Nalini Singh - Rock Addiction

“Good.” He tugged on the curl again. “Anyway, four times in the span of less than eight hours is excessive, even for me. Especially since right now, I’m fighting the urge to push up your skirt to see if you’re wearing pantyhose.”

Mind scrambled, she stared straight ahead. “No.”

“So if I slid my hand up, I’d touch—”

“Unloading zone.” She came to a hard stop on the street kitty-corner from the commercial parking lot where she usually left her car. “Out before I get a ticket.” Or before she turned the car around and spent the day letting him make her even more deliciously sore.

“Mean, Molly. That was mean.” Undoing his seat belt, he reached over to clasp his hand over her nape, kiss her on the lips. A full kiss. A kiss that made her want to play with that ring, suck on his lip, lave her tongue against his, her hands in his hair instead of locked to bone-white tightness on the steering wheel. “I’ll be seeing you, Molly Webster,” he murmured with a final nibbling taste of her lips.

“Yes, see you.” But as she watched him walk away, a rock god burnished by the morning sunlight, she knew that was the last she’d ever see of Zachary Fox outside of music videos or Schoolboy Choir concerts. His life and her own, they might as well have been on different planets.

Swallowing the thickness of emotion in her throat, she pulled away from the curb.

The fantasy was over.

Exiting on the top floor of the serviced apartment complex on the waterfront, Fox went not to his own apartment but to Noah’s. He knew the band’s guitarist, who also played bass like a pro, would be in; Noah might bed a different woman—often women—every night, but he didn’t stay the night with any of them, and if he brought them back to his place, it was only for as long as it took to have sex.

Fox knew why the other man couldn’t sleep with anyone else in the room, but they never discussed it. Not like women discussed shit. They simply had each other’s backs—Noah knew if he felt himself sliding too deep into hell, he just had to reach out a hand and Fox would haul him out. Not that Fox was sure the stubborn bastard would reach out. Didn’t matter. Fox would never allow Noah’s demons to swallow him up.

He knocked lightly and wasn’t surprised when a rumpled Noah opened the door soon afterward. The other male looked like he’d rolled out of bed a second ago, his jeans hanging low on his hips, stubble on his jaw. It was an illusion—Noah rarely slept past dawn, regardless of his nighttime activities.

“You got coffee?” He walked in, leaving the door open. It was only the four of them up here, with the elevator locked to their personal keycards and service personnel instructed to come up only on request. It was one of the first things they’d realized after Schoolboy Choir’s first album went triple platinum—that if they wanted any privacy at all, they’d have to fight for it.

“Check this out.” Noah pointed to a machine that looked like it had escaped the deck of a spaceship. “Looks worse than the monstrosity you have at your place back home.”

“I know how my monstrosity works.” Fox scowled, kicking himself for not having properly checked things out before the party last night. He’d just thrown his gear inside his own apartment, the band having been at a nearby hotel till then. “Damn it, I walked right by the coffee place next door because there was a line.”

Dark gray eyes glinting, Noah found a mug, thrust it under one of the many spouts, and pushed three buttons of the thousands on the spaceship coffeemaker. Half a minute later, Fox was holding some kind of cinnamon-scented coffee so frothy he could feel his testosterone levels dropping just looking at it. “What the hell, Noah? You want me to drink this?”

“You have to drink it,” the blond male snarled. “It’s the only crap I’ve figured out how to make on this thing.”

Fox took a sip, got mostly foam. He tried again, shuddered. “Give me another mug.” When Noah handed it over, he started slotting in the shiny pod things that sat in a basket beside the coffeemaker and pushing random buttons.

Three pods later, he hit on the right combination for plain black coffee. “Clearly, I’m the brains of this outfit.”

“Gimme that.” Commandeering the coffee, Noah took a long drink, groaned. “This is coffee. Now show me what the fuck you did.”

Fox successfully made a second cup and, taking it, followed Noah out onto the balcony, both of them leaning their forearms on the balustrade. The view of the harbor was spectacular, the sparkling blue-green water busy with countless watercraft. Close to the city it was mostly commuter ferries, though there was also a tall-masted racing yacht and a boat that looked like it might be taking tourists out to see dolphins. Farther out, Fox could see sailboats and small personal fishing craft as people headed out to enjoy the brilliantly sunny—if cold—fall day.

“You had breakfast?” Noah asked as they watched a kayaker set off for one of the islands, his muscular arms and smooth pace as he rode the waves created by bigger craft making it clear he was no amateur. “I can scramble some eggs. Or we could wake David up and hold him upside down over the balcony until he agrees to feed us.”

Fox grinned at the reference to David’s superior culinary skills. “I already ate.” Finishing off his coffee, he dangled the mug from his fingers and thought of the delicious armful of woman who’d kicked him out of her car.

“You have a look that says ‘I not only got laid but had my mind blown.’” Noah froze in the act of grinning. “Shit, Fox. I saw you leave the same time as the woman Thea pointed out as her sister. If you’ve touched her, Thea will make your life a living hell, probably schedule you to appear on a Japanese game show.”

Damn right he’d touched Molly. And he planned to do it again. “She’s mine.” Sex usually worked women out of his system; it had only worked Molly in deeper.

Noah angled his body to stare at him. “What?”

“Molly. She’s mine.” This was no longer about anything as simple or as easily handled as physical attraction.

“I need more coffee.” It was a groaned-out statement from his bandmate. Grabbing Fox’s cup as well, Noah went back to the machine, returning a few minutes later to say, “You’re serious?”

“Deadly.” Fox drank from the full cup the other man had handed over. “You know when you get the whisper of a melody in your head, or the murmur of a song? And you have the gut feeling that if you could just hear the rest of it, just capture the music”—the need an ache as frustrating as it was piercing—“you’d have something fucking amazing?”

Noah nodded.

“Yeah well, that’s what it feels like with Molly.” The most compelling whisper of his life. “I’m not about to walk away from that.”

“Could just be lust,” Noah said bluntly. “It can hit hard, leave a man seeing stars, and then it’s over.”

Fox thought of Molly, of what her body, her scent, her taste, did to him.

His own body hardened at the memory. Yeah, their physical chemistry wasn’t in question; he could’ve happily stayed in bed with her all day today and been greedy for more. The things he wanted to do to Molly Webster… But despite their erotic connection, sex wasn’t the first thing that came to his mind when he thought of Molly.

It was her smile.

Eyes glowing from within as her whole face lit up, that smile had knocked him sideways at the party. Then had come her blushing smile in bed when he made a very dirty suggestion midway through their second time around, followed by her smart and funny response as her self-protective shields fell enough that he’d caught a glimpse of the heart of her.

Each glimpse had only deepened his craving to know more. He didn’t only want to fuck Molly; he wanted to talk to her, wanted to hear her use words like “nefarious” and discover what else might come out of her beautiful mouth. And he wanted that brilliant, real, full-body smile turned in his direction.

 “It’s not just sex,” he said into the silence that had fallen between him and Noah. “It’s something else.” A thing for which he didn’t have a name, but that he knew in his gut was important, rare. The idea of turning his back on it made every cell in his body scream “Hell, no!” “I have to hear the whole song, learn the entire melody.” Figure out if this was a song with staying power… or one that would fade into history without leaving a mark.

His shoulders grew tight.

Thrusting a hand through his hair, the blond strands glinting in the sunlight, Noah raised an eyebrow. “She good with that? Being involved with you isn’t exactly going to be a picnic for her once the media gets hold of the news.”

“Molly thinks we had a one-night stand.” Not that he could blame her. It wasn’t as if he’d made his intentions clear—but he had a feeling those intentions would make Molly run hard and fast in the opposite direction.

So he just wouldn’t tell her.

Work kept Molly busy, the library buzzing with a mix of adults and children as well as keen university students after some of the older material held in the archives. And if parts of her body twinged and throbbed in unfamiliar ways, they’d settle soon enough, erasing any lingering physical trace of Fox’s possession and leaving behind only memories—memories she had no intention of smothering.

Her dream of a stable, happily boring life hadn’t changed, would never change. It made her stomach lurch to even think about the horror that had been the unforgiving glare of “fame” after her high-profile father was found with that underage girl, the constant whispers and stares.