by Maisey Yates
“It turns out he’s not that bad,” Daniel said, and he even smiled. “I’m as surprised as anyone, but I kind of like the guy.”
It was beneath her, Zoe told herself after he left her office, to view that as some kind of personal betrayal.
Daniel chose a very popular comedy show that focused on the news for Hunter’s first brand-new-image interview, letting Hunter go on the show to allow them to make fun of him. A lot of fun of him. Merciless fun of him, as was their trademark.
Hunter even joined in.
And then at one point he grinned as if he was embarrassed and rubbed a hand over his head, saying almost bashfully that it was actually his honor to see if he could teach his new students a little love of the game—and, God willing, better manners—
“So, you’re a ‘do as you say, not as you do’ kind of guy?” the host asked. Hunter shrugged, and then laughed. At himself.
“I think I’m more of a ‘if you can’t be a good example then you’ll serve as a horrible warning’ kind of a guy,” he said. “And I think I’ve made it pretty clear that being any kind of a good example is off the table. Making me six feet and then some of a harsh warning.”
The way he laughed then, long and deep, like a shower of light that bathed her in brightness where she sat all alone in her bedroom, told Zoe she’d made the absolute right decision to walk away from him, for all the reasons she’d told him and the ones she hadn’t told him, too.
But it was killing her.
And Zoe told herself that she’d been dead long enough. It was time to live, no matter what it cost. To stop hiding the way she’d promised herself she would, no matter the collateral damage.
To do something, because she didn’t think she could spend another moment pretending she was fine when she doubted she’d be anything like fine again, as long as she drew breath.
As long as he did.
* * *
Zoe didn’t let herself think too much once she’d decided what she’d do.
It was easy to find out Hunter’s schedule from Daniel’s calendar, and easier still to sweep past the usual gatekeepers into the benefit event held in a cavernous art gallery in SoHo.
What was difficult was walking up to Hunter when she saw him standing near the bar in a loose group of well-dressed beautiful people, among them his sister and Zair, her former client, the only one of her clients whose nondisclosure agreements had stumped her own lawyer.
If she could take down Jason Treffen in the very same office where he’d destroyed her so long ago, she told herself as she eyed that gleaming little knot of people, Hunter the brightest by far among them, she could do this.
But he looked up and saw her from across the room, his gaze searing into her as if he’d been expecting her, and it was the longest, hardest walk of her life.
“Zoe,” Zair murmured when she approached, in his cultured, British-tinged voice that was as dark and as dangerous as he was. “What a pleasure.”
Austin greeted her with a smile, his arm around a pretty girl who looked familiar. Alex grinned, as if they were all friends. When Zoe thought that really, they were Hunter’s friends the way they were meant to be, and she was just...a problem she should have kept away from this. From him.
But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t make herself do it any longer, and while she knew what that made her, she couldn’t seem to stop this.
“I wasn’t aware you were attending this gala,” Hunter said after a moment, when it was clear she wasn’t going to say anything to him. His gaze was blue and knowing and it almost took her down to her knees. She almost let it. “Do you know my sister? Nora, this is Zoe Brook. She manages my PR.”
Zoe smiled, shook hands with his pretty, innocent sister, who had no idea who she was touching, and wanted to die.
“Can I talk to you?” she asked him, with an urgency she wasn’t sure she managed to conceal.
Hunter arched a brow. “Here? But the dancing’s just started, and I wouldn’t want to abandon my sister to all these vultures.”
He was teasing her, she thought. This was ripping her apart where she stood, this was harder than she’d imagined anything could be, and he was teasing her.
“Leave Nora to me,” Zair said with a certain dark gallantry that would have piqued Zoe’s interest, had she been capable of such things at a moment like this.
“Nora is a fully functioning human being, thank you,” Nora herself interjected, but Zoe couldn’t tear her eyes away from Hunter, and he only laughed.
And then it was a blur. He led her across the great room, dodging all the people who wanted to stop him to say a few words, smiling and laughing as if he was having the time of his life—
Until he ushered her through a door into a smaller gallery, blocked off from the main event with canvases stacked three-deep against the wall.
And when he looked at her then, she saw he wasn’t happy or carefree at all.
The blue in his eyes burned her. His mouth was in that flat, hurt line she remembered much too well, and he looked at her as if the things he wanted to say to her were fighting to get out.
But he didn’t say a word. He waited.
“You seem to spend a lot of time with your sister these days,” she said in a panic, because she didn’t know how to do this.
“Someone once pointed out to me that she is, in fact, fairly impressive for a twenty-four-year-old.”
Then he continued to do nothing at all but watch her.
He looked too good. He looked like Hunter. He wore a sleek dark suit tonight, and oozed power. And safety. And the look he was giving her made her heart thud too hard inside her.
And he deserved so much better and she wasn’t sure she cared.
“You paid the firm for our—for Daniel’s services,” she said.
“Is that why you’re here? To discuss accounting?”
“I told you it was pro bono,” she gritted out.
“I pay my bills, Zoe. Always. You can take that as a meaningful metaphor if you like.”
She thought he might say something else then, but he still merely stood there, big and forbidding. Waiting. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his trousers and his blue eyes bored into her, and she knew she had to do this.
Before she talked herself out of it. Before she lost her nerve.
It was the most selfish act of her life, and he was looking at her as if he knew it, and she understood that if she was any kind of good person or ever wanted to be, if she cared about him at all, she would turn around and leave him. That doing that before had been the right thing to do. She knew it.
But she couldn’t bring herself to move.
“Hunter,” she whispered, trembling as if she was freezing cold and more scared than she’d ever been in her life, “I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
He didn’t crack. He didn’t even bend.
“You think or you know? And which mistake are we talking about, Zoe? I’ll need specifics.”
* * *
She shook as if he’d hit her, and Hunter wanted nothing more than to go to her. To pull her close, feel the press of her against him, assure himself she was real and here, safe instead of standing in front of him with all of that fear so stark and clear on her pretty face, as if she was terrified of him.
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—”
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 slay 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.