Page 7 of After Hours

Maybe she did, under that cap.

Trouble was, Zachary was a little too good at fixing the broken things he encountered.

When they were pretty women, built just the way he liked, he rarely held himself back from fucking them, too.

The fucking wasn’t the dangerous part. He could usually tell at a glance which women were open to the games he liked to play and he didn’t waste his time with soft vanillas who thought they wanted some dark mixed in with all their sweet. He liked what he liked. Vanilla wasn’t it.

No matter how bored he was with the same old scenes these days.

Even if he’d been tempted to try, he knew better. Vanilla girls had a bad habit of thinking they wanted what he had to offer until they got a taste, and then they freaked. If he had a dollar for every soft little thing who thought she was tough and made it clear she thought she could handle him—only she really, really couldn’t—he would have an international franchise by now instead of the one gym.

He’d long ago stopped bothering with them.

There were more than enough women who were twisted just like he was. They were more his speed.

Because he didn’t just like to fix them, or fuck them. He always ended up getting all up in their lives, too, thinking he could clean up that mess—because it was so often a mess. He always made the mistake of thinking that he could exert his will in every direction instead of tending to himself.

And it always went the same way. The pretty, lost little toys he found always bloomed under his hands, but they didn’t offer much care in return. They were good at taking. They were great at coming. They were selfish as fuck, and he always ended up emptier and grimmer for it.

But he was reformed now. He taught anyone who came to his gym how to protect themselves, no more and no less. He was no one’s hero and damn sure no champion.

A stint in prison would do that to a man. It was on him that it had taken so long after his release to learn the right lessons.

Zachary pushed back from the window, deciding he would go for a long, hard run along the Bay Trail. Always extra spicy at night, but nothing scared him much these days. He couldn’t tell if that was because he was that powerful—or that numb.

Maybe the real truth was that he was afraid he knew the answer.

Still, he took one last look at the marina before he went. And stopped moving. Because he could see her, climbing off her boat and onto the dock with her head down, some kind of hoodie on, and her hands shoved in her pockets.

Zachary knew immediately that she was having the same kind of night that he was, and she was heading out to walk it off.

Like the dumbass she was. A guaranteed mess. There were so many red flags it was a goddamned parade.

And tonight he was not in the mood to shadow her and make sure she was okay, the way he’d done more than once before and left her none the wiser.

Tonight he had other things on his mind.

And red flags had always been his favorite.

So he headed out, jogging down to the alley and rounding the building, making it to the gated entrance of her marina right as she was coming up the walkway from the docks. He waited for her to close the gate behind her. He watched herlook—involuntarily, he thought, if he was any kind of judge of people’s expressions and as it happened, he was—down the line of buildings like she was looking for lights in the gym.

He could have stepped out of the shadows. He didn’t.

Instead, he watched her blow out a breath, shake her head slightly, and then turn toward the old Port building.

“Hey,” he said then, moving out of the shadows. “Don’t you think you’re forgetting something?”

He could tell she knew exactly who was talking to her before she turned. And her amber eyes were wide when she swiveled back around, confirming it. Zachary had the great pleasure of watching her cheeks stain red.

“Um,” was what she said.

He moved closer, not sure if she would run—but she didn’t. And maybe that was a disappointment, he could admit, because he was already so hard he ached.

“Name?”

He didn’t reallyaskher. It was an order.

And he watched her eyes change. He watched her cheeks get redder. He could see the way she shifted on her feet.

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