Ripped

  He grins, his diamond earring glinting as he leans over and presses a butterfly kiss to my shoulder. “I had the car towed,” he confesses.

  “But it was working just fine.”

  He nibbles my skin, sending a ripple of warmth through me. “Listen, Pink. You don’t get to be where I am by not stretching the truth now and again.”

  He turns me around, and I feel his erection poking deliciously into my stomach. “Mackenna,” I protest.

  “Exactly what I hoped you’d say, but not the right tone,” he murmurs. “Let’s remedy that, Pink. I want you moaning it.”

  He brushes my lips with his. I hold my breath as a rush of hot lightning bolts hit me. He brushes my lips again, and when I mewl, he chuckles at the victory.

  “Mackenna,” I say, groaning as I grasp the back of his head.

  He stops chuckling and slides his open hands around my waist to my ass, settling his lips on mine like he wants to taste every fiber of me. My head falls back and he cups my skull in one hand, scouring every corner of my mouth with his silken, hot, delicious tongue. That makes me moan. He groans in return and pulls me up against the wall.

  And there, he fucks me.

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  I’M EXCITED ABOUT riding that bike. Bad boy. Bike. I might have fantasized about it once . . . or twice. But I scowl so he doesn’t know it. “A helmet? Really? In all my dreams of bike riding, I never once wore a helmet.”

  “We’re taking this down to New Orleans after the concert. Hate to break it to you, gorgeous, but you’re hardheaded, not immortal, and I want that pretty head intact so I can keep messing with it.”

  “Oh, well, when you put it that way.”

  I want to stop the flocks of nervous butterflies inside me. To remind myself that he hurt me, and he will do it again. But apart from Magnolia, he has always been the only one to make me truly happy. To bring out the less grumpy side of me.

  “Put it on,” he says, strapping the helmet on my head. He peers into my eyes, smacks a kiss on my lips, then climbs onto the bike. Swinging my leg over, I follow, my whole body aware of where my breasts press his back, where my parted legs rest along his thighs. I tuck my cheek to his back and feel the rumble of the Ducati as he ignites it, all the while telling myself, over and over, that none of this is real.

  “You going to hang tight, gorgeous?” he says, reaching behind me and squeezing my butt, pressing me closer.

  “I’m fucking tight, Kenna. It’s not like I’m going to let go, drop, and die!” I say, my laughter fogging my visor.

  “Jesus, that mouth,” he says, shaking his helmet. He turns, and under the blue tinted visor, I can feel his eyes take me in as he pulls my arms tighter around his waist. Then he grabs the handle, flicks up the kickstand, and with another delicious rumble, we’re off.

  I laugh out loud, and I think he hears me, because, through the wind, he turns slightly. Most of his face is hidden, but I can tell his grin is huge. “You like that?” he says, and his voice carries over the noise of the bike.

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you feel?”

  Happy, I think to myself.

  “I feel great,” I call out. “Just please don’t crash.”

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  IN DALLAS, THE stage lights crackle as the dancers perform, and as the orchestra blares, Kenna, Jax, and Lex take the stage by storm. Later, when he sings one of their slower songs, Kenna joins the orchestra on the piano while his public waves thousands of lighters in the dark. “Pandora’s Kiss” is the last song, and when it starts, the drums kick in with extra vigor, each drumbeat coinciding with the lift of Mackenna’s fist.

  I watch from below. Lionel told me to observe the female dancers because the producers really want me up there for Madison Square Garden. It’s hard, because although I try to keep my eyes on them as they dance all around Kenna—and I really do try—my eyes can’t help straying to him. The lights caressing his skin, shining on his purple rock wig, making even his thumb ring glint as he dances in a way only he can. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m beginning to understand why some of the fans cry at the mere mention of Crack Bikini.

  SEVENTEEN

  BACK WITH THE BAND

  Pandora

  After the concert, the guys are, once again, determined to party. Mackenna leads me into the bar and hunts down one of the waiters. “What do you want to drink?” he asks me.

  “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

  I hear him order for us, and then I’m once again being casually steered toward a booth in the back. “Shame on me for expecting Crack Bikini to party somewhere tamer,” I say, glancing at the bar/disco place.

  “This is tame, babe, but don’t worry—we’ll get the fun started soon enough.”

  He’s directing me to the darkest booth in the darkest corner of the club when he’s stopped by two guys about his age, who both call him “the bomb!” as in, “You’re the fucking bomb, dude!”

  As they high-five, swear, and do generally ridiculous boy handshakes, I watch the Crack Bikini dancers jiggle and dance their way toward a dance floor flickering with lights. The music reverberates everywhere in the room. Under my feet. Under my seat.

  Some girls separate from their flocks and fly over to Mackenna and the two men still nearly praying to him, and the moment they reach them, they start dancing around him.

  “Dance with us, Kenna!”

  He slides an arm around each of their waists and immediately moves his body to theirs, all while still talking to the other guys. He is a great dancer. A great singer. A lover of life. Of fun. Games.

  Games.

  I drop my gaze to the tabletop. You’re such an idiot, I swear to myself.

  This is just a game to him. A challenge. Like The Taming of the Shrew.

  “What’s up, pussycat?” Lex drops into the booth beside me, jerking my face back up with a fist under my chin.

  “Not much. You sound drunk,” I say.

  “That may be because I am?” He laughs and nods toward Mackenna. “It’s because of you he makes good music, you know. Every song.”

  “Your number one hit is the worst song I’ve ever heard in my life, FYI.”

  “No, it’s not, and that’s not the only song he wrote about you. Maybe it’s not a bad thing you broke his goddamn heart.”

  “Me?” I sputter.

  “Oh, please! You think you didn’t? He’s never done more than fuck a passing girl ever since you, and it’s all because of the way you burned him.”

  “Me?” I cry in outrage, completely disbelieving.

  “This jerk bothering you, Stone?” Mackenna asks as he sets my drink down and slides in next to me.

  I smirk playfully. “He can’t help it, I guess.”

  “Dude, I was just telling her what a great catch you are,” Lex tells him. “Trust me, you want me to talk to her.”

  Mackenna slides an arm along the back of the seat behind me and leans in. The gesture is casual in nature, but I’m not deceived. He takes a sip of his drink. “Uh-huh,” he says, nodding in a way that says, “Suck my dick.”

  “She doesn’t care that you like wearing pink hair during your concerts. She likes that it matches her skunk-look,” Lex continues. “She also doesn’t care that you talk like hell in the morning. She doesn’t care your ten-inch dick can rip her in half. She’s all for you, man.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know—like why your ass is parked right next to her?”

  “Keeping her warm.”

  “Get out of here, Lex.”

  “Dude, I’m tired as fuck, chill.” He eases away from the booth, though, and I feel a hand on my thigh. My eyes flick up to meet silver ones, and Mackenna smiles at me.

  Danger . . .

  My heart starts to pound.

  I can’t fall for him again. I can’t.

  But you are. You are. You are!

  “Your hand going somewhere?” I ask breathlessly, sounding amused even though I’m more alarmed than amus
ed. And excited. I’m more excited than anything else.

  “Yes,” he says as he slides his fingers higher, his eyes shining with something. Challenge? Lust? His head ducks, and my stomach dips as I feel his lips, his breath, on my ear. “I can’t keep my eyes off you, and I want my hands on you, my lips on you. Really, I’m developing a serious problem with sharing you, even for the night.”

  I laugh nervously. “Do these lines usually work for you?”

  “Remember our first time?” he continues, ignoring me, his seductive whisper caressing my ear as his fingers stroke up my side, beneath my top, as though . . . as though he really likes to touch my skin.

  He snakes his hand around my waist and settles there, on the side of my rib cage, his thumb only a hairsbreadth away from the underside of my breast.

  “No, I don’t remember,” I lie through uneven breaths. “It’s all that Diet Coke offing my brain cells.”

  But my brain contradicts me, and as he presses a less-than-innocent kiss to my temple, I’m transported back seven years, to a booth like this one, hands like these, lips like these. Back to a time when I was confused about who I was, and who I wanted to be, but never confused about this boy.

  They’ll see us, Kenna . . .

  What’s wrong if they see? Why, are you fucking ashamed of me?

  He’s a man now. Hard. His hard thigh against mine. His hand curling tighter around my ribs. He used to be frustrated and pained because I wouldn’t allow my mother to know about us. I knew she’d take him away. But in the end it didn’t matter. He left all on his own.

  “You do remember. I can see in your eyes that you do,” he says softly.

  I close my eyes as he presses another kiss, this one a soft, seductive flutter, against the corner of my lips. “I don’t like to remember either, Pink. It’s the worst form of torture, to think of the way you used to look at me. To think you won’t ever look at me like that again,” he whispers.

  I force my eyes open and look at his face, so close my hand itches to curve around his skull. Leaning closer, my teeth tug and play with the diamond earring on his ear, and he holds his breath, as if barely holding himself together.

  When I edge back, his gaze is so intense and I feel so drugged by my own effect on him, I start closing my eyes. He stops me. “Don’t. Don’t fucking close them.”

  I keep them open and his jaw flexes, his eyes dark as twilight, his pupils dilated, and I’m scared. Scared of everything. Of the heat of his body on mine. Of his gaze holding me. I’m scared of how close he feels, how close we are . . . emotionally.

  He smiles, but it’s a smile that’s not quite the cocky smirk I’m used to. It’s tender, so tender. I’m confused as he rubs his silver thumb ring over my jawline, his wolf’s eyes staring deep into mine. “I swear you took something from me, but I’ve never been able to figure out what.”

  I loved you, you idiot. And you loved me too. And it scared you—like it scared me—and so you left!

  The reminder makes me squirm. I try to put some distance between us. To put up my walls. I jerk my head around to stare blindly at the dance floor. “I stole your heart, of course. I chewed it up and spat it out. It’s why you don’t feel anything now.”

  “There’s my man-eater.” The laughter that follows doesn’t sound merry, though. He’s just following my lead, but I know he doesn’t really find the comment funny.

  He tugs playfully on the pink strand of my hair. “Okay, Pink,” he says, conceding me this one, “so if you won’t walk with me down Memory Lane, then at least talk to me.”

  I don’t know what to say, and I find myself using silly words to deflect his attention, like I used to with my mother when I was young. With Mackenna, when we had long, comfortable silences and I felt like breaking it—or when he felt like making me laugh.

  “Circumcision,” I blurt out.

  He bursts out laughing, and this time it’s real, and it’s a sound I love. “Bad girl.”

  “Liposuction,” I continue, smiling now.

  “Ah, babe, you know how to skip the small talk, don’t you.”

  “Tyrotoxism!” I laugh.

  He lifts his eyebrows. “Poisoned by cheese?”

  “Yup. Sternutation!” I continue, catching my breath when he pulls me to his chest. He squeezes me to him, and emotion squeezes in my heart when he kisses the top of my ear.

  “God, I love that laugh,” he whispers, smiling down at me. “Dance with me now.”

  “Nope.”

  “Come on, dude. Dance with me.”

  “The answer is no. And I don’t answer to ‘dude.’ Or ‘Pink.’ Or ‘gorgeous.’ ”

  “How about ‘Darth Vader,’ hmm?” Smiling, he tips my head back and teases me.

  “Why? Do you have a thing for men in masks?” I tease in return.

  “I have a thing for you.” He sighs. “Why is that I can have any girl out there and forget about her the moment I come, but you . . . ? Once just isn’t enough. I want to come in you, again and again. I want to watch you come. I’m a selfish prick who fucks girls to feel good. So, why is it with you I want to make you feel good? Explain that to me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Then dance with me.” He stands, and he stretches his large, beautiful hand with the silver ring on his thumb out for me.

  Danger . . .

  Oh, shut it, brain!

  Mackenna offers his lean, corded arm the same way he offered it to me when we were locked in the closet, but this is the first time I get to watch my own hand stretch out and slip into his. The mixture of peace and anxiety I experience at the contact disconcerts me. He leads me to the dance floor.

  Danger.

  Stop.

  All are instructions from my brain to my body, but I cease to hear them when his arms slide around me.

  There’s sweat everywhere, the music is hot, loud, high. It’s okay to have sex. Impersonal sex. But there’s nothing impersonal about what we’re doing now. Nothing impersonal in the way he presses his lips to the top of my head and drags them to my temple, his hands cupping my ass so he can rock his body to mine, grinding against me. His body is both lean and flexible, and the way he moves means I feel every muscle—including his erection.

  “I want to gorge on you, stuff my face with you.” He slides his tongue into my ear, then retreats, the passion between us singeing me, shuddering through me. “God, Pandora, the things I want to do to you—”

  “Kenna . . .”

  “I’m obsessed. I’m fucking mental about you. If you’d only let me in, Pink. Let me in, once and for all . . .”

  The stupid internal struggle I’m faced with exhausts me. The constant push and pull between my brain, my heart, and my stupid horny body. I push him away, my voice wavering. “So you can break my every dream? So you can walk away without even a goodbye?”

  He blinks as if I just threw a left hook from out of nowhere. “I didn’t want to . . . you think I enjoyed . . .” He’s stopped moving, and when he finally seems to take command of his baffled thoughts, his voice is edged with frustration. Taking my elbow and pulling me back to him, he growls, “Fuck! You were the one—”

  “I what? I couldn’t say I loved you, so you left to punish me. That’s what you did!”

  “Is that what you think of me?” He may as well have been slammed by a torpedo—that’s how stricken he looks. “You think I’d punish you? Pandora, the day I walked away from you was the day I fucking ripped my own heart out!”

  “Hey, chill, both of you!” Lex and Jax gather around us, and Lex pulls me back against him while Jax sets a hand on Mackenna’s shoulder with a look that says he doesn’t think now is the right time for us to be discussing this.

  Angrily, Mackenna shoulders free and takes one step forward, dragging one angry hand over his sexy round scalp as he studies me. Everyone else is dancing, but we stand here, both of us about a word away from unraveling.

  He doesn’t like seeing Lex touch me, I realize, for he reaches out and
jerks me back to him. “Let’s go, Pink,” he growls.

  “Kenna, we’ve grown attached to Pink here—” Lex begins.

  He pushes him aside. “Stay out of this, both of you.”

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  REALISTICALLY SPEAKING, THE talk was long overdue.

  Maybe neither of us wanted to venture there. Maybe we both pretended we hadn’t cared. That it hadn’t hurt. That we were over it.

  Sure.

  When we get back into the little cocoon of our hotel—separate from the band’s at his insistence—he asks, “Why did you go to the concert that night? Why slap me in the face with the first thing you could find?”

  “Because I wanted to. Because I thought it would feel good. I wanted to make you hurt, even if it was just a tenth of the hurt you caused me.”

  “I’m hurting now,” he says gruffly, then he comes close, looking down at me intensely. “Does it give you pleasure? To hurt me?”

  “No,” I admit meekly, dropping my eyes in a way I rarely do. But, god, looking into his eyes right now is too much to ask. Too much, when my emotions are in a roil, and the emotions he’s stirring in me are overtaking everything else.

  “Then why stay when Leo asked you to? Why stay and torture me, Pink?”

  “I already told you, I wanted the money,” I argue.

  “What do you want it for?”

  “Saving it.” I move toward the window, stiff with dignity, staring blindly at the city lights. “For me, and for Magnolia. For independence.”

  “I would’ve paid you double to leave me alone.”

  I stop breathing, then turn around and look at him. He’s pacing the length of the room, restless, looking about as unsteady as I feel. My pride prickles as I realize that, of course, he would have paid me. He left. He walked away once before, determined not to see me again. “Why didn’t you?” I demand, my hurt and anger rising once again.

  “Apparently I’m a fucking masochist. When I saw you . . .” He tugs on his diamond earring and sighs as he lifts his head to me. Our gazes meet. His eyes are darkened with emotion. Dirty silver. Haunted somehow.