Ripped (Real, #5)(6)

“She’s f*cking Pandora?” Lionel asks Mackenna.

When Mackenna’s hard jaw only tightens, Lionel turns slowly around to study me. My brain is a tangle of confusion because Mackenna is staring straight at me like he can’t believe I’m standing here.

I can barely take his steely gaze. I thought this night would give me closure. That I could make him feel in front of his fans like I felt when he left: humiliated. Instead he stands there, every inch the rock god, even with tomato puree on his chest. He owns the room, carrying that unnamable X factor that nobody can pinpoint but that he has in spades, that tells you he owns this room and everyone in it.

And that fact only serves to piss me off further.

“Lionel,” he says in a low, warning tone.

Just one word makes Lionel ease back. Now nothing stops Mackenna from staring straight at me.

My face burns as I remember how I loved him. Deep, hard, completely.

Don’t think about that. You hate him now!

“Nice hair.” He shoves his glasses into the belt loops of his pants.

His voice, oh god.

His eyes run down the length of my hair, and Melanie offers, “I suggested she add a little spirit to her hair, so at least she looks happy.”

He doesn’t even look at Melanie. He looks at me in the most intense way, specifically the pink strand in my hair, waiting for me to answer. I loathe that pink strand, but not as much as I loathe him.

“Nice tights,” I return, and gesture to his leather pants. “How’d you get into them? From the top of a building and with a pound of butter?”

I refuse to let his chuckle move me, but I feel it run down my legs as he starts approaching. “No need to use butter anymore. These pants are a part of me.” He holds my gaze helplessly trapped. “Like you were a part of me once.”

He’s coming closer, and every step affects me. My cheeks burn. The gall of him to remind me. I’m so angry. Years of hurt simmer in me. Of loneliness and betrayal.

“Fuck you, Mackenna.”

“Already done, Pandora.” His eyes burn with equal fury as he takes a tomato from the table and surveys it with glinting gray eyes. “Is this for me too?”

“That’s right. All. Yours.”

His lips curl in derision as he tosses it up like a ball and easily catches it, all the while watching me.

“Your show is so bad, Melanie and I felt we had to give your fans some real entertainment.”

He runs his eyes across my face, studying me. “Yeah, by humiliating the f*ck out of me.”

I can’t stand the way he looks at me, his eyes tracing the same path. My eyebrows, my nose, my lips, my chin, my cheekbones. He makes me wonder if I looked at the wrong mirror today, as if there’s something even remotely interesting to see. I swear nothing prepared me for having his eyes on me again. Nothing. I want to get out of here so fast, he won’t even see my butt as I go.

“Let me go, Mackenna.”

“All right, Dora. But first a parting gift.” Saying my least favorite nickname, he crushes the tomato in one fist, then lifts his hand, dropping little pieces of it over my head, watching me as I gasp and the juice spreads down my face and the side of my neck.

“There you go,” he croons, his smile wolfish as he works his fingers into my hair to make the juice seep deeper. When I struggle to pull free, he grips the back of my head and presses his nose to my ear, making me tense to stifle a shudder. “You just pissed off my entire f*cking band. Do you realize the kind of charges we’re going to press?”

Yes, I do. My mother is a lawyer, so I have a pretty good idea.

So why did I think the fact that he deserved it gave me a free pass to be reckless tonight?

Fuck me.

He’s got me f*cked.

And he’s so close. I’m strangely paralyzed as his lips move by my ear, causing an unwanted quiver down my legs. My nipples hurt all of a sudden and my body is in some strange contracting mode.

“Are you suicidal, or just looking to leave home? Because trust me, jail won’t be much of an improvement.”

“And your f*cking face isn’t much improved with the egg facial I gave you.”

His friends, the twins, explode in laughter, but Mackenna doesn’t.

He surveys me with ill-concealed anger, and somehow I have an acute memory of the last time I looked into those slate gray eyes. His heavy stare and the touch of his tongue on mine zipping like white-hot lightning through my body. Him moving, his hands on my hips, holding me beneath him while I thrash. His groans telling me how much he likes being inside me.

It hurts. The sight of him hurts.

I didn’t expect it to.

As if my proximity has just triggered the same memories in his mind, he blatantly studies my body, his gaze lingering on my breasts, my mouth—a gaze hot and tactile and making me squirm—before he focuses back on my face as he speaks to the others.

“I’ll take care of the damages,” I hear him say, those eyes still on me, ruthless and calculating as if he’s just come to a decision. “And I’ll settle accounts with her directly.”

“Ha! You’re settling nothing with anybody here,” Melanie scoffs.

He lets out a cold male chuckle and pins his attention on her. “What’s your name, Barbie?”

“Melanie Meyers, *.”