When the words “Let me think about it” fell from her mouth, he thought she might’ve been as startled as he was, her lips parting on a slight gasp—as if to call back the declaration.
Crouching down, he began to tug off her boots, distracting her from her thoughts. He had no intention of playing fair. There were very few things he’d ever truly hungered for in life, and he’d never been given any of them. He’d claimed each through sheer, unrelenting will and the grim refusal to surrender.
Now… now there was Molly. “Are you kicking me out?”
“Don’t you want a different woman each night?”
He heard the tremor she tried to hide, and knew she’d said words similar to those that had lit a spark under his temper the previous night on purpose. Molly Webster was trying to scare him off because she was finding it difficult to say no.
Gut tight and blood hot, he got rid of her remaining boot. “You really have a high opinion of me.” Expecting warm, supple skin under his hands when he slid them up below the hem of her skirt—because he was more than happy to use her physical response to him to tie them together—he found an unexpected barrier instead. “You said no stockings.” The material under his touch was silky and soft and smooth.
“They’re tights.”
Body hardening even further at her breathy response, he traced the fine fabric another fraction past the hemline of her skirt, kept going. “Thigh-high tights.” Suddenly, they were the sexiest things he could imagine. “I want to see.” See the rich cream of her skin against the frame created by the deep gray and blue pattern, kiss every satiny inch.
She put her hands on his, halting him when he would’ve pushed her skirt up to her thighs. “I haven’t said yes yet.”
“Yes, you have, Molly.” Fox held her gaze, sweeping his thumbs slowly across the delicate skin above her tights. “I can feel it in the pulse under your skin, hear it in your voice, scent the damp heat of you on my tongue.”
Maybe, maybe he’d have found the strength to walk away from the intoxicating intensity of the pull between them if Molly had been indifferent to him—though far more likely, he’d have done everything in his power to change that, because he wasn’t the walking-away type, not when it came to the things that mattered. But Molly wasn’t indifferent.
Skin coloring on the heels of his words, she tried to squeeze her thighs together. He blocked her by wedging his body between them. “Don’t be embarrassed, baby.” Shifting position slightly, he caught her lips in a teasing, coaxing kind of a kiss. “You have no idea how unbelievably hot I find it that I make you so wet.”
When her hand came to rest on his shoulder, her fingers just brushing his nape, he had to exert steely control not to deepen the kiss, not to pull down her panties and take her then and there. That would leave him in the same position he’d been in before she let him in tonight, Molly skittish and unsure.
He had to be smart about this, coax her as he’d coax a difficult chord from the guitar. With sweet patience and hard-eyed determination. “You make the rules.” Pressing a kiss to the hollow of her throat, he stroked his thumbs over her skin again. “Tell me what you want.”
Molly swallowed. Fox was right; she wanted him as much now as she had during the hours they’d spent tangled in the dark. But a single night she could justify. Anything longer threatened to take this beyond a moment of wildness and into far more perilous territory.
“One month,” she whispered near soundlessly. “After that, you leave and never contact me again.” It was a stipulation born of the pain inside her, a pain so old it had its own heartbeat, a dark heaviness that was a terrible ache.
“That’s clear enough.” A kiss on her jaw, the movement of his thumbs on the sensitive skin of her inner thighs radiating pleasure that pooled in the throbbing bundle of nerve endings between her legs.
“And,” she rasped, “we’re exclusive for that month.”
His hands tightened on her flesh. “No one else, I promise.” Another teasing, tormenting brush of his thumbs, the callused pads scraping erotically over her flesh. “Come here, baby.” The seductive invitation in that whiskey-and-sin voice stole her will, threatened to destroy everything she’d worked for in life.
Dangerous, he was so dangerous. Still, she dipped her head that final inch and kissed him. Her control of the contact lasted approximately two seconds. Gripping her nape with one hand to hold her in position, Fox kissed her, not raw and deep as she’d expected, but with a slow attention that had her entire body aflame, the ring on his lip a hard accent. He slid his other hand higher up her leg at the same time, making her stomach flutter, her inner muscles clench.
“Such pretty, soft skin.” It was spoken against her mouth, his lips curving in a smile as he licked playfully across her own. When she shivered, his eyes darkened, his kiss deeper but just as slow, as if this rock god had all the time in the world to kiss and caress Molly Webster. His hand gently squeezed her nape.
Warning bells clanged in her mind. It felt as if she were drowning, kiss by slow kiss, Fox coaxing her into deeper and deeper waters. “The bedroom—” she began on a slightly panicked breath.
Eyes lazy, hooded, he kissed away her words before glancing down at her legs. Her heartbeat was in her mouth as she watched him push up her skirt to expose the pale skin of her upper thighs.
“You make my mouth water.” Lowering his head, he pressed a single wet kiss on the inner curve of her right thigh, his stubbled jaw rubbing against her flesh.