Scandalize Me

Not if he wanted everything from her. And he did. This was why he’d waited.

“I don’t have time for whatever game this is,” he said shortly.

“This isn’t a game—”

“Then stop playing,” he bit out. “I told you I loved you and you walked out on me. Don’t fish around to figure out my feelings. Tell me what you want. Ask me, Zoe, and you just might get it.”

It was a deliberate echo of that night on the street, and her cheeks bloomed with color, shame or heat or regret, he didn’t know which. But it was better than that awful look on her face the day she’d left him. It was better than the frozen way she’d looked at him since. It was better than blue-gray eyes filled with nightmares.

And she was standing here in front of him, clearly in the grip of some intense emotion, so all of this was better, no matter what happened next.

“You deserve better,” she intoned, soft and something like wounded and not like any version of Zoe he knew. “Sarah loved you enough to leave you, and I tried to do the same, Hunter. You can be free of this, and you should be. Of the stain of what Jason did to her. To me. What we did to survive it—or not.”

He didn’t trust himself to speak, so he waited, watching her. Her eyes were dark like rain, and her face was drawn. She stood with her hands clasped in front of her, like something out of a submissive fantasy playbook, and his hands bunched into fists, because it wasn’t her. He didn’t know what the hell this was, what was taking her over and making her play it out like this, but it wasn’t the Zoe he knew. There was no fire. No power. No Zoe.

She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But I can’t seem to stay away from you, even though I know I should. Even though I know that it’s the best thing for you.”

“So you came here to—what?” he bit out, hardly recognizing his own voice. She frowned as if she thought he might bite her, and not in a fun way. As if he was made of fangs and she’d been bitten before. It pissed him off.

“You told me you’d make me beg,” she said. “This is me begging.”

And she sank down onto her knees, right there in front of him, graceful and somehow frail despite the beautiful dress she wore, that clung to her in a dark shade of green and made all of her curves look even more edible than usual.

But all Hunter saw was her bowed head, her unnatural stiffness, her completely out-of-character behavior. What was this? It pissed him off even more.

“I owe you at least this much,” she told him quietly. Almost demurely.

And suddenly, he got it.

“Is this because you think I like saints?” he asked drily, and liked it when she tensed at his tone. “You thought you’d come out and play the martyr for me?”

She jerked her head up and there was a spark in her gaze he recognized, and he felt it the way he might have felt another woman’s kiss. His Zoe. His, beneath this weird act of hers that he understood now, even if it broke his heart.

He wanted her back, all of her, no matter whose heart had to break to get there.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, and she ducked her head down again, and this sucked. He liked playing power games with women who weren’t actually doormats. With this one in particular, because that was what was hot: the fact that the Zoe he knew was never meek or a supplicant. The Zoe he knew wanted him with a ferocity that matched the way he wanted her. This was something out of those dark things in her head, and he wanted nothing to do with it.

“I hate doormats,” he drawled. “Sorry. Though you can crawl around if you want. Who knows? Maybe that will change my mind.”

“This is serious,” she said then, harshly. “I’m serious.”

“Then get up, you fucking idiot,” he growled, and her head shot up, her mouth dropping open in shock. “You heard me,” he said when she only stared at him.

That color flooded her face again, and she rocked back against her heels, then up and onto her feet in a controlled kind of burst that was much more her than all the rest of this. It reminded him of the night she’d hit him, and he wanted that back. He wanted her back.

“I obviously made a much bigger mistake in coming here than I did in leaving in the first place,” she said tightly, but at least that was a tone he recognized, cool and sharp. “Excuse me.”

“Oh, no,” he threw right back at her. “You don’t get off that easy. What did you think would happen here? That I’d enjoy watching you sacrifice yourself to me? That that’s even remotely what I want from you?”