Nalini Singh - Rock Addiction

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.”

Her heart aching, Molly said, “I still want that dream. So much.” The white picket fence, the suburbs, the blissful ordinariness of being normal, she hungered for it so badly. “Only… maybe I can relax the rules, stop simply surviving and start living.”

Never again would she come into contact with a man as talented, as dangerous, and as fascinating as Fox. While they could never exist in the same world, his life lived on a wild, Technicolor stage that caused her veins to fill with pure terror, he was hers for this one month out of time.

Molly didn’t want to give up that month, not for anything. Especially not because of scars formed by the actions of two people so messed up their toxic relationship had eventually killed them.

Fox powered through the city streets until he hit the winding road that went along this part of the Auckland coast. The yachts and other seacraft had been moored for the night, but the area was vibrant with life as a result of the myriad restaurants clustered in the central section. Frustrated by the slow vehicle in front of him, he throttled back the speed—just as well, because right around the corner was a cop car.

That’d be perfect, getting his face splashed over the papers for racking up a speeding ticket after he’d told Molly he could keep a low profile. Teeth gritted at the reminder of why he felt like a powder keg about to blow, every muscle and tendon in his body stretched to snapping point, he continued to drive until he’d ground down the serrated edge of his temper.

Fox had never had any intention of allowing Molly to see that part of him, but he hadn’t counted on the effect she had on him. He couldn’t keep his distance. The only good news was that Molly hadn’t been the least afraid of him, despite the way he’d snapped. Grown men had backed down before him when he got that pissed, but Molly? She’d stood strong and fought.

He was proud of her spirit even as he was infuriated with her.

Now he had two options: return to his waterfront apartment, leaving the ball in Molly’s court, or drive back to her place and use sex to get what he wanted. He could, of that he had no doubt. Their chemistry was a thing of erotic beauty, his sexual experience a weapon against which she had no defense. Except if he did that, they’d repeat this cycle again as soon as her mind cleared.

And he had no intention, none, of ever again being kicked out of Molly’s bed.

Option one, however, carried with it a good chance she’d run scared. Fox wasn’t about to let that happen. Because their fight didn’t change the reason she’d said yes to a one-month stand despite her fear of addiction—the same reason she’d thrown him out and he’d blown up at her tonight.

And what they got up to between the sheets had nothing to do with it.

Eyes focused on the road, one hand on the wheel, the other on the stick, and his mind on the stubborn woman whose taste still lingered on his tongue, he decided on option three.

His body settled into the bucket seat, anticipation uncurling in his gut.

Seven forty-five the next morning and Molly’s fingers trembled as she looked up the number Fox had input into her cell phone the first night.

“In case you ever need a musician,” he’d said with a smile that had made her want to straddle his hair-rough thighs and claim kiss after kiss while his hands roamed over her. She hadn’t been confident enough to act on that impulse, but she wasn’t going to stay silent this morning.

Regardless of the stuttering beat of her heart.

Initiating the call, she readied herself to wait while he woke up, but it was answered on the first ring. “If you’re a telemarketer, I’ll be supremely pissed,” was the growled warning.