Fire Inside (Chaos #2)(9)

Every time.

Damn.

After he came down, he loosened his arm around my waist but still held me close as his mouth worked my neck, his mustache tickling, making me shiver.

I returned the favor, gliding my lips along his neck, my tongue snaking out so I could touch the tip to his earlobe. When I did, his arm around me grew tighter.

I ran the tip of my tongue down his neck to his collarbone.

His arm again grew tighter.

He tasted good. He smelled good. Both man. All man. I couldn’t describe it. He didn’t wear cologne but his scent was spicy. Intoxicating.

It was… him.

His head went back, his hand in my hair relaxed and my head came up.

His eyes caught mine.

God, badass biker beauty.

Every inch.

“Climb off me, beautiful,” he murmured and I didn’t want to but I nodded, maneuvered up, sliding him out of me, and I moved off him, dropping to my side next to him.

That was when he did something that I was trying not to process. Something sweet. Something un-biker (or what I expected a biker to do). Something thoughtful.

Something gorgeous.

He pulled the sheet around my nudity and yanked a pillow down to shove it under me right before he bent deep and kissed the hair at the side of my head.

Damn.

I struggled. It was hard not to let his sweet actions penetrate and every night, every time he did something like that, it got harder.

Do… not… process, Lanie!

Curled around the pillow, my leg tangling in the sheets and comforter, straddling them, I managed to shove how I felt out of my head. Instead I watched him walk to the bathroom thinking that I liked how tall he was. Elliott hadn’t been taller than me. I’d towered over him in heels. I told myself I didn’t mind this and when he was alive and sweet and always being Elliott, I didn’t.

But having a tall man was fabulous.

And Hop’s sculpted ass made it all the more fabulous.

He hit the bathroom, the light went on and he disappeared.

I closed my eyes.

It was Saturday night. We’d started this at the hog roast on Wednesday.

Only bikers would have a blowout hog roast on a Wednesday night but then again, most of them had jobs where it didn’t matter that they showed up late and/or hungover and their hangers-on had jobs in bars or strip clubs; their shifts didn’t start until late so they had time to recuperate.

As for me, I came back to Denver and was greeted warmly (and in some cases with relief) by a number of old clients, so I made the mammoth decision to be my own boss. That was, the boss of an advertising agency, which was not conducive to ha**ng s*x all night long and dragging into work the next morning. And Hop and I had been going at each other all night long, from dark to dawn, every night for four nights. I was exhausted.

Still, I wanted him to come back so I could have more. I was just going to have to inform him that he needed to do all the work.

He would not quibble. Unlike Elliott, Hop had staying power. He actually liked taking over, dominating, doing the hard work. Sure, I rode him on occasion but he didn’t lie back and enjoy it. He participated fully, like just now.

Elliott could start giving it to me but then he’d stop, panting and grunting, and ask me to take over and I always did. I didn’t mind. I liked the top.

Then again, I’d been in love with Elliott and you do stuff like that when you’re in love. You shove to the back of your head little things that bother you. Things you had before that you missed. Things like having a man who was all man f**king you until you ached but ached in a good way.

In my experience, which wasn’t vast but it also wasn’t limited, a man who was all man was usually a total jerk and an ass**le and took both of these to extremes.

I felt Hop’s presence, opened my eyes and watched him walk back into my bedroom.

The back view, fabulous.

The front, God… staggering.

Never, not ever in my life, would the man I was staring at right then be a man I would expect to be in my bed.

But he was and he was, for the first time in my life, in my bed on my own damned terms.

When I met Hop years ago, I’d been in a drama because I’d just learned my fiancé was whacked. Even so, Hopper was the kind of guy that his looks, his charisma, all that was him, and there was a lot, could cut through anything. I was engaged to be married and in the throes of a crazy situation that only got crazier, so my mind didn’t go there but it did process all that was him. It was impossible for it not to.

When I got back from Connecticut, with Elliott gone but Hop alive, breathing and so freaking good-looking, my mind went there.

Again and again and again.

Thick, black, unruly hair that was long in front, often fell into his face and had little flips and waves all through it but especially around his neck.

Gray eyes with lines radiating out the sides, that stated not only did he not have a desk job but that he lived his life, didn’t exist through it. Whether those lines were from squinting, laughter or frowning, they were intriguing and took your attention to the gray that was a pure gray, not slightly blue, not dark to black, just a startling gray.

His mustache, facial hair something else I didn’t like on a guy, was the epitome of biker cool. Thick along his upper lip and down the sides, bushier at either side of his chin.

He had no body fat in evidence, at all. He was tall, lean. There wasn’t bulk to his muscle but the definition stated without doubt there was power in his frame and that power wasn’t insignificant.