Full Throttle (Black Knights Inc. #7)(57)

“It’s an Army Ranger slogan,” he told her, reaching over to give her a friendly nudge. The place where his elbow gently connected with her upper arm was suddenly hypersensitive. “Makes me seem tougher than I really am.”

“I seriously doubt that.” In the last few days, and more specifically, in the last few hours, he’d proved to be the toughest sonofagun she’d ever met, which just made him that much harder to resist. I mean, what woman wouldn’t want to throw herself into the arms of a man who was a real-life doctor turned soldier—and when the moment called for it—turned sex god?

Ride me…

Those two simple words echoed through her head until goose bumps erupted over every inch of her flesh. When she raked in a deep breath, she fancied she could smell the rain on his skin, the gun black he used to clean his weapon, and the lingering hint of the open road mixed with the jungle’s wet foliage.

Shaking her head to scatter her thoughts, she pointed to the edges of the black tattoo on his back. It peeked from the armholes and the collar of his tank top, giving her intriguing hints of what might lie beneath. “And that one?” she asked.

For a moment he regarded her quietly, his eyes like lasers cutting through the dim light inside the hut. Outside, the rain continued to pound. Inside, her heart did the same, clattering against her ribs like the wooden wind chimes she’d installed in a tree back at the DC Botanic Garden. Something in his face made her eyebrows pinch together.

“You don’t have to show me,” she hastily added, “if you don’t w-w-w…”

Her words stuttered to a stop because he reached over his head, grabbed a handful of wet, army-green cotton in a fist, and whipped his tank top off. Tossing it aside, it landed on the floor of the hut with a gentle splat.

Sweet son of a monkey’s uncle…

The man was just so…pretty. And, no, there was no other way to describe him. Because his skin was impossibly smooth and tan. His shoulders were impossibly wide and muscled. His pecs were impossibly defined around his flat, brown nipples. His stomach was impossibly corded and ripped. And then there was that line of black hair…trailing from his navel down into his camouflage cargo pants.

In short, he should not have wasted time on a medical degree or in Army Ranger training. Instead, he should have been a Calvin Klein underwear model. Either that or the subject for anatomy textbooks.

Even the raised white ridge of scar tissue cutting across his bicep and the jagged red line of skin puckered on his flank didn’t seem to detract from the overall…well…prettiness of him. Although she’d already learned her lesson about using that word in conjunction with any of his body parts.

She bit her tongue when he turned to show her the monster tattoo stretching across his broad back from shoulder to shoulder and from below his neck to the small of his waist. Of course, with the thing clamped between her teeth, it was a wonder she didn’t chew it clean off. Because the ink was equal parts fascinating and terrifying.

In deep, impenetrable black, a screaming skull with the coils of a fat serpent slithering from its gaping mouth sat atop two crossed machine guns. An Army Ranger cap had been drawn onto the bony skull, Carlos’s battalion number scrawled across a tattered patch above the bill. A huge knife seemed to skewer the skeletal face under its chin. And surrounding it all was a set of intricately drawn angel’s wings. They worked to soften and offset the harshness of the skull and weapons. And the feathers…they looked so real she would not have been shocked had they fluttered in the breeze drifting in under the flap of burlap covering the door to the hut. Again in Spanish, winding beneath the whole thing, was a string of beautifully scrolled words.

“Wh-what does it say?” she asked. Her voice sounded like she’d been swallowing cactus needles. But she was so riveted, so…moved by the artwork, it was a wonder she could speak at all.

“Rangers lead the way,” he told her, glancing over his shoulder.

And, yes, she’d known when he joined the Army eight years ago that he wouldn’t be content to stay back behind the front lines. She’d known even then that when he decided to leave the green lawns of Georgetown behind, he was doing so with every intention of jumping into the fray and leading the way.

How she’d wanted to save him from all of that. How she tried to save him from all of that.

When she forced her gaze away from the intricate details of his tattoo, she discovered his eyes on her, his expression unreadable. She tilted her head, wondering what he was thinking. But then he flexed his shoulders and the wings along his back seeming to expand. She couldn’t help herself.

Lifting her hand, she ran a tentative finger over one of those elaborate feathers. His tough, smooth flesh quivered beneath her touch, and she was keenly aware of how warm he was. How solid. How…near.

Suddenly, it was as if all the air had been sucked from the room. She couldn’t draw a breath.

“You hate it, don’t you?” he asked quietly, turning so they were once again face-to-face, stretching his long legs out in front of him and crossing them at the ankles. He planted his hands behind him, leaning back. His expression was hard, his black eyes flinty.

“Hate it?” she managed to suck in enough oxygen to ask. “Hate what? Your tattoo?”

He nodded, a muscle ticking beneath the stubble of his jaw.

“H-how could I hate it, Carlos? It’s beautiful. And fierce. Just like you.”