by Maisey Yates
“When you demanded I meet you here I didn’t realize it was a bordello,” he said as he pushed his way through the shimmering barrier like the bull in a china shop he was. “I would have dressed more appropriately. In my belly dancing costume, for example. You may not know this about me, Zoe, but I do a mean dance of the seven veils.”
And then Hunter stopped in his tracks, taking his first really good look at the rest of her without those filmy curtains in the way. It was like getting decisively and comprehensively sacked by an entire, and very large, defensive line.
“Don’t get too excited,” Zoe said coolly, her chin rising.
He couldn’t help himself. It was that slick parody of a dress in one of the dark gray shades she favored, clinging to every curve and hollow, plane and stretch of her perfectly toned figure. It made his mouth go dry and his head swim around in loopy circles, all the blood in his body surging toward the most irreverent and unmanageable part of him.
“I don’t get excited,” he drawled, in an approximation of his usual careless self, the guy who was bored by everything. He remembered that guy. He’d been him all of five seconds ago. “Did you forget? I’m rich, handsome and notorious. People are generally excited to see me.”
“If you say so,” she replied, predictably dismissive, which, also predictably, made him want her all the more. “Positive attention isn’t the same thing as negative attention, you know. Unless you’re an attention whore.”
“I’m whatever kind of whore you want me to be, Zoe,” he said, grinning when her lips thinned. “Have you reconsidered your position on a good, dirty, head-clearing hate fuck? Because I haven’t. For the record.”
That cool gray gaze of hers was reproachful, but he imagined he saw the hint of heat in the depths of it.
“I had an earlier meeting that required more formal attire. I didn’t dress for you.” She looked marginally agitated, and he congratulated himself on even so small a crack in the Zoe Brook armor. “You’re looking at me as if we’re on a date. We’re not.”
“You’re a destroyer of dreams, Zoe. A killjoy of the highest order. Does it give you pleasure to ruin everything you touch?”
“Besides,” she continued, eyeing him in that regal way of hers, a look only slightly marred by the faintest twitch of her lips, “it would serve no practical or strategic purpose for you to be seen on a date with me. We need to find you a social worker. Maybe a kindergarten teacher. Someone sweet and wholesome and good.”
“That sounds thrilling. Truly.”
“Her virtuous love will make you a better man.”
“I doubt that very much.”
“That’s the point of virtue. It can be harnessed and utilized. Everyone believes that love—especially saintly and wholesome love—inspires change. So does religion, but that’s a harder sell, and it requires you carry on about God in public places. Squeaky-clean, rehabilitating love it is.”
“I didn’t realize you ran a dating service.” He kept his own voice mild. “Don’t I get to fill out a detailed questionnaire discussing my various sexual preferences? To start, I like my women obedient and adventurous.”
“Do those things usually go hand in hand?”
“Want me to show you?” He smiled when she only rolled her eyes. “That’s a pity. But I’m sure there are some wild and horny preschool teachers out there, aren’t there, stuffed full of their own virtue and gagging to take a little direction from a man like me?”
But Hunter wasn’t thinking too hard about the secret, naughty lives of teachers, because he was caught in the epic expanse of Zoe’s gloriously sculpted legs, in the way she shifted against the banquette seat, crossing those perfect legs at the knee and making him forget his own name. All that skin, daringly bared to the winter elements outside, a rich ivory cream all the way down to another pair of impossible shoes, those brash ankle boots that made him think of punk rock and the kind of edgy, demanding sex that wrecked whole lives.
The kind he would have with her, sooner or later. Or he might die from wanting her like this.
And then there was the rest of her hot, trim body in that scandalous lick of smoke, with only a single, almost poignant diamond at her throat, her black hair piled high in something that looked complicated and graceful, and made him want to sink his hands and his teeth deep into it—into her—
Maybe she wasn’t beautiful. Maybe she was something far more intense that that. Maybe beautiful was insipid next to Zoe Brook and what she could do with a simple strapless sheath of a dress.
What she was doing to him. Right now.
“Sit down, Mr. Grant,” she ordered him, her frown looking more annoyed than truly bothered, which was, he understood, yet another slap meant to put him in his place. He liked it.
“Stop calling me that,” he said. “It makes me want to demonstrate that we’re on far less formal footing, or should be. Is that what you want?”
Her lips pressed together and if he wasn’t mistaken, that was a glimmer of amusement in her blue-gray gaze. She only nodded slightly, after a moment, awarding him the point.
But a win was a win. And the victory, however minor, washed through him like heat. Like whiskey.
Like sex.
“Say it,” he ordered her.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Say it,” he said again, and rougher. “My name.”
He couldn’t read the expression he saw on her face then. The glitter in her wild, dangerous eyes. But he could feel the tension in his own body and knew this was much more important to him than it should have been. Very much like this—like she—was more than merely a scorching-hot woman in a scandalous dress.
Like she was the only thing keeping him alive. The only thing that could.
He didn’t want to think about that. He wanted his name in her mouth. He wanted to hear it.
“If I say your name, will you stop hovering over me?” She sounded cross, exasperated, but he could see something else in those stormy winter eyes. Maybe what he wanted to see. Maybe the truth. “You’re making me anxious.”
“If you say my name, I’ll give you anything you want.”
“Fine.” But she held out another beat, then another. She swallowed. Then surrendered. “Hunter.”
“Was that so hard?” he asked, amused. “You didn’t fall apart. It’s only a name.”
He took his time sitting down, savoring this moment. First he shrugged out of his coat, tossing it aside carelessly, not taking his eyes off her. Then he settled himself down much too close to her, almost on top of her, grinning when she hissed in an annoyed breath. She went stiff and straight, and he relaxed, stretching his arm out on the high back, a single, easy crook of his elbow away from holding her in his embrace.
“You really enjoy invading the personal space of others, don’t you?” she asked frostily. But she didn’t move away.
“I’m a big guy.” He breathed in the sleek and expensive scent she wore, which wasn’t half as alluring as that hint of lavender he’d smelled on her skin before. “I can’t help it if I take up a lot of space.”
“You use your body as a weapon,” she retorted.
He took his time looking her over. Memorizing her, as if he wasn’t sure he’d get to be this close to her again. To that perfect, clever arch of her dark brows. To that stubborn, too-smart mouth, glossy tonight in the dim, flickering light. He could see her pulse catapult against the soft skin at her neck, telling him exactly what it cost her to sit this close to him. And yet she made no attempt to pull away, not even when his gaze moved even lower, until he nearly forgot himself completely in the tempting hollow between her breasts.
He wanted to taste her again more than he wanted his next breath. He had no idea how he held himself back—except he wanted her to want him, too. He wanted her to feel as outside her own skin as he did. As undone by this attraction.
This...thing that was gradually taking him over. What was left of him.
He nodded toward that smoky sin of a dre
ss.
“Pot,” he said, then he indicated himself with a jerk of his hand. “Kettle.”
She regarded him for a long moment, that heady mix of awareness and wariness in her gaze. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“It’s a coincidence, then, that you happen to be wearing a dress that may in fact be painted directly on to your skin tonight. For your ‘meeting’ in this notably noncorporate environment, with a client you blackmailed into working with you. A client who knows what your inner thighs feel like beneath his hands. Not to mention how you taste.” He laughed. “I’m sure the fact you look edible played no part at all in your decision to wear it tonight.”
“It isn’t for you.” Her voice was lofty.
“You can’t use your body the way you do, Zoe, and then cry foul if others do the same.”
“I’m not an oversize man, all bulky muscles and caveman strength, lumbering through the world like a flat-footed thug.”
“Neither am I,” Hunter said, surprised to find he was grinning. “My feet have an adorable arch. Everybody says so. Want to see?”
“You’re impossible,” she muttered, but he imagined he saw the slightest quirk in the corner of her mouth, like a laugh bitten back before it betrayed her. “And I don’t want to talk about your innumerable body flaws. I want to talk about your behavior toward my associates.”
“I’m suddenly significantly less interested in this conversation.”
“You can’t antagonize Daniel,” Zoe told him sternly. “You may not realize it, but you need him. Calling him names isn’t smart.”
“David is a punk,” Hunter said dismissively.
“His name is Daniel.”
“I don’t care what his name is.” Though he knew it, of course. He eyed her. “He’s in love with you.”
She didn’t deny it. “That’s one more thing that’s absolutely none of your business.”
“You’re not dating him, or you’d defend him. You’d tell me to go fuck myself.”
“I might tell you that anyway,” she retorted. “No matter who I’m dating.” She showed him that little smirk, and he felt it in his groin, as if she’d leaned over and licked the length of him there and then. He felt himself go hard like stone. Hot. But she was still talking. “I don’t know what it is about you that brings out the intense desire to do you harm. But then, I’m sure you get that all the time.”
“I’m an acquired taste,” he agreed.
“That most people spit out?” That arched brow, that clever twist of her mouth.
“I prefer it when they swallow,” he said, his gaze hot on those glossy, glossy lips of hers. “But I’m not going to lie, Zoe. I’m not very picky.”
She tilted back her head—to throw something else at him, he was certain, and he found himself readying for it, all the adrenaline and focus he’d used on the field trained on her instead—but, impossibly, she giggled.
Then jerked against the seat as if electrified, clapping her hands over her mouth as if she wanted to stuff that incongruously girlish sound straight back in it, her eyes snapping to his in a mix of astonishment and horror.
He loved it.
“See?” His grin was too big, taking over his face, moving in him in a way that felt like sunlight. “You like me.”
She shook her head, a firm denial, but her hands still covered her mouth as if it would betray her otherwise, and he didn’t recognize that buoyant feeling that swelled in him then. Light and shiny. Bright.
“For some reason, no one believes this,” he confided. “But I’m incredibly likeable.”
Zoe dropped her hands, but she was smiling as if she couldn’t help herself, and it killed him. It pierced him straight through. It knocked down walls he’d erected so long ago, he wasn’t sure he knew what they were for—and more of that sunlight poured through him, rolled in him, made him forget, for a moment, who he was. What he was. What shadows lurked in him.
What he’d done. What he hadn’t.
Zoe coughed. “I’m certain I was laughing—”
“Giggling, to be precise.”
“—at you, Hunter. Not with you.”
“I don’t think so.”
And he was laughing, too, realizing how close he was to her, how her head was tipped back so her hair brushed against his arm. Her gray eyes had gone bluer than he’d ever seen them, and that pooled in him, making his stomach knot and those shadows that lived in all his empty places seem even brighter, somehow. He didn’t know what the hell that meant.
He traced a vague pattern down the side of her lovely face with a lazy finger, skirting that razor-sharp, dangerous mouth, which only made him want her more. And he felt that white-hot heat flare between them again, tighter this time. Tauter. Winching them together, making it hurt.
“Who else knows the fierce Zoe Brook snorts a little bit when she giggles like a schoolgirl?” he asked softly. “I imagine that’s proprietary information. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. I want it for myself.”
He watched her pull in a breath as if her life depended on it. Or as if his might—that and the heat in her gaze, bright and unmistakable. It lit him up all over again, brushfires building into blazes. Walls crumbling into ash.
“Since when are you sweet?” she whispered, her voice rough. The need in it damning them both.
“Never.” But his fingers still drew lazy symbols on the satin expanse of her cheek, her neck.
“This is sweet.” Her voice was stronger then, and rang with accusation. There was that hint of a frown on her face, etched between her brows. “You can’t deny it.”
“If I’m doing it,” he said, and he could hear the fire in his voice, the desire, “it can’t be anything like sweet. By definition. You can ask any of my eight million enemies. Or read their depositions.”
“Sweet is unacceptable.”
“Just wait a few moments,” he assured her, too many things he didn’t want to accept in his own voice then, the low grit of it, the urgency at such odds with the reverent way he learned the shape of her, each clever eyebrow, with his fingertips. “I’m sure I’ll turn back into an asshole. I can’t help myself.”
He watched, fascinated, as emotions he didn’t understand rose and fell across the face she normally kept so cool. He only recognized the flash of panic, followed quickly by a kind of resignation that made his chest ache.
“I only know how to break things,” he said gruffly, suddenly, and he saw her react to that, as if it hurt her. “Zoe, I don’t want—”
She didn’t let him finish. Her gray eyes went dark—too dark—and then she surged forward, a liquid twist of her perfect body, her hands coming up to frame his face. To hold him steady, as if she had the power to immobilize him that easily.
But then—he realized with some surprise as he simply sat there, his own hands circling her wrists but not attempting to shift her grip on him at all—it turned out that she did.
He tried again. “Zoe—”
“Shut up,” she ordered him. He heard the fire and the panic, the madness and the need, and he felt it all inside him, rising like a tide. “For God’s sake, Hunter. Just shut up.”
And then she closed the final bit of that searing, electric space between them and slammed her mouth to his.
Chapter Six
Zoe kissed him as if her life depended on it.
All that fire. All that danger, that impossible need. All the things she felt that she shouldn’t, that until him she’d thought she couldn’t. That wildfire, burning through her, through him, making her shake against him as she tasted that mouth of his, again and again.
Because she thought that maybe her life did depend on this, after all.
Zoe had already showed him too much. She didn’t understand how it had happened. This wasn’t supposed to be complicated. He wasn’t.
But she’d finally realized that there was only one way to deal with Hunter Grant.
He thought he wanted her? Then he could have her—but only on her terms. S
he thought there was a certain poetry in taking back from this man what other men had taken from her.
He’d said he’d crawl. She’d make sure he did.
But first, she kissed him. She took charge, and she took what she wanted from that too-clever mouth of his that shouldn’t have attracted her, much less beguiled her. She shifted over him, shimmying the tight column of her dress up her thighs so she could climb over his lap. He made a deep, guttural sound that should have been surrender, but instead echoed in her like a battle cry.
Because it was.
Zoe was fighting for her life with every slide of his perfect mouth on hers, every shift of his stunning athlete’s body beneath her. She pressed herself closer to him, angling her head to taste him deeper, wetter, hotter. She found the thick ridge of his need and rode it.
She would do the taking. She would take what she wanted and leave him behind when she was done. She would conquer this thing. She would win, at last.
But it didn’t help that he tasted like fire.
He kissed her as if she was a revelation and he was a connoisseur who trafficked in such things. He licked into her, tasting her and tantalizing her in equal measure, making the flames dance, the fire burn hotter, wild and impossible. He was hard between her legs, packed muscle and all of that delicious male power, but he didn’t use any of it against her.
It made her shake. It made her want. It made her forget what she was doing—
He was the one who pulled back, and she hated it. Hated that he had the presence of mind when she was still so lost. Hated that he looked at her for a long, breathless moment, still so hard against her, his bright eyes seeming to pierce right through her. Hated that all she wanted—with every shuddering beat of her heart, with every harsh breath—was his mouth on hers again.
“You taste too good,” he rasped out, one of his hands moving, his thumb rubbing over her lips, branding them with so simple a touch. She felt it in her breasts, heavy against the tight bodice of her dress. She felt it deep inside her, hungry and throbbing and pressed against him.
His eyes were too blue. As if he was some kind of sun, lighting them both up, though she knew that was impossible. He was too debauched and she was too damaged. None of this was real. None of this could be happening.