Of this, he figured, and he couldn’t make it easy on her. He couldn’t help her. She had to do it herself.
“This isn’t easy,” she whispered.
His brave, beautiful Zoe, with nightmares in her eyes.
“Tell me one thing that is,” he said as if he didn’t give a shit. “One thing that matters that’s even a little bit easy.”
“Does this matter?” she asked, and the vulnerability in her voice then almost made him relent—but he couldn’t do it.
Not if he wanted everything from her. And he did. This was why he’d waited.
“I don’t have time for whatever game this is,” he said shortly.
“This isn’t a game—”
“Then stop playing,” he bit out. “I told you I loved you and you walked out on me. Don’t fish around to figure out my feelings. Tell me what you want. Ask me, Zoe, and you just might get it.”
It was a deliberate echo of that night on the street, and her cheeks bloomed with color, shame or heat or regret, he didn’t know which. But it was better than that awful look on her face the day she’d left him. It was better than the frozen way she’d looked at him since. It was better than blue-gray eyes filled with nightmares.
And she was standing here in front of him, clearly in the grip of some intense emotion, so all of this was better, no matter what happened next.
“You deserve better,” she intoned, soft and something like wounded and not like any version of Zoe he knew. “Sarah loved you enough to leave you, and I tried to do the same, Hunter. You can be free of this, and you should be. Of the stain of what Jason did to her. To me. What we did to survive it—or not.”
He didn’t trust himself to speak, so he waited, watching her. Her eyes were dark like rain, and her face was drawn. She stood with her hands clasped in front of her, like something out of a submissive fantasy playbook, and his hands bunched into fists, because it wasn’t her. He didn’t know what the hell this was, what was taking her over and making her play it out like this, but it wasn’t the Zoe he knew. There was no fire. No power. No Zoe.
She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But I can’t seem to stay away from you, even though I know I should. Even though I know that it’s the best thing for you.”
“So you came here to—what?” he bit out, hardly recognizing his own voice. She frowned as if she thought he might bite her, and not in a fun way. As if he was made of fangs and she’d been bitten before. It pissed him off.
“You told me you’d make me beg,” she said. “This is me begging.”
And she sank down onto her knees, right there in front of him, graceful and somehow frail despite the beautiful dress she wore, that clung to her in a dark shade of green and made all of her curves look even more edible than usual.
But all Hunter saw was her bowed head, her unnatural stiffness, her completely out-of-character behavior. What was this? It pissed him off even more.
“I owe you at least this much,” she told him quietly. Almost demurely.
And suddenly, he got it.
“Is this because you think I like saints?” he asked drily, and liked it when she tensed at his tone. “You thought you’d come out and play the martyr for me?”
She jerked her head up and there was a spark in her gaze he recognized, and he felt it the way he might have felt another woman’s kiss. His Zoe. His, beneath this weird act of hers that he understood now, even if it broke his heart.
He wanted her back, all of her, no matter whose heart had to break to get there.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, and she ducked her head down again, and this sucked. He liked playing power games with women who weren’t actually doormats. With this one in particular, because that was what was hot: the fact that the Zoe he knew was never meek or a supplicant. The Zoe he knew wanted him with a ferocity that matched the way he wanted her. This was something out of those dark things in her head, and he wanted nothing to do with it.
“I hate doormats,” he drawled. “Sorry. Though you can crawl around if you want. Who knows? Maybe that will change my mind.”
“This is serious,” she said then, harshly. “I’m serious.”
“Then get up, you fucking idiot,” he growled, and her head shot up, her mouth dropping open in shock. “You heard me,” he said when she only stared at him.
That color flooded her face again, and she rocked back against her heels, then up and onto her feet in a controlled kind of burst that was much more her than all the rest of this. It reminded him of the night she’d hit him, and he wanted that back. He wanted her back.
“I obviously made a much bigger mistake in coming here than I did in leaving in the first place,” she said tightly, but at least that was a tone he recognized, cool and sharp. “Excuse me.”
“Oh, no,” he threw right back at her. “You don’t get off that easy. What did you think would happen here? That I’d enjoy watching you sacrifice yourself to me? That that’s even remotely what I want from you?”
“I have no idea what you want.”
“You,” he roared at her, glad when she jumped a little bit, when he could hear it bounce back at him from the walls. “I want you, not this bullshit surrender. I don’t think you’re broken, Zoe. I don’t think you’re a stain on anything. You do.”
She let out a sound like a gasp, as if she’d been wounded, but he kept going, realizing he’d moved toward her only when she put up her hand against his chest as if she needed to ward him off. He stopped, but she didn’t drop her hand, and he felt that touch—her palm searing through his shirt like an iron brand—all the way to his toes.
“Be the woman who challenged me out of a lifetime of self-pity,” he told her, love and fury and need indistinguishable from each other in his voice, in the way he looked at her, in the self-control it took to keep from touching her, kissing her, finding her again in a more direct way than these words. But he couldn’t do that.
“Hunter,” she said, but he ignored her.
“Be my equal, the woman who knows that if she’s damaged, then Jesus Christ, so am I. Be worth feeling all of this crap, Zoe.” He could taste the ferocity on his own lips, copper like blood. “I want you, not whatever this is, that you can hide behind when it gets tough. You’re not a martyr and I’m not a hero. Let’s be who we are.”
He was breathing hard, as if he was running, and she was, too, and he didn’t know when that turmoil he’d seen in her eyes, across her face, had spilled out into tears. He couldn’t keep himself from reaching over and brushing the moisture away with his thumbs, and she shuddered.
“I want everything,” he told her, hoarse and sure. “Give me that, Zoe, or don’t waste my time.”
He saw the fight in her, the battle and the darkness and the fear, but she was so brave. So deeply courageous that he thought it might crack him wide open where he stood, and when her hands moved to hold his where they’d rested on either side of her face, something in him eased. Hoped.
“I don’t know how,” she whispered. “I don’t know if I’ll ever have everything. I don’t know how to start.”
“This is starting,” he told her. “This is what it looks like. If it was easy, everyone would be a whole lot happier.”
“Do you think that’s possible?” she asked, and he knew it was a serious question, maybe the most serious she could ask him.
He kissed her then, long and sweet, a promise and a wish.
“For us?” he asked when he pulled away. “I think it’s inevitable.”
“What if I let you down? What if you wake up one morning and can’t live with what I am?” She scowled at him, even though she clung to him. “And don’t tell me that’s not going to happen. It could. It might.”
“Zoe,” he said, matter-of-factly and brisk, never looking away from her. “We sla
y monsters. That’s what we do. Even if those monsters are our own.”
She studied him for the longest moment of his life. The most important moment, and then her face cleared, and she smiled.
It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She was.
“I love you,” she said then. “I didn’t think I should. I didn’t think—”
“I know,” he retorted. “But don’t worry. I know exactly how I’ll let you make it up to me. Prepare yourself, Zoe. It’s going to be a long and arduous journey. It could take years.”
That smile of hers tipped over into more of that edgy, dangerous smirk he loved more than anything, and it sparked inside him, hot and sexy, just like her.
“I can prove it in all of five seconds, if you lock that door.”
“Years,” he said again. “Long years. With begging that does not involve martyrdom of any kind. And I was serious about the crawling.”
“Oh, good,” she murmured. “A challenge. Make that three seconds.”
She took his mouth, or he took hers, and for a moment there was nothing but that fire of theirs, that glorious heat. Them, at last.
Then she pulled away, nipping him slightly on the lower lip as she went, the curve of her mouth enough to drive him wild, and she looked at him as if he were a miracle after all.
“Well?” she asked, taunting him, loving him. His. “Are you going to lock that door or am I?”
* * *
Some nights later, Zoe couldn’t sleep.
She lay in Hunter’s massive bed, the city lights arrayed above her like her own, personal Sistine Chapel. She was replete, even happy, though she hardly dared call it that. What Hunter could do to her with his talented, clever hands ought to have been illegal. She wasn’t sure she’d care too much if it was, as long as he kept doing it.
Not that everything was about sex. There was the way he looked at her, as if he truly did cherish her, the way she’d imagined he might that morning in his kitchen. There was that kernel of hope inside her that grew a little bit bigger every day. That let her smile wider, enjoy him, enjoy this. That let her worry less about the things that she thought she lacked, and think more about the ways they seemed to fit together.
Very much as if they’d been waiting for each other through all these dark years.
As if dawn had finally come, for both of them.
He shifted, pulling her to him so her head was pillowed on his shoulder, then smoothing her hair away from her face.
“What is it?” His voice was a rasp in the dark. “You’re still vibrating with tension, and without flattering myself too much, I think we both know that should be impossible.”
She smiled. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re slipping?”
Hunter snorted as if that was impossible. Then he let out a long-suffering sigh.
“Fine,” he said, as if they’d been arguing for hours. “What will make you happy? Do you need to paint every wall in this penthouse so it doesn’t look like—what did you call it?”
“Abattoir chic?” she asked idly, grinning as she remembered the look of outrage on his face when she’d said it earlier. And his earthy response had involved her hands flat against the windows in his living room and him hard and hot behind her, then deep inside her.
“I’ll stop fighting the inevitable,” he said now. “Just promise me it won’t be pastels.”
She twisted around to look at him.
“That’s not a bad idea,” she said, as if he’d been serious. “You’re not in purgatory anymore, Hunter. You didn’t die ten years ago. You deserve to live.”
His face was shadowed but she still felt the impact of that bright, blue stare. She felt his big hand clutch her shoulder briefly, then return to its lazy smoothing, up and down her back.
“So do you,” he said gruffly.
Zoe thought about what he’d said to her over and over again in these wild, beautiful days she still couldn’t quite believe were real. That they could replace dark memories with new and better fantasies. And it clicked into place then. Just like that. Maybe it had always been inevitable. Maybe she’d been waiting for this. This...happiness, if that was what this was. It was still new, but it didn’t feel fragile. She didn’t think the wrong word or moment or fight could dislodge it.
She wasn’t sure anything could. It felt right.
Hunter didn’t think she was an unpleasant duty the way her grandparents had. She knew he wouldn’t turn on her and abuse her, as Jason Treffen had. Hadn’t he proved it to her when she’d knelt down before him and he’d refused to accept that?
He didn’t want to own her. He wanted to love her.
And that changed everything. It set her free, in all the ways she hadn’t understood she wasn’t when she’d ousted Jason Treffen from that law firm. Because this time, the fear wouldn’t stop her. This time, she knew enough to let Hunter help her.
“I think I have to do it,” she said then, in a rush. She felt Hunter tense beneath her, and flattened her hands against his smooth, hard chest. “Not because anyone expects it of me, or because Alex thinks it’s a good idea to have one of the victims take part in the interview. But because I have to do it for me. Because I want to.”
He was quiet, but she knew he was as focused on her as when he was deep inside her, when all that mattered was the heat and that fire, that beautiful dance that was only theirs. More, perhaps.
“You don’t have to be a part of it,” she told him quickly. “I’ll understand if you don’t want—”
“Zoe.”
“It will probably get ugly,” she continued doggedly, because she still wanted to protect him. He’d started new relationships with his family. He was teaching those kids football. He really was a good man now, a new man, and she was still a scandal. Likely a big one, if Alex had his way. “I’ll be called a lot of names. So will you. People don’t like it when their heroes get pushed off of pedestals, especially not when the pusher can be dismissed as a grasping whore. And I will be.”
“Please shut up,” he said. “I’m not having this conversation. And I’m not going anywhere. I told you.” He took her chin in his hand, his thumb rubbing over her lips, possessive and hot and somehow deeply comforting, too. “I’ll never stop wanting you, Zoe. This is a done deal.”
After a moment, he let her go, and Zoe let herself breathe.
“In a few months, maybe three, I’m going to propose,” he told her in the quiet that surrounded them, and she could hear his smile in the dark. As good as a light. “I’m telling you now so you can start preparing yourself.”
“Propose what? Sexcapades? We already have those, don’t we?”
He smacked her on her bottom, hard enough to make her laugh.
“Marriage,” he said. “I figure you’ll turn me down at least three times. Fear, disbelief, some misbegotten notion that I shouldn’t tie myself down to someone like you. I’ll offer to come up with a binding prenuptial agreement, which will enrage you, and you’ll accept my loving proposal by doing something insane, like punching me, probably in public. I can’t wait.”
“Idiot,” she muttered, but she was grinning. She crawled up over his perfectly sculpted chest and kissed him, hard. Then again, the way, she thought, she planned to keep right on doing for the rest of their lives.
“Is it three months yet?” he asked when she pulled away.
“Not yet,” she said against his mouth. “You don’t want to say anything too crazy tonight, Hunter. It could ruin the whole thing. Scare me off.”
One of his hands came up and fisted in her hair, and she shivered, wanting him as desperately as she always did. More, because every day now, she trusted him more.
And the more she trusted him, the more she trusted herself, too.
“Then we better practice,” he murmured against her mouth,
and that easily, she was needy. Hungry. “So we’re ready when the time comes.”
* * *
They went together.
“Do you want to go in alone?” he asked when they were outside the office where, Zoe knew, Alex waited for them. Where she would tell her story in all its sordid, uncompromising detail, and make herself a very pointed nail in Jason Treffen’s coffin.
She felt that panic again. She swallowed hard, searching his face.
“I don’t want—”
“I swear to God,” he said, his voice impatient but his blue eyes kind, so kind it made a lump swell in her throat, “if you say anything to me about the things you think I don’t want to hear—”
“You won’t want to hear them,” she said fiercely.
“No,” he said evenly, his gaze never wavering. “I won’t. Because I love you, Zoe, and I will marry you no matter how many times you freak out about it, and I’ll hate every second of this because I hate that you had to live through it. But you did. And look at you. You’re a wonder. The most amazing woman I’ve ever known. If you can sit and tell your story, if you can go on national television and accuse Jason to his face, then I can sit with you and hear that story. I can share the burden.” His beautiful mouth crooked. “Or try. I’d like to try.”
She was overwhelmed. Tears pricked at the back of her eyes and she didn’t care if they fell.
“I love you, too,” she whispered.
That grin of his deepened, went cocky. As if he’d always known it would end this way, that he’d win. But then again, maybe she had, too. Maybe they both had.
Maybe that was the point.
Hunter reached over and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, and then he waited.
Zoe looked at Alex’s door, and pulled in a deep, hard breath. To mark this momentous occasion, her outing as one of “Jason’s girls,” she’d worn white. Crisp white jeans and a flowing cream top. Virginal and pure. She’d seen Hunter’s smile when she’d emerged from her bedroom this morning, and she’d known the symbolism wasn’t lost on him.
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