Unbeautifully (Undeniable, #2)(27)

Ripper had already gone outside. I could hear the rumble of his Harley pipes from the foyer.

Hurriedly, I punched in the house alarm, flipped the lights off, and locked the door behind me.

He watched me rush down the walkway toward him, his expression disconcerting. Had he changed his mind already? Had talking to my father triggered his guilt?

Anger toward the man who’d taken a backseat role to my life the second his own had hit a road bump, surged to the surface. He kept ruining everything and now he was going to ruin this for me.

“Ripper?” I whispered, stopping beside him. His hard gaze met mine and my stomach flip-flopped. He looked a million times different than he had inside the house. Nothing remained of the hungry expression he’d been wearing only moments earlier.

“Fuck,” he muttered, startling me as he reached out and wrapped his arm around my waist. I stumbled forward as he hauled me up against him.

“Meant what I said,” he said, dropping his head, pressing his forehead to mine. “You’re with me, you’re with only me. I ain’t gonna share you with some teenage asshat whose dick ain’t full grown.”

Teenage asshat? Ha. Fat chance. My father had ruined any chance of me dating any male my age when he’d threatened my one and only boyfriend. No one wanted anything to do with me after that, leaving me to wonder what sort of pain and torture my father had threatened him with. But Ripper didn’t need to know any of that. He was jealous and I liked him that way.

“What about you?” I asked, before I could remind myself that the details didn’t matter, that this was what I wanted and I’d no right to be demanding anything from a man like Ripper. But damn it, I was fooling myself if I thought I was going to be okay being with him again, if he was just going to turn around and be with other people.

I did not want to share.

I would, that was how much I wanted him, but I didn’t want to have to. Even more so, I didn’t want him to want to.

I wanted to be enough for him but at the same time I wasn’t stupid. I knew what the boys did at the club, or on runs while their old ladies were at home with their kids.

If I wanted this man, I already knew what would be expected of me. Was I prepared for all that came with it? No. But I was a fast learner and everything about Ripper had my body screaming he’s worth it, he’s worth it.

He pulled away from me, his expression serious, yet full of unabashed need.

And just like that, seeing that, knowing that look was for me, that it was all mine, the details no longer mattered.

“I ain’t never did this shit before,” he said quietly and I could hear the internal hesitation, the insecurity lacing his words. And, god, it only made me want him even more.

“But I ain’t never wanted * like I want yours and…Danny, I ain’t gonna touch another bitch, don’t even wanna. Fuck, baby, since that night at the lake, I haven’t done shit but jerk myself off, thinkin’ of you.”

How could someone so gruff and crude be so soft at the same time? Ripper was perfect. Perfectly flawed and everything I hadn’t known I’d wanted in a man until this…him…us.

He only wanted me. Only me.

“Wish I knew what was goin’ on in that head of yours,” he said quietly.

“Nothing,” I whispered. “I’m just…I think…I’m…”

Just say it. Say it, you chicken! Just say it!

“Happy,” I finished breathlessly. And excited and nervous and pretty close to bursting at the seams.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ripper loved riding. It was one of his few escapes from thinking about the hours of torture he’d spent at the hands of Frankie. So when he wasn’t working or sleeping or eating or f*cking, he was riding. Constantly. No plan, no destination, no schedule…just him, his bike, and the open road. Riding gave him the peace of mind that nothing else could, not green, not booze, not *, nothing. Riding cleared his messed-up head and cleaned his shit-stained soul. For a little while.

With nothing but road stretched out in front of him and more road behind him, it was just him and his baby, completely in tune with each other. The past didn’t exist, his future didn’t matter; it was only right then, right there, she was him, he was her, they had melded together, had become not man and machine but one entity, lost to an endless stretch of road.

It was freedom and there wasn’t anything more beautiful than freedom.

And all that freedom had just been flushed down the shitter.

All he could feel was her arms wrapped around his middle, her hands resting just above his groin, her tight little body pressed into his, her muscular thighs locked around his hips.

From the moment Danny had climbed on behind him, he’d been hyper aware of everything about her, every slight movement, every part of her that was touching a part of him.

His heart pounded as wave after wave of heat rolled through him, blurring his vision, leaving him fairly certain he was going to run them off the road if he didn’t get his shit together.

Fuck me, she’d said.

He was ninety percent positive that had been the first time Danielle West had dropped the “f” bomb, making those two little words even hotter than they would have been without that knowledge.

Then Deuce had called and torn him a new one because he hadn’t gotten Danny back to the club yet. That’s when he decided this shit between them, whatever it was, whatever was going to happen, was going to have to wait until after lockdown, until they could be alone again…