The Face of Scandal (6 page)

All that’s missing are the gossiping neighbors…

“So where do you want to go for dessert?” Hazel asked when Ward made no move to tell her.

“No idea,” he confessed. “Take a right here.”

Doing as told, Hazel veered into a side street and followed the road sedately for about half a mile. The scenery changed fast from industrial-but-refurbished to industrial-but-forgotten. Town houses in a bad state of disrepair emerged from behind sunken fences and unkempt greenery as they pulled farther and farther away from the coast. Then, just as abruptly, the run-down effigies of sixties’ booming industry gave away were replaced by palm trees and modern vacation homes that probably sold for millions.

The Tustin Ranch golf course was just a few streets away when Ward told Hazel to jump onto the freeway.

“We headed anywhere in particular?” Hazel wondered, even as she signaled the turn.

“Why? Are you in a rush to get back to the loft?”

The studied nonchalance in his voice put paid to the idea that Ward was simply beat after a long day at the office.

Mere feet before the on-ramp, Hazel veered back onto the side street and pulled up into the nearest parking lot. The windows of a 99 Ranch Market reflected the headlights of the BMW, then fell dark as Hazel switched off the engine.

“I thought I was the only one who’d noticed,” she confessed, wishing she could’ve kept that slightly peevish tone out of her voice.

Ward tilted his head against the backrest and huffed out a mirthless laugh. “I
have
eyes.”

And he did know Dylan better—or at least he had known him longer—than Hazel.

“I doubt he knows he’s doing it,” she reasoned, “but fuck do I hate that he’s paying more attention to her than me. And she’s my friend, too…” Her recently assaulted, probably emotionally devastated
best
friend. “What kind of a selfish bitch does that make me?”

Sadie had just suffered a monumentally bad break-up. Surely her mind wasn’t on jumping into another relationship—let alone with Dylan.

If only Hazel could make herself believe it.

“Do you love him?”

Ward’s voice was edged with tenderness, uncommonly so, but when Hazel turned to him, he didn’t shift his gaze from the stretch of cement beyond the windshield. Splashes of yellow light dotted the outer rim of the parking lot, but where the streetlights didn’t reach, shadows lingered freely.

The question hung between them, unanswered, as Ward’s wristwatch counted a minute, then another. Eventually, Hazel settled back in her seat, a far cry from comfortable in spite of the luxurious, butter-soft leather upholstery.

“Do
you
?” Hazel asked.

A pair of crows alighted on the tarmac, their black wings folded close to their bodies. They stood still for a moment, surveying their surroundings with glassy eyes. After a beat, satisfied that they were alone, the birds commenced a waddling saunter, pecking at scraps left behind by harried shoppers. A piece of pak choi here, a battered apple there. The more adventurous of the two ventured closer to the silent BMW and snagged up a strip of beef jerky.

Its sibling raised its head from the plastic bag it had been assaulting and gave a screeching cry. When the other bird didn’t answer the call with the appropriate deference, the crow propelled itself up into the air with a beat of inky wings and descended on the scavenger. Claws and beaks were employed in the offensive, until the bird released its catch and flew off with a disgruntled squawk.

“Yes,” Ward said, so quietly that Hazel nearly missed his reply.

The crow at once forgotten, Hazel twisted in her seat. “I figured.”
I knew all along
.

The night they’d met, Ward had been circumspect but charming, determined to make an effort to get along with Hazel even as he’d attempted to drive her away. He and Dylan had a complex, slightly painful history, but Hazel hadn’t doubted that since Ward clung to it with fondness.

He cleared his throat, sitting up. “Then you know he doesn’t feel the same way. But you’re different. What he gets from you—”

“He can get elsewhere,” Hazel finished for him.
From Sadie.
“Let’s not kid ourselves. She was the right choice from the start.”

“That’s some defeatist language from the woman who made this happen in the first place.”

Despite the sense of loss churning in her belly, Hazel cracked a smile. “That was different.”

“You wouldn’t take no for an answer, said I was bullshitting you… I’ve met self-made billionaires less ballsy than that.”

“Please,” Hazel scoffed, “you’re not that scary.” He might have been, once, before they’d wound up in bed together. Now she knew that the sneers were a front, that Ward was first and foremost loyal—to Dylan, but also to some degree, to her. “Although whatever you did to get that revolting home movie taken down was—”

“Just a bit of thuggery,” Ward taunted. “I learned from the best.”

“Ouch!”

He grinned at her, one corner of his lips hitching higher than the other. “I didn’t mean you.” He was silent for a long moment, peering out of the windshield at the lone crow devouring refuse in the parking lot. “Don’t give up on him.”

Hazel swallowed hard.

“I can’t make him want me more than Sadie.”
And you can’t ask me that.

Not Ward, who knew her history, who had been right there when she’d lost her composure at her brother’s house and accused her parents of abetting her abuser. Not Ward, who had seen what she was from the moment they’d met.

He didn’t seem to agree. “I just don’t want to lose…this. Us.”

There’s an
us
?

Hazel let him take her hand and press his lips to her knuckles, something vaguely deferential and false in the gesture. “You mean lose
him
,” she corrected, the puzzle pieces slowly clicking into place.

Ward looked up, creasing his brow. “No.”

But Hazel wasn’t finished. “Are you actually— You don’t think you can convince Sadie to sleep with you, is that it?” She couldn’t free her hand fast enough. “You don’t think she’ll want to be shared like I did.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Ward snapped.

“Why not? You’ve put plenty in mine. And a lot more than words.” She didn’t mean it, not really, but hurt flared in her chest like a throbbing bruise. It was as good a way as any to deal with qualms she was too terrified to name.

Ward caught her wrist when she made to reach for the car door. “Because you’re so virginal that we had to force you, is that it?”

“Now who’s putting words in my mouth?” Hazel wrenched her arm free. The confines of the BMW made it difficult to put distance between them, but if he wasn’t allowing her to step outside, so be it. “Just—just be honest for once in your life. Admit that you’re too much of a coward to be with Dylan, so you need someone like me to give you a reason to get close to him.
That’s
the truth.”

He stiffened, recoiling as if he’d been slapped. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“So enlighten me!” Hazel barked, raising her voice. “Tell me what’s so difficult you can’t use your words to—”

Eyes blazing, Ward slammed a hand against the dashboard. “I forced myself on him!”

“Not this again…”

“I’m sorry it’s such an inconvenience for you to hear it,” he shot back.

“Did he ever tell you that?” Hazel glowered. “Did you ask him how he feels about what happened? No, I bet you just decided that on your own and started torturing everyone around you—including yourself, of course. Christ, I thought
I
was nuts, but you take the cake sometimes.”

“You of all people should understand—”

Because it happened to me.

Dylan wasn’t the only one who hastened to absolve Hazel of her mistakes, but when Ward did it, she saw red.

At the end of her tether, Hazel hooked a hand around the back of Ward’s neck and leaned over the gearshift. They had traded rough kisses before, but this was different. This wasn’t meant to entice, but to hurt. To shut him up.

“Is this how it started?” she asked, pulling back. Her lips throbbed, the faint flavor of blood on the back of her tongue. She had kept her frustrations bottled for days now. They needed an outlet.

Breathing hard, Ward shook his head. “Try again.”

It wasn’t in Hazel’s nature to refuse a request like that.

They kissed like wolves, biting and snarling at each other in a quest for dominance. Ward knotted both hands into her hair, plundering her mouth while Hazel squirmed and fought him with equal fervor. The gear stick dug into her hip, a reminder of how deeply, patently wrong this was. To mitigate the dull ache, Hazel threw her leg over Ward’s hips and straddled him.

She banged her head against the car roof as she groped for purchase on his shoulders, but Ward rolled his hips against hers and all thought of stopping for discomfort or common sense dissolved.

“You goddamn
coward
,” she bit out, scrabbling to open his fly.

Ward grunted something that rhymed with
witch
and grabbed her hands. As tight and as difficult as it was to maneuver between the dashboard and the seat, he somehow figured out a way to turn Hazel and yank her jeans down her ample hips.

She sucked in a startled gasp as the elastic of her underwear snapped at his forceful tug.

That sharply drawn breath became a cry when he filled her in one smooth stroke. She was wet enough that there was no painful friction, but the gut-punch sensation of being taken like that still sent a wave of heat up Hazel’s body. Her cheeks burned, the inside of her mouth as dry as dust.

Ward slid an arm around her waist and unceremoniously hauled her into his arms. The shifting angle drove his cock deeper into Hazel’s tight pussy, stealing twin groans from them both.

“Is this what you want?” Ward growled, breathless. “Does this prove it?” He pulled back and slammed their hips together with a punishing thrust.

“Prove what?” Hazel retorted, the way she couldn’t imagine doing in Dylan’s bedroom, or the playroom, when the three of them found just the right balance between comfort and control that her input need never rise above a whimper.

Ward chose to snap his hips against hers in lieu of answer. Desperate, frantic strokes glanced just off her G-spot, teasing her with the promise rather than the achievement of pleasure.

Pleasure wasn’t Ward’s purpose. He fucked her like he’d seldom done before, hard and rough, heedless of what might feel good to Hazel as he grunted and bit her shoulder through the thin fabric of her blouse.

Each deep press of his hips against hers led to a gut-wrenching separation, his rhythm sloppy, distracted but relentless. Without warning, he began to fuck her in earnest, just as she’d requested. And Hazel loved it. She thrilled at the feel of his cock riding over her stretched muscles, delighting in the fullness, the agonizing emptiness when he pulled out. She even found pleasure in the smack of his balls against her labia. Perspiration gathered on her upper lip as he took her hard, biting off curses with every breath.

The car resounded with their groans, juddering back and forth in a tell-tale sway.

Hazel tried to get a leg up and use it as leverage, but her limbs would not comply, her breaths too harried for words. She was pinned, prisoner in Ward’s arms, her unfettered breasts bouncing with every thrust. She couldn’t hold on, but she had no choice.

Ward panted as he spent himself, bare inside her cunt, and suddenly grew still.

Hazel couldn’t see the look of agony on his face, but she cobbled it together from memory.

His beleaguered exhales echoed in Hazel’s ear like a bellows. This Ward, she knew well. She recognized the gentle press of fingers into her thighs as he made to extricate himself.

“No,” Hazel growled. “Stay where you are.”

The car had ceased its rocking. She no longer felt as if she was caught on a rollercoaster ride guaranteed to upend the dinner Sadie and Dylan had worked so hard to put together. With a steady hand, Hazel grasped Ward’s wrist and brought his fingers to her throbbing, wet pussy.

His surprise rushed out on a sigh. “What—?”

“Do you need a diagram?” Rutting against his hand while holding his spent cock inside her was a tricky balancing act. Hazel didn’t put much thought into it. She knew what she wanted out of this.

Slowly, Ward seemed to catch on as well. He circled her clit a few times with his fingertips before prying back the skin to reveal the sensitive bundle of nerves. Of all the things Ward could do to her, this was at once the best and the worst.

Hazel slammed a hand against the car window to keep from jolting out of his arms. The Ward who usually took her to bed would know better than to allow it. He was big on restraints, bigger still on putting her in her place—a firm hand that Hazel craved more than a little bit now. This one, hesitant and erratic as he was, a frequent visitor after their more strenuous scenes, sometimes let doubt get the better of him.

“Fuck, right there,” Hazel ground out, encouraging. “That’s it. God, don’t you dare stop.
Harder
, I need it—I—”

Ward pinched her clit between thumb and forefinger and squeezed until Hazel’s vision whited out. She might have screamed. She wasn’t sure. Nothing else mattered as long as he kept pressing down and winding her up. Tendons pulled like a bow strung tight. Already on a hair trigger and precariously perched on the edge of the abyss, Hazel exploded into orgasm on his fingers.

The ensuing aftershocks rippled across her skin like tiny earthquakes, helped along by Ward’s wicked touch. Hazel gnashed her teeth through it all, too stubborn to plead for mercy.

It felt as if an eternity had passed before Ward finally ceased his ministrations. The last convulsive jerks faded as he pressed his palm to her cunt.

Yeah, baby. That’s yours.

Wrung out but still, unbelievably, mobile, Hazel crawled back over the gearshift and pulled up her jeans. There was no rescuing her ruined panties, but the nuisance of driving home in soiled, torn underwear hadn’t sunk in yet. It would probably hit her by the time she got back to the loft.