Ripped (Real, #5)(60)

My orgasm hits me, fast and hard, and then for a while, he keeps prolonging his own pleasure by seizing me by the hips and lifting and lowering my body on his.

With my body relaxed and still rocking with the occasional residual shudder, I become his own living f*ck doll, aware of his breath, the jerks of his chest, the pulsations in his cock every time he holds me by the hips to lift me and drop me down on him. I enjoy every inch of his ecstasy as he uses me for it . . . my eyes fixed on his face and the way his jaw tightens, his neck arches, and he comes inside me with a growl so sexy, my cunt reflexively clenches around his thickness.

“God, you feel phenomenal,” he sighs at last.

He wraps his arms around me and pulls me down on him, catching his breath with deep, jagged pulls of air. He tips my head back for a moment. “How do you feel?”

“Delicious.”

“Hmm. Because you are. Delicious. Tasty as f*ck.”

He drops a kiss on me and then leans his head back. His eyes drift shut and I notice, when I peer up at him, there’s this smile of satisfaction on his face. God, he’s so beautiful. His body relaxed, his hair so short it’s dry, almost instantly. All his muscles are surrounding me, and I’m being held like I haven’t been held for years.

I drift off to sleep on his lap with a strange fullness in my chest, my face tucked into the crook of his neck, and I think of how much I wish we could’ve been if we’d been able to stay together.





SIXTEEN


FEELS LIKE A HONEYMOON EXCEPT WE’RE NOT HONEYS. ARE WE?!?!


Pandora


The lack of paparazzi means that we enjoy our motel stay so much that we book another one in Dallas. Nobody would expect a member of Crack Bikini to stay in such a place—which works for us. When I wake up, the room is bursting with evidence. Evidence of us. There’s a headset on a table, a guitar, an electric keyboard, and the remains of a bottle of wine and shared pizza.

And there’s him too.

I don’t even know what to call this feeling, but it’s a mix of both pain and pleasure every time I look at him. He smiles when I approach, but he keeps humming, stroking the keyboard with his fingers. The tone is soft, almost like a ballad. “There’s this song in my head,” he says.

Of course. There’s a reason why they’ve won three Grammy Awards so far and are considered by many to be the modern gods of rock and roll. And as I watch Mackenna—the way he makes music with his eyes closed, murmuring to himself before jotting down words—I feel the walls around me melt. For him. For how easy it is to lose yourself in the limelight. The custom coaches for touring, with their big, flashy lights. Not to mention those blue interior lights that almost make them feel like a damn whorehouse. Hiding your face half the time just to have some privacy. I couldn’t ever live with this. Not even for him. But he’s coped rather well. He’s just like he used to be, except even bolder, and more confident.

And his confidence—his boldness—is sexy.

Quietly, I watch him, for the first time accepting maybe this is how things were meant to be. Maybe this trip won’t give me revenge. Maybe it will give me peace.

I study his ears and how they look adorable, just slightly too small for his rounded skull, admiring that he’s writing his own material. By the way he hums, I’m now positive it’s a ballad.

I remember one article in Rolling Stone magazine. He and the twins had been asked about the paparazzi, and they’d said something like, “Half of it is pure lies. Pictures start popping up, and what’s worse is you don’t remember who took those pictures, when, or even how.”

“And the other half?” the interviewer had asked.

They had laughed, and it had been Mackenna who’d said, “True. Every f*cking word of it.”

They’d talked of how they recorded, taking days to rehearse and do sound checks, singing for hours on end until they got the sounds exactly right. There was talk of eighteen-hour stints at the studio, and topping the Billboard charts. The interview wound down with the guys discussing their relaxed approach to coming up with new material—meeting up to write, scribble, hum. They talked of all that.

But now, it’s just him, with a red guitar in his arms that’s as scuffed and as badass as the rocker holding it.

He hums the start, then calls me forward with a lift of his jaw.

I didn’t cry when he left me. If I’d started, I never would have stopped. But when he sets the guitar aside, pats his knee, and I drop down, he whispers five words of the song in my ear, and the prickling sensation behind my eyes surprises me.

I haven’t had to deal with listening to his voice in my ear until this month. I wasn’t prepared for how it would shake me every time. How it would hurt so deeply.

“Haven’t been able to write in a while,” he whispers, an adorable little smile crossing his lips. “Thank you for this song, Pandora.”

I nod silently. I can’t believe that, in a matter of weeks, I will spend the rest of my days seeing him on TV. Watching from afar.

“I am good for inspiration, then,” I say, searching his face, delighting in how young it looks in the morning sunlight. “Are you writing about my rotting teeth? And the frogs I eat?”

“Ahh, that’s you. How’s your song going, by the way?”

“It’s going,” I lie.