“Now that,” he murmurs in the sexiest, roughest voice ever as he addresses his fans, “was Pandora.”

My smile hurts my face as I hear a roar erupt from his fans. And I carry this smile as I retrieve my suitcase from the roadie and take a cab to the hotel.

♥ ♥ ♥

I’M SO NERVOUS. So excited. I think this is what cardiac patients must feel like when their hearts start acting “different.”

I’ve never been so nervous or excited in my life.

Even when I stole from my bed to see him at night . . .

Rushed to the window to receive him . . .

Reliving, in my bed, my very first kiss with him . . .

After he saved me from the school bullies. After I held his hand outside court. The night I met him at the docks, where, before we even said hello, before a word was spoken, he pushed away from the column he’d been leaning against and I picked up my pace, and before we knew it I was in his arms and he was in mine, our lips locked and moving, hot and fast, our breath wild, our hands moving. “You came,” he murmured, holding my face and kissing my temple, chin, cheek, nose.

“Always,” I whispered back, clutching his jaw and loving how his hands felt big on my face, like he still had a couple of inches to grow into them.

I loved him like crazy then. But that level of crazy is nothing compared to now!

Melanie would be proud. Hell, Brooke would be proud. Even Magnolia would be proud.

I pace around the hotel room as I wait for him, then I go check my appearance in the mirror. Fuck. Do I look stupid? I put on some earrings and switch my boots for a pair of heels, and I paint my nails pink instead of the dark purple-black I usually wear. I exchange my leather jacket for a soft white silk top too. God, it’s so obvious I want to please him. Because I like it when he calls me “Pink.” I want to look girly and soft, but . . .

Okay, fine. Let it look obvious that I want him. He called me his vampire queen . . . and I want him to be my king. For him to take a chunk right out of my heart, bleed me out, and carry me to his bedchamber. Lair. Wherever he fucking wants!

I’m pacing around, rubbing my bare arms, when I hear the click! of the door. I swing around, feeling like some stupid eighteenth-century maiden, about to swoon.

Because he’s swoony, swoon, swoon, right here, in my hotel room.

My rockstar.

A rush of emotion sweeps through me when he shuts the door and just stands there, looking at me with those greedy silver eyes that want to eat me up, inch by inch. Rivulets of sweat drip down his chest. He’s wearing a pair of white jeans with a silver belt—looking very much the rockstar. His wrist is covered in thick cuffs, and the silver ring on his thumb glints in the light. A visceral tug jerks me on the inside as I think of how much I want to feel that silver ring brush against me. My chin, lips, my nipples, my sex. God, yeah—why stop at my lips when I can feel it trail deliciously everywhere?

“You came.” The gruff tone makes my skin pebble.

He takes the first step toward me, but I raise my hand to stop him and blurt out, “Kenna, we can’t have a future if you don’t . . . if you don’t really know who I am. What I did. When you left me.”

He laughs softly and drags his hand over his delicious buzz cut in a way that drives me crazy. “I made a mistake too, Pandora,” he tells me, his eyes shining with regret as he takes in the visual of me like I’m some sort of vision he can barely believe. He spreads his arms out. “Baby, we were young, and that’s all right, we know better now. We won’t hurt each other anymore. I had no future, nothing to offer you, I still shouldn’t have walked away, no matter what you said . . .”

“You! You had you to offer me, Kenna.”

He stares as I extend my hand to show him the ring he gave me. I’m wearing it, proudly, on my finger. And don’t I wish that I could be just as proud of my words.

“I know what my mother did,” I painfully whisper. “I didn’t then, but I do now.”

He stares more, eyebrows pulling low over his eyes.

“Mackenna,” I say, my voice turning huskier and darker, “everything you think you know about me, everything you could possibly feel, it could go away right now.”

A flash of wild grief grips me as I pause for breath and he murmurs, “The way I feel isn’t going anywhere. It’s not changing. It’s not ending. It’s . . .”

“Kenna, I suck. I suck—”

“Whoa, baby.” He stops me with an incredulous laugh. “Call me any names you want, but I’ll be damned if I let you sit there and insult my girl like that—”

“I was pregnant, Kenna.”

The words drop on him like a bomb.

I can’t go on for a moment, a spurt of anxiety seizing me. I measure him for a moment—how still he is.

“When you left, I was pregnant,” I force myself to finish.

The shock holds him immobile, while the pain quietly cracks me open. This is my box. The box of bad things Pandora should never open. Here it is, every last part tearing out of my soul so that the one person I want to love and accept me will know.

“What the fuck are you saying, Pandora?” His voice is distant already. It’s one hundred percent disbelief.

Oh, the look on his handsome face. I will remember it every day to my death. The morphing of his eyes from silver to shocked gray. The lines of his perfect features freezing in disbelief.

It takes every ounce of courage in me to breathe out the rest. “We have a little girl.”