Ripped

  I stare at the cool, smooth ice surface in the quiet school and I can’t believe my own eyes. Mackenna grins.

  “College hockey team plays here. I pulled a couple of strings.”

  The strings of my heart? He’s playing those so well too. My chest has never felt so full as I take the skates he extends by the laces, and I immediately kick off my shoes and slide them on.

  Ohmigod, it’s been . . . forever.

  And a day.

  I line up my skates and slide onto the ice with a floating sensation in my legs. I find my balance within a minute, and I slowly raise my hands and spin, my face turned to the ceiling rafters. “Ohmigod, do you realize how long it’s been?”

  He ties his own skates and catches up with me fast: as fast as a hockey player. “A thousand and five hundred days,” he tells me.

  When he slides his arm around my waist and pulls my body to his, aligning us perfectly, my smile fades, but my happiness doesn’t. He takes my arm and spins me like a top, for the first time in a long time, and I laugh. I laugh and squeal, “Don’t let me fall!”

  “Never.”

  He catches me when I grow dizzy, and then we skate and spin, skate and play, skate and race each other, fool around until we fall. We get tangled in each other’s legs and laugh as we go down. He catches me every time, always ready to break my fall, and then we sit there, my body slightly on top of his, catching our breath. Just like old times.

  But now, he doesn’t need to wear a cap on his head to hide his face, and I don’t need an oversized cap on mine to avoid being seen.

  His face is right before me, every angle available for my attention.

  I give it my all, while he does the same.

  I close my eyes when he traces his silver ring along my jawline, up to my temple, around my ear. “I love your face.” His voice is thick, sexy. Unique.

  I feel it in every cell of me.

  My eyes open to find his, and his stare is intent. Unapologetic. Reverent and still very, very busy taking me in.

  “And your lips,” he murmurs thickly, his ring now rubbing them too. “I love making these lips smile.” I find myself smiling and feeling an intense happiness when he smiles back at me.

  No bullshit. This is real. And perfect.

  “All right, lady, time to go,” he says, getting up on his feet.

  “Good. My butt’s frozen,” I lie.

  But I never want to leave this place. I never want to forget how I feel when I’m in his arms, spinning and spinning and spinning like a kid.

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  WE STOP AT a motel, the first we find after sunset. We’re both tired. Mackenna pulls me inside, opens the shower, and murmurs, “Come shower with me.”

  My first instinct is no.

  Too intimate . . .

  Too risky . . .

  Danger.

  “No funny business. Promise.” He lifts his hands innocently.

  My heart seems to lead before my brain can settle on what to do, and before I know it, I’m already peeling off my clothes, aware of the liquid tenderness in his gaze as he watches me.

  He keeps his word, but I can tell it’s a test of honor. He’s very hard. His erection almost gets in the way every time we shift around to help each other soap up. I try to soap up quickly so I can finish quickly and stop feeling jittery and hot, but when he soaps me up with his big hands, I just can’t rush the shower anymore. So a quick shower turns into a long shower. He soaps me, and I soap him. We close our eyes. Groan a little. Whisper, “You feel good.” That came from me, and he’s not far behind as he lathers my hair with shampoo, his wet lips brushing my earlobe. “You smell good. I want to taste you tonight.”

  The panel steams up.

  “I really need to work,” I say reluctantly.

  “No one’s stopping you,” he says.

  “Okay.”

  I step out of the shower and wrap myself in a towel, but Mackenna remains, rinsing the rest of the soap from himself. As I towel dry, I notice him in the stall, turning the knob for cold water. He closes his eyes as the water runs down his chest. He groans, and I hadn’t realized he was so aroused by our shower; his cock looks like a baseball bat aimed high for a home run swing.

  Between my legs, I ache with the want to have that, him, in me. Way to go for saying you need to work, Pandora.

  Idiot.

  I turn away when he steps out of the shower, and it takes me a moment to have the courage to take a peek. He’s got a towel around his hips, a glorious, wet rock god, flashing me a smile. “You okay, babe? Hop on the Wi-Fi and do your thing while I dick about with my guitar.”

  Did he say “dick”?

  “O-okay,” I say, flushing like a moron as I pull out my laptop and sit on the bed with it.

  Is he still hard?

  Did it go soft?

  Does he still want to do it?

  Hell I want to do it.

  We both work quietly, and I peer from my computer to where he sits on the sofa by the window. He looked so fucking hot taking a cold shower I’m still stewing inside. He looks hot stroking those fingers over his guitar. Even when he showers, he can never really get rid of the kohl under his eyes, and Lord, he looks hot with that too. I can’t believe how hard he’d been in that shower. Can that possibly be remedied by just cold water? He didn’t pressure me when he’d given me his word, and by god, that’s superhot too.

  Listen to me. This, right here, is all the sex I didn’t have for six years demanding to be experienced. Fuck that. I have work to do.

  Back to my computer: I have an e-mail from Melanie.

  Why aren’t you answering your texts?

  At least tell me you’re alive.

  Brooke is worried too.

  I’m good I shoot back. Then I peer up at him again, biting down on my smile. Really, really good.

  I smile. Yes, it’s good. But do I really think things will be any different from last time? That he’ll stop doing whatever he wants for me? Or I could ever leave Magnolia alone with my mom for him?

  I can’t. We’ve hurt each other too much. Our past runs too deep. We can’t suddenly just be . . . happy.

  Yes, but you can have sex, you silly nymphomaniac.

  I set my computer on the bed. I can work when I get back home, to my life, but he won’t be here forever.

  Quietly, I walk up to him. “What are you writing? Do you need more inspiration? I seem to be good at that.”

  He smiles and jots down a couple of more things on his iPhone, then sets it aside.

  I point at his lap, covered still in a white towel. “I’m going to sit here. You look like an amazing, sexy chair.”

  “And I’m all yours,” he says with a curious glint in his eyes. He sets his guitar aside.

  Once I’m settled, I slide my arms around his neck. “So, any crimes planned for the night?” I taunt.

  “Aside from ravaging you, flogging you, and making you wake the motel with your yells of pleasure? No, none at all.”

  I don’t understand why he whisked me away, but he saved me an airplane flight. He makes me have fun. Now I want to seduce the sexy fuck, but I’m unsure how to start. I can almost hear Melanie groaning as she’d say something like, “He’s a guy. How complicated can it be? Just stroke him and watch him turn to putty . . .”

  “I’ve been thinking about you all day,” I whisper, leaning over and licking his earlobe.

  “Shit. Fuck. Really?” He grabs me and pulls me back to look at me, searching my face.

  “Love taking a shower with you,” I whisper, feeling vulnerable to admit it.

  He surveys me and his voice thickens. “You’re serious, babe?”

  I’m so aroused just smelling the soap on his skin, I groan and lean over, licking his ear again. “I didn’t realize a man could get so hard just by taking a shower with a girl. Did you like soaping me? Was it on purpose, inviting me to the shower? To make me hot?”

  His eyes are starting to smolder.

  “It t
urned me on, Kenna,” I moan, rubbing my chest against him. I’ve never felt so needy, so desperate.

  His cock is quickly getting into the game, pulsing thick under my bottom. “Do you want to bring one of those tits over to my mouth so I can give it a good long suck?” His eyes are dirty silver and his words are just as dirty. Just as hot.

  “Yes, please,” I whisper, pulling off my sleep shirt and lifting one of my breasts to his mouth.

  “How about a bite?” He nips my nipple before I can say anything, his teeth sinking lightly around my areola. I arch and rock against his cock.

  “Oh, god,” I breathe when his cock makes delicious friction between my legs.

  My pulse skitters deliciously fast and I bite his earlobe, whimpering, “Yes.”

  “Hmm. You’re so fucking hot for it. How about we do start thinking of whips and floggers for you, hmm?”

  “You’re into that?”

  “Right now, I’m into how fucking hot you are.”

  Mindlessly, I run my lips over his throat as I moan out, “And I’m into you. And this. And how hard you are under my bum.”

  His erection is thick and long against my pussy and buttocks. I take my breast and feed it into his mouth again. Dizzy with pleasure, I watch his tongue lave the tip of my nipple. I watch him nibble, then suck me. Watching him do the same to both my breasts arouses me to the point where I’m drenched.

  “Put a rubber on my dick and put it in you.” When I pull out a condom from the back pocket of his discarded jeans, he catches my face with one hand, holding me in place so I never once stop looking at him as I unravel his towel, slide the condom over his beautiful, straining erection, and then hold his dick up high as I lower myself on him.

  “Oh, god,” I moan, letting go of the base of his cock so my pussy can slowly slide all the way down.

  He groans, “Pandora. Gorgeous. Pink . . . open your legs wider so you can take more of me.”

  I do.

  Another groan, this one from both of us.

  “Ahh, Jesus, rock me slowly. Rock my fucking world, Pink.”

  He sounds so lost in me I end up kissing him, slow and deep as I slowly, deliberately slowly, drag out our pleasures as I ride him on the sofa. He drags his mouth down my neck, nips at my breasts, my chin, rubbing his hands just as slow over my curves.

  He grabs my ass and slides one finger down my buttocks, caressing between my ass cheeks. When he uses his middle finger to tease the rosette of my ass, a yelp of pure pleasure leaves me.

  “Kenna!” The pleasure as he penetrates my ass twists and pulls my body.

  “That’s right. I’m gonna rock your world too.” He twirls his tongue over my nipples and fingers me deeply to prove it. I’m nearly in torment. My every orifice being fucked by him. I’m being cock fucked, finger fucked, tongue fucked at the same time by the sexiest man I know.

  My orgasm hits me, fast and hard, and then for a while, he keeps prolonging his own pleasure by seizing me by the hips and lifting and lowering my body on his.

  With my body relaxed and still rocking with the occasional residual shudder, I become his own living fuck doll, aware of his breath, the jerks of his chest, the pulsations in his cock every time he holds me by the hips to lift me and drop me down on him. I enjoy every inch of his ecstasy as he uses me for it . . . my eyes fixed on his face and the way his jaw tightens, his neck arches, and he comes inside me with a growl so sexy, my cunt reflexively clenches around his thickness.

  “God, you feel phenomenal,” he sighs at last.

  He wraps his arms around me and pulls me down on him, catching his breath with deep, jagged pulls of air. He tips my head back for a moment. “How do you feel?”

  “Delicious.”

  “Hmm. Because you are. Delicious. Tasty as fuck.”

  He drops a kiss on me and then leans his head back. His eyes drift shut and I notice, when I peer up at him, there’s this smile of satisfaction on his face. God, he’s so beautiful. His body relaxed, his hair so short it’s dry, almost instantly. All his muscles are surrounding me, and I’m being held like I haven’t been held for years.

  I drift off to sleep on his lap with a strange fullness in my chest, my face tucked into the crook of his neck, and I think of how much I wish we could’ve been if we’d been able to stay together.

  SIXTEEN

  FEELS LIKE A HONEYMOON EXCEPT WE’RE NOT HONEYS. ARE WE?!?!

  Pandora

  The lack of paparazzi means that we enjoy our motel stay so much that we book another one in Dallas. Nobody would expect a member of Crack Bikini to stay in such a place—which works for us. When I wake up, the room is bursting with evidence. Evidence of us. There’s a headset on a table, a guitar, an electric keyboard, and the remains of a bottle of wine and shared pizza.

  And there’s him too.

  I don’t even know what to call this feeling, but it’s a mix of both pain and pleasure every time I look at him. He smiles when I approach, but he keeps humming, stroking the keyboard with his fingers. The tone is soft, almost like a ballad. “There’s this song in my head,” he says.

  Of course. There’s a reason why they’ve won three Grammy Awards so far and are considered by many to be the modern gods of rock and roll. And as I watch Mackenna—the way he makes music with his eyes closed, murmuring to himself before jotting down words—I feel the walls around me melt. For him. For how easy it is to lose yourself in the limelight. The custom coaches for touring, with their big, flashy lights. Not to mention those blue interior lights that almost make them feel like a damn whorehouse. Hiding your face half the time just to have some privacy. I couldn’t ever live with this. Not even for him. But he’s coped rather well. He’s just like he used to be, except even bolder, and more confident.

  And his confidence—his boldness—is sexy.

  Quietly, I watch him, for the first time accepting maybe this is how things were meant to be. Maybe this trip won’t give me revenge. Maybe it will give me peace.

  I study his ears and how they look adorable, just slightly too small for his rounded skull, admiring that he’s writing his own material. By the way he hums, I’m now positive it’s a ballad.

  I remember one article in Rolling Stone magazine. He and the twins had been asked about the paparazzi, and they’d said something like, “Half of it is pure lies. Pictures start popping up, and what’s worse is you don’t remember who took those pictures, when, or even how.”

  “And the other half?” the interviewer had asked.

  They had laughed, and it had been Mackenna who’d said, “True. Every fucking word of it.”

  They’d talked of how they recorded, taking days to rehearse and do sound checks, singing for hours on end until they got the sounds exactly right. There was talk of eighteen-hour stints at the studio, and topping the Billboard charts. The interview wound down with the guys discussing their relaxed approach to coming up with new material—meeting up to write, scribble, hum. They talked of all that.

  But now, it’s just him, with a red guitar in his arms that’s as scuffed and as badass as the rocker holding it.

  He hums the start, then calls me forward with a lift of his jaw.

  I didn’t cry when he left me. If I’d started, I never would have stopped. But when he sets the guitar aside, pats his knee, and I drop down, he whispers five words of the song in my ear, and the prickling sensation behind my eyes surprises me.

  I haven’t had to deal with listening to his voice in my ear until this month. I wasn’t prepared for how it would shake me every time. How it would hurt so deeply.

  “Haven’t been able to write in a while,” he whispers, an adorable little smile crossing his lips. “Thank you for this song, Pandora.”

  I nod silently. I can’t believe that, in a matter of weeks, I will spend the rest of my days seeing him on TV. Watching from afar.

  “I am good for inspiration, then,” I say, searching his face, delighting in how young it looks in the morning sunlight. “Are you writing abo
ut my rotting teeth? And the frogs I eat?”

  “Ahh, that’s you. How’s your song going, by the way?”

  “It’s going,” I lie.

  At first, I stop my hand from reaching out to touch his hair, then I go ahead and let it touch anyway. “Morning, Mackenna.”

  He returns my look, a silver color the likes of which I’ve never seen in his eyes. “Good morning, Pandora.”

  We’re both smiling like idiots when we hear his cell buzz. Lifting a finger, he tells me, “One second, Pink,” and lifts the phone to his ear. I get up for the room service menu when I hear him greet someone I assume to be one of the twins.

  “No, I’m not shitting you,” he says in a tone that says, I’m shitting all over you. “The motor just up and died. Gotta get a new car, and they’re out of muscle cars. I’m not riding in a pansy car. Hell, Pink won’t ride in anything but a muscle car now. So, I’ll just get a bike or some shit.”

  Ohmigod! Seriously? I wheel around, and he gives me a thumbs-up.

  I scowl and plant my hands on my hips.

  “Yeah, she wanted another Lambo or a Ferrari, but they can’t get them here on time, so I improvised.”

  Shaking my head, I go take a quick shower. It doesn’t take long, and I’m pulling out a change of fresh clothes, when, phone still pressed to his ear, he leaps from the sofa and takes them from me, setting them aside.

  Ooooh. He doesn’t want me to dress?

  He’s listening to the other end, saying, “Hmm, yes,” and nodding as he peels the towel off me, then turns me to face the window. At first I don’t understand—then I spot it. In our parking space. Where the Lamborghini used to be.

  A red motorcycle—brand new, as if he’s just bought it—is parked outside, two helmets hanging from the handlebars. He hangs up. “I just bought us a couple of more hours away from practice.”

  “To do what?”

  “You.”

  I glance over my shoulder and into his masculine face as he cups my breast from behind, his hand strong and eager as it pinches and plays with my nipple.