Free Ripped by Sarah Morgan Page A

clothes.’ The gleam in his eyes made it hard to breathe.
    ‘It’s Christmas. You’re allowed to rip open your Christmas presents. And anyway, I figured if you can afford to live here, you can afford another shirt.’ I pushed the shirt off those muscular shoulders and sucked in a breath because there, curling over the top of his biceps, was a symbol inked into his flesh.
    I think my heart might have stopped. It definitely did something strange in my chest.
    ‘OK, well, that’s—’ I breathed and stared at it for a moment. Then I lifted my hand and traced it with the tips of my fingers. ‘Surprising.’ Not in a million years would I have expected this man to have a tattoo. ‘I thought you were this ruthlessly controlled, conservative, Eton-then-straight-to-Oxford type.’
    ‘Did you?’ His husky question slid against my knees and weakened them.
    I thought about the wedding, when I’d spent a good ten minutes staring at him acknowledging the raw, elemental quality that lurked beneath the beautifully cut suit. About that car journey, when the tension had almost fried both of us. I’d always known what lay beneath the surface.
    ‘I guess I made assumptions.’
    ‘People do that. They look and they think they know. And sometimes they don’t look because they don’t want to know.’
    ‘Charlie—’
    ‘I don’t want to talk about Charlie any more.’
    Neither did I.
    I wondered how a man who never showed emotion could be so perceptive. So in tune with my feelings. It unsettled me. I was used to people believing in the person I presented to the world. I chose how much of myself I revealed. Discounting the day of the wedding where I’d revealed far more than I’d wanted to, I didn’t show much.
    I thought about all the parts of myself I’d never shared with anyone. Thoughts that were all mine and not for sharing.
    ‘Tell me about the tattoo.’
    ‘A tattoo is just on the surface. You and I are going deeper than that.’
    I swallowed. We were?
    ‘A tattoo isn’t who I am any more than a ripped dress is who you are.’ His mouth was closer to mine. I could feel the warmth of his breath against my lips.
    I’d got used to thinking relationships were mostly fake and superficial, but this didn’t feel either of those things. There was nothing fake about the way his tongue traced the seam of my lips. Nothing fake about the way his hands eased my hips into his, and certainly nothing fake about the thickness of the erection I felt throbbing against me.
    I leaned forward and pressed my mouth to his shoulder. The tattoo shocked me because it was so unexpected. I’d always known there was so much more to him. I ran my fingers down the swell of hard muscle, feeling the leashed power under the dark ink of his tattoo. I heard the slight change in his breathing and could feel him fighting for control.
    ‘You hold yourself back.’ I thought about how ruthlessly he held himself in check and wondered what had made him like that. ‘Who are you really?’
    ‘Does it matter?’ He cupped my face in his hands and his voice had a raw edge to it that was impossibly exciting.
    I remembered my resolution to have uncomplicated sex with a hot man. They didn’t come any hotter than Nico.
    ‘No.’ I silenced the questions in my head, telling myself they weren’t relevant to the moment. ‘I want you.’
    The corner of his mouth tilted into the sexiest smile I’d ever seen. He might not smile often, but when he did he did it really well. His mouth hovered wickedly close to mine until I was afraid I might knock him over and damage him in my haste and desperation to finish what we’d started at the wedding.
    And then finally, after days of my waiting and thinking of nothing else, he lowered his head and kissed me.

Chapter Seven
    As I’d been thinking of nothing else for days I thought my mind had probably exaggerated his skill at kissing. It should have been a disappointment. It wasn’t. It was as good as I remembered.