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.

“I’m sorry, baby. Sorry I haven’t been there for you lately, sorry I was such a fucking ass there for a while, but you gotta know I won’t do that again,” Rip told me, sounding so grave. “I couldn’t even if I tried, you know that?”

I didn’t let myself tense up, and even though I didn’t really want to ask, didn’t want to be the kind of person who needed reassurances… I was that person. I might always be that person, but I hoped I wouldn’t. But I still asked, “Why?”

And handsome, amazing Rip didn’t hesitate for a single second as he said, “’Cause I love you, Luna. Because I love the shit out of you, girl, and those two weeks when you were acting like you were done with me were some of the worst days of my life.”

That had me sitting up so I could look at him. Look at him I did. At that serious face. At those intense eyes. At the earnestness coming straight out of him like a beam. I could be honest, I could admit I whispered, “You love me?”

Not yeah. Not uh-huh. Nothing watered down or broken up. He gave me the four greatest words I would ever hear. “I love you, girl.” A confirmation. A promise. A Band-Aid that shouldn’t have been a Band-Aid but was.

Because I knew Rip wouldn’t say those words if he didn’t mean them. Maybe he’d said some things weeks ago he hadn’t meant, but I understood why they had come out the way they had. I definitely knew he wouldn’t take them back for no reason.

In that moment, I knew he meant those three words from the bottom of that rough, complicated heart.

“I love you too,” I told him, freaking going for it because why not? People smarter than me would say that the world wasn’t for chickenshits, and I didn’t want to be a chickenshit.

The corners of that mouth tipped up and his smile was gentle but bright and sweet. “I know you do, baby.” One of those hands went up my spine again as he leaned forward a little, not breaking eye contact for even a second. “I know you do. And I know you’ve had a lot of people not do right by you, and I know things with your sister aren’t that great—”

“She sent me a letter,” I cut him off. “I’ve been wanting to tell you.”

He didn’t say anything, but I could tell he wanted me to tell him the rest by the way his eyebrows went flat.

“She said that she was sorry. That she didn’t know how to tell me about talking to my dad—”

His snort wasn’t even close to being a surprise. I couldn’t say I blamed him.

“Supposedly an ex-boyfriend was the one who broke into her apartment, and she’s been acting weird because she didn’t want to tell me she was a stripper. That’s how she’s been paying for her apartment,” I finished with a blink. “I think I was worried there for a moment she was selling drugs, so…”

Rip’s face was carefully blank as he asked, “How you feeling about it?”

I leaned forward and kissed his cheek, earning an expression that was somewhere between a smile and a smirk that went straight into my soul. Was this how easy it was going to be? Was that how it was supposed to be? Rip just letting me kiss him whenever I wanted? I was all for it. I really was. “It makes me sad she didn’t feel like she could tell me. I’m not going to lie. It hurts me a lot that she’s talking to my dad of all people and has been for years. I don’t get it, Rip, you know? I mean, I guess I kind of do but not really at the same time. He wasn’t anywhere near as mean to them, just to me, but even then, I don’t get how she could even bother wanting to try. Her and Kyra. He was horrible. He didn’t give a single crap about her or any of them when they lived with him, and I’m not exaggerating that. If it was her he’d been mean to, I would never be able to forgive him. Not ever.”