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“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 like 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.”
Everything went still.
Excruciatingly still.
Hunter’s intelligent blue gaze was much too hot, and Zoe felt an odd constriction grip her, as if something hard and tight was wrapped around her ribs, the way some insane and rebellious part of her wished his hands were.
