When there was simply nothing inside her any longer, he carried her shivering body into the shower and, setting the water temp close to boiling, held her until she’d stopped shaking. “I’m sorry,” he said, his tone raw. “I’m so sorry, Molly. I’ll kill the bastard who did this. I pr—”
Snapping out of the shock, she pressed her fingers to his lips. “No, don’t make that promise.” Because Fox had never once broken a promise to her… and in that reminder, her world tilted back on the correct axis.
She had no illusions, knew the coming days and weeks would be brutal, even knew there was a high chance she’d fall apart again, but if and when she did, Fox would be there. He was always there and he was the most important person in her world, the one for whom she’d do anything. Even walk back into her worst nightmare.
Cradling his face in her hands, she said, “I won’t allow this ugliness to destroy you, destroy us.”
He crushed her to him, the water pounding over them until steam filled the small enclosure. Warm through and through, not from the heat but from Fox’s embrace, she turned it off. Drying off and shrugging into a thick hotel robe while Fox stepped out to pull on his jeans over bare skin, she brushed her teeth to get rid of the last faint traces of her nausea.
“Come on.” She took Fox’s hand, her rock star having returned to lean in the doorway. “We need to talk to Thea and find out how bad it is, what she can do about it.”
Fox pulled her back against him, his eyes furious but his voice gentle as he said, “This person will pay. I promise you that.”
“As long as it’s legal,” Molly reminded him. “I don’t ever want to visit you behind bars.”
A grim nod. Instead of calling Thea back on the phone once they’d returned to the sofa, Molly used her tablet to connect face-to-face with her sister. Thea looked angrier than Molly had ever seen her, her cheekbones slicing against the smooth honey of her skin.
Her sister didn’t waste time asking how Molly was feeling. Instead, she gave them the cold, hard facts. “The major news organizations aren’t reprinting the still photos lifted from the videos, given that the images were taken in a place where you had an expectation of privacy. The blogs and online fan sites are also staying clear.”
Still grim, she continued, “However, one extra skeevy tabloid has printed two stills with a promise of more, with the video to be uploaded on their site in just over twenty-four hours, and the publicity’s gaining steam. Several other sites have scraped the photos for their own pages. It’s trending on all the main social media platforms, and even the places that haven’t printed the stills are carrying stories about them, so people are going looking.”
Able to feel Fox’s body vibrating with the rigid control he had over himself, Molly put her hand on his knee. “So,” she said, “there’s no way to close the gate, is there?”
“Fox’s legal team can hit every single site that reprinted the stills with a lawsuit, but that horse has bolted.” Her sister checked an incoming call on her phone, didn’t answer. “I’ve already been in touch with them about getting an injunction to block the video, but the tabloid is based in another jurisdiction and I have a feeling they’ll just move up the upload deadline the instant they get a whiff of legal action.” She thrust a hand through her hair. “Only reason they haven’t already uploaded is to maximize the publicity.”
Molly wondered if she was in shock, she was so calm, but now that the first horror had passed, she didn’t feel numb. No, she was becoming angrier with every second that elapsed—because this was hurting Fox, her protective, possessive lover, and no one got to hurt her man. “I want to see what they’ve already posted,” she said. “I need to know how bad this is.”
Thea didn’t argue, just forwarded her the articles, then waited as she and Fox opened the file. It made Molly’s nails dig into her palms to see an image of herself sitting up on her knees with Fox behind her, both of them nude. They were laughing, and he had his hands on her breasts. The tabloid hadn’t blacked out that part, probably because Fox’s fingers covered her nipples, but they’d put a rectangular block over her genital region, with the word “Explicit!” across it.
The second published still was a back view of Fox, nothing blocked out. In the background, she could be seen lying nude in the tumbled bed, her hair a wild mass around her head. In this one, they’d blacked out her breasts.
The text of the “article” was a collection of exclamation points: Think these images are tame?! Well they are!! We have access to incredibly hot and explicit pictures of Fox and his current squeeze getting down and dirty!! Check back in two hours for a fresh fix as we count down to our upload of the original sex tape!! Exclusive!!
“Only those two so far?” she managed to ask her sister through her fury, her mind filled with memories of that night, of the things they’d done. She was ashamed of none of it, would do it again, but only with Fox. The world had no right to violate the privacy of their bedroom.
“Yes.” Thea guzzled what was probably tar-thick coffee. “It looks like the tabloid must’ve bought exclusive rights to the video and they’re getting as much mileage out of it as they can.”
“Shut the fucking company down.” Fox’s voice was so cold Molly felt her skin prickle. “I don’t care how it’s done—tell legal to throw everything we have at the bastards.”
There was a knock on the hotel room door at that instant. Getting up, Fox walked over to open it. “You heard,” he said to Noah as the other man walked in. He’d clearly been pulled out of bed and wore only low-slung jeans, his blond hair a mess and his eyes chips of ice.
“Yeah. Let’s fuck the vultures up.” Coming to sit next to Molly on the sofa, he reached up to rub his knuckles over her cheek. “You holding up okay, Moll?”
“I’m tough,” she said, and it was, she was discovering, true.
Fox wrapped his arm around her waist again when he sat back down on her other side, his rage no less violent. “We’re talking about how to take the tabloid down.”
The guitarist nodded. “I might hate my old man, but the bastard is a shark,” he said, a mix of admiration and anger in his tone. “I called him as soon as I found out about this. He says for you to file a criminal complaint as fast as possible.”
“Right.” Thea nodded. “So anyone who does anything with the video risks falling foul of the criminal justice system, not just civil law. I don’t know if it’ll work with the tabloid based outside the country, but it’s better than nothing.”
They filed the complaint. Meanwhile, Noah tapped his father’s contacts to put a crack private investigator on the trail of the piece of scum who’d decided to use Fox and Molly to land a big payday.
“Someone in the security company either did this or was in on it,” Fox gritted out. “Maybe the same ‘real man’ who let in the groupie, probably for a fucking blow job.” Calling the head of the security firm, a former Green Beret he knew personally, Fox made no effort to hide his fury.
Apparently, that fury was shared—they had a name within the hour, after a check of the corridor surveillance footage from the hotel in question showed one of the guards walking into their suite during a concert. He was spotted going back inside minutes after Fox and Molly checked out, probably to retrieve the camera.
He hadn’t been behind the groupie however; that was traced to a newly promoted guard whom his livid boss had just busted back down to mall patrol. The only people now in the band’s security team had been with the firm for years, and all had also worked more than once for Schoolboy Choir. As for the man behind the video, he’d disappeared, but Molly knew he’d be found—greed this ugly didn’t make for intelligence.
“This is your nightmare, isn’t it?” Fox said hours later, once they were alone again, the suite having been swept for any surveillance equipment in the interim.