Chapter 2 Bunny - Seven months earlier #2
And the deeper you get swept up in all the pomp and circumstance, the more likely it is to utterly destroy you.
“Earth to Bunny.” Dove’s bubbly voice cuts through my spiral. “Hello! I’m trying to break you out of Detective Dick’s snare, missy. You shall not let him dickmatize you.” She even chants the last part like she’s trying to hypnotize me herself.
With a sigh, I flip my hair off my shoulder. “Sorry. You have my full attention.”
“Thank god. Don’t make me—” Her words are drowned out by the crash of glasses shattering across the floor.
Our attention whips around to see Vixey, wide-eyed and sheepish, clutching an empty tray to her chest. If this were an anime, there’d be a giant sweatdrop sliding down her forehead as her fingers toy with the 90s-style tattoo choker around her neck.
“Third strike, you’re out?” I mutter. Dove grins. “Five bucks says she doesn’t make it till last call.”
Dove releases a giggle, though she tries her damnedest to suppress it. Alex just glares as we clink our shots together. “Can you two be nice? It’s her first night. Give her a break.”
An hour later, I’m pretty sure he regrets saying that. If Vixey keeps it up, he’ll be out of glasses before the night ends.
My head swims with too much tequila and not nearly enough tacos.
After another, admittedly unnecessary, jab at Vixey, Dove pushes my shots away from me.
I scowl past her, heat simmering under my skin, sharp and irrational.
At the pool tables, Wrenley and Hunter are now surrounded by another set of women.
Fucking badge bunnies.
Desperate women who get off on cops and haunt their usual hangouts.
My friend grabs my shoulders, trying to convince me to leave and go sing karaoke, but all I can see is Hunter. The way he keeps shooting me those molten glances, like he wants me to be hyper-aware of every move he makes.
I am, you asshole. So painfully aware.
While Dove signals for the check, I slip off my stool. The alcohol hums through my blood, lending me a boost of false confidence. I’m vaguely aware of Dove calling out and trying to get me to stop, but I’m locked on target: a brunette reaching for Hunter’s phone, probably to slide her number in.
Hunter sees me coming. He goes still, as if I’m the predator and he’s the prey.
We both know better.
“I wouldn’t bother with this one,” I lilt, sliding around the brunette to insert myself between them. I flick her hand away and lean back against Hunter’s chest. “He’s already obsessed with his own personal rabbit.”
The woman rears back, brows pinching as she looks between us. “Uh… sorry. I didn’t realize he was taken.”
“I didn’t either,” Hunter murmurs, amused. His fingers brush my waist, grazing the strip of skin between my crop top and pants.
I slap his hand away and bare my teeth at her. “Bye now.”
She sniffs and retreats. Her friend’s gone, too. Across the table, Wrenley’s glaring at where Dove and Ryan, who wasn’t supposed to come tonight, are talking at the bar. His mouth is set in a hard line. I’d bet twenty bucks he wants her just as badly as she wants him.
Idiots.
Hunter’s laugh pulls me back. He’s grinning like the smug bastard he is. “Finally staking your claim, Little Rabbit?”
“You’re gross,” I say flatly as he sets down his cue and grabs his beer.
He takes a slow pull from it, eyebrows raised, while I hiss, “First the woman this afternoon, then the bride, now whoever that floozy was.” I wave at the cluster of women who’ve already latched onto new prey.
“Admit it, Bunny, it makes you wet to see me flirt with other women.” His grin is pure sin. He leans down, voice dropping to a heated whisper. “Just say the word, and I’ll take you home right now. Or we can keep this up until you’re dripping and begging for it.”
I plant my palm on his forehead and push him back. Air stirs between us, carrying CK One and the scent that’s uniquely Hunter. “Please. We both know I’ll never beg you for it.”
“You have once before. You will again.” His certainty nearly distracts me from wondering what, exactly, he means.
Almost.
“The way I see it, you have two options.” Hunter retrieves his cue, uncaring that Wrenley has abandoned the game to bother Dove, now sans Ryan, at the bar.
He lines up another shot like I’m not even there, smoothly knocking the orange ball into a corner pocket.
“Option one: give in and give me what I want.” The blue ball disappears into the side pocket.
“Or option two: keep up this torturous foreplay, watch me flirt, and get yourself off thinking about my tongue between your legs when you’re home alone later. ”
He grins—wolfish, devastating—as another ball sinks.
“Well, Hunter, if your tongue didn’t come with the risk of an STI, you might’ve had a chance of getting in my pants tonight.” I lace the words with every ounce of sass I have.
His face twists. Just the implication makes me queasy, too.
“Okay then, Bunny. Option two it is.” Disgust fades into a lazy grin. “Don’t worry—I’ll think of my own personal rabbit when I jerk off in the shower tonight.”
The final ball flies into a pocket. Heat flares up my neck, down my spine, pooling low as he stalks toward me—slow and certain, like his namesake.
“Get over yourself, Detective Dick.” I fold my arms. “It won’t be you I’m thinking of later.”
He chuckles, dropping the cue and bracing one arm on the table behind me. My nerves spark as he leans in, all taut muscle under a stretched white shirt. Dark, styled curls flop across one eye. My fingers itch to push them back then trail down the short beard framing his mouth.
This man can turn me to putty in seconds.
He knows it. I know it.
But he wants the one thing I can’t give. And he won’t give me anything else until I do.
“You’ll try not to think of me later, Bunny,” he whispers, sliding my hair off my shoulder.
His gaze lingers on my lips, hand drifting down my jacket to skim my waist, scorching every place he touches.
“But you will. You’ll think about my mouth on yours.
My fingers stroking the parts of you that are begging to be touched again. Parts only I know how to reach.”
My hands catch his forearms. My body tilts into his, molten heat gathering between my thighs. “Hunter…”
“That’s right, Little Rabbit. Your Hunter.” His lips brush my neck. “And one of these nights, you’ll stop denying us what we both want.”
Then—air. Cool and sudden, as Dove barrels in.
“He called me a wanton slut! Can you believe the fucking nerve of that asshole?” she shrieks, looping her arm through mine and dragging me off.
I go, though my eyes stay locked on Hunter until the door closes behind us. His jaw ticks as the distance grows, eyes heated as our words replay in both our heads.
Every part of me screams to stop. To turn around. To run back to him.
Which is exactly why I keep walking.
Because Hunter will give me the world if I just ask. Ours is a twisted, reversed kind of love story—he’s the one begging for forever, and I’m the one who can’t commit.
Deep down, I know he’d never hurt me.
Once upon a time, though, I thought the same about my late husband.
And I ended up bashing his face in with a rump roast.