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?”
My gaze went to his and I kept my hand where it was. “Yeah.”
That was an understatement. It looked good on him. It felt good on my skin. It felt better between my legs.
Heaven.
“Before you, was thinking of shaving it off. Growing a patch.” He lifted his hand, touched his middle finger to the indent under his lower lip and I took in his rings.
A plain silver band on his thumb and three rings, side by side, index, middle and ring finger, one that said “Ride”, one that said “Free”; the last said “Chaos”.
Badass, biker, cool.
“I’ll wait until we burn out before I do that,” he concluded.
My eyes cut up to his.
I’ll wait until we burn out before I do that.
His tone was light, his lips surrounded by that ’tache tipped up. He was teasing.