Scandalize Me

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. She 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.

But he shifted beneath her, one of his big hands wrapping over her hip and holding her to him, and she stopped telling herself what was or wasn’t real. Because she felt him everywhere.

“How can you taste so good?”

His voice was no more than a murmur, then, as if he was crooning it to her, and she wanted to tell him he was wrong—that she was blackened within and ruined for years now—but he didn’t wait for her answer. He reared up and captured her mouth with his again, turning her inside out.

And Zoe melted. And she forgot.

She forgot what she’d been through, what she’d survived.

Who she’d become. Who she’d created from the wreckage of her former self.

It was as if he kissed the Zoe she might have been, longing and magic and all those bold, bright futures. A tumult of color. A cacophony of possibility.

And all that delicious, drugging heat.

And for a moment, Zoe gave in to that insanity, as if toppling through the back of a wardrobe or down a rabbit hole. She let herself go.

She let him taste her. Tempt her. As if they were other people. As if they could do this without paying for it later when she knew full well they couldn’t.