shelf and sit in a corner until I finished it, until, inevitably, Paine would show up and force me to come home with him before it got dark.
By the time I lifted my head enough to notice that I was a bit of a freak, an outsider, unlike most of the other girls my age who were interested in boys and lipstick and staying out past curfew, well, it was kind of too late for me. I had already lived a thousand lives. I had climbed mountains, chased down bond jumpers, fallen in love in Victorian England, learned the value of a bathroom towel in outer space, survived a war or two, rebelled within a dystopian future society, learned to tie a corset, created herbal medicine, done so many things within these books that real life seemed dull. Looking up when I was forced to, I felt like I had gone from Oz with its vivid, perfect Technicolor detail and back to Kansas in dull, low-contrast black and white.
So I just decided to keep living all my lives, keep experiencing all the things that had me sobbing into my pillow, had my heart racing, had me throwing my book at a wall in anger, had me experiencing my first real twinges of sexual awakening.
Who needed real life anyway?
Certainly not me.
Real life, in my household, was wrought with poverty that I was too young to do anything about, a broken home that was not my fault, but left me feeling oddly guilty, a sister who effortlessly stood in the spotlight, knew her own mind, and stubbornly followed it - often into trouble. Then, of course, there was my brother and half-brother.
At first, Paine was the only one to make us worry.
It was perhaps the only time in my life I truly understood the term 'sick with worry,' because it literally made me sick. I couldn't sleep, thinking of him on the streets, knowing the statistics about Third Street and their members' tendency to end up in chains or graves.
But then he would show up for me on Sunday afternoons when Mom was at work, and he would take me out to get ice cream, and he would assure me he was fine.
By the time he rose up and took over, I was almost used to the constant worry.
Then Enzo joined in as well.
I don't remember much about that year. I couldn't tell you what songs were popular on the radio, what clothing trends were sweeping the country. I couldn't even tell you what classes I took, though I knew I passed them all.
I could tell you almost every last word of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I could quote entire pages of Jane Eyre. I could explain in painful details the careful universe and language created by Tolkien.
The next thing I knew, I was graduating and getting a job at the library that had always been my safe haven.
Then Paine was out.
>
And Enzo was leading.
I snapped out of my stroll down not-so-happy-memory-lane on a sigh, rolling my neck that was sore from hours looking downward at my book. "Don't look at me like that," I said as my neck cracked loudly and I caught the eyes of Knightley, my Black Moor fish who was the lone one in the giant tank, something that allowed him to balloon up to almost my fist size. When my family started pitching a fit about Kenzi moving out and not wanting me to live all alone - you know, in case I choked to death on my morning vitamin or something - I had bought him as a joke.
I missed Kenzi, but I didn't mind being alone. Sure, it was a lot quieter not to have her pacing the kitchen in her heels ranting and raving about some thing or another. And maybe what little fashion sense I did have slipped away without her there to tell me that my grandma sweater, leggings, and flats were 'cock kryptonite.'
But, all in all, I was always really self-sustaining. I didn't need small talk. I didn't need sounding boards. I didn't need, well, much of anything. Just my library card, my subscription book boxes that came to me each month (all four of them!), my Kindle Unlimited membership, and my Barnes & Noble rewards card. Oh, and my frequent buyer card to the local ice cream shop. All those things were likely to be blamed for my ever-widening behind, but they made me happy.
Fictional men might be great, Kenzi would say with a sigh, but they won't give you five orgasms and bring you coffee in the morning.
I had a vibrator that I bought on a website that promised discreet shipping. It did the job well enough.
I had to admit though, the coffee thing in the morning was a definite incentive. I had a nasty bruise on my hip from stumbling half-awake into my kitchen to get my fix that very morning.
If I were being completely honest though, I would admit that in that quiet time, that time right before sleep claimed you and there was nothing else around to catch your attention, it did creep in. The loneliness, the need for a real connection with a person. Especially a man. I had plenty of females around. My sister, for one. My brother's wife, Elsie. My half-brother's girl, Espen. My mom, aunts, grandmother. The ladies at the library. I was neck-deep in estrogen most of the time. I had my brothers too, sure, but I didn't see them as frequently as I used to.
And, let's face it, after a couple dozen romance novels, you wouldn't be human if you didn't start wanting a leading man all your own.
"Alright, fine," I said, shaking my head at my fish. "I will go out tomorrow night, okay? Does that make you happy?" I climbed up off the papasan chair, my own private little reading haven, with an old lady groan as my lazy limbs were forced to carry my weight for the first time in hours. "But I'm bringing my book," I added as I walked over to flip the top up on the tank and drop in some flakes. "And if it doesn't go well, I am getting ice cream. And don't try to tell me about how I swore off ice cream in favor of squats and lunges and cardio. Because we both know that that was a lie the second it came out of my mouth."
With that, realizing going out was likely a really good idea given that I had just had an entirely one-sided conversation with a goldfish, I went into the bathroom to take a long soak and peruse Goodreads for some new reading recommendations and update my bookclub page.
I stripped out of my clothes, taking a deep breath before forcing myself to face the mirror. I had been reading a bunch of self-love type articles and books lately, trying to stop focusing first on my so-called flaws when I looked at myself. I wouldn't say I was overly insecure. I could recognize that I had a really nice skin tone, well-proportioned facial features, unique eyes, wavy black hair that mostly behaved itself, a somewhat underwhelming bookrest (AKA - boobs), and a waist that wasn't too thin or too big either. It was from the waist down where I couldn't look at myself without a lip curl. Because of my aforementioned large rear-end, I also had wide hips to accommodate them.
Big butts are in, Ree, Kenzi would insist.
I have to do about five million squats to even get a hint of that butt, Elsie would pipe in.
Lotta men like curves. That was Tig, Kenzi's man, the big, gorgeous, scary investigator guy who was actually a real teddy bear underneath it all. And he treated my sister like gold, so I had a real soft spot for him.
I wasn't stupid.
I saw big butts everywhere.
They were the new boobs. Everyone wanted a great butt.
That being said, to me, great butts meant those ones like Jessica Biel had - perky and muscular, and wholly devoid of any divots or stretch marks.
When butts got to the size of mine, those things were unavoidable I guess.
Don't bother trying all the remedies you find on Pinterest or Facebook either. Save your money. I did the research for you.
They don't work.
Of course, what would work would be getting off my butt and exercising and cutting back on the junk food, but let's be realistic here.
Some day I would learn to love my rear end. But today was not that day. So I gave it a casual look, shook my head, and disappeared into the too-hot bath water.
Then I went ahead and wondered what the hell one was supposed to do on a Saturday night.
Alone.
I couldn't go to Chaz's.
Because, let's face it, drunk guys wanted to go home with girls from bars. First, I wasn't much of a drinker. Second, I was definitely not a casual-sexer. And third, girls who brought books to bars got all those creepy comments about sexy librarians. And then I would have to admit that I was, in fact, a librarian, and deal with the consequences from there.
Quite frankly, I was exhausted even thinking about it.
Out of town clubs were out for the same reason.
Going out to eat alone would get me pity looks even though I was perfectly happy to eat by myself.
That left, well, the ice cream place.
And... the coffeeshop.
I liked the coffeeshop.
This likely had a lot to do with the fact that they sell coffee. But it was also because the owners were fun and funny, there weren't too many tables, so it never got too crowded, and they had cool things like poetry slams, comedy nights, and live music.
I had been to the poetry slams they held on Tuesday nights, liking finding local talent and seeing if they had collections that I could get for the shelves at work, knowing there was a genuine interest for teens in spoken word and the only way to get any was by indie publications. But Saturday nights weren't nights I typically went in, being the live music night. It wasn't that I didn't like music per se, but I wasn't completely obsessed with it either.
But it would be an adventure of sorts.
Maybe I would even talk to someone.
You know, aside from the girls who worked there.
Hell, maybe that person could even be a man.
Of course, that might have been asking for too much.
But I was going to, you know, try at least.
TWO
Cyrus
"You're working? It's a Saturday night." This disgust came from Sugar who was hoping we could hit the town and find some skirts at Chaz's.
"You're going to make us handle all the pretty girls all by ourselves?" Roderick piped in. "I mean, we can totally manage, but you've never been one to turn down a night out."
"My set is for an hour," I said, shrugging. "Your asses can grab a cup of coffee and wait it out."
Quite frankly, I was glad for the new blood. Pagan had been good for nights out for a while, but then he got shacked up with Kennedy, and all his free time went to her. You know, as it should be. If you're gonna get yourself a permanent type of girl, it's only right that you spend all your free time with her. Otherwise, what's the point?
But with him coupled up, and Laz with someone, before the new bloods, that only left me with Edison and Reeve. And, let's face it, they were not the best wingmen around. First, it was damn near impossible to get their grandpa asses out of the compound past eight on a Saturday night at all. Second, when you did bring them out, they glared (in Edison'
s case) or looked completely disinterested in everything (in my brother's case) and therefore made the whole thing less than ideal.
Now, well, I had Sugar, who might have been a more insatiable woman-chaser than me, which was really saying something. I also had his buddy Virgin, whose name was completely ironic since he got loads of pussy. On top of that, there was Roderick who was - and I am comfortable enough in my own masculinity to admit this shit - a really good looking dude who had the advantage of all that Spanish charm of his. Once in a blue moon, Roan would come out too, rounding everything out. I was the charming guy with the beard and guitar; Sugar was the slightly dangerous guy who good girls wanted to take for a ride; Virgin was the mysterious one; Roderick was the life of the party; Roan, well, he was the older man, the slightly silver fox, the one who got all the girls with daddy issues to come a-running.
It was a good crew.
We had many a good nights, even when few or none actually went home with anyone.
So their asses could wait for me to finish my set at the coffeehouse before we hit Chaz's for some fun, then maybe took it back to the clubhouse for a little after-party. Besides, doing the set would make some of the girls there, trying to be good, trying not to hit a bar every Saturday, follow us down the street for some drinks and more.
"Are you going to embarrass yourself, and the whole organization again this week by singing some fucking singer-songwriter pop bullshit?" That was from Virgin, the kind of man who would gnaw off his own limb before he would subject his eardrums to the music of John Mayer or Michael Bublé.
I mean, it wasn't my kind of music either, but whatever got the panties wet was what I was going to play. So my catalog went deep.
"I'm gonna sing whatever it takes," I said with a shrug.
"Why do you still do the coffeeshop gig?" Roderick asked, shaking his head.
Cyrus (The Henchmen MC Book 9) Page 1
