The Face of Scandal Read online

  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 beleague
red 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.

  To Sadie and Dylan. Hazel groaned.

  “I’m sorry,” Ward said, buckling his belt. “I don’t know what I was thinking—”

  “Spare me.” Even with eyes closed, Hazel could feel his gaze on her. “Don’t apologize for giving me exactly what I wanted.”

  “You wanted to be charged with indecent exposure?”

  “That didn’t happen.”

  “Could have.”

  “And that red Buick at the intersection twenty minutes ago could’ve rear-ended us all the way into an early grave…” Hazel sighed and reluctantly met his gaze. Her voice was raw from snarling insults and biting off pleas. “You’ve got to get a grip. It’s messing with my head when you’re not…you.”

  “What?” Ward mocked, fluttering his lashes. “My usual sunny self?”

  “When you’re not sure. Of Dylan.” Of me. On a whim, Hazel reached over the gearshift and palmed Ward’s cheek. “Hey. I’ll try for him if you do?” There was no other way this could work but with the three of them aligned, on the same page.

  “Fighting talk.”

  Hazel shrugged. It wasn’t a part she’d played before, but if she was the one who had to take point on this, she would. She had begun to drop her hand when Ward snatched it in his.

  Her heart fluttered in her chest.

  “Let’s go home,” he said, quiet and subdued.

  Hazel retrieved her hand and put the BMW into gear. A flutter of dark wings drifted over the hood of the car as the startled crow took to the air.

  * * * *

  Dylan jolted up from the couch as soon as they set foot through the door. His clothes, as far as Hazel could tell, were very much still in place, his raven hair neatly combed. Of course, he could’ve fixed himself up.

  She silenced that small, doubting voice at the back of her mind.

  “You didn’t need to stay up,” Ward said to Dylan as he brushed past her on his way into the apartment.

  In his haste, he might have missed the way Dylan’s eyes narrowed. Hazel did not.

  “What? Sure I… Sadie went to bed.”

  Neither Hazel nor Ward replied to that. The drive home had been quiet, but Ward hadn’t shaken off her grip when she took his hand. Whatever happened between them in that barren parking lot wasn’t a swan song.

  “You forgot dessert,” Dylan pointed out, squeezing his hands into the front pockets of his skinny slacks. “Or…did you find something sweeter?” He seemed to include Ward in the question, but when he spoke, he addressed Hazel alone.

  In this fragile, limping triad, the two of them always seemed to assume she’d be the first one to crumble.

  Hazel shot Ward a glance and sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. “You were so busy with Sadie that we had to make our own entertainment.”

  With one foot already on the first stair, Ward whipped his head around. Surprise was etched into his expression.

  Hazel met his gaze unflinchingly. Did you forget I made us happen?

  “I see.” Dylan rocked back on his heels. “Maybe I can make it up to—”

  “Not tonight,” Hazel said, shamming a smile. “Actually, I think I’ll bunk with Sadie, if that’s okay?” They had done it before, on those nights when Sadie’s break-ups could still be mitigated with a tub of Ben & Jerry’s and a sappy rom-com. “You don’t mind, right, Ward?”

  The glare he flung her way was tempered by the flicker of a proud, guarded smile. “More leg room for me.”

  He wanted her to fight? She would, but with her weapons, on her terms. She rose up on tiptoes to press a kiss to Dylan’s clean-shaven cheek. “Sleep tight, babe.”

  Hazel didn’t turn to check if he followed her with her gaze. Careful what you wish for.

  Chapter Five

  Between one coffee refill and wiping down a booth, Hazel made sure to keep an eye on Sadie. The diner was quiet. Eleven a.m. was too late for the morning rush, too early for the lunch time crowds. A couple of patrons were dozing over their cups to the tune of some Dusty Springfield ballad warbling from the speakers overhead. Otherwise, Marco’s seemed almost dead.

  “Anything?” Hazel asked as she joined Sadie by the bar. It was just the two of them on the morning shift. Travis had worked until six and Emmalee would be in to take over from Sadie and Hazel in the evening.

  Sadie shook her head. “Just asked how I was feeling. Didn’t even wanna know what I had.”

  “Maybe he’s squeamish?” Hazel guessed.

  “Marco ‘let me tell you all of my mother’s infirmities’? That Marco?”

  “You’re right,” Hazel nodded. “We’ll go with polite instead. Makes so much more sense.”

  Maybe, she mused, he’s just lovesick. Men had done far stupider things out of love than turn a blind eye to absenteeism in an otherwise diligent employee.

  Hazel knew better than to bring that up.

  She had driven Sadie straight from the loft to the diner, despite Dylan’s generous offer to have Sadie stick around and play house for yet another day. The whole business of hunkering down in a safe space and putting real life on pause only worked for a little while. Like Hazel, Sadie had bills to pay—or to help her mother pay.

  The goose egg on her cheek had shrunk with the help of ice packs and Arnica ointment. The lingering shadow was nothing a little concealer wouldn’t fix. Even Hazel, who knew it was there, had a hard time seeing it beneath layers and layers of makeup.

  “You call your mom yet?” she wondered as she folded crisp paper napkins aro
und knives and forks still warm from the dishwasher. It would win her time in bussing tables later, once the crowds rolled in.

  Sadie nodded. “Said I’ll be coming by tonight. And that we gotta talk. She seemed surprised… Asked how Frank was doing.”

  The name was a record scratch in Hazel’s ear. “Ah, I take it he hasn’t been by the house.”

  “Hasn’t called me, either.”

  “Good,” Hazel bit out.

  “Not really. It’s like I never existed. He asked me to marry him and now that we’ve broken up—”

  “That he hit you,” Hazel corrected, mindful of being overheard.

  “Yeah.” Sadie shrugged. “I’d just like to think I’m not so unmemorable, you know?”

  Hazel had learned through trial and a lot of error that men who resorted to violence—or manipulation—were better left far behind in the rearview mirror, regardless of any talk about love. No one had ever proposed to her, but she figured the same rule applied to the engagement ring Sadie still wore on her finger.

  Sadie went on before Hazel could figure out a way to say as much. “Dylan wanted to kick his ass for me. He’s a sweet guy.”

  “He is.”

  He had offered the same service to Hazel when she told him about her college boyfriend and the video he made of the two of them playing rough. Perhaps the knight in shining armor act was something he did when all other avenues were barred to him.

  Perhaps he thought he couldn’t comfort the women in his life in any other way.

  Means nothing, Hazel told herself, rolling a paper napkin so tight around the cutlery that it tore.

  “You’re lucky to have him, you know,” Sadie added, a wistful note in her voice. “Guy like that’ll be good to you…”

  “You said the same thing about Malcolm, though.” You weren’t the only one.

  Sadie stiffened. “How long are you going to keep throwing that in my face?”

  Baffled by the steel in her voice, Hazel glanced up. “I didn’t mean—”

  “I have shit taste in men, Hazel. Do you think I don’t know that? Fuck, I’m gonna be thirty in a month and the one good guy I thought I found is gone.”