Rock Addiction (Rock Kiss #1)(33)

His name was the last word either one of them spoke as they rocked together to a pleasure that was a passionate kiss that engulfed both their bodies. And through it all, they held the eye contact, their hands clasped.

It was the most starkly intimate moment of Fox’s life.




“How was dinner?” Molly asked a long time later, cradled against Fox’s chest.

He’d sat back up after his breathing evened out and taken her with him, her legs on either side of his and her head on his shoulder. It was an unquestionably sexual position with both of them nude, but this felt affectionate… as the sex had felt like so much more. Now, from the way Fox was running his hand slowly over her back, it was clear he was pleasing himself as much as he was pleasing her. That did things to her she didn’t want to accept, didn’t want to think about.

“Bullshitted with the guys,” he said in answer, the vibration of his voice against her another small but potent intimacy. “Played some music. It was good.”

Molly went to speak, closed her mouth, afraid she’d break this moment. The way Fox had touched her, possessed her; the way he’d held her gaze to the very end; the way he’d so gently kissed her cheeks, her nose, her closed eyelids after the pleasure caught them both in its relentless current; it was more than she’d ever expected. Warm and strong and protective around her, he was everything, everything she’d never dared dream of. Why did he have to be from a world she could never survive?

Throat thick, she pressed a kiss to his collarbone, staying tucked up against him. “Thank you for stealing Noah’s boat.” For coming to her.

“You always let strange men in at night?”

Molly’s lips kicked up at the corners, the terrifying emotion that threatened to rip her apart woven through with a playfulness Fox alone seemed to awaken. “Only rock stars I’m banging.”

His laughter rumbled against her, his growling bite at her throat making her smile deepen. She was so happy. “It’s my turn to help close up the library tomorrow,” she said, trying not to worry about the inevitable flip side to this painful happiness, “so I have a later start. We can have a nice breakfast.” She didn’t want him to go, wanted to hold on for every minute, every second that he was hers.

Fox brushed aside her hair to bare her cheek. “About your father.” He stroked his other hand over the bare curve of her hip. “I’m sorry you went through that.”

Molly had been hoping he wouldn’t want to discuss the topic, though she’d known the hope was a foolish one. “It happened a long time ago.” She’d quietly begun to use her mother’s last name at eighteen, instead of her father’s, closing the chapter on that part of her history.

“You turned me down for dinner today because of it. It matters.” Wrapping his arms around her until she felt warm and safe and shielded from the cruelty of the world, he said, “You matter.”

Her barriers shattered. “It was all so sordid.” Swallowing the jagged rock in her throat, she fisted her hands against his chest and lifted her face to his. “All my life, I grew up with people idolizing my father—youngest politician ever to hold such a critical post, part of the ruling party, landslide victor of a major seat he continuously held through multiple elections, active in charities, smart, handsome, witty.”

Molly, too, had adored him—until she’d grown old enough to see through the illusion and her mother’s desperate fantasies, begun to understand that Patrick Buchanan cared only about himself. “Then he was busted with that girl my age, from my own school, in the back seat of his car, and I saw the other side of fame.”

Patrick Buchanan had been charged with statutory rape, though the girl, the child, had insisted it was consensual. “They released him on bail because he was a ‘pillar of the community,’ but the press hounded him.” She’d often wondered if her parents would both still be alive if the judge had made a different decision. “They camped out in front of the house night and day.”

Fox’s arms tightened. “Ah, hell, baby.”

“At least he deserved it, but they also hounded my mother. Asking her how she felt. How did they think she felt?” Her voice rose as old anger, old pain, had her thumping her bone-white fists against his chest. “I was in the car one day when a reporter shoved a microphone through the window as we left the drive and asked her if my father made deviant sexual requests in the bedroom.” Molly had almost thrown up.

Fox muttered some brutal words, cradling the side of her face with one big hand, his other arm steel around her.

“I was protected from any direct questions by the fact I was a minor,” she continued, the words shoving to get out after having been suffocated for nine long years, “but everyone at school knew.” Name suppression had been pointless when the photos of her father with the girl had been plastered across the Internet, the original images taken by a jealous boy who’d followed his fifteen-year-old girlfriend to the assignation.

“That’s when I learned how cruel people can be.” The boy who’d originally posted the photos had ended up in serious trouble, too, for distributing sexual images of a minor, but the damage was done. “I didn’t defend myself at first—I knew it was that poor girl who continued to stick by my father, saying they were ‘in love,’ who was the true victim.” Instead, Molly had taken blow after blow in penance, her soul bruised black and blue.