“I was calling home.”

He looks incredulous. “You call home in the middle of a bar?”

“Mother called me,” I mumble.

“And you can’t make her wait?”

“No, ’cause it makes it worse! It makes her suspicious, and she doesn’t know I’m here.”

“Of course not,” he agrees, his entire countenance hard.

“Stop questioning me, asshole, I’m not yours to command!” I push past him, and he stops me. I squirm in his hold, whining, “Let go.”

“You still dancing to any tune she sings?” he asks. “Are you?” he commands.

I don’t know if I can take the frustrated disappointment in his eyes.

“Do you crave her love so much you’d sacrifice your own dreams and everything you want to please her?” he continues.

I can’t answer.

“She’s not the only one willing and able to protect you from anything, Pandora. Anything!”

A door slams shut nearby, and Lionel walks in. A chill seems to spread. Mackenna’s eyebrows crease in contempt. “You’ve gone too far, Leo,” Mackenna whispers, a low threat.

“Kenna, relax. Where’s your sense of humor?”

A muscle flexes angrily in Mackenna’s jaw. “It’ll come back when I have my fist where I want it on your face.” Reaching out to me, he hooks a finger into the loops of my jeans and tugs me to his side. “I’m taking her back to the hotel. No cameras.”

“One camera. Just one,” Leo pleads.

“Fuck you, Leo.”

Mackenna pulls me angrily out of there, and I follow. One of the camera guys is stumbling behind us. “And fuck you too, Noah.” Mackenna flips the camera. The call with my mother reminds me of why Mackenna and I can never be.

I should tell him right now.

Stop this right now.

But knowing I have to stop it makes me want it all the more.

“I don’t need you to give some asshole a purple eye for me anymore,” I huff as he guides me outside.

“Great. Now you choose to be chatty,” he grumbles.

We slide into the hotel limo, and he looks at me as Noah climbs in next to him, camera and all. Silence settles in the car. Mackenna stares at Noah in quiet rage, then at me. I meet his gaze, because backing down is a sign of weakness and I can’t stand him to know he makes my knees weak.

His eyes flick to my lips. I can almost taste him. Each of the two hundred kisses he gave me in our teens, and the dozens he’s given me since I’ve been with him again. He kisses so well. I used to name his kisses. The sleepy kiss and the smiling kiss, the seductive kiss and the laughing kiss. Right now he looks like he wants to Kiss Me To Death. He looks concentrated like he’s kissing me in his head.

“Tell me something, Pandora,” he commands huskily. I know Mackenna, and what he’s really saying is “Distract me before I do something I’ll regret.”

On his thighs, his hands are clenched into fists, and I know he wants to make the car stop and jerk Noah and his camera out of here. He’s mad because he was being set up, and I somehow think he’s mad because they used me to get to him. He’s mad because they can get to him by using me.

“You’re a Herculean masterpiece with a penchant for trouble,” I say.

He’s not appeased. He leans over and grabs my face, then whispers, “Tell me something you mean, Pink. Say it. Nothing silly, nothing angry—something real. Can you do that? Or you only dress like a badass to hide the tenderness within?”

Strangely, my throat is starting to thicken.

He wants to open me up? To open the box in me and let all the bad stuff out?

He reaches out and cradles my face in his palm. I struggle to tame a shiver building at the base of my spine.

“Tender. Right. Pfft!”

“Come on,” he presses, leaning forward, elbows to knees, his face as persuasive as his music is.

I can’t answer that. I can’t even open my mouth while thinking of the answer, so I leap into the first subject that comes to mind. “I’m mad you pulled that guy away when I was so ready to smash my knee between his legs.”

“Seriously? You’d kick his nuts?” he asks with obvious delight.

“You think I wouldn’t bust his balls? That I only busted yours?”

“You don’t only bust mine . . . you lick them too.”

“I do not! Ohmigod, Noah, erase that!”

Noah grins and shakes his head behind the camera.

We’re laughing now. “Mackenna!”

“See the way she says my name right there, Noah? She sounds guilty, doesn’t she?”

“Mackenna, shut the hell up!” I reach out with my hand to shut his mouth, but he licks my palm and bites my finger gently and playfully. Then he twists his head and kisses me, hard. We moan as I allow myself this kiss. One second . . . two . . . three . . . then I push him and arch away. “Mackenna!”

“What, Pandora?”

We’re laughing, and even Noah is trying to stifle his own laugh.

“I don’t want to kiss you. Not here.”

“Don’t worry, I know where,” he says playfully.

My eyes widen when I realize he’s implying I want to kiss his cock, not his mouth. “MACKENNA!” I cry again, laughing hysterically.

When we get to the rooms, Noah’s still following us as Kenna keeps his arm around me. When I open the door to my room, Kenna tells him, “Night, dude. Bet you really want to be me right now, huh?” and shuts the door on Noah’s camera. He spins me around in the middle of the room, saying, “Come here now,” and I’m smiling, because his eyes are smiling at me too. But suddenly, his lips aren’t.