My heart melts a little as I remember, and I try to reach for the ice I need to guard myself against him. He’s no longer the boy I skated with, hid with, and thought myself in love with. He’s a famous rockstar who plays with women. Me being the first of legions and legions of others.
“What? No reply?” he asks me. To be honest, I don’t remember what we were even talking about, but his lips quirk and he adds, “Not so sure about yourself when you’re not armed with vegetables?” There’s a playful challenge in his eyes, that bad boy gleam that still makes my pulse skittish.
“Kenna, do you want a cupcake?” one of the dancers asks as she comes over and nearly decorates his face with it.
“Not now,” he tells her, shoving the offering away, his eyes homed in on me. His alluring voice—his chiseled cheekbones, that twinge of charged air—is torture to my girly parts. Tor-ture. I feel a little drunk from having the attention everyone wants.
“More drink?” she presses hopefully, offering her red cup to him.
That catches his attention, and he stares at the red cup. “What you got there?”
I don’t intend to stay here and watch this poor girl embarrass our sex in this way, so I head off in search of Lionel. I need my room key.
“Leaving the party early?” Mackenna calls as I leave.
I direct my answer to Lionel, who I’ve spotted, instead, watching the manager put his whiskey down as I reach him. “I’m tired. If it’s okay with you, I already gave a juicy tidbit to one of the photographers.” I point at the blond guy.
“Noah? Good. Appreciated.” He flips a key out. “We’ve got the entire floor. There’s a communal media room that will be open in the presidential suite. Some food storage closets in the hall.”
“Thanks.”
It takes me a while to make sense of the rooms. This is an extended-stay hotel, so the rooms are more like apartments. I hear footsteps behind me—shuffling, then giggles. It sounds like Tit and Lex, making out, but I’m not sure. I don’t bother to turn around. The urge to get away from whoever is behind me hits and on impulse I grab the next doorknob and it opens, so I peer into pure darkness.
Before I realize it’s some sort of closet, the door slams shut behind me and a celebration ensues just outside.
Great.
Fucking perfect.
They’ve locked me in here. Just like Mackenna predicted, I’m being hazed. Damn, I hate him being right.
I press my ear to the door, straining to hear them outside. They’re still out there, and I hear giggles combined with male whispers. Sighing, I look around the closet and wonder if I’m going to sleep in here. It’s a four-by-four space and not long enough to take me stretched out on the floor. So, what, I’ll sleep sitting? All fucking night? No. When they leave, I’m going to try to unlock this sucker.
Minutes pass until, suddenly, they grow mysteriously quiet. I sense them still out there, waiting for something.
But what?
Then I hear the voice. Even though it’s muffled, I know exactly who it belongs to, because all the little hairs on my arms rise to attention.
Fuck no. Please. Anyone but him.
“What did you fuckers do?” Mackenna growls under his breath. When nobody answers him, he adds, “What? Is she in there, you pricks?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Why don’t you check and see for yourself, dude?” one of the twins answers.
There’s a cackle.
And then I hear the low, sensual, male sound of Mackenna’s panty-wetting, heart-melting, toe-curling chuckle coming closer. “Seriously? You’re such assholes.”
He gets the door to open and there he stands, those eerie silver eyes fixed on me. And they are on me. Like a touch. Doing things to my heartbeat that I don’t like but I can’t stop. There’s a tattoo on his forearm, a ring on his thumb, a thousand leather bracelets on his wrist. His lips curl, and I hate the feeling I get, like a bell chiming in the pit of my stomach. I especially hate the little tingle I get when he stretches out his hand.
“Hey,” he says as he studies me with amusement. “Told you, didn’t I?”
He talks to me good-naturedly, with one sleek eyebrow up high, and I feel a flush creep up my body as I stay rooted to my spot, bravely battling a surge of unwanted lust and old, familiar anger.
I want to get out of here, but I don’t like that he gets to play the hero.
Laughter rings out behind him, and before I can take his offered hand or brush snottily past him—which is what I was actually planning on doing—Lex and Jax shove him and, suddenly, all six feet three of Mackenna is crashing into the closet.
The door slams shut behind him. “Woo! Remember seven minutes in heaven, Kenna?” Lex shouts against the door. “How about seven hours in hell, dude!”
They start humming “Pandora’s Kiss,” and anger rushes through me. I fist my hands at my sides and close my eyes, praying for retribution one day.
Sounding bored as could be, Mackenna replies, “Very funny, douche bags,” and turns to grab the knob just as there’s a loud screeching of heavy furniture being dragged across the floor outside.
“Are they seriously blocking the door?” I ask, trying to sound bored as well, but in actual fact, I’m alarmed. They are seriously locking me in here?!?!?! With Mackenna?!?!?
This is beyond hell. So far beyond I don’t even have a term for it, but the closet already smells of . . . man. Man-wolf, and alcohol, and . . . ugh!
True panic floods me when I hear more screeching. The guys seem to be piling chairs against the door and jamming them against the doorknob. I mean, what the fuck?
After the screeching, there’s a bang. “Careful, Kenna, she bites!” one of the twins calls out, laughing again.
Mackenna swears under his breath and jiggles the doorknob. Their laughter intensifies, so he stops trying and turns around. The light that seeps in under the door causes attractive shadows to hit his profile as he looks at me. “All right, I’m not giving the assholes the amusement they want.”
I raise one eyebrow in an are-you-serious gesture.
He raises his eyebrows in an I’m-deadly-serious gesture.
I bite the inside of my cheek and slide down to sit on the floor, sighing dramatically.
He drops down too, and suddenly it’s so much more cramped in here. He’s so near. His thigh is all against mine. Hard as rock, and it’s having an unwanted effect on me. This is the nearest I’ve had him since . . .
Hell, I don’t know, my brain can’t get past his thigh. Against mine. Being this close to Mackenna, and his fucking X factor, is pure torture. My female parts are as responsive to him as the rest of the world is. My lungs feel leaden as I try to breathe, but every breath smells of him, and his eyes glow in the dark as he studies my profile in the silence.
The air feels charged between us. I feel awkward, like I want to say something. I guess we’d better start fighting. So I open my mouth.
“Don’t fucking ruin this,” he says in a voice that’s low and commanding.
Startled, I snap my mouth shut.
But my anger resurfaces when he leans forward and a strange surge of anticipation runs through me. “Come any closer and you’ll find my knee in your balls,” I warn.
He stops advancing and laughs softly. “You’ve been thinking of my balls, haven’t you?”
“Only how much I’d like to chop them, slice them, and add salsa to them.”
“And have them against a nice juicy taco. Hmm.”
“Ohmigod! You’re disgusting!”
I try to push him, and he catches my hands in his warm ones, making me gasp when he pins them over my head, against the wall. Outrage bubbles in my veins. I feel so trapped and helpless, and suddenly my heart is going a mile a minute, pumping in my throat. A crazy, wild wave of lust follows my outrage.
God. Seven hours of this?!?!
I groan in protest. The sound of my groan seems to do something to him, because he tightens his hold and weighs even more heavily on me. All two hundred pounds of muscled him. Our eyes hold each other’s in the darkness, and the electricity rushes through me as I warn, “Let go.”
“You don’t mean that.”
I struggle futilely, and he tightens his hold. I nod. Yes, yes I do. I do mean it. But he transfers both my wrists to only one hand and leans his head against mine. The thundering of my heart echoes in my brain as his breath bathes my face. Oh god, he’s so close, and I’ve dreamed about being this close, in dreams and nightmares, during the day and during the night . . . I’ve dreamed of his eyes and how I used to find them always staring at me through those thick lashes of his. I’d dream and think of his lips. The top one shaped like a bow, almost as full as the bottom, the bottom one so plush and curved . . .
And then he kisses me, placing that mouth on me, cupping my head in his free hand, and parting my lips with the same lips I hadn’t realized I’d been staring at in painful hunger. The unexpectedness of his kiss makes me struggle halfheartedly to wrench free. I don’t want to want this. I don’t want this soul-searing thirst, the dreadful, inescapable feeling that I’ll break if he kisses me and I’ll break if he doesn’t. I whimper, as though it would make him have mercy on me. He doesn’t. He groans softly and tries slipping his tongue into my mouth, and when I part my lips and let him taste me because I’m clearly out of my mind, suicidal, and horny, I make a sound I haven’t ever made in my life. More than a moan or a whimper, a sound of true, quiet pain. He pulls back when I do, and so do I.