Rock Addiction (Rock Kiss 1)

He ran his thumb along the inner seam of her thigh. “Want me to behave?”

Sensation curling through her body, Molly paused, not sure she did want him to behave—and he threw back his head. His laughter pleased every one of her senses, made delight bubble through her veins.

“I like the way you think, Molly,” he said, but stopped tormenting her, settling for claiming a kiss anytime he felt like it.

Fox, as she’d learned tonight, was a man who enjoyed kissing. It was an unexpected and wonderful discovery, and it made Molly realize she liked kissing, too. Especially the way Fox did it, with an exquisite patience that made her feel terrifyingly cherished.

It was only later, the bottle of wine still almost full—Fox had decided it was too sweet for him—and her lips wet and tingling, that he dragged on his jeans, held out a hand, and said, “Come on. I’m starving. Let’s go finish the takeout.”

Not hungry, but willing to keep him company, Molly said, “Pass me the robe on the back of the door.”

He picked up and threw her his T-shirt instead. Molly tugged it on, the scent of him a glove around her body. A deep warmth inside her, she got out of bed and took his hand, conscious all at once of exactly how tall he was.

“Did I tell you how hot you look when you’re dressed up all professional with your hair prim and proper?”

Molly certainly didn’t feel prim and proper now. “You just did.”

A slow smile that caught at her heart in a way that set off those warning bells again, but she didn’t want to listen. Not tonight, not when everything had been so wonderful.

“You ever wear those skinny skirts that go past the knee?” Fox ran his hands up and down her hips, the T-shirt moving softly against her skin. “The ones that look strict and professional and sexy at the same time?”

“Those”—she swallowed to wet her throat—“are called pencil skirts.”

A rumbling sound of pleasure when she shuddered at the kiss he laved on the curve of her jaw. “Yeah, you ever wear one?”

“No.” The shape hugged her body too closely.

Dropping kisses along the line of her neck, Fox shifted his hands to her backside. “I get hard just thinking about your ass in one of those skirts.” He nipped at her sensitive flesh. “Wear one for me?”

Molly thought she should probably refuse but couldn’t figure out a reason why when he was so close, the masculine scent of him short-circuiting her brain. “Okay.”

“Hot damn.” A groan, hands squeezing her lower curves. “I can’t wait to see your body in the skirt I’m buying for you.”

“Wait.” Molly pushed at his chest. “You didn’t say anything about buying it.”

“Semantics.” A hard kiss, one hand rising to grip her nape. “Be kind, Molly. Let me enjoy my fantasy.”

Her knees went weak at the rough appeal.

Molly had never been anyone’s fantasy, couldn’t find the willpower to stand strong against a rock god who saw something in her that she didn’t see in herself. For this one month, she’d be that woman, be that other Molly, the one who’d accept a rock star’s gift and who’d rise on tiptoe to tug on his lip ring. Yet even as she thought that, even as she fought the clawing echoes of memory, the panicked voice of the woman she’d spent years becoming yelled at her to stop, to think.

Fox had felt Molly slipping away over the past half hour. Frustration gnawed at him with every nonanswer she gave from across her round little kitchen table, the Molly who’d spoken to him with such vulnerable honesty in bed nowhere in evidence. Patience, he reminded himself as he finished eating, have some f**king patience.

He knew exactly what was wrong, knew that in some part of her she’d begun to realize what he already understood. That this, what they were doing, it wasn’t just sex, wasn’t just an affair—people who simply wanted to f**k didn’t talk about hidden hurts, didn’t treat each other with tenderness.

“I’m not going to turn on you because you are who you are.”

Her words continued to reverberate in his mind, so damn beautiful. She had no idea what her promise meant to him—he’d seen the truth of it in those eyes that couldn’t lie, felt it in the way she touched him. He wanted the right to that tenderness every day of his life and he’d fight dirty to get it.

“I saw an ad for a horror flick that’s on TV tonight,” he said after drinking the glass of water she’d poured him earlier. “Want to watch? You can pretend to be scared, and I can take the opportunity to slip my hand inside that cute fluffy robe of yours.”

Tugging on the belt of the robe she’d slipped into a quarter of an hour earlier in another damn sign of retreat after leaving his T-shirt on the bed, she straightened her shoulders. “I want to be up and going before eight tomorrow morning.”

“I thought you had Sunday and Monday off?”

“I do, but I want to go to the market to get fresh vegetables, dig around in the antique stalls.”

Fox stared at the woman who was turning him inside out. “You’re skipping sleeping in to get vegetables?”

Eyes sparking, she glared at him. “It’s fun. Even if the antiques are mostly fake.”

“Shit.” He laughed. “Now I have to come.”

Molly hesitated.

And Fox stopped laughing. “You want to keep me confined to the bedroom.” Anger kissed his bloodstream.