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That intensity that spiked the air around him tightened then, like an implacable fist. And then he smiled, sending a shot of something silken and ominous down the length of her spine. It occurred to her that she didn’t understand this man at all. That her research hadn’t prepared her for this, whatever this was. For him.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” he said in a velvet whisper, the way another man might talk of sex and desire, and it shivered inside Zoe like a touch, “but I’m committed to my downward spiral, and that leaves no room for anything else. Certainly not a mysterious woman and her ‘plan.’”
He rose to his feet then, in a kind of powerfully sinuous way that reminded her that he’d made his living for most of his life with that steel-hewn body of his. She didn’t know why that made her throat go dry, but it did. It bordered on painful.
What was happening to her?
“Feel free to stay and enjoy the show,” he said, smirking down at her. “The dancers here are very talented. Don’t forget to tip.”
Then he started to move past her, headed for the door, dismissing her that easily.
“Wait.”
Zoe rose and reached out for him as she spoke, but he saw her and shifted, throwing out one of his remarkable hands—widely held to be miracles in their own right, or so she’d read—to clasp hers in midair. As if they’d choreographed it.
And sensation poured into her, a white, wild heat, turning her to stone where she stood. Turning her body against her. She felt that simple touch like a hammer. It coursed through her, and before she could think better of it, before she could think, she jerked her startled gaze from their hands to his face—
And everything sizzled. Bright. Hot. Painful.
Impossible.
Hunter’s gaze narrowed. Turned dark.
Hungry.
It took every single bit of hard-won pride and determination Zoe had not to rip her hand out from his much bigger one, to reclaim it, to shut off this insane thing that lit her up in the worst possible places, from the hollow of her belly to the secret places below. Behind her knees. The curve of her neck. The suddenly taut and aching crests of her breasts, thankfully hidden behind the thick wool of her dress.
But she didn’t kid herself. He knew.
And she hated that she could react like this to a man like him. That her body didn’t seem to care what she knew about him. That she’d learned nothing from all these long, hard years. That she simply burned.
“I prefer not to be manhandled, thank you,” she said, her voice even and precise, as cold as the winter winds in the concrete canyons of the city outside this club, and he would never know what that cost her. “Particularly by strange men renowned for their long years of compulsive promiscuity and generally loutish behavior.”
He dropped his hand, but there was still that new light in his eyes, intense and certain, focused on her as if he saw all the things she’d hidden, her secrets and her scars. As if he knew she wore a mask. As if he could see it—and therefore, her—when no one else ever had.
That shook her, hard, but she fought to keep it from her face. Her eyes. Her rigid body that wanted things she’d never wanted, that she didn’t know how to want.
“I’m renowned for other things, too,” he pointed out, almost gently.
And she’d read about that, of course. His supposed sexual prowess. And she hated the fact that she could imagine it, too vividly now. Insistent. As if she was like other women, and could yearn—
Enough.
Zoe made a small noise that was too scornful to be laughter.
“Rich, bored men are remarkably predictable, Mr. Grant. I can assure you, I’ve seen every possible permutation of human perversity, and what has to be almost every last ‘dungeon’ on the island of Manhattan. Whips, chains, spanking benches, it’s all so tiresome.” She smiled, big and fake. “And though I’m sure your particular kinks are fascinating, I’ll just take your word for it.”
He laughed then, abruptly. And she didn’t understand why she imagined she heard something there in that sound, something more and deeper than the tawdry, tedious legend of Hunter Grant, professional asshole. Something that suggested he was more than that when she knew, firsthand, that he wasn’t.
He was the key to her revenge. That was all he was. And nothing else mattered. She wouldn’t let it.
“There’s only one way you’re going to learn about my particular kinks,” Hunter was saying, his voice shifting into something smoother, darker, connecting directly to that thing still too bright and too dangerous inside her, making her painfully aware that it was her own hunger. An impossible, alarming hunger for the very things she refused to let herself want. That she didn’t want. He waited until she was looking at him again. “But you’ll have to ask nicely.”
