Dragging her suitcase from the walk-in closet where she’d stashed it, she flipped it open on the carpet and began to throw her things in it as she fought not to cry. When Fox’s hands landed on her upper arms, she wrenched violently away—or tried to. He wouldn’t release her, tugging her back against his chest and wrapping his arms around her upper body in a steely embrace.
She kicked back at him, but her position left her at a disadvantage, her foot barely scraping his shin. “Let me go!”
“I’ll never let you go.” Spinning her around too fast for her to get her bearings, he clasped her to him again.
When she shoved at his chest, he didn’t resist. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“I don’t care!” He’d used her deepest vulnerability to wound her. “I trusted you!”
Unbalancing her by hooking his foot around the back of her calf, he tipped her onto the bed behind her. He’d come down on top of her and pinned her wrists to either side of her head before she could catch her breath, his weight crushing her to the mattress. “I’m sorry for the way I said it,” he gritted out, his pupils jet-black against the rich color of his irises, “but I’m not sorry for what I said.”
“Get off me! I don’t want to be anywhere near you!”
“Too bad.” It was a growl of sound. “You’re mine,” he said again, “and I’ll take care of you if it’s the last thing I do. That includes making sure our f**ked-up pasts don’t mess up the best thing that has ever happened to me!”
Chapter 25
“You really need to move.” Molly didn’t want to hear the care in his tone, didn’t want to see the unyielding commitment on his face. “I can’t breathe.”
Fox released her wrists and pushed himself up onto his elbows. “Better?” Touching his fingers to the side of her face, he went to run them down to her jaw, but she pulled away.
“Molly.” The hard edge was back in his voice. “I’m no shrink¸ but it doesn’t take a bunch of degrees for me to realize why it’s so important for you to remain independent.”
She flinched. “So you had to throw it in my face?” Returning her to a past that had almost destroyed her.
“You want me to ignore it instead? It’s the big goddamn pink elephant in the room.” Fisting his hand in her hair, he forced her to meet his gaze, the smoky green stormy. “I will never abandon you, never put you in a position where you have no choices.” Shoving off her and the bed in a sudden move, he went to the nightstand to pull out a black leather document holder.
“Here.” Throwing it on the bed beside her when she sat up, he strode to the door. “I know it’ll only piss you off, but I was trying to do something to make you feel safe.” He was gone a second later.
Shaken and feeling as if something precious was slipping out of her grasp, Molly picked up the document wallet. Unzipping it, she slipped out the page on top. It was a letter from an attorney, summarizing the complex legal documentation behind it. That summary was concise and to the point and it stole her breath.
Fox had set up an irrevocable trust fund in her name with a fifteen-million-dollar endowment. The money was being managed by a reputable financial firm, with the income from the principal accessible to her at any time: income that could never be cut off by Fox or anyone else. A generous percentage of that income would be automatically deposited into her account every month in any case.
The multimillion-dollar principal, on the other hand, would only be accessible to her after she spent at least two years with Fox, the clock having started the day she landed in Los Angeles. The payout would be doubled if she stayed five years, tripled if she stayed ten.
Hands trembling, she dropped the documents to the bed and thrust her fingers through her hair. She wasn’t a shrink either, but she could see what he was doing and it broke her heart. Rubbing the heel of her hand over the organ, she got off the bed and went to find him, eventually tracking him to the gym downstairs. He’d changed into cutoff sweatpants and was lying on the bench press, having just lifted what looked like a ridiculously heavy set of weights.
Not wanting to risk disturbing him mid-press, she waited until he’d successfully cradled the bar, then straddled his body. “Look at me,” she said quietly and, when he went to lift the weights again instead, closed her hands over the bar. “I won’t allow our pasts to mess us up either.”
Expression grim, he said, “You read it?”
“I read it.” Releasing the bar, she cupped his face in her hands, her throat thick and her anger at the hurt done him a feral wildness within. “You don’t have to pay me to stay with you, Fox.”
A shake of his head, his jaw clenched tight. “That’s not what I’m doing.”
“If I have to face up to my demons,” she whispered, “so do you.” Somewhere inside her gorgeous, strong, talented rock star was the boy who’d been abandoned by his mother, left to the care of strangers for whom it was a paid task.
The brutal rejection had scarred him in ways she was only now beginning to see—but Molly had no intention of permitting that hurt to fester inside him. “We do this together,” she said. “Don’t you make me walk alone.”
Rising into a seated position, he ran his hands down her back. “That’s the one thing you never have to worry about.”
This time it was Molly who initiated the kiss, Molly who rubbed her body over his, and Molly who demanded. Her pretty blue sleeveless shirt was on the floor in seconds, her bra gone the next instant. It frustrated her that she had to get off him to rid herself of her jeans and panties, but that only took a few heartbeats, long enough for him to kick off his sweats.