Rock Addiction

Chapter 24

Molly’s first impression of Fox’s home in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles was of gleaming glass and shimmering blue set back against an unexpectedly green backdrop of spruces and other foliage. The light-filled modern structure, situated on a slope, was all square angles and floor-to-ceiling windows that provided a magnificent view of Santa Monica Bay in the distance, while the water from the infinity pool on the second floor fell in a cool waterfall to a lower pool.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, standing in the sunlit living room that overlooked the infinity pool. The sun beat down outside, but inside it was cool, the air-conditioning soundless. “It’s not what I expected.”

“What?” That lean dimple appeared in his cheek. “Some messy bachelor pad?”

“Um, yes,” Molly admitted, wanting to kiss him but feeling oddly shy in this new place a literal world apart from everything she knew.

Laughing, Fox slid open the doors to the patio around the pool and tucked her to his side. His kiss was slow, the way he rubbed his nose against hers heart-catchingly sweet. “I have a cleaning service—they come in once a week unless I tell them not to. I don’t like anyone in my space when I’m working on a new song.” A playful bite to her lower lip. “I’ll make an exception for naked Molly, however.”

Scrunching up her nose at him, she said, “Can you ask them not to come this month?” She needed time to settle without having to deal with strangers. The one good thing was that she wouldn’t have to stress about work—the copy-editing certificate she’d completed last year in order to earn extra income, before her promotion at the library put that on the back burner, was now going to be part of her new life.

It would take time and a lot of hard work, but she planned to build herself a career as an independent editor and researcher with the emphasis on the latter. Never did she want Fox to think she was with him for his money—and more, she needed to be her own person, needed to be the Molly who was Fox’s perfect song. That Molly stood on her own two feet. “The house looks clean anyway,” she added.

“Whatever you want.” Fox nodded toward the kitchen area that flowed off from the large living space. “Their number’s on the fridge if you want to make the call yourself.”

Molly smiled, liking the idea of jumping right into their life together. “I will.” Her jaw cracked on a huge yawn before she could say anything else. “I’m exhausted,” she said when it passed. “Let’s go take a nap.”

Fox’s eyes gleamed. “A nap?”

“A nap.” She made her voice stern. “After we shower. Even flying in a fancy-pants private jet doesn’t make me feel any less icky after twelve hours in the air.”

Running his hand possessively over her body in a way that had her rethinking her priorities, Fox led her deeper into the house and to a sun-drenched bedroom. Centered in the sprawling space was a king-size bed made up with crisp white sheets, an electric guitar leaning against one of the walls. Seeing the guitar eased the nerves in her stomach—that this house was worth millions didn’t alter the fact it was Fox’s home.

And now hers.

The attached bathroom, she saw when Fox tugged her inside, was enormous, the shower full of jets, the bathtub a huge square thing. “Wow, I could go swimming in there.”

Fox ripped his T-shirt over his head and dropped it on the shimmering gray of the floor tiles. “Get naked.”

A sigh leaving her at the male perfection of him, Molly wriggled out of her clothes. Fox was already in the shower, all jets on and body soapy when she stepped inside. He hauled her close, his mouth firm on hers, his cock long and thick against her abdomen. “How about a little exercise before that nap?”

Hitching her up onto his hips with easy masculine strength, he pinned her against the tile. “Are you sticky and damp for me, Molly?” he murmured, reaching behind her to run his soapy fingers lightly over the cleft of her buttocks. “Say yes, baby, because I want in.”

His words, his actions, they made her thighs clench around his hips, her mouth opening for his on a breathy “Yes.”

He played his tongue over her own, confident and demanding, as the blunt head of his cock nudged at her, and then he was pushing inside. Shivering as he stretched her to aching pleasure, she wrapped her arms around his neck and used her teeth to tug at the ring that had been her temptation into the sexiest of sins.

“Fuck, I love it when you do that.” Gripping her under her thighs, he began to move, the rhythm fast and deep, her breasts rubbing against the taut muscle of his chest with every thrust.

She kissed him again as he pushed his cock in to the hilt, then pulled out almost the entire way… only to thrust his way back in. The relentless pressure, the erotic friction, the feel of his powerful body moving in her, around her, it made her shudder and come without warning, her inner muscles convulsing on the thickness of him.

“Christ!” Fingers tightening on her thighs, he increased the depth and force of his thrusts until he came, the wet heat of his seed inside her a reminder of the primal nature of their intimacy.

They did nap after Fox soaped up her lazy-limbed body, the pleasure heavy in her blood, while she shampooed her hair. Rubbing her dry with a big fluffy towel once they were clean, he nudged her toward the bed, murmuring, “Reflective glass,” when she hesitated to walk naked into the bedroom.

It still felt incredibly naughty to cross the room nude, since she could see through the glass. She slid under the sheets, snuggling into Fox when he followed her to bed, his body cool from the shower, his hair damp. Above them, the wide skylight showcased a vivid blue sky, but her body thought it was five o’clock in the morning.

They slept in a tangle of limbs, Fox’s body curved behind her own, his thigh thrust between hers, one of his arms under her head. It was a position she’d become used to, the warm strength of him lulling her to sleep within minutes. She didn’t wake until three hours later, according to the bedside clock.

Fox wasn’t in bed, but she rolled over just in time to see him coming out of the bathroom. He was as naked as when they’d gone to bed, and just as gorgeous. Noticing she was awake, he smiled that slow Fox smile that made her heart skip a beat. “Hello, sleepyhead.”

“Mmm.” Yawning, she stretched. “Come back to bed.”

But Fox was already pulling on a pair of gray sweatpants. “Insatiable.” Closing the distance between them, he pressed both palms on the bed, one on either side of her head, and bent to speak against her lips. “I’m starving.”

Molly tugged him down. He didn’t resist, lying on top of her, the sheet between them a thin barrier that did nothing to block the wild heat of his skin. “Kiss me,” she said, her arms around his shoulders, “and I might make you that omelet you like.”

His hand curving over her bare breast after he pulled down the sheet, he said, “Kisses as bribery?” Then his smiling mouth came down on hers, the kiss playful, his mouth sucking on her lower lip, her teeth nibbling at his in sensual retaliation.

Neither of them was in a hurry, content to just be together.

“I think you’ve earned your omelet,” she said some time later, shaping the breadth of his shoulders with her hands. “Show me your kitchen.”

Fox brushed her hair off her forehead, the tenderness in his expression intermingled with unhidden possessiveness. “I’m happy you’re in my house, in my bed.” He palmed her breast again. “Where you belong.”

No woman, Molly thought, could question Fox’s commitment when he was so blunt about it. “I’m happy to be here,” she said, then gave him a rueful smile. “Also a little scared and nervous, but underneath it all, happy.” And that happiness? It scared her, too… because it seemed too passionate, too wonderful, to last.

Fox’s gaze was intent, his eyes dark. “Let’s make this town ours, Molly.”

The first three days weren’t much different from the life Molly was used to living. By unspoken agreement, she and Fox stayed home except for short visits out to get groceries and pick up a couple of things she discovered she needed after she unpacked. By some stroke of luck, the paparazzi didn’t seem to have realized Fox was back in the country, so he was able to show her around without anyone dogging their heels.

The area around Fox’s home was lovely, it and neighboring houses set on large parcels of land that ensured privacy. There was also a park, complete with hiking trails, only a short drive away. Molly loved their walk along a canyon trail early one balmy evening, the two of them laughing as serious hikers passed them by with sniffs of disdain for their strolling pace. But his neighborhood was only a small part of a sprawling city, and Molly quickly realized she’d need a car if she wanted to get anywhere on her own.

“I’ll take a few driving lessons,” she said as Fox showed her the sights in his black SUV in place of the highly recognizable red Lamborghini that was his pride and joy. “Get myself used to staying on the wrong side of the road.” Seeing they were on the highway that ran parallel to the coastline, she rolled down the window to take in the sea air, the view breathtaking along what her research told her was one of the most scenic routes in the country. “Let’s do the entire drive one day.”

“We’ll take the Aventador,” Fox said. “It hugs the road like you do my cock when I’m inside you.”

“Fox.” She pushed at one muscled arm, to his wicked grin. “I cannot believe you just compared me to a car!”

“No, I compared the car to you,” he pointed out, one hand on the steering wheel, the big SUV moving so smoothly it appeared an extension of his body. “She gives me a sweet ride, but nothing comes close to my Molly.”

Her heart turned to goo.

“As for your driving,” he said, while she fought the urge to crawl over and distract him from the road, “I’ll set you up with a car and a driver until you’re comfortable on your own.” Reaching out, he tapped her cheek. “I don’t want you feeling trapped.”

Molly’s instinct was to say no, but she knew that was pride talking.

“I take care of what’s mine,” Fox said when she didn’t answer, his tone uncompromising as he pulled off the highway and into a parking spot that overlooked the beach. Switching off the engine, he turned to brace his arm along the back of her seat. “Don’t make an issue out of this.”

Molly hadn’t been about to until that last statement. “I’ll make an issue out of anything I please,” she said, the sound of the waves splashing to shore a gentle contrast to the tension in the vehicle. “Giving orders isn’t the way to get me to agree to anything.”

Fox’s scowl didn’t fade. “You know what I’m like. Did you really think I’d leave you to navigate a new city alone? Especially when you’re going to be dealing with all the other crap that comes with being with me?”

She dropped her head back against the seat and into his hand. “No, of course not, but”—turning, she poked her finger into his chest—“you can’t talk to me like that. I won’t take it.”

Fox curled his hand around her nape. “Then you can’t fight me on everything.” It was a snarl. “Jesus, Molly, let me take care of you. It won’t steal anything from you if you let me make life easier for you.”

Her breath caught at the ferocity of his words. “Am I that bad?”

“Yes.” Direct, furious. “I’ve never had to fight so hard to give a woman so little. You even wanted to pay for the goddamn groceries!” Blowing out a breath, he tugged her closer with the grip he had around her nape, his kiss a stamp of possession. “I make millions. I don’t have anyone to spend it on. I will damn well spend it on you.”

Heart thudding, Molly pressed her hand against his chest. “Yes to the car and driver, but—”

“Always a fucking but,” he growled. “No buts. I told you—I take care of what’s mine, and you are mine.”

“I am not a piece of property!”

He squeezed her nape. “And I’m not your fucking lapdog.” Releasing her without warning, he put the car into gear and peeled out of the parking space to head back to the house.

He didn’t say anything else until they were almost home, when he slammed both hands to the steering wheel and shot her a fuming look. “I’m a man. If that’s not what you want—”

“What?” Molly spoke through clenched teeth, the scream built up inside her. “I should go back to my old life? I quit my job, gave up my apartment—”

“You also promised to trust me!” Fox pulled up in front of the gate to the house, pushing the remote attached to the dashboard to open it. “Remember that?” He powered through the barely open gate and up the winding drive bordered by trees. “What do you think I’ll do? Abandon you penniless and broken like your parents did?”

“You bastard!” Molly fisted her hands, eyes stinging at the brutal emotional slap that shoved her right back to the most horrible year of her life. “I did trust you”—with her deepest pain—“and you—” Unable to continue, she unsnapped her seat belt the instant they entered the garage and, shoving open the door, almost ran into the house.

Dragging her suitcase from the walk-in closet where she’d stashed it, she flipped it open on the carpet and began to throw her things in it as she fought not to cry. When Fox’s hands landed on her upper arms, she wrenched violently away—or tried to. He wouldn’t release her, tugging her back against his chest and wrapping his arms around her upper body in a steely embrace.

She kicked back at him, but her position left her at a disadvantage, her foot barely scraping his shin. “Let me go!”

“I’ll never let you go.” Spinning her around too fast for her to get her bearings, he clasped her to him again.

When she shoved at his chest, he didn’t resist. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“I don’t care!” He’d used her deepest vulnerability to wound her. “I trusted you!”

Unbalancing her by hooking his foot around the back of her calf, he tipped her onto the bed behind her. He’d come down on top of her and pinned her wrists to either side of her head before she could catch her breath, his weight crushing her to the mattress. “I’m sorry for the way I said it,” he gritted out, his pupils jet-black against the rich color of his irises, “but I’m not sorry for what I said.”

“Get off me! I don’t want to be anywhere near you!”

“Too bad.” It was a growl of sound. “You’re mine,” he said again, “and I’ll take care of you if it’s the last thing I do. That includes making sure our fucked-up pasts don’t mess up the best thing that has ever happened to me!”

Chapter 25

“You really need to move.” Molly didn’t want to hear the care in his tone, didn’t want to see the unyielding commitment on his face. “I can’t breathe.”

Fox released her wrists and pushed himself up onto his elbows. “Better?” Touching his fingers to the side of her face, he went to run them down to her jaw, but she pulled away.

“Molly.” The hard edge was back in his voice. “I’m no shrink¸ but it doesn’t take a bunch of degrees for me to realize why it’s so important for you to remain independent.”

She flinched. “So you had to throw it in my face?” Returning her to a past that had almost destroyed her.

“You want me to ignore it instead? It’s the big goddamn pink elephant in the room.” Fisting his hand in her hair, he forced her to meet his gaze, the smoky green stormy. “I will never abandon you, never put you in a position where you have no choices.” Shoving off her and the bed in a sudden move, he went to the nightstand to pull out a black leather document holder.

“Here.” Throwing it on the bed beside her when she sat up, he strode to the door. “I know it’ll only piss you off, but I was trying to do something to make you feel safe.” He was gone a second later.

Shaken and feeling as if something precious was slipping out of her grasp, Molly picked up the document wallet. Unzipping it, she slipped out the page on top. It was a letter from an attorney, summarizing the complex legal documentation behind it. That summary was concise and to the point and it stole her breath.

Fox had set up an irrevocable trust fund in her name with a fifteen-million-dollar endowment. The money was being managed by a reputable financial firm, with the income from the principal accessible to her at any time: income that could never be cut off by Fox or anyone else. A generous percentage of that income would be automatically deposited into her account every month in any case.

The multimillion-dollar principal, on the other hand, would only be accessible to her after she spent at least two years with Fox, the clock having started the day she landed in Los Angeles. The payout would be doubled if she stayed five years, tripled if she stayed ten.

Hands trembling, she dropped the documents to the bed and thrust her fingers through her hair. She wasn’t a shrink either, but she could see what he was doing and it broke her heart. Rubbing the heel of her hand over the organ, she got off the bed and went to find him, eventually tracking him to the gym downstairs. He’d changed into cutoff sweatpants and was lying on the bench press, having just lifted what looked like a ridiculously heavy set of weights.

Not wanting to risk disturbing him mid-press, she waited until he’d successfully cradled the bar, then straddled his body. “Look at me,” she said quietly and, when he went to lift the weights again instead, closed her hands over the bar. “I won’t allow our pasts to mess us up either.”

Expression grim, he said, “You read it?”

“I read it.” Releasing the bar, she cupped his face in her hands, her throat thick and her anger at the hurt done him a feral wildness within. “You don’t have to pay me to stay with you, Fox.”

A shake of his head, his jaw clenched tight. “That’s not what I’m doing.”

“If I have to face up to my demons,” she whispered, “so do you.” Somewhere inside her gorgeous, strong, talented rock star was the boy who’d been abandoned by his mother, left to the care of strangers for whom it was a paid task.

The brutal rejection had scarred him in ways she was only now beginning to see—but Molly had no intention of permitting that hurt to fester inside him. “We do this together,” she said. “Don’t you make me walk alone.”

Rising into a seated position, he ran his hands down her back. “That’s the one thing you never have to worry about.”

This time it was Molly who initiated the kiss, Molly who rubbed her body over his, and Molly who demanded. Her pretty blue sleeveless shirt was on the floor in seconds, her bra gone the next instant. It frustrated her that she had to get off him to rid herself of her jeans and panties, but that only took a few heartbeats, long enough for him to kick off his sweats.

Then she was straddling Fox again, reaching down to grip the silk and steel of him, position him at her entrance before he took over, his other hand on her nape.

“Don’t make me wait,” she whispered and, heart trembling, spoke words she hadn’t said to a single person since well before the day her world imploded around her. “I need you.”

“Molly.” Fox pulled her down over his rigid erection, going so deep she felt branded, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her backside.

Molly cried out, found herself kissed with a rough tenderness that devastated her.

“We’ll do this.” Fox’s voice, deep and harsh against her lips. “We’ll make it.” One hand stroking her hair. “Together.”

“Together.”

Into this scary, wonderful journey that had destroyed so many others. Not us, she vowed as Fox’s kiss drew her under. Not us. Fox was hers and she would fight for him.

They were lying on the bench press, Molly on top of Fox, his semi-hard cock still inside her and her breasts pressed against his chest when the woman in his arms stirred. “Beautiful and hot, and mine,” he said, nipping at her jaw, fucking adoring her for claiming him with such sweet fierceness. “Not like property.”

“Sorry.” She shifted to rub her cheek against his, her movements making Fox groan as ripples of lazy pleasure rolled over his body. “I know you don’t think of me that way—and I don’t consider you a lapdog.”

Taking a page out of her book, he ran his hand over her hair. “Sorry. You might have noticed I have a temper.”

He felt her lips curve against his skin, and her response had him smiling even before she said, “I can handle it.”

“I’ll never say no to being handled by you, Miss Molly.”

“How’s this?” Rising to sit up on his body, she ran her nails over the flat disks of his nipples, a mischievous light in her eyes.

He arched into it. “More.”

She gave him more, her expression telling him she was indulging herself as much as him. “Thank you,” she said after he drew her down to demand a slow kiss that elicited a very female, very delicious sound from her throat.

He chuckled. “I’m that good?”

Sticking out her tongue at him, she tugged playfully at his lip ring. “You do have serious moves”—another tug when his grin deepened—“but I meant for the trust fund. I probably won’t use it for my day-to-day life, but it means a lot to know it’s there.”

She pressed her fingers to his lips when he would’ve spoken, his scowl heavy. “I’ll use it for things like dresses for going to industry shindigs with you, stuff I could never afford on my own and that I’ll need as your date.”

Fox wasn’t happy, but he also knew his woman. “Yeah, okay, but you should know I plan to spoil you. Let me.” He’d never had anyone to lavish with his attention, no one who was his.

Molly bit down on her lower lip. “I’ve never been spoiled before.” A soft confession. “I’m willing to permit it on a trial basis.”

He caught the hint of a smile, knew he was being teased. “Come here, Miss Smart-ass Molly.”

Kissing and petting her when she laughed but obeyed, he knew that though they’d managed to survive this test, there’d be others that cut deeper, threatened to do more damage. The only thing that might take them through to the other side was the fact they were both proving to be stubborn as anything, willing to fight claw and tooth for what they wanted.

It was on the fourth day that Molly found herself on her own for the first time since her arrival in the country, Fox heading off to attend a meeting about the band’s upcoming tour. “I’m picking up David along the way,” he told her in the garage. “His place isn’t too far from here—we’ll walk over to it one of these days, force him to cook us a gourmet meal.”

“Deal.” Smiling, she fixed his baseball cap so it didn’t shadow those incredible eyes. “Have fun and don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

“You have my number, and the numbers of the other guys?”

“Yes.”

“Wait, I don’t think I gave you Tawanna’s.” He took out his phone and sent her a message with the number. “She’s my assistant.” A grin. “My real one.”

“Ha-ha.” She kissed him simply because it made her happy to touch him, to taste his smile. “I’ll probably stay in and go through my e-mails, work on the test pages for my first possible clients.” They’d learned about her via the ads she’d taken out in a few places, then contacted her through the website Charlotte had helped her set up.

So now Anne Webster was (almost) no longer unemployed, Anne being her middle name. If Molly Webster did end up in the media, she didn’t want people to start contacting her for prurient reasons. Anne would quietly go about her work while Molly lived in the spotlight with the sexiest man on the planet.

She kissed that man good-bye, then went up to the poolside patio and knuckled down to work—after first sending Charlotte an e-mail asking her best friend to message her when she was awake and free so they could catch up.

She was just finishing the second set of sample pages when the intercom chimed. Startled out of her thoughts, she walked over to the security panel after realizing someone had pressed the buzzer out by the gate. The chime came again before she’d figured out whether or not to answer. Noah, Abe, and David were all at the meeting with Fox, as was Thea, and Molly didn’t know anyone else in the city.

“Hey, Fox!” came a husky female voice through the speakers. “It’s Kit. I know you’re back! Wake up!”

Molly’s hand froze in front of the Answer button. Who was Kit?

“Hurry up! The damn paps are on my tail.” An infuriated sound. “Dammit, now I’ll have to find the remote you ga—Got it!”

Molly saw the security light turn green as the gate opened, a black sports car with its top down zipping up the drive to halt in front of the house a short time later. Whoever this woman was who had a remote to the gate, she was about to hit the front door—and she might well have a key for that, too.

Taking a deep breath and hoping against hope she wasn’t about to surprise a former lover Fox hadn’t yet told about his new relationship, Molly walked downstairs to open the door. The gorgeous woman on the other side, her skin a deep golden bronze, had a tumbling mass of midnight hair and a flawless body encased in a sleek emerald sheath.

Pushing her Audrey Hepburn sunglasses to the top of her head to reveal striking amber eyes, she blinked. “You’re not the cleaning service.” Lines marring her forehead. “If you’re a stalker, you’re a very not-crazy-looking one.” The statement was followed by the most miniscule pause. “Love the top.” The other woman gestured at the peach top with a softly-tied bow at the throat that Molly had paired with white capris.

“Are you a stalker?” Molly managed to interject. “A very fashion-conscious one?” The words were meant to give her time to think—because there were few people who wouldn’t recognize the woman on her doorstep.

“Fox wishes.” A snort. “I’m Kathleen Devigny.”

Molly smiled through the nerves going haywire inside her. “I know—I saw Last Flight.” The low-budget adaptation of a heartbreaking novel set in the war-torn Congo had become a global blockbuster, catapulting the actress into Oscar contention. “I’m Molly.”

Kathleen gave her a dazzling smile, perfect and false. “So, Fox isn’t home?”

“No.” Unsure what claim the A-list actress had on Fox, Molly felt acutely uncomfortable—but this was her home now and she had to claim it. “Would you like to come in?”

Kathleen’s hesitation was slight. “Fox’s science-fiction machine does make good coffee.”

“You know how to use that thing?” Stepping back, Molly closed the door behind the other woman. “I haven’t managed to turn it on yet.”

Kathleen laughed, and it was a rich, warm sound, but instinct told Molly the actress was faking it. Not that Molly blamed her. If she and Fox— Molly cut herself off before she could obsess too far in what might be the totally wrong direction, and showed her size-zero guest up the hanging spiral staircase to the second level, Kathleen’s heels clicking on the honey-colored wood.

Since she’d set up her laptop and notes outside, there was nothing in the sprawling open-plan space that flowed from kitchen to dining to living areas to give Kathleen any clue as to Molly’s purpose here. “So,” she said, wondering if the other woman would ask, “shall we try this machine?”

Setting her small purse on the counter, Kathleen walked around to the gleaming steel coffeemaker. “Is that a New Zealand accent?”

“Yes.” Molly watched the astonishingly beautiful actress use the coffee machine with the ease of someone who’d done the same thing multiple times. “I’ve only been in L.A. a few days.”

“What are you into?” Expression polite but distant, Kathleen passed across the first cup of coffee, made another. “My side of the business, or music?”

“Neither,” she said, beginning to believe Kathleen’s standoffishness had nothing to do with seeing Fox in a romantic way. “Come on, I’ll show you what I’m doing at the moment.”

Leading the other woman to the wrought-iron table that sat in a shaded area by the crystalline blue waters of the pool, Molly waited for her to take a seat before angling the laptop so the other woman could see the screen. “Words”—she smiled—“that’s what I’m into.”

Kathleen took a sip of coffee. “What’s your screenplay about?”

Still not fully certain about Kathleen’s place in Fox’s life, Molly thought about how to respond to that cool question, went for honesty. “Are you always this suspicious or only when it comes to people you care about?” When the actress’s expression became even icier, Molly shook her head. “I have no desire to be in any way famous.”

Putting down her coffee, Kathleen took her sunglasses off her head and slid them back over eyes critics were calling “breathtaking in their expressiveness.” “Yet you’re with one of the most famous men in the world.”

“It’s funny how life works out.” That, Molly thought, had to be the understatement of the century.

Chapter 26

Kathleen left ten minutes later, and five minutes after that, Fox called. “Whatever you said to Kit,” he drawled, “she’s convinced you have evil intentions toward my millions.”

Her entire body warmed at his tone. “She’s very protective of you.” Molly understood loyalty; it was why she’d online-researched the heck out of T-Rex behind Charlotte’s back weeks ago.

“We’ve been friends a long time,” Fox said. “I’ve invited her back for dinner tonight—you two will be best buds as soon as she realizes you break out in hives at the idea of my millions.”

“Smart aleck.” Any uncertainty about who Kathleen was to Fox erased by his easy words, she luxuriated in the pleasure of talking to her man. “How’s the meeting?”

“No big stress.” The sound of voices in the background. “Gotta go, baby. I’ll see you this afternoon.”

He brought the entire band home with him, the four of them setting up shop in the state-of-the-art and fully soundproofed basement studio. When Molly carried down snacks and cold drinks, she got two offers of marriage and a declaration that she was a goddess.

“Don’t spoil the bastards.” Fox scowled, grabbing one of the iced bottles of water. “They’ll start following me home every day.”

Hugging Fox from behind where he sat on a chair, guitar on his lap, she looked at David. “I hear you can cook.”

The others hooted as David groaned. “Only for you, Molly.”

Three hours later, the drummer took over the kitchen, with Molly acting as his assistant, while the other three men hung out around the big screen in the living area, talking and watching football. When Kathleen arrived, Fox threw her a beer and Abe asked her about a play in the game.

The actress disagreed vehemently with Abe’s interpretation.

“Kathleen knows football,” Molly said to David, popping some rolls in the oven to warm.

David stirred the pot of stew he had on the stove. “She used to be a cheerleader, but I think she would’ve rather played.”

Hearing Kathleen roar at a touchdown, Molly agreed. “Written any new memos lately?”

A blush colored his cheekbones. “Your sister is determined to drive me insane.”

Biting back her grin at how adorable he looked and sounded, she said, “You know you love it.”

“Clearly, I’m a masochist.” He added some pepper to the stew as Fox wrapped an arm around Kathleen’s neck and dragged her into the kitchen area.

The other woman was dressed in skinny jeans and a plain white T-shirt, her hair scraped back into a ponytail and no makeup on her face, but she was no less stunning than she’d been earlier that day.

“Kit,” Fox said, “you know Molly. Be nice to her. She’s on the fence about dating a musician as it is.”

Molly met the green of Fox’s eyes, and suddenly it didn’t matter that they were surrounded by others. Barely aware of Kathleen leaving his side, she placed her palms on his chest and, rising on tiptoe, kissed him soft and sweet and with all the scary, powerful emotions she felt for him. “I might be on the fence about this life,” she whispered for his ears only, “but I’m not and will never be on the fence about you.” He was it for her. Forever. “I will fight for you.”

Fox’s arms came around her, his head bent over hers. “You sure know how to pick your moments.” One big hand against the side of her face, lips moving over her own as he spoke. “Should I kick everyone out? We’ll keep David’s masterpiece though.”

“I think you’d have a mutiny on your hands.” Stepping back with a silly, happy smile, she saw the drummer and Kathleen had moved to the other end of the kitchen to give them privacy.

Fox stroked his hand down her back with a deep, playful smile of his own. His dimple tempted her to steal another kiss—but the oven timer went off right then.

Leaning against the fridge, Fox watched her take the rolls out. “I’m starving.” The ink on his arm was delineated exquisitely in the light as he caught the roll she threw him, tore off a piece to eat. “David—you letting your creation age or what?”

“I’m not the one who can’t keep it in the bedroom,” came the whiplash-fast retort. “Grab some bowls and tell the other wolves it’s time to feed.”

“I had fun,” Molly said to Fox several hours later, her sleep T-shirt soft around her thighs as she finished rubbing moisturizer into her face in front of the bathroom mirror and considered whether or not to tackle her hair with a brush. “I think Kathleen is thawing.”

Dressed only in a pair of sweatpants, Fox cupped her breasts from behind, nuzzling a kiss into her neck, his stubbled jaw a delicious abrasion. It made her shiver and lean back into him, her arms raised to wrap around his neck as he petted her, kissing her neck the entire time.

When he stroked his hands down her body to tug up her T-shirt, slide underneath, she sighed in anticipation. The callused heat of his touch on her bare breasts was a raw shock of sensation. Shuddering, she found her eyes drawn to the mirror and to the way Fox’s hands moved under the T-shirt as he fondled her, but mostly, to Fox.

The look of him as he touched her, as he kissed her… it made her feel so beautiful, until she could see what he saw in her. A sensual woman with creamy skin and curves that were as soft as Fox’s body was hard. She didn’t resist when he pulled the T-shirt off over her head and continued to pet her as he’d been doing, his tanned hands cupping her breasts, his fingers tugging on her nipples, the sinew and muscle of him apparent beneath the tats.

“Push down your panties, baby.” Whiskey and sin and pure hard rock.

Shivering, she rolled them down as far as she was able to in this position, the lace tangling low on her thighs. Fox slipped one hand between her legs from the front the next instant. The erotic shock of seeing him do that had her breathless, her hips moving restlessly against him as he caressed her to a deep, pulsing orgasm.

“I love watching you come.” Hand still between her legs, he nuzzled her neck again, waiting until she’d gained control of her boneless body before saying, “Lean forward and brace your hands on the counter.”

Molly had no desire to argue, but instead of the fast penetration she’d expected, he was slow and tender, kissing his way down her spine to nip playfully at her butt.

“Ouch,” she said without heat, his chuckle making her thighs clench.

Tugging her panties fully off, he waited until she’d stepped out of them—keeping himself busy by kissing his way back up her spine—before kicking her feet apart. One hand gripping her hip, he cupped her again from the front, using his middle finger to stroke lightly over her damp flesh.

“Hurry,” Molly said, pleasure, intoxicating and rich, shimmering to new life inside her.

“You want me in?” he asked, the blunt head of his cock pushing into her, slow but relentless.

“Yes, please.” She loved having him inside her, loved the feeling of possession, of belonging. “Don’t go fast today.”

“Anything you want, polite girl.” His mouth hot and wet on her throat, he rocked into her, the words he spoke in her ear dark, carnal.

When Molly, her inhibitions lowered, murmured certain things back, he rewarded her by tugging on her engorged clit just enough to make her moan but not come. Sensation a sultry wave across her skin, she reached one arm up and back around his neck again, his skin hot against her own. “I adore you, Zachary Fox.” Adore wasn’t the only word she wanted to use, but Fox, she knew, would accept this word as he wouldn’t the other.

Smoky, sexy eyes locked with hers in the mirror, his smile telegraphing an open delight. “I like being adored by you, Molly Webster.”

Smiling, she continued to hold him close as he drove her to another luxuriant orgasm. A kiss to her shoulder before he pulled out—to her moan—and turned her around, hitching her up into a seated position on the black granite of the bathroom counter. It placed her at the perfect height for him to tug her forward and slide into her once again.

His cock rasped against her pleasure-swollen tissues, made her gasp. Leaning forward, she kissed him, playing with the ring in his lip. “This thing is the architect of my doom.”

Cupping her butt, his smile sinful, he pulled her tight against his groin. “Ever think about a ring of your own?”

“Me?” She ran her hands over the lithe muscle of his shoulders, dropping her head to kiss her way across the ink on one side, the hot, masculine taste of him an intoxication. “No way can I pull off a lip ring. It just wouldn’t look the same on me as it does on you.”

Fox thrust a hand into her hair, holding her to him as she sucked on his neck. “I wasn’t thinking about your lip.”

“Hmm?” she murmured, blowing out a breath on the skin she’d wet.

His fingers clenched on her butt, and then he was pulling out of her, shoving up her thighs with a grip under her knees, and slamming back in. Oh God, it felt good. Bracing her hands behind her on the cool stone of the counter, she watched her man find pleasure in her body. His muscles bunching and releasing, his cock sliding in and out of her, slick with their mingled passion, his heavy-lidded gaze locked on the place where they joined.

It was the most incredibly erotic thing she’d ever seen.

It didn’t surprise her in the least when her body wound tighter and tighter, only to come apart on a small scream.

“That’s my Molly.” Dragging her close, Fox took her mouth with his, one big hand on her nape. He always held her close during sex, made her feel unbearably cherished even in the most rawly sexual moment. And he always, always made eye contact.

Heart aching, she locked her arms and legs around him and watched him go over, her lover who was her everything. All her life, she’d fought never to be tied so absolutely to anyone, but she loved Fox until she couldn’t breathe. The irony was that he was a man for whom the words “I love you” meant only abandonment, pain, and loneliness.

A half hour later, her feelings for him a pulse in every cell of her body, Molly sat curled up in Fox’s lap in bed, her T-shirt and panties back on and her lips cool with butterscotch ice cream. “The ring,” she said after he drew the spoon back from between her lips. “Were you serious?”

He ate a bite of the decadent dessert. “I was just thinking”—a wicked smile—“since you have so much fun with mine, I might enjoy playing with one.”

“Where?”

“Here.” A tap of the back of the spoon against her left nipple.

Molly flushed, the ice cream he’d fed her before speaking that single word sliding down her throat. “Never going to happen.” The idea of a nipple ring was so outside the realm of anything she’d ever considered that she could feel herself turning redder with every second that passed.

Setting the ice cream on the bedside table, Fox cuddled her close. “You are so cute.” His chuckle vibrated against her. “I was teasing. Not that I wouldn’t fuck you silly if you turned up with a nipple ring—but since I do that anyway, it wouldn’t make any difference.”

“You’re awful,” she muttered, threatening to pull his hair. “Maybe I’ll get a piercing one day just to see the look on your face.”

“You know another place women sometimes get pierced?” His voice was a gritty purr that touched her in her most private places.

“Yes. I read Cosmo.” Grabbing the ice cream, she shoved a spoonful into his grinning mouth. “That particular piercing is never, ever, ever going to be a possibility.”

Swallowing the ice cream, Fox dipped a finger in the butterscotch and painted her lips with it before kissing the cream off. “I was going to say I hope you don’t go that far. I like you all soft and lush down there.”

Breasts swelling under the T-shirt, the “soft and lush” parts of her damp, Molly decided to give Zachary Fox a taste of his own teasing medicine. “You know what else I read in Cosmo?”

“What?”

“That guys get certain lower-body piercings, too. Apparently it can be very pleasurable for a woman.”

A look of pure horror on his face. “Jesus H. Christ! Feed me more ice cream to get that nightmare image out of my head.”

Shoulders shaking in laughter, she did as ordered. If a few drops “accidentally” fell on his chest and she had to lick them up, well they both had a good time. Especially after she managed to drop the ice cream on the part of his anatomy he had no intention of piercing. Fox “complained” about her very bad aim and took over, only for Molly to find herself turned into dessert.

They fought for the spoon, laughing and cheating by any possible means, the sheets so tangled by the time a truce was declared that they had to get out and remake the bed.

It would hurt so much if he wasn’t in her bed and her life one day in the future, Molly thought as she watched Fox leave the room to get rid of the ice cream carton. The fear was enough to choke her, make her want to turn and run, save herself from the pain. But the Molly who hid was gone, replaced by this wild Molly who loved a rock star named Zachary Fox… and who was considering the benefits of a nipple ring.

Chapter 27

Kathleen turned up again two weeks later, while Molly was working at her computer. She’d had a bite from a nonfiction writer looking to hire a research assistant for a short-term contract. Since being able to make a living doing that type of work was Molly’s ultimate goal, she was in the midst of preparing a detailed outline of her proposed research path when the other woman rang the doorbell.

“Hi.” A long, false Kathleen smile when Molly opened the door. “Look, I was wondering if you wanted to do lunch? Since Fox is a good friend, and you’re in his life, we should get to know each other.”

“I’d love to, but can we do it tomorrow?” Molly said, unsurprised Kathleen remained skeptical about her—trust couldn’t come easy in this town. “I’d really like to send an e-mail off to a potential client in the next couple of hours,” she added so the other woman wouldn’t think she was blowing her off for no good reason.

Kathleen’s expression was odd for a second before she said, “Sure, I’m between films at the moment, so my time’s flexible. I’ll pick you up at one?”

“Sounds good.”

Conscious Kathleen would select a nice restaurant, Molly dressed with care the next day, choosing a slim black skirt that flattered her body and a pretty mint-green top. To her surprise, the actress took her to a park in what appeared to be a suburban neighborhood where everyone was too busy with their kids to worry about anyone else. “That guy makes the best burgers,” she said, pointing to a silver food truck parked in the shade of the palm trees on the street. “You game?”

“Sure.” Molly waited with the actress at a picnic table while Kathleen’s bodyguard went to buy the food, the line long enough that it’d be several minutes at least.

“Does the guard go with you everywhere public?” Molly realized she’d unintentionally stepped on a nerve when Kathleen’s expression went blank, shields slamming down. “Sorry,” she said at once. “I was just trying to break the awkward silence.”

Kathleen shrugged and thrust a hand through her hair. “It’s no secret. I have a disturbed and obsessed fan who thinks we’re married—the cops haven’t managed to catch the fucker, even after he broke into my house and left a disgusting piece of himself on my bed.”

Knowing exactly the toll stalking could take on a victim, Molly was horrified, then outraged. “At least you won’t have any problem with DNA evidence.”

Kathleen laughed, the frost thawing a fraction. “That’s just what Fox said.”

The bodyguard returned then. Leaving the food and bottles of water on the table, he walked off to stand by the car with the driver, their eyes scanning the picnic table and surrounding areas.

The scrutiny made Molly want to squirm. “Don’t you feel bad when they just stand there?”

“Not at the wages I pay them.” The pragmatic words were followed by a small smile that might even have been real. “It’s okay—they’re professionals. I tried to get Butch to eat with me once, but he was mortified. How is he supposed to protect me if he’s stuffing his face? Casey, my driver, he’s a bodyguard, too, so he thinks the same.”

“I see their point.” Molly took a bite of the burger and moaned. “Oh my God, does Fox know about this truck?”

“Yes, I showed him.” Taking a bite of her own burger, Kathleen chewed and swallowed before saying, “Did you get that e-mail sent?”

“Yes.” Molly took a sip of water. “I got the project. It’s small, but it’s a start in the right direction.” Fox had opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate last night, his genuine happiness for and pride in her another arrow to Molly’s heart.

Kathleen was silent for a long while. Wary of exploding another conversational mine, Molly watched the mothers pushing their toddlers on the swings and found herself thinking how much Charlie would’ve enjoyed a lunch like this. She missed having her best friend nearby.

“You’re really real, aren’t you?”

Molly angled her head at the other woman. “I don’t understand.”

An incisive look. “The way you look at Fox, the way you touch him, you care about him.”

Befuddled by the statement of the obvious and a little annoyed at Kathleen’s continued questioning of her and Fox’s relationship, she said, “Why else would I follow him halfway across the world?”

“I didn’t mean to offend you.” Kathleen blew out a breath. “The thing is, in this business… let’s just say I’ve learned to be careful who I trust. Fox’s always been good at looking after himself, but then he turns up with you after a vacation.”

Molly kept her silence, giving Kathleen a chance to talk.

“It made me wonder what your angle was. Only I don’t think you have one.” The actress looked nonplussed. “Either that, or you’re a better actress than I’ll ever be.”

“Not a chance.” Putting down the uneaten part of her burger, Molly took another sip of water. “Fox is the only reason I’m here—he’s become my home,” she said simply. “I don’t need anything else.”

“I’m beginning to see that.” Kathleen rolled her own water bottle in her hands. “I should’ve twigged when Abe mentioned how the guys end up at your and Fox’s place more often than not for a jam session these days. They used to alternate between houses a lot more. Now he says it feels like your place is home.”

Molly had had no idea Abe felt that way, he said so little. “Thank you for telling me, and thank you for reaching out.”

“I did it to get some dirt so I could open Fox’s eyes about you.”

Molly laughed at the other woman’s disgruntled expression. “I know.”

“Shit.” Kathleen shoved her hand through her already tousled hair. “Now we have to be friends. You’re going to need me to teach you how to navigate these shark-infested waters.” She leaned forward. “Rule one—nice people get eaten alive.”

“Should I take notes?” Molly asked lightly, even as her stomach turned at the reminder she existed in a different world now, one run on rules she didn’t understand.

Kathleen smiled, and this time, it wasn’t as perfect, but was much more real. “Don’t worry. I’ve got the guidebook.” She held out her hand. “Hi, I’m Kit.”

Seven days after the tentative beginnings of her friendship with Kit, and Molly didn’t know what she was doing at a swanky New York party filled with tattooed rock stars other than her own, award-winning actors, actresses, and directors, “money people,” assorted plus-ones like Molly, and beautiful swimsuit models with boobs out to there and legs up to their ears.

“Stereotypes,” she muttered under her breath.

Fox leaned close. “What?”

“I’m reminding myself I shouldn’t judge anyone until I meet them.” She brushed a speck of dust off the shoulder of his black shirt with intricate black-on-black detailing along one side—which he’d worn in place of his usual tee because he’d overheard her talking to Charlotte about how men in suits were hot. She’d been teasing Charlie about T-Rex, but Fox had been adorably jealous.

When she’d pointed out how cute he was being, she’d ended up naked.

Now he was as gorgeous and as charismatic as usual, his version of a “suit”—the fitted short-sleeved shirt worn over a pair of well-loved jeans—unbelievably hot. In Fox’s case, she thought, the clothes very definitely didn’t make the man, the man made the clothes. “Though,” she added in a whisper, “it’s really, really difficult to accept that the twenty-five-year-old stunner is with the seventy-five-year-old lech out of true love.”

“What a cynic.” Fox’s lips curved, his hand sliding to her butt, possessive as hell. “A sexy cynic.”

Feeling her face heat, she tugged at his wrist, though his smile had melted her bones. “Fox.”

He kept his hand where it was, stroking her through the tight red pencil skirt he’d bought her, and which she had to agree made her body look smokin’. “I love it when you blush.”

“I’m going to kill you,” she threatened sotto voce as one of the besuited record executives came over. The man oozed oily sincerity, but for some reason, Molly liked him. Short and with a balding hairline, he reminded her of a friend of a friend—Ken was a sweet guy, but he wanted so badly to be liked that he went over the top with it.

Now Fox was noncommittal to the point of looking bored with this “Ken’s” conversational overtures. Molly did her best, but the man slunk away with a big fake smile a couple of minutes after he’d arrived. “Fox, that was rude.” It shocked her to see this side of him—the arrogant asshole star.

“Do you know how many guys like that circle around me and the others? Fucking vultures. They want us to jump labels or for one of us to leave the band, go solo, make money for them.” Scowling, he took a swig out of the beer bottle in his right hand. “If I was just some poor schmuck who wanted him to talk to me, I’d be lucky to get a ‘piss off.’ I wouldn’t even exist.”

Molly closed her mouth before she could say the words that wanted to come out. Fox knew these people far better than she did. But the way he’d spoken, he didn’t sound like the man she’d fallen for.

A squeeze around her waist. “Hey, sorry.” He nuzzled a kiss to her temple. “Band got kicked around a bit back at the start. Men like that tried to cheat us into signing lousy contracts when it became clear we were developing a following. Guess it’s a sore spot.”

Leaning into him, she placed a hand on his chest, his body heat caressing her through the fabric. “It’s okay.” She could understand his disdain for people like those who’d treated him in a shoddy manner, but the unexpected glimpse of who he could be in this world planted a seed of worry in her mind about exactly how well she knew him, a sense of burgeoning unease in her belly.

So when a long-limbed goddess with mink-brown hair down to her butt and a dress that might as well have been painted on sashayed over after Fox left to grab them something to eat, Molly wasn’t in the mood to pull her punches.

“I heard you’re a librarian,” the other woman said, her tone syrupy enough that it was noxious. “That’s… charming.” A flash of teeth so white, Molly wondered if they glowed in the dark. “And what a… sweet outfit.” Cue faux laughter, eyes catty.

“Thanks, I’d return the compliment”—oh God, she was going to go to hell for this—“but you look like you picked up your clothes in the red-light district.”

“This is a ten-thousand-dollar designer dress!” It was a screech.

“Really?” Molly shook her head, deciding she might as well give in to Evil Molly all the way. “That material is $2.99 per yard at my local fabric shop.”

“You know nothing about fashion!” Spluttering, the brunette staged a quick comeback as Fox appeared with a plate. “Foxie, I was just talking to your little friend.” A giggle.

Fox grabbed Molly’s hand. “It’s time to leave this zoo. Here.” He shoved the plate of food into the other woman’s hand. “Eat this. Don’t throw it up later.”

The look on the brunette’s face was priceless. Fighting laughter as Fox all but dragged her out of the glamorous hotel ballroom hired for the party by a celebrity couple who were friends of the band members, Molly waited until they were outside to tug up her skirt past her knees so she could keep up with his pace. He took her down the hallway, through an emergency exit, and past two landings before going through another door and down the corridor to an elevator.

It arrived within seconds. The instant they were inside, he scanned his keycard, pushed the button for the penthouse, and pressed her against the wall, his mouth fused to her own. All she could think about was the security camera, but then Fox licked his tongue against hers, his hand squeezing her hip, and she forgot about everything except his body and her own.

It was as well the elevator was a fast one, arriving at the penthouse level just as Fox was fisting his hand in her skirt to pull it up. Shocked by the blast of cool air that entered the elevator when it opened directly into their suite, she pushed at him. “Cameras.”

“Fuck ’em.” But he tugged her out and pinned her to the wall outside the elevator.

A tearing sound, the force with which he’d pulled up her skirt causing it to rip. Her panties were gone a second later, and he was lifting her up. Locking her legs around his waist, she felt him reach down to release himself from his pants, his knuckles brushing her acutely sensitive flesh. Molly’s gasp was short, ragged. Entering her in a single relentless thrust, he wrapped the hand not curved under her thigh around her throat, his mouth demanding on her own.

Barely able to process the sensations, Molly simply held on for the ride as he thrust in and out of her in a primal rhythm that made it crystal clear who was in charge. She couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but kiss him, her hands locked tight in his hair while he pounded into her.

She came in a wild clenching that made him groan and rasp something so dirty in her ear that she was sure she was blushing even as her womb spasmed in pure ecstasy. Holding him close, she ran her nails over his nape. It sent him over the edge, his teeth gritted together as he buried himself to the hilt inside her, his pleasure harsh and beautiful to witness.

Molly felt a trickle of sticky wetness along her thigh when Fox finally pulled out of her and set her on her feet. Her knees would’ve buckled if he hadn’t been holding her up. Eyes slumberous, he pressed her to the wall and initiated a kiss as lazy as his earlier ones had been voracious, then reached down past her bunched-up skirt to cup one of her lower cheeks, fondling it with a possessiveness she’d come to expect. As she’d come to expect the way he was after sex.

Finding the willpower to throw her arms around his neck, she kissed him in turn, playing with the ring she loved. “That was nice.” She had no idea what had set him off, but she was a very grateful beneficiary.

“Nice?” He spanked her lightly after zipping up his jeans. “Phenomenal would be a better word choice.”

“How about splendiferous?”

“Is that a real word?”

“Yes. It’s like splendid, only better.”

“Then yeah, I’ll accept that description.” A pause. “You were splendid, darling.”

Biting her tongue to still her laughter at his posh English accent, she put on one of her own. “You too, Foxie dear.”

A pinch on her butt that made her jump before he smoothed over the punishment. “This,” he said, his tone a softer version of the sexy growl that was his singing voice, “would feel better if you were naked.”

“Oh?” Molly played her hands over his shirt. “What about you?”

“Trust me.” He moved his own hand to undo the button and zip on her skirt.

She stepped out of it, nudging the puddle of fabric aside with her toes as Fox pulled up her fitted silk top and dropped it on the floor. Her bra took a second to remove and then she was naked, every curve exposed. Fox stepped back to take a good, long look. “You’re so damn hot, Molly.” Smoky-green eyes lingering on her breasts, the sensitive flesh straining as his look became a near-tactile caress. “The first time I saw you, I wanted to bend you over one of those tables at the party and do you right there—except fuck if I wanted anyone else to see what was mine.”

The things he said… “I didn’t think you even noticed me.”

“Oh, I noticed you—especially this mouth.” A single finger tracing her lips, his next words not the sexual ones she’d expected. “You smiled at Thea, and it was a punch to the goddamn gut.”

It was such a romantic thing to say, and such a Fox way to say it. “I’ve never had a reaction to a man like I had to you,” she admitted. “If you’d crooked a finger, I would’ve probably followed you into a dark stairwell.”

Wicked delight in his smile. “Now you’re putting ideas in my head.” Lifting her up again, her legs around his waist, he initiated another lazy kiss, all tongue and wet heat. It was a stark contrast to the other textures that touched her skin. The well-washed denim of his jeans, the crisp cotton of his shirt, the hard angles of his belt buckle, the heat of his skin, the cool bite of his teeth.

She moaned. “Oh, I like this.”

“You were right though,” he said, nibbling and kissing at her mouth as he spoke. “This feels good, but skin on skin feels even better.”

Running her fingers through the chocolate silk of his hair, Molly raised the topic she’d earlier shelved. “What happened downstairs?” Something had.

His jaw a hard line, he said, “One of the execs was about to put the moves on you.”

“What?” Molly shook her head. “Fox, I only spoke to that brunette. No one else paid me the least attention.”

Fox raised an eyebrow. “Like I didn’t at Thea’s party?”

Oh. “You know I’d never—”

“I know, but that doesn’t mean I’m rational about it.” One more kiss before he slid her oh-so-slowly down his body, the friction exquisite.

Molly rose on tiptoe to follow his mouth as he pushed off the wall and straightened to his full height. Knowing what she did of his internal scars, she hated that he’d worried about losing her for even a single second. “Don’t go.”

“Molly.” Stroking his hands down her body, he palmed her ass and they indulged themselves in one another for long minutes.

Her lips deliciously kiss-swollen, she resisted when Fox took her hand to lead her to the living area of the suite. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

His eyes dropped, a very satisfied, very male smile on his lips. “I think you should stay sticky.”

Making a face at him, she ducked into the bathroom off their bedroom and had a lightning-fast shower, hair pinned up. She was just about to step back out clad in the plush hotel robe when she heard voices. Hesitating, she looked down at her robe. It covered her neck to ankle, but it was still a robe and she didn’t know who was out there.

It only took a couple of minutes to find a change of underwear and a summery dress— Underwear! Her face burned as she realized her clothes from the party were currently in a puddle beside the elevator.

Chapter 28

Mortified, Molly took a baby step outside the bedroom as soon as she was dressed, hoping no one would notice her in the large suite. The first thing she did was glance toward the elevator. No clothes. When Fox winked at her as soon as she turned in his direction, she knew he’d thrown the incriminating evidence somewhere where Noah wouldn’t immediately see it.

The blond guitarist wrapped his arm around her shoulders when she got to him. “Why, you’ve changed, Molly.” A sniff. “Showered, too. How interesting.”

Molly elbowed him, having learned by now that while Noah could be glacial and distant at times, he also had a wicked sense of humor around people he trusted. Sometime in the past few weeks, Molly had fallen into that category. Now, laughing, he pulled her close to plant a kiss on her cheek. “Fox’s been telling me all about the benefits of having a girl of his own.”

“I think you’ve had more than one girl,” Molly said as Fox grabbed a seat in one of the midnight-blue armchairs by the large plate-glass windows that formed two corners of the suite, then held out a hand.

No longer shy around the other members of the band, she slid into his lap.

Noah grabbed the facing seat. “I may have had one or two”—dark gray eyes dancing—“but I’ve never had my own girl.” The slightest hesitation before he continued. “Didn’t seem worth the bother. No offense, Molly, but having a girl of his own is a lot of work for a man.”

She arched her eyebrows. “Oh, really?”

“It’s not like Fox can pat you on the ass and say ‘nice ride, honey,’ then show you the door when he’s done.” Grinning at her narrow-eyed look, the guitarist leaned back in his armchair. “No, he has to talk and listen, and when you get mad, he has to grovel and make it up to you.”

“You might grovel,” Fox drawled, spreading his fingers on Molly’s back. “I, on the other hand, apologize manfully and sex Molly into forgiving me.”

“You’re both as bad as each other.” Scowling at her rock star and his unrepentant friend, she got up off Fox’s lap. “I’m going to order room service. I don’t think my palate was refined enough for the canapés downstairs.”

“What the hell were those orange things?” Noah kicked out his jean-clad legs after she’d passed by to grab the menu sitting on the lovely little carved table a few feet away.

“Fish eggs,” Fox told him. “Expensive shit.”

“Tasted like it, too.” Both men laughed before Noah turned to her. “Can you order me a burger, Moll?”

“Sure.” Glancing at Fox, she said, “They have pad thai.”

A groan that had her digging her bare toes into the sumptuous champagne-colored carpet, her body sensitized to the sound of his pleasure. “Order me two plates.”

“Two?”

“One thing we’ve learned—the ritzier the hotel, the smaller the portions.”

“Yeah, make that burger order a double, too,” Noah said. “Throw in a couple of beers.”

The elevator intercom dinged on that statement, and when Molly pressed the button to answer, it was to find Kathleen on the other end. After the way the band and Kit ended up at their place more often than not these days, Fox had predicted their suite would become the natural gathering spot after the party, the reason he’d pulled strings to make sure they ended up in the penthouse. Not only did it have a huge living area, it had a separate dining room. Molly hadn’t even known there were hotel suites with dining rooms until she’d walked into this one!

Now, pushing the button to allow Kathleen to ride up, Molly waited until the stunning actress arrived, then held up the menu. “Want to add something to the order?”

Slipping off the mile-high heels she wore with her short and sparkly blue dress, Kathleen came over. “I’m starving. Those canapés looked so tempting, but did you taste any?” She shuddered, placing her glittering purse on the table. “I should know by now—A.J. always goes for pretty over edible at her parties.” Having scanned the menu as she spoke, she pointed to an item on the second page. “The grilled swordfish with vegetables. Makes my mouth water just thinking about it.”

Molly scribbled her choice on the notepad beside the phone and was about to pick up the handset to place the order when the elevator dinged again. Kathleen walked across to answer it, letting up Abe. Who wanted a steak, a big one. Grabbing Kathleen as he said that, he bent her over his arm and kissed her full on the mouth. “You realize your very nice tits are about to fall out of that dress.”

“Please.” Kathleen patted his ripped chest. “I’m sewn into this thing. Just like you are into your T-shirt.” She tried to pinch the black fabric between her fingertips. “Could it be any tighter?”

It was interesting, Molly thought, how Noah’s eyes had locked on that byplay, which, despite the subject matter, had held no sexual innuendo whatsoever. Abe might as well have been talking to a sister. “Did you all abandon David?” she asked when Abe dragged a chair from the bedroom and flipped it to sit with his arms on the back.

“He took off an hour ago.” A shrug of Abe’s heavily muscled shoulders. “Said he had to pick someone up at the airport.”

Hmm... After placing the room service order, adding in a few extras because she knew how much the men could pack away, she ducked into the bedroom and sent a quick message to Thea. Are you in the country? Did you get a flight? Her sister had flown to London to handle a situation for a client there, become stuck in England when flights were grounded because of a storm.

Finally. Spending a couple of days in New York, was the return message. Just waiting for my luggage now. Damn memos.

Molly stifled her laugh. Have fun. xoxo

When she walked back out into the living area, it was to see Kathleen perched on the arm of Fox’s chair, all toned legs and tumbling hair. The child of a pillow-lipped Venezuelan supermodel and an American tennis ace now considered a “silver fox,” there was no doubt Kathleen had hit the genetic lottery, her parents’ genes combining to give her a breathtaking and exotic beauty.

She was laughing at something Fox had said, and at that instant, they were the embodiment of the perfect celebrity couple.

Then Fox glanced Molly’s way, held out a hand… and the look in his eyes, it was for her, no one else.

“Oops.” Kathleen rose with a good-natured smile. “I’m in your spot.”

“Here.” Noah patted the side of his armchair, distinct challenge in his expression.

Kathleen smiled sweetly. “Thank you, but I’d rather cuddle a rabid dog.” Pointedly skirting his seated form, she pulled out the executive chair from the desk in the opposite corner and rolled it next to Abe.

“What’s going on with those two?” Molly whispered in Fox’s ear, having noticed the slight edge in their interactions soon after she’d first met Kathleen.

“Later.”

As it was, by the time they got to bed, she’d forgotten the question and Fox had other things on his mind.

Molly woke to an empty bed, but she could hear Fox out on the small private balcony off the bedroom, strumming his guitar. Smiling, she simply lay there for a while, listening to her man. His talent was apparent even in what appeared to be a meandering dance through the chords, as if he were exercising his fingers. The breeze was soft, the sunlight coming through the open balcony doors languid and golden, its rays just kissing the bed.

Every so often, when the wind lifted the gauzy curtains a fraction, she caught sight of Fox seated in one of the outdoor chairs. He was shirtless, his feet up on the railing and his guitar held like a lover. Stretching luxuriantly, she decided to get up, make them both some coffee using the espresso machine that came with the suite. She liked doing these things for him, looking after him as he did her. Showing Fox just what he meant to her until he believed it deep within, that was her number-one priority.

It was as she was tying the belt on the hotel robe that she remembered her phone. As was her habit, she’d turned it to silent during the night.

Picking it up to check if Charlotte had messaged, she was surprised to see notifications for six voice mails and double that number of texts. Curious, she opened a text message at random—from a library colleague—and felt her eyes widen.

Molly! You’re on the front page of G&V! And looking hot!

Mouth dry, heartbeat a drum against her ribs, she scanned through the other texts; they all said pretty much the same thing. She had somehow ended up front and center on one of the major gossip blogs in the world.

Not bothering with the voice messages and her fingers too shaky to work the small phone screen, she grabbed the sleek touchscreen tablet Fox had given her with a card that said “Spoiling has begun.” She was ridiculously attached to the thing already, which pleased him to an adorable smugness that always made her want to kiss him silly.

Today however, she was too stressed to think about how very cherished he made her feel. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, she did a search for the exact site address—while she had a secret weakness for celebrity gossip, it was strictly in magazine format. She’d curl up in an armchair on a Sunday morning, tea in hand, and spend a couple of hours reading through the articles.

Now, fingers trembling, she clicked through… to see a full-color image of her and Fox in the elevator. His mouth was locked on hers, his hand pulling up her skirt, the tattoos on his arm taut over muscle, while one of her own hands was clenched in his hair. Her other hand was lost to sight, but the angle of the shot made it appear she was stroking him through his jeans.

Her heart roared in her ears, the brutal memories of her father’s scandal smashing to the surface to tear shreds off her. Gripping the sheet in one bloodless fist, she took a deep breath, exhaled. She did the same again and again, calming herself before she could spiral any further into the nightmare. “It could’ve been much worse,” she murmured and looked back down.

The photo was tame by most standards—two lovers who’d gotten a bit carried away with a kiss. Embarrassing, but of a nudge-nudge, wink-wink kind rather than anything that would lead to malicious attacks. Fox, after all, wasn’t a married politician who’d run a campaign based on family values, and she wasn’t an underage girl.

No, this was a shot of two adults enjoying one another. Yes, it made her blush, would do so for a while yet, but she’d live it down. Her thundering heart settling into a more controlled rhythm, she blew out another breath and looked at the photo again. Her lips curved slowly. Maybe the embarrassment was worth it to see the way Fox was so totally focused on her, his entire being concentrated on the kiss.

She should’ve left it at that, but she’d already scrolled past the photo to read the article—which wasn’t much, just a couple of lines about Fox’s “mystery date”—and caught the start of the comment thread. It was already over two thousand, though according to the blog’s timestamp, the image had only been up for an hour.

At first she didn’t understand what it was she was reading, then it hit her with the force of a body blow.

“I’d do her. I’d even bring the paper bag to put over her face.”

“Ugh.”

“I never knew Fox liked pork chops. Oink, oink.”

“What a hot slut. Lol.”

“Maybe he was drunk? :-(”

“Or maybe she has a vacuum for a mouth?”

“Total thunder thighs. Gross. Fox, u can do better hunney!”

“Molly? Baby, you’re shaking. What’s the—” Fox bit off a vicious word and grabbed the tablet out of her stiff hands to put it on the bedside table. “Come here.” Tugging her trembling body up into his arms, he crushed her to the heat and strength of him. “Forget those fuckers. They’re nothing but two-bit losers who live to pull others down.” Rage had turned his body rigid, his voice hard. “They’re no one to us.”

She stroked her hand over his back. “It’s okay,” she said, finding her feet in the fierceness of his hold. “I just… it reminded me of the hate page from when I was at school.” Except back then, the mean and nasty comments had come from other teenagers, while the profile pictures on these comments had shown adult faces. “I can’t believe people would say such ugly things about someone they don’t know.”

“Face-to-face with you, not one of them ever would,” Fox ground out.

Molly swallowed, continued to stroke his back. “I’ll be fine.” It was a surprising realization—she’d wobbled a bit, but she hadn’t crashed. “It was unexpected, you know? The shock of it.” To innocently scroll down, expecting maybe the odd cheeky comment about getting carried away, and yes, even a number driven by envy… and see such vitriol directed personally at her, it had been a punch to the gut. “They called me fat.”

“If you’re fat, I’ll eat my fucking guitar,” Fox muttered, sliding down his hands to cup her butt. “You’re exactly right.”

A woman would have to be in a seriously bad headspace to argue with that statement from the sexiest man in the world, and while the online attack had shaken Molly, the knock hadn’t dented the heart of her. Nuzzling at his throat and drawing the primal masculine scent of him inside, she said, “We were lucky to skate under the radar this long, weren’t we?”

Fox’s eyes were solemn when they met her own. “Cost of doing what I was born to do is that I lose my privacy.” The edge in his tone was tempered by the protective heat of his hold. “I won’t lie. If you’re with me, you won’t have any either.” His chest rose as he drew in a breath, released it. “Soon as the vultures figure out we’re serious, they’ll dig up everything about you. And Molly”—one hand cupping her face—“you have to be ready for some of your friends to turn against you when offered a big payday.”

Molly heard the pain he couldn’t quite hide, wanted to hurt the person who’d betrayed him. “Biggest skeleton in my closet has to do with my father.” The idea of the world salaciously picking through the ruins of her childhood made a stabbing sensation jab through her, but she’d already considered that consequence when she decided to be with Fox.

“Whatever happens with that,” she said, turning her face into his palm, “it won’t be any kind of surprise.” Today’s shock, however, had had one unforeseen consequence. “I was so nervous all this time about media exposure, but I forgot I’m not a vulnerable, scared girl anymore.” Hadn’t been for a long time. “I’m a strong woman, a survivor… and I have you.” A man who would never let her fall.

“Thank you.” It was a rough-voiced statement, his head bent, his breathing low and harsh.

“For what?” She stroked the side of his face, his stubbled jaw a familiar sensation against her skin. “Baby? What’s wrong?”

Chapter 29

“I know how private you are.” His fingers flexed then curled again around the side of her neck. “I was fucking terrified you’d turn and run in the other direction the first time you saw what being with me can mean.”

“What kind of rock chick would I be if I allowed boneheads like that to scare me off?” Stroking her fingers through the chocolate dark strands of his hair, she petted him as he’d so often done her. “I was just hoping we’d have longer to be us before the outside world started poking its nose into something that isn’t anyone’s business but ours.”

The instant the words were out of her mouth, she groaned. “I’m such a hypocrite. I have a gossip magazine in my bag for the flight home.” It had always seemed like harmless fun to read articles about the lives of the rich and glamorous; she’d never equated those “fluff” articles with the kind of hounding the media had put her family through. “I feel so bad now.”

Fox laughed, pressing an affectionate kiss to the curve of her jaw. “As far as vices go, that’s a forgivable one.”

“Still, it’s one I’m going to kick,” she vowed. “Otherwise, I can’t complain about the people who violate our privacy.”

“I’ll let you in on a secret.” Fox bent his knees so they were eye to eye. “A lot of the ‘shocking’ news articles and ‘scandalous’ photo ops are carefully choreographed.”

She pretended to pout. “Don’t burst my bubble.”

Nipping at her lower lip, he rose to his full height. “It’s not all fake. Some of us don’t want to play the game”—a growl of sound—“but we’re pulled into it regardless.”

“We lucked out in New Zealand, didn’t we?”

“Baby, you have no idea.”

“It has to be a hotel employee who sold the pictures.” Scowling, she curled her fingers into her palms against the taut muscle of his chest. “Has no one heard of confidentiality?”

“So innocent.” Fox shook his head. “You’ll be terrible for my bad boy image if this gets out.” Cupping the back of her head in one strong hand, he opened his mouth over hers, his tongue and lips doing things to her that made her whimper and want to beg for mercy.

A leisurely parting, their lips slick, he ran his knuckles down her throat, along the valley between her breasts. “Clearly”—he began to undo the belt of her robe—“I have to corrupt you as much as possible.”

The robe fell to the floor, Fox’s hands on her skin. No nasty words, Molly thought before thought became impossible, could ever hold as much power as the passion and the tenderness of her lover’s touch.

Kathleen came up around ten thirty that morning. The actress was dressed with her usual pizzazz in a formfitting leather skirt the color of roasted coffee beans, her feet sheathed in five-inch designer heels in luscious raspberry—the color matched her sleeveless top, the prettily tied fabric bow to one side of the high neck keeping the outfit on the right side of sexy. “I’m doing librarian chic, see?” She twirled in those teetering heels, her hair smooth and shiny in a bun at the back of her head. “In honor of our new friendship.”

Molly bit the inside of her cheek. “I’d like to see you survive eight hours on a library floor in those heels.”

Cocking her hip, Kathleen placed a perfectly manicured hand on it. “I’ll have you know I ran in heels worse than this for an action flick I did three years ago. Did eighty takes at least because my douche-bag costar had to be a prima donna.” Fingers pressed between her high, firm breasts, she fluttered her lashes and, voice a piercing falsetto, said, “What do you mean she gets to be in front of me? I’m the lead, not this jumped-up soap ‘star.’” Kathleen made air quotes with her fingers. “Dickhead actually did the air quotes.”

“Bet he’s sorry now.”

“He sends me weekly bouquets and asks for introductions.”

“Have you? Introduced him?” Molly made a coffee for the other woman, her own tea already sitting on the gleaming wooden table in the dining room.

“In his dreams.” Snorting, Kathleen took the coffee and leaned against the wall rather than taking a seat at the table. “How are you doing?” It was a gentle question. “I saw that piece on G&V.”

Molly blew on her tea to cool it, thinking of the forty-five-minute phone call she’d had with Charlotte. “My best friend pointed out that if I had to have a ‘debut,’ then better I got caught dressed to the nines in full makeup than wearing sweats while having a fat day with bad hair.”

Kathleen’s laughter was full-bodied and vivacious. “She’s right, you know,” she said afterward, amber eyes drenched in warmth. “I’d pay to be caught so deliciously in flagrante with a hunk like Fox.” A wrinkling of her nose. “Except not Fox. It would be like sleeping with my spiritual brother. Ew.”

Molly’s face must’ve given something away because Kathleen’s mouth dropped open. “Oh no, you didn’t. You thought Fox and I bumped our bits?”

“You’re stunning, he’s hot, your friendship’s rock solid.” Molly felt like she’d been called up to the principal’s office when Kathleen glared at her. “We’re talking about Fox here.” Gorgeous, talented, wonderful.

Kathleen groaned. “Oh, it is sickeningly cute that you think no woman can resist him.”

Scowling, Molly folded her arms. “Did you just insult the man I adore?”

“As only a friend can.” Kathleen twirled one heel-clad foot, eyes downcast, before raising her head and pointing a finger at Molly. “You ever breathe a word of what I’m about to tell you, and I’ll sell a story to the tabloids saying I caught you doing unspeakable things with and to a goat.”

“Cross my heart.”

It took Kathleen another minute to speak. “The sparks were there—but not with Fox—with My Dick is My Life Noah.” One graceful hand clenched against her leather skirt, she blew out a breath. “We’d never been close, Noah and I, maybe because there was always this tension beneath the surface, but that changed eighteen months ago. The connection…”

The other woman took a long sip of her coffee. “We played chess together.” Her smile was unutterably sad. “No guy had ever spent so much time with me without wanting sex—though don’t get me wrong, the heat was there. Seriously. But we never so much as kissed.”

It was a difficult idea for Molly to process, Noah the most promiscuous member of Schoolboy Choir.

“We talked,” Kathleen said, voice quiet. “Hours and hours, until I felt as if I knew him inside out, as if I could tell him anything. He was the one who gave me the courage to try out for that part in Last Flight.” Trembling voice, jerky breath. “When I was afraid people would laugh at an ex-soap-actress auditioning for such a serious role, he told me I was gifted and perfect for it, then drove me to the casting himself.”

“What went wrong?” Molly’s heart ached at the poignant emotion in every one of Kathleen’s words.

A brittle shrug. “I walked into his hotel room after a concert and found him screwing a groupie.”

Molly had known something bad was coming, but hadn’t expected anything this brutal. “God, Kit, I’m so sorry.”

“The worst thing was,” Kathleen added, eyes shining wet, “I’d been to see him after three previous gigs. He’d cleared it so the hotels would give me a keycard.” She blinked rapidly as if to stave off tears. “We’d always do the same thing—order room service and watch an old movie together on the couch. The bastard knew I’d be coming in.”

Molly wanted to hug the other woman, hurting for her, but Kathleen wasn’t finished. Her fingers gripping her coffee cup so tight that her bones pushed white against the golden bronze of her skin, she said, “I got the message loud and clear. Fox ran into me as I was leaving, took one look at my face and wrapped me in his arms while I cried.”

Kathleen put down her cup on the small counter that held the coffeemaker, flexed her fingers. “That’s when I knew he was a friend I wouldn’t give up, even if it meant I had to see Noah at times.” Breathing deep, she straightened her shoulders and finished her coffee before shaking her head. “I can’t believe I actually told you that. It was the worst moment of my life.”

“Maybe Maxwell’s voodoo is rubbing off on me,” Molly said, sensing the other woman had had enough of heavy emotion for now.

Kathleen’s laugh was surprised, the strain around her mouth easing. “I think it is.” She held out her empty coffee cup. “Please? I think this is a two-coffee morning.”

Molly had just pulled the second cup from the machine when Fox walked through the door, a bakery box in hand. Pushing off the hood of an old college sweatshirt he hadn’t been wearing when he left the suite, he put the box on the counter and dragged Molly in for an unhurried and thorough kiss that made her toes curl and Kathleen whistle.

Releasing her after a smiling nibble of her lower lip, he went over to hug Kathleen with the familiarity of long friendship. Even knowing there had never been anything sexual between the two, Molly found herself envious, because she and Fox, they were still so young, so new. She wanted the stone, the permanent foundations that’d take them through life.

“You weasel.” Kathleen elbowed Fox in the gut. “You told Noah my room number.”

Fox winced, stepped out of reach. “Jeez, Kit, I know better. He probably charmed it out of a desk clerk.” Returning to Molly, he reached back to pull off the sweatshirt to reveal his white T-shirt.

“Where did you get the sweatshirt?” Molly asked as he threw it over the back of one of the dining chairs. “And where’s your Lakers cap?” He adored that cap, treated it like it was an irreplaceable jewel.

“My extra non-signed Lakers cap is on the head of a busboy who’s around my height, and who is currently riding around in my limo,” Fox said, opening the bakery box. “My real cap is safe and sound in the bedroom. As if I’d ever wear that where someone might try to rip it off for a souvenir.”

“Obviously.” Molly tapped him on the nose. “So silly of me not to realize you had a spare decoy cap.”

“Not one,” Kathleen whispered. “He has a crate full of them.”

Fox shrugged and bit into a powdered donut. “When something becomes a trademark, you can use it to throw the hounds off the scent.” He rubbed his bristled jaw with his free hand. “Though I don’t know where I’m going to find extra Mollys so I can sneak out with my Molly through the service entrance.”

My Molly.

Her heart did a flip. “So I’m going to become a trademark?”

“So much they’ll give us one of those stupid joint names.”

“Folly?” Kathleen suggested, already halfway through a donut of her own, the raspberry silk of her top dusted with sugar.

“Good thing you don’t write lyrics.” Fox scowled. “Folly? Are you serious?”

“You do better.”

Grabbing a chocolate-glazed donut instead, Fox put it to Molly’s lips. “Taste this.”

She did, groaned. “You’re forbidden from bringing these anywhere near my vicinity except on very, very special occasions.”

“Yeah.” Kathleen sighed, fingers waving over the box as she deliberated her next pick. “This’ll cost an extra four hours in the gym with Macho Steve, the Evil Personal Trainer, but oh baby, every minute will be worth it.”

“Four hours?” Molly swallowed her second bite of the delicious treat, Fox taking great pleasure in refusing to give her the donut so he could feed it to her himself. “You’re tiny!” An entire box of donuts wouldn’t make any impact on Kathleen’s sleek frame.

“I live in the land of make-believe, sweetie.” Kathleen licked at the pink glaze of her donut. “You can never be too rich, too skinny, or too famous.”

Thinking of the ugly comments on the elevator photo, Molly knew the other woman wasn’t exaggerating. “You are being healthy though?” she asked, worried. “I don’t want you to get sick.”

Distinctive amber eyes widened. “Yes, I eat a healthy diet and I exercise—I don’t throw up or starve myself.” A strange hesitancy to her, Kathleen said, “Thank you for caring enough to ask. Not many people would.”

It made Molly aware once more of how many layers those around her kept between themselves and others. Kathleen called her a friend, trusted her enough to share some of her past, but didn’t expect Molly to care about so simple and important a thing as her health. True friendship, the kind Molly had with Charlotte, would take far longer to form.

And a lasting relationship, Molly thought, her eyes on the rock star who teased her he’d trade kisses for donuts, would take strength and commitment enough to stand against everything the world would throw at them.

That battle began with a vengeance the next afternoon, when they returned home. A phalanx of photographers had camped at the gate to the house, flashes going off in a blinding staccato as they attempted to capture Molly’s image through the closed windows of the SUV. A grim-faced Fox ignored them to nudge the car forward, and when one of the photographers stepped brazenly in front of the car, blasted the horn and kept going.

The man stumbled out of bumper range barely in time, falling backward onto his colleagues, his gestures turning rude as the gates closed behind the vehicle. The police arrived less than ten minutes later.

“One of them”—the senior cop jerked his thumb over a beefy shoulder—“wants to file a complaint. Says you tried to run him over.”

Swearing, Fox invited the officers into the house and, using a laptop, accessed surveillance footage from the gate. It showed the photographer in question stepping in front of the car on purpose.

The cop rubbed his face. “All right. You want to press charges?”

“No. It’s exactly the kind of publicity the piece of shit is looking for.” Pitiless words, but Fox’s voice was calm. “They’ve already got photos of your black-and-white coming through the gates. Fuck knows what story they’ll spin from it.”

“Still,” the cop said, “I’ll have a talk with him, see if I can dissuade him from pulling a stunt like this again.”

“Thanks, but it won’t do any good. The roaches always rise again.” Closing the door after the police left, Fox slammed his fist against the wood not once but twice.

“Fox!” Molly grabbed his hand, saw broken skin. “You’ve hurt yourself.”

“Leave it.” Pulling away, he strode past her. “I need to be alone.”

Chapter 30

Already shaken by the scene at the gate and the resulting police visit, Molly felt every word as if it were a blow. Fox had never rejected her touch that way. Feeling lost, she made her way to her favorite spot by the pool and took out her phone. “Charlie?” she said when her best friend picked up on the other end. “Can you talk?” Her voice wobbled despite her best efforts to keep her emotions contained.

“I can always talk when you sound like that.” A rustling, as if Charlotte was moving around. “Give me a sec to make sure we won’t be disturbed.” Her best friend was back on the line before Molly could begin to worry about having interrupted her at work. “Okay, what’s the matter? Are you still freaked out about that photo?”

“No, that’s not it.”

“Good. Because I’ve decided to have it framed and put on the back of my front door. It’s what I aspire to every day—looking smoking hot while a sexy, sexy man puts his hands on me.”

Smiling through the shakiness—no doubt as Charlotte intended—Molly said, “Are you saying that to wind up T-Rex?”

“He’s not here. Away in Taupo to finalize a property purchase for his personal portfolio—I swear, the man wants to own the entire country,” she said, and Molly could almost see her rolling her eyes. “So, talk. What’s happened?”

As Molly and Charlotte spoke, she thought back to the start of her relationship with Fox, when she’d worried about his ability to contain things within while appearing as if nothing was the matter on the surface… and realized she’d never come up against that roadblock.

He trusted her, let her see him.

The knots in her spine began to unravel at the realization. He would, she was certain, share the reason for the depth of his anger once he’d calmed down. But hours passed, and Fox remained in his studio, not even coming up for dinner. Until, for the first time since they’d decided on a relationship, Molly faced the prospect of going to bed alone.

“Enough,” she said and, pulling on the robe of opulent black silk that Fox had bought her in New York, the fabric decadent against her skin, walked downstairs. The red light over the studio door was on, but Molly turned the handle and stepped inside.

Fox looked up with a scowl from where he was listening to something via headphones, his guitar propped up against the wall. Sliding the headphones down to his neck, he said, “Molly, you know you’re not supposed to walk in when the light’s red.”

She propped her hip against the complex control panel, lights blinking across the board and waves of sound charted on the built-in computer. “You’ve been down here for hours.”

“I’m working.” Shoving a hand through his hair, he took the headphones totally off and put them on the table to his left. “Sometimes I spend days in here. Get used to it.”

It was the way he said the last that had her eyes narrowing. “Fine”—she folded her arms—“then you should get used to a woman who cares about you. You missed dinner.”

“I’m hardly going to fade away.” Legs sprawled out and eyes glittering, he said, “Go to bed. I’ll be up when I’m done.”

“You’re done now.”

Rising to his feet in a sudden movement that sent her heart into her throat, he pressed up against her, hands on the panel on either side. “You don’t want to be with me in this mood, baby. Get upstairs, now.”

Molly reached between them to tug open the knot of her robe instead, letting the lush fabric slide off to pool on the panel, her body nude in his arms. Fox’s own body reacted as it always did to her, as hers did to him, but his eyes continued to glitter. “Using sex to get your own way?” It was a hard question, his hand thrusting between her legs.

Already wet for him, she gasped and gripped at his shoulders. But he withdrew his hand and returned to sit in the chair, undoing his jeans just enough to release his cock. “Come here, then. Fuck me.” A crude challenge.

If there was one thing she’d learned with Fox, it was to be confident about her sexuality. The man wanted her, and even in his anger, he made no effort to hide it, his cock rigid, the vein that ran along the bottom plump with blood. Nudging aside his hand where he gripped the base, she straddled him and used her own fingers to guide him inside her molten core.

His fingers dug into her hips as she sank down to take him to the hilt, his head thrown back. Kissing his throat, she didn’t ride him but began to squeeze her inner muscles in a rhythmic pulse.

“What the—” His breath hissed. “Where did you learn that?” It was a dangerous question.

“I like to read.” Licking along the tendon on one side of his neck, she scraped her teeth over his jaw, kissed her way up to play with his lip ring. “I read the Kama Sutra. Along with a number of very educational erotic romances.”

Gritting his teeth, he ground her down onto him. “The practical application?”

“I guess you’ll have to be my crash-test dummy. Now sit back”—she pulsed her muscles in a faster rhythm—“and take it.”

The words that came out of his mouth were so blue she blushed even in the midst of the eroticism. Then she loved him, pushing up his T-shirt to pay exquisite attention to the flat disks of his nipples with her fingers and her mouth as she used her inner muscles to torment and pleasure him. And the kisses, so many kisses. All of them raw, deep, audaciously sexual.

The orgasm seemed ripped out of him, a quick and violent and merciless thing.

Chest heaving in the aftermath, he lay back, eyes heavy-lidded and hands possessive. When she leaned in to kiss him again, he took control with sated laziness, one of his hands rising to her nape to position her exactly as he liked.

Molly shivered, and this time when her muscles clenched on his cock, it wasn’t on purpose. Semi-hard, he remained inside her as they kissed for long, long minutes, the material of his T-shirt rubbing against her nipples to leave them pouting. Rolling one with the fingers of his free hand, Fox tugged, then flicked his thumbnail against it.

She felt her body coat him in a slickness that only increased when he went for her throat. He hadn’t shaved today, and the stubble scraped over her skin with a coarseness at odds with the wet heat of his mouth. Moving restlessly on him, she wove her fingers through his hair, holding him to her.

“You like that?” More lazy kisses, his head rising from her throat.

“Yes,” she said, as he ran his finger down the line of her throat. “Take off your T-shirt, please.”

“Hmm.” Using his grip on her nape to bring her forward, he claimed another kiss, his lips firm, his touch that of a man who knew his lover would permit him anything. “I don’t think a bad girl who interrupts my work should get what she wants.”

“You weren’t working.” She bit down on his lower lip hard enough to sting. “You were brooding.”

Slits of dangerous green watched her from behind lowered lashes. “Brooding?”

It was a purr that dared her to repeat the accusation, but Molly wasn’t about to be intimidated, even by her rock star. “Brooding.”

Dipping his head, he tugged one sensitive nipple between his teeth, licking his tongue over and over it until she tried to rock her body on his. He held her down. “No,” he said, freeing her nipple with a last leisurely lick. “I think it’s time I reminded you I like to be in charge.”

Skin tight at the sinful warning, Molly played her fingers over his lips. “I’ve never forgotten.” Kissing him her way, softness and heat and tenderness, she stroked both hands under his T-shirt to push it up again, hot skin over steely muscle beneath her touch. “Doesn’t mean I can’t take care of you when you need it.”

This time he helped her get the black material off over his head. Dropping it to the floor, he sat up so she could press her breasts flush against him. “Did you think I needed some Molly-time?”

She heard the thaw in him, and it did things to her to know she had the power to reach him even through such stormy anger. If she hadn’t been able to deal with Fox’s temper, they’d have had a serious problem—but she could… because despite everything, he let her in. “Yes.” Kissing the side of his neck, she luxuriated in the feel of him around her. “I needed you, too. The sheets are cold without you.”

“Out comes the truth,” Fox said, though Molly had just smashed right through his defenses to lay him bare. “You only want me for my body heat.”

“Of course.”

Running his fingers down the cleft of her buttocks to where she stretched so tight around his renewed erection, he watched in possessive pleasure as she arched her body back against the panel. The position thrust up her breasts and he took full advantage, grazing his teeth over the lower curves, rubbing his jaw against her delicate skin.

“You’ve soaked my jeans,” he murmured to his Molly, who’d fought for him exactly as she’d promised, who hadn’t flinched or looked away when the going got hard. “That reminds me—it’s been a couple of days since I’ve licked you up.”

“I have been feeling a bit neglected,” she said on a rasp of breath.

“Poor pretty baby.” Careful of her sensitized flesh, he shifted her gently until she was reclining fully on the part of the panel that had no raised switches. Creamy and lush, she was a work of art, one for his personal and very private perusal. “Did you know I have video recording equipment in here?”

Molly’s chest rose and fell in an unsteady rhythm. “What?”

“Yeah, sometimes it helps to watch the way my fingers move on the strings.” He rocked into her to her soft moan. “Maybe I should turn it on—it might help me refine my technique to watch my fingers move on you.”

Molly’s spine arched up in a sweet curve, her body caressing his in a rush of liquid heat.

“Beautiful,” he murmured and used his forefinger to stroke the slippery nub of her clit exactly as his Molly liked.

Giving a shocked little cry, she came a second time.

“I think,” he murmured after her eyes opened, her body honey in his arms, “you like the idea of making your own sex tape.” He loved how she always cuddled up against him after sex, his personal armful of woman. “Naughty Molly.”

“We are not making a sex tape.” It was a breathless warning. “The next thing you know, it’ll be on the Internet.”

“What if I promise to erase it after a thorough viewing to review my technique?”

“Do I look like I was born yesterday?”

“I love it when you blush.” The pink flush made him want to taste, and because she was his, he leaned down and laved his tongue over her shoulder. “I guess I’ll have to practice my technique on you.”

He would’ve touched her again between the legs, but she pushed away his hand. “Too sensitive.”

Shifting his hand to her thigh instead, he petted her slow and easy until she didn’t repudiate his next caress of her clit. He kept each stroke featherlight, his kisses on her throat unhurried, building a song, note by carefully chosen note, until her body reached the right melody.

“My beautiful Molly.” Who had fought for him.

Putting together some food after their sexual play, Molly took the plate out to where Fox sprawled at the table by the pool. He’d changed into the cutoff sweatpants he often wore while exercising, his upper body gleaming under the moonlight, the sky midnight blue and scattered with stars.

“I like this robe,” he murmured, rubbing the fabric between his thumb and forefinger when she put the food on the table. “I like what’s inside it even more.” His hand lightly cupping her breast, he drew her down for a kiss that felt as affectionate as it was sensual.

Body and heart both melting at the way he touched her, Molly took a seat opposite him, sipping at a cup of chocolate-mint tea while he cleared his plate. “More?” she asked, but he shook his head, his expression unreadable. “What’s wrong?”

“Come sit in my lap.”

Having missed him all day, she didn’t hesitate to obey the order.

“Thanks,” he said, his hand on the bare skin of her thigh.

“For cuddling?” She kissed his jaw. “Careful or your bad boy image will never recover.”

“No, smart-ass.” A squeeze of her hip. “For caring enough to hunt me down.” He nuzzled the top of her head with his chin. “Kinda nice to know you’ll come knocking if I go into a bad place.”

Molly hurt for him that he hadn’t expected his “girl” to come knocking. It told her far more about the damage done to him in childhood than any other words he could’ve spoken. “I don’t know what your definition is of a relationship,” she said, her tone gentle, “but mine includes not ignoring it when something’s clearly eating at you.”

Sitting up so she could look him in the eye, she stroked his nape. “Why did you blow up this afternoon? Talk to me.”

“If I don’t?” The balmy night breeze blew a few strands of darkest brown across his face, the moment capturing his wildness and rough male beauty so exquisitely she wished she had a camera.

“If you clam up”—she put on a severe expression—“I’ll just have to tie you down and torture you with nefarious tricks until you spill.”

The barest hint of a smile. “Nefarious tricks, huh? Give me details.”

“Never.” Tracing his jaw as she became aware he was absently tapping music against her thigh, she said, “You know how you’re so protective?”

A gathering scowl. “You complaining?”

“I was going to say I feel the same way about you.” It scared her how much he meant to her, but that fear stood no chance against the visceral power of the love in her heart. “Let me take care of you, too.”

The silent music went still.

Chapter 31

“You should be safe in our home,” he said at last. “You shouldn’t have to fight to get inside, shouldn’t have to deal with those fucking bastards screaming at you, watching you.”

Molly wanted to kick herself—she’d just pointed out how protective he was of her. Of course he’d react badly to the idea that she might feel threatened in any way. “I feel so safe with you,” she whispered. “More than I’ve ever felt, even before the scandal.” To no one had she ever been this important, this precious, worth protecting. “Those photographers? They’re annoyances; gnats. I know I get the deer-in-the-headlights look sometimes, but that’s because it’s all new. I’ll get used to it.”

Fox’s hand clenched on her thigh. “Why should you have to get used to it?” It was a growl. “I want to make music—it’s what I’ve always wanted. When did wanting that mean people have a right to invade our privacy?”

“It’s not fair,” Molly said, “but if we allow that to grind us down, we allow them to win. I’d rather we just live our lives, because one thing is for certain—you and I, we aren’t going to break.” It was a promise.

“No, we’re not.” Closing a strong hand gently around her throat, he ran his thumb over her pulse point. “But if one of those parasites ever pulls the kind of shit with you that they tried to pull with me today, all bets are off. I will destroy him.”

“Don’t do anything that’ll get you thrown in jail,” she said, looking directly into his eyes so he’d know she was dead serious. “You leave me and I will never forgive you.”

Fox’s thumb went motionless against her pulse. “You mean that.”

“You know what my parents did,” she said in answer, her mind roiling with memories of her father’s ugly crimes and of her mother’s alcoholism. “Their choices left me alone and nearly broken. I’m trusting you not to do the same thing to me.” It was the biggest trust she’d ever given in her life, and her voice shook with the sheer, unrelenting weight of it.

Fox held the intimate eye contact as he spoke. “You’re more important to me than any pap. I’ll sic the lawyers on them—and I’ll tell the overpriced sharks to bite hard.”

Swallowing the knot in her throat, she touched her fingers to his lips. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me for not being an ass.” He gathered her close, and they sat there for a long time, listening to the late-night wind whisper through the trees around the property, the waterfall of the infinity pool a peaceful murmur in the background.

“Tell me about Charlotte,” he said some time later.

“Charlie? Why?”

“She’s your family like the band’s mine. I want to know her.”

Yes, her rock star understood her. In ways no one else ever had. “We met on the first day of nursery school,” she said, his heartbeat strong under her palm. “I remember her giving me her pail in the sandbox so I could build a giant sandcastle. Then she ran around and made sure no one disturbed my creation.”

Her lips curved. “That’s who Charlie is in a nutshell—sweet and generous and loyal.” A woman who deserved a man who understood and cherished the treasure in his arms. “She’s so honest and kind, I’d worry about her, but Charlie sees people for who they are.” Though Molly wished her friend’s innocence about the world hadn’t been shattered as it had been.

Fox buried the fingers of one hand in her hair. “Were you good girls at school?”

“We weren’t teacher’s pets, but neither one of us is rebellious by nature.”

“Yet you ran off with a no-good musician, and you keep talking about some guy called T-Rex with Charlie.”

Molly slapped playfully at his chest. “You’re not meant to listen in!”

A rumble against her as he laughed. “I can’t help it. I’m fascinated by how you and Charlie can chat for two hours without running out of things to say.”

“I could do that with you, too, though you’d probably ask for phone sex.”

“Abso-fucking-lutely.”

Bursting out laughing at the unrepentant statement, she nuzzled a kiss to his throat. “What was the worst thing you did as a student?”

Fox whistled. “That’ll take some thinking. I made it my mission in life to be a problem—until I realized nothing I did would make my mother want me enough to stand up to the prick.” The acceptance in his tone was almost worse than the echo of old pain; Molly couldn’t imagine how badly he must’ve hurt until the wound scarred over.

“Then,” he said, “I became a model student. I think the teachers thought I’d been possessed, especially when I turned out to be freaky good at algebra.”

“I hope you apologized to the teachers you drove crazy,” she said, taking her cue from him and keeping it light; Fox didn’t have to rip open old wounds, didn’t have to bleed to invite her into himself.

“Naw… but I, uh, sponsor a program for kids like me.”

The unusual hesitancy of his voice had her sitting up, her eyes locked with his. “A program?” It was a soft prompt when he fell silent.

“The ones who don’t have anywhere to go for the holidays,” he elaborated. “The program means they get to travel to another country, spend the time with a host family.”

Her eyes burned. Blinking rapidly to fight it, she said, “That’s wonderful,” her throat thick.

Fox shrugged. “It’s not the same as being with your own family, but I thought maybe the excitement of seeing another country would help blunt things. Anyway,” he continued quickly, “the principal writes me now and then. He says most of the kids stay in constant contact with their host families and choose to go back to the same families year after year, so I figure maybe they’ve chosen new families like I did with Noah, David, and Abe.”

There was so much she didn’t yet know about this gorgeous, talented man. Each piece, each facet, he revealed, it tumbled her deeper and deeper into a love she knew would forever define her. “You’re doing an incredible thing,” she said, and when he looked uncomfortable, cupped his face. “Your girl is allowed to say mushy things like that about you. She’s allowed to think you’re wonderful.”

“As long as you don’t tell anyone.” A scowling warning accompanied by a squeeze of the arm he had around her. “Let’s go for a drive.”

“Now?”

“It’s a beautiful night. I want to show you my town under the stars.”

Late as it was, the paparazzi had scattered and they were able to exit the property in the Lamborghini without stress. The drive proved to be romantic in a sweet, old-fashioned way, which she would’ve never expected of Fox. After a stunning moonlit half hour along the Pacific Coast Highway, the sea crashing to shore on one side, Fox circled back through Sunset Boulevard, stopping to buy her hot chocolate—complete with extra marshmallows—from a canny food-truck driver who’d set himself up within sight of night-shift workers on a road-repair project.

“Mmm, smells divine.” She took a sip of the sweet liquid and settled in to enjoy the sound of Fox’s rough purr of a voice as he gave her a personal tour, the tall palms on either side of the boulevard exotic to her eyes.

“Did you ever play in the clubs around here?” she asked some time later when they hit what he told her was the Sunset Strip, the area dazzling with spotlighted billboards and pulsing with nightlife.

“We had one of our first big breaks at that club over there.” Fox pointed out a tiny doorway with a huge line. “Owner’s nurtured more talent than most in this town.” He kept the car at an easy speed as they continued down the Strip, the gleaming black limo in front of them obviously cruising the sights as well. “You know that TV show you like? The detective one? Check out the convertible next to us.”

Molly’s eyes went wide when she did. A second later, she let out an “Eep!” and sat back while Fox started laughing. Shoving at his arm, she tried to scowl through her beet-red face. “I can’t believe he… that she… at a traffic light! Where anyone could see.” There was no way to miss the sleek blonde head bobbing up and down in the lap of the chiseled actor in the driver’s seat.

“Pity”—Fox hauled her over for a hard, wet kiss before the light changed—“I was hoping it’d give you ideas.”

It did, but Molly wasn’t about to put those ideas into practice anywhere public. On a less populated stretch of road, however, and in a car that wasn’t so low-slung… “Keep driving,” she said, voice husky. “Show me Guitar Row. I read about it online.”

“That’ll be better in the daytime. We’ll come back another day, have a real look around,” he promised, pointing out a billboard up ahead that featured Schoolboy Choir and their upcoming concert dates. “When we first came to L.A., we used to walk up and down Guitar Row, salivating over all the instruments we wanted but couldn’t afford.”

Fascinated, she put the empty hot-chocolate cup in the holder and turned slightly in her seat. “Did you four meet at boarding school?” It was something she’d assumed but didn’t know for certain.

“Yes, at an honest-to-God choir tryout. The music teacher forced us to go.”

“No!” She grinned. “You were in the choir?”

“Hell, no.” A growl of sound. “I sang flat and off-key on purpose. So did the others—Noah and I were friends already, but that’s when we decided we were soul mates with David and Abe, too.” A pause as he slowed the car to allow another limo, this one virgin white, to merge into traffic, a topless woman popping out of the sunroof to blow kisses their way before she was yanked back down.

“Was she wearing giant bunny ears?” Shaking her head, Molly shifted her attention back to the rock star who intrigued and compelled her far more than anything around them. “What happened next?”

“We made music together,” he said simply, and brought her hand to his mouth for a kiss. “Starting out, we crashed in a cheap two-bedroom apartment, working every day job we could to make the rent and feed ourselves.”

Molly could hear the passion in his voice, knew the dream of music had driven him. “How old were you?”

“Eighteen. Right out of high school.” He placed her hand on his thigh as he shifted gears. “Noah and Abe, they both come from heavy-duty money, but it was an unspoken rule that we did this on our own. Best decision we ever made—money’s never come between us, and the band? It’s ours, no one else’s.”

Molly loved the insight into the band’s friendship, into Fox, and kept urging him to continue. So engrossed was she in his stories of what it had been like to go from flat broke to filling stadiums with screaming fans that it took her a while to realize they’d left the lights of the city behind to prowl up one of the hills. “Where are we going?”

A sinful smile, the dimple lean and gorgeous in his cheek. “Best make-out spot in the city.”

The row of cars at the top, complete with steamed-up windows, proved him right.

Pushing back his seat once he’d parked, Fox said, “Come here, Miss Molly,” and maneuvered her into his lap.

She snuggled close. “This is so romantic.” Los Angeles spread out in front of them like a twinkling carpet, the lights fireflies in the dark.

“Does that get me points?” Fox ran his hand under her unbound hair to touch her nape.

Skin taut at the tone of his voice, she said, “Depends.”

“On what?”

“On what you intend to do with the points.”

“Trust me?”

It was no longer even a question. “Yes,” she said, “this earns you many brownie points.” Nervous anticipation in her veins, she looked into eyes shadowed by the darkness inside the vehicle. “What do you want to use them for?”

Fingers trailing up her neck. “A little rope.”

“You want to tie me up?” Molly’s voice was husky, the sound a caress over Fox’s senses.

“Yeah.” He cupped the lush warmth of her braless breast through the T-shirt she’d thrown on over jeans, enjoying the simple pleasure of being able to touch her as he pleased. “I’ve always wanted to try it.”

“You’re telling me Zachary Fox, rock star named Reigning Sex God by a certain men’s magazine three years running,” she said, her breast pushing into his palm as she leaned closer, “has never tied up a woman during sex?”

“Even a Reigning Sex God has to develop his tastes.” He rubbed his thumb over her nipple. “By the time I realized it was something I wanted to try, that girl I walked home from the bar had sold her story to the tabloids. I didn’t trust anyone enough to play those games.” Molly though… she could have every one of his secrets.

He was hers.

“Some people would say I’m being naïve believing that—”

Ice in his blood.

Screwing up her nose, Molly glared at him. “I said some people. I know you don’t lie. You never have, not from the start.” A pause. “Though you did let me assume you were perfectly happy for our relationship to end after a month.”

Fox winced. “You ever going to forget that?”

“No”—Molly tugged at his lip ring—“I plan to hold it over you for the rest of our lives together.” Shifting position to straddle him, she held his gaze with the clear brown of her own. “Thank you for never lying to me.”

He heard the honesty, saw the vulnerability she didn’t try to hide. “I never will, baby. Even if I know what I’m about to say will piss you off.” Tucking his fingers under the edge of her T-shirt, he stroked the bare skin of her lower back. He’d always been a tactile man, but with Molly, it was more than that—it felt good deep inside to touch her, as if he was where he was meant to be. “Speaking of which… I got you something in New York.”

“Other than the ridiculously expensive robe with which I’m madly in lust?”

“The robe was a present for me.” She’d accepted that with open pleasure, but this next gift might slam up against her boundaries—it continued to frustrate him that she made no demands on him financially when he wanted to give her the world, wanted to make her happy. “It’s in my front jeans pocket.”

Chapter 32

Wiggling her fingers into his left pocket, Molly brushed something rigid and hot. “Is that it?” she asked, feeling sexy as only Fox could make her feel.

“That’s for later.” A wicked promise. “Try the other pocket.”

Molly managed to get her fingers inside despite the way the fabric had pulled taut because of his seated position, touched velvet. Working it out, she saw it was a pouch from a high-end jewelry store he must’ve ducked into when he went to get the donuts yesterday.

“…you should know I plan to spoil you. Let me.”

The memory of his words broke her heart as she considered what this gift meant to Fox. And it had nothing to do with money.

“Are you going to open it?” A fine tension to his body, lashes lowered to shade the expression in his eyes.

She could swear her commitment until she was blue in the face, she thought, but it would take him time to accept that she didn’t need enticement to stay. Until then, she’d never turn down a gift, no matter how outrageous, never hurt him with what he’d read as a rejection. “I want you to show me,” she said, handing him the bag.

Lips curving, he tugged open the little gold tie and poured a tumble of glittering gemstones onto his palm before picking up one of the earrings and holding it out. “I don’t want to poke holes in you.”

Aware she was handling thousands of dollars, she carefully hooked it on, then added its twin. “So?” She tucked her hair behind her ears to better show off the precious stones.

“You make them look beautiful.” Sliding one hand under her tee and onto bare skin again, he cupped the back of her head with his other and smiled in the way that always made butterflies take flight in her stomach. “Want to make out?”

Molly had never made out in a car with a boy. Even the idea of it had nauseated her after her father was caught in his luxury sedan with his underage lover. “I might freak out,” she warned, because while she felt fine now, the past had a way of biting when she least expected it.

Fox didn’t ask for explanations; his expression told her he got it. “I can handle a freak-out. Especially if you let me get to third base.”

They steamed up the windows, almost got busted by the cops, and there was no freak-out. It was the best date of her life.

“You look happy,” Thea pronounced a week later when they met up at a sunny little café a couple of minutes’ walk from Thea’s office, the two of them choosing an outdoor table.

Molly took a sip of her passion-orange tea. “I am.” She was starting to believe she and Fox would be okay, even in this hothouse atmosphere. “Is that stubble burn on your cleavage?”

Thea shoved her sunglasses up on top of her head to glance down, groaned. “Damn it. I thought this neckline was high enough.” She pointed a finger at Molly. “’Fess up. You told David to write memos.”

Molly gave her innocent eyes.

Snorting, Thea picked up her phone to check her e-mails.

“So?” Molly prompted, used to the way her sister multitasked.

“So… I guess we’ll see if I can trust him while the band’s on tour.” A whisper of pain, an echo of the brutal blow her fiancé had delivered, the cheating, supercilious piece of crap.

Molly didn’t know if her sister’s heart could take another beating without permanent damage; she truly hoped David was the man she believed him to be. “I thought you’d be traveling with us?”

“No, it’ll be one of my associates. I need to remain at base command for the most part so I can quickly stamp out any fires.” Thea’s eyelashes flicked up. “The other guys, how are they handling what’s happening between David and me?”

“No one’s making a big deal of it,” Molly said, conscious Thea continued to worry about the possible repercussions of being involved with a client, especially if things didn’t work out. “They mess with each other all the time, but not on this topic.” Tight as the four were, it was clear Fox, Abe, and Noah understood exactly how important this relationship was to their bandmate. “We’re all rooting for you.” Smiling, she said, “As your sister, I hope that stubble burn is the first of many.”

Thea laughed, her tension easing. “I’m considering flying in to meet up with the band during some of the tour stops, so you never know.” Spooning up the foam from her cappuccino with one hand while typing a return message with the other, she turned the conversation back to Molly. “Are you looking forward to the tour?”

“Yes and no.” Molly watched a bouncy, tanned woman walk by with two tiny dogs on leashes, each dog pure white with a diamanté collar. It wasn’t until the woman had passed that Molly noticed she was wearing four-inch Perspex heels and had another fluffy white dog in the handbag slung over her elbow, her fingers curved to show off hot-pink talons. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole.”

“You’ll be fine.” Thea nibbled at her bran muffin. “Stay grounded, don’t allow all this”—a wave at the flamboyance and wealth around them—“to taint what you have with Fox.” She took a drink of her coffee before saying, “Why yes and no?”

“I’m excited because I get to travel with Fox, watch him perform.” Molly would never get enough of watching him onstage. “But I’m worried about the pressure it might put on us—it’s an intense environment.” Pausing, she admitted, “I’m so possessive of him, Thea. I hate it when he poses with female fans without his T-shirt, even though I know it means nothing to him.”

Her sister turned off her phone, gave Molly her full attention. “Have you spoken to him about it?”

“We fought about it after Sydney, but I haven’t brought it up since.”

Thea shook her head. “Do it, Molly. Otherwise, he’ll end up hurting you without knowing it, and you’ll become angry and resentful.” She held up a hand when Molly would’ve spoken. “I’ve worked in this industry for a decade and the couples that make it are the ones who have no secrets. Because even a tiny thing can act like a grain of sand against skin, rubbing and rubbing until it makes you bleed.”

Two days later, Thea’s words circled in Molly’s mind as she sat at home watching the live broadcast of a prime-time show: Schoolboy Choir was currently being interviewed by the witty, likeable host. The host’s questions—which the guys were handling without problem, shooting back good-humored retorts—weren’t what had Molly’s nerves taut. That came courtesy of the other guest, a tall, curvy blonde in a dramatic, figure-hugging dress of deep blood-orange.

A major recording star in her own right, Carina had sung a chart-topping duet with Fox for Schoolboy Choir’s most recent album, the rock ballad as hard as it was romantic. Molly had loved it. Until now. It only took her a couple of minutes into the interview to realize the other woman was intelligent as well as talented and physically blessed. She’d also clearly not been faking her enjoyment of the sultry kiss she’d shared with Fox in the music video for the song.

Molly would’ve had to have been blind to miss the flirtatious invitations Carina was sending Fox’s way. And it wasn’t just her imagination or jealous paranoia. The show had a tweet stream running along the bottom of the screen and the majority of the tweets had to do with the chemistry between Fox and Carina. Whoever was choosing the tweets to display had picked relatively tame messages, as opposed to the more sexually charged ones Molly knew had to be flooding the site, but that didn’t matter.

So shipping Carina and Fox. #perfectcouple

She is totally hot for him. Love it!

OMG, most beautiful couple or what?

We saw it first! Foxina 4ever!

Molly’s stomach knotted further with each second that passed. No one, she thought, seemed to remember that Fox had been spotted with a different woman in New York, Molly forgotten in the blink of an eye. The only thing that kept her from throwing something at the television screen was that no matter what the viewers believed, Fox wasn’t returning the signals. And Molly knew every one of his signals intimately.

Forcing herself to breathe, she consciously relaxed her death grip on the cushion she’d hugged to her chest. Fox couldn’t help it if he drew women like flies. The only way Molly would survive this relationship was if she trusted in their bond. “Doesn’t mean I can’t be a little irrational though.”

Decision made, she put a piece of duct tape along the bottom of the screen so she couldn’t see the tweet stream, and muted the TV every time Carina opened her mouth. The interview was suddenly enjoyable—enough that she didn’t mute Carina’s part in the live performance of the duet—but when the woman got too close to Fox, as if to recreate their kiss, she did throw the remote at the television.

Justifiable, she rationalized, just as Fox—strumming an electric guitar—smoothly deflected the attempt by leaning into Noah for an off-the-cuff jam session that had the audience rioting in their seats. In the interim, Abe grabbed Carina as if stealing her away. By this stage, the audience was wild, and they stayed that way as the host yelled out a good-bye message, the credits beginning to roll across the bottom third of the screen.

Molly didn’t think, didn’t give herself time to second-guess her emotions. Picking up her phone, she sent a message to Fox. You were amazing. Smooth moves with a certain Miss Touchy-Feely.

The response came quicker than she’d expected. She’d figured the audience had to be swarming the men for photos and autographs. I thought so. Just so you know—these brownie points equal more ropes.

Molly’s teeth sank into her lower lip. Promises, promises, she sent, a deep happiness inside her at the unmistakable sign that though he’d just been publicly hit on by a superstar, he was thinking about her. By the way, don’t take off your T-shirt even if a fan wants it.

Yes, Molly.

When his car purred into the drive an hour and a half later, exactly when he’d predicted he’d be home, a smile broke out over her face. Running downstairs, she opened the internal door to the garage and watched him park the Aventador, jumping into his arms as soon as he stepped out, her legs wrapping around his waist. “Hi.”

A slow smile that was so real it stole her breath. “Hi, yourself, Miss Molly. I think you missed me.”

Since the day she’d first understood she came last in her parents’ lives, Molly had been protecting herself. Charlotte alone had broken through, but much as she loved her best friend, it was nothing as terrifying and as beautiful as what she felt for Fox. And her rock star needed to know that, needed to see she was in this for the long haul.

“Yes,” she said, not hiding any of her emotions, though the exposure made her pulse stammer, her throat go dry. “You’ve been gone all day.”

A hot tangle of a kiss, one of Fox’s hands at her nape, the other under her butt. “I missed my Molly-time, too.”

They just cuddled there for a minute before Fox turned to place her on the hood of the car. Pushing her down gently until she lay on her back on the metal, her feet on the ground in front of the low-slung vehicle, he ripped off his T-shirt. “So, I’m not allowed to be shirtless when I take photos with fans?”

Molly shook her head. “No. I hate it when other women touch you.” He couldn’t totally stop that, but at least this way, they wouldn’t be touching his skin beyond the arm.

Leaning down, one hand on her breast, he suckled her upper lip into his mouth, his smile unhidden. “Then you’d better have spares backstage for me,” Fox said, luxuriating in her possessiveness.

“I will.” A firm statement, Molly watching him rise back up to his full height, her eyes following his movements as he dropped his hands to the studded black leather belt that held up his faded and ripped jeans.

“You want me, Molly?” he asked, sliding out the belt to drop it to the garage floor.

“No.” Her fingers curled into her palms. “I think you need to come here and rev me up.”

Nudging her thighs farther apart, he undid the button on her jeans, tugged down the zipper. “Want to take back what you said?”

Chapter 33

Molly stubbornly shook her head.

Stripping off her jeans, he settled between her legs again, so damn pleased with her that he’d play with her all night if she wanted. “Maybe it’s the car,” he said, undoing the buttons of the cardigan she wore as a top. “That’s what has you so hot.”

The fact she’d run into his arms, her need for him open and unhidden, it meant everything, his passion for her about far more than lust. He wanted to pet her, pleasure her, cherish her. “Seems like you’re getting me to do this under false pretenses.”

“It is,” Molly said, tone breathy, “a very nice car.”

“Just for that, I’m not going to put my mouth on you.”

Molly flexed her fingers against the flawless red paintwork. “What if I ask nicely?”

“It’d have to be very, very nice indeed.” God but he fucking loved that she trusted him enough to let her body be his favorite instrument.

Shivering as he peeled apart the sides of the cardigan to bare the lace-covered mounds of her breasts, his lover said, “Please, Fox.” A feminine whisper that wrapped him in silken chains tinged blush pink with the color on her cheekbones. “Please put your mouth on me.”

Never had he talked this much during sex, but this was Molly and there were no rules. “Hmm, good start,” he said, pressing a kiss to the delicate skin of her breastbone, “but I don’t know if you really mean it.”

“Maybe I don’t want your mouth.” Her hand gripping his hair, tugging him up with a scowl. “I can take care of myself.”

Smoldering heat in his blood. “Oh, you’ll be doing that one day soon. In front of me.” It would be an erotic fantasy come to life. “But since you’re being so uncooperative today”—he stroked his hand down one silken thigh, to her restless movement—“maybe you don’t deserve an orgasm.”

Chest heaving, she wrapped both legs around his hips to hold him to her, the denim of his jeans scraping against the cream of her skin. “You are a bad man and I adore you.”

Ah fuck, but she knew how to cut him off at the knees. Totally hers, he kissed her, one hand at her throat, the other on the plump curve of her breast. When she broke the kiss to gasp in air, he took his hand off her throat to run his mouth over the slope of it, continuing downward until he reached her breasts. It only took a second to push down the cups, bare her to him, her nipples lush berries in his mouth.

“Fox.” A husky moan, her hands on his shoulders. “I want you.”

That did it. The leash snapped. “Be a good girl for my cock”—he reached down to push aside the gusset of her panties, undo his jeans—“and I’ll use my mouth on you later.”

Molly’s skin tinged hot pink, but his smart, sexy librarian didn’t back down. “I always am for you.”

Pretty damn sure he’d spill then and there, he shoved up her thigh and pushed into her in a single thick thrust, both of them sprawled out on the hood.

“Fox!”

“I have you.” Bracing his hands palms down on either side of her head, he looked into brown eyes drenched in pleasure, the pupils dilated, and found he wanted to hear the words Molly gave him, the ones that made him feel ten feet tall. But he didn’t know how to ask for them, how to tell her how important those words were to his soul.

Then she raised her fingers to his lips, tracing the shape of his mouth. “My gorgeous, talented Fox. I’m so glad I wake up next to you every morning.”

Shuddering, he stroked her thigh and found the patience to rock her slow and easy, his Molly who didn’t only fight for him, but who gave him what he needed with a generosity that tore him to pieces. As the world splintered around them, he could only hope he gave her the same, hope that she saw no lack in her life.

He couldn’t lose her. Not his Molly.

Three weeks later and Molly felt as if she was living in a dream world. The band was now officially on tour and had been for the past five days. Though they were surrounded by crew, and had—until an hour ago—been accompanied by a reporter from the most iconic magazine in the industry, Molly was the only one who was attached on a strictly personal basis.

She’d expected to be cornered by the reporter sometime during the fourteen days he shadowed the band, beginning with Schoolboy Choir’s pre-tour preparations. She’d even worked out strategies to answer what she’d guessed would be intrusive questions, but the man had treated her with a kind of absent politeness, otherwise ignoring her existence. Molly had been delighted but mystified.

It was Maxwell who cleared things up for her.

“He thought you were flavor of the month,” the crew boss said with his customary bluntness. “Since he’s planning to write the definitive article on the band at this point in their career, he’s not going to bother to include what he thinks is a bit of pussy.”

Molly could feel herself turning bright red. Booming with laughter, Maxwell hugged her close to his bulk. “Don’t worry about him. He’ll kick himself later when he realizes his ‘definitive article’ has a hole the size of Alaska because he couldn’t see what was right in front of his face.”

“Damn straight,” Molly said, tugging on her Schoolboy Choir cap when Maxwell released her.

“Good girl.” His grin could’ve been of a proud father. “Boys don’t have a concert tomorrow and we’re not on the road, so get ready to paint the town red after tonight’s show.”

Molly might’ve been surprised at how circumspect the entire band had been the past five days, if she hadn’t understood the demanding physicality of the concerts. Dedicated to their music as all four men were, giving a mediocre performance simply wasn’t acceptable—it wouldn’t only disappoint their fans, it would mean letting down the other members of the band.

As a result, they were more than ready to blow off some serious steam. “Wear the red skirt,” Fox said, patting her on the butt after he’d showered off the sweat from the show. “With the sparkly top.”

The “sparkly top” was a low-cut sequined halter in shimmering gold he’d bought her two days ago after spotting it in a boutique window across from their last hotel. Trying it on with a strapless push-up bra and the skirt she’d fixed after Fox tore it in New York, Molly whistled at her own reflection. She looked hot. Feeling confident and happy, she spent time straightening her hair before pulling it back into a sleek ponytail. A bit of careful makeup, with the focus on knockout red lips, and she was done.

“Oh holy hell.” It was a harsh groan from the open bedroom doorway, Fox having slipped out to the living area of the hotel suite to raid the room service cart while she dressed.

Turning around on skinny black heels, she propped a hand on her hip, her stomach flipping at the heat in the smoky green of his eyes. “I love this outfit.”

Fox, dressed in camo-green cargo pants and a white T-shirt that hugged his biceps, began to prowl closer. “Not as much as I do.”

Molly held out a hand. “No way. I didn’t go to all this trouble for you to mess me up.”

Fox’s eyes gleamed. “Bet I could change your mind.”

“No bet. We both know I’m easy where you’re concerned,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and drawing in the clean bite of his aftershave. “You’re all smooth.” She rubbed her cheek against his. “Not that I don’t like you rough.”

Fox cupped her butt with possessive hands. “I know just how rough you like it, Miss Molly.” Squeezing her curves, he ground his aroused body against her. “I’m absolutely going to mess you up.”

“No, you don’t.” It took serious effort to break out of his hold, the flesh between her thighs already damp. “I want to see what you guys get up to on a night out.”

“I sure as hell won’t be getting up to the same things now that I have you in my bed. Which is where I’d like to be right now.” Despite his frustrated growl, he held out his hand. “Come on, let’s go watch the other guys’ eyes pop out.”

The smug satisfaction in his tone made her want to drag him to the sheets. “Wait,” she said, fighting the temptation, “I have something for you.”

He watched curiously as she picked up a little bag emblazoned with a shop logo and pulled out a black leather cuff. “I thought this wouldn’t break rock star fashion protocol,” she said and closed the cuff around his left wrist, the studded design an echo of the belt hidden beneath his T-shirt.

“When did you get this?” he asked, admiring the workmanship.

“Secret.” Sliding her hands into the back pockets of his jeans, she kissed his jaw. Her glossy lipstick left a red imprint, but liking her mark on him, she didn’t immediately wipe it away. “I get to spoil you, too, you know.”

He echoed her position, his hands on her lower curves and his smile deep. “I’m already spoiled, but I could get used to this kind of a surprise.” Eyes dropping to her lips, he went to kiss her, sighed. “Damn it. I’ll ruin your pretty makeup.”

“Come here.” Lipstick or Fox’s kiss? No contest.

Noah wolf-whistled when he saw her ten minutes and a quick touch-up later, and suddenly she was being hauled to his side, one muscular arm around her waist. Startled, she landed with her hand on his T-shirt, the fabric black with silver detailing. The guitarist, she thought, could’ve stood in as a model for a fallen angel—beautiful and with an aristocratic look to him, his eyes holding a sardonic edge he made no effort to hide with people he didn’t like.

“Forget about that schmuck,” he said, motioning at Fox. “Don’t you know blonds do everything better?”

Fox claimed Molly back. “Find your own woman. I’m not sharing mine.” Nuzzling a kiss to her temple, his hand curving proprietarily over her hip, he glanced at David. “Car here?”

“Yep. Outside.”

The “car” proved to be a Hummer stretch limo, complete with a full bar and tiny lights on the roof that looked like stars. Sliding onto the black leather seat that ran along the side opposite the door, Molly accepted a flute of sparkling grape juice from Abe. “Thank you.”

He winked, thick lashes coming down over a dark brown eye, and turned up the music until it pumped through her blood. Soon afterward, everyone had a drink, the sunroof was open, and Fox’s arm was around her neck as they cruised through the city en route to their first stop.

Molly had only gone clubbing that one disastrous time, never partied with a boy, never made out in the middle of a dance floor. Fox was no boy, but he absolutely made out with her in the midst of the pumping mass of bodies that was the hottest club in town. Molly knew there had to be cameras around, but the place was all but dark, and she was in too good a mood to ruin the experience by focusing on the outside world rather than her man.

As Charlotte had said, being caught in the arms of a sex god was hardly anything to be embarrassed about. So she danced flush up against Fox’s hard body and when he demanded a kiss, opened her mouth for him, her hand curled over the warmth of his nape. The muscle and tendon of him moving under her touch as he kissed her was as hot as the weight of his hand on her ass.

Swaying with her under the pumping music, Fox scowled at Abe when the keyboardist cut in, but let her go. The members of the band were the only men to whom he’d surrender her. Soon as any other male even looked interested, Fox made it very, very clear Molly was off-limits. It was an intoxicating feeling, to be so publicly branded as his.

They went from club to club as a group, walking in at the front of every line. “This could go to a girl’s head,” Molly said, nuzzling at Fox’s throat in the shadows to the side of the dance floor.

Bending closer to her ear, his breath hot and intimate, he ran his hand down her side, stopping to caress the curve of her breast. “Does that mean you’ll suck my cock when we get back—after I tie your hands behind your back and bind your ankles together?”

Molly felt her skin blaze, wasn’t ready for the kiss he laid on her, her ponytail wrapped around his hand. “You are so sexy when you blush.” A delicious bite of her lower lip. “So?”

Molly somehow found the will to speak through the pulse of arousal low in her body. “If I say yes,” she whispered in his ear, her lips touching his skin, “you’ll have me on my knees in the hotel room so fast my head will spin, and I’m having fun.” Not that she’d last long if he decided to persuade her. “I like being out with you and the guys.”

Hands on her hips, he squeezed. “I can be patient when I know what I’ve got coming.” Taking her hand on that low promise, he led her through to the VIP section of the club, no doubt leaving a generous tip with the bouncer whose hand he shook on the way in.

“Do you always tip so well?”

“I waited tables when we were trying to make it,” he said. “Worked as a bouncer, too. You wouldn’t believe the number of big shots who never tip, the jerk-offs get so used to being given everything for free.”

Molly went to part her lips to reply when there was a holler from the other end of the bar, and two seconds later, Fox was being lifted off his feet by a big black guy in a flawless charcoal-gray suit. David, who’d entered right behind them, received the same treatment a few seconds later. “Damn!” the stranger said. “You didn’t tell me you were coming in!”

“That’s why it’s a surprise, asshole.” Noah’s laconic response had the older man grinning, the guitarist having just joined them.

“Fuck you, pretty boy.” Sharing a quintessentially male hug, complete with thumping back slaps, the two drew apart.

Abe, the last one to enter, held up a hand. “I don’t do girly shit like hugs, man.”

He was swallowed up an instant later and came out of it grinning, the deep smile rare on his face. Slapping Abe’s cheek with hard affection, the stranger turned to Fox. “You going to introduce us?” He was looking at Molly.

Startled, Molly found herself taking in the besuited man with new eyes. People had a way of ignoring her, appearing surprised when Fox introduced her. Seemed the “bit of pussy” wasn’t meant to have a name. It would’ve infuriated her except that Fox always made it clear she mattered. So she was taken aback when he said, “Hell no,” a scowl on his face. “You’re not safe around women.”

Flashing an undaunted smile at her, the stranger said, “I’m Shawn, but most folks call me Doc. A beautiful woman like yourself, however, can call me Shawn.” He held out one thickly muscled arm. “Let me show you things Fox here didn’t even know existed until I shared my wisdom with him.”

Fox traded insults with Shawn as they walked up a spiral staircase and into a private section that offered a view over the entire club. Shawn, Molly realized, either owned or managed the club. From the confident way he moved in this space, she leaned toward ownership. Ordering them to settle in, he called up trays of finger food from the club’s generous kitchen. Then, with food and drink flowing while the music boomed beneath them, Molly sat back and listened to the band catch up with a man who was obviously a trusted friend.

“This guy,” Abe told her, “gave us our first big break.”

Noah nodded, his beer held loosely between thumb and forefinger, the green glass of the bottle sweating with condensation. “He wasn’t a big shot then—had a tiny place that was building a serious rep, and he put us center stage.”

“Good business.” Shawn ate a spicy spring roll before continuing. “They packed out the club night after night. Had lines out the door by the end of what was supposed to be their run—so of course I signed them up for another one.”

Fox shook his head, fingers playing with Molly’s ponytail, his arm along the back of the sofa. “We didn’t pack in those crowds for weeks—not until word spread. Most people would’ve let us go, but Doc had our back.”

David clinked his beer bottle to the club owner’s. “Which is why he’d better have instruments for us.”

Shawn whooped. “You gonna jam? Hell yeah, I have what you need!”

Chapter 34

Molly watched from the high aerie that was Shawn’s domain as the band brought down the house with a rocking set that had people screaming. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how amazing they are onstage,” she said to the club owner where he leaned on the railing next to her.

“Some musicians,” Shawn said, “they practice until they get good, others they have raw talent. Fox, Noah, Abe, and David, they always had the talent, but they had the drive too.” Leaving for a few seconds, he returned with a cocktail glass filled with decadent-looking chocolate mousse, complete with an enticing red cherry on top.

Molly groaned. “You’re going to kill me.” He’d already talked her into a frothy, creamy nonalcoholic cocktail.

“Try a spoonful for me.” He beamed at her shuddering moan when she gave in. “Good, yeah?”

“Divine.” She spooned up another tiny bite. “Fox is right—you’re dangerous around women.”

That got her another deep smile before he returned his attention to the band.

“You’re the first woman Fox’s brought into my club,” he said several minutes later. “Before, he might’ve picked up a woman here, taken her back to the hotel, but he’s never once brought anyone with him.”

Molly let the mousse melt on her tongue and tried not to think about those other women, but about the important part of Shawn’s statement. “That’s why you asked to be introduced.”

“Nope. That was because I plan to steal you away from Fox—I have an old pinup calendar in my office.” A low wolf whistle as he looked her up and down. “You’d fit right in.”

Smiling at the blatant sweet talk, Molly scooped up a touch more mousse as the band gave in to the urgings of the crowd and began another number. “If we’re going to be friends,” she said to Shawn, “you can’t tell me about the women Fox used to pick up and take back to his hotel.”

“You know he wasn’t a virgin when you met him, right?”

“Doesn’t mean I want an action replay.”

“Fair enough.” He hollered along with everyone else at Noah’s guitar solo.

Almost as if they’d timed it, Fox’s growl of a voice rolled out over the last riff and David slammed down on the drums. Abe’s keyboard joined in fifteen seconds later, Noah coming back in at the same time. “This is new!” she yelled to Shawn over the screams of the crowd. “Never before performed live!”

The big man’s eyes sheened wetly. “Goddamn punks,” he said, his pride clear.

Clapping and dancing along with the crowd as the band finished the song and walked offstage, she ran back to the door through which Fox emerged a few seconds later. “You were amazing!” Kissing the life out of him, she turned to the others. “That was incredible!”

“Do we get a kiss, too?” Noah drawled.

Jerking him forward by grabbing the front of his T-shirt, Molly smacked him on the lips. It was the first time she’d seen Noah thrown off balance. He recovered quickly. “Fox, sorry, man. I’m keeping her.”

Fox wrapped an arm around her waist, his face holding the exhilaration of performing. “Not even in your dreams.”

Then Shawn was there, hugging and backslapping his “punks.” They partied with the club owner till after four in the morning. “I’ve never been out this late,” Molly confessed to Fox as they danced to a slow song.

“You are such a good girl.” A quick, hot kiss, her breasts crushed against his chest. “It turns me on like crazy—but what turns me on even more,” he whispered in her ear, “is watching you be dirty only for me.”

Drawing her aroused body off the dance floor when the house lights flickered, he took her back upstairs to say good-bye to Shawn. David had left much earlier, while Noah and Abe had both disappeared about an hour ago—Noah with a petite black woman and a pneumatic peroxide blonde, Abe with a statuesque, tattooed brunette, her skin pure cream.

“What’s the deal with Noah?” Molly asked softly once they were settled in the far back of the limo, Fox having instructed the driver to take them on a night tour of the city. Now, with the opaque privacy screen up between the front and the back, it was as if they were in an intimate cocoon. “I could’ve sworn he was looking at Kit as if he wanted a second chance, but then he picks up women left, right, and center.”

Fox shrugged. “Noah’s got his demons. Frankly, it’s better if Kit keeps her distance.”

Molly shifted on the seat to look at his face. “That bad?”

“I think of him as a brother,” Fox said, his voice quiet and his expression solemn, “but I also know he’s not good for a woman who wants an actual relationship. We might not have partied the past few nights, but Noah was fucking a groupie or some other woman—probably women—he picked up.” It was a nonjudgmental statement of fact. “I don’t know if anything or anyone is capable of fixing what’s broken inside him.”

Saddened, Molly laid her head against his shoulder and didn’t ask further questions. As she wouldn’t betray Charlotte’s secrets, she didn’t expect Fox to betray Noah’s. “The streets are so quiet and pretty this time of night.” Rain had fallen not long ago, and everything shimmered, the lights reflecting off the tarmac. “Let’s do this in other cities.”

Fox ran his fingers lightly over the side of her face where she lay tucked up against him. “Just don’t tell anyone I’m doing romantic bullshit.”

“Tough guy.” Snuggling into him, she said, “Can we ride around for a while?”

“Long as you want.”

They stayed out almost to dawn, stopping to play barefoot in a deserted fountain and dance under the moonlight in an otherwise empty plaza. Held in Fox’s arms, his cheek against her hair and the only sound that of their breaths, Molly drew in the scent of him and felt her heart overflow with love.

“Sorry ’bout the ropes,” she said sleepily much, much later, cuddling up to him in bed.

“Nothing to be sorry about—I’ve never had a better night out.” Fox stroked his hand down her spine, the callused pads of his fingers a delicious, familiar roughness, his words a gift against her skin. “I’ve decided to save the ropes for when we have hours to play. I wouldn’t want to rush.” A kiss to her shoulder as goose bumps broke out over her skin. “Good night, Molly Webster.”

“Good night, Zachary Fox.” I love you.

Fox was the one who found Abe the next afternoon when the big keyboard player didn’t meet the rest of them for a late lunch in Fox and Molly’s suite. “I’ll go wake him,” he said with a grin. “Maybe I’ll use this ice cube to do it.” Plucking the cube from his otherwise empty orange juice glass, he wrapped it in a thick napkin.

Noah and David grinned, but with restraint. Both their heads had to be throbbing since it turned out that after Noah showed his women the door last night, he’d woken David up and talked him into another drink or five.

“The rock-and-roll life,” Molly said sweetly, “is not healthy for your livers.”

David groaned. “Fucking tequila. Never again.”

“You said that last time.”

“Shut up, you minion of evil.”

Noah splurted his coffee. “Minion of evil? Last night you were declaring your undying love.”

“I’m going to stab you in a second.”

“For the record, Molly,” Noah said, turning his attention to her, “we’ve been saints since we returned home. Saints. We didn’t want Fox’s girl to get the wrong impression about us.”

Rolling her eyes, Molly took pity on the two males and was pouring them fresh coffee when her cell phone rang. It was Fox. “Get in here, bring the others.” He hung up after that terse instruction, and she saw why when they reached Abe’s room.

The keyboardist was sprawled in his bed, reeking of alcohol, bottles strewn around him and the brunette from the club nowhere in evidence. This, Molly knew at once, was more than a few too many drinks. “He needs medical attention.” She’d seen her mother like this, the memory an ugliness under her skin.

“It’s on its way.” Fox’s jaw was a brutal line. “I called 911.”

Thinking past her instinctive anger, the rage an old one, and back to the first-aid course she’d attended during university, she said, “We have to turn him to his side, make sure he has a clear airway.” Abe had thrown up at some stage, that much was apparent, but he’d survived. They had to keep him that way until the paramedics arrived.

The men rolled Abe into the correct position while she checked to make sure his airway wasn’t obstructed. His breathing did seem to steady after the change in position, but it remained shallow, the normally rich mahogany of his skin pallid. “Has he done this before?”

“No. He drinks, but nothing more than the rest of us.” Noah’s fists were so tight his skin had gone bone white. “Cocaine was his problem, but he kicked the habit. He made it.”

Except it was clear to all of them that Abe had only switched addictions.

Five hours later, the keyboardist was conscious but in no state to get out of bed. “It was just a binge,” he said when the others confronted him in his private hospital room.

Molly had stayed outside the room, knowing this was something the four men needed to discuss alone, but she remained within earshot. Noah’s temper, from what she’d seen, was as hot as Fox’s. Abe wasn’t far behind. David was calmer, but he was furious today, white lines bracketing his mouth. If needed, she’d step in to defuse the situation before it got violent. None of the men were the type to raise a hand against a woman.

“A binge?” Noah shouted. “You were almost in a coma!”

“Shit, lower your voice.” It was a groan.

“What the hell are you doing, Abe?” Fox asked through what sounded like clenched teeth. “You stopped snorting coke, so you’ll kill yourself this way instead?”

“What I do in my own fucking time is my own fucking business.”

“You want to go there?” David said, and he didn’t sound like the calm one at all. “You really want to say that when we might have to go onstage tomorrow without you?”

“I’ll be fine by then.”

“Have you looked at yourself?” Noah demanded. “Your hands are shaking and you can’t even get out of bed.”

“Get back in,” Fox said, then swore as there was a small crash. “Satisfied now? You can’t do anything but destroy cheap vases.”

Abe’s response was too low for Molly to hear, but she could guess what it had been from Fox’s response. “You don’t get to pick and choose when we’re your friends. We won’t let you do this to yourself or to us again. Choose, Abe.”

“What?”

“The band or the booze, the drugs, whatever shit you want to shovel into yourself.”

A stunned silence.

Abe was the first to find his voice and it was a roar. “You can’t kick me out!”

“You’re kicking yourself out! How many times do you expect us to do this? Wait to see if you wake up? Get ready to call your mom to tell her in case you don’t?” Fox’s voice vibrated with unhidden fury. “Enough, Abe. You either want to live or you don’t.”

“I’m not trying to commit suicide for Christ’s sake!”

“You think she’d want this?” came Noah’s voice. “For you to wallow in a pool of self-pity because boo-hoo-hoo it’s too damn hard to be alive? She fucking idolized you, man.”

A charged silence, secrets hovering in the air.

“Enough,” David said quietly. “We all need to cool off before we say things that can’t be forgiven. I will not lose who we are together because of this.” A grim silence. “Any objections?”

There were none, and the three men walked out a few minutes later. Noah strode past without spotting her. David nodded and was gone. Wrapping his arm around her, Fox called up the two bodyguards he’d told to wait downstairs. “Stay here,” he ordered them when they arrived. “Watch him—and check everything that goes in and out. I find out he had any booze or drugs in that room, I’ll have your heads.”

Nodding, the two muscle-bound men took up position on either side of the door.

Molly kept her silence as she and Fox left the hospital via a loading dock not covered by the media. Everyone was whispering drug overdose, and the band had decided to let that stand. Abe’s problem with cocaine was old news, would soon fade from the screens and papers if they didn’t feed the story.

Given Fox’s mood, Molly didn’t think anything of it when he ignored a smartly dressed woman in the hotel lobby who said “Zachary” and made as if to walk toward him, her expression faintly supercilious. The elevator arrived before she reached them, and Fox nudged Molly inside.

“She didn’t look like a groupie,” Molly said, simply to break the strained quiet.

Fox’s lips twisted in a humorless smile. “They all want something.” He didn’t speak again until they were back in their room. “You okay?” Knees slightly bent, he brought himself down to her eye level.

It startled her that he’d remembered her past even in his current frame of mind. “I had a couple of flashbacks,” she admitted. “I guess it’s something I need to learn to handle. This environment—”

“No.” Fox’s voice was harsh. “You do not need to get used to this shit because it will not happen again. And never with me. Got it?”

Molly nodded. “I wouldn’t have fallen for you if I didn’t believe that.” Not after seeing up close and personal the damage substance abuse could do, emotional and physical.

“Good.” A hard kiss before he spun away and grabbed his acoustic guitar.

She left him alone by the windows, having learned he worked out his emotions through music. It was over an hour later, when the music went silent, that she took him a cup of coffee. “You’d never really walk away from Abe, would you?” Molly was fighting her instinctive revulsion to addiction to be a friend to Abe and she’d only known him a short time; Fox had known him years. “He needs you more now than ever.”

“I’m so angry with him, Molly. We worked so hard to get him clean—we never let him down. Not once.” He set the guitar aside, the coffee forgotten on a side table. “Every time he called, day or night, we were there. Noah’s the one who rode to the hospital with him last time, and David drove his mother there when the doctors weren’t sure if he’d ever wake up.”

Fox’s voice was jagged as he continued. “She’s this tiny, fragile thing, and she cried until I had to carry her out of the room, away from the sight of her son lying motionless on the bed.” He shook his head. “Abe’s sister died as a child, and that day, it was like she was reliving every instant of the agony.”

A deep breath. “No mother, she said, should have to watch both her children die.” Hands fisted, his eyes stormy. “After that, after the detox and the rehab, he promised her he’d stay clean. Then he goes and does this?” Pain combined with the fury. “I can’t watch him go down this road again.”

Molly understood in a way no one who hadn’t lived with an addict could. At some point, the emotional drain snapped something inside you. “The third time I found my mother in a pool of her own vomit,” she said, confessing a secret not even Charlotte knew, “I hesitated before calling an ambulance.” It had only been a matter of seconds, but Molly would never forget who she’d almost become as a result of her mother’s addiction.

The hesitation shamed her, but Molly had long since forgiven the worn-out and scared teenage girl who’d had to act the responsible adult at far too young an age. “I just couldn’t take the cycle of remorse and promises, the one or two days of normality before the inevitable slide back into the bottle.”

“Ah, baby.” Fox stood to wrap her in his arms, his cheek pressed against her temple. “It wears you down until you start to ask, what’s the fucking point?”

Molly nodded, tears choking up her throat. “With Abe, he can’t have been drinking all this time,” she said, soothing him with slow strokes of her hand down the rigid line of his spine. “Close as we have to travel together, we’d have noticed. You’d have noticed.”

“I hope to hell you’re right.” Exhaling a ragged breath, he tightened his hold and they just stood there, taking strength from one another in a brutal world.

Chapter 35

Discharged after a night in the hospital, Abe was back onstage the next night. Tension lingered in the air, but the band stuck together as the shows continued to go by. When—out of nowhere—David was hit with news that threatened to tear down the foundations of his world, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Fox, Noah, and Abe had his back.

The laughter took longer to return, but it came in time, with Abe going cold turkey on the booze. “I don’t know if I’d be able to stop,” he said one night to Fox while Molly was in the room. “So better I don’t start.”

Molly was hopeful he was telling the truth—that the descent into alcohol had been a one-off thing and not the sign of a new addiction. Determined to help in a way she hadn’t been able to help her mother, she cornered Abe before the Manhattan concert. “Want to go shopping?”

He rolled his beautiful dark brown eyes at her, ridiculously gorgeous lashes throwing shadows on his cheeks. “Don’t you have Fox for that?”

“Yes, but I want to buy something for Fox.” He’d worn the leather cuff at several concerts, a silent symbol of his pleasure, and she wanted to find other small surprises. “You’re his friend, you know what he likes.”

“Take Noah. Fashion plate likes shopping.”

“You’re the fashion plate, not Noah,” Molly pointed out. “Anyway, he’s keeping Fox distracted while I go shopping. And David,” she said, cutting off his next excuse, “is with Thea.” Her sister had flown in this morning and disappeared into David’s room; the two had gone through a tough time over the past week, needed alone time.

“What’s up with David and Thea?” Abe narrowed his eyes. “They sort out the BS over that ridiculous claim?”

“Come with me and maybe I’ll share what I know.”

He still looked surly as he hauled himself out of the armchair he’d been sprawled in. “Now I have to put on my disguise.”

Curious, Molly watched as the usually sleekly dressed male disappeared into his room and returned wearing an honest-to-God one-piece jumpsuit in black fleece with yellow smiley faces. He’d paired the monstrosity with sheepskin boots and donned a wig with knotted dreads that hung about his face. Each dread was capped off with a tiny pink barrette shaped like a butterfly.

Her jaw fell open. “No, seriously? You’re going to walk out on the street in that?”

“People run when they see me coming. It’s a repeller disguise.” Grinning, he slipped his hands into the pockets of the one-piece no one should’ve ever made for a grown man. “Where’s your disguise?”

“I don’t need one.” Thankfully, her elevator-photo notoriety had faded quickly, especially with the gossip sites and magazines focusing on the “secret” Carina-Fox relationship. Grr… “Ponytail, sunglasses, cap, and I’m set.”

“Then I dare you to walk with me.” Abe crooked his arm.

“I’m no chicken.” Sliding her arm into his, she headed out into the noise and color and vibrancy that was Manhattan.

Abe was the band member she’d spent the least amount of time with, but he proved good company, even when a bus full of international tourists swarmed him for photos. Posing patiently, he told them he was a clown on his day off, his expression deadpan, while Molly attempted not to collapse in a fit of giggles. The photos she took were priceless.

It was on the way back to the hotel that he said, “You trying to become my friend, Molly?” A laid-back comment with a steely undertone.

“Yes.” He was too smart for anything but honesty. “I know the band is tight, but you’re guys. You’d rather shoot yourselves in the family jewels than talk about feelings, and sometimes even big, tough guys have feelings.” As with her mother, Abe’s problems seemed to result from an attempt to drown emotional pain.

“You got balls. No wonder Fox likes you.” Slinging an arm around her shoulders, he held her to his side. “I had a shrink at the rehab center. Didn’t talk to him. What makes you think I’ll talk to you?”

“You don’t have to talk to me, Abe. I just wanted you to know I’m here if you ever decide to acknowledge that you do in fact experience these mysterious things called feelings.”

“You think that’ll stop me ending up in the hospital?”

“Only you can do that,” she said bluntly. “If you manage to mess up in spite of a rock-solid support network, then you’re a self-destructive idiot.”

“Don’t hold back now.” A hard-eyed comment as they snuck into the hotel through a back entrance.

“Lies don’t help anyone.”

He walked with her to the suite she shared with Fox. “I’ll try not to be an idiot,” he said at the door, no humor on his face. “Hey, Moll.”

She stopped with the door partly open. “Yes?”

“Why bother?”

“Because you’re my family now.” She’d lost one already, couldn’t bear to see this one fall apart too. Last time, she’d been young and scared and alone. This time, she was an adult who was learning her own strength—and she had Fox.

A month into the tour and three weeks after Abe’s binge, all the tension had dissipated and Molly felt at home with the entire group. The crew teased her good-naturedly now and then about being an “intern” but said they’d have her back anytime. She did still pitch in around her own work—which was gathering steam, word of her skills spreading through the recommendations of satisfied clients.

It felt as if all was right with her world as she and Fox walked to their suite after the Chicago concert. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to the feel of thousands of people singing along to the music, the thundering power of it indescribable. No wonder Fox remained wired up afterward, sometimes for hours.

“I want you naked the instant after we walk through the door,” he said, his body heat kissing her skin. “On your hands and knees.”

Her face flushed. Sex was always hard and fast the first time when he got like this. Then he’d go slow, every ounce of that untamed energy focused only on her as they explored one another and their fantasies. There’d been scarves involved last time, and he was playfully threatening to buy fur-lined handcuffs. But he was generous with his own body, too, letting her kiss and caress and pet to her heart’s content—just not at the start. Wired as he was, he didn’t have the patience.

Smiling hello at the private security guard assigned to monitor this floor, the other members of the band in suites just down from theirs, Molly walked inside. Fox paused for a second to say something to the guard.

Her fingers were on the hooks of her pretty, fitted black jacket embellished with lace panels on either side when she froze, the hairs standing up on the back of her neck. Having shut the door, Fox, his body primed as it pushed into her backside, went to reach for the button on the back of her skirt when he, too, went motionless.

“That’s not your perfume,” he said, pinpointing what had set her off.

It was too sweet for her, too opulent in its sensuality. “Maybe a housekeeper made a mistake?” The band had a standing order in all the hotels they used that no one was to enter their suites without a specific request.

“She’d have had to get past the guard.” Stepping in front of her, he headed to the bedroom. “Stay here.”

Molly followed at his heels, got a scowl, but he didn’t order her back. A second later, they were at the open bedroom door.

The girl inside couldn’t have been more than nineteen, every inch of her sleek and golden, her perky breasts tipped with pale pink nipples, the flesh between her thighs bare. Molly saw all that at a glance because the girl was reclining on the king-size bed on her elbows, her legs drawn up at the knees and thighs spread.

Black stilettos and a mane of glossy caramel-colored hair arranged artfully over one shoulder completed the look. “Hi,” she breathed, after dismissing Molly with a single, contemptuous glance. “I thought you might want some company.”

Jaw a vicious line, Fox’s hand fisted. Slipping past him before he could give free rein to his temper, Molly grabbed the scrap of sequined fabric that was apparently the groupie’s dress and threw it at her. “If you don’t want to be arrested and thrown in jail for the night, put that on and haul ass.” No way was she touching the G-string panties discarded on the carpet.

The girl pursed pouty lips painted a wet pink. “Fox wants me here, don’t you, honey?” Her eyes went to the zipper of his jeans.

Molly felt Fox snap. Striding across the room, he would’ve taken the girl’s arm and dragged her out if Molly hadn’t stepped in front of him. “She’s not worth the aggravation,” she whispered, one hand on his cheek to force him to meet her gaze. “Touch her and she’ll sue or sell her story to the tabloids.”

Fox’s eyes glittered but he didn’t push past her. Reaching into his pocket, he grabbed his phone and made a call, barking a single order. “In here now!”

The security guard entered the room less than three seconds later, his face going ashen at the sight of the intruder. “I threw you off the floor.”

The groupie, apparently understanding she truly was unwanted at long last, grabbed her dress and pulled it over her head. “A real man let me in.” Her eyes slanted to Fox again as she picked up her purse. “Anytime, Fox darling. Just call me.” She brazenly threw her panties and a scrap of paper holding a phone number on the bedside table.

“Sir, do you want me to contact the police?” the security guard asked as the intruder began to saunter out.

“Yes.”

The girl spun around. “Fox!”

“Get the fuck out.” With that, he turned his back on the guard and the groupie both, his breathing low and uneven.

Shaking her head at the guard when it appeared the other man might say something, Molly waved him and the screeching girl out. Not until she heard the front door close, locking out the sounds of the girl’s continued disbelief, did she speak. “Fox,” she said softly, “if you have her arrested, the story will—”

“I don’t care.” Reaching out, he began to tug open the hooks that held the lace-paneled jacket tight to her body. “Let them talk about it. We don’t press charges, next time some woman’s going to figure she has the right to walk into our home and our bedroom. They must think I’m a goddamn lowlife—that all a groupie has to do is flash her pussy at me and I’ll cheat.”

Molly realized he wasn’t going to listen in this mood. She grabbed his wrists. “Not in this bed.” No way was she about to lie on those sheets. “Take me bent over the sofa.”

Fox’s fingers halted in the act of undoing the final hook, the jacket having parted to expose the scarlet-and-black bustier she’d worn underneath for his eyes only, the pale globes of her breasts exposed by the half cups. “You liked it when I did that before?” he asked, the anger smoldering into passion.

Molly pressed her thighs together at the gritty sin of his voice, but she was aware he wasn’t calm yet, the smoky green holding a hard edge. “Yes.” Undoing the final hook herself, she shrugged off the jacket. “I really liked it.”

Grabbing her hand, Fox pulled her into the living room and had her bend over the low sofa, hands braced on the back. The position made her arch her back, her butt higher than her head. “Don’t move.” With that harsh order, he went to the main door and threw the dead bolt.

Fox knew he was in the grip of a vicious temper, but he also knew he would never hurt a hair on Molly’s head—and he needed to touch her. Brand her.

Stripping away her skinny black skirt but leaving her red heels on, he ripped off her panties to reveal the creamy curves of her body. The contrast of the silk bustier against her skin was so erotic he knew he’d make her ride him one day while dressed just like this. Not today. Today, he needed to be the one in charge, needed to know she’d accept him after the bullshit that had just gone down.

Hot with a combination of rage and lust, he tore off his own clothes without taking his eyes from the luscious sight of her bent over waiting for him, a flush of heat beneath the cream. At any other time, he’d have talked, have teased, further jacking up their arousal. Tonight, he gripped her hips and nudged at her with his cock.

Scalding heat, honey slickness.

Plunging in to the hilt to her gasp, he shifted one hand to her nape, holding her in position as he thrust hard and deep, his balls slapping against her with every stroke. It wasn’t enough. He needed to feel her pleasure, needed to know she was his on this most elemental level, that her trust in him hadn’t been damaged. Sliding his hand to her navel, he reached down and squeezed the succulent nub of her clit between thumb and forefinger.

“Fox!” It was a soft scream, her orgasm sweet and hot around him.

Bottoming out, he gritted his teeth as she squeezed him in possessive clenches, his own orgasm tearing down his spine. He hauled her up against him while his cock still twitched inside her. Breath jagged, he wrapped one arm around her waist, the hand of the other around her throat. “I will never fuck around on you.”

Chapter 36

Chest heaving, Molly reached back to cup the side of his face. “I know,” she whispered, her voice breathless. “Baby, I know.”

She wasn’t sure Fox was calm enough to hear her even now, so she waited until after, when she was in his arms on the sofa, her bustier discarded beside her skirt and her body flush with his. Then, rising up on her elbow, she ran her fingers gently through his hair, petting him until he was no longer so on edge.

“I know you won’t cheat,” she said, looking into his eyes to make sure she had his attention, that he’d hear every word she said. “I might’ve worried at the start, before I truly knew you, but I haven’t for a long time.” He was too blunt, too honest to go behind her back. “You’d tell me to my face if you wanted out.”

“Never going to happen.” An unyielding statement, his arm steel around her back. “You’re stuck with me.”

“I like being stuck with you.” Continuing to run her fingers through his hair, she leaned down to kiss him, sips and licks that were more about being with one another than sex. “You don’t have to worry that things like this will make me doubt you.”

“There’ll be lies,” he told her, one hand rising to curve around the side of her neck, his thumb grazing her jaw, “in the tabloids and magazines and online. I won’t always have a way to prove I didn’t do something.”

“Fox, I trust you.”‘ She turned her face to kiss his palm. Never had she thought she’d feel this kind of trust in a man, but Fox had taught her how—by being the man that he was. Temper, talent, and an unflinching loyalty. “As long as you talk to me, we’ll be okay.” Her lips curved. “Or you can sex me silly, then talk. I’m good either way.”

The sinew and muscle and strength of him seemed to fully ease at last. “I like that last option.” Shifting her so she lay on top of him, their bodies rubbing against one another, he pushed back her hair from her face, held her gaze. “Your trust means everything, Molly. I won’t let you down.”

“I know,” she said, so content and safe in his arms that she couldn’t imagine anyone or anything tearing them apart.

The world, however, had other ideas.

Molly woke with a jerk when Fox’s cell phone went off in what felt like the middle of the night. Swearing, he let go of her to turn and reach for his discarded jeans. “Sorry”—a sleepy rumble—“I’ll turn it off.”

“’S ’kay.” Already sliding back into sleep, Molly snuggled to his back… and felt the instant his muscles locked. She came immediately awake. “Who is it?”

“Thea.” Turning to wrap his arm around her, he put the call on speaker. “Go, Thea.”

“Is Molly with you?”

“Yes, I’m here,” Molly said, knowing it couldn’t be good news if her sister was calling at what the phone told her was four in the morning. “Has something happened?”

“Yes, and it’s bad.” Her tone made ice form in Molly’s bones, her heart in her throat. “Before I tell you,” Thea continued, “I want to say I’m so sorry, Moll. I’ll do whatever it takes to bury this.”

“Just spit it out,” Fox ordered.

“Some sick fuck managed to sneak in and set up a video camera in one of your previous hotel suites.” Thea’s words were bullets in the silence. “It might’ve been motion activated, or just started and left to run until the digital card was full. From the angle on the still photos posted from the video, it looks like it was on a shelf.”

Nausea swirled in Molly’s stomach, skin flushing hot, then cold. She had a horrible feeling she knew exactly where the camera must’ve been—their last hotel suite had had an antique shelf against one wall of the bedroom, set up with old books in a way she’d found charming at the time.

“Where?” Fox demanded.

“Bedroom.”

Molly jumped from the sofa and ran for the toilet, barely making it there before her stomach revolted. Throwing up so hard it felt as if her entire digestive tract was being peeled with a grater, she was barely aware of Fox coming after her and pulling her hair back so it was no longer in her face, his voice a low, rough murmur as he stroked his hand down her back.

When there was simply nothing inside her any longer, he carried her shivering body into the shower and, setting the water temp close to boiling, held her until she’d stopped shaking. “I’m sorry,” he said, his tone raw. “I’m so sorry, Molly. I’ll kill the bastard who did this. I pr—”

Snapping out of the shock, she pressed her fingers to his lips. “No, don’t make that promise.” Because Fox had never once broken a promise to her… and in that reminder, her world tilted back on the correct axis.

She had no illusions, knew the coming days and weeks would be brutal, even knew there was a high chance she’d fall apart again, but if and when she did, Fox would be there. He was always there and he was the most important person in her world, the one for whom she’d do anything. Even walk back into her worst nightmare.

Cradling his face in her hands, she said, “I won’t allow this ugliness to destroy you, destroy us.”

He crushed her to him, the water pounding over them until steam filled the small enclosure. Warm through and through, not from the heat but from Fox’s embrace, she turned it off. Drying off and shrugging into a thick hotel robe while Fox stepped out to pull on his jeans over bare skin, she brushed her teeth to get rid of the last faint traces of her nausea.

“Come on.” She took Fox’s hand, her rock star having returned to lean in the doorway. “We need to talk to Thea and find out how bad it is, what she can do about it.”

Fox pulled her back against him, his eyes furious but his voice gentle as he said, “This person will pay. I promise you that.”

“As long as it’s legal,” Molly reminded him. “I don’t ever want to visit you behind bars.”

A grim nod. Instead of calling Thea back on the phone once they’d returned to the sofa, Molly used her tablet to connect face-to-face with her sister. Thea looked angrier than Molly had ever seen her, her cheekbones slicing against the smooth honey of her skin.

Her sister didn’t waste time asking how Molly was feeling. Instead, she gave them the cold, hard facts. “The major news organizations aren’t reprinting the still photos lifted from the videos, given that the images were taken in a place where you had an expectation of privacy. The blogs and online fan sites are also staying clear.”

Still grim, she continued, “However, one extra skeevy tabloid has printed two stills with a promise of more, with the video to be uploaded on their site in just over twenty-four hours, and the publicity’s gaining steam. Several other sites have scraped the photos for their own pages. It’s trending on all the main social media platforms, and even the places that haven’t printed the stills are carrying stories about them, so people are going looking.”

Able to feel Fox’s body vibrating with the rigid control he had over himself, Molly put her hand on his knee. “So,” she said, “there’s no way to close the gate, is there?”

“Fox’s legal team can hit every single site that reprinted the stills with a lawsuit, but that horse has bolted.” Her sister checked an incoming call on her phone, didn’t answer. “I’ve already been in touch with them about getting an injunction to block the video, but the tabloid is based in another jurisdiction and I have a feeling they’ll just move up the upload deadline the instant they get a whiff of legal action.” She thrust a hand through her hair. “Only reason they haven’t already uploaded is to maximize the publicity.”

Molly wondered if she was in shock, she was so calm, but now that the first horror had passed, she didn’t feel numb. No, she was becoming angrier with every second that elapsed—because this was hurting Fox, her protective, possessive lover, and no one got to hurt her man. “I want to see what they’ve already posted,” she said. “I need to know how bad this is.”

Thea didn’t argue, just forwarded her the articles, then waited as she and Fox opened the file. It made Molly’s nails dig into her palms to see an image of herself sitting up on her knees with Fox behind her, both of them nude. They were laughing, and he had his hands on her breasts. The tabloid hadn’t blacked out that part, probably because Fox’s fingers covered her nipples, but they’d put a rectangular block over her genital region, with the word “Explicit!” across it.

The second published still was a back view of Fox, nothing blocked out. In the background, she could be seen lying nude in the tumbled bed, her hair a wild mass around her head. In this one, they’d blacked out her breasts.

The text of the “article” was a collection of exclamation points: Think these images are tame?! Well they are!! We have access to incredibly hot and explicit pictures of Fox and his current squeeze getting down and dirty!! Check back in two hours for a fresh fix as we count down to our upload of the original sex tape!! Exclusive!!

“Only those two so far?” she managed to ask her sister through her fury, her mind filled with memories of that night, of the things they’d done. She was ashamed of none of it, would do it again, but only with Fox. The world had no right to violate the privacy of their bedroom.

“Yes.” Thea guzzled what was probably tar-thick coffee. “It looks like the tabloid must’ve bought exclusive rights to the video and they’re getting as much mileage out of it as they can.”

“Shut the fucking company down.” Fox’s voice was so cold Molly felt her skin prickle. “I don’t care how it’s done—tell legal to throw everything we have at the bastards.”

There was a knock on the hotel room door at that instant. Getting up, Fox walked over to open it. “You heard,” he said to Noah as the other man walked in. He’d clearly been pulled out of bed and wore only low-slung jeans, his blond hair a mess and his eyes chips of ice.

“Yeah. Let’s fuck the vultures up.” Coming to sit next to Molly on the sofa, he reached up to rub his knuckles over her cheek. “You holding up okay, Moll?”

“I’m tough,” she said, and it was, she was discovering, true.

Fox wrapped his arm around her waist again when he sat back down on her other side, his rage no less violent. “We’re talking about how to take the tabloid down.”

The guitarist nodded. “I might hate my old man, but the bastard is a shark,” he said, a mix of admiration and anger in his tone. “I called him as soon as I found out about this. He says for you to file a criminal complaint as fast as possible.”

“Right.” Thea nodded. “So anyone who does anything with the video risks falling foul of the criminal justice system, not just civil law. I don’t know if it’ll work with the tabloid based outside the country, but it’s better than nothing.”

They filed the complaint. Meanwhile, Noah tapped his father’s contacts to put a crack private investigator on the trail of the piece of scum who’d decided to use Fox and Molly to land a big payday.

“Someone in the security company either did this or was in on it,” Fox gritted out. “Maybe the same ‘real man’ who let in the groupie, probably for a fucking blow job.” Calling the head of the security firm, a former Green Beret he knew personally, Fox made no effort to hide his fury.

Apparently, that fury was shared—they had a name within the hour, after a check of the corridor surveillance footage from the hotel in question showed one of the guards walking into their suite during a concert. He was spotted going back inside minutes after Fox and Molly checked out, probably to retrieve the camera.

He hadn’t been behind the groupie however; that was traced to a newly promoted guard whom his livid boss had just busted back down to mall patrol. The only people now in the band’s security team had been with the firm for years, and all had also worked more than once for Schoolboy Choir. As for the man behind the video, he’d disappeared, but Molly knew he’d be found—greed this ugly didn’t make for intelligence.

“This is your nightmare, isn’t it?” Fox said hours later, once they were alone again, the suite having been swept for any surveillance equipment in the interim.

“Who does that?” she said, blood hot where she stood by the window. “Who thinks it’s all right to spy on people in their most private space?” She fisted her hands on the sweatpants she’d pulled on—along with a zipped hoodie—for the visit by the cops. “Who thinks that way?”

“Scum.” Fox walked over, eyes shadowed and voice taut as he said, “You gonna run?”

“No, I’m going to fight.” Running out on Fox was simply not, and wouldn’t ever be, an option. “Never again is anyone going to turn me into prey—and I refuse to allow them to hurt you. We’ll kick their butts.”

Fox’s arms locked so tight around her that she couldn’t breathe for a second. Tugging back her head after easing his hold a fraction, he claimed her mouth. His kiss was wild possessiveness, unrelenting demand… but his body, it shuddered. Running her hands down his back, she held him close.

If she ever came face-to-face with the man responsible for putting that look in Fox’s eyes, as if he was readying himself to lose her, Molly would beat the bastard bloody. “No running away,” she said when their lips parted. “Not today, not tomorrow, not any day to come.”

“My tough, beautiful Molly.” His body shuddered again, his eyes dark. “I’m so fucking glad you’re mine.”

Molly held Fox’s words bang against her heart, her fingers locked bloodlessly tight with his as they stood ready to walk out the hotel’s main door midmorning. She’d been running on anger and adrenaline since four a.m., had, until a few minutes ago, believed she had the tools to deal with the media mauling about to happen. Now, with the horde only meters away, she wasn’t so sure. Her stomach churned, her chest painful beneath the peach top that she loved, the one with the softly tied bow at the throat.

“You sure we have to do this?” she asked Fox.

A squeeze of her hand. “We take the offensive,” he said, his confidence and determination a powerful force. “We control the situation, and we damn well stand proud.”

It was the same thing Charlotte had said when Molly called her best friend.

“Don’t you dare let them shame you.” Charlie’s voice had been fierce. “Go out there and show the world that Molly Webster is a force to be reckoned with. Also, try not to smack anyone—you sound like you’d really like to.”

Molly realized the anger was still there, embers burning beneath the nerves. “Charlie told me not to smack anyone,” she said to Fox, “but I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop myself if a reporter gets out of line with you.” Fox had focused only on her pain, shrugging off the exposure of his own body, but Molly was fuming over the way this incident had torn open his scars. “Don’t let me do anything dumb.”

His dimple appeared, her Fox back with a vengeance. “Follow my lead,” he said, and hauled her in for a deep kiss, his free hand covering the side of her face in the hold that always made her feel cherished. “Ready?”

Chapter 37

“Yes.” There was nothing she wouldn’t do for him.

Looking over his shoulder, Fox nodded at Noah, David, and Abe, who were set to follow.

She’d thought the distance to the hotel entrance would seem endless, but the five of them were walking through the automatic glass doors what felt like a second later. David flanked Fox, while Noah and Abe stood next to her, a solid wall of friendship and loyalty. Charlie might not have been physically present, but Molly could hear her best friend’s voice in her mind, telling her not to smack anyone. It almost made her smile.

The mass of reporters, photographers, and cameramen—corralled off the hotel steps by a wall of black-suited security—began to scream questions the instant they spotted Fox.

“Spin is everything,” Thea had said to Molly and Fox in a call a quarter of an hour ago. “Make the world see you as an ordinary couple trying to have a relationship under the spotlight—and point out that this could happen to anyone.”

Her sister had barely taken a breath before continuing. “Allow them to glimpse your anger but don’t look hounded. The scent of blood only makes predators hungrier—shrug and say you’ll deal, but that the ones behind this will pay. No one messes with you and gets away with it.”

Now, looking at Fox as he stood in front of the cameras, ignoring the screaming until the media people began to nudge one another to shut up, Molly thought Thea had been wasting her breath. He’d do exactly what he’d do.

“Fox! Fox!” One reporter’s voice rose above the other fading ones. “Do you have a statement about the recent intimate photos of you and your”—the slightest pause—“lover?”

“Yeah, I have a statement,” Fox said, his tone a growl.

The entire rabble went quiet.

“Being caught with a gorgeous, sexy woman having one hell of a good time isn’t exactly something I’m going to apologize for.” He paused as the reporters laughed, the tension dropping in a steep dive. “Especially when that woman is Molly.”

Heads swung toward her, questions congesting the air.

“Are you going to introduce us?” another reporter managed to shout above the wall of noise.

“World, meet Molly.” Gripping her jaw, Fox kissed her full on the mouth, complete with tongue. “Molly, world.”

Blushing, she found herself half-laughing as she faced the cameras. “I’m going to kill you,” she muttered under her breath when his hand landed on her butt.

His smile turned wicked.

“Molly! Molly! Are you as unworried about this as Fox?”

“Well, I did get caught in bed with a rock god. I’m real sorry.” She didn’t know where the words came from, but they were the right ones from the way the reporters began to hoot and clap.

Fox held up a hand when they would’ve shouted more questions, his other one hooked into the back pocket of her jeans. “One thing I want to say—Molly and I, we’re never going to be sorry about what we do between the sheets.”

Another wave of laughter and conspiratorial grins.

“But,” Fox continued, “I’m the possessive type. I share my music, my voice, and I don’t think anyone will argue when I say I’ve been more than open when it comes to interviews”—a round of nods—“but the one thing I will not share is Molly.”

He waited to let that sink in before continuing, the ruthless edge back in his voice. “No matter how long it takes, I will crush both the voyeur who decided to get his pathetic rocks off by violating our bedroom, and the scum-sucking site that put the footage up.”

He held up his hand again when the media would’ve asked more questions. “I have a request of Schoolboy Choir fans—we’ve always been accessible to you guys in every way we could be. Now I’m asking you to honor the years we’ve been on this rock-and-roll ride together by not sharing or reposting this content. This isn’t about the music, it’s about hurting my girl, and that is not fucking okay.”

Molly wanted so badly to kiss him at that instant that she almost didn’t hear the question that floated into the air as they turned to leave.

“Molly! Is that a Kiwi accent?”

She knew there was no point in prevaricating; her whole life would soon be an open book to the media, the past she’d tried so hard to outrun thrown in her face. “Yes,” she said, her fingers locked once more with Fox’s.

“I told you you’d handle it.” Fox closed his arms around her the instant they were alone inside their brand-new luxury coach.

As of now, Schoolboy Choir would no longer be staying in hotels during the tour. Aside from the driving section up front, which was sectioned off by a soundproofed wall, each coach had a furnished living area and bedroom, as well as a section for the facilities. It reminded Molly of the small apartment she’d rented right out of university, neat and functional, though without much extra space.

It would require some logistics to get the coaches to concert locations on time, with the band often having to fly ahead, but that was a minor issue compared to the guaranteed privacy. Each coach could only be accessed by a thumbprint scan.

“I thought you were incredible.” Nuzzling her nose against his, she smiled. “You know how to play the media like you do an audience.”

“I just laid it out like it is, no bullshit.” Tender hands tucking her hair back behind her ears. “I would’ve come after you, you know. If you’d run. I wouldn’t have been a good guy, wouldn’t have let you live your life away from me. I’ll always come after you.”

“Hey.” Rising on tiptoe at the words that sounded as if they were ripped from his soul, she kissed him, her hands cradling his face. “I told you, I’m in this for the long haul.” Molly would repeat that promise until he believed her, until he stopped expecting her to give up on him. “You and me, we’re a unit. They’re going to start calling us Folly any day now.”

“Smart-ass.” A playful slap on her butt, the strain fading from his expression.

Stealing another kiss, she said, “Let’s go into the bedroom and christen this hotel on wheels.” Fox was a physical man and Molly was more than willing to use their intimate connection to show him how much he meant to her.

“No need to rush into the bedroom for that.” He backed her against the wall, each word accompanied by a kiss. “We have to do a thorough job.” His hands sliding up under her top to cover her breasts. “It’s a very big coach.”

“I guess”—Molly gasped as he fondled the lace-cupped curves with blunt masculine approval—“we’ll have to take it one bite at a time.”

“Perfect idea.” Strong white teeth gripping the skin just above the pulse in her neck before he shifted his attention to divesting her of her top. Unraveling the pretty bow with a tug, he made quick work of the buttons, and the top was soon on the carpet.

Two more seconds and her bra of blush-colored lace met the same fate.

“You’re far too good at that.”

Dimple showing, he dropped a kiss on one pebbled nipple. “I practiced to get good just for you.”

“Smooth, Zachary Fox, real smooth.” Stroking her hands through the cool silk of his hair, she sucked in a breath as he took a leisurely bite of her right breast. “Do that again.”

Fox’s mouth curved against her skin before he did as ordered, licking his tongue over her flesh. “Want to play a little?” he asked when he raised his head.

Molly bit her lower lip, sudden bubbles of agitation in her blood. “This coach is secure?”

Steel glinted in Fox’s eyes, his hand heavy and comforting on her lower back. “It came directly from the dealer and I watched the head of the security firm personally go over it with a fine-tooth comb. You’re safe.”

Her heart ached. Always, Fox thought of her, though the man who’d invaded their privacy in such a gutless way had harmed him just as much. “Yes,” she whispered, wondering how she’d gotten this lucky. “I’d like to play.”

Bracing his forearms on the wall on either side of her head, Fox pressed his mouth to her own, his body heat making her want to rub up against him like a cat. The kiss was wet, tangled, their tongues licking against each other until her breath was lost, her heartbeat a rapid stutter in her chest.

Fox wasn’t in much better condition, his erection pushing into her abdomen and his breath harsh in her ear as he said, “Trust me, baby.”

Bending at her nod, he picked up her blouse, but when he would’ve twisted it as if to make a tie, she gripped his wrist. “Don’t you dare. I love that top.” It was gasped out.

“God, you’re strict.” One big hand on her breast, he leaned in to kiss her again. “That turns me on.” Nipping at her lower lip, he dropped her top back to the carpet and moved his hands to his belt buckle.

The funny, fluttery feeling in her stomach, ignited by watching him undo the buckle and pull the belt through the loops, only grew when he said, “Turn around, Molly.”

That tone. Molly couldn’t do anything but obey, the finely textured carpet that covered the walls of the coach deliciously abrasive against her aroused nipples.

“Hands behind your back.”

She obeyed again, even knowing it would leave her at his mercy. Somewhere along the way, trusting Fox had become a bone-deep impulse. The leather was warm, strong against her skin. Again and again she felt the sensation of movement—he’d wrapped the belt around her overlapping wrists multiple times. A brush of metal, the buckle clinking softly for a second before he pulled the belt tight, rendering her arms helpless.

“Too tight?” His jaw grazed the skin of her shoulder. “Studs not pushing too deep where your wrists press against your back?”

Molly shook her head as he caressed her lower curves, her throat dry.

“That’s good. Anytime you want out, just say so.” Chest pressed to her back, he said, “You got it?”

“Yes.” Molly curled her fingers against his zipper, his own hand slipping around to cup her breast before he ran it down her stomach to the waistband of her skirt, following it in a teasing line to the back.

Slipping the small black button there out of its hole, he brushed his thumb over the skin below. “You’re so soft, Molly.” The zipper being tugged down with those husky words. Shaped to her body, the skirt didn’t sag but had to be pulled down—which Fox did slowly, so slowly, his kisses getting lower down her spine.

She shivered.

“Cold?” A breath of hot air against her skin as the skirt fell to her ankles, followed by a tender kiss to the delicate crease of skin where her buttock met her thigh. “Better?”

“More,” she said, shameless.

But being shameless with Fox had its rewards. She got a second kiss, long caressing strokes of those rough-skinned hands over her thighs. “Lift your leg.” Another kiss after she obeyed. “Now this one.”

An instant later, the skirt was gone from around her ankles, leaving her clad in nothing but black heels and panties of blush-colored lace that matched the bra already on the floor. Fox had given her the decadent lingerie as a gift, as he gave her so many things. She truly was spoiled. Most of all because he was hers.

“Did I ever tell you I love taking you while you’re wearing heels?” Kisses up her spine as he rose to his feet behind her.

Sucking in a shallow breath, she said, “You might have mentioned it once or twice.”

His laughter low, masculine, intimate, Fox drew her hair over one shoulder and, sliding his hands between the wall and her skin, palmed her breasts. Her sensitive flesh was crushed against his hold by the heavy press of his body, but it wasn’t painful—no, it felt wonderful. Especially when he drew one hand back to undo the button on his jeans, lowered the zipper what sounded like halfway and, taking her bound hands, tucked them inside.

Molly moaned. “You went commando before a press conference?” Hot and thick and erect, he felt too big to fit inside her, but he did. He always did, and the fit was perfect.

“Why the hell not?” Running the fingers of one hand lightly over her neck and shoulder, he rolled and tugged at her nipples with his other. “How would you like me, Molly? Like this.” He ground himself against her lace-covered behind, her hands trapped in between. “Or should I throw you on your back, spread your thighs wide and pound into you while you lie helpless?”

Molly squeezed her fingers on the part of him she held, to his groan. “Whatever you want,” she whispered.

“Oh, I like the things you say.” A firm tug on her nipples before he caressed one hand down her body and into her panties from the front.

It was a bold, self-assured hold, that of a man who knew the woman he touched belonged to him. She could feel herself growing wetter against his palm with every second that passed, his mouth busy on her throat and shoulder, his free hand continuing to roll and tug at her nipples, shooting darts of sensation directly to her clit—which she tried to rub against his hand, but her position wasn’t quite right, and she could only manage the most frustrating of brushes.

“Fox.”

“You said I could do what I liked.” It was a gravelly purr. “And I want to tease you.”

Molly whimpered, tried to clench her fingers on him, but he’d already stepped back, her hands sliding away from all that rigid male heat. “You want me, baby?”

“Yes.” Her fingers curled into her palms.

Sounds behind her—the light thud of shoes being kicked off, fabric rustling, a zipper moving the final few inches. “I’m naked,” he told her a minute later. “I’ve got my hands on what you want. I’m stroking it hard and fast, rougher than you ever do.” A quick kiss to her nape before he stepped out of reach once more. “That’s not a complaint—I love your hands on me. Shit, I jerk off to the thought of you jerking me off.”

A palm pressing between her shoulder blades when she would’ve turned. “Nu-huh. Don’t make me tie your ankles too… or maybe I should.”

“I’ll fall.”

He spanked her on one of her bottom cheeks, the ripple of sensation arcing through her flesh. “As if I’d let that happen.” Hooking his fingers in the sides of her panties, he tugged them down and off.

She felt fabric around her ankles the next instant. “It’s my T-shirt, not your top”—Fox’s voice, low and with that gritty undertone that made him so powerful as lead singer—“so don’t get mad.”

Hobbled by the tie and in a slightly unbalanced position against the wall, she had to stay where she was or risk taking them both down, because Fox was right—he’d never let her fall.

“You have no idea how hot you look.” A kiss to her nape. “My strong, smart, fucking perfect Molly.”

Heart aching at the stark emotional power of his words, she drank in the sight of him when he stepped back and scooped her up in his arms. The words she wanted to say flirted on the tip of her tongue, words that meant everything to her, but that Fox could well reject.

Chapter 38

Carrying her to the bedroom with effortless ease before she could give in to temptation, Fox said, “I wouldn’t want you to abrade your skin,” and placed her carefully on her front, making sure her face was turned to the side and her hair out of the way. “Okay?”

His tenderness undid her. “Yes,” she whispered, feeling something break inside her—old pain, old fear, the last hidden fragments crumbled into dust at the brush of his callused fingertip across her cheek. “Fox.”

“I have you, baby.” Maneuvering her lower body until she was on her knees, her butt in the air and her face against the sheets, he ran his hands down her curves with unhidden pleasure. “Now this would make a pretty picture.” His words turned the ugliness of what had happened into something beautiful, claimed it for their own.

An open-mouthed kiss on her lower back, his hand pushing between her thighs again, his fingers sinfully busy. Brought to the edge of what felt like a shattering orgasm, she screamed when he stopped… only to start again a minute later, after he’d eased her down from the high… then he repeated the cycle.

Until she was an incoherent pile of trembling woman, every one of her senses primed. That was when he drove into her. The fact her thighs were pressed together by the tie around her ankles made the thick heat of him feel like an invasion, hot and welcome. She was branded, she was owned, she was taken.

Molly came, sobbing her pleasure. And kept coming as he pounded into her again and again, his fingers digging into her hips and buttocks. When he gripped her hair in his hand near the end and tugged up her head, the pulling sensation on her scalp sent her over the edge.

She came so hard she passed out… but not before she heard Fox groan her name as he slammed deep into her one last time.

Molly rose to consciousness cradled in Fox’s lap, her rock star sitting on the bed with his back against the headboard. Her bindings were gone, his heartbeat a hammer under her ear as he ran one hand along the curve of her spine, the other down her arm. Her own heartbeat not exactly steady and her skin sheened with perspiration, she snuggled closer.

“Hey.” Fox tipped up her chin. “You okay?”

Seeing the concern in his gaze, she found the energy to reach up and kiss his jaw, his stubble coarse under her lips. “I can officially say that was the hardest orgasm I’ve ever had.” The confession got her a deliciously male, flagrantly smug smile that wrapped another thread around her already claimed heart. “I used to read that in romance novels and scoff. I mean, who passes out from an orgasm?”

“My Molly.”

“Your Molly.” Her veins sluggish from the aftereffects, she ran her fingernails down his chest in a light caress. “Do you have to report in for anything today?” There might not be a concert tonight, but the band was constantly fine-tuning the show, part of what made them so good at what they did.

“Nothing that can’t wait.” He kissed the top of her head. “Do you want to sleep?”

Molly nodded, knuckling her suddenly heavy eyes. “It’s been a crazy day.” She’d expected to feel scared, humiliated and broken after what had happened, but instead she was content, happy… and proud.

“I survived the world seeing naked pictures of me and knowing they might see a whole heck of a lot more,” she said, sitting up to look into Fox’s eyes. When the green grew stormy, she shook her head and cradled his face in her hands. “I discovered I’m stronger than I thought. You know what else I realized?”

A shake of his head, his expression unreadable.

“That we don’t blame and fracture when the going gets tough. We don’t abandon each other.” As her father had abandoned her mother in so many ways. “We stand together, and Fox, if we can do that now,” she whispered, “can you imagine how strong we’ll be in the years to come?”

His smile creased his cheeks, his gaze potent with emotion as he said, “I see you in every dream I have of the future.”

“I love you.” It spilled out, what she’d held inside for so long because she knew that for Fox, those three words in that particular order meant loneliness, neglect, and rejection.

He froze, but Molly wasn’t about to allow her rock star to carry this hurt inside him forever. “I know that statement doesn’t have good memories for you,” she said, eyes locked to his. “That’s why we’ll make new ones together.”

“Might take a hell of a long time.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” No fear, no regrets, no other always but Fox. “Just remember, this is me, Molly, saying it to you. And it means my heart.”

He brushed his thumb over her cheekbone, his strained muscles easing beneath her. “Say it again.”

“I love you,” she said, understanding on a storm of emotion that this was the first time in his life he’d heard the words from someone he trusted not to kick him in the heart. “So much. Until it hurts and the hurt is one I want to feel forever.”

They slept intertwined, warm and safe—and woke to another phone call from Thea, this time on Molly’s phone. Molly immediately put her on speaker. “Thea?”

“You’ll never believe what’s happened!” The excitement in her sister’s voice had them sharing a confused glance, especially when she continued on to say, “I mean, I’m looking at it and I can’t believe it.”

“Stop rambling and get to the point,” Fox growled.

But her sister remained ebullient. “I always knew Schoolboy Choir had some dedicated fans, but this is unreal.”

“Thea.”

“Sorry, Moll.” Thea laughed. “That tabloid site that published the photos? It’s down.”

“How?” Fox asked.

“Hacked, and a post on a major online bulletin board says it was done by the band’s fans. Several other sites that scraped the images have also gone down.” Thea sounded like she had the most gleeful smile on her face. “All of a sudden anyone else who reposted the photos is hauling ass to get them off.”

“Will this blow back on Fox?” Molly frowned.

“No, I asked the legal team. Everyone heard what Fox requested of Schoolboy Choir fans—they did this on their own initiative.”

The print version of the tabloid remained, Molly thought, but the worst they could do there was print stills with the explicit sections blacked out. Though, if the tabloid’s management had any sense, they’d stay clear even of that. No paper could survive only on print; the tabloid needed to have an online presence, and printing the photos would no doubt be seen as an aggressive move by the band’s fans.

“You haven’t even heard the best part.” So much glee Thea could’ve been a cat who’d found a whole vat of cream.

“There’s more?”

“Get your tablet so you have access to a bigger screen.”

It only took Molly a few seconds. “I have it.”

When Thea told her to look up a major entertainment blog, she was leery. “Thea, I don’t—”

“Trust me, this is a good one.”

Arm around her waist, Fox pressed a kiss to her shoulder, and it gave her the strength she needed. The front page of the site blinked to life on her screen—and it was dominated by a photograph of a grinning Fox kissing Molly on the steps of the hotel this morning.

FOX’S TAKEN, LADIES!!

The accompanying article was relatively small, but it mentioned that Molly was from New Zealand, a librarian, and that her father had been a “disgraced politician.” However, they’d spun the facts so instead of her family’s past being a tawdry piece of gossip, Molly came out looking plucky and strong, her and Fox’s romance a fairytale ending to a tough life.

Astonished, she said, “Did you do this?” to Thea, as Fox glanced at his phone, then stepped out to make a call.

“No, Molly, you did. The media, and more importantly the fans, are charmed by you—you couldn’t have done better if I’d scripted everything.” Open delight. “God, you were so cute. You even blushed!”

“I’m going to strangle you soon,” Molly muttered.

“Like I care. Just keep on being yourself, being the ordinary girl who snagged a rock god.” A pause. “Hmm, I’m going to feed that line to the press. Oh, if you want to get caught being adorable with Fox now and then, that’d be—”

Molly hung up on her laughing sister, then looked at Fox when he came to sit back down beside her on the bed. “The video’s still out there.”

“Yeah, but what dumbass will upload it now, especially when the man responsible has just been arrested and confessed.” He held up his phone. “That’s the message that came in.” Running his hand down her back, he said, “Even if someone is stupid enough to touch it, the piece of shit told the cops he only got about ten minutes of usable footage.”

“What?” Molly turned, heart thumping.

“Turns out he wasn’t a technical genius. No motion sensors. He just switched on the camera and left it running.”

“And”—Molly’s eyes widened—“we came in super late that day.” A tanker had spilled its load not far from the concert site, leading to traffic being held up for over two hours.

“The scum couldn’t get back into the suite to reset the camera because his shift had ended.” Fox closed his hand over her nape. “That’s probably why the tabloid was building up hype—they were hoping for a big surge of initial customers paying to watch it before word got out about how tame it was.”

Molly exhaled because Fox was right. Even if the video did leak one day, all anyone would see was a couple in love, cuddling and kissing and laughing. After surviving the exposure of the still photographs, photographs that could never be totally erased from the Internet, Molly knew she’d be able to handle that. “At least now,” she said to Fox, “you have the compulsory rock star sex tape.”

He squeezed her neck for the smart-aleck comment. “I can’t have that video getting out.” It was a snarl. “My reputation as a badass who does dirty, nasty things to women would be in shreds.”

Giggling, she leaned into him, her hand on his ridged abdomen. “The media likes us now, but they could turn on us in a heartbeat, couldn’t they?”

Fox looked down into her face as she looked up into his. “Yeah, so we don’t live for them, we live for us.”

“Us,” she whispered, her lips parting for his kiss.

The concert the next night blew off the roof. Schoolboy Choir kept playing for two hours beyond the official end time, accepting screamed-out requests from the sold-out crowd. Noah and Abe took the mike a number of times and the crowd chanted “Da-vid, Da-vid” until the drummer surrendered and laughingly added his voice to one of the band’s popular songs.

Molly was surprised to find that David could sing, and quite well. All the men could, though none had the ferocious power of Fox’s vocal cords. But no one could pound a beat like David, caress the keys like Abe, or the guitar strings like Noah. Their diverse range of talents was what made the band so incredible as a unit.

“Thank you!” Fox yelled into the mike after what they’d announced as their final song. “You’ve been an amazing audience—and thanks for some other things I’ll get in trouble for if I mention them too specifically!”

The crowd roared.

And the band did one more song, pure unfettered hard rock, before leaving the stage. Fox dragged her into a kiss the instant they were clear. He was sweaty and pumped and gorgeous.

“Fuck, man,” Noah muttered with a scowl. “I really need a girl backstage.”

Fox snorted. “You have about three hundred girls lined up outside your door every night.”

“Yeah, yeah, but it’s not the same as having a Molly.” The guitarist swung his arm around Molly and smacked a kiss on her cheek before heading farther backstage.

“He’s right,” Fox said, dimple on display, “it’s not the same.”

She had to kiss it, to his chuckle. “You must be exhausted,” she said afterward, exhilarated from having witnessed what she knew was a concert that would go down in rock history. “Starving, too.”

“It hasn’t hit yet—I’m riding on adrenaline.” Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, his energy sky-high from the rush of performing, he headed toward his dressing room. The concert attendees who’d won a backstage pass through a radio contest hadn’t yet been escorted up, so it was an easy walk.

David and Abe were standing outside their rooms, swigging on chilled bottles of water. Abe threw a bottle to Fox, who caught it one-handed. Noah appeared in his open doorway the next instant. “That might be the best concert we’ve ever done.”

“I hope the crew got it all on tape.” David glanced at Molly after she returned from Fox’s dressing room with a fresh T-shirt for him, his own thrown out into the crowd as had become tradition. “What did you think, Moll?”

“Incredible, a legend in the making.” The entire crew had stopped and listened as much as they could, not wanting to miss out. “Now what you need to do is get some food into your bodies, followed by a good night’s rest.”

Abe, David, and Noah grinned at her before saying, “Yes, Molly,” in unison.

Well aware she was being teased, she made a face at them.

“Don’t worry, boys.” Fox tucked Molly to his side. “She’ll be far too busy to hassle you tonight or tomorrow morning.”

Molly elbowed him. “You are so not getting lucky tonight.”

Noah hooted just as one of the crew called out a warning that the backstage fans were about to come in. Leaving the band in the corridor, Molly slipped out of sight. She had no problem with being known as Fox’s girl, but she had no desire whatsoever to be a celebrity.

Fox winked at her as she entered the dressing room, and she knew he understood. Just as she understood that he thrived in the spotlight, in the surge of energy that came with performing live, and in interacting with the band’s fans. If he’d needed it all the time, they would’ve never worked, but he was a musician at heart, liked the peace of home to create.

So they fit.

Chapter 39

Her rock star did get lucky that night—as if she had any chance of resisting him. She kissed his throat when he collapsed on top of her, tasting the salt and untamed masculinity of him, her fingers weaving through his hair.

On her wrist sparkled the white fire of a diamond bracelet he’d given her before the concert. Molly was almost afraid to ask what it was worth—she’d probably never wear it, she’d be so worried about losing a stone. “Don’t,” she murmured when he pushed himself up to his elbows. “I like you there.”

A grin, his hand fisting in her hair to hold her in place for his kiss. “I need to get some more fluids into my body. Especially since you’ve just wrung me dry.” Another slow kiss before he left her pleasured and sated body—to her shuddering moan—and walked out of the bedroom area of the coach. “You want a drink, baby?” he called out.

“Yes, please.”

He came back with a sports drink for himself and a bottle of lime-flavored water for her, since she didn’t like the taste of the sports drinks. Sitting up, she drank as he guzzled his standing up. Molly enjoyed the view, a smile on her face. Tattooed and muscled and all man, Fox could walk around naked as much as he pleased—for her eyes only.

Finishing off his bottle, he put it on the bedside table and opened up the safe built into the bedroom closet. “What’re you looking for?” she asked, her attention on his gorgeous shoulders, and on the puzzle tattoo on his arm that she’d almost totally figured out.

It made her goofy with happiness that she knew him that well.

“This.” Withdrawing the flat blue box, he got back into bed as her mouth dropped open.

“You didn’t get me something else?” She put aside her own bottle.

“The bracelet’s part of a set. I wanted to give you the necklace when you were naked so I could see it lying between your breasts.”

Her lips twitched. “You are such a guy.”

Grinning unabashedly, he hooked the necklace around her neck. “Oh yeah, I like this visual.”

It was a simple pattern, two strands knotted together to hang along the line of her cleavage. Timeless, classic… and from the fire in the stones, each was of flawless clarity. “I’m going to pretend this is cubic zirconia,” she said, “so I can wear it without freaking out.”

A glint in his eye, Fox tumbled her onto her back. His hand was warm on the mound of her breast as he touched her in a way that said he was simply enjoying being with her. “Didn’t I tell you? All your jewelry is fake.”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire.” She pretended to punch his jaw, then wrapped her arms around his neck. “It’s stunning, Fox. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” His thumb brushing over her nipple, the light in his eyes dimming as he said, “You can ask me for anything you know. I want to give you the world.”

“I know.” Molly caressed his nape, unsure what was wrong. “The fact is you’re the best present I could’ve ever received. I’m not a greedy or possessive person, except when it comes to you—there, I’m afraid I’m awful.”

“I like your kind of awful.” An intense look, his voice rough. “Always be possessive and greedy about me, Molly.”

“Something’s bothering you.” She could sense it with every cell in her body, had even before the concert. “Talk to me.”

Bracing himself on his forearms above her, his lower body tangled with her own, he blew out a breath. “I got a call from Tawanna this morning to say my half sister Lauren’s been trying to get in touch with me again.” A hardness to his jaw. “You saw her right after Abe was hospitalized.”

Molly connected the dots. “Linen shift, shiny bob, called you Zachary?” At his nod, she remembered what he’d said then, about everyone wanting something, and her protective instincts bristled. “What does she want?”

“She’s trying to sell me some sob story about her husband losing his job and their house being repossessed by the bank.” His expression was grim. “I checked it out the first time she asked months ago. They have enough money coming in from investments to live a stress-free, normal life, but she’s used to luxury. Enough to lower herself to asking me to support them.”

Aware of Fox’s loyalty, his generosity, Molly knew his half sister must’ve done something horrible to cause the breach that clearly existed between them. She took a guess. “Has Lauren ever made any effort to stay in touch except to ask for money?”

“Hell no.” Fox snorted. “I reached out after she turned twenty-one, figured maybe she hadn’t ever been in touch herself because it would create friction with her parents. I wasn’t planning to mess that up, just wanted to know her.”

Molly nodded, her heart aching. She knew exactly what it meant to find a sister; her relationship with Thea was an integral part of her life. So she could understand Fox’s need to reconnect, hoped desperately this story would have a happy ending—even though Fox’s tone made it clear the hope was a futile one.

“You know what she said?” Fox’s shoulders tensed. “That she didn’t associate with trash like me and she’d appreciate it if I didn’t flaunt our relationship, as it might taint her reputation in the circles in which she moved.”

“That bitch.” Molly put one of her hands on Fox’s cheek. “You don’t have anything to feel guilty about then.” When he would’ve argued, she pressed her fingers to his lips. “You do feel guilt—because you’re a good man with a huge heart.” A heart strong enough to have survived the rejection and neglect of his childhood. “But here’s the thing: you might be related by genetics, but she’s a stranger to you in every other way.”

Fox’s expression was intent. “You’re not going to tell me to make nice with my family, all that stuff?”

“Lauren isn’t your family. She’s toxic, and you can’t let her get to you.” Weaving her fingers into his hair, Molly said, “I’m your family. Noah, Abe, David, and Kit are your family.” She picked up his wrist, kissed the strange characters above his pulse point, which he’d finally confessed were from a made-up language he’d created as a lonely eight-year-old. “You told me this means loyalty. That’s what family is, whether of blood or of the heart.”

She kissed the characters again. “If Lauren has children later on, and you want to reach out to your nieces and nephews, I’ll go with you.” Molly wouldn’t blame the children for the sins of their mother. “But Lauren doesn’t deserve you.”

He settled more heavily against her, the green of his irises rich against the jet-black of his pupils. “There’s something else I haven’t told you.”

“I’ll spank you later. Now talk.”

It made him laugh, his shoulders shaking. “So fucking strict.” Thrusting a hand into her hair, he kissed her the pure Fox way, all tongue and sex.

She was close to melting when he sat up and brought her into his lap so they were face-to-face. “When I was eighteen,” he said, “I decided to give my mother another chance.”

Molly’s throat grew thick. She knew how much courage it must’ve taken for him to do that. Wrapping her arms around him, she held him as he spoke, but to her surprise, though she’d expected bleak pain, his tone was even, his eyes unshadowed.

“I walked up to her front door, knocked.” He ran his knuckles down her back. “The maid who answered said my mother was in the park with Zachary.”

“What?”

“Yeah, that was my reaction.” Still no anger, no hurt. “I walked over to the park, and there she was playing with a little boy who called her Mommy. She redid her life, Molly. Redid me.”

Molly had no words for the cruelty of it. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “Your mother has no idea of the incredible man her son grew into, a son she’ll never know, and that’s her loss, Fox, not yours.”

Fox kissed her throat, his lip ring brushing over her skin as he made his way back up to her mouth. “It was a kick to the guts then, and for a long time,” he said. “It stopped hurting the first day you smiled at me and I knew you adored me just as I am. My sweet and honest and fucking sexy Molly who means it when she tells me she loves me and who comes knocking if I brood.”

Lower lip quivering and eyes burning, Molly locked her legs around his hips, her hands on his shoulders. “I fall more in love with you each and every day,” she whispered. “I will hurt anyone who causes you pain.” If Lauren ever showed her face in front of Molly again, she’d better watch out.

Fox’s lips curved, one big hand spreading on her lower back, the other curling around her nape. “No one can, not when I’ve got my Molly-love armor.” Another kiss, his cock growing hard against her. “Enough of the bullshit. I want you.”

“I thought I wrung you dry?” she teased, letting the subject of his mother and sister go. Fox wasn’t the kind of man to worry things to death—what mattered was that he trusted her enough to tell her about something she had a feeling no one else knew. If he ever needed to talk about it again, he would.

Because she was his Molly.

“You did,” he now said, tipping her flat on the bed and straddling her body. “I’m a broken man.”

“Poor Foxie.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Someone wants to be in trouble.” Grabbing her wrists, he used his other hand to shake out a pillow from the case. She knew that case was going to be used to tie her wrists together before he shifted higher up her body and pinned her hands to the bed frame.

Excitement hot and dark under her skin, she looked down from his face as he knotted the fabric around her wrists… to realize his erection was within reach of her mouth. Since Molly Webster, good girl, was now Molly Webster, good girl with a naughty streak, she leaned up and sucked the blunt tip into her mouth.

“Christ!” Fox’s hands slammed into the bed frame, the entire bed shaking. “That was not in the plan,” he gritted out, one hand sliding down to cradle her head so she’d be in a better position to take more of him.

Unrepentant, she licked her tongue along the vein plump against her tongue. He thrust once, twice, each thrust shallow, before pulling out, his cock gleaming wet. “Your mouth should be illegal.” Shifting down, he spread her thighs wide and bent to give her a taste of her own medicine.

A single minute and Molly arched up off the bed and against his mouth, her skin glimmering with perspiration. He showed no mercy, holding her spread wide as he continued to lick and suck until she was whimpering. Only then did he release her throbbing clit to flick his tongue almost delicately around her entrance.

“So,” he said, lifting his head, “how should I punish you?” The lean dimple in his cheek invited her kiss, the ring in his lip her favorite plaything.

An ache in her heart, Molly didn’t want to continue the game all of a sudden. “Later,” she whispered, her breasts rising and falling in a choppy rhythm. “I need to feel you inside me.” Needed to hold him close. “I love you.”

Expression altering to raw tenderness, he rose above her and tugged the knot in the pillowcase open. “You are such a bad girl. That’s the second time you’ve messed with my plans.” He dipped his head. The taste on his tongue her own, an erotic intimacy between them, he put one hand on the inside of her thigh and pushed into her, slow and relentless.

It drew a sound of acute pleasure from within her throat, her fingers buried in his hair and her legs locked around his hips. Fox kissed her throughout the loving, his forearms braced on either side of her head, his tattoos familiar and unique.

“My Molly.” It was a guttural sound against her ear as he came in her arms.

When Molly got a message from Fox two days later to say he’d be out with Noah for a couple of hours, she didn’t think too much of it. If he wanted to go off and do manly stuff with Noah, she didn’t mind. Just like he didn’t mind if she spent an hour on the phone with Charlotte or went out with Thea when her sister flew in.

Now she decided to e-mail Charlotte before getting to work at the little desk Fox had found for her; it fit perfectly in one corner of the living area of the coach.

It turned out Charlotte was online, so they video-chatted. Her best friend’s life had become very interesting of late.

Molly ended the session with a smile on her face so wide it was probably blinding. “Go, T-Rex,” she said with a little fist bump before forcing herself to concentrate on her work. Her eye fell on the bowl of strawberries on the desk as she opened her laptop and her smile grew impossibly wider. Diamonds were one thing, but Fox had a way of remembering the small things she loved.

Eating a couple of the juicy strawberries, she knuckled down. The work did eventually engross her, and darkness had fallen by the time she looked up. She got up, stretched, then decided to see if anyone was up for dinner—Fox’s and Noah’s afternoon out had apparently been extended.

Not that she was surprised, given what the men got up to, and it wasn’t what people might expect. The last time Fox had disappeared—with David and Abe—they’d returned after drag racing around a special track built for speed. Gleeful as small boys, they’d been buzzed for hours.

The door opened in front of her at that second, Fox on the other side.

“Hey.” She smiled, noting he didn’t look any the worse for wear. “Dare I ask?”

A deep grin. “I got a tat,” he said, jumping into the coach and pulling the door shut. “Noah came along for moral support, but he ended up with one, too. Not as amazing as mine though.”

Proprietary of his body, Molly said, “Show me.”

He took off his T-shirt, leaning back against the coach wall as she gingerly lifted the edges of the gauze bandage taped partway down his chest, just slightly to the left of center. “Fox”—she scowled up at him—“this is right over your heart.” She knew a tattoo needle couldn’t penetrate through muscle and bone, but still. “What if you’d been hurt?”

He squeezed her hip. “Worth it.”

“It better be a work of sheer geni—” She froze as the gauze pad came off enough that she could see the ink, black against skin reddened from the recent work. It was shaped like a rectangular stamp, the kind businesses put on letters to say “Confidential.” This one said something else.

Molly’s Property.

Eyes burning, she pushed fisted hands against his abdomen as his arms came around her. “Idiot.”

A kiss, his lips curved.

“What happens if we break up?” she said, so overwhelmed her mind was a mess. “They’ll make fun of you, call you Folly’s Property.”

“Guess you better not dump my ass then or there goes my entire image.” His dimple appeared. “Especially after I suffered hours of pain for you.”

She touched her fingers delicately to the ink, leaning forward to brush a featherlight kiss over it as tears rolled down her face. No, he might never be able to say “I love you,” those words yet hard for him, but he had other ways of making his point.

“Aw, hey baby, don’t.” Reaching down to cover the tat with the gauze again, he cuddled her close. “It doesn’t hurt. I was just messing with you.”

“Happy tears,” she managed to get out.

“You like it, then?”

“I love it.”

Chapter 40

When Fox ripped off his T-shirt in the middle of the concert the next night to throw it into the crowd, realization slammed into her. God, she’d been slow. Fox hadn’t just told her he loved her; he was telling the world.

Hugging her arms around her waist, she tried to hold the tidal wave of emotion inside, her breath rasping in her chest. Maxwell stopped on his way past her, patted her on the shoulder. “What did he do?”

“Be wonderful.”

“Huh.” Squeezing her into a hug, the crew boss said, “I thought you hadn’t heard it.”

“Heard what?”

He touched a finger to his earpiece. “Sorry, got to check out one of the speakers.”

Forgetting his words when Fox turned to shoot her a grin before facing the roaring crowd once more, Molly just stood there. The man was going to kill her. Never had she thought she’d be so loved, so wanted, so cherished and adored. Taking out her phone, she texted, “I’m stupid in love with you,” to his phone.

That phone was currently in her other jeans pocket, so he wouldn’t see her message until after, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that it would be waiting for him whenever he checked. Sliding away her own phone, she frowned at the sudden silence in the stadium… and then the air filled with the pure sound of a single electric guitar. Even before lifting her head, she knew it wasn’t Noah but Fox on the instrument.

He bent his mouth to the mike as he continued to play. “This song is for my Molly, who is the best fucking thing that’s ever happened to me. Also, for those suicidal idiots sending her fan mail asking her to run away with them, I will hunt you down and rip off your nuts.”

Laughing and crying as the crowd went wild, Molly wanted so badly to kiss him. Those words were so Fox. So her man.

He waited until the crowd quieted down once more before beginning the haunting intro to the song again, the ferocious power of his voice holding a rough tenderness as he began to sing. Noah, Abe, and David fell in gently in the background, Fox’s voice and the guitar holding center stage until they slammed into a pounding beat as a unit.

It was hard rock and it was a love song, though the word “love” was found nowhere in the lyrics. The chorus was six words, a single voice, the music cutting off as if the band was one being.

My heart. My soul. My home.

Molly had tears streaming down her face by the time it ended, the crowd insane for a song she felt in her bones would become a classic. When Fox strode off the stage to drag her onto it, she went without argument, wrapping her arms around him and kissing him in front of the band, the crew, the audience of thousands.

He was hers, and she didn’t care if the whole world knew how much she loved him.

Lifting her up against him, his arms steel, he spoke words for her ears only. “Since I’m already your personal and private property, will you be mine?” The dimple appearing. “It would really suck balls to be called Folly’s Property.”

It was a marriage proposal only Fox would make. “Yes, yes, yes.” She punctuated each word with a laughing, crying kiss, uncaring of the flashbulbs and the lights and the eyes that watched them. “Always yes.”

The smoky green exultant, his kiss a branding, he turned to grab the mike. “She said yes!”

The crowd thundered and screamed as the rock star who’d been meant to be Molly’s one-night stand pressed his forehead to her own and whispered, “I’m yours.”