“I got a lot of tattoos from those days, and I haven’t gotten around to covering them up,” he said in a quiet voice, and something just pulled at my heart. It just yanked it tight and crazy.
I loved this man. I loved him, I loved him, I loved him.
“Rip, I don’t care about your tattoos from back then,” I told him gently. “Unless you have another girl’s name on you somewhere, but you don’t, right?”
His face instantly softened so much I couldn’t help but smile. “Quit with the dumbass questions, yeah? And no, I don’t fucking have somebody’s name on me.”
“Okay then.” I tipped my chin up. “You have gang tattoos. Thank you for telling me.”
“They’re not gang tattoos.”
“Club tattoos, whatever you want to call it.” I raised my eyebrows and wiggled my fingers in the sliver of space between our bodies. “Show me the goods.”
His laugh took the edge off his word. “Luna—”
“I’m being serious,” I told him carefully. “I don’t care.” I held my hand out for him and opened and closed it to get him to come closer to me. “None of us are who we used to be, and luckily for you, I think you’re the hottest man on the entire planet, and that’s with me only seeing you fully clothed.” I smiled. “Show me.”
Rip watched me with those heavy eyes, and the breath he took in and then out was deep and rough.
I recognized the uncertain expression that made the lines at his eyes deepen, and it made my heart clench up again.
I loved this man. I had loved this man for a long time, but I had never loved him more than I did right in that moment as he stood there, with dread in his eyes. Because he was worried what I would think.
“Come here,” I said again, smiling.
The tiny little breath he took in through his nose just made me love him even more.
So I gestured him toward me again. “I don’t think I ever told you about how many times I stole things from the grocery store or from people’s wallets.”
This huge man blinked. “You?” he asked, but it sounded more like he didn’t believe me.
And that only made me smile wider as I nodded. “Yeah, me. If it was small enough for me to hide it in my hoodie pocket, I was taking it. I was hungry, and I didn’t want to spend my money when I started to run out,” I explained, not struggling at all to remember what that Luna had felt when I’d gotten to the last of my money.
“I stole all kinds of things before that too. Usually candy from the convenience store since no one ever took me to the store or anything like that. And when I could take money from my parents, I’d go back and give the owner money. I’m pretty sure that old man knew exactly what I was doing, but he never called me out on it or called the police on me.”
Ripley took a step forward as his fingers dropped away from the collar of his shirt. “They never got you candy?”
I shook my head. “I used to make my own birthday cakes.” I shrugged. “After I stole the cake mixes from the grocery store. My dad loved milk and eggs, so there was always some at the house. He’d always give me money for that.” I blinked. “He’d ask for his receipt and make sure I brought every penny back.”
This man took another step closer to me. “February thirteenth, yeah?”
He was asking me for my birthday, and the fact that he even knew what day my birthday was…. “Yeah.”
He took another step forward. “I’ve got you from now on.”
“For birthday cakes?” I asked, hoping that I didn’t sound as… hopeful as I was sure I did.
“Yeah.” He took another step. “I’ll make you that red velvet cake you like.”
“Okay.” I smiled. “Now let me see what you’ve got since you know you’re not the only one who’s done some shady things.”
He took another step closer, another step that got him to stop directly in front of me, his fingers coming up to nudge me under the chin. “You are a shady shit under there, aren’t you?”
“When I’ve needed to.”
His finger traced along the line of my jaw up to my ear, and his voice was low as he said, “Yeah, I noticed when you had me break your cousin’s hand. I’m not gonna lie, Luna, I was ready to kill his ass, but I was too busy thinking about how you kicking his ass and throwing that fucking shoe like a ninja star was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Reaching forward, I pressed my fingertips against the band along the top of his jeans where the belt loops went. “You still like me even after that?”
His smile was gentle. “You could steal the Mona Lisa, and I know you’d do it for a good reason. I don’t think there’s anything you could do that I wouldn’t be all about, baby girl.”
I laughed, and that just made him smile wider and drag his finger the opposite direction of my jaw, his thumb just lightly brushing the skin under my throat.
“You are the goodest, sweetest thing I have ever had in my life, and I don’t want you to go screaming the other way, you understand me? One day I’ll tell you about everything,” he said softly.
I just stared up at him, and if he would have taken a picture, I’m sure my mouth would have been partially open, and if there could have been big, pink hearts behind my head, they would have been there.
I couldn’t even find it in me a little bit to be embarrassed as I wrapped my arms around his waist. “I’ve wanted to do this a hundred times.”
“What?” he asked quietly.
“Hug you.”
It took a moment, but the second his palms landed on the top of my head, I pressed my cheek against him. One of those big palms cupped the back of my head while the other landed right between my shoulder blades, and his voice was hoarse as he whispered, “Baby girl.”
“You are the sweetest thing I’ve ever had in my life,” I told him.
Something that sounded like a laugh that had gone through a meat grinder trickled out of his mouth.
“You are. Don’t argue with me.”
That meat grinder laugh came out of his mouth again, and I hugged him so tight, it was easy to ignore that my forearm was pressed right up against his butt cheeks.
“I’m not saying any of it either to get you to show me your tattoos.”
“I know.”
“Can I see them now though?”
His laugh was lighter, but I felt him moving, felt his fingers leave me before sensing him pulling his shirt over his head. He just barely moved away from me.
I squeezed him one more time before I finally lifted my face and instantly spotted the almost olive skin at his waist…
Covered by thick lines and shapes in faded black ink.
I held my breath as I dragged my eyes over the ink on him, beneath his belly button letters spelled out ENFORCER, big and shaped in half a circle. Above the word, on top of his ribs were two skulls with wings on them. The lines were thin and detailed. And everything above that were these massive tribal lines that spread out across his pectorals, his shoulders, biceps, going up over his throat….
They weren’t pretty.
They weren’t pretty at all.
Without saying a word, Rip turned in front of me, showing me his back.
And that’s where the oversized skeleton holding an umbrella within an imperfect circle was. The word REAPERS MC 1978 were tattooed directly before it, the lettering uneven and tilted up higher on one side than the other. Wrapped around all that were the same giant tribal curves and lines.
I reached up to trail my fingers over the smooth skin pulled tight over his muscles.
And I heard him let out a deep breath.
Dragging my fingers up higher, over the dip of his spine and higher up over where the notches of his spine were underneath him, I said, “I’m a little disappointed there isn’t a Chinese symbol for strength.”
The laugh that exploded out of him only made me laugh too.
“Your skin is really soft too, do you moisturize?”
He kept on laughing. “No. They aren’t som
ething I want to last. Not anymore.”
“So what you’re trying to say is that your skin is just naturally soft?”
His “mm-hmm” was low.
I dragged the pads of my fingers up higher along the curve of where his spine went, leading up to his shoulders. Ink crisscrossed his spine, and it didn’t take a genius to know that it must have hurt like hell to have that tattooed.
“I have a tattoo.”
His head tilted up and his eyes focused on mine. “You do?”
“Yup.”
“Where?”
“On my ribs. I wanted it on my hip, but the artist talked me out of it.”
“It small?”
I shook my head, and that only earned me another blink. A slow one.
“What is it?”
“It’s a fox.”
“A fox?”
I nodded, reaching down to grab the bottom of my shirt, pulling it up over my head in one movement. I was wearing a decent bra, nothing that sexy, but it was cute and turquoise. I lifted my right arm and pivoted just enough for him to see my side clearly.
But it only took a quick glance to notice he wasn’t looking at my ribs. He was looking at all of me. At my breasts held up high by my bra, at the soft slope of my stomach, at the band of my jeans high on my hips.
“Look,” I told him, showing him the fox head that spanned from just below the band of my bra to just lower than my bottom rib.
And I watched his eyes finally move there, his nostrils flaring.
“Pretty, huh?” I asked, knowing it was. Delicate black lines outlined the fox’s head and ears, a little girly but fierce. Beautiful and feminine and strong. “I got it when I was nineteen.”
A warm hand landed on my hip, just short of the bottom of the fox’s head. “Why a fox?”
“Because,” I barely got out as his fingers stroked my skin. “People think they have to be lions or lambs, but I’ve always just wanted to be something in between.” I bit my lip and lifted a shoulder. “Something that still has sharp teeth, just in case.”
He hummed low in his throat as he dragged his fingers up my rib cage, just over the fox’s face. “Just one?”
“For now, I almost passed out with that one. I cried, don’t tell anyone,” I answered, squeaking when his fingers moved over the front of my stomach, one finger dipping lightly into my belly button. “I should probably tell you something else right now too.”
“Hmm?” he asked, all husky and sexy as he dragged that same finger straight up my stomach.
“I’ve got a piercing too.”
Rip’s head dipped down until his mouth landed on my shoulder, his lips warm and dry as they trailed up my throat, pecking one kiss after another on the way up. The hand he had on my stomach trailed back around to my spine, and I felt him tugging at my bra as his lips latched onto this spot right where my neck met my shoulder, sucking it lightly, forcing me up to the tips of my toes while I squeaked again.
“It’s only one too,” I warned him. “I wanted to do both, but it hurt so much, I chickened out.”
His grumble floated over my skin as he moved his mouth a little more across my shoulder, dragging his tongue too, before he sucked a spot there, his hand still messing with the clasp on my bra. I loved him struggling with it, how much I would never mind helping him out by reaching behind myself to undo it, feeling it loosen and slip lower the instant it happened.
And that was when I told him. “It’s one of my nipples.”
He sucked in a breath so loud that the hairs on my arms stood straight up. The hand he’d had on my bra fell away a moment before both his hands landed on my hips and his head dove. Dove straight for the nipple with a small bar through it. The piercing that had hurt like a freaking son of a bitch for months.
But all of a sudden, the memory of the pain didn’t feel as sharp as it had.
Not when Rip’s lips sucked my nipple into his mouth, his warm tongue flicking the piercing back and forth before he opened his mouth a little wider and took more of my breast in. His “goddamn” went straight to my bones just as his hands moved from my hips to the front of my jeans, undoing the button there and dragging the zipper down just as I managed to get my own hands on his shoulders to hold me up.
Arching my back, I sucked a breath in and let him shove my jeans as far as they could, which was only a few inches lower since they were so tight. And when I went to my tippy toes again, trying to get him to pay attention to my other breast or be greedy and have him take more of the current one into his mouth, Rip crouched and pulled my jeans down roughly the rest of the way. Impatient, jerky, and so hot. How was this man so freaking hot?
“Rip,” I groaned as his hands went back to my hips and yanked my underwear down to my feet in the same quick movement that stung my skin from the fabric scraping it. By the time I took another breath, my pants, underwear, socks, and shoes were all over the carpet.
“I know, baby,” the sexiest man in the world grumbled as he stood straight up again and yanked me so close to him we were pressed together.
Those huge hands went to my butt, and he started walking us backward. His mouth shifted from one nipple to the other, sucking, flicking, suckling even more, these hungry, rough noises bubbling out of Rip’s throat as we kept moving, and moving…
Then he dropped back into one of the recliners by the door, and with me totally naked, he pulled me onto his lap, making me straddle his hips. His mouth trailed up, pecking kisses along my chest, up and up, over my neck before he kissed me.
And kissed me. Warm, closed-mouth pecks that drove me nuts and had me finding his lips. Had me slipping my tongue against his, brushing over it. Wet, wet kisses that had me grinding my totally naked body against his half-naked one. If it wouldn’t have been for the soft ripple and the brush of his hands low against my stomach, or how he arched his hips for a moment, I wouldn’t have known he’d undone his jeans.
At least not until something blunt, and hot, and so freaking hard and thick nudged me right below the belly button.
Prodding.
Brushing.
Kissing.
Lowering my hands to my lap, I wrapped them around the hard, hard dick that bobbed between us. And holy crap. Rip was warm, softer than soft at the same time, but mostly he was thick and long and dripping over my fingers and himself.
“Fuck,” he hissed low and broken into my skin.
With my hands stacked one on top of the other, ending right below a wide, mushroom-tipped head I couldn’t get myself to look down at when Rip had his head tipped back and that mouth of his parted. I squeezed him, loving how big he was. How good he felt. How handsome he looked breathing deeply. So I gripped him a little tighter and moved my hands up and inch and back down, toward the root.
And that was when he opened his eyes, aiming those blue-green irises right at me with a suck of an inward breath. I knew, I knew right then, what he wanted. Knew what I wanted. What my body didn’t want to wait another second for either if the wetness between my legs meant anything.
I looked at that face with its harsh bones and hollow cheeks and moved my hands, and him, u
ntil the damp, damp head of his dick found the place we both wanted and… I lifted my hips, like this with him was the most natural thing in the world, and slowly, slowly, slowly dropped my body back down, gasping as one inch after another slow inch eased inside of me. Holy crap. Lifting my hips again, I dropped down even lower, taking every long inch inside, our kisses never ending. Over and over, I took that thick, long shaft in me, sucking in a breath when I could manage until I bottomed out on what had to be nine solid, hard, so-freaking-hard, inches.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he hissed right as my butt met his warm balls.
I sucked in a breath, squirming just enough on top of him that both of us panted.
I rode him slow, grinding down on that broad base, up and down, his wiry hair just the perfect brush against my clit as his hands rested on my hips, guiding me as I took him over and
over again. In and out. In and out. Kissing him. Him kissing me. Dragging his mouth across my neck. Licking one nipple, then the other. Sucking the right one deep into his warm mouth both before taking the other one and doing the same exact thing to it. Rip licked and sucked and suckled little nooks and crannies I had no idea could feel so good…
“Fuck,” he groaned, arching his hips, pushing as if I wasn’t already fully seated on him. But he was as rooted as he could go. He twitched hard inside of me as he curled his hips again, making our bodies press even tighter together.
I circled my hips, faster, rougher, taking every single thing he had to give me, over and over again until I came, squeezing down around him on a cry that even I could barely hear.
And when he sucked in a breath and with his hands and body tight on mine, Rip shoved me down all the way on him a moment later, stuffing me so deep my muscles fluttered over him, his grunts were hoarse in my ears and on my mouth as he came inside me. That massive body shuddered, his dick pulsing slowly and steadily. I took it all. Every single little bit of it.
I draped myself over him afterward, my arms over his neck, our sweaty chests pressed against each other as we both struggled for breath. Those huge arms wrapping around me, holding me close, was the greatest and most welcome surprise of my life. There was nowhere else I wanted to be other than right freaking there. Nowhere. Not for a million dollars.
I pressed my nose against his throat, taking in that sweet scent of his: clean, fresh deodorant and warm skin.
His palms moved over my back, on either side of my spine. Sweeping me up and down and up and down. “You good?”
I smiled. How could I not smile? “I don’t think I’ve ever been better, Rip.”
His chuckle was soft against my ear. “Can’t say I don’t feel the same.”
“Oh, yeah?” I asked, soaking up the heat of him. The love of him. The feel of him.
“Yeah,” was his reply as his hands did that trek over my spine again, almost like he loved the feel of me too.
I hoped he did.
We sat there for a while, him in me, softening, but his arms as solid as ever. And I loved it. I loved it so much I had no words for how much.
Luna and the Lie Page 51