by Cox, Chloe
She hated realizing she was wrong when she was still angry.
“Yeah, that was a dick move,” she said. Grudgingly.
His hands raced up her thighs to circle around her hips and he pulled her violently forward, their chests nearly touching. She could have stopped him at any time. Could have told him no. Why hadn’t she?
“Apologize,” he growled.
That was why. The voice, the order: she felt it deep inside. She almost wanted to moan.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He squeezed his thumbs into the crease where her legs met her hips and she rocked a little, involuntarily. Molly grit her teeth, fisted the bed sheet, and glared back at him, determined not to let him get the better of her. She would not beg him to fuck her right now, on this bed. She would not.
“It’s not about shame,” he said. “It’s about proving to me that you’ve seen enough of your own shit to understand mine.”
She studied his face. There was no pretense there. Just open, honest eyes, a calm certainty. No games, no power exchange.
And the worst part is it made perfect sense to her. The only reason she could even consider the idea of telling Declan the worst things that had happened to her was that she could see, in those eyes, that terrible things had happened to him, too.
She gave in.
“What do you want to know?” she asked.
Now he flashed a wicked smile while his hands still branded her thighs. “Why do you fight it?”
“Fight what?” she said. It sounded weak even to her.
“How much you want me.” He emphasized his point by digging those thumbs in a little deeper.
Oh Christ, was there even a point to denying it anymore? Declan saw right through her. It would be more embarrassing to lie, to keep lying, and admit that she was afraid she couldn’t control herself.
He slid one hand up to her waist, toying with the edge of her shirt, as if to prove that she didn’t want him to stop.
“Answer me,” he said.
An order.
She sighed. Fuck it. Honesty.
“I told myself it was because I wanted to be professional, for the book,” she said. “And that’s true. But that’s not the real reason. That’s not the reason I’m scared shitless of the way I feel when you touch me. I fight it because I’ve been burned by guys like you before, Declan. Badly. Bad things happened. And I’m not doing it again.”
Declan moved that hand up from her waist to her face, touching her cheek, her neck, tucking her hair behind her ear. He looked thoughtful and angry all at the same time.
“Somebody didn’t treat you right,” he echoed.
Molly didn’t trust herself to speak.
Declan took her chin in his hand and looked her in the eyes.
“Did he fuck you right?”
Molly gasped. She was stunned mentally—and overwhelmed physically—by the weight of him between her legs, the smell of him so close, the way he brought her physical pleasure just by barely touching her. It took her a moment. And then:
“You want to know how other men have fucked me?” she asked.
Declan growled a little, his brows coming together. Secretly, Molly rated that as a triumph.
“No,” he said. “I want to know if you got what you needed. But I already know you didn’t.”
His eyes roved all over her body, her taut muscles, her aroused nipples, the way she could barely breathe. Yeah, it was obvious. Fuck.
And then he got up.
“And you never will if you don’t trust a man to give it to you,” he said.
And he left.
Molly sat there for far too long. The bus started up with a rumble and she swayed as they turned out of the Volare compound, her eyes staring at nothing while she thought about what Declan had said. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t find anything wrong with it. He was right.
And now the question that reverberated deep inside was this: could she ever trust anyone? Could she trust herself after everything that had happened?
Could she trust Declan?
chapter 8
Molly. Naked. On her knees.
Declan closed his eyes and stroked himself, his cock so hard it hurt, the hot water sluicing over his hard body in thin rivulets. She was driving him crazy, with those big eyes and those bee stung lips, and that plain, raw desire to submit. Fuck. He would have her. He would have those lips wrap around his cock, those eyes looking up at him, hungry. Yielding.
Until then he had to take care of himself, or walk around with a permanent hard on. He swore he’d match every orgasm with one buried deep inside her. He’d make her come hard for every one of these that she missed.
And he knew how obedient she’d be given the chance. Once he had her naked. The idea made him groan, his hand moving faster as the feeling at the base of his cock intensified. She’d beg for it. She’d bend over and take him to the hilt when he told her to. And if he did his job right, it would help her let go of whatever had happened to her.
Fuck.
He kept coming back to those big eyes. What they’d look like when she finally came for him. What it would feel like, looking into those eyes, buried deep inside her, her breasts bouncing with every thrust, feeling her come hard around his cock…
“Fuck!” he roared, his cum covering the shower wall, one hand shooting out to steady him. She was a great fuck even when she wasn’t there. “Fucking Molly,” he growled.
He couldn’t have her fast enough.
Declan took his time toweling off and coming down, wanting a clear head, knowing she’d be right there when he rejoined the guys. That clear head lasted about two seconds after he saw her.
Christ.
A week on the road and already that girl was weaseling her way into everything. Declan didn’t mind, but he did find it remarkable. She felt so damn comfortable already, and not just to him. All the guys had gotten used to her.
Yeah, still dangerous.
He’d seen her talking to all the other dudes in the band, even some of the roadies. Doing her detective work. It always seemed to go the same way, too, with her target kind of avoiding her, all nervous because she already knew they were all going to try to lie to her, and then she’d corner them somewhere and get them laughing, smiling.
She was good.
Freaking. Dangerous.
And still Molly hadn’t tried to interview him yet. It maybe kinda rankled, a little bit. What the hell did she have to talk about with those other guys? Wearing those damn cutoffs all the time?
He’d actually asked her about that. She had more than one pair. She’d packed multiple goddamn pairs of lethal cutoffs. “It’s summer,” she’d said.
Declan was going out of his mind wanting her. He hadn’t jacked off this much in the shower since he was a teenager, and it was never enough. Worse, he’d been thinking about what Molly had told him, that she’d been burned badly by another guy. That bad things had happened to her. Thinking about it pissed him off, but it also made him…fuck, he didn’t know what to call it. She’d said it as though it were something to be ashamed of, but to Declan, she’d looked like a grown woman with some baggage to deal with who owned that baggage. She didn’t pretend everything was hunky dory; she put that shit front and center, and she was dealing with it the best way she knew how at the moment.
As opposed to the other women in his life, who hadn’t been able to deal with much of anything and kept on pretending they had no problems right up until everything went tits up.
Molly handled her troubles more like he did. It made him feel closer to her, even if he had no right to feel like that yet.
Again, the whole thing was stupidly dangerous, right there.
Just preshow jitters, he told himself. That was why he had this jumpy energy, why his eyes followed her around the bus, even when he was supposed to be working on new material. She was just so damn beautiful, her hair falling in her face as she leaned over that notebook, writing. The way she tucked
one leg under her. The way she made fun of him whenever she caught him looking.
He needed to get either in her or on stage, one of the two, and he needed it bad. At least he’d get one of those things tonight: first big show on the road. First real test of the band without Soren. They’d played a couple of small venues, like the show at Volare. They’d been warm-ups, and even that had been dicey up until he’d rocked the stage, but this? This was an old venue, Springfield, somewhere they’d played regularly since they started to get big. True blue fans, not handpicked and half famous. Declan stayed away from the news and the gossip, but he knew his fans. Knew most of them were either in love with him or Soren.
Who knew what was going to happen?
“Fifteen minutes!” yelled Davey from the front of the bus.
He caught Molly looking at him. “You checking me out?” he teased.
“No. You nervous?” She grinned. She was curled up next to a window, the sun hitting the highlights in her hair, lighting up her face. More than normal, even.
“Nah,” he said. I’m wound up and you could help me with that, he thought. But she already knew it.
Molly let her eyes linger on him.
He knew she knew. Knew that it had to happen eventually. They were both only human. And now that he knew she’d been hurt by someone, someone who’d robbed her of a chance to find out who she was—it hit every Dom button he had, knowing he could help her. Declan didn’t leave a sub in need. Didn’t leave a woman in need, period, but this was different. This was something he knew only he could give her.
“Careful with those looks, Mol,” he said easily. “You’ll get yourself into trouble you can’t get out of.”
He laughed when she blushed deep, deep red, then got up to get his stuff together. Too late he thought about how red she’d get over his knee and under his hand, and then he had to jump in the shower again.
***
Freshly scrubbed and it was all a damn waste. He came out of his bedroom to find Molly looking just as good all over again. In fact, she looked good enough, leaning against that window, legs spread out in front of her lengthwise on the seat, that it took him way too long to read the expression on her face.
He’d seen it before, always when she was checking her phone. Molly looked the way he felt when he was waiting for Bethany to check in and tell him she’d made it through another day.
Somebody had Molly worried. Somebody important.
“Somebody wake Brian up, we’re here!” Davey yelled.
Molly’s head shot up, and she came to join Declan near the front of the bus while Gage and Erik went to go drag Brian out of his bunk. Declan was surprised to find that she looked kind of nervous. He smiled.
“Ever done this before?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah, tons of times,” she said quietly, looking out the windshield. The venue, an old brick factory that had been converted into a concert hall, rose up out of the emptiness ahead. There was already a sea of cars in the parking lot. “Nothing unusual about this at all.”
“So you’re not nervous or anything?” he said.
Molly just chewed on her lip and kept her eyes on the crowd.
“Don’t be a dick, Declan.” Brian yawned behind them. “We know you have giant coconut balls made of solid steel, but the rest of us get a little freaked out to see that.”
There was an army gathering at the entrance to the parking lot. Even Declan didn’t expect that, at least not a crowd of this size. They looked rowdy, too. Some of them had Soren signs, some of them Savage Heart signs, or “WE LOVE YOU, DECLAN,” and they were on opposite sides of a goddamn police barrier. He could already see some shoving.
“So how big is this show?” Molly asked in a small voice.
“Tiny, for us,” Gage said. Even he seemed a little subdued. The crowd only seemed to get bigger the closer they got. “Or it was supposed to be. We’re playing smaller venues to build up a buzz, keep it in control until the fans get used to it. But this… Did they oversell the show?”
“Don’t say ‘it,’” Declan said. “It’s Soren. They have to get used to not having Soren around. And they will.”
“So what happens now?” Molly asked.
“We go in. We wait. We do sound check. We wait. We kick ass. Simple as that,” Declan said. But he was watching the crowd, too. The bus was pulling into the parking lot now, going about an inch a minute, waiting for the crowd to part. He could see actual fights starting. He could hear them, even through the double thick glass of the windows.
“So much for keeping it lowkey,” Gage said. “This is gonna be one hell of a show.”
Declan, though, was looking at Molly. Then he looked at the crowd, who in his experience would get extra crazy when they found out most of them wouldn’t even get in to the show—if they hadn’t been told already. Then he checked out the piece of shit security the venue had provided, like eight pudgy guys in cheap black shirts, clearly not enough to do anything in this situation.
“Molly, you sit this one out,” Declan said suddenly, surprising even himself with the urgency in his voice. “Stay on the bus.”
He might as well have told her to stick to women’s work or something else equally dumb. She turned on Declan with such ferocity that even Brian took a step back, and the look she gave him should have turned him right to stone.
Molly said simply, “Fuck. No.”
“Do you see that out there?” Declan pointed, irritated even though he knew he didn’t have a leg to stand on. He just didn’t like the idea of Molly out in that swarm of crazy fans. “You think that’s safe?”
“Then you stay on the bus,” she snapped. “I have a job to do, same as you.”
“Can I stay on the bus?” Brian whispered.
“You know she’s right, Dec,” Erik said quietly. They all turned to look at him. “We’re all going to have to make a run for it anyway. At least they don’t know I’m Soren’s replacement yet,” he smiled wryly. “After the show I might need Declan to carry me out, Bodyguard-style.”
Brian patted their new guitarist on the back while they all laughed. Good. They needed to get rid of that tension. But that didn’t change the way he felt.
“Fuck,” Declan muttered. He hated being wrong, mostly because it meant he had to freaking admit it. That had been one of Uncle Jim’s rules and it was a good one. It just annoyed him this time. He gave Molly a stern look. “Fine. You’re right, I can’t keep you on the damn bus. But you are staying close to me, you understand? Those people out there…”
“They look crazy,” Molly said.
There were warring chants now. “Declan!” “Soren!” It was freaking ridiculous.
“They’re wound up,” Declan replied. “It can happen. I’m more worried about the lack of security.”
And then, just to make sure she understood he was serious, he put his arm around her and pulled her close. He really didn’t give a fuck about being half hard, even if they had to run for it. Molly was tense for a second, still pissed at him probably, but then she relaxed into it, warm and soft and so damn female. Declan couldn’t argue with that; it felt good to touch her in any way at all. Felt right. He could feel her excitement, her fear, and it brought out that caveman part of him all over again. He had to stop himself from picking her up. What had Erik called it?
“You guys ready?” Davey asked. Security guards had lined a the start of a path from the bus to the performer’s entrance at the back.
“You sure you won’t let me carry you Bodyguard-style?” Declan asked.
Molly elbowed him playfully in the ribs. He was forgiven.
“And give those women a reason to hate me? You must be out of your mind,” she said.
The doors opened, and the sound of thousands of screaming fans crashed into them like a flying brick wall.
“Let’s go!” Davey shouted, and they all rushed out of the bus, toward the line of frightened security guys waving them on in desperation. Declan pushed his way out and then waited for
Molly, putting his arm around her again, ignoring the screams.
It was fucking nuts.
“Declan, I need you!”
“I wanna have your baby, Declan!”
“Fucking Savage Heart forever!”
Molly was ducking into his side under the pressure of the crowd, just the shouting, the craziness of it, the arms reaching for them as they made their way to the door in a scrum of stressed out security guys. Nothing could prepare someone for a fan gauntlet like this, for the way grown adults went crazy in groups. She was tense as all hell, and he looked down to see if she was ok, or terrified, or what, but instead he saw that she was riding the adrenaline just like he was. Looked ready to take the world on, just like he was.
Fuck yes, that is a woman, he thought.
Couldn’t tear his eyes away from her face. Which was how he missed it. He only saw Molly’s expression: sudden alarm, fear, maybe.
Declan turned just in time to see a bleached blonde woman, heavy black mascara streaming from her crying, crazy eyes, hoisting a bucket over her head as she screamed, “Murderer!”
Declan didn’t think, he just reacted. He pulled Molly into his arms and hunched over her, spinning them both around so his back faced the psycho, and then he felt it hit his back.
Liquid.
Paint.
Red freaking paint. That was all. It exploded around him from the impact, splattering the security guards and the already riled up crowd, the shock of it igniting the tension and sending the place into pandemonium. The crowd erupted and surged forward, a security guard stumbled and fell, Gage was knocked into Molly. People were going down left and right, swallowed up by the tide of people, trampled under foot. Panicking.
He heard the crazy lady scream, “Soren! Where is Soren? What did you do to Soren?”
But Declan was already running, Molly in his arms, the band following behind him, security going nuts.
chapter 9
Molly still couldn’t believe it. Not a drop of red paint on her.
Declan, on the other hand…
“Where the fuck is the head of security for this shithole?” he roared.
