Ripped
Page 9“Me?! I’m not the one who covered the camera!”
“You’re right, you just threw the contents of your kitchen cabinets at me.”
I open my mouth to cuss, and he stops me.
“Didn’t you get the memo? I like oranges best.”
“You’re starting to irritate me.”
He leans over and whispers in my ear. “Next time you give me a tomato bath, I’m going to make you give me a tongue bath and clean up your mess.” He strokes the pink in my hair. “Fair warning.”
Something is crackling in the air so hard, I can’t speak or breathe. My nipples, my sex, even my skin feel hypersensitive. I wait for him to say something. A strange heat makes my jaw start chattering. Really. I haven’t seen Mackenna look at me this close in . . . years.
He puts his arm around my waist, and suddenly he starts pressing closer to me.
“Don’t touch me,” I growl.
He reaches his arm around me, and the touch of his fingers spreads warmth and pain in me. “You know you’re the only girl I’ve ever met who actually growls? Like a mean old bear,” he whispers huskily in my ear.
I especially disapprove of the tender way his thumb grazes my skin, causing delicious little ripples. And I wholeheartedly disapprove of the way he looks at me with a slight curve to one side of his lips because he knows that I do disapprove. I refuse to answer, so his scrutiny continues.
“What happened to you?” he asks me, his expression intent, his eyes concerned.
God, the gall. The way he moves his thumb . . .
“You happened!” When he’s close enough, I swing, but he grabs my wrist midair. I swing out again with my other arm but he grabs that too, setting them both over my head. The way he surveys me, like he’s dissecting me, makes me fight harder. “Let go!”
“So you can pull out a couple more tomatoes?” he asks, his eyes carving into me.
“What can I say? They looked great with your fucking Peter Pan tights!”
I struggle, but it only makes the current between our bodies crackle more, so I force myself to fall deathly still—every inch of my body aware of his hands on my wrists.
“Did you want my attention, Pandora? The rest of the band thinks you do,” he says. His low, unexpectedly soft voice rolls through me, inside my body, and I can’t think straight. My eyes blur from the force of his effect on me. I drag in a deep breath to calm down, but his hand sliding down the inside of my arm fucks up my thoughts. “Babe . . . if that’s what you want,” he finally whispers, a warning, “I can oblige.”
“You do want something. Is it me? Am I what you want?”
“Fuck, no!” I growl in outrage, swinging out my suddenly free arm.
Again he catches my wrist midair. I remember wanting his head on a platter. I remember vowing to myself that one day I’d make him tell me he loves me, and I’d laugh and leave, like he did. And I whisper, “My god, it’s really gone to your head, hasn’t it? You think you can get anything you want and always have it your way? I have news for you, asshole. I’m here to make your life a living hell, and it will all be on film. Your complete humiliation. Just watch me!”
He looks at me and says nothing. My entire body is aware of where he grips me, not hard, but . . . firm and hot. “No, baby,” he says, his teeth gritted. “You won’t ruin this for me. You got it? We give them what they want, and you won’t fucking ruin this for me.”
I clamp my jaw. “If you don’t want me to ruin this, then when we get to Madison Square Garden, you’ll say on that stage that your fucking song is a lie.”
“That’s our number one song.”
“If I do like you say . . . you tell all your fandom that it’s a lie.”
“Why?”
“Because I hate it, I hate hearing it. If they see me kiss you, they’ll think I’m Pandora, and you paint me as . . . you paint me as . . . a whore, a liar, and a . . .”
Mistake. Something dirty. Hidden. Something you regret.
Just remembering infuriates me all over again, but Mackenna keeps those silver eyes leveled on me, as though truly considering what to do.
“I can’t take that song back,” he says at last, dropping down on the seat and crossing his arms behind his head and his feet at the ankles. “But if you want to write a song about me, we’d be happy to add some music to it and play it.”
“I’m not a lyricist. Hello?”
“We’ll take it slow. You tell me what you think of me, and I’ll help you.”
“Asshole. Dog. Liar. Cheat. Scum. If you regret our time together, I regret it tenfold.”
His eyes flash dangerously, but he remains in that deceptively calm posture. “Go on,” he warns.
“Why? Your pride hurting?”
I grit my teeth, knowing that once there was a girl inside me who believed that one day she’d marry him. But the only girl left now is the angry one, the one he hurt, and she grits out, “You’ll never have me again.”
“Your lips say one thing but the rest of you screams the opposite.”
We stare for another moment, and I hate that I’m breathing hard, and somehow do feel flustered, flushed, my breasts aching, something throbbing between my legs, before I strain out, “Who cares?”
“You do,” he says. “And I do.” He stands again, comes over, and leans forward. “You hate it, but right now—knowing how much you fucking hate the way you want me—it’s making me high.”
He surveys my chin, lips, cheekbones, forehead, as if thirsty to see something in my face he fails to see. Then he whispers, “You make me hard too, but that’s about the only thing you do for me,” and loosens his hold.
“Fuck you.”
He flashes me a smile. “Oh, it’s such a pleasurable experience, I will.”
I feel strangely bereft of all fight as he puts some distance between us and settles back in the seat, lips still curled as he watches me in silence.
My insides tremble with a combination of anger and lust that I don’t want. God, he’s a narcissistic pig. So in love with himself he probably even smiles like that for his own sake in the mirror. His smile is one of the things everybody in the world can’t stop talking about. It’s one of those manly smiles that makes him look even sexier. It softens the silver in his eyes, at the same time melting your insides. Now the fact that he has a beautiful smile makes my insides boil while still attracting me.
GOD!
I want to say something painful that will hurt him. But no. He wants to punish me because I ruined his concert? I’m going to ruin. His fucking. Life.
FOUR
WHEN LIFE WAS GOOD
Pandora
A little over six years ago
“First we will get a small apartment. A loft!”
“That’s right,” a low voice answers over the top of my head.
“And you,” the husky voice murmurs, and I turn into the arms holding me. Silver eyes meet mine—silver like a wolf’s, heavy-lidded, both tender and eerily sharp. His lips are curled into this adorable smile, and I know right then and there that my boyfriend loves that I suggested a bed, of course.
“We can even get a dog,” I add cheekily.
“And a fish.”
He lifts one arm to point at the desiccated swordfish on the wall of the yacht we’ve stolen into. It’s not ours, but this is one of our hiding places. One of the many places where we meet and spend as much time together as we can.
It’s almost dawn now, and though we haven’t slept and could easily stay here forever, he grudgingly gets up and shoves his long, muscular legs into his jeans.
“Gorgeous,” he calls as he shoves a hand into his jeans pocket.
I turn from where I’m slipping into my sweatshirt.
“There’s been something I’ve been wanting you to have . . .” He steps over and holds something small and shiny to the thin streaks of light that steal through the round yacht windows. A sliver of excitement runs through my body when I realize what it is.
“Is this a promise ring?”
When my lashes raise, I find him watching me with somber intensity.
With the intensity of a boy who loves you.
Just like you love him.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper, reverently reaching out for it.
“It was my mother’s.” His voice is textured with emotion, his beautiful face harsh with it as he watches me slip it onto my finger.
“What are you promising me?” I taunt, lifting my face to his.
I will never forget the cocky lift to the corner of his lips when he said, “Me.”
Oh, god, I love him. I love him like a storm loves a sky and a smile needs a face. Mackenna is the best of me, the rock that holds me, the only one who understands me. He’s all that is left of my life that is tender and happy. I throw myself at him and he catches me, squeezes me, hugs me tighter than anyone else hugs me. “I’ll say yes and take all of you, so don’t joke about this,” I warn.