Without saying a word, Rip turned in front of me, showing me his back.
And that’s where the oversized skeleton holding an umbrella within an imperfect circle was. The word REAPERS MC 1978 were tattooed directly before it, the lettering uneven and tilted up higher on one side than the other. Wrapped around all that were the same giant tribal curves and lines.
I reached up to trail my fingers over the smooth skin pulled tight over his muscles.
And I heard him let out a deep breath.
Dragging my fingers up higher, over the dip of his spine and higher up over where the notches of his spine were underneath him, I said, “I’m a little disappointed there isn’t a Chinese symbol for strength.”
The laugh that exploded out of him only made me laugh too.
“Your skin is really soft too, do you moisturize?”
He kept on laughing. “No. They aren’t something I want to last. Not anymore.”
“So what you’re trying to say is that your skin is just naturally soft?”
His “mm-hmm” was low.
I dragged the pads of my fingers up higher along the curve of where his spine went, leading up to his shoulders. Ink crisscrossed his spine, and it didn’t take a genius to know that it must have hurt like hell to have that tattooed.
“I have a tattoo.”
His head tilted up and his eyes focused on mine. “You do?”
“Yup.”
“Where?”
“On my ribs. I wanted it on my hip, but the artist talked me out of it.”
“It small?”
I shook my head, and that only earned me another blink. A slow one.
“What is it?”
“It’s a fox.”
“A fox?”
I nodded, reaching down to grab the bottom of my shirt, pulling it up over my head in one movement. I was wearing a decent bra, nothing that sexy, but it was cute and turquoise. I lifted my right arm and pivoted just enough for him to see my side clearly.
But it only took a quick glance to notice he wasn’t looking at my ribs. He was looking at all of me. At my breasts held up high by my bra, at the soft slope of my stomach, at the band of my jeans high on my hips.
“Look,” I told him, showing him the fox head that spanned from just below the band of my bra to just lower than my bottom rib.
And I watched his eyes finally move there, his nostrils flaring.
“Pretty, huh?” I asked, knowing it was. Delicate black lines outlined the fox’s head and ears, a little girly but fierce. Beautiful and feminine and strong. “I got it when I was nineteen.”
A warm hand landed on my hip, just short of the bottom of the fox’s head. “Why a fox?”
“Because,” I barely got out as his fingers stroked my skin. “People think they have to be lions or lambs, but I’ve always just wanted to be something in between.” I bit my lip and lifted a shoulder. “Something that still has sharp teeth, just in case.”
He hummed low in his throat as he dragged his fingers up my rib cage, just over the fox’s face. “Just one?”
“For now, I almost passed out with that one. I cried, don’t tell anyone,” I answered, squeaking when his fingers moved over the front of my stomach, one finger dipping lightly into my belly button. “I should probably tell you something else right now too.”
