I can’t stand the way he looks at me, his eyes tracing the same path. My eyebrows, my nose, my lips, my chin, my cheekbones. He makes me wonder if I looked at the wrong mirror today, as if there’s something even remotely interesting to see. I swear nothing prepared me for having his eyes on me again. Nothing. I want to get out of here so fast, he won’t even see my butt as I go.

“Let me go, Mackenna.”

“All right, Dora. But first a parting gift.” Saying my least favorite nickname, he crushes the tomato in one fist, then lifts his hand, dropping little pieces of it over my head, watching me as I gasp and the juice spreads down my face and the side of my neck.

“There you go,” he croons, his smile wolfish as he works his fingers into my hair to make the juice seep deeper. When I struggle to pull free, he grips the back of my head and presses his nose to my ear, making me tense to stifle a shudder. “You just pissed off my entire fucking band. Do you realize the kind of charges we’re going to press?”

Yes, I do. My mother is a lawyer, so I have a pretty good idea.

So why did I think the fact that he deserved it gave me a free pass to be reckless tonight?

Fuck me.

He’s got me fucked.

And he’s so close. I’m strangely paralyzed as his lips move by my ear, causing an unwanted quiver down my legs. My nipples hurt all of a sudden and my body is in some strange contracting mode.

“Are you suicidal, or just looking to leave home? Because trust me, jail won’t be much of an improvement.”

“And your fucking face isn’t much improved with the egg facial I gave you.”

His friends, the twins, explode in laughter, but Mackenna doesn’t.

He surveys me with ill-concealed anger, and somehow I have an acute memory of the last time I looked into those slate gray eyes. His heavy stare and the touch of his tongue on mine zipping like white-hot lightning through my body. Him moving, his hands on my hips, holding me beneath him while I thrash. His groans telling me how much he likes being inside me.

It hurts. The sight of him hurts.

I didn’t expect it to.

As if my proximity has just triggered the same memories in his mind, he blatantly studies my body, his gaze lingering on my breasts, my mouth—a gaze hot and tactile and making me squirm—before he focuses back on my face as he speaks to the others.

“I’ll take care of the damages,” I hear him say, those eyes still on me, ruthless and calculating as if he’s just come to a decision. “And I’ll settle accounts with her directly.”

“Ha! You’re settling nothing with anybody here,” Melanie scoffs.

He lets out a cold male chuckle and pins his attention on her. “What’s your name, Barbie?”

“Melanie Meyers, asshole.”

“Leave her alone—” I start, but he cuts me off with a hand and tells the guards, “Escort Barbie to her car.”

“Dream on, pink wig. I won’t leave without Pandora!”

“This goth is seriously Pandora?” one of the twins finally asks. “Our Pandora? She was supposed to be a myth, dude.”

There’s a tense silence as every one of his team members looks at Mackenna. And I can’t help but notice with a prick in my chest that Mackenna looks none too pleased in a manner suggesting he’d hoped some eighteen-wheeler had run me over at some point, burying his secret.

He’s handed a towel, which he drags over his built chest as he shakes his head, raking his fingers through the beautiful buzz of hair on his scalp as he tries to get all the shit off his head. His silence and the thoughtful lines on his face render me beyond nervous and edgy.

Fuck, I don’t like that he’s taking control of things now.

I don’t like the effect he has on me.

The ways he could torture me.

The power he has over me, knowing how I’m privately afraid of my own mother—he’ll fucking know I will do anything to keep her from finding out.

As he’s about to speak again, Lionel says, “Kenna, a word.”

Mackenna heads over to him, the twins joining the little circle. The twins look like Vikings, and Mackenna a pirate who steals and deflowers girls like me. I can feel them watching us as they speak. Mackenna trails his eyes over my body as he listens. He doesn’t even seem to realize how blatantly he’s checking me out. Checking me from the top of my pink-streaked hair down to my badass boots.

Finally, he looks into my eyes, narrows his own, and shakes his head angrily. “No fucking way.”

“Yes fucking way,” Lionel counters.

Sighing over his front man’s stubbornness—which is a palpable thing, as big as an elephant in the room—Lionel ushers out the Vikings and the pirate, the door slamming shut behind a cursing Mackenna.

Melanie and I remain there for what feels like forever, exchanging a what-the-fuck glance.

The two guards stay in the room, watching us—watching me, especially—while little pieces of tomato slide down my face.

I want to punch something.

Something with gray eyes and a buzz cut.

Mackenna returns and grabs the towel again, the rest of the guys shuffling in behind him. “Just let her apologize to us and clean up her mess, then she can go.” He lifts the towel in the air and signals at me to come over, curling his finger in a mocking way.

“Fuck. You,” I breathe, suddenly seething.

“Mackenna,” one of the guys groans, laughing in an Are you fucking kidding me? She’s got you this worked up? way.