Текст книги "Rock Addiction"
Автор книги: Nalini Singh
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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 21 страниц)
Chapter 7
Molly struggled up into a sitting position some time later, tucking her no doubt wildly tumbled hair behind her ears and pulling up the sheet to cover her breasts. Just in time. Fox walked into the bedroom the next instant, holding a plate of cheese and crackers in one hand, a bottle of wine in the other. She exhaled at the sight of him.
He was naked.
Except for the tattoos. A jagged tribal design in black ink ran along his left shoulder and licked at his neck before continuing down the left side of his back to his hip, the design sleek rather than bulky. His left arm, in contrast, was covered by a gorgeous stylized dragon in brilliant color, its body wrapping around Fox’s arm multiple times. Around the dragon were hundreds of tiny leaves—shaded from spring green to autumn brown—all in motion, as if the dragon had disturbed them in flight.
It truly was a piece of living art.
Those two were the biggest pieces, but on the right of his ridged abdomen fell three vertical lines of fine text that she’d read last night. They were from Schoolboy Choir’s first hit song, penned by Fox and Noah, with David and Abe providing the hard rock tempo that had helped shoot it to the top of the charts.
“We all have this tat,” he’d told her before he left the bedroom. “Different locations on the body.”
“Even David?” The drummer always looked so elegant and urbane.
Fox had grinned. “You’d be surprised what David has under those Ar-mani suits he likes to wear.”
Now, as Fox bent to put the bottle of wine on her dainty bedside table, she glimpsed the intricate pattern of black ink on the top of his right arm that he’d told her had been created for him by a friend who was a tattoo artist. Incorporating musical notes and hidden words, it was a puzzle that could be unraveled only by someone who really knew Fox.
That arm was otherwise bare of ink, except for a horizontal line of characters directly above his pulse point.
“What language is that?” she said, brushing her fingers over the characters, still not quite believing she had the right to touch him.
“Move your hand to the left and down and I’ll tell you.”
Heat in her cheeks as she saw he was semi-aroused. “How can you…” She waved in the general direction of his groin.
“Because you’re built and I have a high sex drive.” Grinning at her renewed blush, the lean dimple in his cheek devastating, he passed her the plate and got into bed. Or onto it.
“Under the sheet,” she ordered, trying to retain some sense of control when she knew it was far too late where Fox was concerned. “I can’t focus with you naked.”
A very male laugh, a hand in her hair as he drew her to him for one of his slow, drugging kisses.
“You know how to touch a woman.” It came out throaty, soft.
“I’ve had a lot of practice.” His smile didn’t disappear, but there was a sudden, disturbing falseness about it.
Molly knew she’d be fooling herself if she believed she knew anything of Zachary Fox, the man behind the rock god, but she couldn’t stay silent when every instinct she had screamed at her to speak. Fighting her discomfort at discussing such an intimate thing, she said, “I’m not going to turn on you because you are who you are.” She’d known exactly who it was she’d invited into her bed and that his sexual experience far outweighed hers.
“Especially,” she added, fingers curling into the sheet, “when I’m the beneficiary of all that practice.”
His smile became vividly real again, gorgeous and of a man who was enjoying being with her. It troubled her how quickly he could do that—withdraw from a situation while appearing involved… but that was only something she’d have to worry about if they were on the road to a relationship. That simply wasn’t in the cards, even had Fox not been seriously out of her league.
The media, tabloid and otherwise, was fascinated by him.
After having been savaged to shreds during her father’s ignominious fall from grace, any kind of media attention was Molly’s worst nightmare. It had been endless, article after article, whisper after whisper, innuendo after innuendo. She’d fought and fought, refusing to allow the agony of it to crush her, to give the bullies at school the satisfaction of seeing how badly she was bleeding inside, but then a policeman with a solemn face had come to tell her she was an orphan, and she’d broken.
The fractures had never quite healed right.
But it wasn’t Fox who’d caused the teenage girl she’d been such terrible hurt, and at that instant, she couldn’t forget the pain she’d sensed behind his earlier words. “Did a woman hurt you?” She knew she’d crossed another line as soon as the words were out, couldn’t find the will to fill the air with others in order to call them back.
An unreadable expression on Fox’s face. “No, it wasn’t a lover.” With that inscrutable answer, he leaned across to claim a tender, suckling kiss before getting his lower body under the sheet as she’d asked and reaching for the food. “Here.” He popped a bite of cheese into her mouth and she understood the topic was closed.
Chewing, she swallowed and told herself it was better this way. Because the more she saw of the real Zachary Fox, the more she liked him. “Those characters aren’t like any Asian language I’ve seen,” she said, focusing on his body instead of on emotions that had no place in a temporary relationship, “though they’re close.”
“Hmm.” He fed her another piece of cheese.
Molly scowled, though she wanted to trace the curve of his lips with a fingertip. “Are you going to tell me?”
“What? And ruin one of rock’s greatest mysteries?” He ate a cracker with cheese on it, a wicked smile in his eyes. “What the fuck is that on Fox’s body? Was he stoned when he got the tat? Did he just get a drunk tattoo artist?” A raised eyebrow. “Or is the bastard pissing with everyone for the fun of it?”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Molly cajoled, feeling young and playful in a way she’d never expected, in a way she’d never been. “Cross my heart.”
“Do I look like a sucker?” Tapping her nose with a single finger, he reached over for the fancy wine Molly had bought in case Thea had time to come over, her sister being a wine buff.
Leaning down over the side of the bed to snag a Swiss Army knife from his jeans, Fox used the corkscrew to pop the cork, then drank straight from the bottle. She must’ve made a sound, because bringing down the bottle, he winked. “I’ll replace it with something better.” Holding out the wine, he said, “Bet you’ve never done that before.”
Molly shook her head. “I don’t drink.”
“So this is all mine?” Fox grinned. “Excellent.”
Having braced herself for questions, she blurted out, “Most people ask about the not-drinking,” then wanted to slap herself for making it an issue. Why couldn’t she keep her mouth shut around Fox?
“It’s bad musician manners to bring it up,” he answered, “’cause you never know who might be in AA or detox.” Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, he hugged her close. “But since you already did, and also since you don’t show any signs of an alcoholic jonesing for a drink, I’m guessing you’ve been around someone who drank?”
“Yes.” With that, she took a cracker, loaded it with a big hunk of cheese, and bit down. She might’ve made a mistake in her surprise, but the idea of discussing her mother with Fox had her chest going tight, her lungs strained—it was one thing to let go, another to trust him with the vicious pain that had shaped her. “Why didn’t you bring the grapes?”
Fox set aside the wine. “So you’d have to walk nude to the kitchen and get them.”
Relieved he’d taken the hint and dropped the subject of her aversion to alcohol, she shook her head. “Not happening.”
“Why not? You have an amazing body.” A bite on her shoulder, his hand sliding along the inside of her thigh. “Like that old painting of the redhead rising from the clamshell.”
The Birth of Venus.
Utterly undone at being compared to the sensually beautiful artwork, she thrust a cracker between his lips. “Shh.” His body might be so hot it should be illegal, but she was beginning to learn it was Fox’s mind that was his most dangerous weapon. Add that to his voice and it was no surprise women fell into his lap at the crook of a finger.
He ran his thumb along the inner seam of her thigh. “Want me to behave?”
Sensation curling through her body, Molly paused, not sure she did want him to behave—and he threw back his head. His laughter pleased every one of her senses, made delight bubble through her veins.
“I like the way you think, Molly,” he said, but stopped tormenting her, settling for claiming a kiss anytime he felt like it.
Fox, as she’d learned tonight, was a man who enjoyed kissing. It was an unexpected and wonderful discovery, and it made Molly realize she liked kissing, too. Especially the way Fox did it, with an exquisite patience that made her feel terrifyingly cherished.
It was only later, the bottle of wine still almost full—Fox had decided it was too sweet for him—and her lips wet and tingling, that he dragged on his jeans, held out a hand, and said, “Come on. I’m starving. Let’s go finish the takeout.”
Not hungry, but willing to keep him company, Molly said, “Pass me the robe on the back of the door.”
He picked up and threw her his T-shirt instead. Molly tugged it on, the scent of him a glove around her body. A deep warmth inside her, she got out of bed and took his hand, conscious all at once of exactly how tall he was.
“Did I tell you how hot you look when you’re dressed up all professional with your hair prim and proper?”
Molly certainly didn’t feel prim and proper now. “You just did.”
A slow smile that caught at her heart in a way that set off those warning bells again, but she didn’t want to listen. Not tonight, not when everything had been so wonderful.
“You ever wear those skinny skirts that go past the knee?” Fox ran his hands up and down her hips, the T-shirt moving softly against her skin. “The ones that look strict and professional and sexy at the same time?”
“Those”—she swallowed to wet her throat—“are called pencil skirts.”
A rumbling sound of pleasure when she shuddered at the kiss he laved on the curve of her jaw. “Yeah, you ever wear one?”
“No.” The shape hugged her body too closely.
Dropping kisses along the line of her neck, Fox shifted his hands to her backside. “I get hard just thinking about your ass in one of those skirts.” He nipped at her sensitive flesh. “Wear one for me?”
Molly thought she should probably refuse but couldn’t figure out a reason why when he was so close, the masculine scent of him short-circuiting her brain. “Okay.”
“Hot damn.” A groan, hands squeezing her lower curves. “I can’t wait to see your body in the skirt I’m buying for you.”
“Wait.” Molly pushed at his chest. “You didn’t say anything about buying it.”
“Semantics.” A hard kiss, one hand rising to grip her nape. “Be kind, Molly. Let me enjoy my fantasy.”
Her knees went weak at the rough appeal.
Molly had never been anyone’s fantasy, couldn’t find the willpower to stand strong against a rock god who saw something in her that she didn’t see in herself. For this one month, she’d be that woman, be that other Molly, the one who’d accept a rock star’s gift and who’d rise on tiptoe to tug on his lip ring. Yet even as she thought that, even as she fought the clawing echoes of memory, the panicked voice of the woman she’d spent years becoming yelled at her to stop, to think.
Fox had felt Molly slipping away over the past half hour. Frustration gnawed at him with every nonanswer she gave from across her round little kitchen table, the Molly who’d spoken to him with such vulnerable honesty in bed nowhere in evidence. Patience, he reminded himself as he finished eating, have some fucking patience.
He knew exactly what was wrong, knew that in some part of her she’d begun to realize what he already understood. That this, what they were doing, it wasn’t just sex, wasn’t just an affair—people who simply wanted to fuck didn’t talk about hidden hurts, didn’t treat each other with tenderness.
“I’m not going to turn on you because you are who you are.”
Her words continued to reverberate in his mind, so damn beautiful. She had no idea what her promise meant to him—he’d seen the truth of it in those eyes that couldn’t lie, felt it in the way she touched him. He wanted the right to that tenderness every day of his life and he’d fight dirty to get it.
“I saw an ad for a horror flick that’s on TV tonight,” he said after drinking the glass of water she’d poured him earlier. “Want to watch? You can pretend to be scared, and I can take the opportunity to slip my hand inside that cute fluffy robe of yours.”
Tugging on the belt of the robe she’d slipped into a quarter of an hour earlier in another damn sign of retreat after leaving his T-shirt on the bed, she straightened her shoulders. “I want to be up and going before eight tomorrow morning.”
“I thought you had Sunday and Monday off?”
“I do, but I want to go to the market to get fresh vegetables, dig around in the antique stalls.”
Fox stared at the woman who was turning him inside out. “You’re skipping sleeping in to get vegetables?”
Eyes sparking, she glared at him. “It’s fun. Even if the antiques are mostly fake.”
“Shit.” He laughed. “Now I have to come.”
Molly hesitated.
And Fox stopped laughing. “You want to keep me confined to the bedroom.” Anger kissed his bloodstream.
Throat moving, she bit down on her lower lip. “People will recognize you.”
Shit. He wrenched his angry response under control. “I’ll make sure they don’t.” Reaching across the table, he ran his fingers down her cheek, and when she appeared uncertain, he pushed the advantage. “Show me a little of this city I’d never otherwise see.”
“All right.” A husky whisper that caused a fierce exultation inside him.
“But,” she added quickly, “you can’t stay tonight.”
Fox gritted his teeth, consciously dropping his voice to the edgy purr that always made her blush, melt. “Molly.” He’d happily seduce her back into bed if that was what it took to keep her in his arms through the dark hours of night. Because sleeping together was a whole different ball game than sex, and the woman he wanted as his own knew it. That was why her breathing was ragged, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. “It’s already late”—he slid his hand down to cup the side of her neck—“and you said we have to get up early for the market.”
Pushing back from the table in a jerking move, she broke contact and rose to her feet. “Stop,” she said when he got up and began to move toward her. “I want you gone. I’ll call you a cab.”
The flat rejection lit the fuse on Fox’s temper.
Chapter 8
“Don’t bother,” he growled, striding toward the bedroom to pull on the T-shirt she’d discarded. “I have a car.” It was a good thing he hadn’t ended up drinking more than half a glass of that damn wine.
His fury roared even more wildly when he emerged from the bedroom to see that she’d unlocked and opened the door, ready to throw him out. Fox wanted to slam that door shut, force her to face the reality of what pulsed between them, growing stronger with every second they spent together, but the small part of him that remained rational told him he’d lose her the instant he did.
Allowing her to simply shut the door on his back, however? Not ever going to happen. Fisting his hand in her hair, he kissed her startled taste into his own mouth. “I’m not the kind of man who likes to have the woman running the show. I made an exception for you, but it’s not working.”
She pushed at his chest, eyes glittering. “That’s the most arrogant thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Yeah? I’m not done.” Backing her up against the wall, he bent his knees so they were eye to eye. “The sex between us is mind-blowing, and I want to have a whole hell of a lot more, but I’m not letting you blow hot and cold.”
Even as he spoke, he knew he was fucking up his grand goddamn plan to slowly seduce Molly into his life and his world. It had been a pipe dream from the start—he wasn’t the kind to mess around when he made up his mind. “So decide.” He held the eye contact, made her see him. “You either want me in your bed and your life for the month, or you don’t. I won’t play your sex toy.”
Molly’s gasp followed him as he released her and, slinging his guitar on his back, walked out the door. His blood was a pounding rush in his ears, his jaw rigid. The sane part of him knew he was overreacting, but he couldn’t stop the response any more than he could stop playing music. The scar ran too deep.
Molly was the only lover who’d ever torn it open.
And she’d done it on their second night together. It slammed home the fact that he was already in far too deep for this to be any kind of a brief affair. Not that he’d needed the fucking reminder. He’d never, never, reacted to a woman this way. And her stubborn blindness to the truth of what burned between them aside, the more time he spent with Molly, the deeper he fell.
Honest and smart and with a sweet tenderness to her that cut him off at the knees, she pushed buttons he didn’t even know he had.
“Stop.” A breathless demand. “You’re the one who proposed a one-month stand.”
Turning, he stalked back to her doorway just as another door opened down the hall. “Molly?” said a heavyset man wearing black sweatpants and a navy tee. “You okay?”
Fox shifted instinctively to protect her from the view of the other man, her body clad only in that silly fluffy yellow robe that drove him crazy. She flushed and looked around his side. “Yes, I’m fine.”
The stranger gave Fox a long, suspicious look before saying, “Just yell if that changes,” and shutting his door.
Fox waited until Molly’s eyes were back on him to speak, his voice harsh and his arms braced on either side of the doorway. “I might have proposed a one-month stand,” he said, “but I didn’t expect to be used and shoved out as soon as I’d served my purpose.” It infuriated him. “Or should I say as soon as my cock had served its purpose?”
Molly flinched, but she didn’t back down. “What? You expect me to let you move in for the month?” Her words came out in a furious whisper, her hands clenched to bloodless tightness even as her cheeks flared with hot spots of color. “I never did anything to make you believe I’d be fine with that. There are boundaries.”
Gripping her jaw, he said, “You don’t get to treat me as disposable.”
Shock rippled through the anger in the dark brown of her eyes. “No, I—”
“You can’t use me for sex,” he interrupted, too pissed to hold back the words, “then put me away until the next time. I will not be your fucking dirty little secret.” Not when it was brutally clear their relationship had already crossed the line from sex to a far more demanding, far more passionate bond. “Decide, Molly.”
“I can’t.” The words were shaky, the anger draining away to leave her expression stark with pain. “I can’t become entangled in you.”
“You’d rather live half a life?” he asked without mercy, knowing he was pushing her too hard, too fast, but unable to stop himself, his response to her a violence inside him. “Always with one step backing away, ready to run to safety?” Sensing his temper was about to slip the leash totally, Fox pushed away from the doorjamb. “Make sure you can live with that choice.”
This time when Fox turned and walked away, Molly didn’t call him back. Closing the door with fingers that trembled, she slid down to sit with her back to it, the robe he’d teased her about bunched around her thighs and her eyes on the bench where Fox had kissed her until he melted her bones.
“You’d rather live half a life? Always with one step backing away, ready to run to safety?”
The knuckles of one clenched hand pressed against her mouth, Molly shook her head. That wasn’t what she was doing. She was living life on her terms—she supported herself, had a job she truly enjoyed, a best friend she loved, and a sister she’d embraced. More, she had a plan for her future and if that plan wasn’t bursting with excitement, that was exactly what she wanted.
You’re also twenty-four years old, another part of her whispered, and the only two relationships you’ve had, if you can even call those fiascos relationships, have been with men who were… comfortable. The first was married to his job, the other in love with his ex-girlfriend. Neither one tried to get anything more than a kiss. And you didn’t really care. You don’t think something might be wrong with that picture?
It was a pitiless indictment of the life she’d built out of nothing. A safe, careful, content life. Rather than a strong, purposeful plan, it suddenly sounded unutterably sad.
A tear trickled into her mouth, the taste of salt hot.
Knuckling it away, she got up and found the phone as well as the chocolate-fudge ice cream and took both back to the couch
Thea’s sleep-slurred voice came on the line two rings later. “Hello?”
“Thea, it’s me.” Normally, she’d have called Charlotte, but if her smart best friend had one area of total cluelessness, it was on the subject of men.
“What’s the matter?” Instant wakefulness.
Thea listened, not saying anything until Molly had poured it all out. “I guess it’s too late to warn you against getting involved with someone in the industry?” Not waiting for an answer, she continued. “Here’s the thing, Molly, Fox isn’t the type of guy you can be with and expect to hold the reins. That vibe he gives off? It’s not an illusion—he really is that intense.”
Sipping sounds, Thea drinking the herbal tea she’d made while Molly talked. “I’ve worked with him for over two years,” she continued, “and never once has he delegated control of any aspect of his private life to an assistant, manager, anyone. You have no idea how rare that is at his level of success.”
Molly swirled her spoon in the melted ice cream, emotion a rock in her throat. “It was meant to be one night.”
“You’re the only one who can decide if you want more,” Thea said, “but speaking professionally, if you had to pick a time and a place to have an affair with a man like Fox, this is about perfect. You can stay off the radar if you’re careful, and he’ll be gone in a month.”
The idea should’ve comforted her. It didn’t. It… hurt. It really hurt. “What if I can’t maintain the distance?” she said on the heels of that staggering realization, her eyes burning. “What if I fall for him?” The agony and humiliation of being in love with a man who didn’t love her was her worst nightmare.
She’d grown up watching her mother drink away her pain, Patrick Buchanan’s infidelities acid on her soul, until by the time Molly was seven, her mother was a stranger, an alcoholic so accustomed to the effects that she was permanently drunk yet appeared sober. Molly had always known the truth, had hated seeing the distant ghost of the mother who’d once read her bedtime stories and promised her Daddy would be home soon. Daddy, of course, had no doubt been banging his aide or another young staffer at the time.
“Molly,” Thea said, breaking into the agonizing slap of memory, “you said it yourself—that bastard who donated sperm to make us did a real number on you.” Blunt, unexpected words. “The real question is, do you want him to manipulate the direction of your life from the grave?”
Long after the conversation with Thea had ended, Molly sat staring at nothing. Was her sister right? Was her whole life not a life at all, but rather an anti-life, as she did everything in her power not to repeat the mistakes of either her father or her mother?
“You’d rather live half a life?”
Fox’s words circled in her brain, smashing and crashing into what Thea had said until she couldn’t think. So she did what she’d done since she was a child alone in a large air-conditioned mansion, the nanny new and unfamiliar again because her mother didn’t want her daughter to grow attached to another woman: she called Charlotte.
Her friend was up reading.
Too confused and upset to talk about Fox anymore, she just told Charlie of her conversation with Thea, of her sister’s final, piercing question.
“I don’t think,” Charlotte said softly, “Thea knows how strong you are, how brave. She never saw you handling the bullies when you were fifteen.”
“But she’s right, too, isn’t she, Charlie?” Abdomen tight and shoulders tense, Molly dropped her head against the sofa-back. “I make all my choices based on what happened back then.” The shock, the disbelief, the public degradation followed by a screaming loss that had left her numb for months.
“If you’re happy with your life,” Charlotte replied, sweet and intelligent and perceptive, “what does it matter how it came to be?” The slightest pause. “Are you happy?”
It took Molly a long time to answer, to be honest about it. “No,” she whispered. “Sometimes the rules I’ve made feel like a straitjacket.” Squeezing until she couldn’t breathe, her chest compressed by the weight of the expectations she’d placed on her life.
“Then be brave again.” A quiet, powerful statement, followed by a fierce one: “Be that fifteen-year-old girl who told Queen B-face to shove her snotty nose in a dark, dark, place.”
Unanticipated laughter bubbled in Molly’s throat. “You mean Queen Bitchface?” she teased her friend affectionately. “I notice you still can’t repeat the words I actually said that day.”
“Sometimes, when I’m alone really late at night, I try to say bad words out loud,” Charlie said with the sharp, self-deprecating humor very few people were ever lucky enough—or trusted enough—to witness. “Once, I even said the ‘F’ word behind Anya’s back… very quietly.”
Molly’s smile deepened. “You degenerate.”
“Thank you.” Charlotte’s voice turned solemn again with her next words. “If you don’t want the same dream anymore, it’s okay, Moll. You’re allowed to change your mind.”
Her heart aching, Molly said, “I still want that dream. So much.” The white picket fence, the suburbs, the blissful ordinariness of being normal, she hungered for it so badly. “Only… maybe I can relax the rules, stop simply surviving and start living.”
Never again would she come into contact with a man as talented, as dangerous, and as fascinating as Fox. While they could never exist in the same world, his life lived on a wild, Technicolor stage that caused her veins to fill with pure terror, he was hers for this one month out of time.
Molly didn’t want to give up that month, not for anything. Especially not because of scars formed by the actions of two people so messed up their toxic relationship had eventually killed them.
Fox powered through the city streets until he hit the winding road that went along this part of the Auckland coast. The yachts and other seacraft had been moored for the night, but the area was vibrant with life as a result of the myriad restaurants clustered in the central section. Frustrated by the slow vehicle in front of him, he throttled back the speed—just as well, because right around the corner was a cop car.
That’d be perfect, getting his face splashed over the papers for racking up a speeding ticket after he’d told Molly he could keep a low profile. Teeth gritted at the reminder of why he felt like a powder keg about to blow, every muscle and tendon in his body stretched to snapping point, he continued to drive until he’d ground down the serrated edge of his temper.
Fox had never had any intention of allowing Molly to see that part of him, but he hadn’t counted on the effect she had on him. He couldn’t keep his distance. The only good news was that Molly hadn’t been the least afraid of him, despite the way he’d snapped. Grown men had backed down before him when he got that pissed, but Molly? She’d stood strong and fought.
He was proud of her spirit even as he was infuriated with her.
Now he had two options: return to his waterfront apartment, leaving the ball in Molly’s court, or drive back to her place and use sex to get what he wanted. He could, of that he had no doubt. Their chemistry was a thing of erotic beauty, his sexual experience a weapon against which she had no defense. Except if he did that, they’d repeat this cycle again as soon as her mind cleared.
And he had no intention, none, of ever again being kicked out of Molly’s bed.
Option one, however, carried with it a good chance she’d run scared. Fox wasn’t about to let that happen. Because their fight didn’t change the reason she’d said yes to a one-month stand despite her fear of addiction—the same reason she’d thrown him out and he’d blown up at her tonight.
And what they got up to between the sheets had nothing to do with it.
Eyes focused on the road, one hand on the wheel, the other on the stick, and his mind on the stubborn woman whose taste still lingered on his tongue, he decided on option three.
His body settled into the bucket seat, anticipation uncurling in his gut.
