Whoa, this encounter worked you up, Jones!

Fuck her, she’s getting to me again. But I can’t let her.

“Come back so we can fuck,” I shout after them. Shutting my eyes, it’s no use. I can’t get rid of the way she looked at me, with those angry dark-as-sin eyes, that ridiculous pink streak in her hair. I’m still throbbing under the zipper of my jeans, aching for her touch.

I need to work it out of my system. I need to work her out of my system. I suck on my middle finger, and my cock twitches. She tastes good, smelled good, felt good. She smelled like my teen years. Back then, her skin and hair smelled of coconut—like a damn beach. And now, even though her looks are dark as sin, she smells like anyone’s dream vacation. Her tits are fuller than I remember. Still not big, but just right on her. And, here’s an odd thought, I want them again. In my mouth. I want to fuck that girl. God fuck me standing. I want to fuck her until she can’t walk and neither can I, for that matter.

Jax grabs one of the girls and pulls off his shirt, then his pants.

“No one wants to see you naked, Jax,” I cry, tossing him a pillow.

“Only a million people,” he returns.

I narrow my eyes as the girls bring me a whiskey, straight up, and I down it in one second as they rub my body like it’s made of the most precious material on the planet.

There’s a strange modern drawing on the ceiling of the suite, and my eyes trace the swirls as I think of that mouth of hers. That mouth of hers. I could kiss that mouth of hers again. She kisses like her kiss could kill, and I’m suicidal enough to want that fucking kiss again, just as badly as I did when I was younger.

I like bad things—booze, threesomes, orgies, smoking. But the baddest thing I’ve ever wanted is Pandora, and I want her deep and hard, like wanting to tie myself to a sinking ship and letting it take me under. So when one of the girls tugs on my shirt and presses her mouth to mine, the moment she trails her tongue along my lips, I pull away and laugh at myself.

“You know what? I think I feel like torturing Pandora a little longer,” I tell them, easing away and zipping my jeans back up.

“Kenna . . . ,” they chorus, pouting.

“Where you going?” Lex calls.

“Obviously back to hell.” One of the cameras follows me down the hall. I stop the cameraman, Noah, and tell him, “Not this, dude.”

“I can’t come into her room. Leo said it was the only way she’d sign a contract.”

“Really now?” I stare at him as I register the singular truth that Pandora’s bedroom is a safe place from cameras. “Excellent. She’s smart, that woman. And mad. Stay away from her.”

“Like you are?” he snorts.

“Stay away from her,” I repeat. “Stay the fuck away from her, and a couple of feet away from me.”

I charge back down the hall and knock on the door. There’s a flash at the peephole as she seems to peer through. She groans. And holy shit, even that groan I can feel in my dick.

I knock again. “Gonna knock all night if I have to!” The door swings open and she’s . . .

Fuck.

Her pupils are dilated, her hair loose, and she’s in a short T-shirt. I can’t take it. The blood storms hot in my veins. I open my mouth, my tone low. “I’m fucking desperate for you.”

She glances at the camera, then at me. She opens her mouth to say something, sees the camera again, and says, “You’re such a drama queen.”

“Drag prince,” I shoot back.

She frowns and makes a move to slam the door in my face, but I stop her with the toe of my boot. “Come on, Pink,” I say, my heart pounding as I grab her by the neck so she looks into my eyes. “You want this,” I urge. I dare not even consider what it’ll be like if she sends me back to my room. Failure is not an option here. My body is tense with the need for me to sink myself inside this woman until she comes for me. “You’re desperate for me too,” I whisper, massaging her scalp with my fingers. “Aren’t you? You’re wishing you hadn’t kissed me in the closet, but you did. We both did. And now we can’t stop here.”

Her eyes keep drifting to my mouth, and that act alone makes standing here with a hard-on only one step inside her room nearly the most impossible feat of my entire existence. “What happened to your threesome?” she dares me, and I can hear from the texture in her voice she’s caving in.

Go for it. Seduce her stupid, Kenna.

I lean over in the hopes Noah can’t hear me, whispering close to her ear, “Obviously I passed on it for something better.”

“Really? You had a better offer?”

I reach up and trail my hand down the pink in her hair. “I’m hoping for one.”

“I don’t even like you.” She pushes my chest using the heels of her palms with great effort, and for a second I indulge her by taking a step back.

“But your mouth still likes mine, and I can’t even begin to describe how much I like yours—”

She slams the door in my face. I swear out loud and run a frustrated hand over the back of my idiot head. “Motherfucker.”

Behind me, muffled laughter. “Crash and burn, Mackenna?” Noah taunts, camera trained on me.

Scowling, I flip him the bird. “Just watch. I’ll be practically living in that room right there.” I point to her door, then angrily stalk back to my suite, where the guys’ private party is raging full blast.

Everyone’s fucking or doing blow or drinking, and I’m stone fucking sober. One of the girls is bent over Lex. She signals to me that I’m next. Fuck that noise. I stomp into my bedroom, my entire brain filled with Pandora. Her stony little glare. The solid door in my face. Her pussy felt so goddamn tight in the closet, like she hadn’t had anyone in five fucking years and I’m suddenly obsessed.

I should have closed the distance between us and crushed her mouth under mine, until neither of us remembered anything at all. My hands are restless at my sides. I push them through the buzz of my hair, run the water in the sink, and splash some onto my face.

I imagine her crawling up against the headboard, spreading her legs for me. She’d sigh out my name and I’d dip my tongue to taste the sweet honey between her thighs.

Fuck this shit. I’m not settling for less than what I want, and suddenly I want in that room like nobody’s business—and I know just how to get in there.

♥ ♥ ♥

MINUTES LATER, I’M pounding on Leo’s door.

“What the fuck, Kenna?” He swings the door open and motions at one of the girls to stay put in bed. Obviously entertaining him.

“Key,” I growl.

Leo’s eyes get glassy with cash signs; clearly I don’t need to say to which room.

He grins and nods. “Take her to your room so the cameras can get some of the heavy petting,” he instructs.

“Write Santa Claus a letter, see if he listens, Leo.”

My manager rolls his eyes, then goes to rummage through his stuff while the girl comes over, tying a robe around herself. “Hey, Kenna, looking good.”

Leo comes back with a key. “Try to throw the cameras a bone soon.”

“If I throw anything tonight it’ll be the ass of a cameraman out the tenth-floor window.”

I march down the hall and pop that fucking door open. The lights are dim and the room is completely silent.

On the bed, Pandora is sprawled, facedown. My chest feels cramped as I take in her long legs, the soft, pale skin peeking out from under the T-shirt she wears. She’s out like the dead, her head tossed to the side, all that dark hair made for my fingers. Before I can think twice, I’ve shucked my clothes and climbed into bed with her. Just like old times. And the demons that have ridden me all night quiet down enough so I can relax against her. I pull her close to me.

She sighs in her sleep, her body seeking my warmth.

She fits me so right; she’s always fit me right, this girl.

We were both virgins once. You’d expect it to be awkward that first time, but it wasn’t. It felt like being swept up by a storm. Disheveled and destroyed inside on some level I never recovered from. When we were done, she was softly crying in my arms. I felt as unhinged as a building shaken to its foundations. I’d lost control, and so had she. I didn’t know what to do, what I’d done wrong, how to make it right.

I feel like that now.

Back then, I waited it out, wanting her to explain how she had all that emotion for me when she was usually a girl who displayed none. When she finally composed herself and wiped her tears, I kissed her and told her I loved her, and I asked her, “You love me, don’t you? Don’t you, Pandora?”

For the two years we dated, she never did say she did.

Yeah, I don’t think this girl can love anybody.

I don’t know why the memory slaps me now. It doesn’t bring the anger it usually does, or the sadness and frustration. I fell for a girl who would never love me back the way I wanted her to. Hell, I’m over wanting declarations of love. I’m over craving it. I’m over feeling the way she made me feel all those years ago.

But will I ever be over her?

I exhale.

She’ll probably punch my face when she sees me in bed with her in the morning. Blue balls and a purple eye, that’s what a guy who messes with this girl gets. But fuck me if I care at all. That’s not really my problem.