Nalini Singh - Rock Addiction

Swaying with her under the pumping music, Fox scowled at Abe when the keyboardist cut in, but let her go. The members of the band were the only men to whom he’d surrender her. Soon as any other male even looked interested, Fox made it very, very clear Molly was off-limits. It was an intoxicating feeling, to be so publicly branded as his.

They went from club to club as a group, walking in at the front of every line. “This could go to a girl’s head,” Molly said, nuzzling at Fox’s throat in the shadows to the side of the dance floor.

Bending closer to her ear, his breath hot and intimate, he ran his hand down her side, stopping to caress the curve of her breast. “Does that mean you’ll suck my cock when we get back—after I tie your hands behind your back and bind your ankles together?”

Molly felt her skin blaze, wasn’t ready for the kiss he laid on her, her ponytail wrapped around his hand. “You are so sexy when you blush.” A delicious bite of her lower lip. “So?”

Molly somehow found the will to speak through the pulse of arousal low in her body. “If I say yes,” she whispered in his ear, her lips touching his skin, “you’ll have me on my knees in the hotel room so fast my head will spin, and I’m having fun.” Not that she’d last long if he decided to persuade her. “I like being out with you and the guys.”

Hands on her hips, he squeezed. “I can be patient when I know what I’ve got coming.” Taking her hand on that low promise, he led her through to the VIP section of the club, no doubt leaving a generous tip with the bouncer whose hand he shook on the way in.

“Do you always tip so well?”

“I waited tables when we were trying to make it,” he said. “Worked as a bouncer, too. You wouldn’t believe the number of big shots who never tip, the jerk-offs get so used to being given everything for free.”

Molly went to part her lips to reply when there was a holler from the other end of the bar, and two seconds later, Fox was being lifted off his feet by a big black guy in a flawless charcoal-gray suit. David, who’d entered right behind them, received the same treatment a few seconds later. “Damn!” the stranger said. “You didn’t tell me you were coming in!”

“That’s why it’s a surprise, asshole.” Noah’s laconic response had the older man grinning, the guitarist having just joined them.

“Fuck you, pretty boy.” Sharing a quintessentially male hug, complete with thumping back slaps, the two drew apart.

Abe, the last one to enter, held up a hand. “I don’t do girly shit like hugs, man.”

He was swallowed up an instant later and came out of it grinning, the deep smile rare on his face. Slapping Abe’s cheek with hard affection, the stranger turned to Fox. “You going to introduce us?” He was looking at Molly.

Startled, Molly found herself taking in the besuited man with new eyes. People had a way of ignoring her, appearing surprised when Fox introduced her. Seemed the “bit of pussy” wasn’t meant to have a name. It would’ve infuriated her except that Fox always made it clear she mattered. So she was taken aback when he said, “Hell no,” a scowl on his face. “You’re not safe around women.”

Flashing an undaunted smile at her, the stranger said, “I’m Shawn, but most folks call me Doc. A beautiful woman like yourself, however, can call me Shawn.” He held out one thickly muscled arm. “Let me show you things Fox here didn’t even know existed until I shared my wisdom with him.”

Fox traded insults with Shawn as they walked up a spiral staircase and into a private section that offered a view over the entire club. Shawn, Molly realized, either owned or managed the club. From the confident way he moved in this space, she leaned toward ownership. Ordering them to settle in, he called up trays of finger food from the club’s generous kitchen. Then, with food and drink flowing while the music boomed beneath them, Molly sat back and listened to the band catch up with a man who was obviously a trusted friend.

“This guy,” Abe told her, “gave us our first big break.”

Noah nodded, his beer held loosely between thumb and forefinger, the green glass of the bottle sweating with condensation. “He wasn’t a big shot then—had a tiny place that was building a serious rep, and he put us center stage.”

“Good business.” Shawn ate a spicy spring roll before continuing. “They packed out the club night after night. Had lines out the door by the end of what was supposed to be their run—so of course I signed them up for another one.”

Fox shook his head, fingers playing with Molly’s ponytail, his arm along the back of the sofa. “We didn’t pack in those crowds for weeks—not until word spread. Most people would’ve let us go, but Doc had our back.”

David clinked his beer bottle to the club owner’s. “Which is why he’d better have instruments for us.”

Shawn whooped. “You gonna jam? Hell yeah, I have what you need!”

Molly watched from the high aerie that was Shawn’s domain as the band brought down the house with a rocking set that had people screaming. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how amazing they are onstage,” she said to the club owner where he leaned on the railing next to her.

“Some musicians,” Shawn said, “they practice until they get good, others they have raw talent. Fox, Noah, Abe, and David, they always had the talent, but they had the drive too.” Leaving for a few seconds, he returned with a cocktail glass filled with decadent-looking chocolate mousse, complete with an enticing red cherry on top.

Molly groaned. “You’re going to kill me.” He’d already talked her into a frothy, creamy nonalcoholic cocktail.

“Try a spoonful for me.” He beamed at her shuddering moan when she gave in. “Good, yeah?”

“Divine.” She spooned up another tiny bite. “Fox is right—you’re dangerous around women.”

That got her another deep smile before he returned his attention to the band.

“You’re the first woman Fox’s brought into my club,” he said several minutes later. “Before, he might’ve picked up a woman here, taken her back to the hotel, but he’s never once brought anyone with him.”

Molly let the mousse melt on her tongue and tried not to think about those other women, but about the important part of Shawn’s statement. “That’s why you asked to be introduced.”

“Nope. That was because I plan to steal you away from Fox—I have an old pinup calendar in my office.” A low wolf whistle as he looked her up and down. “You’d fit right in.”

Smiling at the blatant sweet talk, Molly scooped up a touch more mousse as the band gave in to the urgings of the crowd and began another number. “If we’re going to be friends,” she said to Shawn, “you can’t tell me about the women Fox used to pick up and take back to his hotel.”

“You know he wasn’t a virgin when you met him, right?”

 “Doesn’t mean I want an action replay.”

“Fair enough.” He hollered along with everyone else at Noah’s guitar solo.

Almost as if they’d timed it, Fox’s growl of a voice rolled out over the last riff and David slammed down on the drums. Abe’s keyboard joined in fifteen seconds later, Noah coming back in at the same time. “This is new!” she yelled to Shawn over the screams of the crowd. “Never before performed live!”

The big man’s eyes sheened wetly. “Goddamn punks,” he said, his pride clear.

Clapping and dancing along with the crowd as the band finished the song and walked offstage, she ran back to the door through which Fox emerged a few seconds later. “You were amazing!” Kissing the life out of him, she turned to the others. “That was incredible!”

“Do we get a kiss, too?” Noah drawled.

Jerking him forward by grabbing the front of his T-shirt, Molly smacked him on the lips. It was the first time she’d seen Noah thrown off balance. He recovered quickly. “Fox, sorry, man. I’m keeping her.”

 Fox wrapped an arm around her waist, his face holding the exhilaration of performing. “Not even in your dreams.”

Then Shawn was there, hugging and backslapping his “punks.” They partied with the club owner till after four in the morning. “I’ve never been out this late,” Molly confessed to Fox as they danced to a slow song.

 “You are such a good girl.” A quick, hot kiss, her breasts crushed against his chest. “It turns me on like crazy—but what turns me on even more,” he whispered in her ear, “is watching you be dirty only for me.”

Drawing her aroused body off the dance floor when the house lights flickered, he took her back upstairs to say good-bye to Shawn. David had left much earlier, while Noah and Abe had both disappeared about an hour ago—Noah with a petite black woman and a pneumatic peroxide blonde, Abe with a statuesque, tattooed brunette, her skin pure cream.

“What’s the deal with Noah?” Molly asked softly once they were settled in the far back of the limo, Fox having instructed the driver to take them on a night tour of the city. Now, with the opaque privacy screen up between the front and the back, it was as if they were in an intimate cocoon. “I could’ve sworn he was looking at Kit as if he wanted a second chance, but then he picks up women left, right, and center.”

Fox shrugged. “Noah’s got his demons. Frankly, it’s better if Kit keeps her distance.”

Molly shifted on the seat to look at his face. “That bad?”

“I think of him as a brother,” Fox said, his voice quiet and his expression solemn, “but I also know he’s not good for a woman who wants an actual relationship. We might not have partied the past few nights, but Noah was fucking a groupie or some other woman—probably women—he picked up.” It was a nonjudgmental statement of fact. “I don’t know if anything or anyone is capable of fixing what’s broken inside him.”

Saddened, Molly laid her head against his shoulder and didn’t ask further questions. As she wouldn’t betray Charlotte’s secrets, she didn’t expect Fox to betray Noah’s. “The streets are so quiet and pretty this time of night.” Rain had fallen not long ago, and everything shimmered, the lights reflecting off the tarmac. “Let’s do this in other cities.”

Fox ran his fingers lightly over the side of her face where she lay tucked up against him. “Just don’t tell anyone I’m doing romantic bullshit.”

“Tough guy.” Snuggling into him, she said, “Can we ride around for a while?”

“Long as you want.”

They stayed out almost to dawn, stopping to play barefoot in a deserted fountain and dance under the moonlight in an otherwise empty plaza. Held in Fox’s arms, his cheek against her hair and the only sound that of their breaths, Molly drew in the scent of him and felt her heart overflow with love.

“Sorry ’bout the ropes,” she said sleepily much, much later, cuddling up to him in bed.

“Nothing to be sorry about—I’ve never had a better night out.” Fox stroked his hand down her spine, the callused pads of his fingers a delicious, familiar roughness, his words a gift against her skin. “I’ve decided to save the ropes for when we have hours to play. I wouldn’t want to rush.” A kiss to her shoulder as goose bumps broke out over her skin. “Good night, Molly Webster.”

“Good night, Zachary Fox.” I love you.

Fox was the one who found Abe the next afternoon when the big keyboard player didn’t meet the rest of them for a late lunch in Fox and Molly’s suite. “I’ll go wake him,” he said with a grin. “Maybe I’ll use this ice cube to do it.” Plucking the cube from his otherwise empty orange juice glass, he wrapped it in a thick napkin.

Noah and David grinned, but with restraint. Both their heads had to be throbbing since it turned out that after Noah showed his women the door last night, he’d woken David up and talked him into another drink or five.

“The rock-and-roll life,” Molly said sweetly, “is not healthy for your livers.”

David groaned. “Fucking tequila. Never again.”

“You said that last time.”

“Shut up, you minion of evil.”

Noah splurted his coffee. “Minion of evil? Last night you were declaring your undying love.”

“I’m going to stab you in a second.”

“For the record, Molly,” Noah said, turning his attention to her, “we’ve been saints since we returned home. Saints. We didn’t want Fox’s girl to get the wrong impression about us.”

Rolling her eyes, Molly took pity on the two males and was pouring them fresh coffee when her cell phone rang. It was Fox. “Get in here, bring the others.” He hung up after that terse instruction, and she saw why when they reached Abe’s room.