Scandalize Me

“I have no idea what you want.”

“You,” he roared at her, glad when she jumped a little bit, when he could hear it bounce back at him from the walls. “I want you, not this bullshit surrender. I don’t think you’re broken, Zoe. I don’t think you’re a stain on anything. You do.”

She let out a sound like a gasp, as if she’d been wounded, but he kept going, realizing he’d moved toward her only when she put up her hand against his chest as if she needed to ward him off. He stopped, but she didn’t drop her hand, and he felt that touch—her palm searing through his shirt like an iron brand—all the way to his toes.

“Be the woman who challenged me out of a lifetime of self-pity,” he told her, love and fury and need indistinguishable from each other in his voice, in the way he looked at her, in the self-control it took to keep from touching her, kissing her, finding her again in a more direct way than these words. But he couldn’t do that.

“Hunter,” she said, but he ignored her.

“Be my equal, the woman who knows that if she’s damaged, then Jesus Christ, so am I. Be worth feeling all of this crap, Zoe.” He could taste the ferocity on his own lips, copper like blood. “I want you, not whatever this is, that you can hide behind when it gets tough. You’re not a martyr and I’m not a hero. Let’s be who we are.”

He was breathing hard, as if he was running, and she was, too, and he didn’t know when that turmoil he’d seen in her eyes, across her face, had spilled out into tears. He couldn’t keep himself from reaching over and brushing the moisture away with his thumbs, and she shuddered.

“I want everything,” he told her, hoarse and sure. “Give me that, Zoe, or don’t waste my time.”

He saw the fight in her, the battle and the darkness and the fear, but she was so brave. So deeply courageous that he thought it might crack him wide open where he stood, and when her hands moved to hold his where they’d rested on either side of her face, something in him eased. Hoped.

“I don’t know how,” she whispered. “I don’t know if I’ll ever have everything. I don’t know how to start.”

“This is starting,” he told her. “This is what it looks like. If it was easy, everyone would be a whole lot happier.”

“Do you think that’s possible?” she asked, and he knew it was a serious question, maybe the most serious she could ask him.

He kissed her then, long and sweet, a promise and a wish.

“For us?” he asked when he pulled away. “I think it’s inevitable.”

“What if I let you down? What if you wake up one morning and can’t live with what I am?” She scowled at him, even though she clung to him. “And don’t tell me that’s not going to happen. It could. It might.”

“Zoe,” he said, matter-of-factly and brisk, never looking away from her. “We slay monsters. That’s what we do. Even if those monsters are our own.”

She studied him for the longest moment of his life. The most important moment, and then her face cleared, and she smiled.

It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She was.

“I love you,” she said then. “I didn’t think I should. I didn’t think—”

“I know,” he retorted. “But don’t worry. I know exactly how I’ll let you make it up to me. Prepare yourself, Zoe. It’s going to be a long and arduous journey. It could take years.”

That smile of hers tipped over into more of that edgy, dangerous smirk he loved more than anything, and it sparked inside him, hot and sexy, just like her.

“I can prove it in all of five seconds, if you lock that door.”

“Years,” he said again. “Long years. With begging that does not involve martyrdom of any kind. And I was serious about the crawling.”

“Oh, good,” she murmured. “A challenge. Make that three seconds.”

She took his mouth, or he took hers, and for a moment there was nothing but that fire of theirs, that glorious heat. Them, at last.

Then she pulled away, nipping him slightly on the lower lip as she went, the curve of her mouth enough to drive him wild, and she looked at him as if he were a miracle after all.

“Well?” she asked, taunting him, loving him. His. “Are you going to lock that door or am I?”

* * *

Some nights later, Zoe couldn’t sleep.

She lay in Hunter’s massive bed, the city lights arrayed above her like her own, personal Sistine Chapel. She was replete, even happy, though she hardly dared call it that. What Hunter could do to her with his talented, clever hands ought to have been illegal. She wasn’t sure she’d care too much if it was, as long as he kept doing it.