Ripped (Real, #5)(64)

“I want to gorge on you, stuff my face with you.” He slides his tongue into my ear, then retreats, the passion between us singeing me, shuddering through me. “God, Pandora, the things I want to do to you—”

“Kenna . . .”

“I’m obsessed. I’m f*cking mental about you. If you’d only let me in, Pink. Let me in, once and for all . . .”

The stupid internal struggle I’m faced with exhausts me. The constant push and pull between my brain, my heart, and my stupid horny body. I push him away, my voice wavering. “So you can break my every dream? So you can walk away without even a goodbye?”

He blinks as if I just threw a left hook from out of nowhere. “I didn’t want to . . . you think I enjoyed . . .” He’s stopped moving, and when he finally seems to take command of his baffled thoughts, his voice is edged with frustration. Taking my elbow and pulling me back to him, he growls, “Fuck! You were the one—”

“I what? I couldn’t say I loved you, so you left to punish me. That’s what you did!”

“Is that what you think of me?” He may as well have been slammed by a torpedo—that’s how stricken he looks. “You think I’d punish you? Pandora, the day I walked away from you was the day I f*cking ripped my own heart out!”

“Hey, chill, both of you!” Lex and Jax gather around us, and Lex pulls me back against him while Jax sets a hand on Mackenna’s shoulder with a look that says he doesn’t think now is the right time for us to be discussing this.

Angrily, Mackenna shoulders free and takes one step forward, dragging one angry hand over his sexy round scalp as he studies me. Everyone else is dancing, but we stand here, both of us about a word away from unraveling.

He doesn’t like seeing Lex touch me, I realize, for he reaches out and jerks me back to him. “Let’s go, Pink,” he growls.

“Kenna, we’ve grown attached to Pink here—” Lex begins.

He pushes him aside. “Stay out of this, both of you.”

? ? ?

REALISTICALLY SPEAKING, THE talk was long overdue.

Maybe neither of us wanted to venture there. Maybe we both pretended we hadn’t cared. That it hadn’t hurt. That we were over it.

Sure.

When we get back into the little cocoon of our hotel—separate from the band’s at his insistence—he asks, “Why did you go to the concert that night? Why slap me in the face with the first thing you could find?”

“Because I wanted to. Because I thought it would feel good. I wanted to make you hurt, even if it was just a tenth of the hurt you caused me.”

“I’m hurting now,” he says gruffly, then he comes close, looking down at me intensely. “Does it give you pleasure? To hurt me?”

“No,” I admit meekly, dropping my eyes in a way I rarely do. But, god, looking into his eyes right now is too much to ask. Too much, when my emotions are in a roil, and the emotions he’s stirring in me are overtaking everything else.

“Then why stay when Leo asked you to? Why stay and torture me, Pink?”

“I already told you, I wanted the money,” I argue.

“What do you want it for?”

“Saving it.” I move toward the window, stiff with dignity, staring blindly at the city lights. “For me, and for Magnolia. For independence.”

“I would’ve paid you double to leave me alone.”

I stop breathing, then turn around and look at him. He’s pacing the length of the room, restless, looking about as unsteady as I feel. My pride prickles as I realize that, of course, he would have paid me. He left. He walked away once before, determined not to see me again. “Why didn’t you?” I demand, my hurt and anger rising once again.

“Apparently I’m a f*cking masochist. When I saw you . . .” He tugs on his diamond earring and sighs as he lifts his head to me. Our gazes meet. His eyes are darkened with emotion. Dirty silver. Haunted somehow.

By me?

“If you can’t stand me, then why did you agree to this too?” I ask in a suffocated whisper, my chest clutching in pain as I anticipate his reply.

“I agreed to it in exchange for a time out—away from the band.” He waits for a moment, and then he quirks one mocking eyebrow. “You look surprised.”

“Well, what do you mean ‘a time out’? You’ve dreamed about this. You had big dreams, Mackenna, and this . . . this is your dream.”

“It’s not how I dreamed it would be,” he says, propping a shoulder negligently against the wall and tapping his fingers restlessly against his thigh. “All I wanted was to make music. I never wanted or imagined everything else. I never really wanted all of this.”

“Why create such a big band, then?”

He hikes up one shoulder. “The guys needed a lead, and I needed to get away.”

“Because of your dad?”

He pushes away from the wall and starts crossing the room, his laugh soft and bitter. “Because of you, Pandora.”

The words stun me.

Cut me.

His continuing approach unsettles me, causing little ripples in my tummy.

“I tried to be good enough for you, Pandora,” he says darkly, and with every step he takes, my heart grips harder, more painfully. “I tried to make you happy. I tried to make up for my shitty dad. But I was never good enough to be taken home to meet my girl’s family. Nothing I did could ever prove myself to you.”