Ripped

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to tell me something that’s been bugging me,” he says, scraping a hand over his head.

  “What?”

  Using his thumb, he angles my head up higher so our eyes hold. “Tell me what made you so mad at everyone.”

  “I’m not mad at everyone, I’m just mad at you,” I say. It’s part lie and part truth. But he’s walking straight into the past, and something frozen has just dropped into the pit of my stomach, leaving my veins as cold as icicles.

  “Yet the person you’re most mad at is yourself. Isn’t it?” He rubs his silver ring along the bottom of my lip, and I hold on to everything I want to say. Holding it tightly, in an airlocked and lidded box, because once it’s out, I can never take it back.

  I can never take it back.

  “Dora, come with us!” Tit calls, just in time to save me.

  I expel a breath, then take Mackenna’s hand and slowly lower it. “You’re going to have to let me out of the booth, Mackenna.”

  “Why? Little girls’ room chat session?” he asks with a cocky lilt. Because I’m so grateful he’s scooting out to let me pass, I grin.

  “That’s right. No boys allowed,” I warn.

  As I stand, he drops back down. “All right, Pink. Just know I’ll be waiting here to pick up right where we left off.”

  “Don’t hold your breath, Wolf. I can find out from the girls what your tattoo means.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that,” he says, laughing his it’s-so-sexy-it-should-be-illegal laugh.

  “Hey, girls,” I greet as I join them.

  That’s when my phone starts to ring and my heart stops when I see HER flashing on my phone screen.

  My eyes widen. Glancing around for the quietest, most private space I can find, I peer into the men’s restroom, find it empty, and close the door, leaning against it so no guy can come in while I talk.

  “Hello?” I answer.

  God. I sound like a chicken shit. Like I’m guilty of something.

  I’m guilty of lying and more. So much more.

  “Pandora?”

  “Mom. What’s up?”

  “She misses you, she wanted to say hello.”

  My eyes turn to the tiny window and a slice of moon outside. Hmm, looks high enough. “It’s past her bedtime.”

  “I know, she couldn’t sleep because I’d promised she could talk to you today and I was caught up in a call, but we’re calling now.”

  “Right,” I say, thinking, No, actually you’re letting her stay up late watching movies as an excuse to check up on me at this hour and make sure I’m not screwing up my life again.

  “How are you?” she finally asks.

  “Good, Mom,” I mumble, staring at the toes of my boots. They don’t look so badass anymore.

  “You’re keeping busy with work? Staying smart about your choices?”

  “Of course,” I lie, dragging the tip of my boot down a square tile.

  “You know, it’s hard for me to give Magnolia the attention you’ve accustomed her to.”

  “I’ll call more often.”

  She sighs, clearly displeased but conceding. My stomach hurts. She’s the only one who knows exactly what I am and what I can do and how easily I get broken. I “gauge my value by her love,” according to Dr. Finley, the therapist who suggested I accept my mistakes, as well as the mistakes of the people in my past, and move forward.

  I thought I did.

  I thought I had.

  Hell, I thought tomatoing Mackenna would be the last “fuck you” I had to say in terms of my past.

  I was so, so wrong. Maybe I should consider saying something else instead.

  “Are you all right? Where are you?” my mother presses.

  “I’m in . . . Kentucky,” I lie.

  “You’re decorating in Kentucky?”

  I wonder if she’s onto me and worry my lip a little while I worry in my mind. “A bachelor’s apartment. I’m using my usual eclectic combination. Steel, dark woods. It kicks ass.”

  “Language,” she chides, but she laughs a little.

  We end up talking a little bit. She’s not perfect, my mom. But she’s the only one who knows how much I’ve screwed up and hasn’t hightailed it out of my life.

  She never lets me forget that.

  Then I get to talk to Magnolia.

  “I miss you, Panny, I have forty-seven things now.”

  “Wait, let me guess! We’re going to dress like gorillas and bang our chests out on the sidewalks?”

  “No! But that will be forty-eight!”

  I smile with happiness, but the guilt I usually feel when I’m happy slowly creeps in.

  I’ve fucked up. And Mackenna’s right, I’m mad mostly at myself.

  “You’re my hero, Pan,” she then says, her voice dreamy as if I really am something special.

  “You’re mine,” I whisper. She squeals, sends me kisses, and we hang up.

  I stare at my bracelet, then tuck my phone into my back pocket and breathe deep. When I finally get out, the girls are at the guys’ booth, Tit exactly in my spot.

  I don’t like the rush of possessiveness I feel when I see her busy talking with Mackenna. I don’t like how possessive I feel of his eyes and his smile and the hand he has spread out casually over the back of the seat . . . where I had been sitting. I have a spectacular urge to go and tell Tit to take her hand off Mackenna’s shoulder and park her ass somewhere else. Shit. I’m so over my limits of normal involvement here, I shake my head at myself and head over to the bar. Best to stay away from him.

  Dealing with my mother always leaves me raw, and I don’t want Mackenna to improve on that.

  “See that guy?”

  I turn to the low baritone to my right, and a guy—thirty-something-ish, with a black cowboy hat and a huge-ass belt buckle—tips his head in a certain direction. When I follow the aim, my eyes land on you-know-who. You-know-who’s silver-laser-beam is staring straight at me from across the room. “You’re asking me if I see him? Does anyone not see him?” I counter.

  “He your man?” the cowboy asks.

  “In my nightmares, sometimes.”

  But Cowboy isn’t appeased. “He sure looks like he thinks he is,” he drawls.

  “Ignore him. He thinks he’s many things. God is one of them.”

  “Bitches with him agree.” He points to the girls trying to catch Mackenna’s attention at the booth, but nothing seems to make those eyes go away—not even the frown I send his way before I give him a first-class view of my backside as I turn around to order myself a drink.

  Why not?

  Safer to let the tequila put me to sleep later rather than Mackenna.

  “You nervous? Whatcha got there?” the cowboy asks, peering down at my bracelet, which I hadn’t realized I’d been playing with.

  “Something that always reminds me how human I am when I look at it,” I say, brushing his hand off. “Don’t touch it, nobody gets to touch it but me.”

  He rubs a hand down my back and trails it lower. “I think you’re hot despite your lips. I like red better. So you’re possessive about your accessories, what about the rest of you?”

  He squeezes my ass.

  Alarm skids through me. “Hey, we were being morose at the bar. What the hell happened to being plain old morose at the damn bar?”

  He grins. “See that other guy?” He nods in the direction of Leo as he watches us from next to a big black camera. “He offered compensation if we made the night interesting for your crowd.”

  “Is that so?” Leo. Ohmigod. What a douche bag.

  I remove Cowboy’s hand from my ass and consider slapping him and having Leo put that in his precious movie. Cowboy squeezes my ass again. I’m getting ready to knee him in the balls when I hear Lex’s voice call out in a friendly way, “Hey, bud, you don’t want to lose that hand, trust me.”

  In the opposite of a friendly way, the cowboy is suddenly pinned back on the bar with a jo
lt that sends a couple glasses rattling.

  “You touch her again, I’m ripping your guts out through your throat.” Mackenna pushes him back against the bar even harder.

  “Kenna!” Jax grabs his arms and tries to stop him.

  “Fucking let go,” Kenna growls as he yanks his arms free.

  I look at Leo in disbelief. He was setting up Mackenna for a show. Their precious manager would let a mass murderer in here if it would get him buzz for his precious movie. Wow. I really don’t even know what I’m doing here anymore. What am I doing? Magnolia is alone with my mother, my mother is suspicious, Mackenna is in my head, he’s in my fucking bed. He’s getting into a bar fight because of me, as if he’s my . . . boyfriend still. Like all those years. Oh god.

  I stalk across the bar, when a familiar hand with bracelets and silver rings catches me by the elbow.

  “Hey, come here, look at me,” Mackenna says, and he pulls me to his side. As much as I don’t want to, I tremble at the instant release of feeling warm and safe with his arm around me as he leads me to some sort of storage room, where we find peace and quiet.

  “So,” he demands.

  I scowl.

  “What’s going on, baby?”

  Seeing him visually checking me to see if I’m all right, I scowl harder.

  “You planned to stay at the bar all night?” he asks.

  “I was having fun, actually,” I bait.

  “Oh yeah? That sure looked like fun for that motherfucker.” He cracks the knuckles of one hand, then the other, a violence I’ve never seen before roiling in his eyes. “Where did you run off to before?”

  “I was calling home.”

  He looks incredulous. “You call home in the middle of a bar?”

  “Mother called me,” I mumble.

  “And you can’t make her wait?”

  “No, ’cause it makes it worse! It makes her suspicious, and she doesn’t know I’m here.”

  “Of course not,” he agrees, his entire countenance hard.

  “Stop questioning me, asshole, I’m not yours to command!” I push past him, and he stops me. I squirm in his hold, whining, “Let go.”

  “You still dancing to any tune she sings?” he asks. “Are you?” he commands.

  I don’t know if I can take the frustrated disappointment in his eyes.

  “Do you crave her love so much you’d sacrifice your own dreams and everything you want to please her?” he continues.

  I can’t answer.

  “She’s not the only one willing and able to protect you from anything, Pandora. Anything!”

  A door slams shut nearby, and Lionel walks in. A chill seems to spread. Mackenna’s eyebrows crease in contempt. “You’ve gone too far, Leo,” Mackenna whispers, a low threat.

  “Kenna, relax. Where’s your sense of humor?”

  A muscle flexes angrily in Mackenna’s jaw. “It’ll come back when I have my fist where I want it on your face.” Reaching out to me, he hooks a finger into the loops of my jeans and tugs me to his side. “I’m taking her back to the hotel. No cameras.”

  “One camera. Just one,” Leo pleads.

  “Fuck you, Leo.”

  Mackenna pulls me angrily out of there, and I follow. One of the camera guys is stumbling behind us. “And fuck you too, Noah.” Mackenna flips the camera. The call with my mother reminds me of why Mackenna and I can never be.

  I should tell him right now.

  Stop this right now.

  But knowing I have to stop it makes me want it all the more.

  “I don’t need you to give some asshole a purple eye for me anymore,” I huff as he guides me outside.

  “Great. Now you choose to be chatty,” he grumbles.

  We slide into the hotel limo, and he looks at me as Noah climbs in next to him, camera and all. Silence settles in the car. Mackenna stares at Noah in quiet rage, then at me. I meet his gaze, because backing down is a sign of weakness and I can’t stand him to know he makes my knees weak.

  His eyes flick to my lips. I can almost taste him. Each of the two hundred kisses he gave me in our teens, and the dozens he’s given me since I’ve been with him again. He kisses so well. I used to name his kisses. The sleepy kiss and the smiling kiss, the seductive kiss and the laughing kiss. Right now he looks like he wants to Kiss Me To Death. He looks concentrated like he’s kissing me in his head.

  “Tell me something, Pandora,” he commands huskily. I know Mackenna, and what he’s really saying is “Distract me before I do something I’ll regret.”

  On his thighs, his hands are clenched into fists, and I know he wants to make the car stop and jerk Noah and his camera out of here. He’s mad because he was being set up, and I somehow think he’s mad because they used me to get to him. He’s mad because they can get to him by using me.

  “You’re a Herculean masterpiece with a penchant for trouble,” I say.

  He’s not appeased. He leans over and grabs my face, then whispers, “Tell me something you mean, Pink. Say it. Nothing silly, nothing angry—something real. Can you do that? Or you only dress like a badass to hide the tenderness within?”

  Strangely, my throat is starting to thicken.

  He wants to open me up? To open the box in me and let all the bad stuff out?

  He reaches out and cradles my face in his palm. I struggle to tame a shiver building at the base of my spine.

  “Tender. Right. Pfft!”

  “Come on,” he presses, leaning forward, elbows to knees, his face as persuasive as his music is.

  I can’t answer that. I can’t even open my mouth while thinking of the answer, so I leap into the first subject that comes to mind. “I’m mad you pulled that guy away when I was so ready to smash my knee between his legs.”

  “Seriously? You’d kick his nuts?” he asks with obvious delight.

  “You think I wouldn’t bust his balls? That I only busted yours?”

  “You don’t only bust mine . . . you lick them too.”

  “I do not! Ohmigod, Noah, erase that!”

  Noah grins and shakes his head behind the camera.

  We’re laughing now. “Mackenna!”

  “See the way she says my name right there, Noah? She sounds guilty, doesn’t she?”

  “Mackenna, shut the hell up!” I reach out with my hand to shut his mouth, but he licks my palm and bites my finger gently and playfully. Then he twists his head and kisses me, hard. We moan as I allow myself this kiss. One second . . . two . . . three . . . then I push him and arch away. “Mackenna!”

  “What, Pandora?”

  We’re laughing, and even Noah is trying to stifle his own laugh.

  “I don’t want to kiss you. Not here.”

  “Don’t worry, I know where,” he says playfully.

  My eyes widen when I realize he’s implying I want to kiss his cock, not his mouth. “MACKENNA!” I cry again, laughing hysterically.

  When we get to the rooms, Noah’s still following us as Kenna keeps his arm around me. When I open the door to my room, Kenna tells him, “Night, dude. Bet you really want to be me right now, huh?” and shuts the door on Noah’s camera. He spins me around in the middle of the room, saying, “Come here now,” and I’m smiling, because his eyes are smiling at me too. But suddenly, his lips aren’t.

  The atmosphere turns deadly serious, and the air begins to crackle with whatever it is that always—always—leaps between us.

  I love that Kenna knows it’s hard for me to ask for what I need. Sometimes even I don’t understand why it’s so hard, but he does. I suddenly wonder if maybe he left all those years ago because I could never say I loved him.

  What if I still love him?

  He takes a breath and reaches up to stroke me, temple to chin. “You all right?” he asks seriously.

  I nod. “I am now.” His eyes watch me as his fingers trail my skin. My body starts throbbing. Right now, there is no past. There’s just now. I want to climb onto him, or want for him to climb into me.

&nb
sp; Without warning, he moves his mouth over mine, devouring the softness of my lips, his kiss sending new spirals of need swirling in my tummy. When we embrace and I make a soft whimper, he tears free, takes one ragged breath, and looks at my wet lips with those glimmering wolf eyes. My lips still burning from his kiss, he promptly recaptures my mouth, more demanding this time.

  “Yeah,” he rasps. The touch holding me against his body is both firm and persuasive, and as his mouth becomes more commanding, my eager response makes him groan.

  “Spend the night,” I whisper as I clutch his shoulders and sink my teeth into his lower lip, a lower lip I’ve been watching through the night. Before he can answer, I add, “Spend the night with me, you won’t regret it.”

  “Finally the lady sees the advantages of having a strong, capable man by her side.” His voice is all satisfaction and teasing huskiness. He has no idea who I really am—scared, lonely, vulnerable, and full of regrets—as he lifts me up in his arms and carries me to the bed.

  I swear he acts like I’m this big prize . . .

  A part of me wants to tell him I’m a big empty prize with nothing inside.

  But another part just aches for him to fill it and help me finally heal it.

  The thought that I might be hurtling past the point of no return briefly crosses my mind. But only briefly, because his slow, drugging kisses are back on my mouth, my face, my neck, sending the real world spinning on its axis. The bed nearly swallows me as he sets me down and spreads out over me.

  His hands work faster as he uses them to strip his beautiful body of his clothes and then strip me of mine, his erection thrilling me as he leans over to scrape his hands over every inch of me. Every hot touch tells me that tonight will be an act of raw possession. His possession. I usually take back as much as I give, but right now Kenna seems determined to take—and I am trembling.

  He spreads out over me and I slide my arm up the coiled muscles of his back. I move my head to the source of his breath and whimper in the only way I know how to make him come kiss me. He does. He gyrates his hips and presses against my hip bone as though he needs the contact, making a soft, growling noise as he slips the strong, probing hand of his tattooed arm between my legs.