Page 35 of Burden of Proof

“You can sit,” he said over his shoulder, and I tried to make myself comfortable on his couch. I shifted some of the pillows around to make room, finally tucking one onto my lap and using it for emotional support.

Hunter came back to me and passed a crystal glass into my hand. He sat down and angled his legs toward mine, but not close enough to touch.

“I don’t know where to start,” he said at the same time as I said, “I kind of hoped we could just cut to the fucking.”

It took a second for what I said to register with him, and his cheeks flushed. He smiled down into his drink.

“Sounds like we’re definitely not on the same page,” he said.

“You asked me to film my face while I came so you could see it,” I reminded him. “I’m not sure what page that is in your book, but in mine…”

“You came over the first time because you wanted to submit. Whatever that meant to you. And you did. And I would love to have closed the door on you and never thought about you after that, but that’s not what happened.” Hunter took a sip of his drink, the ice clinking against the edge loud enough to sound like a gunshot.

I hadn’t even tried mine.

“What about me kept you up at night?” I asked.

“Besides how attractive you are?” He arched a brow and cocked his head to the side, and I nodded for him to go on. “The way you cried from your chest like your bones were cracking open in my arms.”

Well.

I raised the glass to my mouth and took a swallow of what was mostly vodka with a splash of soda. Hunter watched my mouth, his nostrils flaring when I licked the wetness off my lips.

“Why, though? I hope you don’t think you can fix me.”

“That’s no one’s job except yours,” he said, setting his glass down on a cork coaster on the table that I hadn’t seen, tucked between the notes and the books. “Did you get what you wanted from it? From our time together I mean? Did it answer your questions?”

I snorted and rolled my eyes. “I only have more now,” I admitted.

“Do you want to talk about them?”

I worried the inside of my lip until it bled, biting hard enough—on accident—to grimace.

“What?” he asked.

“I bit myself,” I muttered.

Hunter leaned in closer, moving fast like a predator. My breath caught in my throat as he curled his hand over the top of my shoulder.

“Are you bleeding?”

“Yes.”

With his free hand, he tapped the underside of my glass, lifting it toward my mouth. His eyes were dark when the glass connected with my lip, and darker still when he tipped a swig of the cocktail into my mouth. I don’t know how I managed to swallow. I could barely remember how to breathe with his hand on me and his drink on my tongue.

“It’ll sterilize it,” he murmured, pulling back reflexively.

The tension between us snapped like a taut wire, and he reached to take the drink out of my hands the same moment I moved to give it to him. He set it on the table and then was back, his fingers sliding around my neck and coming together in my hairline, thumbs tracing lines along the underside of my jaw.

“Do you want to talk about them?” he repeated his earlier question, and I could barely think, let alone speak.

“No,” I said.

His thumbs pressed harder against my jawbone. “Do you need to?”

I pulled my lips between my teeth, making sure to not draw more blood. “Probably.”

Hunter groaned, but it sounded like a sigh, and then he let me go. But at some point, he’d moved closer, our legs finally touching and the proximity to him made me feel like I could breathe, even though I also felt like I was choking. I was so tired of everything existing inside of me at the same time. The dominance, the submission, the top, the bottom, the want, the rejection. It was unfair and it was too much, and there was no way I was going to cry in front of this man again. Or so I thought until he reached up and quickly swiped away wetness from beneath my lashes.