Fire Inside (Chaos #2)(10)

A dusting of black chest hair, not a thick mat. Short, rough, sparse but not meager, arrayed across his pecs and ribs, hair that felt crazy-good against my skin.

The best part, defining the center ridge in his six pack, the hair got thicker, darker, leading in a thin line from the valley of his pecs to his navel, then got thinner as it led down to one of the best parts of him.

I loved his chest hair. I loved his height. I loved the power behind his body. And, if I was honest, I loved the beauty of his cock, perfectly formed, both thick and long, and it helped a whole lot that he knew what to do with it.

I also found that I loved his tats, something on other men I wouldn’t like. The Chaos emblem on his back. Another one all the men had that Hop had had inked into the inside of his right bicep, a set of scales, unbalanced, reapers, scythes, and the words, “Never Forget” at the bottom. There were also black, yellow, and red flames dancing from wrist to elbow on both of his forearms.

Badass.

Hot.

Fantastic.

And last, Hop was the only man I’d ever had who wore jewelry. He wore a lot of it and, as with everything else, he looked good in it. Bulky silver rings on his fingers, sometimes two or three, sometimes five or six. Leather bands or silver bracelets at his wrists. A tangle of chains with medallions at his neck. Stud earrings in both ears, the same every day: a small silver cross in one, a tiny silver profile of a skull, the back of its head a set of flames, all this set in black in the other.

No man looked good in jewelry.

No man except a biker in a motorcycle club that had great chest hair, zero body fat, and flame tattoos up his arms could carry off that jewelry.

The man in my bed.

I watched as he came toward that bed then stopped, bent and tagged his jeans.

At that, my belly hollowed out.

He never left. Not until dawn.

Now it appeared he was preparing to leave.

I didn’t lift my cheek from the pillow I was cradling when I asked, “What are you doing?”

His gaze came to me even as he tugged up his jeans. “Chaos business, babe.”

I tipped just my eyes to the clock on my nightstand. Eleven thirty-six.

It was late and I could use some sleep.

I still didn’t want him to leave.

Damn.

Do… not… process, Lanie!

I didn’t process and therefore said nothing.

Hop dressed, yanking his black tee over his head, pulling it down, and I watched with some fascination as it sculpted itself to his torso as if by magic.

Nice.

Unbelievably nice.

He nabbed his boots and socks and sat on the side of my bed.

I didn’t move.

He tugged them on then turned to me and bent in, his hand shifting the hair off my neck, his face coming close.

I wanted to ask if he was coming back the next night. Maybe the next morning. Whenever. I didn’t care. I just wanted him to know whenever he showed, I’d be there.

I didn’t say this. I couldn’t say this. I wouldn’t allow myself to say this. It would expose too much. It would give too much. I didn’t have it in me. I had nothing left to give. Whatever I’d once had leaked out of my body in the form of blood on a floor in Kansas City while my eyes stared into the dead ones of my fiancé across the room.

So I just tilted my eyeballs up to look at him.

His hand moved to my cheek, the pad of his thumb gliding whisper-soft on the skin just under my eye as his eyes studied mine, not like he was looking in them but at them with an expression on his face that said, quite clearly, he liked what he saw.

This was another thing he did frequently that was something I was trying not to process. I liked that he liked looking at me. I liked that he didn’t hide that he liked what he saw. He certainly wasn’t the first man to do that.

What could I say? I wasn’t blind. It wasn’t like I didn’t know God had been generous with me. It wasn’t like I didn’t appreciate it. But with every blessing, there was also a curse and my curse was that I was a dick magnet.

Handsome men knew they were handsome and it was my experience this did not skip a single good-looking guy. It was also my experience that they thought the world should throw roses at their feet just because they were hot. They definitely thought their women should bow down or eat shit.

If they weren’t exactly handsome but still smart, confident, charismatic, and successful, they were worse.

Hop was good-looking, smart, confident, and charismatic. What he wasn’t was a man who hid that he liked what he saw.

He could act the player. He could pretend he could take it or leave it. He could hide his attraction to me in order to gain the upper hand. He could even begin to lay the groundwork of tearing me down, making me feel less than I was, trying to make me feel lucky I had in my bed all that was him and, in doing that, embarking on a campaign that was usually scary successful not to mention swift, to make me feel like I was nothing.

He didn’t.

He liked looking at me, my eyes especially, like just then but particularly when he was inside me. I never came without my eyes to his and his to mine; Hop made it that way. I’d never had a man look me in the eyes so intently, so steadily, so hungrily, as Hopper.

I found my hand lifting even as the rest of me didn’t move, cupping his jaw, my eyes watching my thumb trail the side of his ’tache, moving over the thickness of his whiskers at his jaw, and he muttered, “You really like that, don’t you?”