Lost, she rose on tiptoe and linked her hands behind his neck, her taut, aching br**sts crushed against his chest. He groaned and squeezed her neck a fraction, just enough to get her notice.
“Fox?”
“I want you in my lap.” Nipping at her lower lip, the ring rubbing over the kiss-swollen flesh, he drew her not into the bedroom but to the sofa.
Sprawling there, he crooked a finger. Molly really, really wanted to find that arrogant, but the sight of him aroused and ready for her made her breath catch, her body melt. Kicking off the slippers, she straddled him, and because he was her own personal piece of insanity, leaned in to tug on the ring that had led her into trouble in the first place.
His lips curved, and the painful happiness inside her grew bigger, threatening to crush her ribs outward.
“Kiss me, Molly.”
It was one demand he’d never have to make twice. Burying her hands in the thick silk of his hair, she indulged herself in the taste of Fox, having missed him until it hurt.
Pleasure thick in his veins, Fox ended the kiss on a soft suck of sound and looked into brown eyes that held a pained vulnerability. He felt something tear inside him, the need to take care of her a violent craving. “Come here.” Kissing her with all the tenderness he had in him, he brushed his hands up and under her T-shirt to caress the lush cream of her skin.
Touch by touch, kiss by kiss, he gentled her, seduced her, the raw sexual possessiveness he always felt when it came to Molly tempered by a vicious protectiveness. By the time he pulled off her T-shirt, she was liquid honey around him.
Easing her down onto the sofa on her back, he bared her lower half then rose to strip, conscious of the way she watched him.
“You’re so beautiful.” It was a husky feminine whisper as he came down on top of her.
Fox drew up her thigh and, pausing only to check she was ready for him, pushed into the welcoming heat of her body. He needed to be inside her, needed to reclaim her. Molly gasped, her neatly cut nails digging into his arms and her thighs wrapping around him.
God, she felt good, felt like his. Pulling her hands off his arms to place them on either side of her head, he wove his fingers with her own, their eyes locked as he rode her slow and deep; Molly moved with him, sensual and natural and f**king perfect.
Fox had done plenty of debauched things in the twenty-seven years he’d been on this earth, had treated sex as a bodily need, found pleasure before… but this… “Look at me, baby,” he demanded when her lashes fluttered down, her body an erotic song below his own.
Deep brown eyes met his own. “Fox.”
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.”