by Maisey Yates
“Luckily,” Hunter said, “I make a pretty thin meal. Not much left to chew on.”
Zair, keeper of his own dark secrets and certainly no stranger to trouble, diplomatic immunity or no, laughed.
“She can solve any problem. Even one of yours.”
“And you know this from personal experience?” Hunter asked, cradling his phone between his head and his shoulder as he walked out into the cold night. “Please tell me that for the first time in our entire history, you plan to share.”
If there was anyone cagier or more private than Zair, Hunter had never met him. They’d been sophomores before Hunter had realized that when Zair made vague references to “home,” he’d meant a sultan’s palace. Or when he’d said “my brother,” he’d meant the Sultan of Ruyi.
His old friend only laughed now, making Hunter wish things were different. That instead of chasing footballs across the past decade, he’d made more of an effort to stay connected to these first, best friends of his, more like brothers than his own, actual brother had ever been. But he’d lost that, too.
“Whatever Zoe Brook wants with you, Hunter,” Zair said, not answering the question directly, not that Hunter would have known what to do if he had, “I’d give it to her. Because otherwise I suspect she’ll simply go ahead and take it.”
* * *
He met Zoe in the waiting room of her bold Columbus Circle office at precisely ten-fifteen on Thursday morning. Hunter lounged on one of the bright red leather couches as if he were in his own living room, a detail he saw her take in with a single amused glance. Her wicked brows rose at once, and he felt it like a blast of heat dancing all over his skin. Like the brush of her fingers against his sex.
“Look at that.” She sounded faintly mocking. “You can find your way across the city. And all by yourself!”
“Third time’s the charm,” he agreed in the same tone, aware that the receptionist was staring at him in something like awe. Or was it horror? “You could say I had a change of heart in the gym the other night.”
“Men your age need to be careful,” she said as if agreeing, and he had to grin at the slap of it. Especially since he knew perfectly well she was all of a year younger than he was. “Your hearts aren’t what they were when you were young.”
“I was visited by an apparition of annoying conversations past,” he said mildly. “She irritated me into coming here. It was that or sink into a coma of indifference.”
Zoe smiled, slow and triumphant, and that was even hotter. It made him wish they were alone. It made him care less by the second about the fact they weren’t.
“A coma might have been something of an improvement, Mr. Grant, all things considered,” she said, as if she could read his dirty mind. He hoped she could. He’d spent a significant amount of time imagining a different and far more satisfying ending to that hot tub encounter over the past few days. “Why don’t you follow me?”
Hunter lost himself in the sway of her hips in that delectable skirt she wore as she turned and he followed. The sweet curve of her bottom. The way she walked—that confident swagger that made his whole body tighten—in those lickable shoes with the clever red soles that peeked at him with every step, like an invitation to the best kind of sin.
He accepted. Happily.
“You say you’re good at what you do,” Hunter said as she led him down the bright, airy hall toward her private office.
“I don’t have to say it.” That razor-sharp curve of her lips, thrown over her shoulder, was the best thing he’d seen in years. It made even those great, dark spaces in him seem to sing with light. With heat. “My work speaks for itself, and usually on the nightly news. Or when I’m really good? Not at all. No news cycles. No whispers. Not even a speculative paragraph in the fringe tabloids, stuck in between UFO sightings. I make it disappear completely, as if it never happened at all.”
“Like magic.”
“Something like that. Just more expensive.”
“I enjoyed that character assassination you treated me to in the strip club the other day,” Hunter drawled. “Is that how it usually works? Break the clients down into bite-size pieces so they’ll be grateful when you put them back together into your preferred image, whatever that might be?”
“Don’t look behind the curtain, Mr. Grant,” she said, without looking at him this time, her voice filled with the laughter he couldn’t see. But he wanted to see it. He wanted to bathe in it. Again and again, as if it could finally wash him clean. “Just accept the wave of the PR wand. It’s as magical as you let it be.”
“I’ve been on a few sports teams, Ms. Brook. I know you have to tear me down to build me back up. It’s Psychological Warfare 101.”
“Then I expect you’ll be the model client, won’t you?”
She waved him into her office and closed the door behind them. He looked around as she walked toward her desk, taking in the crispness of the white walls, the cold concrete floors with scattered area rugs in muted colors to cushion the chill. The frigidity was relieved only by the view of the city out her windows and the typical vanity wall of photographs featuring Zoe with various famous and/or powerful people. Happy clients, presumably.
He recognized most of them, and noted that Zair was in the top left, his usual too-handsome, too-serious self, his unsmiling face on this particular wall another mystery that would likely never be solved. Her desk was scrupulously neat, made entirely of heavy sheets of metal and glass, and he suspected she knew exactly how formidable and untouchable she looked when she rested against the front of it, leaning back to regard him coolly.
Trouble was, he didn’t respond to messages like that the way he should. The way he was no doubt intended to respond. He wanted to...mess her up a little. Make all of that chilly control bleed into something else, something at least as hot and as wild and as deeply foolish as the thing that hummed in him, demanding he go over there and lose his hands in that slick twist of her hair, take her wicked, argumentative mouth with his, pull those impossibly long legs around his waist and sink into her with those sexy red-soled shoes still on her feet.
He wanted to know why she was targeting him, what she was after.
What she thought she knew about Sarah.
So he kept walking, over the cold floor that made his boots sound like drums, past the sitting area that was set up off to the right and was no doubt where she meant for him to go, to a low sofa that would put him at her knees.
He didn’t think so.
He moved closer and closer, watching the way she fought to keep from reacting, the way her fascinating face tightened and then smoothed out almost in the same instant, as if she’d had to order herself to stay so calm. He certainly hoped she did.
And then he was looming over her. Wholly and unapologetically and inappropriately in her space. As if, should he crook his head just slightly, he might finally taste that smart mouth of hers. It would be that easy.
She tilted her chin up to keep holding his gaze, but otherwise, showed him nothing but that cool wariness she wore like a shield. He wondered what it cost her.
He didn’t know why he wanted to know, as if it was a desperate thing inside him, clawing its way out.
“Perhaps,” she said, and though her voice was mild he could hear a darkness beneath it. A hint of something raw that shouldn’t have called to him, sung in him. “I should have been slightly more clear about what I meant by model client.”
“Tell me why you came after me,” he said. “What you want.”
There was nothing but a scant breath of space between their bodies, and he’d have bet his entire fortune that she wanted to stand up straight to regain a little bit of height, and her edge. But didn’t, because he’d know exactly why she was doing it. He imagined that was also the reason she didn’t tell him to back off. It would be too revealing.
He smiled. He’d always been good at games like this. “Tell me, and I’ll behave.”
“Is this an example of you behaving, Mr. Gr
ant?” Her voice was light. Airy. Her gaze was not. “Because it feels a bit more like a crude attempt at intimidation.”
“Not at all. I’m never crude.”
The problem was, this close, he found it hard to concentrate on things like strategy. He could smell the faintest hint of lavender on her skin, and wanted to follow it. Taste it. Strip away her clothes and feast on the flesh beneath until they were both in pieces. On her desk, on the floor, wherever.
He dropped his gaze to her mouth, which was fuller and more tempting this close. Like a beacon it hurt him to ignore. “This is the first step toward a bright and shiny new me. Just tell me what you want with me.”
“Rehabilitation isn’t easy for anyone,” she said, her voice a little bit too even. He felt it like a victory, adrenaline and need coursing through him, drumming louder than his boots had against the hard floor. “It depends on the client, and clients tend to have difficulty with the most crucial part of it.” She waited until he dragged his gaze back up to hers, and held it for a beat or two. “For starters, you have to do what I say.”
“What happens to clients who don’t?”
“They all do, eventually.”
“No one is entirely successful, Ms. Brook,” he pointed out, his voice lower than it should have been. A rasp against that pulse of need between them, that intense current. “It’s statistically impossible.”
“The only failures I’ve ever had all share one thing in common,” she said, and the heat between them pulled taut. Grew hotter. Wilder. Pounded in him. He saw it move in her gaze, across her face. “Guess what that is?”
“They didn’t do what you told them to do. To continue the theme.”
“Look at that.” There was that flash in her gray gaze that he felt like the touch he craved, like a burst of fire deep in his gut. Did he move closer? Did she? He couldn’t tell any longer. “He can be taught.”
Hunter could see the awareness and arousal on her face then, like a flashing sign. That faint hint of color high on her cheeks, that sheen in her eyes. That sudden, almost shocking hint of softness in her lips. It took every bit of willpower he had to keep from bending down and tasting it. Tasting her.
Drinking her in and getting good and drunk on her heat. Making her feel that clench of fire that was driving him mad. Filling the hollow places inside him with the flames.
Letting them both burn.
He liked the way her chin tilted up, tough and cool despite the clamor and slap of the flames that danced in the air all around them. He liked the fierce kick of his own desire, all of that feeling when he’d been so numb for so long. He wanted to test it against hers, see what it made of them. See if they survived. How long they’d burn before they broke. He wanted.
“Do you want to play teacher?” he asked, drawing the words out, because he liked the way his voice worked in her, half tease, half promise. He could see it in the way she fought to hide it. He could feel it inside, hard and hot. “Because I have some ideas for the first lesson. I think you’ll like the exercises. But first you have to tell me why I’m here.”
* * *
For a moment, Zoe couldn’t remember.
What they were talking about, what was happening, what she was—or wasn’t—doing. Hunter was like a wall before her, imposing and huge, and shockingly, irrepressibly male.
And hot. So hot it almost hurt to be this close to him, burning alive when she’d worked so hard to stay icy through and through. So hot she was afraid she’d lose herself forever if she didn’t do something—anything—to keep from falling into the wildfire that seemed to rage in the tiny little space between their bodies.
Think, she ordered herself the way she’d learned to do in far worse situations than this one. Don’t simply react. Think this through.
But that was very hard to do when she was surrounded by a big, hard, beautiful man—who was looking at her as if he’d like to eat her whole. As if he already knew how she tasted. As if all she needed to do was give the slightest little bit of an inch, and she could find out herself.
Not that she wanted something like that. Like him. Of course she didn’t.
But right now, right here, it was difficult to remember why not.
“Mr. Grant,” she said, her voice a cold blast of winter, folding her arms over her chest in a way that was obviously a defensive gesture—but it couldn’t be helped. She was only human. Even if Hunter Grant was, improbably, the first client who had ever made her feel like this. The first man who’d come close, in too many years to count. Maybe ever, and she didn’t want to think about the implications of that. “I think you have the wrong idea.”
“Don’t lie to me, Zoe.” She didn’t know what was worse—the laughter in his voice, the blaze of intense heat in his gaze, or the unexpected caress of her name in his mouth. That smug, male, somehow intoxicating mouth that she absolutely was not imagining claiming hers. “Persuade. Pivot, if you must. But don’t stoop to lying.”
He was daring her.
“Mr. Grant,” she said again, on a theatrically exasperated sigh, as if he was a naughty schoolboy, “you could try the patience of one of your saints.”
“Lucky, then, that none are in this room.”
“I don’t have to resort to lies.” She relaxed against the desk, as if she’d never been more at her ease. As if she routinely had very large men entirely too close to her, moments away from a kiss she suspected she’d do better to avoid—that might, she worried, shake her whole world apart, and then what would happen to her great plans for Jason Treffen? “It may surprise you to discover that you’re not the first of my clients to imagine that injecting sex into the situation might make this process more palatable for them.”
One of those dark, unreadable expressions of his moved across his face, suggesting—again—that he was an enormously complicated man. Far more complicated than he liked to let on, and she still didn’t want to believe that was possible. Because it would make everything she needed to do with him much more difficult. He smiled, sending that dancing, seductive fire to wild heights inside her. Making her belly hollow out, then pull taut.
“Is that what I’m doing?” he asked, in a light tone she didn’t believe for a moment. “But then, maybe those clients actually hired you.”
Hunter shifted back on his heels, then shoved his thumbs into the pockets of yet another pair of jeans that fit him much too well. The movement made his finely cut button-down shirt pull taut against the smooth, solid muscles of his chest, and thanks to her bright idea to confront him in that hot tub, she knew exactly what was behind the fabric. Zoe found her throat felt tight. And worse, she felt that extra sliver of space yawn between them as if it was a loss. As if it was grief.
“You don’t have to hire me, Mr. Grant. I’ve generously decided to take your case on pro bono.”
“Be still my heart.”
Hers was making a racket. “But we were talking about sex.”
“Were we? How exciting. I thought we were discussing image rehab.” But his bright eyes were too hot and much too assessing on hers.
“No, you didn’t.” She wished his smile didn’t lance into her like that. That she wasn’t so shockingly susceptible to a man like this, when she would have believed that impossible only a week ago. “Here’s the thing. You’re obviously an attractive man.”
“Thank you.” His tone was dry, but she didn’t change the steady way she was watching him, as if she was delivering a lecture from a podium. If she did it long enough, maybe she’d tamp down that riot inside her, too. “All those magazine covers can’t be wrong, I flatter myself.”
He ran a hand down his front, making it difficult to hear herself think over the sudden noise in her brain, her body. Her skin. Her bones. There was only the slow journey of his palm over the ridged, solid wonder of his abdomen, as if he was smoothing out a wrinkle from his shirt, which, she was well aware, he was not.
She’d seen him wet and almost naked the other night, rising from that hot tub li
ke a fever dream. The lean muscles, the ridged abdomen, the arrow of dark, male hair that pointed south. It was pressed into her memory like a red-hot brand.
It was suddenly hard to swallow, but she forced herself to do it. Then to push on as if his little display hadn’t unsettled her at all.
“Your former job demanded a level of physical fitness that’s impressive, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t intriguing, on some level.”
“And you don’t lie. Thank goodness.”
“But you’re a very specific sort of man.” She smiled when he frowned at that. “Most of the men who walk into this office are more or less the same. You’re used to being in control, you told me so yourself. You may or may not find me attractive, but you’d have sex with me anyway because in your mind, doing so would put me back in the subordinate position you think I ought to be in. You’re the kind of man who gets off on that. And as a bonus, you’d get to keep feeling in control no matter how many times I told you to do things for the cameras that you didn’t like.”
“Well,” he said, and there was a considering sort of gleam in the deep blue of his gaze then, and a great tide of that insane heat that she was pretending she didn’t notice, “and it would also be fun.”
She’d been hoping he’d say something like that.
“Not for me,” she told him, her eyes on his. Direct and matter-of-fact. And, she knew, about to end this thing once and for all.
Because Zoe had never had a client come on to her yet who didn’t back off when she threw some version of this speech at them. She told herself that strange stabbing feeling in the vicinity of her chest was too much coffee, not the faint disappointment that Hunter was just one more among the multitudes. Interchangeable assholes, all of them, like the fleets of yellow cabs racing down Ninth Avenue outside her windows, wholly indistinguishable from one another.
Which was why she’d chosen him, she reminded herself. Because he was just like the rest. Just like the worst.
“I’m afraid I wasn’t kidding when I told you that I prefer to be the one in charge.” She watched his face as her words penetrated. “You might be pretty, but I don’t want you—or anyone—unless you crawl. And that isn’t a metaphor.”
