
It takes more than a rock star to rock your world. Sometimes you need a friend.
Bandicoot Cove, Book 3
McKenzie Wood is Australia's star gossip mag journalist, and she's just spied the story of a lifetime: rumor-shrouded rock star, Nick Blackthorne---who thinks he's incognito at Bandicoot Cove resort. The word is Nick's a sex addict about to come out of the closet, and who better to lure Nick out than her BFF, Aiden Rogers---a pulse-poundingly gorgeous firefighter who is always there when she needs him, no matter the challenge.
Aiden admits it's pretty damned pathetic that he can rush into burning buildings, but not have the guts to tell McKenzie he's in love with her. No way can he tell his best friend he'd like to do some seriously sinful things to her, especially since she's never shown one iota of sexual interest.
Nick looks forward to some "unfamous" downtime in his home country. He's surprised to find his creative muse stirred---more like brought to rigid attention---by a couple so sexy that all he can think about is the three of them. Together.
Three bodies move together as one, and the music becomes a smoldering beat that rivals the island's heat. When the truth inevitably comes out, the heat might be enough to save three souls...or end up just another sinner's lament.
Warning: One plus one plus one equals OMG sex, are-you-freaking-kidding-me orgasms and some serious mind-blowing climaxes.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520
Macon GA 31201
Tropical Sin
Copyright © 2011 by Lexxie Couper
ISBN: 978-1-60928-524-1
Edited by Jennifer Miller
Cover by Kanaxa
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: September 2011
Tropical Sin
To the man who was once "just" my friend.
You Are Personally and Cordially Invited to Attend
The Soft Opening of Australia's Newest FIVE-STAR Luxury Resort
BANDICOOT COVE on Bilby Island.
Bring a plus one if you desire.
All expenses and needs will be catered for
as we test our customer services in preparation for the Grand Opening.
(P.S. Can you believe I got this job, guys? Wow!!
Mack, if you don't bring Aidan I will thump you. Just saying.
See you soon,
Love, Kylie
XXXX)
"Holy shit!" McKenzie Wood grabbed at her best friend's sleeve, almost yanking Aidan off his seat and into her lap. "Did you see who that was?"
She swiveled in her own seat, trying like hell to catch a glimpse of the tall-dark-and-freaking-gorgeous man through the restaurant's crowd.
Aidan, bless his little cotton socks---well, not that little, since the guy had size thirteen feet---didn't smack her back. Instead, her best friend since she was fourteen disengaged his shirt sleeve from her fist, righted himself on his chair and turned to look in the general direction she was gawking.
"Hugh Jackman?" he guessed, his deep voice rumbling with mirth. "Russell Crowe? Russell Brand? Brandon Routh?" He shot her a sideward glance, a grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. "Care to throw me a bone here, Mack, 'cause I haven't got a bloody clue."
McKenzie twisted back to him and gave him a wide grin. "Nick Blackthorne."
Aidan's mouth fell open. He smacked his palms to the sides of his face, his green eyes wide. "No!" he burst out. "Nick Blackthorne? The Nick Blackthorne?"
McKenzie whacked the back of her right hand against his chest, hiding her grunt of pain under a scowl of exasperation. Damn it, the man's chest was harder than concrete. "Yeah, yeah, yeah---" she rolled her eyes, "---funny bastard, aren't you? The last time anyone saw Nick Blackthorne, he was supposedly checking into a sex rehab clinic in Germany for being an addict."
Aidan cocked an eyebrow. "Sex addict? The guy's a bloody rock star. The biggest rock star this country has produced. Isn't he meant to have sex with just about everything in a dress that throws herself at him?"
"No, no, no, no." McKenzie shook her head. "God, don't you actually read the rags I write for? He supposedly checked into a sex rehab center because he can't stop having sex with men."
Aidan studied her for a long second. Followed by another one.
She sat and waited for him to say something, her hands on his knees, her gaze holding his.
Finally, he shrugged. "Well, to each his own."
McKenzie leaned closer to him. "You're missing the point, Rogers. If Nick Blackthorne is here, when everyone thinks he's in Germany, I could get the scoop."
"The scoop?"
She grinned, squirming closer to the edge of her seat. "The scoop."
Aidan let out a sharp breath, turning back to their table and reaching for his beer. "McKenzie," he said, his voice level, "we are at the soft opening of your friend's resort. If you go all tabloid-journalist and stalk a guest, Kylie will kill you. Then I will have to explain to Mason why I let his twin sister get killed. And then Mason will probably try to punch me."
"And what would you do in return?"
Aidan gave her a steady sideward glance. "Depends. Do you like your twin today or not?"
McKenzie thought about that question for a moment, struggling to keep her face composed. Aidan always, always seemed to make her want to grin, even when he was telling her she was being horrible. Prick. "Better not punch him back," she answered. "He did, after all, pay for the flights up here."
"Good point." Aidan took a mouthful of beer before picking up his fork and stabbing at the lobster bisque on his plate. "Although I coulda done without the blackmail to help clean that boat of his he just bought with Trent. Seriously, if Trent wanted to sail up the Australian coastline, how come I get stuck with scraping the barnacles off the hull of the damn rust bucket?"
"'Cause you lost that stupid bet at the airport about whose bag was the lightest---his or yours, remember?" McKenzie offered, picking up her own fork. She had to hand it to Kylie; the girl knew how to throw a party, and the soft opening hadn't even started yet. Lobster for brunch? Bring it on. "Oh, and you can hold your breath the longest?"
Aidan snorted again, the sound making her grin wider. "Next time Kylie launches a resort opening, I want it to be in the Outback." He took another mouthful of beer. "Or the Snowies."
McKenzie laughed. "Don't tempt her. You know what she's like. Besides, it was nice to have Mason on the flight with us, even if he did sucker you into cleaning Paradise. At least this way I don't have to call Mum. She still hasn't forgiven me for my article on---" A tall man walked past the entrance to the restaurant, oozing brooding sexuality, phenomenal good looks and smoldering arrogance. Nick Blackthorne. In the flesh. She grabbed Aidan's arm just as he was about to take a drink, sploshing beer over his hand and wrist. "Oh God, it is him, Rogers. It is him! Look. Look!"
Before Aidan could do such a thing, McKenzie jumped to her feet, sending her chair tumbling to the ground. The rather overweight and ridiculously overdressed woman sitting at the table behind her muttered something that sounded very much like "inconsiderate cow", but McKenzie didn't care. Nick Blackthorne was here. At Bandicoot Cove Resort. Walking around without any sign of bodyguards, groupies or entourage.
Nick Blackthorne. The world's biggest rock star.
Here. Within twenty meters of her.
She watched him amble through the opulent foyer, his stunning light grey eyes concealed by a pair of pitch-black sunglasses, his tall, lean frame wrapped in a pair of snug, faded Levis and a R2-D2 T-shirt. Sinewy muscles coiled and flexed as he walked, each stride almost rhythmic, as if he moved to music no one else but he could hear.
A little flutter of something entirely sexual stirred in McKenzie's core, a tiny throb of base, instinctual interest. For a brief second an image of him throwing her on the massive bed in her resort room filled her mind. His long-fingered hands tore her clothes from her body before, with fluid ease, he sank what was rumored to be a solid and very impressive ten inches into her sodden and very willing pussy.
Her nipples pinched tight and she huffed into her fringe, tracking his path past the reception desk and out of sight.
"We gotta go." She hooked her fingers under Aidan's arm and tugged him to his feet. Well, tried to. Shifting a six-foot-three firefighter wasn't easy, especially when he was looking up at her like she'd lost her mind. "Quick quick," she begged, resorting to both hands wrapped around his biceps. Bloody hell, when had Rogers bulked up so much? "I need to see where he's going."
Aidan---stubbornly---stayed put. "Stalking now? Didn't you tell me you wanted out of the tabloid business? That it was time to start your serious journalist career?"
McKenzie slapped the back of his head and then snared his arm again, her fingers barely curling halfway around its muscled width. "Shut up. He's getting away."
Aidan made a move to pick up his fork again. "Good for him."
A surge of hot anger stabbed into McKenzie's chest and she bit back a curse. Aidan was correct. She had told him and Mason on the flight up that she was going to quit her job at Goss when she got back. She had said it was time to actually use her degree in journalism for the greater good. But then Nick Blackthorne had walked past, and really, wasn't it for the world's greater good to know just what he was doing here and where he'd been? And if that "where" had anything to do with the secret activities of ten inches of flesh?
She pulled at Aidan's arm once more, an ineffectual tug she was almost ashamed of. Almost. "Please, Aidan?" she begged, giving him her most wounded-puppy expression. The kind that always, always made him bail on one of his stubborn stand-offs. "Please? For me?"
He looked up at her, his jaw square, his expression unreadable. He'd been her best friend since before she had her first boyfriend. He'd been her rock, her anchor. Her voice of reason when her journalist's mind got carried away with her. She didn't want him upset with her. She needed him with her on this.
He studied her with those deep, direct eyes of his. Eyes that missed nothing. Eyes that seemed to see nothing in the world but her.
A soft flutter constricted in McKenzie's sex, unexpected and just as eager as her earlier response to Blackthorne.
She hitched in a silent breath and let his arm go, a lump forming in her throat. "Please," she muttered, looking everywhere but at the man sitting before her. "Please come with me, Aidan."
"Fuck it," she heard him grumble, half a second before his chair scraped over the polished bamboo floor and he stood.
A wave of impish relief surged through her, destroying the wholly unsettling...thing...she'd just felt. Aidan was Aidan. Yes, he was pretty okay to look at and just about every woman within a ten-mile radius threw herself at him whenever she hit the clubs with him, but he was Aidan. That was it.
Grinning up at him, she snared his arm again with her fingers, giving his hard biceps a small squeeze. "You are so bloody awesome, Rogers."
"I know," he growled, moving away from the table and taking her with him. "Just promise me no muck-slinging, no trash-flinging and no lies. We follow the guy, you ask him for a comment and we leave. All over, Red Rover, in ten minutes. Deal?"
"Deal."
He pointed a finger at her nose, a stern glower darkening his otherwise friendly face. "And no asking him if he's gay. A bloke doesn't like being asked such a thing whether he is or not, got it?"
McKenzie cocked her head, quickening her step to stay abreast of him. "Are you gay, Rogers?"
His eyebrows shot up. "What?"
"I only ask 'cause you've never gone out with anyone for more than a day or two. Like, ever."
Aidan let out a harsh breath and turned his glare forward, all but pulling her out of the restaurant. "I've had girlfriends."
"Really? When? The longest you ever went out with a woman was that police officer from Newcastle Command and that lasted for a little less than a week."
His fingers curled harder into her arm, his stride lengthening. "Why the hell do I put myself in these situations?"
McKenzie skipped into step with him. "'Cause they're fun?"
"Yeah," he grunted, not looking at her. "Like a root canal."
They walked through the foyer, McKenzie's stomach flipping and flopping in a strange little way she didn't understand. Part of her wanted to slide Aidan a little sideward glance, just to be sure it was still Aidan storming along beside her. She'd known him forever, well, what felt like forever. She'd met him in her second year of high school when his family had moved to Newcastle. The minute he'd walked into the science lab, towering over just about every boy in the class, and the teacher as well, she'd smiled. It had nothing to do with the way he looked---which even at fourteen she knew was pretty damn good. She'd smiled because his eyes said, there's mischief to be had. Who wants in?
The rest of the girls in her year, and quite a few above and below, threw themselves at him straightaway, but he never took any of them up on their far-from-unsubtle advances. It wasn't until he'd been at school for a week when she finally spoke to him---right after she'd accidently kicked a soccer ball straight into his groin during a Phys Ed class.
Of course, she'd run over straightaway and dropped to her knees, rubbing his groin and making sorry sounds before she realized what she was doing. She had six brothers, after all, one of them being Mason, her twin. Male anatomy wasn't something mysterious or dangerous to her. She'd seen more penises by the time she was fourteen than she could remember---especially Mason's. Damn, her brother had zero interest in personal privacy. When Aidan had looked up at her, squirming under her palm, his face red with pain, his eyes wide with stunned shock, she'd realized what she was doing and promptly burst out laughing. She'd laughed all the way to the principal's office after being sent there by her mortified Phys Ed teacher for inappropriate touching of a fellow class member. Aidan had found her at lunch, plonked down beside her on the rickety metal bench, said, "You know, I don't think I've ever had a handjob quite like that before," and that had been it. They'd been best friends since.
She'd never ever thought of him in any kind of sexual way. Ever. So why had her belly done that weird squirmy thing just now in the restaurant?
Because you're excited. You've just seen Nick Blackthorne. The Nick Blackthorne. Of course, you're going to be all squirmy. Not just 'cause the guy's as freaking hot as sin, but because he's your ticket. One exclusive exposé about Nick Blackthorne's sexual tendencies, and you can write your own meal ticket out of tabloid trash hell and land yourself that serious job you've ached for forever.
The reasoning made little sense. Write trash to stop writing trash? But McKenzie wouldn't let herself analyze it any more. If there was more to the way her belly was behaving, she'd deal with it later. Nick Blackthorne was in front of her and Aidan was beside her. Currently, the two most important men in her life.
Huh. You really are one for the dramatic, aren't you?
Shut up. Focus. You've got a story to write. How exactly are you going to do that, Ms. I'm-Such-A-Clever-Serious-Journalist?
Her eyes, of their own accord, slid to Aidan and her belly flip-flopped again. She grabbed at her bottom lip with her teeth, an idea coming to her.
If the rumors about Nick Blackthorne were true, she had the most perfect, perfect bait to get her story. Now, all she had to do was convince Aidan of that.
Do you really want to do that, McKenzie? Ask him to...
She cut the thought dead. She wouldn't just ask him to do it for a story. She would ask him to do it for fun. Aidan had always been one to leap into life. Hell, he'd taken her kicking and screaming on more than one harebrained adventure. Why should this be any different?
Yeah, but you're going to ask him to...
"I still can't believe I'm doing this."
Aidan's low grumble played over her senses and she started, her stomach tightening again. And not just her stomach this time, but all sorts of other parts of her anatomy: parts of her anatomy that had no right getting tight over Aidan Rogers.
"I remember when you'd do anything for fun, Rogers." She shoved him with her shoulder, giving his arm a squeeze at the same time. Seriously, when had he become so muscular?
"Fun I can do. Fun I like doing. Stalking celebrities---" he gave her a steady and very pointed sideward stare, "---not so much fun."
She flashed a grin at him. "You're looking at this all wrong, Aidan. All you're doing is walking through a hotel in the same direction as another guy. That's not stalking."
"Is this how you live with yourself, McKenzie Wood?" He turned his attention back to the foyer and the broad back of the world's most Googled rock star. "Delude yourself into believing you're not being a horrible creep?"
"Yep."
Her one word answer made him snort, but for a brief second McKenzie glimpsed a hint of a dimple in his left cheek.
Bingo! She had him.
"Just go with me on this one, will you?" She turned her own stare to Blackthorne, her stomach knotting. This time the physical reaction was from nervous excitement. "All I'm going to do to start with is say g'day."
Aidan snorted again. "Why do I not believe you?"
McKenzie laughed. "I have no idea."
Nick Blackthorne weaved his way through the smattering of guests milling around the Bandicoot Resort's massive reception area, a small smile curling at the corners of his mouth. It wasn't the fact he was here, at the soft opening of the resort, that made him happy, nor the fact he was walking around without a minder or bodyguard or groupie to be seen. It was simply because the woman laughing behind him had a delightfully throaty, infectious laugh.
He stopped himself from shooting a look over his shoulder, concentrating instead on finding the correct passageway that would lead him to the Oasis Bar. He was a touch jetlagged and needed something more than coffee to wake up.
A touch? You've been on one plane or the other for the last three days. You're more than jetlagged, you're jet-fucking-dragged-through-the-turbines stoned. Besides, the need for something more than caffeine has nothing to do with jetlag. You just want to sit out in the sun and pretend you're a normal person for a short while, don't you?
He smiled wider. The truth was always less sensational. It had been a long time since he'd been able to sit at a bar and relax. When his agent had offered him the chance to attend the resort's soft opening he'd jumped at it. Minimum number of guests, all hand-picked by the hotel's manager, all---his agent assured him---too discreet or important in their own rights to worry about him being in their presence. A nice change from where he'd just been, that was for sure.
The thought made his smile falter. A little. He wasn't going to let his mind turn to where he'd just been. Not when he was walking through Eden.
Ah, so the romantic you used to be is still buried in that craven pit you call a soul, is he?
Behind him the woman laughed again, another low, throaty chuckle and, before he could help himself, Nick turned.
Whoa.
She was only a few feet behind, grinning up at a guy almost half again her height, her long, strawberry blonde hair a flaming halo in the sun's warm rays, her pink lips stretched in a grin that said very clearly, "Yes, I am completely in charge of this situation."
Nick let his gaze flick to her companion, noting with an experienced eye the man's latent strength in his six-foot-plus form, his fluid, steady movements, and his utter adoration for the woman gripping his arm.
Fuck, they were a sexy couple. Damn sexy.
His prick twitched in his jeans and he scowled, turning away from the young lovers. There was a time he'd have walked straight on up to them and suggested something far more depraved than either could probably imagine. Something very dirty and very enjoyable. That time had passed, however.
The woman laughed again, the delicious sound accompanied by a lower, deeper chuckle. The guy's laugh. Relaxed. Easygoing. Coming up from his chest to slip past his lips in a humored rumble. Equally as infectious as hers.
Nick's cock gave an eager spasm, rubbing with a certain amount of pleasant insistency against the denim of his favorite jeans.
He drove his nails into his palms and scanned the lush gardens on the other side of the glass wall. Where the hell was this bar? Somewhere outside beside a pool? He needed a drink.
No, not a drink. You need---
A face of an angel with filth on her mind,
I pray to burn in her fire, I pray to die in her arms.
The words---lyrics of a song he hadn't written yet---whispered through Nick's head and he raised his eyebrows, his heartbeat quickening. Just as it had been too long since he could relax in public, it had been even longer since words of music came to him. Whoever the redhead was, she stirred something in him.
Yet the arms of her lover reach out for more.
Like a sinner I will burn in his fire,
I will die in his fire as she pleads for more.
Nick came to a halt, the unexpected lyrics floating through his head. It seemed they'd both stirred something in him he hadn't felt for a long time, not just the woman.
The whisper of a rhythm teased him and he closed his eyes, a familiar sensation stirring in the pit of his gut. Carnal thoughts and lyrics? Coming to Bandicoot Cove really was a good---
"Excuse me, but can I ask you a question?"
The soft, husky voice speaking beside him could only belong to one person. Opening his eyes, Nick turned around, leaving his sunglasses firmly in place as he fixed his gaze on the flame-haired woman smiling up at him. This close she wasn't just sexy, she was stunning. Stunning and gorgeous. As was the man standing next to her, his expression unreadable, that sleeping strength radiating from him in waves of...
Like a sinner I will burn in his fire,
I will die in his fire and beg her for---
"You're Nick Blackthorne, yes?"
The woman's question took Nick by jarring surprise. It shouldn't have, but with the words of a hidden song taunting him and the unexpected lick of sexual interest teasing him, he wasn't prepared. Especially for what she said next.
"I'm McKenzie Wood from Goss Weekly." Her clear blue eyes turned direct. Intent. "I'm wondering if you'd like to comment on your stay at the Vergnügen sex clinic in Germany?"
Biting back a groan---damn it, she said she was going to be subtle!---Aidan watched Blackthorne stiffen. No, not just stiffen. Every muscle in the man's body coiled, as if he were about to attack. And why wouldn't he? He was minding his own business when out of nowhere, bam, a little thing with beguiling blue eyes and an attitude the size of Uluru smacks into his peace with a question about his sex life. If it were Aidan in the rock star's shoes, he'd stiffen too.
But it wasn't Aidan, and the little thing with the beguiling blue eyes and attitude was McKenzie. Which meant Blackthorne was in a world of pain if he so much as raised his hand to her.
"No." The singer's voice was a liquid-smooth purr. "I don't think I do want to comment."
A strange accent---not quite Australian anymore but not quite American either---made the words sound tight. Strained.
"So, nothing about the rumors you checked in to Vergnügen to try and cure your---"
Aidan reached out and pressed his hand over McKenzie's open mouth, grabbing her around the waist and tugging her against his body as he did so. He looked at the tall man standing stock still before him, eyes still concealed by pitch-black sunglasses, body still tense.
"Sorry," he said, ignoring McKenzie's attempts to disengage herself from his hold. It wasn't easy---she was the only daughter of seven offspring. She knew how to get herself out of a death grip if she needed to. He, on the other hand, was a firefighter. And he'd been wrestling with McKenzie---in some way or another---since before his balls dropped.
When the hell are you going to tell her how you---
"Sorry," he said again, giving Blackthorne an embarrassed smile. "She kinda forgets not everyone's open to her type of charm."
The rock star didn't say a word. Nor did the tension leave his body.
Aidan pulled McKenzie---still squirming in his arms---harder to his body. It was a bad idea, of course. The way her toned backside kept rubbing against his dick, the way her full breasts kept pushing against his forearm, he was going to be in a rather stiff situation any second now. Better that, however, than Blackthorne taking a swipe at the tabloid journalist bugging him on his holiday. If that happened, Aidan was likely to do something very foolish. Knocking out the world's most famous musician wasn't on his bucket list.
Telling McKenzie how you feel? That's on your bucket list though, isn't it? Ever since you almost---
"Like your last album, by the way," he burst out, shutting the unnerving thought down. Far too unnerving when the woman in question was writhing against his crotch in an attempt to break free. Jesus, he could feel his semi already. With every wriggle and squirm from McKenzie the damn thing got bigger. "Wasn't that fussed on track number five, though."
Oh, you bloody moron. Has all the blood from your brain gone south?
Blackthorne didn't move. "Savage Lust? Not one of my favorites either."
Aidan laughed, the man's answer surprising him.
They stood looking at each other for a second, McKenzie's muffled protests filling the awkward silence. "Well," Aidan finally said, his cock now so hard there wasn't a hope in hell McKenzie could miss it, "I better boat this marlin and mount her on my wall."
An image of McKenzie---naked and waiting for him on all fours---flashed through Aidan's head and he bit back a groan. Fuck, that's what he got for trying to be funny. Why the hell did he have to use the word "mount"?
Another image of naked McKenzie popped into his head---this one of her bent over a black velvet cube with her wrists cuffed to her---
"I'm sure that will be...entertaining."
Blackthorne's strangely accented drawl jerked Aidan's mind from the wholly arousing and unsettling image. The man looked at him, black sunglasses hiding whatever was going through his mind. His expression never changed, his body never relaxed.
Just get her outta here, Rogers. Take her as far away from him as you can. Now. Before she bites your hand or you come on the small of her back.
It was the last thought that did it. With a nod and an embarrassingly sheepish grin, Aidan hauled McKenzie off her feet and carried her in the opposite direction of Blackthorne. Jesus Christ, what a debacle.
He strode through the foyer, ignoring the curious glances and questioning stares of the resort's guests and staff. Thank God Mason wasn't about. The guy knew what his sister was like. He'd probably offer to lend Aidan a hand and that'd end them all up shit creek.
No, what he needed to do now was take her back to her room, deposit her on her bed and then---
Fuck her senseless?
---go find Kylie and apologize in advance for harassing one of her guests. After that, he'd find a bar and order himself a bloody stiff drink. To go with his bloody stiff dick.
Two seconds later, McKenzie did what he suspected she'd do much earlier. She bit his palm. Hard.
"Oww." He dropped her, shaking his hand before giving the bright red teeth marks indented in his skin an angry inspection. "That hurt."
McKenzie glared at him. "Serves you right. What the hell were you doing?"
"Saving you from a lawsuit," he shot back, shaking his hand again. Damn, she knew how to bite. "And saving your friendship with Kylie. Do you think she'd be happy you pissed off one of her guests? Not just one of them, either. Nick bloody Blackthorne. Think for a second here, Mack. Yeah, there may be a story to be had, but Christ, this is your friend's job on the line. A soft opening like this comes with all sorts of expectations and conditions. You stuff up Kylie's event and she'll suffer, long after you've written your story and moved onto the next one."
For the first time since he'd known her, McKenzie seemed lost for words. She stared up at him, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, her eyes wide. She looked confused. Fragile.
So completely kissable.
Do it. Do it now. For fuck's sake, man, how long are you going to wait? Do you need to almost die in another fire before you tell her?
He took a step toward her.
"Where the hell have you two been?" a male voice boomed from behind Aidan, and he turned around, his gut sinking to find Mason approaching them both. "I've been looking everywhere for you."
McKenzie let out a soft breath, the sound ragged, and he flicked her a quick look, frustration stabbing into him. Whatever expression had been on her face when she sighed, it was no longer there, replaced instead with a wide grin as she watched Mason walk toward them.
What do you think it was, Rogers? Do you really think she wanted you to kiss her? The whole reason you never have is 'cause she's never shown an iota of sexual interest in you. What would change that? Manhandling her like you did? Hardly.
"Aidan, you bloody bastard," Mason continued, throwing him a laughing glower, "you turned your mobile phone off."
His balls throbbing and his cock an aching rod, Aidan turned toward McKenzie's twin. "You think I wanna clean that boat of yours so early in the morning?"
Mason gave him a wide grin, his eyes as blue as McKenzie's---and just as full of irrepressible charm. "Hey, what else are you going to do?"
What else indeed?
"I can tell what you've been doing," Aidan said, knowing very well the statement would shut Mason up in a heartbeat. McKenzie's twin was in a rather unusual...relationship...with his best friend, Trent and the cute little Canadian pastry chef they'd met a while ago, but he wasn't overly forthcoming about it when he was around McKenzie. In fact, Aidan would say Mason was doing everything he could to keep his sister in the dark.
For a quick second, panic flickered across the other man's face and then he gave them both another patented Mason Wood smirk. "Don't try and wheedle out of it, Rogers. You owe me a boat clean-up."
"What have you been doing all morning?" McKenzie asked, giving her brother a curious look. "We didn't see either you or Trent at breakfast."
A very faint pink tinged Mason's cheeks as he looked everywhere but at his sister. "Err, housekeeping."
"That'd be right." She rolled her eyes. "In your hotel room for less than an hour and it's already a mess. I hope you're not making Paige clean it up. She's far too nice to be doing your dirty work."
Mason didn't say a word, but Aidan noticed his cheeks got a little pinker.
"How long has she been going out with Trent for?" McKenzie asked, and Aidan had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself bursting out laughing. It seemed that while he may be the only one not scoring, at least he wasn't the only one feeling awkward at the moment---Mason's cheeks were almost red.
"Did you know Josh Lye is here? Installing the resort's IT system."
Mason's hurried question made Aidan blink. And McKenzie laughed. "Josh Lie-With-Si? Really? Does Sienna know he's here? She's going to freak when she finds out. Especially now she's finally starting to live her life again." A wide grin pulled at her lips and she rubbed her hands together. "Wow, I just remembered I still owe that bugger a thump in the arm."
Mason rolled his eyes. "You're not still holding a grudge over the AFL Grand final are you? Bloody hell, sis, that was twelve years ago."
McKenzie jutted out her chin, the stubborn action making the pit of Aidan's gut tighten and his balls---still throbbing from their earlier unintended stimulation---ache anew. Jesus Christ, he was pathetic. "Doesn't matter," she said. "Josh's team lost. I get to thump him. That was the bet."
Mason gave her an exasperated look. "How old are you?"
"Same age as you. So shut up."
"No, you're not," he shot back, lips twitching. "I'm five minutes older."
"Freak."
"Lunatic."
"Maniac."
"Girl."
It was Aidan's turn to roll his eyes. "Alright you two, break it up."
Mason poked his tongue out at his sister before giving Aidan a firm stare. "I need you at the yacht in a couple of hours, mate. Don't be late."
Aidan raised his eyebrows.
"Okay, okay." Mason shrugged. "Please can you come to the yacht, Aidan? Trent and I are taking Paige out later this evening and we need your help."
McKenzie laughed. "You mean his muscles?"
Mason flicked Aidan a quick look, a small grin pulling at his lips. Aidan resisted the urge to shuffle his feet. The way McKenzie's twin was looking at him made Aidan wonder if the way he felt about her wasn't as secret as he thought.
His gut knotted. If Mason suspected he had a thing---a big thing---for his sister, what would the guy do? Hit him? Hug him? Tell him to fuck off?
And if you die before she finds out? What does that achieve?
"No," Mason drawled, a gleam in his eye that made Aidan's stomach knot some more. "We need his firefighting skills." He gave McKenzie a "duh" look. "Of course his bloody muscles, you moron."
It was McKenzie's turn to poke her tongue out at Mason. "I don't like you. Go away, please."
Mason grinned again, the smile so like his sister's it was a little freaky. "Gladly. Places to go, people to do."
McKenzie pretended to make herself gag. "You're disgusting."
With a wave and another uncomfortably ambiguous smile at Aidan, Mason left them alone, swinging open the nearest exit door in the glass-walled passageway and ambling through the gardens outside.
"I've always wondered what sex on a boat would be like?"
The question was out before Aidan realized where his mind had taken him. Or that he'd spoken aloud.
"Who's having sex on a boat?" McKenzie turned her head, tracking her brother with a narrowed-eyed stare through the glass until the tropical gardens swallowed him up.
"Err..."
She turned back to Aidan, giving him a disgusted look. "Mason? Really? Sex with Mason? Who would have sex with Mason?" She pulled a face. "That's just gross."
Aidan cocked an eyebrow. "Not that it's any of my business, but I'm pretty sure your brother has a dick and you know what we blokes are like---have dick, will use it."
For a very brief moment, McKenzie's gaze slid down Aidan's chest, over his stomach to his groin before, with an almost imperceptible shake of her head, she looked up into his face again. A faint frown pulled at her eyebrows and she caught her bottom lip with her teeth again. "Umm...there's something I need to ask you."
Aidan's throat slammed shut. He stared down into her clear blue eyes, his dick---all too easily remembering what it had been worked up over only a short while ago---growing hard again. His blood roared in his ears and he tried to swallow, his mouth dry. "What?" he asked, more than a little dismayed at how croaky his voice came out.
"Something kinda...odd," she continued, the frown pulling deeper at her eyebrows until a tiny crease formed in the middle of the smooth space between them. "But important."
Aidan drew a slow breath through his nose. This couldn't be happening, could it? What he'd hoped for, for so bloody long? Had McKenzie Wood finally seen him as something other than---
"Will you hit on Nick Blackthorne for me?"
McKenzie waited for Aidan to say something. He didn't.
Not straight away.
"Umm..."
"I know I'm asking a lot." She placed her palms on his broad chest and gave him a crooked smile. "But it's just one little conversation with the guy at a bar."
He looked down at her, an expression she had no hope of deciphering falling over his face. "Ummm..."
Oh, my God, Wood. Are you really doing this?
"Please?"
Yes. It seemed she really was.
You're pathetic, you know that?
No. Pathetic she wasn't. Confused. That's what she was. Confused about the new and totally unexpected way her body was reacting to Aidan. Aidan. Her best friend. The guy who'd held her hand after every break-up she'd ever had. The guy who'd helped pick out what she was going to wear on just about every first date she'd ever had. Aidan freaking Rogers. She didn't get horny over Aidan Rogers. She didn't.
Yeah, that's why the second he uttered the word "dick" you wondered what his was like. And don't go pretending you didn't feel it when he was holding you against his body earlier. In fact, don't go pretending you weren't squirming against him more than you needed to. You liked the way his dick got hard rubbing against your arse. You liked it a lot.
"Let me get this clear." His voice was just as unreadable as his expression. "You want me to try and pick up the world's biggest rock star so you can get a story?"
McKenzie's belly flip-flopped. She wanted to take it back. She wanted to say, No, it was just a joke, what I want you to do is kiss me.
The unexpected thought hit her. Blindsided her, in fact. Made her pussy clench and her pulse pound.
She nodded, not trusting herself to say or do anything else.
Aidan's jaw bunched. His nostrils flared. "If I do this, will you do something for me?"
McKenzie nodded again. A quick single nod of her head.
"Quit Goss."
The request was like a physical slap. And not because he'd asked her to give up her job, a job she didn't want anymore. Because he hadn't asked her to...
What? Kiss him? Sleep with him? Marry him?
Oh, for Pete's sake. What the hell was going on with her?
For the third time, she nodded.
Aidan's nostrils flared again. "And when he turns me down?"
She looked up at him, her sex constricting, her heart hammering. "He won't."
Because who in their right mind would?
Nick studied the sweating glass in his hand, his stare following the paths of individual beads of water even as his mind played seven lines of lyrics over and over again.
A face of an angel with filth on her mind,
I pray to burn in her fire, I pray to die in her arms.
Yet the arms of her lover reach out for more.
Like a sinner I will burn in his fire,
I will die in his fire as she pleads for more.
Like a sinner I will burn in his fire,
I will die in his fire and beg her for---
What? What did he beg for?
He didn't know yet. He didn't know and it pissed him off. And intrigued him.
As did McKenzie Wood from Goss Weekly and her unnamed, completely enamored male companion.
Intrigued? Is that the word you're going with?
It was for now. When he finished his drink, however...
"Is it just water?" A familiar male voice spoke beside him and Nick twisted on his barstool, watching as McKenzie Wood's unnamed, completely enamored male companion slid onto the stool beside him. "Or something a little stronger?"
Nick swung his attention back to the glass in his hand, regarded it for a second and then turned back to the man next to him. "Water. Very icy."
His new friend perched himself on the edge of the stool, and Nick couldn't help but note how tense he was. Every muscle in his body seemed sculpted from rock, lovingly carved by a master artist, each one sublime in that latent strength he'd noticed earlier, but rock all the same. Whatever was going on, the man was on edge.
Nick waved a finger at the barkeeper, keeping his gaze on McKenzie Wood's companion as the woman dressed in little but a string bikini and lip gloss hurried over to them. "Give my friend what I'm having. Straight up."
The man flinched at the word "straight", a barely-there tightening of the corners of his eyes, and Nick chuckled. He took a sip of his drink, let the cool water slide down his throat and then turned back to his new friend. "Can I ask a question?"
If it was even possible, the man's muscles coiled tighter. "Sure."
"What's the first thing to come into your head when I say, 'I will die in his fire and beg her for...'"
"A chance."
The two words passed the man's lips without hesitation and Nick chuckled again. Yep. Here was a love story ready to be told. Or sung about.
He straightened back to the bar, closed his eyes and held up his glass. "A face of an angel with filth on her mind," he sang, his voice low. "I pray to burn in her fire, I pray to die in her arms."
He heard the man shift on the stool, but he didn't open his eyes, the words and the rhythm---far more haunted than anything he'd created before---claiming him for the moment.
"Yet the arms of her lover reach out for more.
"Like a sinner I will burn in his fire,
"I will die in his fire as she pleads for more.
"Like a sinner I will burn in his fire,
"I will die in his fire and beg her for a chance."
It worked. On more levels than Nick expected.
A chance? Isn't that what you've been looking for, for the last lifetime? A chance at something else? Something you once had?
He ignored the ambivalent question, opening his eyes instead and holding out his hand to the man beside him. "Nick Blackthorne." He smiled. "But you already know that. Who might you be?"
The man closed firm fingers around Nick's grip, his skin callused. "Aidan Rogers."
"And what do you do for a living, Aidan Rogers? Apart from boating marlin and helping tired rock stars write song lyrics."
Aidan snorted, the sound far more self-deprecating than Nick believed he intended. "I'm a firefighter."
"Dealing with enflamed situations a specialty, 'ey? But today, you're on a different mission? Feeling the heat for a different reason?"
Aidan cocked an eyebrow. "What makes you say that?"
Nick grinned. "You're here to ask me out."
Silence followed his statement. Stretching silence. He shot Aidan a quick look, taking another drink as he did.
The man studied him, his expression steady. For all intents and purposes, Nick could have said Aidan was here to sell him a fire extinguisher. Nothing about his face registered any kind of shock or reaction. "So," the man finally said, his voice steady. Calm. "Can I buy you something stronger than water?"
Unable to help himself, Nick burst out laughing. "Oh, mate." He clapped a hand on Aidan's very broad shoulder---what did the guy do? Shoulder-press Mack trucks in his spare time? "You have no idea how far from my type you are."
A face of an angel with filth on her mind...
The song lyric came to him, lilting and soft, a teasing caress on the part of him he'd thought long dead, and with it came an image of McKenzie Wood, her entirely kissable lips curled in a challenging smile, her direct gaze presenting its own challenge.
His prick moved in his jeans, an eager spasm he felt both in his balls and at the base of his spine. What he wanted right now...right at this very moment...
Aidan cleared his throat, and as if someone had released a valve somewhere on his well-built body, a fluid ease rolled through him. "Didn't think I was."
"So, what are you going to tell her?"
A frown pulled at Aidan's eyebrows. "How do you know it was Mack who put me up to this?"
Nick shrugged, Aidan's answer confirming more than one suspicion. "Who else would it be? You're here at the resort with a tabloid journalist. A journalist with the balls to ask me straight out about Germany."
"That doesn't really answer my question." Aidan's gaze was direct. "Who's to say I didn't find you attractive back in the corridor?"
Nick laughed again. "I do. I saw the way you looked at her, even when you were trying to shut her up. You don't write over twenty rock ballads about unrequited love without being able to recognize it."
He waited for the man to say something, wondering if he should also point out the way Aidan had looked when the little journo with the brass balls and sexy-as-sin body squirmed against him?
Before he could, though, Aidan shook his head, another one of those self-deprecating snorts escaping him. "Unrequited love. Yeah. That's one way of putting it."
Nick chuckled. "Ever thought of telling her?"
"About a million times a day."
"And instead you're here?"
Aidan let out a huff. "Yeah. I'm here. Of course, she'll accuse me of not trying to pick you up hard enough." He tilted his head a little, casting Nick a gaze part curious, part uncertain. "What were you doing in Germany, if I might ask? If not because of the whole..." He made a funny, fumbling gesture with his hand, his cheeks growing pink and Nick had to laugh again. Aidan Rogers was, if nothing else, an open, honest and somehow altogether innocent bugger.
"Gay thing?" Nick finished for him, grinning.
"Yeah, that." Aidan raised his own ice water to his lips and took a drink. "Are you bi?"
Nick let out his own snort. "Nope."
"So the sex clinic thing is just a rumor?"
The pit of his gut tightened and he swallowed a mouthful. "Nope."
Once again, Aidan didn't say anything. Not for a good couple of minutes at least. "Fair enough," he eventually said with a nod. "Just out of interest, if I were to say to you, 'I will die in his fire and beg her for', what's the first thing that comes into your head?"
Life.
The word---simple but with so much weight he could barely draw breath---came to Nick straightaway, accompanied by an image of McKenzie Wood naked and slicked in perspiration, her lithe little body wrapped in the strong, muscled arms of an equally naked, sweat-slicked Aidan Rogers.
How could two people he'd never met until today stir something so firmly believed dead?
And what was he going to do about it?
The sound of metal scrapping on granite jerked Nick back from the brooding thought and he turned towards Aidan, surprised---and more than a touch disappointed---to find the man on his feet. "So, you're going to give her the bad news, are you?"
Aidan let out a short chuckle. "You know what?" An ambivalent expression claimed his face. "I think it's time I give her something else."
Nick raised an eyebrow, his pulse thumping quite hard in his neck. "Why today?"
"Because a month ago I almost died in a fire." Aidan's lips pulled into a small, lopsided smile. "I think a chance is exactly what I've been given."
With another one of those strangely communicative nods the man walked away, his massive back straight, his shoulders so broad his T-shirt barely stretched over them.
Nick watched him go, his throat far too dry for a man drinking ice water. "Give her one for me, mate," he muttered, reaching for his drink, knowing full well he was thirsty for something else.
McKenzie chewed on her thumbnail, her stare fixed on the closed door of her luxurious room. It was a disgusting habit she'd promised herself she wouldn't indulge in anymore---nail chewing, not door staring---but at the moment, she was so damn nervous she didn't know what else to do.
Damn it, what if Aidan didn't come back?
What if Nick Blackthorne accepted his drink offer?
What if they were both right at this very minute removing each other's clothing in Nick's room?
Why are you so worried about this, McKenzie? Why now? What's going on in your head to make you worry about who Aidan Rogers sleeps with?
She didn't know. But something about the way he'd looked at her earlier, like she was the only thing that mattered to him in the world... God, what if she'd made a mistake asking him to---
The sound of a lock releasing shattered the suffocating silence, and McKenzie started on her chair, her pulse flying as the ultra-chic chrome doorknob turned.
The door swung inward, Aidan filling the frame for the split second he took to cross the threshold. The sun streaming through the room's main window bathed him in warm light, picking out the copper-gold in his light brown hair and turning his green eyes brilliant jade. The white T-shirt he wore clung to his body, snug enough to emphasize his perfectly fit physique, loose enough to highlight how little attention he paid to his appearance. Even his almost baggy cargo pants---hanging low on lean hips and faded to a washed-out olive---were a season late, but on Aidan they just looked...
Sexy.
McKenzie's heart slammed into her throat, a hot prickling sensation she didn't want to analyze racing through her at the sight of his towering presence.
Face it, Wood. The guy's sex on legs. Why have you never seen this before?
Tossing the suite's key card on the nearby table, he gave her a steady look, walking deeper into their luxurious suite's living room, drawing closer to her with slow steady steps.
"Soooo?" she asked around her thumbnail.
"He said no."
"No?" She scrambled from her chair, her heart beating harder. Faster. "How could he say no? How could anyone with a pulse say no to you?"
Aidan's face became still, a small muscle twitching in his jaw. "I don't know, Mack. How can you?"
McKenzie's heart didn't just thump harder in her chest. It tried to smash its way out of her chest cavity. She looked up at him, lost for a thing to say.
"Ah, fuck it." The words were almost a guttural growl. In two steps he destroyed the small space left between them, pressed his large hands on either side of her face and took her lips with his.
They were warm. Warm and soft and confident. He didn't hesitate. He didn't just test the waters. He kissed her. The way a lover kisses. There was nothing chaste or friendly about the way his lips took hers. First with just his lips, his hands framing her face, holding her motionless, and then with his tongue, dipping into her mouth with a determined assurance she liked so very, very much.
Aidan Rogers is kissing you. You are kissing Aidan Rogers.
The thought should have terrified her. He was her best friend. What if it went all wrong?
His tongue stroked against hers, a slow, thorough mating that made her pussy constrict and the ridiculous notion of things going wrong went out the window. Along with the temporary paralysis for some reason claiming her.
With a low groan, she snaked her arms up around his neck, closing her eyes as she pressed her body to his. He was hard. Everywhere. Hard and big. Her sex constricted again, a demanding throb that made her whimper.
"Jesus, you have no idea how long..." he murmured against her lips, nipping at them with gentle bites. He didn't finish the statement, instead plunging his tongue back into her mouth, a groan closer to a growl rumbling in his chest as his hands raked down her back and grabbed her arse.
He was six-foot-three and built like a warrior. She was five-foot-six and resembled a waif. He had no difficulty whatsoever hauling her off the floor, even less spinning around and taking the two steps needed to press her back against the door. His hands cupped her butt, his legs splaying just enough to balance them both as his lips and tongue continued to worship hers.
McKenzie's head swam. Hot fingers of raw sensations threaded through her, twisting and turning through the center of her heat as Aidan made love to her mouth. She rolled her hips, wanting to feel the solid thickness of his erection rub over her spread pussy lips. Even with the damn barrier of their clothes, the bulbous shape of his cock head nudging her folds made her pulse quicken and her nipples pucker. She'd touched that cock once---sixteen years ago. She'd rubbed it and laughed and never thought twice about touching it again.
And yet, here she was. Aching to not just touch it, but impale herself on it. Have it stretch her to her limits, fill her completely. No laughing involved.
What if this is a mistake?
The unspoken question hung between them and she pulled away from his kiss, her heart racing. She couldn't believe this was really happening. How could she? One minute Aidan was just her best friend, now...they were about to have sex?
He waited, watching her but not saying a word, his eyes blazing his desire---and, she was somehow glad to see---his confusion as well. Had he always wanted this? Or was it an island thing? God, she didn't know.
Does it matter?
Yes, it did. This was huge. She wanted him to make love to her, but hell, was she just letting her body do the thinking now? Their relationship was on the line here. What happened next could destroy it. Irrevocably.
Or take it to a level you never imagined.
Or realized you wanted.
"Aidan..." she whispered, wishing she could see inside his head. Was this just sex for him? Or something else? Something...
"You truly have no idea how long I've ached for this, Mack."
His proclamation, spoken with an almost dazed disbelief, sent a shiver through her. Not just through her sex, but through her. All of her.
"What?" She needed to know. "What have you ached for?"
"You."
The answer was simple. Honest.
"Why didn't you tell me before?"
"Because I almost...because the thought of you rejecting me..." He left the sentences unfinished, but what he didn't say made her belly flip.
Oh God. This wasn't just two friends fooling around now. This was...huge.
"If you want me to stop..." he continued, dragging his hands up her waist only to halt them at the curve of her ribcage just below her breasts. His face was tight with tension, his jaw clenched. "I will. But you need to tell me now."
Stop? Was he kidding?
Her reaction was instant and raw and it told her what her stupid brain couldn't. The second he'd even uttered the word "stop" she knew she didn't want him to.
She buried her fingers in his choppy mess of hair to stare into his eyes. "If you stop, I will be forced to slap you senseless."
A soft chuckle vibrated through him, the dimples in his cheeks flashing into existence. "I thought of doing something else to you until you were senseless only a little while ago."
She cocked an eyebrow at him, rolling her hips again in an attempt to stroke her sex over the confined pole of his cock. Damn, she wanted to feel that inside her. Wanted it so much she actually ached. "And what was that, Rogers?"
His eyes twinkled green fire. "This."
He spun her away from the door and, three strides later, threw her on to the suite's main bed, a massive king-sized number covered in silk and cushions. She squealed in shocked delight, the sound captured by his mouth as he dropped on top of her.
His hands roamed her torso, up to her throat, back down to her hips. He squeezed her arse cheeks before raking one hand down the back of her thigh and tugging her leg up. She willingly obeyed his unspoken direction, wrapping her leg around his hip to grind her pussy up and down his still-constrained cock.
"I want to make love to you, Mack." His breath was ragged, his eyes ablaze. "Right now." He slipped one hand under the hemline of her shirt, his fingers brushing her bare flesh beneath.
She sucked in a swift gasp, the contact somehow more electric, more arousing than any she'd ever had before.
Of course it is, McKenzie. This isn't just anyone. This is Aidan. The guy's had your heart in his pocket since you were kids. Even if you didn't know it.
She whimpered, bringing her hand to his as she arched her back. She wanted him to touch her breasts. Not just touch them, but cup them, squeeze them. She wanted to feel the callused strength of his hands mold her soft flesh, hands skilled in extinguishing heat now on the verge of setting her on fire. She wanted to feel him possess her.
"Then what the hell are you waiting any longer for?" she asked, directing his hand up to her breast. Over it.
"Oh God, McKenzie." He moaned, his body stiffening as his fingers found her pleasure-swollen flesh.
He dragged his thumb over her rock-hard nipple, teasing it through the thin lace of her bra. It puckered harder to his touch, as if it too said, "Yes, why have you taken so long to do this?"
Her breaths grew shallow, more rapid with every stroke of his thumb pad. But it wasn't enough. It was torture.
"Please..."
Like he always knew when she wanted popcorn at the movies, like he always knew when she needed chocolate, like he always always knew when she needed to hear his voice and called her from the fire station, now it seemed he knew exactly what she wanted him to do to her.
God, it was wonderful. More than wonderful. It was amazing. Sublime. It was...
Right. So goddamn right.
His erection pressing to the sodden junction of her thighs, Aidan hooked the edge of her bra with his fingers, and with one swift move of his arm, pulled the lace from her breast and raised her shirt up her torso.
He looked at what he'd revealed for a short---and at the same time, agonizingly long---second before his gaze found her face. "Are you sure?" he whispered, the words almost strangled.
Was she? This wasn't just a quick fuck. Not even a one-night stand---well, a one-morning stand. There was no coming back from this. Sex with Aidan. Everything changed after that. Whether it was good or horrendously bad, it changed everything.
Horrendously bad? Are you serious? You've never felt so freaking aroused, so consumed with...with...hell, so consumed with real pleasure and all he's done is kiss you.
Was she sure?
She nodded, swallowing at the thick anticipation rising in her throat. "I've never been surer."
The muscles in his body tensed, his nostrils flared again, and then he lowered his head and took her nipple in his mouth.
Exquisite pleasure shot through her, and she cried out, her pussy not just throbbing but contracting with such eager want she thrust her hips harder to his body. She'd had her breasts sucked before, but what Aidan was doing...
His tongue rolled over her nipple, short stabbing strokes followed by shorter, sharper sucks that sent shards of squirming pressure straight through her. She moaned, fisting her hands in his hair and shoving her sex closer to his cock. "Oh, Aidan..." She closed her eyes, close to sensory overload. "That feels..."
"I'm in hell here, Mack," he growled, his lips and breath hot on her breast. "I want to make this last forever---for as long as I've wanted to do it---but I'm so close to coming..."
The torment she heard in his voice, the raw truth, flayed McKenzie's tenuous control. God, why had she never known he felt this way? Why hadn't she realized she felt the same? Her pussy squeezed a cock that wasn't there. She opened her eyes and gazed up at him, the pain etching his face, the desire, making her sex flood.
She'd always been one for foreplay. Long sessions of foreplay followed by longer sessions of fucking, but Aidan---as always---seemed to know exactly what she needed. She needed him inside her. Now.
"Sixteen years of foreplay and I didn't even know it," she murmured.
Aidan's jaw bunched, his cock nudging her sex with a jerking spasm. "I fucking did."
She laughed, a shallow burst of awestruck breath, and he seized on the moment to rise up between her legs, grab the waistline of her shorts and yank them off her body, taking her sodden undies with them.
"I'm going to fuck you with my tongue later," he rasped, tossing her clothing aside, his voice not altogether steady. "I promise, but right now..."
He tore open his fly, his cock springing free of its imprisonment immediately. McKenzie's breath left her in a whimpering moan. God, he was huge.
Precome glistened on the tip of his shaft, a perfect bead of pleasure. Her mouth filled with moisture at the thought of licking it off with her tongue.
Later. Later. But now...now...
"Condom?" The single word passed Aidan's lips in a low question, his breath ragged, his oh-so-very-impressive stomach muscles hitching.
McKenzie laughed. "I've known you for sixteen years, Rogers." She raised herself off the bed, just enough to trace her fingertip up the length of his cock, its satiny heat making her pussy contract. "I trust you more than I trust any other living soul. I know you will always protect me and you know I would never do anything to hurt you, but if you think there's a reason to use a condom, then use one."
His nostrils flared again and McKenzie could see his throat work up and down as he swallowed.
"Babies?"
His question was barely more than choked moan. She knew exactly how he felt---she was burning up herself.
"Pill."
Green fire danced in his eyes and he lowered himself toward her, his hands planting on either side of her ribcage, his lips brushing hers. "So is this where I should say coming, ready or not?"
She grinned, her heart warm. Aidan---the man she'd never seen before, the man turning her on so much she could barely think, was still her Aidan. The bloke that made her laugh. "Oh, I'm more than ready."
Aidan stared into her face. "So am I."
And in one single, fluid move, he buried himself to the balls inside her.
"Oh God, yes!" she cried out, arching herself into the searing thrust. He was inside her. Completely and totally. Filling her like no one before, and for a surreal moment all she could think about was how bloody perfectly they fit together and how bloody stupid she'd been not to see that before now.
And then he slammed into her again, again and again, his face buried into the side of her neck, his hands balling the silk duvet beneath her, and rational thought deserted her.
There was nothing tender or gentle or even romantic about the way he took her. It was raw and desperate. His breath left him in strangled moans, in shaking hisses through clenched teeth. His penetrations grew faster, harder, and McKenzie rode each one, a frantic need for a connection so long denied, so long ignored, consuming her. There was a power in his thrust, an urgent force she'd never experienced before. It was amazing. It altered everything, as she knew it would, but on such a monumental scale, her mind was lost to it, overwhelmed by it.
"Yes." She bucked into his strokes, pulled him into each one, driving his thick length deeper, deeper into her center. "Oh God, God, yes, yes."
Her climax claimed her, her orgasm an exquisite eruption. She drove her nails into Aidan's back, her voice hoarse, just as his savage rhythm broke and he came in thick wads of liquid release she felt fill her very soul.
Aidan Rogers. Her best friend.
His strokes grew wilder, erratic, and then, with one last driving thrust, he let out a moan, the sound vibrating through him, turning into a long groan as he slumped on top of her.
They both lay like that, McKenzie's mind reeling, her body still thrumming from the pleasure he'd wrought upon her. God, there was no turning back now, was there? No matter what Aidan said next, he'd just given her the most mind-blowing orgasm of her life.
"Jesus, Mack," he finally whispered, his face still pressed to her neck, his lips brushing her flesh, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Her heart stilled, her blood roaring in her ears. She lay motionless, unsure she'd just heard him correctly. Sorry?
He's realized he's made a mistake. After all these years of wanting you, now he's realized he was wrong. Just when you've finally realized just how right for you he is.
Her stomach lurched, and she ground her teeth. Tears stung at the back of her eyes, hot and burning.
Oh, McKenzie, what do you do now?
"I'm sorry," Aidan said again, his voice muffled. "I wanted to last longer. I wanted---" he shook his head against her neck, "---to give you so much more."
A short, sharp laugh burst from her, relief not just sweeping through her but turning her chilled blood hot. She wriggled beneath him, shifting him enough so she could cup his jaw in her hands. With a no-nonsense push, she raised his head, giving him a hard stare. "Don't you bloody dare apologize."
He gave her a wry smile. "That wasn't exactly how I planned this to go."
McKenzie chuckled. The gravity of their situation beat at her but she didn't let it take her. Not when she felt this totally, utterly awesome. "Well, considering I pictured you naked and in bed with Nick Blackthorne less than thirty minutes ago, I think the afternoon's gone pretty well, don't---"
A knock on the suite's door stopped her. She and Aidan looked at each other, a small grin playing with the corners of Aidan's mouth. "That'll be Mason."
"Oh, let me open the door." McKenzie scrambled away from him, almost falling off the bed as she did so. She was happy, so damn happy she wanted to shout it to the world, no matter how clichéd the notion. "I wanna see his face when he sees what we've been up to."
"Mack!" Aidan burst out, throwing a pillow at her as she all but sprinted for the door.
She dodged it, throwing him a wide smile over her shoulder as she messed her hair up more and smoothed out her rumpled T-shirt until the hem fell just below her backside. She wrapped her fingers around the doorknob and gave Aidan one last look over her shoulder. "Wanna bet he threatens to tell Mum?"
Before Aidan could answer, she flung open the door.
And found Nick Blackthorne leaning against the doorframe, his pitch-black sunglasses perched atop his ink-black hair, his piercing grey eyes fixed completely on her.
"Hello, McKenzie Wood from Goss Weekly. Any chance I can join in?"
Aidan didn't just scramble from the bed; he leapt from it. He stared hard at the rock star leaning in the threshold, his heart thumping fast. "What the fuck are---?" he began, a second before Nick's gaze slid to him and he realized he was standing in the middle of a hotel room with his tackle---still semi-hard and probably glistening with McKenzie's juices---on show.
Jaw clamping shut, glare locked on Nick's smiling face, he shoved his dick back into his cargos and yanked up his fly. What the hell was Nick Blackthorne doing here? And what the hell did he mean "join in"?
"Nick?" McKenzie's startled voice shattered the suffocating silence, and from the corner of Aidan's eye he saw her step back from the open door, her eyebrows dipping in a stunned frown. "I...we...you..."
She stammered over the personal pronouns, each one passing her lips in a short, breathless hiccup, her normal poise nowhere to be seen.
The rock star raised his eyebrows, a grin Aidan would have sworn was cheeky playing with his lips, if not for the hesitation in his eyes. And the uncertainty.
Nick himself, it seemed, didn't really know why he was here. Or what was going to happen next.
"How can we help you, Nick?" Aidan held the man's stare, a heavy beat thumping in his temple, his throat. If what the singer was going to suggest was what Aidan suspected...
An unbidden image flickered through his head, McKenzie, naked, pressed between them both, her head thrown back as both Nick's mouth and his own explored the perfection of her throat, her breasts.
His pulse quickened and his balls---so recently depleted---grew hard. Jesus Christ, what was he thinking?
"I came to ask..." Nick paused, rubbing at his mouth with a hand before raking it through his hair; hair, Aidan couldn't help but notice, much more messy than it had been at the bar. "I wanted..." He let out a harsh breath, shaking his head and stepping backward. "Fuck," he muttered, turning his face away, "where's the cool fucking rock star when I need him?"
Aidan's pulse beat faster. He narrowed his eyes, knowing he should do something, say something. But what? What exactly did he want to say?
Before he could work that out, however, Nick swung his stare back to them both, looking first at McKenzie and then Aidan, a calm resolution falling over his face. A face hundreds of thousands of women---and likely a few men---fantasized about over and over again. A face, when combined with a voice unlike any the world had heard, that elevated Nick Blackthorne beyond fantasies.
"I want to have a threesome," he said, that ambiguous accent almost all Australian now. "So fucking much I'm aching all over."
McKenzie's mouth fell open, but not before Aidan was at her side, his stare locked on Nick. "I think---" he started, but Nick cut him off, his gaze holding Aidan's with just as much force.
"I haven't heard music, lyrics, for a long time. Too long to remember." He let out a ragged sigh. "I haven't felt alive for a long time either. I've been dead inside for so long I'd forgotten what it was like to feel anything. But the second I heard McKenzie laugh---" he closed his eyes for a moment, an expression of sheer rapture crossing his face, "---the second I saw her in your arms..."
He opened his eyes and looked at Aidan, and that haunted, hesitant torment was back on his face. "I want to be a part of your intimacy."
Something heavy and hot surged through Aidan's veins, though his body. "What you're saying," he said, keeping his voice calm, modulated, "is you want to make love to the one woman you know I've wanted forever?"
McKenzie gasped. Nick's nostrils flared. "Yes," he nodded. "While you do as well."
"You want to..." McKenzie's unfinished question, uttered on a shaking breath, should have torn Aidan's stare from Nick's. But it didn't.
"I want to lose myself in the magic of your desire for each other," Nick continued, the words low and smooth, and yet at the same time rough and husky. "Just standing here now, looking at you both, looking at the room behind you...the rumpled sheets, the rumpled hair...the scent of your pleasure streaming into my body with each breath I take..." He closed his eyes again for a split second, shaking his head as if moved by something Aidan couldn't experience.
Or maybe already had?
"Arousing," Nick growled, and it was a growl. Guttural and barely controlled, it was the horniest sound Aidan had ever heard a man make. "So damn arousing."
He looked at them again. "I'm assailed by images of you both together. Ever since you left me at the bar, Aidan, ever since I knew you were coming back here to claim the woman of your dreams, I can't stop seeing you together, moving together... Fuck me, I can't stop wanting to be a part of that."
Aidan's mouth went dry.
"I don't want to intrude on your intimacy." Nick shook his head again, even as he moved his stare to McKenzie, his eyes beseeching. "I know you need time alone, but damn it, just for once, I want to be a part of something so very few people in the world ever get the chance to experience: true bliss."
He returned his stare to Aidan. "McKenzie is so fucking gorgeous." The sides of his lips twitched a little in a small smile. "And God help me, the thought of you making love to her..."
He left the rest of the sentence dangling between them, saying instead, "I hear music again. I feel it in my soul, but the song isn't finished." He paused again, his Adam's apple rolling up and down in his throat. "Just one day, that's all I ask. Just one day, the rest of this day. Please."
Aidan stood motionless, the heat of McKenzie's body seeping into his side, his stare locked on Nick Blackthorne's haunted face. His ears rang with a low roar, his heart thumped a wild tattoo. He didn't know what to say.
But surely, that is answer enough? As is Mack's silence?
He pulled a swift breath. McKenzie hadn't said a word either. Not one. Her uncharacteristic failure to respond to the rock star made his throat tight. And not just his throat. His balls grew hard, his cock twitching with interest. He turned to face her, the delicate scent of her release still lingering on the suite's still air.
Nick was correct. She was fucking gorgeous. He'd known that forever. Every night when he'd closed his eyes he'd seen her, imagined her moving over him, riding his shaft, her hair rumpled like it was now, gorgeous and sexy and his, all his. But now, right now, right at this very moment in time, it wasn't just he and McKenzie he saw in his head.
And by the shaky way she drew breath, by the way her eyes were dilated and the way her nipples were erect and hard beneath the thin cotton of her shirt, he suspected Nick was in her head as well.
Which should have made him jealous as all hell, but instead made him so fucking aroused his cock was a rod of agonized steel.
The world's most lusted-after celebrity, the man described by Rolling Stone magazine as "sin and sex and soul", was inspired by what he and McKenzie had. How could he not be turned on?
Aidan gazed at her, unable to find the words to vocalize his thoughts.
She studied him, her eyes wide, her lips parted, the tiny pulse at the base of her neck beating so quickly he could see it fluttering beneath her smooth skin.
Did he ask her? Did he dare?
He didn't have to. A small smile began to pull at her lips, the kind he recognized so very well: the kind that said she was with him. No matter what, she was with him. He'd seen it so many times since he'd first met her that if he were an artist, he could draw it with his eyes closed. But he wasn't an artist, he was a firefighter. And a man. The luckiest fucking man on the planet.
He cocked an eyebrow at her and let his own smile stretch his lips. I'm with you too.
Without a word to either him or Nick, McKenzie turned and crossed the suite's carpeted floor, her hips swaying in that naturally sensual way he knew was unpracticed or contrived, her naked butt barely hidden by the hemline of the shirt she wore.
She stopped at the expensive iPod docking station that was part of the suite's luxurious inclusions, bending a little at the waist until her fingertips swirled over the iPod she'd placed there on checking in.
He heard Nick suck in a swift breath at the teasing glimpse of her perfect arse peeking out at them from beneath the rising hem of her shirt. Heard the man's feet shuffle a little, and then the room filled with the low, muted sounds of Nick Blackthorne singing the love ballad that catapulted him onto the world's music stage and gave him his first number one selling, multi-platinum release: "Night Whispers".
The smoldering lyrics wafted from speakers embedded in the walls, Nick's voice husky and raw, the lyrics lamenting the loss of love when courage failed.
Aidan sucked in his own breath. He knew this song so very well. He'd danced with McKenzie at their high school formal to this song. The only slow dance they'd ever shared.
"And I want to beg but I can't find the words," Nick from fifteen years ago sang, the evocative sound of an acoustic guitar his only accompaniment.
"And I want to cry but I can't find the tears.
"And all that's left is the shadow of your heart and the ghost of your smile...
"And the whispers in the night."
Aidan's throat grew tighter. Thicker.
As did his cock.
But no more so than when McKenzie---her back still to him and Nick---crossed her arms in front of her body and slowly, without turning to face them, lifted her shirt up over her head.
Aidan's heart skipped a beat.
Jesus Christ.
Her back was beautiful. He devoured its sublime perfection with greedy eyes, following the subtle curve of her spine from the smooth column of her neck down to the equally smooth curves of her arse cheeks. His mouth filled with water at the sight of the twin dimples denting her flesh just above the swell of each one, his cock jerking with insistent need.
"Bloody hell," he heard Nick murmur behind him.
"And all that's left is the shadow of your heart and the ghost of your smile..." Nick crooned from the iPod, his voice cracking, the guitar strings echoing his torment. "And the whispers in the night."
McKenzie turned to face them.
Two sets of eyes moved over her naked body. Two men staring at her with undeniable, molten want.
McKenzie stood still. Erect. The suite's cool, air-conditioned air slipped over her exposed flesh, between her thighs, over the folds of her sex and her taut nipples. A ripple of wanton delight claimed her, making her pleasure-swollen breasts grow rounder, pinching her nipples tighter. She lifted her chin, catching her bottom lip with her teeth.
Her iPod continued to play, the sounds of Nick singing "Night Whispers" slipping over her nerve endings. Her heart didn't just hammer in her chest, it beat out a rhythm so wild, so frantic she could barely draw breath.
Was she really doing this?
Yes, she was.
She was about to let two men make love to her at once. Her firefighter and the world's most desired rock star.
It was Aidan who moved first.
With a growl, he crossed the floor, nostrils flaring, his hands removing his shirt as he did so.
McKenzie only had a second to gaze in stunned rapture at the sheer strength of his naked torso, its muscled width marked by a stunning tattoo of a heart set alight with deep red flames directly above where his real heart sat, before his mouth was crushing hers and his hands were on her body.
His tongue delved past her lips, finding hers and battling with it. His hands roamed up her back, the line of her neck and into her hair, fisting in the strands at her nape, holding her head motionless as his mouth turned hungrier, more demanding.
Liquid heat pooled in McKenzie's sex at his dominating possession. His teeth nipped at her bottom lip, his tongue swirled inside her mouth. He sucked and plundered and fucked her mouth, and all the while his massive erection ground against her belly, making her head spin and her pussy constrict and her pulse pound.
She pressed her hands to his hard chest, her fingertips resting on the pebbled points of his nipples. The contact drew a low groan from Aidan, the sound vibrating through her body. It was a wild sound, desperate and aggressive at once. She liked it. A lot. She stroked her fingers over his nipples, her pussy fluttering as Aidan groaned again, his cock jerking against her.
"Jesus, Mack," he ground out against her lips, "tease me like that and I'm going to lose it."
The confession sent shards of squirming tension into the junction of her thighs. She rubbed them together, her clit throbbing in her folds. A simple kiss and she was almost insane with need. A simple kiss. She flicked at his nipples, catching his tongue with her lips and sucking it with ungentle force, giddy with mounting want. And the very moment she thought she would pass out from the sheer pleasure Aidan's lips and tongue wrought on her senses, another set of hands moved over her body.
"You smell just like I knew you would." Nick's deep murmur caressed the side of her throat, his lips journeying up to her ear as his fingers skimmed up the length of her arms. "Like spring flowers and summer breezes." He snared her wrists, pressing his body against her back as he moved her hands up Aidan's chest to link her fingers behind Aidan's neck.
In the background, the next song on her playlist began, Nick's husky-smooth voice wafting from the speakers, the lyrics a carnal declaration of lust for a woman called Heartbreak.
McKenzie's heart slammed faster, her pussy lips growing engorged with fresh blood. At some stage since Aidan had begun his ravishment of her mouth, Nick had removed his clothes. His tall, lean form touched her from shoulder blades to thighs, the soft hair on his chest tickling her back, the soft curls at his groin kissing the cheeks of her arse. McKenzie whimpered. The rigid pole of his cock nudged at the crevice of her backside, parting it with insistent force just as Aidan's cock---still trapped in his cargo pants---pushed harder at her belly.
Oh God, she thought, squirming against them both, I'm the filling in a manwich.
Nick's hands smoothed back down her arms and over her shoulders, his lips exploring the sensitive dip below her ear as his fingers brushed the side swell of her breasts. "You feel just like I knew you would, soft and warm and heavenly." He feathered his fingertips over breasts and down her ribcage, sending a ripple of concentrated pleasure over her flesh. "And so, so fucking sinful."
The growled proclamation made McKenzie's pussy contract, her anus squeezing with equal pressure. She tore her lips from Aidan's, rolling her head until it rested on Nick's shoulder. "Can I quote you on that?" she asked on a moan.
He chuckled, curling his fingers over her hips and pressing his thick cock harder to her butt. "The face of an angel with filth on her mind..." he sang, his voice husky.
Aidan's lips curled in a slow, crooked smile as he gazed down into McKenzie's face. "I'm thinking this song's on its way to being my all-time favorite."
Before she could respond, he stepped away from her, his fingers slipping from her hair, his nostrils flaring at her soft cry of protest. "I need to feel your flesh on mine, Mack." His chest heaved and his hands moved to the waistband of his cargos. "All my flesh."
"Do you see how much she wants you, Aidan?" Nick's hands took advantage of Aidan's absence against her body. They roamed her belly, skimming over the shallow dent of her navel, the angles of her hips. She hitched in a breath as his fingertips brushed over the trimmed curls of her pubic hair, her stare locked on Aidan's eyes.
"Jesus, Nick," he groaned, jaw bunching, "I didn't think I could be this turned on watching someone else touch Mack like that."
Nick chuckled behind her, his warm breath tickling her ear. "What if I touch her like this?" His fingers dipped lower over her mound, parting her folds to stroke her clit with one slow caress.
Warm tension speared into McKenzie's core and she let out another whimper.
Aidan's eyes burned, his stomach muscles coiling. "Oh, yeah."
Nick's fingers played over McKenzie's clit once more. "She's wet for us already, mate."
"Good."
The simple word left Aidan in a low breath, his fingers playing with the button on his waistband and, her pussy squeezing in greedy impatience, McKenzie watched as he released it with a quick flick and then lowered the zipper.
Oh, yes.
Her heart beat harder, faster, against her breastbone, her stare devouring the sight of his distended shaft jutting free of his parting fly. If possible, it was bigger, thicker than before. Its head topped the venous length like a taut, purple dome, tiny beads of precome glistening on its very tip, slicking his flesh.
The need to taste those pearls of Aidan's pleasure filled McKenzie's mouth with saliva and she writhed in Nick's embrace. "Please..." she whispered.
"Tell me what you want to do to him, McKenzie," Nick murmured in her ear, his lips hot on her skin.
She stared at Aidan where he stood, motionless, but a mere meter away from her. The tattoo over his heart seemed to throb, his broad chest and sculptured stomach highlighting the sheer perfection of his body. He didn't move, waiting for her, his hands fisted at his side, his cock standing ramrod straight from the thatch of dark blond curls peeking from his open fly.
Nick's fingers slipped over her clit, dipping in to her sodden heat. "Tell me."
McKenzie's head swam. Her breath grew shallow. Rapid. She gazed at Aidan, every fiber in her body aching for him. Needing him. Needing this. "I want to suck his cock."
Aidan groaned at her hoarse confession, his eyes closing for a brief moment, his rigid shaft jerking against his stomach. "Jesus, Mack."
"A face of an angel with filth on her mind," Nick sang, his throaty voice tormenting McKenzie's nerve endings. He slid his fingers deeper into her sex, his other hand smoothing up her stomach to capture her right breast.
"Please," McKenzie begged, writhing in his embrace. "Oh, please, Nick, let me...give me..."
Nick wriggled his fingers in her pussy, sending ribbons of exquisite sensations through her very core. "Tell Mack what you want, Aidan."
Aidan's nostrils flared and he swallowed, flicking his smoldering green gaze to the rock star's face. "I want to feel her lips slide over my dick, Nick, while you bury your cock into her."
At the calm declaration, McKenzie climaxed. Or maybe it was Nick's seeking fingers, stroking the sweetest spot on her feminine walls over and over again. Or maybe it was both. Whatever it was, she could not control the strangled cry bursting past her lips, nor the shuddering contractions squeezing her sex.
"Oh God." She bucked into Nick's penetrations, her own hands moving to his, helping him cup her breast and bury into her dripping cleft. "Oh God, yes." She felt herself through Nick's hands, her abrupt orgasm rocking through her, her stare holding Aidan's.
"Now, Aidan," she heard Nick pant, a second before Aidan yanked his cargos from his thickly muscled legs and destroyed the distance between them.
He fisted his hands in her hair, hungry desire burning in his eyes. His cock pressed to her hitching stomach, painting her heated flesh with precome. He stared into her face and crushed her mouth with his lips, his kiss neither gentle nor sweet.
It was a declaration: of what, McKenzie didn't know. Or care. She'd never been kissed with such brutal need. That Nick's hands worked her pussy and her breast at the same time only heightened the rising tension already rebuilding in her center.
Her head swirled. She was going to come again. How could that be? How could she come again so---
Another orgasm claimed her, just as abruptly, just as violently as the first. Nick pinched her clit as it did so, rolled her nipple between his fingers, torturing her pleasure-torn body with new waves of rapture. And still, Aidan plundered her mouth, his tongue lashing inside, his teeth nipping and biting her bottom lip, drawing moan after moan from her chest.
The two men were relentless. Unstoppable. She bucked and whimpered and pleaded with them to stop, begged them for more.
Just when her legs began to tremble, just when the third orgasm threatened to consume her, just when her pussy seemed to flow with rivers of her cream, Nick released his hold on her and stepped backward.
"No!" she cried out, but the word was muffled in Aidan's kiss.
Aidan tore his lips from hers. "Climb on the bed, Nick."
It was Aidan's turn to growl commands. He stood before McKenzie, his jaw clenched, his right hand slowly pumping up and down his turgid erection.
Nick did as Aidan ordered, and it was all McKenzie could do not to moan at the sight of him moving atop of the king-sized mattress.
Instead, she kept her attention on her best friend, in awe and more than a little apprehensive of this new side of him she'd never seen before. There was nothing jovial or sardonic about Aidan right at that moment: he was a base male, wanting one thing from his woman and doing exactly what he needed to get it.
His nostrils flared as he pulled a slow breath. "Go and climb onto the bed, Mack. On your knees with your back to him."
A shiver raced up McKenzie's spine at the blunt order. Her nipples puckered hard. Her clit throbbed. She moved to the bed, her gaze connecting with Nick's for a tantalizing second as she climbed onto the mattress's edge. He studied her, his stunning grey eyes half lidded, his world-famous languid smile nowhere to be seen.
McKenzie swallowed, her pulse quickening. Nick's cock jutted up from the dense thatch of black curls covering his groin, long and thick and bowed in a slight arc. Like Aidan's, its tip was anointed with tiny beads of pleasure. Like Aidan's, each drop made her more aroused.
Movement from the corner of her eye made her turn back to her best friend, and her breath caught in her throat as she watched him retrieve his wallet from his discarded trousers and withdraw a small thin foil square from inside it.
She knew what it was. She knew what it meant.
The world's most desired singer was going to fuck her very soon.
Her mouth went dry and she rubbed her thighs together, her clit not just throbbing but prickling with fresh need.
"Put this on." Aidan tossed the condom packet to Nick, his stare never leaving McKenzie's face.
At the faint sound of foil tearing, she sucked in a ragged breath. This was really happening. She was going to have a threesome with Nick Blackthorne and Aidan Rogers. This was really, really happening.
A low chuckle rumbled behind her and she tore her gaze from Aidan to risk a glance over her shoulder. Nick's fingers were slowly sliding down his length, sheathing it in a bright red condom. "Should have known a firefighter would go for red." He smirked, a flash of his famous smile playing with his lips.
McKenzie licked her lips at the sight of his erection straining within the tight red latex. That was going to be inside her. Soon. Oh, so---
"I'm going to fuck your mouth now, Mack."
Aidan's soft words jerked her attention from Nick's cock and she turned back to find Aidan standing before her. He towered over her, as he always did, his imposing height making her pussy constrict. She'd had a thing for tall, bear-like men since she was a teenager and now she knew why---Aidan. It was Aidan. For years she'd been trying to make love to him without even knowing it. She looked up at him, wanting him to see the elemental desire he'd awakened in her.
"I'm going to fill your mouth with my cock while Nick buries his cock in your cunt."
His use of the word made her gasp. She'd never, ever known him to use such raw language. Ever. It was the horniest fucking thing she'd heard.
He studied her, every muscle in his body coiled. "Are you ready?"
She let out a ragged breath, snaring his fingers in hers and pressing his hand to her sodden, throbbing sex. "Do you have to ask?"
A shuddering spasm made his cock twitch and he lifted his stare to Nick. "Take her," he said.
And with one fluid move, Nick slid his hands up McKenzie's back and bent her forward, the tip of his cock parting her drenched folds as her palms came to rest on the end of the bed and her head lowered to Aidan's straining erection.
Nick sank his dick into heaven. Tight, hot, wet heaven. He felt McKenzie's pussy muscles squeeze around his length, gripping him as he slowly pushed deep into her sex. He was big; he knew that. More than one "anonymous source" in more than one tabloid magazine boasted of his "impressive package" and "porn-star length" and while the number of his lovers was much smaller than those trash rags would have the world believe, the size of his dick wasn't. He'd been worried McKenzie wouldn't be able to accommodate his length, but at the sound of her moan, a low gnarr of undeniable pleasure as he buried himself to the balls in her heat, all doubt and fear vanished. Replaced with a sheer rush of carnal joy a second before he watched her lips slide down Aidan's equally impressive erection.
"Fuck, Mack," Aidan groaned, his eyes rolling back in his head. His hands came up to McKenzie's head, his fingers tangling in the wild copper-fire mane as a shudder wracked his body.
Nick felt it course through McKenzie and into his cock, the sensation beyond wild. He'd participated in more than his fair share of threesomes in his day, but none came with the unadulterated passion and desire of this one. What Aidan and McKenzie felt for each other...what they were allowing him to share...
It soothed the hollow grief of his heart. And made him so fucking hard he wondered if there was any blood left in his brain.
Withdrawing slowly from McKenzie, he stopped just as the head of his cock crowned the sodden folds of her tight pussy. She whimpered, pushing her backside to him, her fingers driving into Aidan's hips.
"Christ, that feels amazing," Aidan ground out, his stare locked on McKenzie's mouth. Nick understood his rapt focus. Watching her lips stretched over Aidan's engorged dick, seeing those lips glisten with the moisture of her mouth... Holy crap, there were no words.
He let his own gaze linger on the sight for a long moment before dropping his attention to the equally amazing vision of his cock sliding in and out of her pussy. Her juices coated his red-sheathed length, filling the air with the musky scent of her pleasure.
"Oh, Mack," Aidan groaned, lifting Nick's stare. "I'm going to come soon, babe. I can't hold on much longer."
Nick's heart leapt faster. He knew exactly what the man meant. McKenzie's pussy enveloped him like a glove. With every thrust into her center his balls slapped against her soft mound. With every withdrawal, she gripped him tighter. His blood surged through his veins, his breath ripped from his throat in shallow pants. He wasn't just going to come soon, he was going to fucking erupt.
"I hope to God you have more than one condom in that wallet of yours, mate," he rasped, flicking Aidan a look, "'cause I'm about to blow myself."
McKenzie's pussy fluttered around his cock. She moaned around Aidan's dick, her grip on his hips growing harder, her knuckles growing white.
"Babe." Aidan's moan sent a shard of hot tension into Nick's groin. "Oh, fuck, babe, you need to stop if you don't want me to..."
McKenzie didn't stop. Nick could see it in the way Aidan threw back his head, in the way his sweat-slicked muscles coiled.
He stared at the man on the verge of sexual implosion, and---a mere heartbeat from destruction himself---felt McKenzie's sex contract. Not just once, but twice, three times, four.
"Oh, Jesus, yes!" Aidan burst out. "Yes."
It was enough. It was too much. As McKenzie's pussy pulsed around his dick, as her nails gouged into Aidan's bucking hip, as Aidan's cry tore through the air, Nick's orgasm smashed through him. Scalding through his soul, searing through his veins and pouring into Aidan's fire-red condom. And as it did, the words poured through him too.
I will die in his fire and beg her for life.
Beg her for soul, beg her for heat.
I will die in his fire and live in their love.
Live in their love until...
And then, even the words were lost to his release.
McKenzie slowly lifted her head from Aidan's spent cock in time to see his chest heave and his body shudder. His eyes were closed, his nostrils flaring. His semi-stiff length jerked in her hand, a small wad of his seed---the last of his orgasm---spurting from its tip. The raw sight made her own ebbing climax pulse with increased force in response, squeezing Nick's cock still embedded deep within her.
Nick groaned. "Don't do that, McKenzie." He smoothed his hands over her back before dropping a soft kiss between her shoulder blades. "Give me a moment."
"A moment?" Aidan brushed his knuckles over her cheek. His eyes seemed to burn into her soul, a small smile---his smile---curling the edges of his mouth. "Think I might need a lifetime to recover from that."
McKenzie chuckled. "Wuss."
Giving Aidan her own smile back, she slowly straightened to an upright position, the sound of Nick's tortured groan as his length slipped from her sex making her pulse flutter.
She climbed off the bed and stepped away from both men---or at least, tried to. Aidan's arms snaked out around her waist, drawing her to his body as Nick came up behind her, his hands smoothing over the front of her thighs. "Wait a minute," Aidan rumbled, tilting her chin up to gaze down into her face, "I said 'might', not 'will'."
"And if you think I'm done," Nick murmured in her ear, his fingers skimming up her legs to traced a gentle caress over her swollen pussy lips, "you don't know the staying power of us rock stars."
McKenzie's pulse kicked up another notch. She couldn't believe what she'd just experienced with these two men and they were already talking about more?
Oh God, yes please.
The entirely wanton thought didn't just whisper through her head, it pleaded.
Aidan's hands slid up her back, a heady passion glinting in his eyes as he feathered his fingertip around her ribcage to stroke her breasts. "I'm pretty certain Kylie left a packet of condoms in the bathroom, Nick."
McKenzie drew in a ragged breath. The tops of her thighs were still wet from her oh-so recent orgasm, her juices dribbling onto her flushed skin. An orgasm that had rocked her to the very core. Hell, she'd almost come the second Aidan's thick, long cock slid past her lips, let alone when Nick's equally impressive appendage stretched her to the limit. Did she even have the energy to succumb to another climax so soon?
Behind her, Nick chuckled, and she hiccupped in a gasp when he fingered her still-sensitive clit. "Red ones?"
Aidan returned his laugh with his own, the sound vibrating through McKenzie like a thrumming caress. Oh God, it was making her horny again.
"Doubt it." Aidan's grin curled his lips. "But knowing Kylie Sullivan, they won't be the standard issue."
"Any chance she's left any toys?"
Nick's question, spoken in a gravelly growl, filled McKenzie's cheek with tingling heat, and sent squirming pressure into her pussy.
She caught her bottom lip with her teeth, her nipples tight. Yep, she was horny again. So horny her sex throbbed and ached with an insistent, undeniable need.
Aidan looked down into her face, his thumb rolling little circles over her erect nipples. "Who knows with Kylie? The woman has always been one for surprises."
McKenzie gazed back at him, her womb heavy with want. Surprises? Oh Lordy, this whole island had been full of surprises.
With a gentle pinch on her clit, Nick slipped away and she had to bite back her whimper of dismay at his sudden absence. "Let me see what I can find."
McKenzie barely heard him. Not with her blood roaring in her ears. Not with her heart hammering so powerfully. Not with Aidan's hands stroking and massaging and teasing her breasts.
Surprises. Like having a threesome with the very guy only a few hours ago she was sure was gay. Like discovering her best friend was more than the platonic mate she'd believed him to be. Like realizing she was in...
"Are you okay?"
Aidan's soft question made her blink. She frowned, pulling away from him a little. "Yes." Her voice cracked. "Why?"
He gave her a lopsided smile, the kind that said, bullshit, Wood. "You kinda looked like a rabbit trapped in headlights there for a sec."
McKenzie shook her head, her pulse beating fast in her neck. "A little shocked is all. I was planning on writing an award-winning exposé on Nick Blackthorne's sexual secrets...now I seem to be a part of them."
Aidan chuckled, tracing the line of her nose with the tip of one of his fingers. "Maybe he'll give you an exclusive?"
"Good idea, Aidan."
McKenzie started at Nick's murmur so close behind her. She turned to him, the sight of his lean, sinewy naked body making her pussy constrict. Damn, he truly was sex and sin and soul. A treble cleft tattoo sat just below his shallow navel, its curled bottom hooking over the root of his shaft. At least, that's where she assumed it was. She really couldn't see, seeing as his dick was jutting upright---thick and long and obviously ready.
"I do have an exclusive for you, McKenzie." He walked toward her and Aidan. "But later."
"Later?" Her voice cracked again.
He nodded, a slow dip of his head that didn't break eye contact. "After we find a use for these." He held up his right hand, showing them the packet of condoms, Rough Rider ridged condoms to be precise. "And this." He cocked an eyebrow as he held up his left hand.
McKenzie's mouth went dry. Oh God.
The glass dildo reflected the muted light of her suite, its long surface covered in subtle dimples, its end a wide, pointed mushroom shape. A small tube of lube rested on Nick's palm, white and clean, but it was the dildo that made her pulse pound.
"Now that's a surprise and a half," Aidan murmured behind her. "It seems Kylie remembered our conversation about toys last New Year's Eve, Mack."
"I think I like this Kylie friend of yours." Nick grinned, closing the distance between her and Aidan. He stopped directly before her, just as Aidan's large body pressed against her back. His grin turned sultry, his eyes holding hers as he lifted the dildo and traced its tip along her bottom lip.
McKenzie's breath caught in her throat. She stared up at him, unable to move, even when Aidan's hands smoothed over her hips, one nestling between her thighs, the other moving up to cup her left breast.
"She's definitely not the shy type." Aidan chuckled, dipping one finger, then another into McKenzie's sopping folds.
Who was he talking about? McKenzie couldn't remember. Her brain didn't seem to be working anymore.
Nick traced the tip of the glass dildo over her chin, down the column of her throat. Its cool surface was so smooth it almost felt slick, and a ripple of base lust claimed her. "Tell me about this New Year's Eve conversation." Nick circled her right nipple with the dildo's end. Her nipple distended into a rock-hard peak, the response eliciting a hum of appreciation from the rock star.
Aidan's fingers in her pussy wriggled a little deeper, his breath fanning the side of her throat.
"I told Kylie I wanted to try a glass dildo once," McKenzie croaked, the simple pleasure of Aidan's intimate touch and the insane caress of smooth, cool glass on her breast almost stealing her ability to speak. "And Kylie suggested Aidan be the one to..." she faltered.
"To what, McKenzie?" Nick prompted.
Behind her, Aidan drew a ragged breath, his erection like a rod of steel pushing at the base of her spine.
"To use it on me," she finished on a whisper, her stare fixed on Nick's piercing grey eyes.
"What did you do?"
His question made her cheeks fill with heat. "I laughed."
He studied her. "Are you laughing now?"
All she could do was shake her head. And swallow.
Without a word, he passed the dildo to Aidan.
The glass was hard against Aidan's palm, cool against his flushed flesh. He closed his fingers around its dimpled length, his dick jerking at the somehow carnal contact.
There was no denying what the object in his hand was designed for---the giving of pleasure.
Mack's pleasure.
His head swam and he ground his teeth, gazing at Nick over the top of McKenzie's head. He remembered the conversation with Kylie and Mack so very, very well. The second Kylie---not anywhere near as tipsy on champagne as McKenzie---had uttered the suggestion he help his best friend out with her unexpected sexual curiosity, his prick had jumped to aching attention and his heart had slammed into his throat.
Much like they did now, although he doubted his cock could get any harder than it already was.
He curled his fingers tighter around the dildo's dimpled girth, his head swimming some more. From the corner of his eye he saw Nick move, rolling a fresh condom down the length of his erection, but the sight barely registered in his rapture-fogged brain. "Babe..." he murmured against McKenzie's temple.
"Oh God, Aidan." She arched into his fingers still sheathed inside her sweet, wet pussy. "If you don't fuck me with that now..."
He didn't need her to finish.
Neither it seemed, did Nick.
With one simple move, the singer scooped McKenzie's right leg up into the crook of his elbow, spreading her folds wide.
The heady scent of her musk filled Aidan's breath, and, impossible as it was, his cock pulsed with fresh blood, growing thicker and longer and harder.
Jesus, how could he be in this much pain and feel this goddamn good?
"She is so ready for you, mate."
Nick's low statement speared into his groin. The man was correct---McKenzie's juices flowed from her spread pussy, coating Aidan's fingers. He withdrew them from her tight heat, stopping at the swollen nub of her clit. She hissed as he rolled the tiny button of flesh under his fingertips, her hips bucking upward once in a violent thrust. "Aidan..."
She hadn't finished calling his name when he slid the glass dildo into her sodden channel. Burying its dimpled length into her.
"Oh God!" she cried out, her arms reaching up behind her, snaring around his neck and shoulders. "Oh God, yes."
He withdrew the dildo a little, McKenzie's hitching whimpers telling him exactly what those tiny beads all over its length were doing to her, and then plunged it back into her, squeezing her breast and fingering her clit as he did so.
"Fuck!" The word left her on a breathless scream, followed by nonsensical moans as Nick stepped closer into her spread legs and closed his free hand over her other breast.
"Tell me how you feel, McKenzie," Nick commanded, his lips roaming her cheek, her jaw. "Tell me what Aidan is doing to you."
She shook her head, her body quivering against Aidan's, her pussy weeping her pleasure. "I can't...I can't..." she panted, clinging tighter to Aidan's shoulders. The position thrust her breasts upward, a fact he reveled in as he watched Nick capture her nipple with his thumb and forefinger. Aidan's mouth watered, the need to suck on that pebbled form so great he growled.
"Yes, you can," Nick ground out, and it was only the raw tone of his voice that told Aidan the man was on a tightrope of control as well. "Tell me how good Aidan is making you feel and he will let you come."
"I..." McKenzie's gasp was barely a word. She pushed her hips upward, riding the dildo as much as Nick's hold on her leg would let her. Her heart hammered---Aidan could feel its frantic rhythm pound through her body into his. It was an intoxicating beat he felt all the way to his soul.
"Tell me, babe," he whispered against her temple. "Please...please, tell me."
"Oh God," she panted, writhing into each thrust and stroke and penetration he made with the glass dick. "Oh God, Aidan, I...you..."
Nick dipped his head, and Aidan let out a growl of arousal at the sight of the man closing his lips over one of McKenzie's erect nipples. He saw Nick's cheeks concave, he heard McKenzie whimper immediately after. His cock jerked some more, so engorged with need it was excruciating.
"Tell me, Mack." He slid the dildo in and out of her gripping sex. "Tell me how I make you feel."
She bucked, one hand burying in Nick's hair. "I..." Her voice grew higher. Her breath grew shallower. "I..., oh, Aidan, oh God...I...I...too good...this is...so..."
He plunged the dildo back inside her, his body on fire. "Oh babe, I need to be inside you now."
His declaration tore from his throat.
"Fuck, so do I," Nick groaned, lifting his head from her breast. "Will you let us take you both at the same time, McKenzie?"
Her grip on the back of Aidan's neck grew fierce. His mouth went dry.
"Yes," she gasped. "Yes, I want that. I want that so badly."
"Aidan's going to fuck your arse, McKenzie." Nick's voice was barely more than a rasping breath. "Aidan's going to bury that massive dick of his into your tight arse and I'm going to fill you with mine. Is that okay?"
"Yes," she moaned, squirming on the dildo impaled in her sex. "Yes."
Aidan's cock throbbed. His ears roared. He withdrew the thick, glass length one last time, pinching her clit as he did so.
"Oh God, I'm coming," McKenzie screamed.
Warm cream gushed from her pussy, coating his hand, his fingers. She clung to him, to Nick, making nonsensical noises as her climax detonated through her. It poured from her, turning the air to sweet musk, filling the room with the wet sounds of her release.
He thrust the dildo in once more, his balls full with need, his heart smashing in his chest, and then, unable to control himself any more, he pulled it free of her folds, threw it aside and swiped his drenched fingers from her pussy up to her anus. Spreading her wet pleasure to the tightest opening of her body.
"Lube?" He flicked Nick a harried look. He was coming undone here. He wouldn't hold on much longer. He couldn't---
Nick held up the tube, and Aidan couldn't help but note the man had already removed the lid. He lifted his own hand and without a word, Nick squeezed some of the cool, thick liquid onto his fingers. Fingers that trembled when he applied the lubrication to his straining cock.
"Gonna try to take it slow, Mack." He pressed his face to the side of her neck. "Gonna try."
She shook her head, fisting her hand in the sweat-matted hair at his nape. "Don't."
The command was all it took to push him to the edge. He wrapped his fingers around his cock, dragged his thumb over its tip, painting his already lubricated flesh with his viscous precome, and then pressed it to McKenzie's cream-slicked anus.
"Now, Aidan," she gasped, trembling. "Now."
He penetrated her tightness. One ring of muscle, the other, the other. Fighting to go slow. Almost losing. Almost.
"Oh. My. Fucking. God!" she cried, her spine arching, her nails digging into his scalp. "That feels so fucking good."
"As will this," Aidan heard Nick promise, a second before he saw the man shift his position slightly, his hips rolling upward.
And then Aidan felt Nick's cock sink into McKenzie's pussy. Felt Nick's cock slide against his through the thin wall of McKenzie's heat. And then all rational, cohesive thought deserted him and he became a creature of elemental pleasure.
McKenzie's name falling from his lips.
McKenzie's mind was consumed with utter and total rapture. She'd never ever experienced anything like it. She wasn't an anal virgin, but nothing, nothing could have prepared her for the insanely amazing feel of Aidan's and Nick's erections sliding in and out of her at the same time.
Without words, they moved in perfect sync, Aidan penetrating her arse, stretching her to an exquisite burning point, while Nick withdrew from her pussy, the textured condom he wore grazing the inside of her most feminine walls. And then they would reverse their wonderfully torturous strokes and it would be Nick sinking into her heat as Aidan slowly withdrew almost free of her anus.
And then they would do it again. And again.
And, God help her, again.
She clung to them both, one fist knotted in the hair at Aidan's nape, the other in Nick's. The rock star's elbow still supported her leg, still held her motionless between them---spreading her folds to accommodate his famous cock, balancing her for Aidan's deep thrusts.
Moans and shallow pants filled the room---hers, Aidan's, Nick's. Behind her, Aidan rained a slew of hot kisses over her jaw, her cheek, her temple, his hands roaming her body as he did so, his strokes growing faster. She whimpered, the wicked sensation of his cock in her arse flooding her pussy with new, wet pleasure.
Before her, Nick dragged his free hand up her ribcage to capture her breast, his thumb rolling over her nipple until she gasped. A low chuckle slipped from him, the sound echoed by Aidan's. If she didn't know any better, she could believe them psychically linked. How else did they move so perfectly together to make her feel so...so...was there even a word to describe how she felt?
"Oh..." she breathed, the mounting pressure inside her very core growing heavier. Tighter. "I can't...this is..."
Aidan captured her breast with one large hand, the friction of his callused fingers on her soft flesh making her whimper again. With Nick cupping one breast and Aidan massaging the other, their erections sliding in and out of her, their lips on her throat, her face...
"Just..." she begged, her pussy and arse constricting. "Oh, just..."
"Jesus, you feel so tight, babe." Aidan groaned in her ear, pinching her nipple as the words flayed her senses. "So tight. So tight and so good."
The last word left him in a drawn-out tremble, his cock pulsing inside her. Its massive girth stretched her anus and she let out a strangled cry. Only to have the sound captured by Nick's seeking mouth.
"So good," he growled against her lips before his tongue invaded her mouth again. His rhythm increased, each stroke of his cock into her pussy faster, deeper. The root of his cock rubbed her clit, sending shards of searing tension into her center.
The world began to spin, her mind incapable of comprehending the concentrated pleasure being wrought upon her body. Her eyes fluttered closed and she lolled her head back onto Aidan's chest, her breath tearing from her thick throat in soft mews.
She was there. There. All it would take was one more...
Aidan's tongue dipped into her ear as his rough fingers found her clit.
"Oh God!" She bucked, her orgasm detonating through her like a fireball. "Oh God, yes, yes!"
"Fuck, yes." Nick's groan raked over her a second before she felt his cock spasm. Rhythm deserted him, his thrusts into her sex becoming wild. Savage. He threw back his head, his spine arching, his cock grinding harder to her clit even as Aidan's fingers rolled over the tiny button of flesh.
And then Aidan, too, was coming, his breaths ragged and barely restrained, his seed filling McKenzie's arse in thick wads of pleasure. His hands dug into her hips, his thrusts frenetic. "Christ, Mack," he choked out, "I didn't...I never..."
But before the words could form, another orgasm slammed through McKenzie, followed by another. She cried out, all control of her body lost, all strength robbed of her muscles except those surrounding Aidan and Nick's stabbing lengths, and soon, even that was too much and she gave herself over to absolute pleasure.
For a long moment, they stood still. Aidan's heart slammed against her back, Nick's thumped against her breast. The two men held her closely before, with a gentle shift of his arm, Nick released her leg from his elbow and allowed her foot to return to the floor. There was a moment of prickling heat as the blood rushed into her toes, the sensation adding to the waves of warmth radiating through her, and then she slumped against Nick's chest. "Oh..." she began, her throat dry. "Wow."
The singer chuckled at her highly eloquent, whispered exclamation. "Well, that's one word I would use."
"Amazing," Aidan murmured, his lips pressed to the back of her neck. "That's the word this poor firefighter is going to use."
"Yeah." Nick laughed again, his hips shifting just enough to let his spent shaft slip from McKenzie's still-throbbing sex. "I'd agree with that one too."
He took a step backward, giving McKenzie a slow smile. "Don't move."
She gave him a weak snort, letting her weight rest against Aidan's solid form. "Are you kidding? I don't think I can."
Aidan smoothed his arms more snuggly around her body, his hands---with almost hesitant uncertainty---skimming over the underside of her breasts. "I've got you, babe."
McKenzie's heart fluttered. Yes, he did. On so many levels. Levels she didn't imagine possible only six hours ago.
Nick studied them both, his sharp grey eyes unreadable in the suite's dimming light---where had the day gone?---before he turned on his heel and disappeared into the bathroom.
McKenzie closed her eyes, content to stand against Aidan's hardness. The fading beat of her orgasm---don't you mean orgasms, Wood?---still constricted the inner muscles of her sex, sending soft pulses of delicious pleasure to her brain. The tops of her thighs were slicked wet with the sticky juices of her climax, a wholly carnal aftermath of sex she'd never enjoyed until this very moment.
"Did I hurt you?"
Aidan's low murmur in her ear made her turn her head and she raised her eyebrows at him. "Yes." She smiled, touching her fingertips to his bunched jaw. "And it felt so so good so don't you dare say sorry."
"That's twice you've told me not to apologize to you today." He narrowed his eyes. "If you keep this up I'm going to think I've been too nice to you all these years."
She laughed, the vibration working its way through her body, reminding her he was still buried in her arse. The realization sent a wicked little shiver through her, pinching her nipples tight.
God, I've become an Aidan addict.
Her heart beat quicker at the notion. She had. It felt...right.
"Okay." Nick's deep voice rumbled before her and she turned her attention back to the singer, but not before seeing an ambiguous tension pass over Aidan's face.
Something warm and moist stroked at the junction of her thighs and she blinked, more than a little surprised to discover Nick was wiping her sex clean. "Turn around and give the firefighter a kiss, McKenzie," he ordered.
She grinned. "Yes, sir."
She twisted in Aidan's embrace, the friction of his shaft sliding from her anus making her moan. A moan echoed by Aidan as she raised herself up on to tiptoe and lifted her face to him. "Kiss me, Rog---"
The rest of his name was cut off by his lips claiming hers, his tongue dipping into her mouth as Nick briskly, albeit gently, cleaned her backside with the washcloth.
"Now, I don't know if either of you have noticed," Nick said behind McKenzie, and it took Aidan a second to realize he had finished tending to her hygienic cleanliness, "but we missed lunch. May I suggest we sojourn to my bungalow for a quick supper before picking this up where we left off?"
With far more reluctance than he expected, Aidan broke off his exploration of McKenzie's lips. He wanted to taste them again. He couldn't seem to get enough of their soft warmth moving under his.
He looked down into her face, wondering what she would say, what Nick would say if he was to announce he was quite satisfied feasting on McKenzie's kisses.
What would they both say if you told them you didn't want to go anywhere at all? Not even to the big party at Bar Evoke tonight? That you quite cheerfully would stay here with McKenzie. Just McKenzie, forever?
McKenzie stared at him. As if waiting for him to say something.
"Sounds great," he blurted out.
Idiot.
Before he could take it back, Nick nodded and scooped his discarded clothes up from the floor. "I'm performing tonight at Evoke." The rock star shoved his long legs into his jeans. "But there's still something we need to do before then."
Aidan's heart thumped a little harder.
A quiet stillness seemed to claim McKenzie as she turned to face the singer. "What's that?"
Nick gave her a wide smile. "Where would the fun be in me telling you that?" He snatched up his boots and slung them over his shoulder, stuffing his T-shirt into the back pocket of his snug jeans, leaving his upper body bare. To Aidan, he'd never appeared more the sexual celebrity.
With another smile and a nod to Aidan, he was gone, humming the song Aidan knew was unfolding in his soul softly as he went.
"Bloody celebrities," McKenzie muttered, disengaging herself from Aidan's arms. She padded on bare feet over to her own clothes lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. "Think the world bows down to their every whim."
Retrieving his own clothes from their scattered locations, Aidan forced a jovial chuckle from his chest. "Kinda getting the feeling we just did, Mack."
She didn't answer him. Instead, she yanked her T-shirt over her head and thrust her legs into her cutoff white denim shorts, shorts, Aidan couldn't deny, that had always driven him to distraction
"Aidan?" McKenzie lifted her attention from her fly, giving him a curious glance over her shoulder.
He grinned, zipping his fly up. "Yes?"
"Why did you finally decide to show me how you felt?"
The question wasn't what he was expecting. He blinked, a heavy knot rolling in his gut. How did he answer this?
His hesitation must have been enough to trigger McKenzie's suspicious journalist's mind. Eyes narrowing, she turned to face him, crossing her arms over her breasts, her expression part expectant, part impatient. "Well?"
Aidan swallowed, a tornado of colors and sound and smells assaulting him---greys and blacks, the pop and hiss of incinerating wood, the stench of burning flesh... If it hadn't been for his sheer strength and a fellow firefighter...
He let out a sigh, knowing exactly how McKenzie was going to react. "I almost died in the fire that destroyed the Newcastle Town Hall."
Her face drained of color. "You what?"
The words burst from her in a choked whisper, her eyes growing wide.
"I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to---"
"If you say worry---" she cut him off, her arms dropping from her chest, her eyes thunderous, "---I will smack the shit out of you."
Aidan chuckled, a wry laugh he knew was going to piss her off even more. "Okay." He reached for his shirt where it hung perilously from the edge of the suite's writing desk. "I didn't want you to freak out, how's that?"
McKenzie slumped onto the foot of the bed, as if his statement had robbed her body of its strength. She shook her head, her stare locked on his face, her eyebrows pulling into a deep frown. Or was it a scowl? "Details. I want details. Now."
Letting out a sigh, Aidan slipped one arm and then the other into his shirt, shucking it over his head and down his torso. "There isn't much to tell you, Mack." He walked over to her, stopping a mere inch before her bent knees and lowering himself into a crouch. "A support beam collapsed while I was underneath it. For a while, I was wearing the second floor as a hat. It crushed the airways on my gear and I was breathing nothing but smoke until I passed out. Beaso found me under the rubble and pulled me out." He shrugged. "As far as onsite accidents go, it was pretty uneventful."
The thunder in her eyes grew angrier. "Uneventful?"
Aidan released another sigh, smoothing his hands up the tops of her thighs. Her muscles tensed under his palms and she pulled her legs away from his touch, glaring at him.
Uh-oh.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked, and his chest tightened at the controlled anger in her voice. "Is that why I couldn't get in contact with you for those four days?" Her jaw bunched. "Those four days you told me you were on a training run up the coast?"
He didn't answer.
She stared at him. "You were in hospital?"
Jesus, Rogers. Probably should have told her before now.
The anger in her eyes turned seismic. And icy. She stood, the abrupt move sending him tumbling backward. He landed on his arse, his elbows hitting the floor a second before she stepped over him and stormed across the room.
"You were in hospital, almost dead, and you didn't tell me?" Her voice cracked on the word me. "You were in fucking hospital and you didn't tell me?"
He scrambled to his feet, watching her pace back and forth in a short line in front of the suite's large flat-screen television. Yeah, he probably should have told her before now.
She spun to him, fists clenched, fury etching her face. "You selfish prick," she snarled, striding back to him again. "What did you think I'd do? Cry on your chest and beg God not to take you?" She stopped directly before him, chin tilted upward, glare firmly in place. "Go all weepy and wussy and burst into---"
She burst into tears. Just like that.
"Hey!" Aidan was shocked. No, more than shocked. Stunned. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Mack cry. Maybe when Lachlan Wilson called her a "frigid bitch" when she wouldn't pay out at the school dance? How old were they when that happened? Sixteen? "Hey hey hey."
He stepped forward, wrapping his arms around her back and pulling her into his body. She fought him, trying to wriggle out of his embrace, still grumbling about him being a prick, stating quite firmly as she hiccupped around her tears that she hated him and wished she'd known he was in hospital so she could have come into his room and changed his chart to read "castration required".
And in amongst all the bluster and foot stamping and repeated "God, I hate you, Rogers, I really hate you", her struggle to escape his hold turned to her pressing herself closer to his body, her cheek resting on his chest, her arms circling his waist, the words "What if I'd lost you before I knew?" slipping from her in a soft sigh.
"Knew what?" he asked, his lips against the top of her head, her hair like cool silk on his warm face.
"About this?"
He closed his eyes, wanting to ask just what this meant. He loved her. He had no doubt of that. Unconditionally and unreservedly. But she had yet to utter the L-word and he didn't want to push her, not after the way she'd just reacted to the revelation that he'd almost lost his life. Risking his life every day came with the whole firefighter job description, but risking McKenzie...?
He pulled a slow breath, taking the subtle scent of her---clean soap, fruity shampoo, musky perfume---into his very soul. Was what they'd just done here, on the island, more dangerous than what he did every workday?
What happened after Nick Blackthorne left their lives and it was just the two of them again? Aidan the fiery and Mack the journo? What happened then?
What happens if Nick doesn't want to leave, Rogers? What happens if he decides he wants McKenzie for himself? What do you do then? How do you compete with the world's biggest rock star with a dick the size of a rhino's?
A tight chill rippled through him. A second before a hard slap struck him on the shoulder.
"Hey!" He pulled away, looking down into McKenzie's upturned face. "What was that for this time?"
"For being a jerk." She scowled. "Next time you decide to try and wear a building for a hat, remember that slap, okay?"
He laughed. He couldn't help himself. "I'll try." He grinned, snuggling her closer to his body, his hands cupping her backside with a gentle squeeze. His cock twitched in his cargo pants, more than happy to go along with the fondling.
She scowled a little harder. "Do."
Before he could stop himself---and why would he?---he dipped his head and brushed his lips over hers. "Anyone tell you you're kinda pushy, Ms. Wood?" he murmured, squeezing her ass again as he rolled his hips forward.
She gazed up at him, her hands resting on his chest, her lips parting. The silence stretched between them, heavy, thick. She touched the tip of her tongue to her bottom lip and her eyes widened, as if she'd just realized something very, very important.
"I---"
The suite's phone rang.
You've got to be bloody kidding me.
An ambiguous frown flittered across McKenzie's face and, with a gentle shove, she disentangled herself from Aidan's arms and crossed the room.
Leaving him standing motionless, his dick growing stiff and his heart thumping harder than ever.
Chewing on her bottom lip, McKenzie snatched up the phone's hand piece from the cradle and pressed it to her ear. "H---"
"What the hell are you doing?" Kylie yelled on the other end of the line, her normally soft, lilting voice far from quiet---or lilting. McKenzie flinched, pulling the phone a little from her ear. Damn, she'd forgotten how loudly her friend could screech.
"What am I doing?" She frowned, turning to Aidan. He stood looking at her, all massive broad chest, sculpted six-pack and lean hips. Hell, even the tattoo under his shirt made her sex constrict, its burning form so very much the perfect metaphor for how he made her feel---on fire.
Which is why you were just about to---
"I've just been informed by one of my staff," Kylie went on, assuming a very uptight tone---far more businesslike than any McKenzie had heard her use, "that a reporter from Goss Weekly has been harassing Nick Blackthorne."
McKenzie laughed. "Oh, that."
"Yes, that," Kylie snapped, and McKenzie flinched again. "I invited you here as my friend, Mack, not as a bloody journalist for that shit mag you work for." The words tripped over each other, Kylie's anger turning each one to a sharp report. "Do you have any idea how hard it was even getting to talk to Blackthorne's agent? And you go and pull this stunt on me?"
"No, it's not like that, Ky," McKenzie said quickly, her friend's rising ire like a blow to the stomach. "I slept with him."
Silence greeted her statement. Not even the sound of Kylie breathing could be heard.
McKenzie licked her lips, her gaze moving to Aidan's, watching him watching her. "I haven't been harassing him," she continued, Kylie's complete lack of response unnerving her. "Well, not since I first approached him, and then Aidan stopped me from---"
"Wait a minute," Kylie cut her off, and McKenzie could almost see her friend on the other end of the line, her eyes narrowing the way they always did when she was processing information she couldn't believe possible, her head tilted to the side just a fraction. "Are you telling me you had sex with Nick Blackthorne?"
McKenzie nodded, a stupid thing to do, given Kylie couldn't see her, but reflex all the same. "Yes."
More silence. Followed by Kylie saying, "You stupid cow."
McKenzie's eyebrows shot up her forehead. "Excuse me?"
"I can't believe you did that." Her voice wasn't just angry this time; it was disappointed. "Why the fuck did you think I specifically told you to bring Aidan to the island? Damn it, Mack. It was because I thought the romance of the island would finally make you see...would finally make you realize how desperately he---"
"Aidan was there."
McKenzie's hurried statement shut Kylie up. Pronto.
"I had my first threesome." McKenzie grinned, holding Aidan's gaze with her own. Her pussy constricted, her belly squirming with a tight sensation she recognized all to well---arousal. Arousal for the man standing watching her. Christ, he made her horny.
"Wait, wait, wait." Kylie's voice was incredulous. "You had sex with Aidan?"
The squirming sensation in McKenzie's stomach grew more insistent, sinking into the warm junction of her thighs. Her nipples pinched tight, the minute reaction drawing Aidan's attention for a split second. His nostrils flared and he returned his stare to her face, hungry desire smoldering in his eyes.
McKenzie nodded again, her pulse beating faster. "Yes."
"Aidan Rogers?" Kylie questioned down the phone line. "New South Wales' firefighter of the year? Eight-foot-five, built-like-a-brick-office-block Aidan Rogers?"
McKenzie's sex contracted, the aroused thrill twisting through her body turning into something else. Something far more wanton. "Yes, Aidan. And Nick Blackthorne."
"Aidan Rogers?" Kylie asked, ignoring the singer's inclusion. "Your best friend? The man you've known for practically ever? The guy who once punched out the school captain for saying you had a fuckable arse? That Aidan Rogers?"
McKenzie smiled, her sex fluttering some more. If Kylie was going to tell her she was an idiot for doing such a thing, McKenzie was going to tell her friend to stick it in her ear. "Yes. That Aidan Rogers."
Once again, silence filled the connection.
McKenzie's eyebrows pulled into a slight frown. She looked at Aidan, his expression puzzled. And just a little concerned. Any second now he'd come and take the phone from her, she could see it in his eyes and the way his muscles coiled beneath his shirt.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Kylie suddenly burst out. "Oh, my God!" She laughed, the riotous peals of jubilation forcing McKenzie to jerk the phone away in an effort to preserve her eardrum's delicate integrity. "About freaking time!"
A heavy beat thumped in McKenzie's throat. Damn it, did everyone know how Aidan felt about her, except her? Jesus, how ignorant and blind could she be?
She placed the phone back to her ear, her lips curling into a wide grin. "I'm not kidding," she said, watching Aidan walk towards her. She gazed up at him, her lips parting as he stopped directly before her, his thighs brushing hers, his eyes not just smoldering with desire, but positively ablaze. Desire. For her. Powerful, undeniable desire. Bloody hell, how could she have missed it?
"Was it good?" Kylie gushed, her excitement thrumming through the connection. "Tell me it was good. Tell me it was amazing. Oh, my God, tell me you're going to do it again. And again. And again."
With a small, lopsided smile, Aidan reached out and took the phone from McKenzie's fingers, raising it to his ear. "And again," he said into the mouthpiece, his voice a deep rumble that sent a shard of wet electricity into McKenzie's core. "Now excuse us, will you Kylie? There's somewhere I have to take Mack. And something I have to do to her. Again."
And as Kylie's squeal of delight exploded through the connection, Aidan threw the phone over his shoulder and lowered his head, his breath mingling with McKenzie's as his lips brushed hers. "Ready?"
She was ready. More than ready. When it came to Aidan, how had she ever not been? So why was her stomach knotting? Why was she feeling...nervous?
Because this isn't just a simple fuck-fest, Mack, and you know it. Which means it's something else. Something more. But with Nick Blackthorne in the equation, with him waiting for you both in his bungalow, with you both heading there now...what does that make that "something else"? What? What?
She didn't know and that not knowing scared her. She should know. Hell, Aidan wasn't an unknown quantity. He was her best friend. He was her rock, her world, her crutch. He was what put the smile on her face and chased away the tears when life made her sad. But that was the old Aidan, the pre-threesome Aidan. What if that Aidan was gone now? Lost to her because of what they'd shared?
And if that was the case, who was the Aidan with her now? Come to think of it, who was she now? Could they ever move on from what had happened in this room? Did Aidan even want to? Did she? Did she even want to go to Nick's bungalow? With the irrefutable pleasure waiting for her there, how could she not? But was it pleasure from two men worshipping her body, or simply pleasure from Aidan---just Aidan?
Her belly knotted again. Oh God. Too many unanswered questions. She hated unanswered questions. Hated them.
Then find the answers.
Aidan's lips moved over hers, not a kiss but a soft and achingly sweet caress. "Shall we go?"
Tell Aidan you want to stay here. Tell him you want to stay here and make love to him and only him. Tell him you love---
"Nick's probably waiting for us."
A numb calm fell over her body. She'd never felt so confused. When she should be feeling so damn wonderful she'd never felt so bloody confused. She was balancing on the edge of a yawning precipice shrouded in unanswered questions and she had no clue if she was going to fall...
Then step back from the edge for a moment, Mack. Step back.
McKenzie's belly flip-flopped and she pulled in a steady breath, closing her eyes and leaning into Aidan's chest for a heartbeat before pushing herself from his body. She needed space. She needed time. Some way to gain a little perspective, but how could she get that space, time and perspective with Aidan beside her? And with Nick waiting?
"You're right, Aidan." She gave him a slow smile. "He probably is. But I have to go for a walk first."
A flash of worry etched between Aidan's eyebrows, a deep crease she rarely saw on his face but recognized all the same. He wanted to ask her more, she could tell by the way he regarded her. But he didn't. He was still Aidan, after all. She may have discovered he was her very deepest sexual fantasy and even deeper soul fantasy. He may have shared the most amazing sexual experience of her life with her, but he was still Aidan. Even if this new post-threesome Aidan was different, Aidan her best friend knew when to push her and when to let her have some rope, and right now, she needed some rope.
If only enough to walk through the resort's grounds and clear her head.
"Just give me a few minutes, okay?" She rested her hands on his chest. His heart beat under her right palm, a drumming rhythm that vibrated straight into her own body.
He studied her, gaze unwavering, before giving a single nod. "Where shall I meet you?"
Here.
She wanted to say it. She really did. She wanted to say, "Here---just you and me", but she wasn't brave enough. Because what if just "her and him" didn't work anymore? After what they'd shared with Nick, what if what she and Aidan had only just discovered was now...tainted? What did she do then?
And there you have even more bloody questions, Mack. You need to go think about what you'll do if the answers to all these questions aren't the ones you want them to be.
With another smile, this one smaller and much more wry, she slipped from his loose embrace and walked to the door. "I'll meet you at Nick's bungalow."
Aidan's Adam's apple jerked up and down in his throat but he didn't say a word. Not one.
Not even when she turned the doorknob, pulled open the door and left him standing alone.
The early evening air flowed over her body, curled around her bare legs and arms in a warm and humid caress. She drew it into her lungs in a long, slow breath, counting to ten as she did so.
When had she become so gutless? Damn it, she was supposed to be a fearless journalist, for Pete's sake. She'd hounded drug-using actors, wife-cheating politicians and stripper-addicted authors in her time at Goss. Hell, only this morning she'd approached the world's most famous rock star to ask him about his sexuality. Why couldn't she look her best friend in the eye, tell him exactly how she felt about him and ask him how he felt about her? Like, really felt about her? She knew he wanted her sexually, but was that just it? Were they friends with benefits now?
God, Mack, are you serious? Is that what's worrying you? The sex? Just the sex?
No, it wasn't. It was more. It was a life unfolding in front of her with Aidan's place in it unclear. That was a future she'd never, ever glimpsed before and it scared her witless.
She walked away from the suite, heading for the beach. The sounds of the resort wafted around her, the low murmur of people enjoying the luxury threading through the whisper of the coastal breezes in the lush gardens and the gentle swish of the nearby waves on the sand.
She let out another ragged breath, her bare feet taking her farther away from her suite and the man within it. Kylie had wanted this place to be something magical for her and Aidan, and it had. It truly had. But what happened if that magic didn't follow them back to the mainland? Would it be capable of returning with them to Newcastle and their normal lives when the memory of Nick's part in that magic shadowed them?
Who says it would?
She pulled a face. She did. Every time one of Nick's songs played over the radio she'd be drawn back into the moment both men possessed her body, and she didn't doubt Aidan would be as well. Would they survive that? Or would everything, everything just fall apart?
What would she do if that happened? How would she live each day without Aidan in her world, even "just her friend" Aidan? He'd been there for so long, she couldn't imagine a life without him. She knew she wanted more than what they'd had before, her heart knew it, her soul knew it and her body knew it, but what the hell would she do if not even that was there for her anymore?
The cool silken kiss of sand through her toes sent a shiver up her spine and she stopped, staring out at the absolute beauty of the Pacific Ocean before her. The water was calm, the setting sun turning the rolling waves a deep indigo-purple, the breaking foam on each a golden pink. Couples strolled along the pristine white sand, hand-in-hand or arms wrapped around waists, hips brushing hips as they made their ambling way to whatever happiness awaited them.
McKenzie closed her eyes on the sight of all that peace and beauty, feeling even more unsettled. What was wrong with her?
"Shall I remind you, you can't surf to save yourself?"
Mason's voice behind her made McKenzie jump and she spun to face her twin, her heart beating far too fast in her throat. "What the hell are you doing here?" she snapped, giving him a narrowed-eyed glare. "Aren't you meant to be out on that bucket of rust you and Trent call a boat?"
Mason's cheeks seemed to fill with a warm pink tinge---or maybe it was the sinking sun's rays that cast his face in such a blushing light. Either way, he flashed her a somewhat sheepish grin, the action very un-Mason-like. "Yeah, well, with six months of being on Pleasure ahead of us, I'm kinda letting my land legs make the most of it while they can."
McKenzie cocked an eyebrow, her brother's passive answer even less Mason-like than his smile. "Why do I feel like you're not telling me something?" She narrowed her eyes on his again. "Are you up to something Mum will have a freak about?"
Mason snorted, his hands finding his hair and scruffing at the thick dark-blond waves. "You could probably say that."
"Oh, goodie." McKenzie wriggled. "Can I tell her?"
For an answer, Mason gave her his own intense stare. "Wanna tell me why you're standing here gaping at the surf alone? Where's Rogers?"
At Aidan's name, McKenzie's belly did another little flip-flop. And her pussy gave a tight little flutter. She let out a sigh, turning back to the breathtaking beauty of the beach. Behind her, the resort seemed to settle into the approaching night, the distant sound of someone saying "one-two-one-two" in a microphone peppering the more recognizable sounds of exotic birds calling to their absent partners. "Have you ever done something completely reckless and insane and downright surreal, and then thought, holy shit, what do I do next?"
Her brother snorted again. "Every fucking day of my life of late."
McKenzie shot him a sideward look. His jaw was clenched, his stare fixed on the rolling waves. She suppressed a wry chuckle. Typical. The day she goes and gets herself all fucked-up, Mason decided to as well. No wonder their other brothers always complained about their "scary-shit twin thing".
She gave his shoulder a nudge with hers. "You okay?"
Mason pulled a face. "Nope. You?"
She laughed, shaking her head. "Nope. Wanna tell me about it?"
He laughed in return, shoving her shoulder back with a fraction more force. "Not yet. You?"
"No way. That would be way too weird." She smiled, Mason's presence seeping into the unsettled apprehension gnawing at her bones. If there was one other person on this planet she could rely on apart from Aidan it was Mason. Her twin, however, didn't make her think dirty thoughts. Or warm, fuzzy happily-ever-after thoughts. "Do you think it's possible best friends can share everything, Mase? Like, everything?"
"You reading my mind again, girly-girl?" His use of his special childhood nickname for McKenzie made her throat tight. He hadn't called her girly-girl since they were twelve---since she'd nipple-crippled him into stopping. Why had she done that? She couldn't remember now. "I think best friends should know what can be shared and what can't, no matter what the rest of the world thinks."
McKenzie ground her teeth and scrunched up her face. "You're not helping me here, brother."
He cocked her a look. "You and Rogers having problems?"
Mason's question squeezed a ragged sigh from her chest. "Depends on your definition of 'problems'."
"Do you love him?"
Her mouth fell open. "Love?"
Mason rolled his eyes. "Oh, c'mon sis. I've seen the way he looks at you. We all have. He's been in love with you for bloody ever. And honestly, I've seen the way you look at him as well. It wasn't as obvious, but it was there---an affection way beyond that of a mere friend. So I ask you again, do you love him?"
McKenzie swallowed. She hadn't expected that from her bother, but then, she hadn't expected anything that had happened so far since she stepped foot on this island. "I...I..." The rest of her answer caught in her throat, the implications of her answer far too scary to consider.
He gave her a pointed look. "Aidan's your best friend for a reason, sis. Hell, he's the only one I know you let push you around, and to be honest, he's the only one I know who I'd let push you around. He's been looking out for your heart since the day he met you, holding it in those massive bloody hands of his and making sure no one hurts it. He would do anything for you, you know that, right?"
"I know. But what if I don't know what that 'anything' is at the moment?"
Mason turned back to the surf, his gaze focused on the gentle waves as if the answer to her question was riding them. "I think, when it all comes down to it, a best friend knows more about what's right for you than you do." He turned his attention to her, really looking at her. "That's why they're your best friend, yes?"
McKenzie looked at him back---into his face so like hers and yet so very different. "Yes. That's exactly why."
A heavy beat thumped in her temple. Aidan was her best friend, but just as importantly, she was his. He may have been holding her heart in his hands, but she'd been bloody well holding his in hers for as long as she could remember, too. And she sure as shit wasn't going to let it go now. Not when she'd finally realized how damn right it felt there. And as for the "anything"? She knew exactly what she wanted that "anything" to be---Aidan in her life. Not just as her friend, but as her lover, and if Nick Blackthorne was the sex toy du jour while on the island, she was fine with that. When she and Aidan got back home to Newcastle, they would just go shopping for a different one---maybe some handcuffs? Or a glass dildo? Or one of those funky U-shaped vibrators aimed at couples? Maybe all three? Maybe nothing at all.
It wouldn't matter because they would have each other.
"Your best friend will never ever do anything wrong by you, Mack." Mason nudged her shoulder with his again. "Aidan would die before he did."
With a strangled cry, McKenzie threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck and giving him a tight squeeze. "Thanks, bro," she whispered in his ear, warm pressure holding her chest a fraction of a second before she slapped a noisy kiss on his cheek.
"Eww," he wailed, scrambling for her wrists with his hands. "Girl germs!"
She laughed, skipping backward away from him, the sand like cool satin between her toes. "Freak."
He grinned at her, his teeth flashing white in the mauve dusk light. "Lunatic."
She danced another step backward, her pulse pounding in her neck, her pussy heavy with constricting want. "Gotta go."
Mason's grin stretched wider. "Going to go do something reckless and insane?"
She grinned back. "And totally surreal. You?"
He laughed. "Oh, you better believe it."
"A face of an angel with filth on her mind," Nick sang under his breath, studying the smooth amber liquid in the cut crystal glass in his hand. "I pray to burn in her fire, I pray to die in her arms."
The words sent a charge through him, like the electrical energy of a summer storm---crackling through the hazy, eucalyptus-drenched air, making the pulse quicken and the breath turn to shallow pants. It was intoxicating. Potent.
He held his glass closer to his face, watching the rolling waves kiss the white sand beyond his private bungalow's eastern balcony through the still scotch.
"Yet the arms of her lover reach out for more," he continued to sing on a murmur, closing his eyes, his dick---already half erect---twitching in his jeans. "Like a sinner I will burn in his fire. I will die in his fire as she pleads for---"
"I don't think she's coming."
Aidan's low voice, spoken from the balcony's doorway, opened Nick's eyes and he lifted his glass to his lips, swallowing the scotch---his first since Germany---in one mouthful. The liquor burned its way down his throat, a river of heat that did nothing to ease the unsettled nerves fluttering in his gut. So much more to his song to be found, to be felt... So much more of it still hidden in the mist.
Letting out a soft breath, he turned to the massive man now standing beside him, casting him a slow smile. "She'll come."
Aidan didn't look convinced. The muscles in his sizable body tensed and he turned to look at the main door.
"She'll be here, Aidan," Nick said, taking in the man's coiled strength and taciturn apprehension.
Troubled green eyes turned back to him. "How do you know?"
"Because she loves you."
At Nick's simple statement, Aidan let out a ragged sigh. "She hasn't told me that."
Nick chuckled, unfurling from his seat and placing his hand on Aidan's broad shoulder. He'd seen the guy buck naked, he'd been witness to his amazing strength and power, but at the feel of Aidan's muscles under his palm---like chiseled marble---another wave of awed appreciation rolled through him. The male form had never turned him on before, but it was impossible not to be impressed with Aidan's sheer masculinity. "Her eyes have told you, mate." He fixed Aidan with a steady look. "Trust me, she'll be here. She loves you."
Aidan studied him, doubt etching lines on either side of his eyes. "Damn it, I fucked up." He dragged his hands through his hair as he turned back to the door. "I should have told her---"
A soft knock on the entry door brought him to silence.
Nick's heart leapt into his throat. His pulse rate doubled. He stood and stared at the bungalow's closed door, the knot in his gut twisting tighter. There were two possibilities to what awaited on the other side and as selfish as it was, he longed for only one of them: McKenzie Wood would cross the threshold and he would find the ending to his song. The other was too bleak to consider: she would tell Nick she wanted nothing to do with him again.
The knock came again, softer this time.
He shot Aidan a quick look and found the man standing motionless. "Do you want to get that, or shall I?"
With a start, Aidan moved, his ropey muscles coiling and flexing as he strode to the door. Nick watched him wrap long, callused fingers around the doorknob, watched him twist his wrist, watched his shoulder bunch as he pulled open the door.
A shaky sigh escaped from Nick as McKenzie stepped over the threshold, closed the door behind her with her heel and slipped the soft black shift dress she was wearing from her shoulders.
It fell to an inky puddle of material at her feet, but Nick didn't really notice. Not when she stood before Aidan wearing nothing but a tiny black lace G-string and delicate black patent leather stilettos. Not when her breasts rose and fell with such sublime perfection, their rosy nipples puckered into hard tips, their creamy form swollen with anticipated pleasure.
Not when she looked up at Aidan and said, "And I want to beg but I can't find the words."
The lyrics from Nick's first love song---a song he wrote for the goddess who long ago owned his heart---speared into his soul. The song McKenzie had selected when he'd come to them both and asked to be a part of their rapture.
He walked towards the two lovers, scooping the red silk scarf he'd laid out on the bungalow's dining table earlier up as he did so. The cool fabric slid over his fingers in a gentle caress that send wicked licks of hot desire into his groin. His throat thickened. Oh, what he wanted to do tonight...
He stopped beside Aidan, giving the man---who still gazed down at McKenzie with silent love---a steady look. His heart beat harder. How could they not know how much each loved the other? How could they not see it? It was so potent, so undeniable he could barely draw breath. It fueled his arousal like nothing he'd ever experienced before. It moved him, inspired him. Fuck, it rocked him to the very center of his soul.
"Aidan---" he kept his voice steady, "---tie McKenzie's wrists together behind her back."
McKenzie's sudden intake of breath, a hitching gasp, sent another hot surge of hunger into Nick's groin. As did the way Aidan's nostrils flared as the man turned to look at him.
He raised his hand, holding it palm upward, fingers extended. The red silk scarf draped over his palm, vibrant and evocative, as if alive with the future of those in the room.
Aidan studied it for what felt like a lifetime, his jaw clenched, his eyes unblinking. He lifted his stare to McKenzie's face. "Mack?"
The question---just her name but full of unspoken hope---was enough to make Nick's cock flood with hot blood. When McKenzie gave Aidan a single nod, moving her hands to behind her back, her breasts thrusting forward, Nick almost came there and then.
The trust, the faith these two people had for each other... God, it was exquisite.
And so fucking arousing.
Without a word, Aidan removed the scarf from Nick's hand, stepping behind McKenzie, towering over her.
Nick took his place in front of her, his gaze holding hers as Aidan slid his hands over her shoulders and down her arms, the scarf held loosely between his fingers, caressing her skin as he reached her wrists.
"You trust him, don't you?" Nick's balls rose at the concentrated want in McKenzie's direct blue eyes.
He saw Aidan become still, his head bent, his body pressed close to McKenzie's back, as if he needed to hear an answer he already knew. Perhaps, with Nick there, he did.
A small smile pulled at the corners of McKenzie's mouth. "I trust him."
Nick's balls throbbed and he took a step closer, letting his denim-clad thighs brush her naked ones. "Do you trust me?"
"Yes." She drew in a deep breath, the action causing her nipples to graze the front of his shirt and his balls didn't just throb, they ached. "I do. Besides, I know Aidan will break you in two if you do anything to hurt me."
Nick chuckled. "True."
Aidan's gaze flicked up to his. "True," he said softly just as McKenzie's gasp filled the room and her body stiffened.
Nick's pulse thumped harder in his chest, her reaction telling him exactly what Aidan had done: tied the scarf around her wrists. Bound them together. Rendering her vulnerable.
Fuck, yes.
The urge to kiss her, to capture her lips and plunder her mouth almost overwhelmed him, but he held it in check. Just. Turning on his heel, he crossed the room to the table, retrieving another soft silk scarf waiting there. He heard Aidan's heavy breaths behind him, the sound affirmation the man was as close to breaking point as himself. When he turned back to them both, he found two sets of eyes watching him, both ablaze with a desire so raw his cock jerked in his jeans. Precome leaked from its slit, its warmth slicking his taut flesh.
He walked back, stopping directly before McKenzie, the scarf dangling from his fingertips. "A face of an angel with filth on her mind." The lyrics came from him in a low purr. "I pray to burn in her fire, I pray to die in her arms."
He reached up and laid the scarf gently on her forehead, holding her stare for a moment.
"Yet the arms of her lover reach out for more.
"Like a sinner I will burn in his fire,
"I will die in his fire as she pleads for..."
McKenzie lifted her chin. "More," she whispered.
Aidan's groan rumbled in his chest, urgent and strained, and it was too much for Nick. Too much.
He pulled the scarf down over McKenzie's eyes, knotted it behind her head and crushed her mouth with his.
The very second Nick's lips found McKenzie's, Aidan's lips found her throat. He tasted her perfume on her skin, he breathed in her clean, delicate scent. From the way McKenzie shifted against him, he knew she was already struggling to control the pleasure in her body. Her hands were balled as fists at the small of her back, her knuckles pressing to the flat plane of his belly, just above his groin. His dick jerked in his trousers, straining instantly and irrefutably for her flesh, her heat.
He smoothed his hands over her body instead, up the curve of her ribcage to the swell of her breasts. His thumbs found her nipples, his pulse quickening at the hitching moan he heard her make through Nick's kiss.
The singer pulled away from her, his mouth journeying down her throat, over her breasts until he captured one of her nipples. Aidan felt Nick's warm lips on his fingers, felt his tongue stroke at McKenzie's flesh. He held her breast for Nick to suckle on it, the soft moans rising in her chest all the evidence he needed to prove she was succumbing to the sensations the man's mouth wrought on her body.
His cock jerked with increasing need. And something else. Something like...
Jealousy?
The thought threw him off kilter. Jealous? Now? Why now? After everything...
Because you love her, Rogers. You love her with every fiber of your being. You always have and you always will.
A low growl rumbled in his chest and he ground his teeth. The idea of Nick making love to McKenzie, of touching her...
Aidan's stomach knotted. Not anymore. Not anymore.
As if sensing Aidan's sudden tension, Nick lifted his head from McKenzie's breasts, sliding his gaze to Aidan's face. They stared at each other for a steady moment, a question in Nick's grey eyes.
Aidan drew in a slow breath, taking McKenzie's scent into his being, feeling her soft body against him. She stood motionless, blindfolded and bound between them, and yet there wasn't an iota of apprehension to her. Her trust in him was implicit. Unquestionable. Oh, Christ, he loved her. So damn much.
He looked at Nick.
Nick looked at him. He didn't say anything, not a word, but Aidan knew what he was going to do. With a smile Aidan could only ever call joyous, the world's most famous, desired rock star lifted his hand to McKenzie's face, cupped her jaw in his palm, and then stepped backward.
Aidan took his place immediately. Silently. He lowered himself to his knees, pressing his lips to McKenzie's flat stomach, exploring her belly button with a series of tiny nips and nibbles.
She hitched in a gasp, and another one when he dragged his lips down farther, his tongue flicking out once to touch her soft, damp folds.
"Oh," she whispered.
Did she know who was touching her now? Aidan didn't care. All he wanted to do at that very moment was fill her with the purest pleasure he could. Give her his heart, his soul, in a simple touch.
He stroked her folds again with his tongue, and again she uttered that whispered word. "Oh."
With gentle hands, he parted her thighs, opening her pussy up to his mouth. He lapped at her cleft, passing his tongue over her clit. Again. Again.
He heard he whimper, a shaky cry that barely left her throat.
He tasted her pussy with his tongue and lips, sucking on her sweetness with gentle pressure before laving her clit once more.
"Oh, yes."
Her moan sent a surge of hot blood to his groin. His balls rose up. He dipped his tongue into her sex again, reveling in the wet heat of her feminine cleft. She tasted... divine.
And he wanted more.
His fingers skimmed over her hips, squeezing her firm arse cheeks for a brief second as he blew a gentle stream of cool air on her flushed, swollen folds.
"Please..." she begged on a trembling breath, rolling her hips forward.
He stroked his tongue over her clit, with a touch more force this time.
A slight shudder rocked through her, vibrating through his hands, down his arms into his chest.
"Please..." she begged again, her voice husky. "Oh, please, please I need to..."
He dipped his tongue deeper into her sex, lapping at her juices.
"I need to..."
The words fell from her in a hitching moan.
He rolled his tongue over her clit, flicked it, sucked on it.
"Oh, oh."
He drew the sensitive nub into his mouth, capturing it with his teeth a split second before suckling on it once more.
"Oh God, please..."
He sucked harder. Flicked his tongue over it. Delved deep into her creamy heat and then sucked on her clit again.
"Oh, please, please."
Her hips bucked forward. Her arse cheeks coiled. He heard her breath turn rapid, shallow pants that turned his balls to excruciating globes of urgent need.
He stroked his fingers over her hips, up her belly, feathered his fingertips over the swell of her breasts, teasing her erect nipples and then returning his hands to her hips. He swiped his tongue over her clit, swirled it around the tip and sucked it past his lips.
"Oh, please." The moaned supplication was barely more than a breath. "Please."
He smoothed his hands back to her thighs, spread her legs wider, granting his fingers, his mouth, greater access to the very center of her heat, and flicked his tongue over and over and over her clit. He slipped his fingers into her drenched channel and stroked the sweetest spot of her walls within.
She came. With a keening cry and a jolting shudder.
Aidan closed his eyes, pressing his face to her center, drinking her release as it wept from her.
He would never tire of this, of giving her this unconditional pleasure. He would never...
"I love you, Aidan."
McKenzie's voice caressed his heart. He opened his eyes, hardly daring to draw breath.
She bent her face toward him, the scarf hiding her beautiful, cheeky, expressive eyes from him.
He didn't move. Did he hear correctly? Did he?
"Did you hear me, Rogers?" she murmured, her lips curling in a slow grin. "I love you. I love you so bloody much I won't thump you for taking so long to tell me you love me back."
Before he could stop himself, Aidan leapt to his feet, a whoop of delight---or some such sound---bursting from him as he swept McKenzie up into his arms and claimed her lips with his.
She kissed him back, her tongue mating with his, fierce and demanding and ferocious. Everything McKenzie-ish. And everything McKenzie-ish was everything he loved.
He kissed her until his head spun and his groin throbbed, and when he feared he would drop her, he lowered her feet to the floor and slipped the scarf from her face. "I love you too, Mack, just in case you haven't picked up on that yet."
She rolled her eyes. "A girl would have to be pretty bloody dense not to."
He laughed, pulling her closer. "Yeah, dense is a good word."
She thumped her fist against his chest, giving him a mock glare. "Hey!"
"How did you know it was me?" he asked, gazing into her eyes.
She grinned. "Who else would make me feel like that?"
He cocked an eyebrow. "Like what?"
Her grin stretched wider. "Like nothing else mattered in the world but me?"
A soft cough to Aidan's left made him start and he swung around, more than a little embarrassed to discover he'd completely forgotten Nick's presence in the room.
The rock star sat in one of the bungalow's low, leather chairs, ankle resting on bent knee, one arm slung casually over the back of the chair. His body was loose and calm, his lips curled in an easy smile. Across his lap lay McKenzie's dress, his fingers dancing over its soft fabric as if it were the strings of a guitar. "Now that was a thing of beauty."
McKenzie laughed, resting her cheek against Aidan's chest. His heart rate kicked up a notched at the simple intimacy and he wondered if he would ever get used to the wonderful sensation of being touched by her. Unlikely. Hell, he didn't want to. Not ever.
He bent his head and kissed the top of hers, for no other reason than he could.
His heart rate tripped over itself again. Christ, he felt amazing.
Nick it seemed, recognized his sheer joy. The man's smile twitched, his eyes sparkling bright grey happiness. "I think I'm allowed to say I told you so at this point, Aidan?"
Aidan smoothed his hands down McKenzie's arms and, with a quick fumble of the scarf on her wrists, released her of her silken binds, gazing down into her upturned face. "Yeah, I guess you can."
A second of silence past before Nick cleared his throat again. "I have to perform at Evoke in a few minutes." He uncrossed his leg and shifting in the chair until he seemed so far removed from leaving Aidan wondered if he'd misheard him. "But before I go, I have McKenzie's exclusive to tell."
McKenzie stiffened against Aidan, her hands coming to rest on his stomach as she gave her head one sharp shake of disagreement. "No, I don't want it. The world doesn't need to know why you were---"
Before Aidan's jaw could drop, Nick interrupted her with a laugh, holding up his palm. "It's okay, Ms. Wood from Goss Weekly. I want to tell you."
McKenzie stood very still in Aidan's arms. Her heart thumped against his chest, quick, rapid. She caught her bottom lip with her teeth, gnawing on it as she considered Nick's offer. The sight of such uncertainty sent an irrational surge of pride through Aidan. Here was the woman who less than twelve hours ago wanted to spill the beans on whatever dark secret Nick Blackthorne was harboring. But now...
"Truly, Mack," Nick said from his chair, the use of her nickname sending an inexplicable ribbon of happiness through Aidan.
McKenzie turned her gaze to Aidan for a moment, long enough for him to see her waiting for his reaction. A slight frown pulled at her eyebrows.
He shrugged. "You're a journalist, Mack." He gave her a nudge and slight push away, letting her know exactly what he thought of the situation. "Could I stand back and watch a house burn down?"
With a nod, she crossed to Nick, retrieving her dress from his fingers as he offered it to her. She shimmied into it, the fabric falling over her slim body like black liquid. Aidan pulled in a slow breath. Yep, there wasn't a hope in hell he was ever getting used to being in love with her. Not a hope in hell.
"Okay," she said, and he had to chuckle at the sudden brusque tone of her voice---all business and no-nonsense and serious. "Give me my exclusive."
"Two years ago I learned I was adopted."
Nick's calm statement made McKenzie blink. That wasn't what she'd been expecting at all. She'd expected...what? Actually, she didn't have a clue. After the last day, nothing about Nick Blackthorne was what she'd thought it was.
"Two years?" Aidan said behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder, noting he'd propped himself against the edge of the table with his ankles crossed. The pit of her belly tightened and she fought the urge to smile. Damn, he looked hot. Hot and fuckable. "Around the time your parents were killed in that car accident?"
The time frame made McKenzie blink again. Her journalist's mind scrambled to connect the dots.
"Yeah," Nick answered, his voice uncharacteristically emotionless. "My adopted status was revealed to me during the reading of their will. Along with the fact I had a brother three years younger than me."
McKenzie's breath caught in her throat. Thirty-five years of not knowing. Thirty-five years of thinking you were one person only to discover you weren't? And then discovering you had a brother you knew nothing of? The tightening in her belly turned to a churning lurch. She thought of her brothers---all six of them. Sure, she'd wanted to kill more than one of them growing up, Mason the most, but not having them in her life? Not knowing about them...? No. She couldn't even begin to comprehend it.
"Jesus."
Aidan's barely audible murmur whispered behind her, but she couldn't take her stare from Nick.
He gave her a wry grin. "To say it was a shock is a bit of an understatement."
Aidan snorted.
"Apparently my parents---" Nick paused, a frustrated frown pulling at his eyebrows, "---my non-biological parents tried to adopt him too but the application was denied. I don't know why. It wasn't mentioned in the will and I could never find out."
McKenzie crossed to the seat next to Nick's and lowered herself onto it, perching on its cushioned edge. "But you found out everything else?"
He let out a sigh. "It took me eighteen months of battling red tape but I did. My birth name is Nicolas Schulze, my birth mother was a young German illegally living in Australia and my brother's name is---" he let out another sigh, the breath a harrowing gush of air, "---was, Derek."
"Was?"
The one-word question felt like dust on McKenzie's tongue. This was not the exclusive she imagined. That Nick was sharing it with her, on the record, made her throat thick. God, how had the world not known this?
"Eighteen months to find him?" Aidan asked softly. "So, six months ago from today? That was the time you cancelled your world tour."
Nick nodded, giving Aidan a wry grin. "You got a Nick Blackthorne timeline in your head, mate?"
Aidan chuckled. "I bought tickets. Was going to surprise Mack with them."
Nick pulled a face. "Well fuck, 'ey. I hope you got your money back?"
Aidan gave him a grin. "Yeah. Bought tickets to U2 with it."
Nick's laughter bubbled up his chest. "Good, Bono could do with the extra cash." He laughed again, and yet McKenzie couldn't help but notice the mirth didn't quite reach his eyes. They were still...haunted.
"What happened to Derek, Nick?"
Nick's chest heaved with a silent breath. He looked away, his attention seemingly focused on the sweeping views outside his bungalow's open deck doors. McKenzie doubted he saw the Pacific Ocean. "I finally did find Derek in Germany. It took many weeks to establish any kind of relationship with him at all. It would seem our mother---long dead of a drug overdose by this time---hadn't been the most loving of parents. Nor the best role model. Derek grew up being dragged from one commune to another. By the time he was sixteen, he'd been sexually assaulted by more than one of our mother's partners."
The air left McKenzie's lungs in a sharp gasp. She didn't know what to say. Neither, it seemed, did Aidan, who studied the singer with a clenched jaw and flaring nostrils, his arms crossed over his broad chest, coiled and hard.
Nick moved his gaze from the open doorway and the calm, dusk-painted ocean beyond. "He was working the streets in Berlin. He was addicted to just about every fucked-up drug a pusher can sell and fucking anything that offered him a hit."
His voice was flat. He stopped. Swallowed.
"I'm sorry, Nick." McKenzie caught her bottom lip with her teeth. "You don't have to tell me anymore. I'm not---"
He shook his head. "Shush, Mack. There is a happy ending to this tale, I promise."
McKenzie found it hard to believe him. Happy? No wonder the last two years had been filled with reports of Nick Blackthorne acting surly and aggressive. No wonder he'd cancelled all live performances. Shit, with this to deal with?
She frowned at him.
"I did everything I could to help him," Nick went on, holding her gaze. His strength staggered her. "He got cleaned up as much as he could, kicked as many addictions as he could, except..." He wiped at his mouth with his hand. "Derek was bisexual, but one of his so-called 'fathers' tried to beat it out of him at the age of eighteen. A month after finding Derek I had to return to the U.S.---contractual obligations with my record label. By the time I returned to Germany, Derek had admitted himself into the Vergnügen sex clinic. He was convinced he was a sick, perverted sex-addict who needed to be cured. Nothing I or the doctors said would change his mind. I spent my days and nights with him in the clinic, doing everything to help the brother I'd never known I had see there was nothing wrong with his sexual choices."
He stopped and looked out the window again. "He committed suicide two weeks ago. I found him in a pool of his own blood on the floor of his room after returning from a meeting with his doctors."
"Jesus," Aidan muttered, making McKenzie jump. She blinked, her eyes prickling, her mouth dry. "There's a happy ending to this?"
"There is." Nick turned away from the window. "You two."
"Excuse me?"
She'd asked the question before she realized it. She and Aidan? How could she and Aidan be the happy ever after to this tale?
Nick smiled, the first truly relaxed action she'd seen from him since he started her "exclusive".
"You two. I'd lost any sense of life, of happiness, you see. Fuck, I couldn't see any color in the world, I couldn't hear any music in the days until I saw you together this morning. I was broken. I doubted real love, real joy existed." He let out a sigh and a soft chuckle. "Your obvious love for each other has mended me and for that, I will never be able to thank you enough."
"Wow." McKenzie couldn't think of anything else to say. Not a thing. Luckily, Aidan could.
"No worries, mate. Remind me to send you the bill later."
The unexpected quip made Nick laugh. Really laugh. He shook his head, grinning at Aidan. "Deal, although I'm pretty certain I can think of something better." He turned back to McKenzie, unfurling from his seat with loose-limbed ease to stride over to her. "And there you have your exclusive, Ms. Wood. All on the record. Just do me a favor?"
She nodded, still unable to find her voice. That Nick had shared that with her and Aidan. That she and Aidan could have affected him so much. That their love for each other...
"Don't write it for Goss." He gave her a look she could only describe as knowing. "I did a quick Google search of your stuff before coming to your suite this morning. Write it for Time Magazine or Rolling Stone. It's where you deserve to be."
McKenzie's mouth fell open. She stared at him, for the third time in twenty-four hours lost for words.
Beside her, Aidan chuckled, the sound a low, easy rumble of content. "She will. Trust---"
The phone rang.
"Shit." Nick shot the watch on his wrist a quick look. "I'm meant to be at Bar Evoke." He looked back at Aidan, giving him a wide grin. "I know the urge to stay here and make long, mad passionate love to the woman is probably fucking overpowering, but promise me you'll control yourself for just another hour or more? You both need to be at this soft-opening party, okay?"
Ignoring the still-ringing phone, he held out his hand to Aidan, who took the long slender fingers with his own strong, callused ones in a firm shake.
"Deal." Aidan nodded, and those green eyes of his slid to McKenzie, his gaze so hot her pussy constricted with an eager throb. "But only for an hour. After that, I'm taking her back to our suite and making love to her until the sun comes up."
Nick laughed, and with a soft kiss on McKenzie's lips, he turned and strolled from the room, scooping up a battered guitar case from the bungalow's plush leather sofa as he made his way to the door.
McKenzie watched him swing the door shut behind him, the faint sound of his humming tickling her ears before the room was silent once again.
"Well." Aidan's hands smoothed around her waist, his arms tugging her slightly backward until she nestled against his large, hard frame. "You promised me the trip of a lifetime, McKenzie Wood," he murmured in her ear, his lips grazing her skin, "and you sure as hell delivered. Remind me never to doubt you again."
Closing her eyes, she leaned into his firm embrace. "Can I have that in writing?"
He laughed, a healthy, contented snort. "Not on your bloody life."
She twisted in his arms, regarding him with a cocked eyebrow. "Excuse me?"
For an answer, his lips brushed hers, his hands finding their way to her backside to cup it in a not-so-gentle caress. "C'mon," he growled, raising his head enough to stare down into her face, "I promised the world's most famous rock star I wouldn't make love to you for an hour and if we don't leave this very room now I'll be forced to break that promise."
And---as McKenzie's pussy began to throb anew with hungry want at his statement---he spun her on her heel and pushed her away from him.
Nick Blackthorne walked up onto the small raised level Kylie Sullivan had provided to act as a stage, his fingers curling loosely around the handle of his guitar case. Around him, the nightclub thrummed with the sounds of people enjoying the soft opening's offerings---fine food, fine wine and the most stunning vista on the island.
Bar Evoke was, if nothing else, evocative. The resort's main nightclub was lit with warm, muted lights that made the steel and polished wooden surfaces look like liquid gold. One entire wall was made of glass, providing the crowd already gathered in the club an uninterrupted view of the calm Pacific and the deep, purple sky beyond.
Nick wasn't remotely interested in any of it.
He crossed to the lone stool waiting for him in the center of the small stage, placing his guitar case on the floor beside it. It had been almost two years since he'd held any kind of musical instrument, let alone the old acoustic twelve-string guitar resting within the case's battered walls. Two long years. He placed his hands on the closed lid, the darkness of the as-yet unlit stage providing him the concealment to study the guests spread out around him, currently unaware of his presence.
He wasn't interested in them either. Well, not all of them.
A loud cheer broke out to his right, followed by a loud "'Bout bloody time, Rogers," and an equally loud "Good on ya, mate". Nick smiled, watching as two men---one who surreally looked a lot like a male version of McKenzie---slapped Aidan Rogers on the back, the McKenzie carbon-copy reaching up to scruff up Aidan's hair.
Nick let out a soft laugh. "My sentiments, exactly," he murmured, his heart growing heavy when Aidan's lips stretched into a wide grin. The large firefighter ducked his head, and Nick couldn't help but notice Aidan never tore his gaze from McKenzie.
He chuckled, flipping open the latches of his guitar case. Love. Such a raw, inescapable, ungovernable emotion. Complicated and fraught with great moments of absolute terror, love was the single most wonderful gift a person could experience. And for someone like him---the most elemental muse. Who would have thought his muse would take the form of two soul mates born to be so much more? Friends to lovers. A song waiting to be sung.
He watched as McKenzie lifted her face to Aidan's. Watched as the journalist with his life in her talented hands reached up and tugged Aidan down into a kiss that was both cheeky and full of promise.
"A face of an angel with filth on her mind," he whispered, the words sliding over a rhythm found deep within his soul.
Lifting the lid of his case, he touched his fingertips to the steel strings of his old guitar---tracing the line of one down the neck until he reached the sound hole. The almost imperceptible friction of skin on stretched steel filled him with a deep warmth, his balls rising up, his heart rate quickening before, with a steady confidence, he closed his fingers around the guitar's neck and withdrew it from its worn velvet bed.
A low thrill rippled through him.
He stood and perched himself on the edge of the stool, enjoying the anonymity the dark shadows afforded him. Cradling his guitar on his lap, he sat motionless, watching the guests move around the club, listening to the sounds of them enjoying their meals as they relaxed into one another's company. Time and again, his attention returned to Aidan and McKenzie where they sat with a small group of people, drawing something akin to comfort from their distant presence. His time with them was over, but he would never, ever forget them. They had given him music again.
Given him hope after he thought hope no longer knew his name.
He closed his eyes and let the ambience of the night roll over him, hearing the songs in the guests' conversations, hearing the rhythm in their laughter and the music in their movements.
Ten, fifteen minutes later---he wasn't really sure---he opened his eyes and nodded to a silent man waiting to the left of the stage. With hurried grace, the man stepped up onto the stage, positioned a microphone a few feet away from Nick and then scurried off the stage.
Nick's heart thumped once. Hard into his throat.
He touched his fingertips to the strings of his guitar once more, stroked them and then, with a low clearing of his still-thick throat, tucked the musical instrument's familiar wooden body under his right arm.
A single beam of light revealed his presence on the stage, a hush falling over those selected by Kylie Sullivan to experience the resort's soft opening as they realized he was sitting on the stage.
He heard his name whispered by a dozen voices or more.
He heard his blood roar in his ears.
He heard his heart pound in his chest.
He heard the voice of a ghost from a lifetime ago murmur his name in pleasure, heard the goddess ask him to sing, sing for me, lover.
He caressed the strings one more time before lifting his head and gazing out at the quiet crowd. "For McKenzie and Aidan." He smiled at the two people who had changed him forever. "Who showed me love and gave me life. This, ladies and gentlemen, is 'Tropical Sin'."
His fingers found the notes on his guitar, a simple and yet intricate melody, and then the words found his tongue.
A face of an angel with filth on her mind,
I pray to burn in her fire, I pray to die in her arms.
Yet the arms of her lover reach out for more.
Like a sinner I will burn in his fire.
I will die in his fire as she pleads for more.
Like a sinner I will burn in his fire,
I will die in his fire and beg her for life.
Beg her for soul, beg her for heat.
I will die in his fire and beg her for life.
Beg her for soul, beg her for heat.
And the waves sing their song as endless as time,
And the ache in my heart is so sweet.
Like a sinner I will burn in her fire,
I will die in her fire and live in their love.
Live in their love
Until I find you. Again.
About the Author
Lexxie's not a deviant. She just has a deviant's imagination and a desire to entertain readers with her words. Add the two together and you get darkly erotic romances with a twist of horror, sci-fi and the paranormal.
When she's not submerged in the worlds she creates, Lexxie's life revolves around her family, a husband who thinks she's insane, a cat determined to rule the house, two yabbies hell-bent on destroying their tank and her daughters, who both utterly captured her heart and changed her life forever.
Contact Lexxie at lexxie@lexxiecouper.com, follow her on Twitter http://twitter.com/lexxie\_couper or visit her at www.lexxiecouper.com where she occasionally makes a fool of herself on her blog.
Look for these titles by Lexxie Couper
Now Available:
Death, The Vamp and his Brother
The Sun Sword
Triple Dare
Savage Series
Savage Retribution
Savage Transformation
Coming Soon:
Suck and Blow
Dare Me
Fate is a wind that can change at the drop of a heart...
Paradise Found
© 2011 Vivian Arend
Bandicoot Cove, Book 2
Paige has enjoyed every nostrings-attached minute with her two Australian lovers, Trent and Mason. Over the past eleven months, they've surfed, hiked...and explored their seemingly limitless sexual chemistry.
Her lovers' invitation to the opening of a new resort comes at the ideal time, because in a few days she's returning to Canada. It'll be a fitting swan song for their easygoing relationship. A chance to fulfill a few fantasies and then escape before her men realize she's broken the rules by falling in love with them both. Better to take flight than be forced to choose.
Unaware of Paige's self-imposed deadline, Trent and Mason scheme to get Paige on their yacht for a once-in-a-lifetime voyage with one goal in mind: break the news that they're ready for something more than casual---and hope she doesn't run like hell.
It's a delicate operation that'll require close attention to which way her emotional winds are blowing. One wrong word, and their paradise-perfect arrangement could be lost in an instant.
Warning: This book starts with the heat turned way up high. Two men entirely focused on one woman's pleasure. One woman stepping outside the box to please her men. An exotic resort suite featuring an erotic piece of furniture that makes ménage a trois even hotter than usual. Really.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Paradise Found:
Paige stared him in the eye. "Sex in a pan."
He laughed. "That's the dessert?"
"The name is a mutation from six in a pan, for the original six layers, but the taste is downright orgasmic, if you make it right." She ran a finger along the edge of the bowl, scooped up a smear of the chocolate sauce onto her fingertip and offered it to him.
He swallowed hard.
"This isn't a good time for you to stop what you're doing, is it?" He forced the words past a throat suddenly tight with need.
She shook her head.
Fuckit. He sucked her finger into his mouth and moaned. The dessert was tasty, but having her finger to suck and tease, to be able to watch her eyes widen and hear her breath catch as he twirled his tongue around the digit? Torture.
He let her pull back, her finger escaping with a pop. He shook off the haze of lust threatening the production of the delicacies. Hold off, caveman.
Instead, he grinned at her. "If they're individual sex servings, does that make them masturbation pies?"
Paige rolled her eyes. "God. You are not helping me name them."
"Jerk tarts?"
"Trent!"
"Cream---"
The shot of, appropriately enough---whipped cream---hit him in the mouth, and he sputtered to a stop, eyeing her evilly.
She lowered the piping bag, fists dropping to her hips. "Behave. Let me pop these crusts in the oven, and then we can talk about your fascination with self-pleasure."
Hmm, now there's an idea. Not his pleasure, but hers. That was something he could get into. He stepped back complacently, licking his lips. Paige poked him as she passed by to re-wash her hands thoroughly. She returned to the counter, working quickly with the pastry dough. Effortlessly, she formed intricate flowerlike cups, one after another resting on the paper lining the cookie sheets.
He studied her face, loving the way her intent concentration made a tiny furrow appear between her eyes. She was smiling, nodding as she placed another edible art form onto the tray, and he realized this was a form of artistic expression. The beauty she created not only pleased the eyes but the palate and all the rest of his senses. She was a fully sensual creature, and he loved being around her. Enthusiasm and sensuality shone through everything she did.
He couldn't be any more certain. This thing between them was far more than a physical attraction. He was head-over-fucking-heels with the slim seductress. He would do everything he could to make sure she stayed in his life---even if it meant a few more unusual solutions, like those offered by Mason's gung-ho, madcap, anything-goes, both-feet-forward attitude.
Hmm, an attitude that was remarkably like Paige's.
"I bet that's why you guys get along so well."
She straightened after placing the second pan in the oven, that little secretive smile teasing the corner of her mouth again. "What are you talking about? Who?"
"You and Mason. You're both totally open and game for anything."
Paige's heartbeat leaped upward again as he caught her fingers. She'd slipped them under the faucet, adding a shot of soap to clean off the butter clinging to them. He lathered her up, threading his fingers through hers, his touch firm and yet sexual as he touched each digit in turn. Her mouth went absolutely dry.
They didn't seem to be able to be in the same room without wanting each other. "You're not such a prude yourself, Trent."
He crowded closer, his arms caging her, hands rocking over hers again and again. Splashes rose to soak the front of her blouse. He planted kisses along her neckline, and she leaned to the side to allow him to maneuver.
Instead he spun her and locked his lips on hers. Oh Lord, she couldn't think when he did that thing with his tongue. Taking total control of her mouth as if he were starving and only she could satisfy his hunger. He licked and nibbled and explored---ownership in every touch. The sound of the running water grew faint below the roaring of the blood in her ears. His wet hands slipped onto her back, the fabric sticking to her skin. He held her by the upper arms and slowly separated their bodies, his lips clinging with heat and moisture until the last possible second.
They stared at each other. She knew she was grinning, and the expression on his face---sheer happiness. As if he was exactly where he wanted to be, and life was good.
She'd put that expression in his eyes, at least partially, and for one wild second she nearly blurted out that she loved him.
"Knock knock."
They both spun toward the door, Trent settling her tightly against his chest. The warmth of his body heated the wet spots on her clothing.
Mason raised a brow as he approached. "Am I interrupting? Fair dinkum, it smells delicious in here."
"Paige is cooking up a storm."
Mason walked the length of the room with any hesitation, not stopping until he was pressed firmly against her.
"She always cooks up the most mouth-watering mischief." He lifted her chin with his fingers and kissed her. A momentary buss on the lips, just enough for her to taste him, tease her senses. "What's next on the menu? That's what I want to know."
He dipped his head again and took his time opening her lips to his caress. A series of small kisses along her jaw, a butterfly soft touch to the corner of her mouth. A tantalizing stroke of his tongue over her lower lip.
A low level of excitement and delight accompanied his teasing touch. She was totally surrounded, boxed in by two solid male torsos. Trent's erection pressed hard into her right butt cheek, and the longer Mason kissed her, the more his interest rose as well. She tangled her fingers in his hair and held him tight. Twisted her hips slightly, rubbing both of them, slow and deliberate. She might be encircled, but she still had a say in this adventure. It looked as if there was no need to prolong the wait for one of her favorite parts.
Being totally cared for by two men. Four hands bringing her delight, stroking and guiding her pleasure in ways she'd never dreamed possible before getting involved with them.
Paige pulled her lips free and Mason leaned his forehead against hers. Trent's fingers caressed her hip slowly. They both waited, patiently. Time paused, their three bodies slowly becoming more attuned to each other as their breathing synchronized. Her anticipation rose---there was some specific mischief she had in mind, although it was actually Mason who was the engineer of this afternoon's coming escapade.
She could hardly wait to see him explain the sex chair that graced the center of their suite. Forget the details of how it got there, she wanted to know everything possible about using the chair itself.
Adolescent fantasies can grow into very adult realities.
Island Idyll
© 2011 Jess Dee
Bandicoot Cove, Book 4
Sienna James has come to Bandicoot Cove to mourn the end of her eight-year relationship with Ben Cowley. The last person she expects to meet is the star of every one of her high school fantasies.
Joshua Lye is not only as appealing as he was in high school, he reveals she was the main feature in his adolescent wet dreams. As kids they never got it together. But they're adults now, and there's nothing keeping them apart.
When Ben arrives at the resort determined to win Sienna back, finding another man in her bed kind of throws a spanner in the works. But he isn't deterred. Rather than admit defeat, he comes up with an alternative plan: Let Sienna sleep with both men---at the same time. Then she can make an informed decision as to which man she wants.
Sienna shouldn't want to go through with this shockingly sexy plan, but she does. Desperately. Except after the sexual storm passes, she could have it all...or be left holding an empty heart.
Warning: Contains a suggestion beyond risqué, a solution beyond orgasmic, and two men who know how to play dirty. Really, really dirty.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Island Idyll:
"My room is just down there." She pointed, her voice breathless.
Ah. A beachside bungalow. Figured. Kylie would have saved the best for her best friends. His own suite was situated in the staff quarters. Nothing to sneeze at, but a million miles away from here. "Condoms are in my room," he told her, wondering why the fuck he didn't carry one around in his pocket at all times.
New rule. From this second on always carry a condom. Always. No question.
Her lips curved into a sexy grin. "I have some."
He faltered midstep. "You do?"
"There's a box in the bathroom. Compliments of the hotel."
"So, they're not yours?"
She shook her head.
Unquestionable relief stole through him. They weren't hers. Which meant she hadn't come here with the intention of having sex.
"I didn't think to bring any," she confessed. Her lips twitched as she looked on ahead, steering him towards her bungalow. "I don't usually use condoms with my vibrator."
Josh tripped. Over his own feet. Fuck, she hadn't even blushed when she'd said that.
Sienna turned to steady him. "You okay?"
Christ, the way her eyes danced, mischief painted all over her delectable face, her freckles standing out... "You said that on purpose," he accused. "Just to get a reaction out of me."
Why on earth had he ever thought her eyes were the color of a summer sky? Right now they looked black. Her pupils were enormous, dark spheres rimmed with navy.
"Did I get a reaction?" she asked with the tiniest hint of a smirk.
Jesus, what happened to the naïve kid he'd known in school? "Did you want one?"
She shrugged sweetly. "Only if it promises more satisfaction than my vibrator."
Enough.
He couldn't take another second of her teasing. Of her subtle scent that drifted through his nose with hints of cinnamon. Of her creamy white skin, so silky, just begging to be touched. He couldn't take one more second.
With more speed than he knew he possessed, he backed her up against the trunk of a palm tree, stepped in close---so close she'd have no doubt of the satisfaction his response could provide---and slanted his mouth over hers.
The little minx was ready for him, her lips soft, warm, welcoming and...parted.
Holy fuck! She'd parted her lips for him, inviting his tongue in, leaving the hot, sweet cavern of her mouth open to his exploration.
Her taste hit him with the force of a cannonball, smashing into his chest, winding him. Sweet and tangy, like strawberries and rum. And salty, like the sea air. Innocence, mischief and...sadness, all rolled into one.
He could taste all that on her tongue? Sadness? Why?
Then she whimpered against his lips, and his thoughts scattered. She twined a leg around his, hooking her foot around his ankle, pressing her groin into his and lining her pussy up with his cock.
He hadn't been kidding earlier when he'd said if she'd touched him, even once, when they were younger, it'd have been game over in a second. Suddenly he was that horny kid all over again. The determined teenager, aroused and desperate for a taste of her, a feel of her, knowing he could never have her.
She slid her hand between their bodies, cupping his dick through his boardies, making him groan savagely into her mouth.
The sound must have motivated her. Less than a second later the same hand was dipping beneath the waistband of his shorts and caressing his bare, aching penis. Here, in the open, standing just on the side of a public pathway, where God knew who could walk past. Anyone.
Anyone. And she was holding his dick in her palm, petting it.
Christ. Fuck. Holy shit.
She was in his arms, pressing her body against him, wrapping her hand around his erection, and damned if he wasn't on the verge of ending the game right now.
He wrenched his lips from hers, his eyes scrunched shut, pain shooting through his balls.
Fuck, release. He needed release. Needed to come.
"Let go. Quick," he rasped. Whoa. Close. Way too close. "Say something, anything. Get my mind off fucking you, or it's not gonna happen."
Her hand was an instrument of torture, releasing him in tiny, tormenting strokes. Her breath came in shallow gasps, her breasts scraping against his chest with every inhalation.
Not helping. Not one little bit. "Princess, fuck, say something."
With a long, breathy sigh, she released him, extricating her hand from his pants. "I...I'm getting married."
He clenched his teeth, willing his orgasm into retreat mode, mulling over her words, trying to make sense of them.
Married.
Married?
His erection died a sudden, effective death. Her confession slapped him clean across the face.
Josh stumbled back. "Married?"
No way. No fucking way.
What was he then? Some last minute entertainment before the big day? The last hurrah? A quick spin to tie up any childhood loose ends?
Sienna's face creased with sorrow.
"You're getting married, and you're here? Doing this? With me?" Irrational fury surged through him.
Tears pooled in her eyes. She shook her head. "No. I'm not."
Josh glared, his thoughts reeling. "Jesus, Sienna, what the fuck kind of a game are you playing with me?"
"No game. I'm not getting married." Her voice trembled.
"You said---"
"You told me to say something."
He smacked his fist into his forehead. Christ, he had. He'd practically yelled at her. "So...so you're not getting married."
A tear spilled over onto her cheek. "No." She shook her head. "Not anymore."

