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“I—” She stared him straight in the eyes, and he saw the struggle, the indecision, and maybe even some sorrow. Then she shook her head and drank.
“Chicken,” he whispered.
A sad nod was all he got in return.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
DANGER! DANGER!
The word had been bouncing around in her head from the moment Maverick suggested the game. Drunk, she was more likely to let something slip. Let a clue about her true identity tumble out. But this was also a chance to ask questions, find out about the club. Maybe her best shot at getting in-depth information.
So she’d played along and learned that he was thirty-eight, prospected with the club as soon as he turned twenty-one, was currently the Road Captain, and had as many piercings as she had fingers on one hand. From her, he’d learned she was twenty-seven, a natural blonde, and she hated cats. Fun, get-to-know-you information, but not exactly the deep MC secret-revealing gouge she was after.
But now, four shots in, she was tipsy and feeling a little more reckless and a little less investigatory than she had at the start of the little game. “My turn,” she said, scooting along the bed until her entire side was plastered against his. “You’ve got full sleeves and I’ve seen the tattoos on your chest and stomach. Just how much more of you is inked, anyway?”
His grin grew sinful, and the pierced eyebrow arched into his forehead. “All of me.”
Stephanie laughed, nearly upending her shot glass. “Come on. Not all of you.” His facial expression didn’t change, and she sobered. Well, not really, but she snapped to attention. “All of you?”
He just kept giving her that cat-who-ate-the-canary grin.
“Oh, my God! Can I see?”
Mav’s head dropped back, and he stared at the ceiling for a good minute before saying, “You realize you’re killing me here, don’t you?”
“I am? What? How?”
“Yeah, you’re clueless. Well, you asked for it.” With a sigh, he pushed off the bed and stood straight up which put his pelvis at eye level. “You sure you’re ready for this? Women have been known to swoon at best and die right there on the spot at worst.”
Fully sober, she’d never in a million years have requested he drop his drawers so she could verify he had a tattoo somewhere under there, but in her half-drunk state, she just giggled and waited for the show.
Slowly, like he was, in fact, putting on a show, he lowered the zipper on his faded slim jeans before shoving them down his hips. Clad only in a pair of light gray boxer briefs, his crotch was at eye level, and it was then Stephanie realized her mistake. He was aroused. Fully aroused. Largely aroused.
Heat pooled between her legs, and along with it, a rush of liquid that should have mortified the hell out of her, but her alcohol-soaked brain didn’t seem to care at the moment.
“Last chance to back out.” His tone was full of warning, and all playfulness had vanished.
She shook her head, tongue too thick in her mouth to release any words. It was a mistake of epic proportions, but she couldn’t seem to tell him to stop. He hooked his thumbs in the sides of the boxers and shoved them to the floor with his jeans. Then, he returned to his spot on the bed, reclining on his elbows. Between his legs, legs that were covered in almost as much ink as his arms, his cock jutted straight out.
Stephanie couldn’t help it, and licked her lips in a completely instinctive reaction.
“Fuck,” Mav said on a groan.
Sure enough, along the left side of his shaft was a tattoo that began just beyond the head and ran the length of his cock. As though driven by a force she was unable to deny, Stephanie slid off the bed and onto her knees between his legs.
“Warrior,” she read the word inked on his cock. She longed to ask him the significance, but before the words left her mouth, she noticed an abnormality in the writing. A semicolon replaced the I, making it read Warr;or.
Just as she was about to ask the meaning, she recalled an article she’d read online a year or so ago, and the words lodged in her throat. “A—” She shook her head and cleared her throat. “When people write, they use semicolons to…” Hot tears flooded her eyes. She couldn’t finish the thought.
Mav had an uncharacteristically serious expression on his face. Tight-lipped, flat-eyed, no trace of the good-humored man she was so drawn to. Despite that, the pull to this man who had a difficult story to tell was just as strong. “It’s used when a sentence could be ended but isn’t. When the writer decides to continue on with a new thought,” he said in a dead voice.
Stephanie nodded and rested her forearms on his lean but still defined thighs. “And a semicolon tattoo has come to represent a person who thought of or attempted to end their life but was saved somehow and decided to continue on.” She stared straight into his somber eyes. “You tried to kill yourself.”
