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 something 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.