Brushing back her hair when her breathing quieted, he looked down. “Hey.”

A shy smile before she snuggled back down against his shoulder and traced the song lyrics on one side of his torso. “Was this your first tattoo?”

“No, that was the inner-wrist characters.”

“Did it hurt badly?”

“Like a bitch.” He laughed at the memory. “But I was with the guys—all of us decided to get inked to celebrate our first number one—so none of us could make a sound. Afterward, we went and got drunk and whined like pussies.”

Molly’s laughter was music he knew he could never capture with chords and notes.

 “I have something for you,” he said after they’d lain in warm silence for several minutes. Reaching down to snag his jeans, he tugged out the folded piece of paper he’d put in the back pocket this morning. “Here.”

“What’s this?”

He knew the instant she found the answer to her question. Her cheeks went bright red, but he knew she was listening when he said, “I’m clean, Molly, and I haven’t been with anyone but you since that medical report. I wanted you to have the info before I asked you if we can ditch the condoms.” Even young and stupid, he’d never taken chances, but he wanted to be skin-to-skin with Molly, brand her from the inside out.

Yeah, it was primitive as hell. Fox didn’t care.

“Oh.” Molly carefully folded the report back into a neat square and gave it to him to put on the bedside table. “Why—” She coughed to clear her throat. “Why did you have this done?”

Fox thought about how to answer that without betraying something it wasn’t his business to tell. “Friend needed to go get checked after he did something idiotic, and I went with him. Moral support.”

“This was done a month ago,” Molly said a little hesitantly, and he knew what she was asking.

“Fact is,” he said, shifting so that she was below him, her eyes looking up into his as he braced himself above her, “I haven’t been with anyone for a hell of a lot longer than that. It’s been almost a year.”

Her pupils dilated. “But you’re so…”

“I have a high sex drive, but I got over the stick-my-dick-in-anything-hot-and-female stage a long time ago,” he said and, when she didn’t flinch away from the unvarnished answer, decided to lay it all out. He hadn’t been an angel and he’d rather tell her that than have her wonder or get the twisted version from the tabloids.

“At first, it was like having candy thrown in my face, women waiting wet and willing wherever I turned.” He’d been a nineteen-year-old suddenly drowning in money and women, with no parent to put a brake on things, and the label happy to use his exploits and those of the others to further build their hard-rock image. “I took the candy, fucked around.”

He gripped her chin to turn her back toward him when her eyes glanced away, wanting her to see he was dead serious about his next words. “These days, however, I prefer to take my time, choose a lover I enjoy in and out of bed.”

Molly knew and accepted that Fox was no kind of virgin, his sexual experience simply a part of him, but she found she didn’t like hearing about his conquests. It made her wonder if he’d done the same things with them that he did with her. If he’d cupped a woman’s face so tenderly while he kissed her slow and sweet, if he’d spent a lazy Sunday morning petting a lover until she turned boneless, if he’d wrestled with a woman over ice cream, his laughter filling the air.

It took conscious effort to push away thoughts that betrayed so much about the kind of trouble she was in. “Y…you know I haven’t been with anyone else,” she said, trying to sound as practical as he’d done and failing miserably, “and I had a physical for medical insurance four months ago. It was all clear.” She rubbed her foot over the sheet, this conversation so far outside her realm of experience that she had to think about every word. “I’m protected against pregnancy… so I think we could.” Her doctor had prescribed the Pill to regulate her cycle.

Fox brushed her hair off her face. “You okay with it? Because if you’re not, we go on like we’ve been doing. I’m not an asshole who’ll make you feel bad about your choice.”

Molly thought of having Fox inside her, no barriers, all hard heat and power, and knew she wanted the intimacy. “Yes. I can show you the insurance report if—”

“It’s okay.” His hand curved gently around her throat. “I trust you.”

She stroked her hands over his shoulders. “Not very smart of you.”

Shifting, he thrust his thigh between hers, the crisp hairs on his skin a deliciously coarse abrasion against her flesh. “I didn’t say I trust every woman, only a certain librarian who loves to play with my lip ring.” A more serious look. “But if the contraception fails for any reason, you tell me.”

Molly’s throat dried up, the discussion suddenly too intense, too much more than it should be for a fleeting relationship. Pushing at Fox, she would’ve left the bed, but he wouldn’t let her go. Instead, flipping over onto his back, he tumbled her on top of his body. “Hey, hey, what’s the matter?”

She raised her head, her breath hoarse and choppy to her own ears. “The idea of a child coming out of a relationship with an end date,” she said, speaking around the lump of ice that was her heart, “it’s terrifying.”

His pupils jet-black against vivid green, he nodded. “I get it, and baby, if anything does happen, I will be there for you.” Words potent with a raw emotion she couldn’t identify. “Don’t shut me out.”

All at once, she remembered an article she’d read about Fox, back when he’d simply been a darkly beautiful rock star she’d sighed over from afar. “You never knew your father.” She knew she was crossing another line, but Molly had realized she didn’t know how to compartmentalize sex and emotion.

Fox was no longer just that fantasy rock star; he was a man whose touch made her ignite and whose smile made her breath catch in her chest. He could cook a single fancy dish that he’d promised to make her the next time they had a night together, was talented, had a temper, and a fascination with fast cars. All those pieces and so much more made up the person he was… a person who’d begun to matter to her in a way that could have no happy ending.

“I promise I’ll tell you if it happens.” She was the one who brushed back his hair this time, suckled a soft, sweet kiss from his lips. “I’m sorry if I brought up bad memories.”

A crooked smile, his fingers spreading on her lower back. “What am I going to do with you, Molly Webster?” Running his hand up her spine, then back down, he surprised her by adding, “My mom was drugged out of her mind at the time I was conceived, couldn’t have picked the guy out of a lineup, and she certainly wasn’t ready for a kid. She dumped me with my grandparents the week after I was born.”

Her heart broke; she knew what it was like to be abandoned by your parents, but she’d been a teenager at the time, not a defenseless child. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be—I loved living with Gramps and Grammy.” Deep warmth in his tone. “I grew up digging in the garden, even had my own plot. My best harvest was seven carrots when I was six.”

Fascinated at this glimpse into his childhood, she hugged the moment to her heart. “What did you do with them?”

“I made my grandmother put carrots in the soup, and we also had to have them in our sandwiches.”

“Sandwiches?”

“Absolutely. Carrot and cheese sandwiches.”

Unable to resist that grin, she traced his lips with a fingertip, laughed when he pretended to bite. “How did your grandparents cope with an active little boy?”

“By tiring me out until I couldn’t cause trouble.”

As the night softened and went still around them, he told her stories of being allowed to go wild on his kid-sized skateboard while his grandparents watched over him, of playing stickball with the neighborhood kids, of cooking with his grandmother and learning carpentry with his grandfather.