"Yes." With that, she took a cracker, loaded it with a big hunk of cheese, and bit down. She might've made a mistake in her surprise, but the idea of discussing her mother with Fox had her chest going tight, her lungs strained--it was one thing to let go, another to trust him with the vicious pain that had shaped her. "Why didn't you bring the grapes?"
Fox set aside the wine. "So you'd have to walk nude to the kitchen and get them."
Relieved he'd taken the hint and dropped the subject of her aversion to alcohol, she shook her head. "Not happening."
"Why not? You have an amazing body." A bite on her shoulder, his hand sliding along the inside of her thigh. "Like that old painting of the redhead rising from the clamshell."
The Birth of Venus.
Utterly undone at being compared to the sensually beautiful artwork, she thrust a cracker between his lips. "Shh." His body might be so hot it should be illegal, but she was beginning to learn it was Fox's mind that was his most dangerous weapon. Add that to his voice and it was no surprise women fell into his lap at the crook of a finger.
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 fucking 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 fuck 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.
Throat moving, she bit down on her lower lip. "People will recognize you."
Shit. He wrenched his angry response under control. "I'll make sure they don't." Reaching across the table, he ran his fingers down her cheek, and when she appeared uncertain, he pushed the advantage. "Show me a little of this city I'd never otherwise see."
"All right." A husky whisper that caused a fierce exultation inside him.
"But," she added quickly, "you can't stay tonight."
Fox gritted his teeth, consciously dropping his voice to the edgy purr that always made her blush, melt. "Molly." He'd happily seduce her back into bed if that was what it took to keep her in his arms through the dark hours of night. Because sleeping together was a whole different ball game than sex, and the woman he wanted as his own knew it. That was why her breathing was ragged, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. "It's already late"--he slid his hand down to cup the side of her neck--"and you said we have to get up early for the market."
Pushing back from the table in a jerking move, she broke contact and rose to her feet. "Stop," she said when he got up and began to move toward her. "I want you gone. I'll call you a cab."
The flat rejection lit the fuse on Fox's temper.
Chapter 8
"Don't bother," he growled, striding toward the bedroom to pull on the T-shirt she'd discarded. "I have a car." It was a good thing he hadn't ended up drinking more than half a glass of that damn wine.
His fury roared even more wildly when he emerged from the bedroom to see that she'd unlocked and opened the door, ready to throw him out. Fox wanted to slam that door shut, force her to face the reality of what pulsed between them, growing stronger with every second they spent together, but the small part of him t
hat remained rational told him he'd lose her the instant he did.
Allowing her to simply shut the door on his back, however? Not ever going to happen. Fisting his hand in her hair, he kissed her startled taste into his own mouth. "I'm not the kind of man who likes to have the woman running the show. I made an exception for you, but it's not working."
She pushed at his chest, eyes glittering. "That's the most arrogant thing I've ever heard."
"Yeah? I'm not done." Backing her up against the wall, he bent his knees so they were eye to eye. "The sex between us is mind-blowing, and I want to have a whole hell of a lot more, but I'm not letting you blow hot and cold."
Even as he spoke, he knew he was fucking up his grand goddamn plan to slowly seduce Molly into his life and his world. It had been a pipe dream from the start--he wasn't the kind to mess around when he made up his mind. "So decide." He held the eye contact, made her see him. "You either want me in your bed and your life for the month, or you don't. I won't play your sex toy."
Molly's gasp followed him as he released her and, slinging his guitar on his back, walked out the door. His blood was a pounding rush in his ears, his jaw rigid. The sane part of him knew he was overreacting, but he couldn't stop the response any more than he could stop playing music. The scar ran too deep.
Molly was the only lover who'd ever torn it open.
And she'd done it on their second night together. It slammed home the fact that he was already in far too deep for this to be any kind of a brief affair. Not that he'd needed the fucking reminder. He'd never, never, reacted to a woman this way. And her stubborn blindness to the truth of what burned between them aside, the more time he spent with Molly, the deeper he fell.
Honest and smart and with a sweet tenderness to her that cut him off at the knees, she pushed buttons he didn't even know he had.
"Stop." A breathless demand. "You're the one who proposed a one-month stand."
Turning, he stalked back to her doorway just as another door opened down the hall. "Molly?" said a heavyset man wearing black sweatpants and a navy tee. "You okay?"
Fox shifted instinctively to protect her from the view of the other man, her body clad only in that silly fluffy yellow robe that drove him crazy. She flushed and looked around his side. "Yes, I'm fine."
The stranger gave Fox a long, suspicious look before saying, "Just yell if that changes," and shutting his door.
Fox waited until Molly's eyes were back on him to speak, his voice harsh and his arms braced on either side of the doorway. "I might have proposed a one-month stand," he said, "but I didn't expect to be used and shoved out as soon as I'd served my purpose." It infuriated him. "Or should I say as soon as my cock had served its purpose?"
Molly flinched, but she didn't back down. "What? You expect me to let you move in for the month?" Her words came out in a furious whisper, her hands clenched to bloodless tightness even as her cheeks flared with hot spots of color. "I never did anything to make you believe I'd be fine with that. There are boundaries."
Gripping her jaw, he said, "You don't get to treat me as disposable."
Shock rippled through the anger in the dark brown of her eyes. "No, I--"
"You can't use me for sex," he interrupted, too pissed to hold back the words, "then put me away until the next time. I will not be your fucking dirty little secret." Not when it was brutally clear their relationship had already crossed the line from sex to a far more demanding, far more passionate bond. "Decide, Molly."
"I can't." The words were shaky, the anger draining away to leave her expression stark with pain. "I can't become entangled in you."
"You'd rather live half a life?" he asked without mercy, knowing he was pushing her too hard, too fast, but unable to stop himself, his response to her a violence inside him. "Always with one step backing away, ready to run to safety?" Sensing his temper was about to slip the leash totally, Fox pushed away from the doorjamb. "Make sure you can live with that choice."
This time when Fox turned and walked away, Molly didn't call him back. Closing the door with fingers that trembled, she slid down to sit with her back to it, the robe he'd teased her about bunched around her thighs and her eyes on the bench where Fox had kissed her until he melted her bones.
"You'd rather live half a life? Always with one step backing away, ready to run to safety?"
The knuckles of one clenched hand pressed against her mouth, Molly shook her head. That wasn't what she was doing. She was living life on her terms--she supported herself, had a job she truly enjoyed, a best friend she loved, and a sister she'd embraced. More, she had a plan for her future and if that plan wasn't bursting with excitement, that was exactly what she wanted.
You're also twenty-four years old, another part of her whispered, and the only two relationships you've had, if you can even call those fiascos relationships, have been with men who were... comfortable. The first was married to his job, the other in love with his ex-girlfriend. Neither one tried to get anything more than a kiss. And you didn't really care. You don't think something might be wrong with that picture?
It was a pitiless indictment of the life she'd built out of nothing. A safe, careful, content life. Rather than a strong, purposeful plan, it suddenly sounded unutterably sad.
A tear trickled into her mouth, the taste of salt hot.
Knuckling it away, she got up and found the phone as well as the chocolate-fudge ice cream and took both back to the couch
Thea's sleep-slurred voice came on the line two rings later. "Hello?"
"Thea, it's me." Normally, she'd have called Charlotte, but if her smart best friend had one area of total cluelessness, it was on the subject of men.
"What's the matter?" Instant wakefulness.
Thea listened, not saying anything until Molly had poured it all out. "I guess it's too late to warn you against getting involved with someone in the industry?" Not waiting for an answer, she continued. "Here's the thing, Molly, Fox isn't the type of guy you can be with and expect to hold the reins. That vibe he gives off? It's not an illusion--he really is that intense."
Sipping sounds, Thea drinking the herbal tea she'd made while Molly talked. "I've worked with him for over two years," she continued, "and never once has he delegated control of any aspect of his private life to an assistant, manager, anyone. You have no idea how rare that is at his level of success."
Molly swirled her spoon in the melted ice cream, emotion a rock in her throat. "It was meant to be one night."
"You're the only one who can decide if you want more," Thea said, "but speaking professionally, if you had to pick a time and a place to have an affair with a man like Fox, this is about perfect. You can stay off the radar if you're careful, and he'll be gone in a month."
The idea should've comforted her. It didn't. It... hurt. It really hurt. "What if I can't maintain the distance?" she said on the heels of that staggering realization, her eyes burning. "What if I fall for him?" The agony and humiliation of being in love with a man who didn't love her was her worst nightmare.
She'd grown up watching her mother drink away her pain, Patrick Buchanan's infidelities acid on her soul, until by the time Molly was seven, her mother was a stranger, an alcoholic so accustomed to the effects that she was permanently drunk yet appeared sober. Molly had always known the truth, had hated seeing the distant ghost of the mother who'd once read her bedtime stories and promised her Daddy would be home soon. Daddy, of course, had no doubt been banging his aide or another young staffer at the time.
"Molly," Thea said, breaking into the agonizing slap of memory, "you said it yourself--that bastard who donated sperm to make us did a real number on you." Blunt, unexpected words. "The real question is, do you want him to manipulate the direction of your life from the grave?"
Long after the conversation with Thea had ended, Molly sat staring at nothing. Was her sister right? Was her whole life not a life at all, but rather an anti-life, as she did everything in her power not to repeat the mistakes of either
her father or her mother?
"You'd rather live half a life?"
Fox's words circled in her brain, smashing and crashing into what Thea had said until she couldn't think. So she did what she'd done since she was a child alone in a large air-conditioned mansion, the nanny new and unfamiliar again because her mother didn't want her daughter to grow attached to another woman: she called Charlotte.
Her friend was up reading.
Too confused and upset to talk about Fox anymore, she just told Charlie of her conversation with Thea, of her sister's final, piercing question.
"I don't think," Charlotte said softly, "Thea knows how strong you are, how brave. She never saw you handling the bullies when you were fifteen."
"But she's right, too, isn't she, Charlie?" Abdomen tight and shoulders tense, Molly dropped her head against the sofa-back. "I make all my choices based on what happened back then." The shock, the disbelief, the public degradation followed by a screaming loss that had left her numb for months.
"If you're happy with your life," Charlotte replied, sweet and intelligent and perceptive, "what does it matter how it came to be?" The slightest pause. "Are you happy?"
It took Molly a long time to answer, to be honest about it. "No," she whispered. "Sometimes the rules I've made feel like a straitjacket." Squeezing until she couldn't breathe, her chest compressed by the weight of the expectations she'd placed on her life.
"Then be brave again." A quiet, powerful statement, followed by a fierce one: "Be that fifteen-year-old girl who told Queen B-face to shove her snotty nose in a dark, dark, place."
Unanticipated laughter bubbled in Molly's throat. "You mean Queen Bitchface?" she teased her friend affectionately. "I notice you still can't repeat the words I actually said that day."
"Sometimes, when I'm alone really late at night, I try to say bad words out loud," Charlie said with the sharp, self-deprecating humor very few people were ever lucky enough--or trusted enough--to witness. "Once, I even said the 'F' word behind Anya's back... very quietly."
Molly's smile deepened. "You degenerate."
"Thank you." Charlotte's voice turned solemn again with her next words. "If you don't want the same dream anymore, it's okay, Moll. You're allowed to change your mind."