Page 7

She handed him a can and pulled a second for herself.

“Come have a seat.” She led him into a living room with a couple of recliners and a sofa, but no TV. She didn’t sit but waved to the room. “Sit wherever you’d like.”

Cypher sat at one end of the sofa, then opened his soda and took a long drink. He wanted to pat the seat beside him and invite her to join him, but he was curious how she would handle this. He got the feeling she was out of her element in more ways than one.

“I take it from the way you talk you’re not married?” she asked, easing down to sit on the edge of far end of the sofa from where he sat.

“Nope, never even got close, have you?”

She turned and looked at him, a crease between her brow. “Got close?”

“Never found anyone I was interested in keeping around for more than a few hours. Couldn’t see the point in tying myself permanently to someone I couldn’t talk to.”

“You talk to me just fine.” She looked confused.

“That’s cause you’re smart. You’ve got a brain and you think about someone other than yourself. I have no trouble talking to you. You aren’t like most of the women I spend time around.”

Her scowl grew deeper. “Jenna’s not like that. She thinks about a lot of people, Lacey, Joker, Roadkill, and the rest of your club.”

“You’re right, but by the time I met her, she was already Roadkill’s. I don’t poach on my brothers.”

She tilted her head as she watched him for several seconds.

“Does that mean you would ‘poach’ on some other guy?”

Cypher blinked. He’d never thought about it in those terms. “Only if he was treating her wrong.”

“Who decides what’s wrong?”

Cypher smirked. “She does. I mean I’m not going to force anyone into anything but if I make a better offer, if I treat her better, is that my fault or his?”

“Do you do this poaching often?” She lifted one brow.

“Well, no.” How the hell had this gotten turned around on him? Should he admit that the most action he’d seen in a while was when one of the Savage Angels had rubbed her tits against him while he fixed one of the security cameras at the club last week? Somehow he didn’t think she’d find that either amusing or reassuring.

“So is the concept of poaching more of a theory than a practice?”

“Not entirely.” Cypher winced. “I have done it before. Just not in a while.” He didn’t say that was partly because he’d mostly quit going to random bars. These days he only went when he was looking for a fight. And he never failed to find one, because there was always some asshole out there mistreating whatever woman he was with. Cypher liked to think he was showing those women that there were better men out there.

She grinned then stood and moved closer. She set her soda on the table beside his and moved over him.

“I was teasing but I’m glad to know you haven’t done it in a while and that you’re not attached.”

Cypher’s gaze flicked to her mouth as she ran the tip of her tongue over the top one as she closed the distance between them.

She paused and watched him from only a few inches away.

“Or am I wrong in assuming since you won’t poach on your brothers, you wouldn’t cheat on your woman either? I know Jenna keeps telling me you guys aren’t like that.”

“You’re not wrong. I haven’t had anyone I called mine in a long time.” Well, ever if he was being honest. He’d had a few girlfriends, women he would have liked for things to become more serious with, but something had always happened, either they had an issue with him, or more often, they’d had an issue with his lifestyle, both when he’d been in the Navy and after, when he’d been prospecting with the Savage Warriors.

After that it had been easier to scratch the itch with an Angel or a Belle, when he had to, but he knew where some of them had been and wasn’t into dipping his wick where everyone else already had.

It wasn’t that he didn’t believe that women had the same right to make choices about their sexuality that men did, but he also wasn’t into the ones that gave themselves to anyone who wanted a taste.

As Lauren smirked, then leaned in again, he got the feeling this wasn’t something she normally did, and even if it was, he didn’t care.

When her lips met his, he was ready, he kept his touch gentle, not wanting to scare her. He brought one hand up to cup her neck as he coaxed her mouth open and tasted her. She moved closer, until she leaned against him. He lost himself in her taste, the sweet of the soda she drank and the slight tang of the vodka lime she’d been drinking before, then just her.