Unbeautifully by Madeline Sheehan

more…after this? Or…he wanted only me? Or he wanted me to be with only him while he did…what? Is that what that meant? God, I really needed to start asking some of these questions out loud so I didn’t just stand there staring at him like some sort of speechless freak. But then again, did I really care what he meant? This was what I wanted, right? I wanted him and this and I wanted it right now and everything else was just details that could be worked out later. Or not, because at this precise moment I didn’t care about the details but instead about the hands on me, all over me.
    “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.