“Look at that.” There was that flash in her gray gaze that he felt like the touch he craved, like a burst of fire deep in his gut. Did he move closer? Did she? He couldn’t tell any longer. “He can be taught.”
Hunter could see the awareness and arousal on her face then, like a flashing sign. That faint hint of color high on her cheeks, that sheen in her eyes. That sudden, almost shocking hint of softness in her lips. It took every bit of willpower he had to keep from bending down and tasting it. Tasting her.
Drinking her in and getting good and drunk on her heat. Making her feel that clench of fire that was driving him mad. Filling the hollow places inside him with the flames.
Letting them both burn.
He liked the way her chin tilted up, tough and cool despite the clamor and slap of the flames that danced in the air all around them. He liked the fierce kick of his own desire, all of that feeling when he’d been so numb for so long. He wanted to test it against hers, see what it made of them. See if they survived. How long they’d burn before they broke. He wanted.
“Do you want to play teacher?” he asked, drawing the words out, because he liked the way his voice worked in her, half tease, half promise. He could see it in the way she fought to hide it. He could feel it inside, hard and hot. “Because I have some ideas for the first lesson. I think you’ll like the exercises. But first you have to tell me why I’m here.”
* * *
For a moment, Zoe couldn’t remember.
What they were talking about, what was happening, what she was—or wasn’t—doing. Hunter was like a wall before her, imposing and huge, and shockingly, irrepressibly male.
And hot. So hot it almost hurt to be this close to him, burning alive when she’d worked so hard to stay icy through and through. So hot she was afraid she’d lose herself forever if she didn’t do something—anything—to keep from falling into the wildfire that seemed to rage in the tiny little space between their bodies.
Think, she ordered herself the way she’d learned to do in far worse situations than this one. Don’t simply react. Think this through.
But that was very hard to do when she was surrounded by a big, hard, beautiful man—who was looking at her as if he’d like to eat her whole. As if he already knew how she tasted. As if all she needed to do was give the slightest little bit of an inch, and she could find out herself.
Not that she wanted something like that. Like him. Of course she didn’t.
But right now, right here, it was difficult to remember why not.
“Mr. Grant,” she said, her voice a cold blast of winter, folding her arms over her chest in a way that was obviously a defensive gesture—but it couldn’t be helped. She was only human. Even if Hunter Grant was, improbably, the first client who had ever made her feel like this. The first man who’d come close, in too many years to count. Maybe ever, and she didn’t want to think about the implications of that. “I think you have the wrong idea.”
“Don’t lie to me, Zoe.” She didn’t know what was worse—the laughter in his voice, the blaze of intense heat in his gaze, or the unexpected caress of her name in his mouth. That smug, male, somehow intoxicating mouth that she absolutely was not imagining claiming hers. “Persuade. Pivot, if you must. But don’t stoop to lying.”
He was daring her.
“Mr. Grant,” she said again, on a theatrically exasperated sigh, as if he was a naughty schoolboy, “you could try the patience of one of your saints.”
“Lucky, then, that none are in this room.”
“I don’t have to resort to lies.” She relaxed against the desk, as if she’d never been more at her ease. As if she routinely had very large men entirely too close to her, moments away from a kiss she suspected she’d do better to avoid—that might, she worried, shake her whole world apart, and then what would happen to her great plans for Jason Treffen? “It may surprise you to discover that you’re not the first of my clients to imagine that injecting sex into the situation might make this process more palatable for them.”
One of those dark, unreadable expressions of his moved across his face, suggesting—again—that he was an enormously complicated man. Far more complicated than he liked to let on, and she still didn’t want to believe that was possible. Because it would make everything she needed to do with him much more difficult. He smiled, sending that dancing, seductive fire to wild heights inside her. Making her belly hollow out, then pull taut.