Fire Inside: A Chaos Novel (4 page)

I was close. This was good, the best.

The best I ever had.

Then he did what I knew he’d do—four nights, no matter how many times we did it, he always ended it the same way.

He pulled out and my head jerked around, my eyes went to him and I pleaded, “Hop. Please don’t. I’m close.”

He dropped to a hip at my side and pulled me over him. Head to my pillows and God,
God,
he looked hot, all that messy hair, that biker ’tache, his badass gorgeousness framed by my pale pink pillowcase.

“Ride me, lady,” he muttered and I didn’t make him ask twice.

I lifted up to straddle him, wrapped my hand around his cock, guided the tip inside and slid down until he filled me.

My head dropped back. I loved this, I missed it. He’d been pounding inside me not ten seconds before but having him back, it felt like I hadn’t had him in years.

Hop shifted then I felt his fingers slide into my hair so his hand could cup the back of my head. He tilted it down. I opened my eyes to see he’d knifed up so I was staring into his, close.

His eyes were intense. Always when we were like this, they were intense in a way I never felt before. Like he could read my thoughts. See into my head. Touch my soul through a gaze.

“Move, Lanie,” he murmured, and again, I didn’t make him ask twice.

My gaze held captive in his, I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and moved. His arm snaked around my waist, holding me close so my body slid against his as I rode him, his hand cupped to my head pulling me down so my lips grazed his. Through this, his eyes held mine, not letting go.

My soft breaths whispered against his lips as it built again, just as his deep groans sounded against mine.

I was getting close. This was good, the best.
The best.

The best I ever had.

His arm around my waist moved so his hand could glide over my belly and down. Suddenly, his thumb hit the spot and God,
God
, perfect aim.

Elliott couldn’t do that. Because I was me and more than a little crazy, I’d done the math and Elliott had hit the spot on his first try one out of every four times.

Hop never missed.

I closed my eyes as it shot through me, my head automatically arching back only to be caught in Hop’s grip, forced forward, my lips to his, my moans sounding in his mouth. I kept moving, faster, faster even as it shook me.

The best I ever had.

I finished and kept moving, my rhythm not breaking, needing to give to Hop what I’d just had. Needing to get it back. Needing it like a drug.

Hazy from my orgasm, I watched his face get dark, hungry. He was close.

Then he shoved my face into his neck as he shoved his into mine, his arm clamped around me, holding me down on his cock as he groaned deep, the sound vibrating against my skin.

Absolutely, bar none, the best I ever had.

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 having sex 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 fucking 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 asshole 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.

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?”

My gaze went to his and I kept my hand where it was. “Yeah.”