The second time around was delectably slow and astonishingly instructive. Molly might’ve been inexperienced, but she was smart, read a lot. She knew there were endless nuances to what men and women got up to behind closed doors. But when Fox lowered his head to between her thighs and put his mouth on her, when he showed her exactly what that ring felt like against her most delicate flesh, she realized some things required practical application.
And, when it was over and he tucked her close to the hard planes of his body, she stayed. For this one night, a night that would never be repeated, she could trust a man to hold her.
“You work every Saturday?” Fox asked the next morning as they walked toward her car.
Molly nodded. “The library opens seven days a week, rain or shine.” Her work-week started Tuesday, ended today.
“When will you finish?”
She felt her stomach dip, shook it off with pure strength of will. The night was over; wild, dangerous Molly with her taste for rock stars and bone-melting pleasure put permanently under dustcovers, leaving sensible Molly in charge. “Around five,” she answered. “Can I drop you off somewhere?”
Her heart stuttered with the effort to keep her voice steady. Even she knew there were certain unwritten rules of behavior after a one-night stand, chief among them a calm, mature morning after. No blushing, no thinking about how Fox had wakened her an hour before her alarm had been set to go off, his fingers between her thighs.
She was sore. It had been worth it.
“The library where you work,” he said now, “where is it?”
“City center.” Realizing she was staring at his lips, her skin flushing and br**sts aching, she wrenched her gaze away and unlocked the car.
“I’ll get off there,” he said after sliding into the car with an audible groan at having to fold his body into the compact space. “It’s an easy walk to the apartments we’ve taken on the waterfront.”
Molly’s hands clenched on the steering wheel as she drove out of the garage. “I thought you’d be on one of the private islands?” Safely beyond her reach, where she couldn’t give in to the temptation to ask him for just one more night.
“Nah, that’s not our style, but one of Thea’s minions did also book out a small hotel for us on the island with the wineries.”
“Waiheke.” The vibrant island was a short ferry ride across the water, though she guessed Fox and his bandmates had their own transportation to a no doubt private beach.
“Yeah, that one.” He tugged at a tendril of hair that had escaped the twist at the back of her head. “Fancy.”
Damn her skin and its inability to be mature, but at least her voice only sounded a fraction husky when she said, “Professional.” It was getting harder and harder to breathe with him so close.
He looked her up and down. “Boots, skirt, slinky top. Nice.”
Having stopped at a traffic light, she resisted the urge to tug at the soft coral-colored wool of her thin V-necked sweater. “It’s not slinky. It’s warm. The air-conditioning’s high at work.” As for the skirt, it was tailored but not tight; she needed to be able to move freely.
“I bet you give all the teenage boys hot flushes.”
“I don’t give anyone a hot flush.”
“Yeah?” A single word full of sensual challenge. “I seem to recall having several heat waves hit me. Four times, wasn’t it?”
Molly had never been teased this way. “Do you always keep score?”
“Hell yeah.” He leaned back in his seat, hands behind his head, biceps taut. “You sore?”
Molly was fairly sure he wasn’t supposed to care after a one-night stand, but since he did, she fought her embarrassment to say, “Nothing major.” Except that she’d feel him inside her with every step she took today.
“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.
Chapter 4
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.