Scandalize Me

“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.