“I love watching you come.” Hand still between her legs, he nuzzled her neck again, waiting until she’d gained control of her boneless body before saying, “Lean forward and brace your hands on the counter.”

Molly had no desire to argue, but instead of the fast penetration she’d expected, he was slow and tender, kissing his way down her spine to nip playfully at her butt.

“Ouch,” she said without heat, his chuckle making her thighs clench.

Tugging her panties fully off, he waited until she’d stepped out of them—keeping himself busy by kissing his way back up her spine—before kicking her feet apart. One hand gripping her hip, he cupped her again from the front, using his middle finger to stroke lightly over her damp flesh.

“Hurry,” Molly said, pleasure, intoxicating and rich, shimmering to new life inside her.

“You want me in?” he asked, the blunt head of his cock pushing into her, slow but relentless.

 “Yes, please.” She loved having him inside her, loved the feeling of possession, of belonging. “Don’t go fast today.”

“Anything you want, polite girl.” His mouth hot and wet on her throat, he rocked into her, the words he spoke in her ear dark, carnal.

When Molly, her inhibitions lowered, murmured certain things back, he rewarded her by tugging on her engorged clit just enough to make her moan but not come. Sensation a sultry wave across her skin, she reached one arm up and back around his neck again, his skin hot against her own. “I adore you, Zachary Fox.” Adore wasn’t the only word she wanted to use, but Fox, she knew, would accept this word as he wouldn’t the other.

Smoky, sexy eyes locked with hers in the mirror, his smile telegraphing an open delight. “I like being adored by you, Molly Webster.”

Smiling, she continued to hold him close as he drove her to another luxuriant orgasm. A kiss to her shoulder before he pulled out—to her moan—and turned her around, hitching her up into a seated position on the black granite of the bathroom counter. It placed her at the perfect height for him to tug her forward and slide into her once again.

His cock rasped against her pleasure-swollen tissues, made her gasp. Leaning forward, she kissed him, playing with the ring in his lip. “This thing is the architect of my doom.”

Cupping her butt, his smile sinful, he pulled her tight against his groin. “Ever think about a ring of your own?”

“Me?” She ran her hands over the lithe muscle of his shoulders, dropping her head to kiss her way across the ink on one side, the hot, masculine taste of him an intoxication. “No way can I pull off a lip ring. It just wouldn’t look the same on me as it does on you.”

Fox thrust a hand into her hair, holding her to him as she sucked on his neck. “I wasn’t thinking about your lip.”

“Hmm?” she murmured, blowing out a breath on the skin she’d wet.

His fingers clenched on her butt, and then he was pulling out of her, shoving up her thighs with a grip under her knees, and slamming back in. Oh God, it felt good. Bracing her hands behind her on the cool stone of the counter, she watched her man find pleasure in her body. His muscles bunching and releasing, his cock sliding in and out of her, slick with their mingled passion, his heavy-lidded gaze locked on the place where they joined.

It was the most incredibly erotic thing she’d ever seen.

It didn’t surprise her in the least when her body wound tighter and tighter, only to come apart on a small scream.

“That’s my Molly.” Dragging her close, Fox took her mouth with his, one big hand on her nape. He always held her close during sex, made her feel unbearably cherished even in the most rawly sexual moment. And he always, always made eye contact.

Heart aching, she locked her arms and legs around him and watched him go over, her lover who was her everything. All her life, she’d fought never to be tied so absolutely to anyone, but she loved Fox until she couldn’t breathe. The irony was that he was a man for whom the words “I love you” meant only abandonment, pain, and loneliness.

A half hour later, her feelings for him a pulse in every cell of her body, Molly sat curled up in Fox’s lap in bed, her T-shirt and panties back on and her lips cool with butterscotch ice cream. “The ring,” she said after he drew the spoon back from between her lips. “Were you serious?”

He ate a bite of the decadent dessert. “I was just thinking”—a wicked smile—“since you have so much fun with mine, I might enjoy playing with one.”

“Where?”

 “Here.” A tap of the back of the spoon against her left nipple.

Molly flushed, the ice cream he’d fed her before speaking that single word sliding down her throat. “Never going to happen.” The idea of a nipple ring was so outside the realm of anything she’d ever considered that she could feel herself turning redder with every second that passed.

Setting the ice cream on the bedside table, Fox cuddled her close. “You are so cute.” His chuckle vibrated against her. “I was teasing. Not that I wouldn’t fuck you silly if you turned up with a nipple ring—but since I do that anyway, it wouldn’t make any difference.”

“You’re awful,” she muttered, threatening to pull his hair. “Maybe I’ll get a piercing one day just to see the look on your face.”

 “You know another place women sometimes get pierced?” His voice was a gritty purr that touched her in her most private places.

“Yes. I read Cosmo.” Grabbing the ice cream, she shoved a spoonful into his grinning mouth. “That particular piercing is never, ever, ever going to be a possibility.”

Swallowing the ice cream, Fox dipped a finger in the butterscotch and painted her lips with it before kissing the cream off. “I was going to say I hope you don’t go that far. I like you all soft and lush down there.”

Breasts swelling under the T-shirt, the “soft and lush” parts of her damp, Molly decided to give Zachary Fox a taste of his own teasing medicine. “You know what else I read in Cosmo?”

“What?”

“That guys get certain lower-body piercings, too. Apparently it can be very pleasurable for a woman.”

A look of pure horror on his face. “Jesus H. Christ! Feed me more ice cream to get that nightmare image out of my head.”

Shoulders shaking in laughter, she did as ordered. If a few drops “accidentally” fell on his chest and she had to lick them up, well they both had a good time. Especially after she managed to drop the ice cream on the part of his anatomy he had no intention of piercing. Fox “complained” about her very bad aim and took over, only for Molly to find herself turned into dessert.

They fought for the spoon, laughing and cheating by any possible means, the sheets so tangled by the time a truce was declared that they had to get out and remake the bed.

It would hurt so much if he wasn’t in her bed and her life one day in the future, Molly thought as she watched Fox leave the room to get rid of the ice cream carton. The fear was enough to choke her, make her want to turn and run, save herself from the pain. But the Molly who hid was gone, replaced by this wild Molly who loved a rock star named Zachary Fox… and who was considering the benefits of a nipple ring.

Kathleen turned up again two weeks later, while Molly was working at her computer. She’d had a bite from a nonfiction writer looking to hire a research assistant for a short-term contract. Since being able to make a living doing that type of work was Molly’s ultimate goal, she was in the midst of preparing a detailed outline of her proposed research path when the other woman rang the doorbell.

“Hi.” A long, false Kathleen smile when Molly opened the door. “Look, I was wondering if you wanted to do lunch? Since Fox is a good friend, and you’re in his life, we should get to know each other.”