Rock Addiction (Rock Kiss #1)(95)

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 f*ck 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 f*cking 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 f*cking 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.”