Ripped

I guess I knew there could be repercussions to being in the front row: listening to the crowd clamor, “CRACK BIKINI!” as he walks in, the Vikings pop out, and the music builds . . . slow at first—like foreplay—then races toward a musical orgasm that grabs you in a choke hold and doesn’t let go. I should have known my body would betray me, just like last time. I should have known I’d feel hot and bothered and confused . . .

Just like last time.

But Mackenna? He wears a spiky blue mohawk over his buzz cut, and the things that does to me. Is he teasing me, or indulging me? He’s just so good at what he does. The crowd is hyped, and he greets them all with a low chuckle and a vigorous yell.

“Aren’t you a noisy crowd tonight!”

The crowd responds by yelling louder, and after a short interlude from the orchestra, he gets into position at the center of the stage and starts to sing.

My body reverberates with the music. With his voice.

He sings with incredible focus—and one of the things I most marvel at is that he never just stands there. His body is always on the move, rippling muscles and fluid movements that have to be deceptively strong. Those leaps he makes . . . how he leaps from one level of the stage to the other and flips in the air . . . I need to consciously fill my lungs. They’ve stopped working on automatic.

And, as if the sight of him isn’t enough, the sound of his voice bolts through my body and makes my blood pump furiously in my veins. His voice is so deep and masculine, you cannot be both a woman and unaffected. He sings from the heart, and you can see it—feel it—in every word. When he sings “Pandora’s Kiss,” I can hear the anger in the song, even in the mad strike of the twins’ guitars . . . and my own anger, frustration, and pain rise up to meet Mackenna’s sudden frown.

He looks at me with pained eyes, and my stomach plummets when he keeps singing without looking away from me. Those wolf eyes have hunted me down in the crowd, snagged and captured me. He’s stopped dancing too. The dancers dance behind him, but he just sings, and looks at me, and sings, “I shouldn’t have opened you up, Pandora . . .”

As he sings his frustration and regrets to me, I know it’s for the cameras.

It has to be.

I’m confused. Confused when his anger and mine mix in a powerful combination that brings forth an undeniable, electric spark of lust. People scream, the music vibrating in all of us, but in me it’s tangled up like another being. Breathing. Pulsing. Beating.

As the music continues, Liv and Tit come up to his sides and start rubbing up his chest. He’s ignoring them, still singing while their fingers trace his nipples and chest. Just like I will in Madison Square Garden. If I don’t puke from the nerves first.

Tit looks at me from upstage. It’s a brief flick of her eyes that everyone else would miss—even me, if I weren’t so engrossed by what they’re doing to him—then she leans and licks his nipple. Jealousy flits through me as his voice rumbles through my body, spinning me into a frenzy to the point where I want to go and scream at the bitch, “He was mine first!”

He turns and moves against Tit, looking at her now as he sings, and strangely I feel the absence of his eyes like a punch in the gut. But then the guitars come in for their turn, and when his stare comes back to me, I’m charged with a thousand watts. The night progresses and his attention keeps straying to see that I’m watching him, and I feel . . . sexy, wanted, womanly. I remember how Brooke used to sit when her husband spotted her from the boxing ring. I used to think how ridiculous it was to be so stunned and excited. Yet here I am, trapped in my seat. In trying to show how tough I am, I’ve repressed the sensual side of me for so long that it feels good to embrace it now. Aware that he’s watching, I close my eyes and lose myself to the music, somehow feeling the shift in his voice.

When this last song is done, I open my eyes to see him whispering something to someone. One of the roadies comes out and ushers me backstage.

“What’s going on?” I ask, confused.

“Kenna gets a water and costume change. He wants you there.”

As the Vikings take over the microphone for a while, I find myself waiting in darkness under the stage until, suddenly, he drops through the same open elevator that lifts the Vikings at the start of the concerts.

I cry out in surprise when he rockets to the ground. He leaps off and grips me to his hard body to steady me, saying against my temple, “Easy.”

He holds me, his heart beating wildly under my ear. We’re both panting. It’s dark, but I feel his eyes looking down at me, gauging me. The silence here is eerie, but I can still hear the roars of the public outside. “I never thought you watching me perform would get to me the way it did.” His eyes are silver flames. “Did that turn you on as much as it did me?”

Whatever it is I expected, it wasn’t this.

And I bite my tongue before I can tell him that it turned me on more. My god, it turned me on more. His desire isn’t the only turn-on; it was also the way his stare felt almost intimate on me. I feel it right now, close and heady, and like a heavy anchor in my chest.

“Tell me,” he repeats, seizing my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Why didn’t you come to me last night? You’re determined to be stubborn about this, when you know I want you?” He tips my head back so I have no choice but to stare into his heartbreakingly handsome face. He wears this beautiful, partly amused, partly regretful smile. “Well, you know what they say, Pandora,” he murmurs, stroking his thumb ring over my chin. “If Muhammad won’t come to the mountain, then the mountain will come to Muhammad.”

“And you’re this walking, moving mountain?” I scoff, trying to lighten the atmosphere between us. It’s too much. It’s electric. Magnetic.

He slides his fingers under the fall of my hair and massages my scalp, the movement almost as hypnotizing as hearing his rough rocker’s voice so close. “That’s right. I heard you were dancing your heart out. You’re determined not to embarrass yourself on our final concert night?”

“That’s right.”

I focus all my attention on his strong jaw and then his mouth. Anything so he doesn’t look into my eyes and see the things I’m suddenly thinking. I want to impress you. I want you to remember the girl in the ice skates. The one you said you loved . . .

God, I’m such a bluffer. Black clothes, black nails? I’m a pussy. An innocent little kitty pretending to be Catwoman. This man could kill me, over and over, until my nine lives are done.

“You know,” he says. His tone is conversational, but there’s a lingering huskiness in his voice, an exertion from his vocal cords roughening it. “When I kiss you in front of the world, I’m going to tongue you. I’m going to fucking ravage your mouth and give Lionel exactly what he wants. A kiss that’s going to be plastered on every fucking screen across the country. A kiss you’ll never, ever forget, Pandora. It’s what you want too, isn’t it? To make people see that I’m really into you. That I’m a fucking fool, singing about you as if I don’t want you when the truth is, I want you more than my next fucking song?”

These words are so unexpected, my lungs forget to expand and contract. The only things expanding seem to be my throat and my chest, and contractions flutter between my legs. “It doesn’t matter. It’s an act,” I say.

“Is it.”

It’s a statement, not a question. He keeps his four long fingers cupping the back of my head and uses his thumb to trace the line of my neck. “I’m a singer, Pandora. Not an actor.”

One second he’s warning me, looking at me, the next he ducks with that strangely sexy mohawk and brushes his lips across mine. A teasing brush, but enough to set me ablaze.

“Urghm, Kenna . . .”

I don’t like the sound I make. Like I have longed for this for Lord knows how long, but who cares when he’s pushing his tongue through my lips. I’d make that sound again to get him to keep stroking into my mouth.

So I do.

And he rubs in, wet and slick, hot and deeper, lips angling over mine. My world spins and I grab his hard arms and push closer, while his hands settle on my bottom and he pulls me up against his hips. I can feel his big erection against my tummy. But it’s at the wrong place. I want it somewhere else.

I’m ready to twine my legs around him and rub myself against him, when he tears free and sets me aside as though it’s taking a monumental effort to do so. The mountain unable to stay away from Muhammad. “Stay here, babe. Don’t so much as twitch a single of your sweet, long, delectable little muscles. I’ll be back in three songs.”

He steps onto the elevator platform as a counter lights up in the dressing room, counting from 10 down to 0. Then he seems to remember the costume change. Racing into the room, he swears and jerks off his shirt, grabbing a new one from a hanger before he climbs back up onto the platform again.

I cover my mouth. Wet and hot, it tingles, and tastes of him.

“Stay here,” he says again.

His pale eyes glimmer on me, and his feet are braced apart, hands fisted at his sides.

I’m so hot I’m roasting in my skin. I can’t answer. God, what is he doing to me?