SIX | CYRUS

I heard Grace gasp beside me, but I couldn’t draw my eyes away from him to check on her. The coffee jug felt too hard against my palm, and I realised distantly that I was gripping onto it with all my strength.

“I don’t recognise you,” I said, a little playfully, something flirtatious slipping into my tone. I’d not heard that quality in my own voice in years, not since before I’d met Harper. “You aren’t from around here?” I asked.

He laid down his paper, leaning forward and propping his head up on his hands. His face could have been chiselled from white marble, smooth and sleek beneath his tousled almost-black hair. I let my gaze wander up his face slowly, taking in the elegant, arrogant curve of his sensual upper lip, the hard, sharp lines of his jaw, the faint brush of stubble covering his cheeks and chin, and the perfectly straight line of his nose.

But it was his eyes that made something deep within me tremble. They were bright blue at their centre, ringing his wide and open pupils