Madeline Sheehan - Unbeautifully

Free from the ropes, cupping his right eye socket, Ripper staggered to his feet. Blurrily he looked around the empty warehouse until he locked on a door. Limping, his right leg dragging, he hobbled as fast as he could across the dirty floor and collapsed against the door. Trembling, he tried the handle and nearly fell over when the door pushed open. Looking around, he had no idea where he was. The last thing he remembered, he’d been overseeing a drop-off in Vegas when Frankie nabbed him, coldcocked him, and he’d woken up here.

Cursing, he dragged himself outside onto the gravel driveway.

A creak sounded from inside the warehouse and, gripping his right thigh, he tried to walk faster.

“Frankie!” a voice bellowed. “Horseman’s on the loose!”

Fuck, fuck, fuck! He limped faster.

Footsteps pounded behind him, growing closer.

A road. He could see a road. Crying out, he amped up his speed, bit straight through his lip trying to stave off the pain.

He’d just breached the tree line, could see a pair of headlights off in the distance, when he felt the barrel of a gun jammed into the back of his skull.

“Where you think you’re goin’?” Frankie laughed. “Date ain’t over yet. Haven’t even gotten to the best part. Where you’re beggin’ me not to end you.”

The headlights grew closer, the rumbling engine of the truck louder.

He’d never beg for anything. Not a motherfucking thing. Not even for his life.

“Turn around slow,” Frankie said. “And—”

Ripper, with the last of his quickly waning strength and pure determination to die on his own terms, leaped into the road, directly in the front of the truck and impact was immediate. As his body flew through the air, he closed his eyes and thought, Fuck you, Frankie.

He was jumping in front of that truck again, only this time he wasn’t trying to die on his own terms.

He was trying to start living again. So he dug his fingertips even deeper into her skin, kissed her harder than he’d ever kissed, fucked her with a determination he didn’t wholly understand and…

…and something inside of him began to ache. It was painful, yeah, but it was painfully…good.

He wanted more.

More and more until there was nothing left of his old world until everything felt as good as she felt and fit as perfectly as she fit him, and so he closed his eyes and thought, Fuck you, Frankie.

That’s when it happened.

He lost control for the first time during sex and finished hard, still inside of her.

What the repercussions of that were going to be, he surprisingly didn’t care. He was too busy staring at the beautiful girl sitting astride him, feeling clearer and freer than he’d felt in a very long time.

Danny’s eyes blinked slowly open and, Jesus Christ, she was covered in sweat, had tears streaming down her cheeks, her makeup smeared and her face flushed from sex, and she was smiling, the sweetest dimpled smile he’d ever seen.

She was strikingly beautiful and sexy as shit and…good; she was a good, good girl. She was everything a man like him didn’t deserve to be inside of.

“I like you, Ripper,” she whispered, sliding her arms over his shoulders, threading her fingers through the hair at his nape, causing a ripple of tiny, pleasant tingles across his skin and a warmth inside of him, the likes of which he’d never felt before.

“Yeah, beautiful girl,” he whispered. “I’m feelin’ you too.”

He meant it too. He was over his head into her and he knew it. He didn’t just want to fuck her, he didn’t just want her in his bed…

He wanted her on the back of his bike.

Yeah, he wanted to lay claim to Danielle West, ink his name on her body and slap an old lady patch on her ass. And worse, he wanted the world to know it.

It was at that precise moment that Ripper knew his world had shattered for a third time, had crumbled and turned to dust at his feet.

Nothing from here on out would ever again be the same.

I hated lockdown. Every single one had always completely sucked.

Brothers, their old ladies, their kids, young and old, all piled inside the club, filling up every nook and cranny. There was no seat unoccupied, no bed not taken, and in a warehouse roughly the size of a department store, most of which was used for locked storage, there wasn’t a whole lot of room.

But this time…

It was day four of prison by Hell’s Horsemen association and there wasn’t anywhere else on earth that I wanted to be other than right there, locked up in a crowded, overheated building…with Ripper.

Seated at the U-shaped bar, my elbows on the counter, chin propped in my hands, I was watching Ripper move across the room. He was shirtless, barefoot, wearing only his half-buttoned leathers and his cut. His blond hair was pulled back mid-skull in a messy ponytail and a cigarette dangled from his lips. My gaze traveled down his big body, lingering on the trail of blond hair that disappeared inside his pants, and my heart started beating faster.

I’d never been so intensely attracted to a man before, never felt so aroused in all of my life, and it wasn’t just when he was touching me, it was all the time. All I had to do was think about being with him, and I was crossing my legs and squeezing my thighs together.

He was an incredibly beautiful man. The scars just forced you to look a little harder to see what was still there, and what was still there was the squared, strong bone structure of a Greek god, the heavily muscled stature of a boxer, and a deviously sexy smile.

We’d spent the past three days sneaking off together, deftly avoiding the club security cameras, and finding secret places to be together. The kitchen pantry, the communal showers, the shed behind the clubhouse…

I was waiting for Ripper’s signal, eagerly anticipating day four of being together.

“This sucks,” Tegen pouted, walking up next to me and folding her arms across her chest. Startled out of my Ripper stare-a-thon, I glanced over at her and winced.

Even her attempt at dressing like a girl had somehow gone hideously wrong. Her plain black sundress hung loosely on her, the straps had fallen off her shoulders revealing two white bra straps, she’d spilled something on the skirt of the dress earlier and hadn’t bothered to wipe it off, and…I looked down at her feet. She was wearing flip-flops. Not cute, stylish ones but a plain pair of black foam flip-flops that I wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing, not even at the beach.

“What does he see in those fucking sluts?” Tegen hissed.

Knowing she was talking about Cage, I started rolling my eyes until I saw where she was looking. It wasn’t just Cage talking to a pair of club whores, it was Cage and Ripper. I shot into an upright position. He wasn’t giving me the signal because he was too busy talking to…those whores?

Jealousy swamped me, followed closely by panic. He’d lied. He was still interested in other women and here I was forced to sit and watch it happen right in front of me, just like Dorothy had to watch Jase with his wife while she pined for him from afar. Oh god, I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t be an old lady or, even worse, a secret old lady that no one knew about.

Without warning he glanced my way, a small smile on his face that instantly fell the minute we locked eyes. I bit down on my bottom lip and attempted to school my expression, hoping my inner turmoil wasn’t showing through.

I knew I’d failed when his eyes narrowed.

The next thing I knew Ripper was crossing the room, heading toward the bar, toward me. Taking the space to the left of me, he leaned forward, placing his forearms on the counter top. I went rigid, suddenly completely at a loss as to what I should be doing with myself, where I should be looking. God, I didn’t even know what to do with my hands or how I should be sitting. He’d made a point to never be less than twenty feet away from me, and this new development had caught me completely off guard.

“Yo,” he said, nodding at ZZ who, as usual, was playing bartender while he kept an eye on the security monitors.

ZZ lifted his chin. “Tequila?”

“Naw, dude, gimme a brew.”

Nodding, ZZ reached below the bar and pulled a bottle of beer from one of the small refrigerators underneath. Popping the cap off on the bar, he handed it to Ripper, who took a prolonged swallow during which I moved my hands from the bar to my lap and back to the bar again. Twice.

“Uh, are you okay?” Tegen asked, eyeing me queerly. The expression on her face clearly showed that she thought I’d completely lost my mind.

I nodded jerkily. “Yes.”

Her nose wrinkled. “Yeah, sure. So, you’re suddenly acting like you have Tourette’s for no good reason?”

I glared at her. Just because I wasn’t dressed like a secondhand clothing reject who’d had her hair done by an electrical socket, and didn’t pout in corners staring at a guy who’d never give me a second glance, didn’t mean she had to hate on me.

“I’m fine,” I gritted out.

“Right,” she muttered. “Fine, whatever, no need to give me your prissy angry face.”

I gaped at her, furious, Ripper’s close vicinity instantly forgotten. Who did she think she was?

“What is wrong with you?” I demanded. “Why can’t you ever just be…normal?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Normal?” she asked, her tone scathing. “What the fuck is normal, Danny? This? The club? My mom crying in the corner, staring at Jase and Chrissy? Or Adriana over there,” she said gesturing to where Mick’s wife was sitting. “She’s talking to her husband’s favorite club whore and she doesn’t even know it. Is that normal?”

Whether Tegen actually cared about the virtueless bikers and the lack of morality that went on inside the club was debatable. Her bad moods, as often as they were, nine times out of ten were usually related to only one biker. My brother. If she wasn’t angry, which was rare, she was just outright sad.

“Girls.”

Ripper’s voice was low but harsh and both our heads swiveled toward him. Using his bottle of beer, he gestured between us. “Lockdown’s wearin’ on everyone, yeah?”

Tegen sighed noisily. “If by wearing on us you mean driving us all to the brink of insanity from having to watch you all drink yourselves into oblivion, belch and fart and whore it up with whatever walks by, then yes, I’m a little worn.”

Both ZZ and Ripper burst out laughing. Leaning over the bar to ruffle her hair, ZZ grinned at her. “You’re one badass little motherfucker, you know that?”

She swatted at his arm, trying to duck away from his hand. “Piss off!” she yelled, throwing a stack of bar coasters across the bar, missing ZZ by several feet.

“Danny.”

Swallowing hard, I glanced over at Ripper.

“You’re thinkin’ again,” he said quietly. “And whatever you’re thinkin’ you really ain’t likin’.”

“I’m not,” I protested. “I’m totally, completely, one hundred percent fine.”

“You’re not,” he said. “You’re readin’ into shit you shouldn’t and makin’ up all sorts of crazy inside that head of yours.”

Damn him.

“Fine,” I hissed, slapping my hand down on the bar. “You want to know what I’m thinking about, I’ll tell you. I don’t like being a secret, that’s what. I don’t like that those stupid sluts can just walk up to you, thinking they can touch you. If they knew about me, that wouldn’t happen when I was around.”

Realizing what I’d just said, and that I’d said it not so quietly in a room full of people who would undoubtedly be interested to know why I was having such a personal conversation with Ripper, I slapped my hand over my mouth and shut my eyes in dismay.

When I braved looking up again, I found the club exactly as I’d left it. No one was paying me any attention, Tegen was still yelling at ZZ, Ripper was still beside me, still leaning over the bar, still looking right at me. Smiling.

“You tryin’ to tell me you’re my old lady, Danny?”

Yes.

“No,” I whispered and watched his smile turn into a full-fledged grin.

“Liar,” he whispered back.

“I hate you.”

“Liar.”

“Now I really hate you.”

Standing up straight, he slid his empty bottle across the bar toward ZZ, using the action to lean into me. “Five minutes,” he breathed over the top of my head. “Your room.”