Chapter 42

42

Hunter

"You’re doing well in the polls," JJ Kane says as he puts his arm around his girlfriend. His much younger girlfriend who, at one point, was his son’s girlfriend. But to see how happy he and Lena are now, you’d never know the journey they went through to get here.

The younger woman looks up at him with adoring eyes, before turning to me. "You have my vote, Minister."

"Thank you." I tilt my head.

"Your strategy to launch your campaign a little later than the other candidates paid off."

"Thanks to the hard work put in by my team," I demur.

"They’ve done a stellar job in getting you off to a good start." Sinclair Sterling joins with his wife Summer. Lena and Summer embrace. Sinclair takes two glasses of juice from the hovering waiter and passes one to Summer.

"Thanks, darling." She takes a sip while Sinclair places his own glass on the table between us.

I glance at the glass, then back at him.

"Summer’s nursing; I’m keeping her company." He raises a shoulder.

"I told Sinclair he can drink for the both of us, but he insists he’ll start drinking once I wean off the baby completely." Summer laughs.

"He’s right." I raise my glass in their direction. "Parenting is bloody hard work, not that I know anything about it. But hats off to you guys, you’re doing an incredible job."

"Sinclair’s been so helpful. He insists on waking up at night when the baby starts crying and is really good at putting him back to bed."

"Good on you." JJ, too, raises his glass in their direction.

"This is our first night out in" —Sinclair shakes his head— "in forever. Speaking of," —he takes his wife’s hand in his— "I’m going to take my wife dancing."

"Go for it." I laugh and take a sip of my champagne.

Sinclair pulls away with Summer. JJ turns to Lena and asks, "Want to dance?"

She shakes her head, then wraps her arm about his waist. "I’m happy to watch."

He pulls her even closer. "And I’m happy to watch you."

They share a look, and it’s such an intimate moment, I feel like I’m intruding. "I think I need to get around and press the flesh and all that." I shuffle my feet.

JJ and Lena look at me. "You sure, you—" He looks past me and his jaw firms.

"What is it?"

Lena follows the direction of his glance and her gaze widens.

I begin to turn, when JJ shakes his head. "Don’t."

I arch an eyebrow. "Meaning, I really need to look at this."

I glance over my shoulder, and all of my muscles coil. The hair on my forearms rises. I curl my fingers so tightly around the stem of the glass that it cracks. "Fuck." I swipe out my other hand and catch the thin bowl of the flute before it can roll over the side. I place it back on the table upside down so it doesn’t fall, then shake out the champagne that’s fallen on my hand. Luckily, I didn’t cut myself. I pull out the handkerchief from my pocket and dry my fingers before stuffing the cloth back in my pocket.

"Excuse me."

I turn to leave, when JJ grips my shoulder. "Don’t do anything stupid."

I hesitate.

"The paps are salivating for gossip. Your enemies can’t wait for you to take a wrong step. It’s your career at stake."

I set my lips.

"And hers," he adds.

I draw in a breath and force my muscles to relax. When I nod, he releases me. At which point, I turn and stalk toward where she’s dancing with someone else. I know she has to circulate among the guests. It’s her job. It comes with the territory of being a fixer. Of keeping an ear to the ground and staying abreast of events. I get that. But this… This is where I draw the line. She came to the event with me and now she’s dancing with another. How dare she dance with another man?

There’s something familiar about his stance, his features, but I’m positive I’ve never met this man before. He’s much taller than her—as tall as me—and in comparison, she looks tiny, fragile. His swarthy looks complement her delicate ones. With his head of full dark hair, and Zara’s dark locks that flow behind her, they make a striking couple.

My chest seizes. My heart pumps so hard, the beats reverberate through my cells. The bastard has his hand around her tiny waist, the other holding her hand. As I watch, he releases her waist, only to twirl her out then back toward him. She laughs, that full-bodied, hearty laugh that arrows straight to my cock. He leans forward, until his face is close to hers, until his mouth is close to her ear, until it feels like his entire body is a hair’s breadth from enveloping hers. That’s when something inside me snaps.

I weave through the people standing around the edge, then past the other dancing couples, to stand beside them.

For a second, they don’t notice me, so engrossed are they in each other, and that only fuels this burning sensation that’s flared in my chest.

"Let her go." I hear my words, and only then, do I realize I’ve spoken.

Both of them turn to face me.

Her features pale. "Hunter, we were just dancing."

I glare at her, then back at the motherfucker who still has his hands on her.

"Let her the fuck go."

He looks between us. "Are you with him?"

"I’m not," she snaps at the same time that I growl, "She is."

He frowns. "Maybe it’s best I step back."

"That would be best for all of us, motherfucker," I growl.

"No need to swear." The man’s lips firm. "I’ll leave once I make sure Zara’s okay." He turns to her. "You all right, Z?"

"The fuck?" He called her by a nickname? How dare he call her by a nickname. No one gets to do that, except me.

I glare down at where the bastard still has his hand on her hip. "Let her the fuck go."

"And if I don’t?"

I raise my fist and bury it in his face.

"Really? Really?" She paces back-forth-back in the small room up the corridor from the ballroom where the gala was being held. "What were you thinking, Hunter?" she snaps.

I wasn’t thinking.

I saw his hands on her and I swung and connected with his face. The stranger took the hit, staggered back, only to recover and swing at me. I ducked, of course, and growled at Zara to step aside, which she did. When I was sure she was at a safe enough distance I swung at him again, and we both went tumbling to the ground.

"You were lucky that Michael Sovrano happened to be there and caused a diversion by pulling the fire alarm," she rages at me.

Which also opened up the sprinklers in the ceiling of the ball room, and water rained down on us. It hit me with the impact of a cold shower. Literally. I pulled back; so did the stranger. We stared at each other, chests heaving, breath coming in pants. Logic dictates that’s when I should have apologized to him for starting the fight. Which I hadn’t.

"’Stay away from what’s mine’? You growled at him to 'Stay away from what’s mine'?" She turns on me, eyes spitting golden sparks, her hair clinging in long damp tendrils to her shoulders, and that gorgeous dress showing off the curves of her spectacular hips. "Who says something so Neanderthalish?"

"Is that a word in the English language?" I ask in a mild tone.

Her already pink cheeks now flush red. "That’s what you take away from what I said?"

"Not only."

"Oh?" She plants her palms on her hips.

I nod. "I also know now that I can’t bear it if anyone else dares touch you. If any man dare look at you again, I’m going to kill him."

She throws up her hands. "You’ve declared you’re going to run for the top leadership position in this country. You can’t afford to lose your temper at such a trivial matter."

"Trivial matter?" Anger punches my guts with such force, specks of black dot my vision. I rise to my feet and prowl toward her. "He. Had. His. Hands. On. You." I stop in front of her and glare into her features. "He was dancing with you. You were laughing at something he said, you?—"

"He’s my brother, Hunter."

I still. "Eh?"

"He’s. My. Brother. Cade Kingston."

"That was Cade Kingston, aka the King, the Captain of the English Cricket Team?"

She nods.

I shake my head. "He looks different from his pictures."

"He shaved off his beard and his hair."

Of course, I know Cade Kingston is her brother. And there was something familiar about him… But I was so consumed by anger, and he looked so different from his pictures, I never, in a million years, would have recognized him as her brother.

I rub the back of my neck. "Fuck, fuckity, fuck."

"Indeed." She folds her arms across her chest. "If you had paused to think for one minute, or better still, decided to think with something else other than your dick?—"

"Which is very difficult for me to do where you’re concerned."

"—you’d have noticed that he had his hands on me, not in a lover-like fashion, but in a brotherly manner."

I lower my hand to my side. "He still had his hands on you."

"Didn’t you just hear what I said?" She scowls up at me. "He. Is. My. Brother."

"He was a man. He was someone other than me. And he was touching you."

She throws up her hands. "So?"

"So?" I bend my knees, peer into her eyes. "I will not tolerate you being with anyone else. I will set fire to the world before I let anyone else touch you, and that includes any sibling of yours."

"Jesus Christ, give me patience." She draws in a breath, then stabs her finger into my chest. "This passion of yours? This obsessive attention to what you want, this forgetting everything else except the one thing most important to you? This…this…all-consuming fervor is what you need to bring to the campaign trail."

I blink. "You’re comparing what I feel for you to the emotions I need to bring to the campaign trail?"

"Absolutely."

I glare at her. She pales but doesn’t look away.

"This fire inside of you, this need to go after what you want, this absolute focus that you have for me, it’s the most flattering thing in the world.".

"It’s how I feel about you," I growl.

"It’s the true you." She flattens her palm against my chest. "The one you need to show to your constituents. To this country."

This woman, only she could take my words and turn them on me, and yet…a part of me wonders if she doesn’t speak the truth. Is this what’s been missing in the run up to my campaign? Why I haven’t been able to galvanize my efforts behind this program? Why it felt empty, even to me, like something was missing? Why I feel alive only when I’m with her? Why I need her beside me to feel whole?

"You’re right."

Now, it’s her turn to look taken aback. "I am?"

I nod. "Since I met you, something inside of me, something I didn’t even know I had, came to life. Until now, I’d been following the path that was expected of me. Well also, my instinct dictated this was right for me. That deep inside I do want to serve my country. But it’s only when I’m with you that I feel inclined to follow my truth. Because you are my truth, Zara."

The color drains from her face. She pulls her hand back, but I curl my fingers about her wrist. "Don’t. Don’t deny what’s between us."

"Hunter, but?—"

"No buts. You saw me out there. You saw how I’m unable to control myself around you. And you’re right. I need to bring that passion, that visceral feeling when you want something to the exclusion of everything else, that ruthless determination to succeed, that aggressive, tenacious urge for domination that I feel when I’m with you, that I sense only when I’m with you. I need to become it. I am all of this when you are with me, by my side. When I’m in your presence, I am alive. It’s your proximity that fires me up. It’s your look, your touch, the feel of your skin on mine, your breath entwined with mine, the thud of your heart echoing mine, the drumbeat of your pulse mirroring mine… It’s always been you."

"Hunter, don’t," she whispers.

She tries to pull away, but I hold onto her.

"I’m only truly me when I’m holding your hand, Zara."

I lower my gaze to where I clasp her wrist.

She follows my gaze.

I place my other palm on hers, enfolding her smaller one between both of mine, then I go down on bended knee.