Текст книги "Rock Addiction"
Автор книги: Nalini Singh
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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 21 страниц)
Chapter 11
Fox held Molly in his arms after she fragmented in pleasure. He’d touched her with all the tenderness he had in him after she cried while listening to the song he’d been working on for weeks, the final pieces coming only today. Because of his beautiful Molly who did things to him he didn’t understand, who spoke to him without lies, who made him wish he were a better man. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to give her up.
Brushing back her hair when her breathing quieted, he looked down. “Hey.”
A shy smile before she snuggled back down against his shoulder and traced the song lyrics on one side of his torso. “Was this your first tattoo?”
“No, that was the inner-wrist characters.”
“Did it hurt badly?”
“Like a bitch.” He laughed at the memory. “But I was with the guys—all of us decided to get inked to celebrate our first number one—so none of us could make a sound. Afterward, we went and got drunk and whined like pussies.”
Molly’s laughter was music he knew he could never capture with chords and notes.
“I have something for you,” he said after they’d lain in warm silence for several minutes. Reaching down to snag his jeans, he tugged out the folded piece of paper he’d put in the back pocket this morning. “Here.”
“What’s this?”
He knew the instant she found the answer to her question. Her cheeks went bright red, but he knew she was listening when he said, “I’m clean, Molly, and I haven’t been with anyone but you since that medical report. I wanted you to have the info before I asked you if we can ditch the condoms.” Even young and stupid, he’d never taken chances, but he wanted to be skin-to-skin with Molly, brand her from the inside out.
Yeah, it was primitive as hell. Fox didn’t care.
“Oh.” Molly carefully folded the report back into a neat square and gave it to him to put on the bedside table. “Why—” She coughed to clear her throat. “Why did you have this done?”
Fox thought about how to answer that without betraying something it wasn’t his business to tell. “Friend needed to go get checked after he did something idiotic, and I went with him. Moral support.”
“This was done a month ago,” Molly said a little hesitantly, and he knew what she was asking.
“Fact is,” he said, shifting so that she was below him, her eyes looking up into his as he braced himself above her, “I haven’t been with anyone for a hell of a lot longer than that. It’s been almost a year.”
Her pupils dilated. “But you’re so…”
“I have a high sex drive, but I got over the stick-my-dick-in-anything-hot-and-female stage a long time ago,” he said and, when she didn’t flinch away from the unvarnished answer, decided to lay it all out. He hadn’t been an angel and he’d rather tell her that than have her wonder or get the twisted version from the tabloids.
“At first, it was like having candy thrown in my face, women waiting wet and willing wherever I turned.” He’d been a nineteen-year-old suddenly drowning in money and women, with no parent to put a brake on things, and the label happy to use his exploits and those of the others to further build their hard-rock image. “I took the candy, fucked around.”
He gripped her chin to turn her back toward him when her eyes glanced away, wanting her to see he was dead serious about his next words. “These days, however, I prefer to take my time, choose a lover I enjoy in and out of bed.”
Molly knew and accepted that Fox was no kind of virgin, his sexual experience simply a part of him, but she found she didn’t like hearing about his conquests. It made her wonder if he’d done the same things with them that he did with her. If he’d cupped a woman’s face so tenderly while he kissed her slow and sweet, if he’d spent a lazy Sunday morning petting a lover until she turned boneless, if he’d wrestled with a woman over ice cream, his laughter filling the air.
It took conscious effort to push away thoughts that betrayed so much about the kind of trouble she was in. “Y…you know I haven’t been with anyone else,” she said, trying to sound as practical as he’d done and failing miserably, “and I had a physical for medical insurance four months ago. It was all clear.” She rubbed her foot over the sheet, this conversation so far outside her realm of experience that she had to think about every word. “I’m protected against pregnancy… so I think we could.” Her doctor had prescribed the Pill to regulate her cycle.
Fox brushed her hair off her face. “You okay with it? Because if you’re not, we go on like we’ve been doing. I’m not an asshole who’ll make you feel bad about your choice.”
Molly thought of having Fox inside her, no barriers, all hard heat and power, and knew she wanted the intimacy. “Yes. I can show you the insurance report if—”
“It’s okay.” His hand curved gently around her throat. “I trust you.”
She stroked her hands over his shoulders. “Not very smart of you.”
Shifting, he thrust his thigh between hers, the crisp hairs on his skin a deliciously coarse abrasion against her flesh. “I didn’t say I trust every woman, only a certain librarian who loves to play with my lip ring.” A more serious look. “But if the contraception fails for any reason, you tell me.”
Molly’s throat dried up, the discussion suddenly too intense, too much more than it should be for a fleeting relationship. Pushing at Fox, she would’ve left the bed, but he wouldn’t let her go. Instead, flipping over onto his back, he tumbled her on top of his body. “Hey, hey, what’s the matter?”
She raised her head, her breath hoarse and choppy to her own ears. “The idea of a child coming out of a relationship with an end date,” she said, speaking around the lump of ice that was her heart, “it’s terrifying.”
His pupils jet-black against vivid green, he nodded. “I get it, and baby, if anything does happen, I will be there for you.” Words potent with a raw emotion she couldn’t identify. “Don’t shut me out.”
All at once, she remembered an article she’d read about Fox, back when he’d simply been a darkly beautiful rock star she’d sighed over from afar. “You never knew your father.” She knew she was crossing another line, but Molly had realized she didn’t know how to compartmentalize sex and emotion.
Fox was no longer just that fantasy rock star; he was a man whose touch made her ignite and whose smile made her breath catch in her chest. He could cook a single fancy dish that he’d promised to make her the next time they had a night together, was talented, had a temper, and a fascination with fast cars. All those pieces and so much more made up the person he was… a person who’d begun to matter to her in a way that could have no happy ending.
“I promise I’ll tell you if it happens.” She was the one who brushed back his hair this time, suckled a soft, sweet kiss from his lips. “I’m sorry if I brought up bad memories.”
A crooked smile, his fingers spreading on her lower back. “What am I going to do with you, Molly Webster?” Running his hand up her spine, then back down, he surprised her by adding, “My mom was drugged out of her mind at the time I was conceived, couldn’t have picked the guy out of a lineup, and she certainly wasn’t ready for a kid. She dumped me with my grandparents the week after I was born.”
Her heart broke; she knew what it was like to be abandoned by your parents, but she’d been a teenager at the time, not a defenseless child. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be—I loved living with Gramps and Grammy.” Deep warmth in his tone. “I grew up digging in the garden, even had my own plot. My best harvest was seven carrots when I was six.”
Fascinated at this glimpse into his childhood, she hugged the moment to her heart. “What did you do with them?”
“I made my grandmother put carrots in the soup, and we also had to have them in our sandwiches.”
“Sandwiches?”
“Absolutely. Carrot and cheese sandwiches.”
Unable to resist that grin, she traced his lips with a fingertip, laughed when he pretended to bite. “How did your grandparents cope with an active little boy?”
“By tiring me out until I couldn’t cause trouble.”
As the night softened and went still around them, he told her stories of being allowed to go wild on his kid-sized skateboard while his grandparents watched over him, of playing stickball with the neighborhood kids, of cooking with his grandmother and learning carpentry with his grandfather.
It sounded like an idyllic childhood, but there was something beneath, a dark pulse of anger. Molly wanted to ask about it, wanted to learn every piece of him, but knew instinctively that it would be too profound an intimacy. She didn’t want to put him in the position of having to push her back, of fracturing the painful beauty of this instant when it was only Molly and Fox talking to one another.
No past that had altered the course of her life. No present where he lived in a world in which Molly simply couldn’t survive. No future where he’d be only a heartbreaking memory.
Keeping her silence and stifling her hunger to know this complex, talented man both in and out of bed, she fell asleep to the rhythm of his voice, only to wake to the unadulterated demand of his kiss.
Going back to work on Tuesday felt like stepping into a different world. She and Fox had spent the whole of Monday together as well, the day a lazy, playful one.
Her rock star had no inhibitions in bed and coaxed the same openness from her. “That’s it, baby,” he’d say, encouraging her to taste, to explore, to indulge and be indulged, his voice a finely honed instrument of which she couldn’t get enough.
“Earth to Molly.”
Molly jerked when a slender hand waved in front of her face. “What? Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Her colleague laughed. “Must’ve been some weekend—you were on another planet.”
Flushing guiltily, Molly reined in her wayward thoughts and focused on work. Three hours passed before she checked her phone—a deliberate act of willpower on her part—to find a message from Fox inviting her to the island hotel Schoolboy Choir had booked out, for a casual dinner with “the boys.”
Just meat on the grill, forget the greens, he’d added. And Noah lost a bet with Abe, so he’s making his (in)famous passion fruit cheesecake.
Molly’s fingers trembled. Putting down the phone before she dropped it, she went to help at the desk as the seniors’ book club came en masse to check out their selections for the week.
It wasn’t until forty-five minutes later, while she was on her lunch break, that she picked up the phone again. She didn’t know what to say, what to do, but she did know it was dead certain at least one aggressive member of the paparazzi had to have followed Schoolboy Choir to the island. Lusted after by millions of women and idolized by as many men, Fox, Noah, Abe, and David were too good for business to leave alone.
Wanting to be wrong, to be proven needlessly paranoid, she opened a browser window on her phone and input a news search for the band’s name. It took a split second for the search engine to show her several images of the villa-style hotel Schoolboy Choir had booked, as well as a couple of shots of two of the band members—Abe and Noah—throwing a football around on the beach.
Below that was a photograph of David diving into the undoubtedly freezing water.
The final image was of Noah and Fox leaning on the balcony railing of a waterfront apartment, the image clearly taken from somewhere on the ground. Molly recognized Fox’s T-shirt; it was the one he’d worn the first night at the party.
The caption made her tongue go dry, her breath coming so fast she knew she was in danger of a panic attack: The local female fans are apparently extending a warm welcome—Noah was spotted returning to his apartment around four in the morning, while a source tells us Fox spent the entire night with a lucky mystery woman!
Chapter 12
Screwing her eyes shut, Molly ignored the roaring in her ears and concentrated on doing the breathing exercise the school counselor had taught her back when the scandal first broke. It took several minutes, but she was eventually able to read the article associated with the apartment photo.
A wracking shudder of relief.
The article was pure fluff, the “source” probably created in the reporter’s imagination in order to spice up the photo editorial, which was heavily focused on Noah’s shirtless upper body.
Did you know, she messaged Fox, there are already photos online of the band on the island—and at your apartment building?
Grill’s out back in an enclosed space the paps can’t get at, came the reply. I’ll pick you up at eight.
The message was so Fox, confident and take charge, and if Molly was honest with herself, she liked that about him… but some risks she couldn’t take. No, she wrote back, I’ll see you another night.
The phone rang in her hand a second later. “I’m not changing my mind,” she said, before he could charm her into exactly that.
“Don’t worry, baby.” The grit and sex of his voice made her body ache, but more dangerous was the effect he had on her heart. “We know how to avoid the cameras when necessary—it’s why we give the paps an easy shot now and then, so the bastards stay lazy and don’t dig.”
She couldn’t bear to miss even a single night with him, wanted badly to give in, but her stomach churned at the idea of her past being dug up by the voracious media, of the nightmare beginning again. Sweat broke out along her spine. “No, Fox. I can’t risk it.”
“You’re being overcautious.” Edgy frustration, a kiss of the temper she’d already come up against once. “Even if someone snaps you from a distance, it won’t be a huge deal.”
Fingers clenching on the phone, she said, “It would be to me,” and hung up. A lump choking her throat as she fought the tears, she stared unseeing at the wall in front of her. Maybe he didn’t know her history, but she’d told him how much it meant to her to stay out of the spotlight.
And he’d said it didn’t matter.
Despite her angry hurt, she couldn’t help checking her phone an hour later, a cold tightness inside her. There were no further messages from Fox.
Exiting the elevator of her apartment building at six that night, Molly found herself searching for a tall male form leaning against the wall, guitar by his side. Her gut-wrenching disappointment when Fox wasn’t there offered an agonizing preview of exactly how much it would hurt if she never saw him again. Pushing through the door after unlocking it, she dumped her stuff and sat down on the bench to take off her shoes—and remembered what Fox had done to her in this spot.
“Stop it,” she ordered herself, but it wasn’t that easy. Fox had left his mark on her entire apartment.
She lasted an hour before she couldn’t stand the memories anymore. Picking up the phone, she called Charlotte. Her best friend was working late but fell in happily with the idea of dinner down at the Viaduct, that section of the waterfront always vibrant with life.
“So,” she asked, after meeting Charlotte in the lobby of her building, “how’s it going with the new boss?” Maybe the jagged knot in her chest would unravel if she just didn’t think about Fox.
“Honestly, after that disaster over the weekend, I’ve tried to stay out of his way.” A groan at the mention of a dinner she’d described in a text message as Silent Charlie-mouse waiting for the growling, bad-tempered predator to eat her. “He’s causing carnage in management. Two new firings today.”
“Wow.”
“I know, right? Anyway, enough about T-Rex.”
“What?” Molly laughed at the look on her friend’s face, Charlotte’s cheeks pink at having been caught out. It eased some of the tension in her body, though it did nothing to ease the ache deep inside her. “T-Rex?”
“He’s big, scary, and people run when they see him coming.” With that succinct description, Charlotte slipped her arm through the crook of Molly’s as they walked out into a night that actually wasn’t as cold as it could’ve been. “Do you want to get ice cream first and find a good spot to watch the water? Radio said there’s a super yacht coming in soon. Might be fun to see some gazillionaire’s fancy boat.”
“Dessert before dinner?” she said, forcefully ignoring the horrible sense of loss that continued to grow within her. “I’m in.”
Ice creams in hand an easy stroll later, they decided to sit on the wide, shallow steps near the ornate ferry building that was a piece of history amongst the steel and glass so prevalent in this section of the city. Hand-holding couples on dates, businesspeople on their way home, night runners with their earbuds in, the surrounding area was electric with activity.
“So,” Charlotte said after they’d taken their seats, “what’s the matter?”
Molly looked out over the harbor, the dark slick of water colored by the lights of nearby businesses. Even now, she could get on a ferry and be on the island in under forty minutes. “Why do you think anything’s the matter?” she asked, quashing the dangerous impulse that could destroy her.
A shoulder bump. “How long have we been friends? Spill. Are you still worrying about what Thea said?”
“No. But… there was a reason I had that conversation with Thea.” Taking a deep breath, Molly told Charlotte what had happened after the party.
Her best friend’s mouth fell open. “You—with Zachary Fox—” Throwing one arm around Molly with a cry of wild glee, she smacked a big kiss on Molly’s cheek. “My hero!” She pulled back her arm a second before her ice cream would’ve toppled over. “At least one of us will have outrageous stories with which to shock any grandchildren we might or might not have.”
Startled into a giggle, Molly leaned against her petite friend and shared the rest. Not the private memories, the ones that meant the most, but the reason why she’d be alone in her bed tonight. “Do you think I’m being ridiculous?” she said at the end. “About not being caught by the media with Fox?”
“Of course not.” Charlotte finished off her cone, balled up the napkin it had been wrapped in, and took Molly’s to the trash as well before coming back. “I was there, remember?” She closed her small-boned hand over Molly’s. “Did you tell Fox about what happened? So he knows it has nothing to do with him?”
Shaking her head, Molly pointed out the gleaming super yacht that had appeared in the distance. “I’m falling for him,” she whispered, admitting the truth to the one person she knew would never betray her trust. “I can hardly bear to think about the end of our month together.” If Fox even wanted to continue their affair after today’s fight. “If I let him in any further… it’ll be agony.”
Charlotte didn’t respond for a long time, the two of them watching the sleek progress of the yacht built to be a dream on water, golden light pouring through every window. Someone had also put up tiny colored lights along the railings, adding a sense of mischief and whimsy to the regal craft, the colors pretty against the silky deep blue of the night.
“I’m scared, Molly,” Charlotte said at last, her voice quiet. “All the time. You know why.”
Molly hugged her close. “We don’t have to talk about it.” It hurt her friend to discuss the events that had devastated her first year of university, causing internal scars that had never faded. Because while Charlie had been shy her whole life, she’d also always had a sparkling fire inside her, which that brutal year had all but doused.
“No, it’s okay.” Her friend turned to face her, soft blonde curls escaping the knot at the nape of her neck. “I miss out on so much because I’m scared—and the thing is, I’m intelligent enough to know it. That just makes it worse.”
“You’re selling yourself short.” Molly wouldn’t allow it. “You said I was brave, but I wouldn’t have made it through high school and foster care without you.” She didn’t know how many times she’d cried in Charlotte’s arms, or turned toward her for silent moral support when the taunts threatened to break her down. “You were my rock.”
“You were mine, too.” Charlotte shook her head, her eyes full of quiet power behind the transparent shield of her glasses. “Don’t let that tough, strong, fifteen-year-old girl down, Molly. Don’t shortchange yourself like I do.”
Heart breaking for what her friend had been through, Molly turned back to face the water before she started crying. “Is it worth it,” she said when she could speak without her voice cracking, “for a single month?”
“That’s for you to decide—but I vote for breaking the bed with Mr. Kissable.” Charlotte fanned her face.
Molly burst out laughing, grateful once again for her best friend. She only wished she could help Charlotte conquer her own fears, convince her to put away the shapeless, unflattering clothes that swamped her tiny frame and let down those pretty curls. But if Molly’s rules were her security blanket, Charlotte’s clothes were hers. “Maybe you need a rock star of your own.”
“No way. I’d rather go to bed with T-Rex.”
Molly’s antennae shot up. That was the second time Charlotte had mentioned her new boss—and she’d linked him to sex, however tenuously. “What’s he look like?” she asked casually.
Scowling, her best friend shrugged. “What most carnivorous monsters look like.”
“Charlie.”
A sigh, pointed chin propped up in fine-boned hands. “The name Gabriel Bishop sound familiar?”
Molly gasped. “No?” Gabriel Bishop, known on the field as “the Bishop,” was a former pro rugby player turned corporate genius. Tall, with wide shoulders and heavily muscled, he was certifiably hot in a hard-sex-and-hard-play kind of way. “Hey! Didn’t you once say you wanted to rip off his shirt and sink your teeth into his pecs?”
Charlotte spluttered at the reminder of her cocktail-induced sigh at the TV screen during a game where Gabriel Bishop had been roped in as a guest commentator. “I swear,” she said, “you have the memory of an elephant!”
“So?” Molly waggled her eyebrows, fingers discreetly crossed and hope a bright, bright flame in her heart.
“That was before I realized he wasn’t human.” With that pert comment, her friend shifted her attention toward the restaurant section of the Viaduct. “I’m starving.”
Luck was with them and they snagged an outdoor table with an amazing view of the water, yachts and other pleasure craft berthed in neat rows in the marina. As they ate, Molly thought of everything her friend had said, everything she herself had decided about stepping out of the box in which she’d lived for so long, and sent Fox a message: Search for Patrick Buchanan and scandal.
