Not hungry, but willing to keep him company, Molly said, “Pass me the robe on the back of the door.”

He picked up and threw her his T-shirt instead. Molly tugged it on, the scent of him a glove around her body. A deep warmth inside her, she got out of bed and took his hand, conscious all at once of exactly how tall he was.

“Did I tell you how hot you look when you’re dressed up all professional with your hair prim and proper?”

Molly certainly didn’t feel prim and proper now. “You just did.”

A slow smile that caught at her heart in a way that set off those warning bells again, but she didn’t want to listen. Not tonight, not when everything had been so wonderful.

“You ever wear those skinny skirts that go past the knee?” Fox ran his hands up and down her hips, the T-shirt moving softly against her skin. “The ones that look strict and professional and sexy at the same time?”

“Those”—she swallowed to wet her throat—“are called pencil skirts.”

A rumbling sound of pleasure when she shuddered at the kiss he laved on the curve of her jaw. “Yeah, you ever wear one?”

“No.” The shape hugged her body too closely.

Dropping kisses along the line of her neck, Fox shifted his hands to her backside. “I get hard just thinking about your ass in one of those skirts.” He nipped at her sensitive flesh. “Wear one for me?”

Molly thought she should probably refuse but couldn’t figure out a reason why when he was so close, the masculine scent of him short-circuiting her brain. “Okay.”

“Hot damn.” A groan, hands squeezing her lower curves. “I can’t wait to see your body in the skirt I’m buying for you.”

“Wait.” Molly pushed at his chest. “You didn’t say anything about buying it.”

“Semantics.” A hard kiss, one hand rising to grip her nape. “Be kind, Molly. Let me enjoy my fantasy.”

Her knees went weak at the rough appeal.

Molly had never been anyone’s fantasy, couldn’t find the willpower to stand strong against a rock god who saw something in her that she didn’t see in herself. For this one month, she’d be that woman, be that other Molly, the one who’d accept a rock star’s gift and who’d rise on tiptoe to tug on his lip ring. Yet even as she thought that, even as she fought the clawing echoes of memory, the panicked voice of the woman she’d spent years becoming yelled at her to stop, to think.

Fox had felt Molly slipping away over the past half hour. Frustration gnawed at him with every nonanswer she gave from across her round little kitchen table, the Molly who’d spoken to him with such vulnerable honesty in bed nowhere in evidence. Patience, he reminded himself as he finished eating, have some fucking patience.

He knew exactly what was wrong, knew that in some part of her she’d begun to realize what he already understood. That this, what they were doing, it wasn’t just sex, wasn’t just an affair—people who simply wanted to fuck didn’t talk about hidden hurts, didn’t treat each other with tenderness.

“I’m not going to turn on you because you are who you are.”

Her words continued to reverberate in his mind, so damn beautiful. She had no idea what her promise meant to him—he’d seen the truth of it in those eyes that couldn’t lie, felt it in the way she touched him. He wanted the right to that tenderness every day of his life and he’d fight dirty to get it.

“I saw an ad for a horror flick that’s on TV tonight,” he said after drinking the glass of water she’d poured him earlier. “Want to watch? You can pretend to be scared, and I can take the opportunity to slip my hand inside that cute fluffy robe of yours.”

Tugging on the belt of the robe she’d slipped into a quarter of an hour earlier in another damn sign of retreat after leaving his T-shirt on the bed, she straightened her shoulders. “I want to be up and going before eight tomorrow morning.”

“I thought you had Sunday and Monday off?”

“I do, but I want to go to the market to get fresh vegetables, dig around in the antique stalls.”

Fox stared at the woman who was turning him inside out. “You’re skipping sleeping in to get vegetables?”

Eyes sparking, she glared at him. “It’s fun. Even if the antiques are mostly fake.”

“Shit.” He laughed. “Now I have to come.”

Molly hesitated.

And Fox stopped laughing. “You want to keep me confined to the bedroom.” Anger kissed his bloodstream.

Throat moving, she bit down on her lower lip. “People will recognize you.”

Shit. He wrenched his angry response under control. “I’ll make sure they don’t.” Reaching across the table, he ran his fingers down her cheek, and when she appeared uncertain, he pushed the advantage. “Show me a little of this city I’d never otherwise see.”

“All right.” A husky whisper that caused a fierce exultation inside him.

 “But,” she added quickly, “you can’t stay tonight.”

Fox gritted his teeth, consciously dropping his voice to the edgy purr that always made her blush, melt. “Molly.” He’d happily seduce her back into bed if that was what it took to keep her in his arms through the dark hours of night. Because sleeping together was a whole different ball game than sex, and the woman he wanted as his own knew it. That was why her breathing was ragged, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. “It’s already late”—he slid his hand down to cup the side of her neck—“and you said we have to get up early for the market.”

Pushing back from the table in a jerking move, she broke contact and rose to her feet. “Stop,” she said when he got up and began to move toward her. “I want you gone. I’ll call you a cab.”

The flat rejection lit the fuse on Fox’s temper.

Chapter 8

“Don’t bother,” he growled, striding toward the bedroom to pull on the T-shirt she’d discarded. “I have a car.” It was a good thing he hadn’t ended up drinking more than half a glass of that damn wine.

His fury roared even more wildly when he emerged from the bedroom to see that she’d unlocked and opened the door, ready to throw him out. Fox wanted to slam that door shut, force her to face the reality of what pulsed between them, growing stronger with every second they spent together, but the small part of him that remained rational told him he’d lose her the instant he did.

Allowing her to simply shut the door on his back, however? Not ever going to happen. Fisting his hand in her hair, he kissed her startled taste into his own mouth. “I’m not the kind of man who likes to have the woman running the show. I made an exception for you, but it’s not working.”

She pushed at his chest, eyes glittering. “That’s the most arrogant thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Yeah? I’m not done.” Backing her up against the wall, he bent his knees so they were eye to eye. “The sex between us is mind-blowing, and I want to have a whole hell of a lot more, but I’m not letting you blow hot and cold.”

Even as he spoke, he knew he was fucking up his grand goddamn plan to slowly seduce Molly into his life and his world. It had been a pipe dream from the start—he wasn’t the kind to mess around when he made up his mind. “So decide.” He held the eye contact, made her see him. “You either want me in your bed and your life for the month, or you don’t. I won’t play your sex toy.”

Molly’s gasp followed him as he released her and, slinging his guitar on his back, walked out the door. His blood was a pounding rush in his ears, his jaw rigid. The sane part of him knew he was overreacting, but he couldn’t stop the response any more than he could stop playing music. The scar ran too deep.

Molly was the only lover who’d ever torn it open.

And she’d done it on their second night together. It slammed home the fact that he was already in far too deep for this to be any kind of a brief affair. Not that he’d needed the fucking reminder. He’d never, never, reacted to a woman this way. And her stubborn blindness to the truth of what burned between them aside, the more time he spent with Molly, the deeper he fell.