Rock Addiction (Rock Kiss #1)(27)

“This is the best date.” The unsophisticated words spilled over Molly’s lips, she was so happy.

Picking up her hand, Fox kissed her palm, the caress unexpectedly sweet. “Yeah, it is.”

She curled her fingers around his, let him taste her ice cream, took a big bite out of his, which made him cry foul and attempt to claim it back in a laughing kiss. There would, she thought as he wrestled her giggling form to the grass, be no forgetting Fox. It wouldn’t only hurt when he walked away, it would be brutal.

Strong, intelligent, and talented, he’d marked her deep inside.

That talent was in haunting evidence later that night, when—having picked up his acoustic guitar on the way back from the beach—he played for her. Lying curled up naked under the sheet in bed, a jean-clad but otherwise undressed Fox in a chair facing her, Molly listened and felt her entire body ache at the harsh beauty of his music, the edgy sound distinctively Fox.

“I can’t figure out how you create something so extraordinary from a few strings and your fingers.” She could listen to him forever. “Play it again, please.”

Fox’s smile was quiet, the look in his eyes unreadable as he complied. “It’s not finished yet.”

“Will you,” she began, hesitated, took the plunge. “Will you play it for me if it’s done by the time the month is over?”

A long look. “Yeah, baby. I promise.”

For some reason, she believed in his promise, despite the fact she’d spent a lifetime learning not to trust. “Thank you.” Then she lay silent as he moved his fingers over the strings with a grace that astounded and compelled. When he added his voice, keeping the volume low to avoid disturbing her neighbors, she felt her heart stop beating.

A fallen angel might have a voice like that, she thought, hard and pure and with an unashamed sexuality to it that invited the listener into sin. It made her eyes burn, tears roll down her face.

Setting aside his guitar as the last note faded from the air, Fox walked over to kneel beside the bed. His hand slid into her hair, his lips touched hers… and Molly felt herself fall, her shields crashing in splintered shards at her feet.





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, f*cked around.”