Madeline Sheehan - Unbeautifully

“Ripper,” I whimpered, arching my back, pushing my flesh into his hand. “Please—”

His mouth crashed down on mine and, oh my god…his tongue and my tongue and… Oh god, oh god, oh god…

Suddenly, Ripper was pulling away from me and turning around. I panicked, feeling confused and worried until I saw him pull his cell phone from his leathers and bring it to his ear.

“Yo… Yeah, I’m here now…yeah…yeah…she’s packin’, Prez…fuck…yeah, I know what the fuck lockdown means, I’m gonna get her there.”

Prez. He was talking to my father.

I winced, feeling like we’d been caught red-handed, that somehow my father would know what we’d been doing.

“Danny!” Ripper hissed. My eyes shot to him. He was holding the phone away from him and gesturing wildly to the stairs. Oops. Whirling around, I bolted up the stairs, burst into my room, and quickly changed out of my pajamas and into a short pink sundress and my cowboy boots. After throwing some clothing and makeup into my shoulder bag, I checked my reflection, smoothed my hair, and darted back down the stairs.

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 pussy 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.

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 fucking, 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 pussy, 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…

…until her thighs clenched and her fingers began creeping down his abdomen, to the edge of his T-shirt where she paused, fingering the threadbare material.

His dick went rock solid. Probably punched a hole straight through his leathers; he was that hard.

No. No, no, no. Not now. He had to get her to the club before Deuce called again. If she kept this shit up, he was going to throw caution to the wind and be inside of her in about three seconds.

No? Who was he kidding? He was so fucked. Done for and completely fucked.

He wasn’t going to make it to the club. He wanted that pussy so bad he could fucking taste it. And he couldn’t keep pretending this was just about pussy either. It was more than pussy. It was Danny. Her pussy, yeah, and there was something else.

Ripper had been walking around life pissed off, not giving a shit about anything, until he’d made the mistake of fucking a girl he’d never given a second thought to before and everything had changed. Suddenly he cared about what was going to happen next, wondering when Deuce was going to find out, whether he was going to get killed or not, wondering where Danny was when she wasn’t at the club…what she was doing, if she were hanging out with some other dude, and feeling murderous at the thought. Wondering if she were going as motherfucking crazy as he was.

He wasn’t pissed off anymore, either. He was something else entirely. He was…

What the fuck was he?

Fuck it. Whatever he was feeling, he didn’t want to ignore it. He wanted more of it; he wanted to own it.

Right. Now.

Fuck that black bitch; fucking threatening him. Fuck lockdown.

He wasn’t losing this.

Caution met wind and he pulled off the dark, deserted highway onto a patch of grass and cut the engine.

Neither of them spoke.

Or moved.

They just breathed.

Hers, quick and short.

His, loud and heavy.

Just breathing.

“Ripper?” she whispered.

Aw, Jesus, that sweet, sweet voice…

…and the angelic face and the fucking body that owned that voice.

“Yeah, baby?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

Her hands slipped under his shirt, her nails dug into the skin on his stomach, and he stopped breathing altogether.

“Please,” she whispered.

Ripper moved fast, jumped off his bike and hopped back on facing her. She pulled up the material of her dress and he yanked open his leathers, lifting her over top of him, moving her underwear to one side and positioning himself at her entrance.

There was just some shit you didn’t get a say in.

He knew that better than most.

He’d lost his parents at seventeen, his only family.

At twenty-seven he’d been captured by Frankie, tortured for twelve hours. He’d lost his eye, a lot of fucking skin, and pretty much all of his self-respect.

Both of those events had drastically changed the course of his life, each one a wrecking ball that had come crashing into his world, forcing him to watch as everything around him shattered and fell to pieces at his feet.

That’s how this shit was with Danny.

It was an accident, a mistake, it was the wrong place at the wrong time kind of shit that had quickly turned into a catastrophe of epic proportions.

If she’d just been pussy, if he’d fucked her at the lake then forgotten about it…

But Danny was different.

A game changer.

She wasn’t pussy, she was damned beautiful and everything he’d ever wanted in a woman but hadn’t realized until he held her in his arms.

She was the reason his world was about to shatter again.

“Ripper…oh my god.” She pushed back against him, trying to take all of him inside of her in one thrust.

Yeah, she wanted him, the looming wrecking ball.

And fuck him, he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything else, and the wrecking ball swung.

So he took her, grabbed her thighs, and slammed her down onto him…and that wrecking ball came crashing through.

God, sweet fucking Jesus; it was better than he’d remembered. She was tight, wet, and warm and fit him like a fucking glove, kissing him and touching him as if he didn’t have scars, not avoiding them, not lavishing attention on them; he was starting to think she couldn’t see them.

She was making him feel whole again.

Yeah, no way was he losing this.

“Ripper,” she cried. “Ripper…” Her head lolled to the right and her eyes rolled back.

Knowing she was about to come, he gripped her hips, digging his fingertips into her backside, and began slamming up into her, harder and harder, rocking against her faster and faster until her body locked up tight and her cries turned into breathy, panting whimpers and her pussy clenched around his cock, again and again. He kept going, hard and fast, milking her orgasm.

And…ah, god, she was coming again, her muscles were contracting around him, the incredible feeling spurring him into increasing his already ball-breaking pace.

That’s when it happened.

His hair was soaked with sweat, his jaw locked, his teeth clenched, his grip on her bruising, his hips powering back and forth, his cock slamming up into her, again and again.

It was so motherfucking good; she looked like a goddamn sex angel, face flushed and breathing hard, whimpering and crying as he took her hard and fast and she felt like heaven, tight and soft and smooth.

He felt the walls of his world start to shake and the bricks began to fall…one by one until it was a free-for-all and suddenly he could breathe again when he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding his breath. Breath he’d been holding for the last five years.