Ripped (Real, #5)(40)

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 *. 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 f*cking ravage your mouth and give Lionel exactly what he wants. A kiss that’s going to be plastered on every f*cking 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 f*cking fool, singing about you as if I don’t want you when the truth is, I want you more than my next f*cking 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.