Ripped (Real, #5)(65)

“I never made you prove yourself to me!” I gasp.

But his face is grim now, a frown of remembrance flitting across his features as he stops a good three feet away from me. “You wouldn’t walk next to me on the street. By the time I left town, you were determined that nobody know I’d been with you.”

“Because my mother would have my head! It had nothing to do with you not being good enough. I thought you were . . .” My words are choked with anxiety. “I thought you were the most amazing human being I’d ever met, Kenna. You had goals, you knew who you were, and who you wanted to be. And what was I? Mourning, confused . . . unwanted.”

“You were wanted by me. Yet you walked next to any f*cking guy you knew except me. Even though I was yours.” The brilliant pain in his eyes nearly bowls me over with its intensity.

“I didn’t want it to be them, I wanted it to be you!” I cry.

“It was me!” he shoots back. “But you wouldn’t have it.” He openly studies me, the muscle ticking in his jaw betraying his frustrations. “Even when you gave yourself to me, you still held back. You gave me your body, your time, but not you. Never you.”

His gaze claws into me as if he can find me—the real me—inside here somewhere, and when he reaches out to take my hand in his hand, my emotions rage at the gentle squeeze he gives me. “I loved you, Pandora. I loved you so f*cking hard.”

Oh, how wrong I was to think you could hurt someone so much and ever find real closure. It just hurts more, and more, and more. “But that’s over now,” I whisper.

He swears and reaches out for me, but I edge back. “Don’t. I’ll never forgive myself if I cry right now,” I warn.

“I cried for you, Pandora. Drunk and sober, I cried for you, and I’m not ashamed to say it.”

“Don’t! Stop, Kenna!” I spin around and blink rapidly, and thankfully, he doesn’t touch me when he walks up to the window, stopping an inch to my right.

He sighs, dragging his hand through his hair as we both stare outside.

“Look, this is over in a week. Let’s just try and be friends. I don’t want to hate you, Mackenna. Hating you makes me miserable.”

He turns me around to face him. His eyes are brilliant, and if my gaze weren’t blurry, maybe I’d see the pain I can hear in his voice. “Whatever you want.”

He leans forward and kisses my forehead.

The lump in my throat grows.

Framing my face with his big, wide hands, he kisses the tip of my nose, my chin, my forehead.

“Kenna . . . ,” I whisper. “I think I’m ready to go home. This wasn’t how I imagined it either.”

He keeps kissing me.

My throat hurts. Like all my sins and mistakes are trapped in me, like everything else. Trapped like my love for him, and anything good I have to give. He rains kisses on my face, gently, as if he truly cares about me, bringing all the things that I’m feeling just under the surface of my skin to bloom in full view. For anyone and everyone to see.

Every touch feels multiplied in intensity. My breath’s suddenly hitching. His voice in my ear says, “Are you planning my murder behind those eyelids?”

I open them. “No,” I gasp. “I don’t hate you anymore, I—”

“Then look into my eyes.” His eyes keep holding mine as he lays me on the bed, my hair falling behind me. He flicks open the button of my jeans.

Our gazes remain locked.

My fingers anxiously work at his pants. What starts out slow begins moving faster. I hear the rasp of our zippers. The pound of my heart. Our breaths. My soft gasp when he shoves his long fingers into my panties and cups my sex. His groan when I shove my hand into his briefs and curl my fingers around his erection. I stroke him lightly, finding the tip already wet.

For me.

When he hands me over a condom, I stroke him lovingly while I roll it on his length. He sinks his free hand into my hair and secures the back of my head as he takes my lips with his, roughly, deeply, his tongue darting into my mouth as his finger enters me. A gasp leaves me. His mouth is not apologetic. It never is.

I squeeze his cock and rub the heel of my palm against his balls, wrapping my tongue around his. “Fuck me. Fuck me hard,” I whisper.

And as he lifts me up and centers me on the bed, I curl my legs around his body, and then he pins my hands at my sides, lacing his fingers through mine.

“I said don’t stop looking at me,” he commands.

So I don’t.

? ? ?

I WAKE UP to feel him stroking my hair, and for a moment I’m too groggy to wonder what alternate reality this is. A reality where I get to feel a man’s arms holding me close, like he desperately wants me there. His hands in my hair like he’s obsessed with the feel of it. Maybe he wants to send an e-mail to the makers of my shampoo, commending them for leaving my hair with such a pleasant smell. Such silkiness.

I wake up feeling . . . the opposite of angry.

“Hey.” He brushes his lips to mine, then catches my eyes open and he’s smiling. He wiggles his brows to the cart of food in the living room. “Hungry?”

“Whaaa—? Where did that come from?”

“A button I found on this thing here called a phone. It read, Room Service.”

“I didn’t hear them knock.”