Nalini Singh - Rock Addiction

A palm pressing between her shoulder blades when she would’ve turned. “Nu-huh. Don’t make me tie your ankles too… or maybe I should.”

“I’ll fall.”

He spanked her on one of her bottom cheeks, the ripple of sensation arcing through her flesh. “As if I’d let that happen.” Hooking his fingers in the sides of her panties, he tugged them down and off.

 She felt fabric around her ankles the next instant. “It’s my T-shirt, not your top”—Fox’s voice, low and with that gritty undertone that made him so powerful as lead singer—“so don’t get mad.”

Hobbled by the tie and in a slightly unbalanced position against the wall, she had to stay where she was or risk taking them both down, because Fox was right—he’d never let her fall.

“You have no idea how hot you look.” A kiss to her nape. “My strong, smart, fucking perfect Molly.”

Heart aching at the stark emotional power of his words, she drank in the sight of him when he stepped back and scooped her up in his arms. The words she wanted to say flirted on the tip of her tongue, words that meant everything to her, but that Fox could well reject.

Carrying her to the bedroom with effortless ease before she could give in to temptation, Fox said, “I wouldn’t want you to abrade your skin,” and placed her carefully on her front, making sure her face was turned to the side and her hair out of the way. “Okay?”

His tenderness undid her. “Yes,” she whispered, feeling something break inside her—old pain, old fear, the last hidden fragments crumbled into dust at the brush of his callused fingertip across her cheek. “Fox.”

“I have you, baby.” Maneuvering her lower body until she was on her knees, her butt in the air and her face against the sheets, he ran his hands down her curves with unhidden pleasure. “Now this would make a pretty picture.” His words turned the ugliness of what had happened into something beautiful, claimed it for their own.

An open-mouthed kiss on her lower back, his hand pushing between her thighs again, his fingers sinfully busy. Brought to the edge of what felt like a shattering orgasm, she screamed when he stopped… only to start again a minute later, after he’d eased her down from the high… then he repeated the cycle.

Until she was an incoherent pile of trembling woman, every one of her senses primed. That was when he drove into her. The fact her thighs were pressed together by the tie around her ankles made the thick heat of him feel like an invasion, hot and welcome. She was branded, she was owned, she was taken.

Molly came, sobbing her pleasure. And kept coming as he pounded into her again and again, his fingers digging into her hips and buttocks. When he gripped her hair in his hand near the end and tugged up her head, the pulling sensation on her scalp sent her over the edge.

She came so hard she passed out… but not before she heard Fox groan her name as he slammed deep into her one last time.

Molly rose to consciousness cradled in Fox’s lap, her rock star sitting on the bed with his back against the headboard. Her bindings were gone, his heartbeat a hammer under her ear as he ran one hand along the curve of her spine, the other down her arm. Her own heartbeat not exactly steady and her skin sheened with perspiration, she snuggled closer.

“Hey.” Fox tipped up her chin. “You okay?”

Seeing the concern in his gaze, she found the energy to reach up and kiss his jaw, his stubble coarse under her lips. “I can officially say that was the hardest orgasm I’ve ever had.” The confession got her a deliciously male, flagrantly smug smile that wrapped another thread around her already claimed heart. “I used to read that in romance novels and scoff. I mean, who passes out from an orgasm?”

“My Molly.”

“Your Molly.” Her veins sluggish from the aftereffects, she ran her fingernails down his chest in a light caress. “Do you have to report in for anything today?” There might not be a concert tonight, but the band was constantly fine-tuning the show, part of what made them so good at what they did.

“Nothing that can’t wait.” He kissed the top of her head. “Do you want to sleep?”

Molly nodded, knuckling her suddenly heavy eyes. “It’s been a crazy day.” She’d expected to feel scared, humiliated and broken after what had happened, but instead she was content, happy… and proud.

“I survived the world seeing naked pictures of me and knowing they might see a whole heck of a lot more,” she said, sitting up to look into Fox’s eyes. When the green grew stormy, she shook her head and cradled his face in her hands. “I discovered I’m stronger than I thought. You know what else I realized?”

A shake of his head, his expression unreadable.

“That we don’t blame and fracture when the going gets tough. We don’t abandon each other.” As her father had abandoned her mother in so many ways. “We stand together, and Fox, if we can do that now,” she whispered, “can you imagine how strong we’ll be in the years to come?”

His smile creased his cheeks, his gaze potent with emotion as he said, “I see you in every dream I have of the future.”

“I love you.” It spilled out, what she’d held inside for so long because she knew that for Fox, those three words in that particular order meant loneliness, neglect, and rejection.

He froze, but Molly wasn’t about to allow her rock star to carry this hurt inside him forever. “I know that statement doesn’t have good memories for you,” she said, eyes locked to his. “That’s why we’ll make new ones together.”

“Might take a hell of a long time.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” No fear, no regrets, no other always but Fox. “Just remember, this is me, Molly, saying it to you. And it means my heart.”

He brushed his thumb over her cheekbone, his strained muscles easing beneath her. “Say it again.”

“I love you,” she said, understanding on a storm of emotion that this was the first time in his life he’d heard the words from someone he trusted not to kick him in the heart. “So much. Until it hurts and the hurt is one I want to feel forever.”

They slept intertwined, warm and safe—and woke to another phone call from Thea, this time on Molly’s phone. Molly immediately put her on speaker. “Thea?”

“You’ll never believe what’s happened!” The excitement in her sister’s voice had them sharing a confused glance, especially when she continued on to say, “I mean, I’m looking at it and I can’t believe it.”

“Stop rambling and get to the point,” Fox growled.

But her sister remained ebullient. “I always knew Schoolboy Choir had some dedicated fans, but this is unreal.”

“Thea.”

“Sorry, Moll.” Thea laughed. “That tabloid site that published the photos? It’s down.”

“How?” Fox asked.

“Hacked, and a post on a major online bulletin board says it was done by the band’s fans. Several other sites that scraped the images have also gone down.” Thea sounded like she had the most gleeful smile on her face. “All of a sudden anyone else who reposted the photos is hauling ass to get them off.”

“Will this blow back on Fox?” Molly frowned.

“No, I asked the legal team. Everyone heard what Fox requested of Schoolboy Choir fans—they did this on their own initiative.”

The print version of the tabloid remained, Molly thought, but the worst they could do there was print stills with the explicit sections blacked out. Though, if the tabloid’s management had any sense, they’d stay clear even of that. No paper could survive only on print; the tabloid needed to have an online presence, and printing the photos would no doubt be seen as an aggressive move by the band’s fans.

“You haven’t even heard the best part.” So much glee Thea could’ve been a cat who’d found a whole vat of cream.

“There’s more?”

“Get your tablet so you have access to a bigger screen.”

It only took Molly a few seconds. “I have it.”

When Thea told her to look up a major entertainment blog, she was leery. “Thea, I don’t—”

“Trust me, this is a good one.”

Arm around her waist, Fox pressed a kiss to her shoulder, and it gave her the strength she needed. The front page of the site blinked to life on her screen—and it was dominated by a photograph of a grinning Fox kissing Molly on the steps of the hotel this morning.

FOX’S TAKEN, LADIES!!

The accompanying article was relatively small, but it mentioned that Molly was from New Zealand, a librarian, and that her father had been a “disgraced politician.” However, they’d spun the facts so instead of her family’s past being a tawdry piece of gossip, Molly came out looking plucky and strong, her and Fox’s romance a fairytale ending to a tough life.

Astonished, she said, “Did you do this?” to Thea, as Fox glanced at his phone, then stepped out to make a call.

“No, Molly, you did. The media, and more importantly the fans, are charmed by you—you couldn’t have done better if I’d scripted everything.” Open delight. “God, you were so cute. You even blushed!”

“I’m going to strangle you soon,” Molly muttered.

“Like I care. Just keep on being yourself, being the ordinary girl who snagged a rock god.” A pause. “Hmm, I’m going to feed that line to the press. Oh, if you want to get caught being adorable with Fox now and then, that’d be—”

Molly hung up on her laughing sister, then looked at Fox when he came to sit back down beside her on the bed. “The video’s still out there.”

“Yeah, but what dumbass will upload it now, especially when the man responsible has just been arrested and confessed.” He held up his phone. “That’s the message that came in.” Running his hand down her back, he said, “Even if someone is stupid enough to touch it, the piece of shit told the cops he only got about ten minutes of usable footage.”

“What?” Molly turned, heart thumping.

“Turns out he wasn’t a technical genius. No motion sensors. He just switched on the camera and left it running.”

“And”—Molly’s eyes widened—“we came in super late that day.” A tanker had spilled its load not far from the concert site, leading to traffic being held up for over two hours.

“The scum couldn’t get back into the suite to reset the camera because his shift had ended.” Fox closed his hand over her nape. “That’s probably why the tabloid was building up hype—they were hoping for a big surge of initial customers paying to watch it before word got out about how tame it was.”

Molly exhaled because Fox was right. Even if the video did leak one day, all anyone would see was a couple in love, cuddling and kissing and laughing. After surviving the exposure of the still photographs, photographs that could never be totally erased from the Internet, Molly knew she’d be able to handle that. “At least now,” she said to Fox, “you have the compulsory rock star sex tape.”

He squeezed her neck for the smart-aleck comment. “I can’t have that video getting out.” It was a snarl. “My reputation as a badass who does dirty, nasty things to women would be in shreds.”

Giggling, she leaned into him, her hand on his ridged abdomen. “The media likes us now, but they could turn on us in a heartbeat, couldn’t they?”

Fox looked down into her face as she looked up into his. “Yeah, so we don’t live for them, we live for us.”

“Us,” she whispered, her lips parting for his kiss.

The concert the next night blew off the roof. Schoolboy Choir kept playing for two hours beyond the official end time, accepting screamed-out requests from the sold-out crowd. Noah and Abe took the mike a number of times and the crowd chanted “Da-vid, Da-vid” until the drummer surrendered and laughingly added his voice to one of the band’s popular songs.

Molly was surprised to find that David could sing, and quite well. All the men could, though none had the ferocious power of Fox’s vocal cords. But no one could pound a beat like David, caress the keys like Abe, or the guitar strings like Noah. Their diverse range of talents was what made the band so incredible as a unit.

“Thank you!” Fox yelled into the mike after what they’d announced as their final song. “You’ve been an amazing audience—and thanks for some other things I’ll get in trouble for if I mention them too specifically!”

The crowd roared.

And the band did one more song, pure unfettered hard rock, before leaving the stage. Fox dragged her into a kiss the instant they were clear. He was sweaty and pumped and gorgeous.