Scandalize Me

It was pretty. She could breathe.

She was fine.

“Zoe.”

She stiffened, more ice than stone, but it was Hunter, pushing himself away from the wall near the entrance to meet her. And then she hated herself, because she’d let him see her reaction. It was as if she didn’t fit in her own skin anymore. It made her feel things she’d gone to great lengths to keep from feeling for all these years. Vulnerable. Small.

She watched his too-clever eyes narrow, knowing he saw too much. As usual, damn him.

And then she hated him, too, because he didn’t reach over and touch her. Oh, no. No fingers at her cheek, no touch against the hair she’d let fall around her shoulders tonight. Hunter thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers and he stood too close, so close she could almost feel that drugging heat of his—but he didn’t touch her the way she knew he would have before.

Before she’d told him the truth about what she was. Before he’d discovered that she wasn’t that incandescent creature she’d seen reflected in his gaze when he’d moved inside her.

Before.

It was only to be expected, but that didn’t make it any easier. And she hated that it hurt. So much more than it should have.

“Let’s do this,” she blurted out, with perhaps a touch too much aggression. He blinked.

“You don’t have to do anything.” His voice was so calm. A hint of his drawl, no sign of temper or pain or heat. “You don’t have to meet them. You can turn around right now and leave. I’ll still do whatever you want me to do to help bring him down. You don’t have to involve anyone else if you don’t want to.”

“I want to.” Her lips felt numb, but that didn’t matter. So did her heart. She’d do this anyway. “Let’s go.”

But Hunter didn’t move. He frowned down at her, his gaze moving over her face, and she felt nothing but a howling within. Because he’d wanted to touch her so badly he shook with it, before. And now he knew how filthy she was, how polluted, he kept his hands to himself. She hadn’t imagined he’d be any different from the whole rest of the world, so there was no reason that should feel like a punch in the stomach. Like betrayal.

No reason at all.

She unzipped the coat she wore with more force than skill, then unwound her scarf from around her neck, scowling at him as she did it.

“Hunter. I said I want to do this, which means sometime tonight, please.”

“What are you wearing?”

Zoe knew what he meant, but there was temper and heartache and panic pounding at her temples, in her veins, in every breath she took, and she wanted to hit him again. Harder this time. With something very heavy, like one of the nearby tables.

“I believe we call them clothes.” She eyed him, hoping she looked as unfriendly as she felt. As she wished she felt. “But you can call them whatever you want. I don’t really care.”

He blinked again, and she thought he tensed, but when he spoke again his voice was still perfectly smooth. If a shade darker.

“I’ve never seen you in jeans before.” He said it as if it hurt his jaw. “Or red.”

“It’s been a big week. Why not reflect it in my wardrobe?”

His gaze moved over her, and she hated the fact her body responded, shivering into the heat of it, letting that damned need bloom wherever that blue gaze touched.

“I like it,” he said.

“That was, of course, my singular goal.”

His mouth crooked then, as if he knew. As if he’d been there tonight when she decided it was time to come out of her Ice Queen cave of sleek mourning clothes. As if he knew perfectly well that she’d been unable to get that hot gleam in his blue gaze out of her head when she’d pulled on the dark black skinny-legged jeans that hugged her legs and the red top that wrapped around her torso, leaving a deep V open in front. As if he knew exactly what she’d been thinking when she slid on the killer heels in a leopard print that demanded attention and did wicked things to her walk, especially on wintry sidewalks.

As if she was completely and utterly transparent, after all these years of hiding herself away.

And that same fire licked at her, reminding her. The air between them pulled taut. She saw that awareness in his gaze, that same bright blaze.

But he still didn’t make a single move to touch her, and that burned through her like poison, drowning out everything else, sitting heavy on her chest like the tears she refused to cry. Not here. Not in front of him. Not when it already hurt this much.