Scandalize 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.