Molly pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek, her hands stroking his nape—as if she knew what was coming was going to be bad.

Holding her close, he opened the doorway to the echoes of a lost little boy’s grief. “When I was seven, my grandmother died, and my grandfather followed three weeks later.” It had destroyed his world.

Molly hugged him tight, her tears quiet. Burying his face against her neck, he breathed in the warm, sweet scent of her and told her the rest. “I went to live with my mother and her family.”

Molly sucked in a breath.

“Yeah,” he said with a twist of his lips, “she’d pulled herself together a couple of years after she had me, married into money and had another child, a girl three years younger than me.” He clenched his hand against Molly’s spine. “Turned out she’d never told her Ivy League husband about me, and the prick refused to bring up ‘some piece of trash’ she’d had off a stranger in a club.”

 “Prick is too nice a word.” Molly pulled back to look him in the eye, her expression livid in a way he’d never seen, not even when they’d fought. “Who says that in front of a grieving child? He deserves to be horsewhipped, the useless waste of space.”

Fox found himself grinning, the last thing he’d ever have expected. “Trust me, I’ve had a few fantasies along those lines—before I realized the limp-dicked fucker wasn’t worth it.”

Kissing him in that way she had of doing, one that always made his grin deepen, Molly said, “I’m sorry you had to live with such ugliness,” and brushed her fingers through his hair.

Fox’s smile faded. “I didn’t—to cut a long story short, the prick told my mother it was either him or me, and she chose him. I was placed in a boarding school in another state and left there to rot.” No way to dress it up and he’d stopped trying to convince himself otherwise a hell of a long time ago. “It was an expensive place, a sop to her conscience I guess. As she led me inside, she said, ‘I love you, Zachary,’ and it was the first time in my life anyone had ever spoken those words to me.”

Hearing the way he bit off the declaration, Molly knew the damage done that day had been brutal. Fox likely never again wanted to hear those words, wouldn’t trust them if he did.

“I was never invited back to their house,” he continued in the same harsh tone, “spent my vacations at the school and, later, at Noah’s house. My mother visited about twice a year, when I suppose she could sneak around the prick—or when she could be bothered.” He leaned back against the sofa, his fingers digging into her hips as his grip tightened. “When I was ten, I told her I didn’t want to see her again.”

Molly’s chest throbbed with an ache that made her eyes hot, but she didn’t allow her sadness for the boy he’d been to show. Fox, she knew instinctively, was too proud to accept that. Instead, she ran her hand down to tug at one of his, twining their fingers together when he allowed her to take it. Neither did she ask him if his mother had listened to what had been a desperate cry for love disguised as anger—his face told her the truth.

“Thank you for trusting me.” Grazing the rigid line of his jaw with her fingertips, she rubbed her nose gently against his. “I know that can’t have been easy.”

“It’s not exactly a secret.” He thrust his free hand through his hair. “The tabloids and gossip sites dug up every dirty detail of my life as soon as Schoolboy Choir hit the big time.”

“Mine wasn’t secret either,” she pointed out. “It still hurts to talk about it.”

His brow darkened. “I’m a man. I don’t have feelings.”

“Ha-ha.” A deep tenderness in her veins that she knew was going to get her into bad, bad trouble, the kind of trouble that could permanently scar, she kissed him on a wave of heartbreaking emotion. The contact helped heal the torn-up places inside her, at least a little.

She hoped it did the same for him.

His hands warm on her lower back, he pressed his forehead against hers afterward, their breath mingling. “I have a plan for Sydney.”

Molly stifled her immediate negative reaction, unable to back away after the emotional honesty of the past few minutes. Fox, she thought, wouldn’t be so tender with her, only to disregard her deepest fear. “Tell me.”

“You’re going to be a roadie.”

Blinking, she stared at him. “I am?”

“Yep. Stick a Schoolboy Choir crew cap on your head, give you a pair of big, black-framed glasses and a clipboard, and you’ll become invisible to the media.” A coaxing kind of a kiss, his hand cupping her nape. “Say yes, Molly.” Wickedness in the smoky green.

Molly felt her heart catch; she’d much rather see him this way than angry and hurt.

His next words were as wicked as his gaze, as his smile. “I don’t think my cock will survive a weekend without you.”

It wasn’t the most romantic invitation, but that did nothing to alter the fact that he was planning to go to a lot of trouble to have her with him. Her, Molly, when he could have any woman for the taking at the concert. Inhaling a deep breath, she seriously considered his suggestion. No one would ever mistake her for a starlet or supermodel, especially with the crew accoutrements Fox had suggested, and if she dressed down as she assumed the crew did.

It wasn’t as if she’d run the risk of a reporter spontaneously recognizing her from the old scandal. Molly Buchanan had been a late-blooming and gawky teen with braces whose breasts had barely budded. Molly Webster was a twenty-four-year-old with a rock star for a lover, a rock star who loved her curves. So long as she didn’t do anything to make someone pay specific attention to her past, no one would ever connect the girl with the woman. Her colleagues at the library certainly hadn’t.

“I think,” she said, adrenaline pumping through her veins, “I like the idea of being undercover.”

“That’s my Molly.” This time his kiss was unashamedly sexual, his arousal long and thick against her inner thigh. Breathing in shallow pants when he broke the kiss, she watched his mouth as he spoke, his lip ring an outward sign of who he was: Fox wasn’t a bad boy—he was the harder, more demanding, grown-up version.

“We’ll fly out on different flights,” he told her. “That’ll make sure no one connects the two of us.” Hands on her thighs, he smiled that smile, the one that dared her to do naughty, naughty things. “Ride me.”

“I…I’ve never…” Sucking in air, heat rising up her body in a lush pink wave that made Fox cuddle her closer, she admitted the truth. “Not on my own.” He’d always helped her. “Teach me how.”

He used the hand he had on the back of her neck to haul her down to his mouth, his tongue thrusting aggressively between her lips. “You’re gonna kill me,” he said afterward, cheekbones painted with a red flush. “I never was into the whole professor-student deal, but I’ve changed my mind.”

“Fox.” She tugged at his lip ring in retaliation for the sensual teasing, playfully threatening to pull it off.

Smile deep, he positioned her until the blunt head of his cock nudged at her, but he didn’t allow her to push down. “Use your hand to guide me.” He cupped her jaw, holding her in place for what she’d come to think of as a “just because” kiss, indulging himself in her.

It made her melt.

“Professor Fox,” he said against her lips, “promises to grade you fairly.”

“You,” she said, a wild sensual joy within, “shouldn’t be set loose on unsuspecting women.”

An unrepentant look. “Class is in session, Miss Webster.”

So wet it would’ve been embarrassing if she weren’t with Fox, with whom nothing was taboo, she reached down between them to close her hand over his thickness.

“Ah, damn, that feels good.”

Her breasts aching at that masculine growl, Molly discovered a long-hidden streak of wickedness within herself. “Enough for an A?”