Chapter Four
She should not be this turned on by a pair of handcuffs. Truly.
Bad sign.
Bad decision.
But gods, the look in his eyes? It was low. Dark. Decided. Like he was one breath away from kissing her or arresting her—or both, in that order, and maybe not even with a pause in between.
“I’m here on business,” he growled, voice rough enough to sand wood. “You were warned, Thea. For fuck’s sake, you’ve been warned so many times.”
“I’m doing research.”
“Unlawfully.”
“You didn’t seem to mind my unlawful behavior last night when you were whispering sweet nothings into my ear at the station.”
His nostrils flared. “That’s it.”
The handcuffs snapped shut around one wrist before she even registered the movement. Cold metal. Fast fingers.
“Alaric!” she gasped.
“Keep mouthing off,” he murmured, hauling her bodily off the ground and into him with terrifying ease. “See what happens.”
“Oh no,” she whispered, faux-innocent. “Is the big, bad detective going to punish me?”
That was the moment he snapped.
He slammed her back against the nearest crypt, one large, gloved hand flattening beside her head as the other dragged the cuffed wrist behind her. His mouth crashed onto hers.
Hot.
Hard.
Holy hell, finally.
Thea didn’t know what shocked her more, the click of the cuffs tightening behind her back, or the sound Alaric made when he finally gave in. It wasn’t a growl. It was a low, ruined noise, like something sacred breaking.
One second she was smug and mouthy. The next, she was against the stone, and his mouth was on hers, claiming, devouring, warning.
“You don’t get it,” he bit out against her lips, before pushing away. “You never have. You think I don’t see you?” he rasped. “You think I haven’t wanted you every time you flashed that mouth and made my job a bloody nightmare?”
She moaned.
He laughed. Dark. Sinful. “You should’ve stayed home, sweetheart,”
Rain slipped down the back of Thea’s neck like a thief, soaking beneath the collar of her dress and teasing its way down her spine. She shifted in her wet boots, hands pinned in cold iron, heart thundering so loud it echoed in her ears.
Alaric stood before her, dripping, steaming, smoldering, looking like every grudge she’d ever held against authority and every fantasy she hadn’t dared admit out loud.
He was scowling. Of course he was. He always scowled.
But now his jaw twitched with something hotter, hungrier, and far more dangerous than simple annoyance.
“You lied,” he ground out. “You promised no more graveyards.”
“And you promised to respect my work,” she snapped back, even as her pulse fluttered like a lunatic moth in her throat. “We both tell fibs when the moon’s full.”
His gaze dipped—to her lips, her chest, the sodden fabric clinging to her curves—and then darted back up with visible effort, like looking at her hurt. Hell, it might have.
Thea lifted her chin, refusing to wilt. “So what now, inspector?”
He stepped closer. Close enough to smell the rain on him. Leather, cedar, and storm. His fingers brushed her cuffed wrist, firm, warm, and unshakably sure.
His voice dropped like a stone in the water between them. “Now I teach you what happens when you push me too far.”
Thea opened her mouth to say something cutting, something clever and smug and wildly inappropriate, but the words got caught on the edge of his gaze.
He stepped in. Close. Until her back brushed the crypt wall behind her and the breath between them turned thick enough to drown in.
“Turn around,” he said.
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Turn around,” he repeated, lower this time. Rougher. The syllables scraped like gravel and thunder, and her stomach flipped so violently she almost laughed. Almost. But then his hand slid to the small of her back. Firm. Possessive. He didn’t push. He didn’t have to.
She turned.
The cuffs bit at her wrists as she pivoted to face the wall. Cold stone met her damp front. Her breath caught.
And then his body covered hers. Big. Hot and relentless.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” he growled, voice right at her ear, lips brushing skin as if he hated himself for wanting it.
Her eyes fluttered shut. She couldn’t speak. Could barely breathe.
“You barge into cemeteries like you own the place. Mock my authority. Drive me half mad with those bloody opinions of yours. And every time you do”—his hands slid over her hips, curved there like he’d been sculpted for it—“I think about this.”
“The cuffs?” she managed, dizzy.
“The way you look when you’re dripping wet and mouthing off like you want to be punished.”
A gasp caught in her throat.
He pressed closer, lips dragging down the side of her neck, voice wrecked and velvet-dark. “I should arrest you. Drag you in like I’m meant to.”
“But?” she whispered, her head spinning.
His hands smoothed down, over her stomach, her thighs. He gripped them through her skirts like they were his to claim, like he knew every sinful thought she’d had about him and wanted to punish her for each one. “But I want to ruin you more.”
Thea gasped as his hands skimmed up, bold, calloused, unhurried. When they cupped her breasts through the soaked fabric of her bodice, she nearly melted right into the crypt wall.
“Bloody hell,” Alaric rasped, pressing his mouth to her neck, his breath ragged and hot. “You’ve got no idea, do you?”
Her breath caught.
“What I think about when you glare at me in my own bloody station. When you open that mouth and argue,” he said, rough and reverent all at once, his thumbs brushing over the peaks like he was memorizing the weight of her in his palms. “I think about shutting you up like this. Your back against a wall, your wrists cuffed, your body mine to claim.”
Her knees nearly buckled. “I should hate you,” she whispered, lips trembling, heart a frantic thrum in her chest.
His tongue swept along the edge of her ear, sinful and slow. “You don’t.”
“I might,” she breathed, barely hanging on.
He chuckled, low and aching. “You won’t when I get you home and make you scream for me.”
She made a noise then, something wholly indecent and furious with need, and he grinned against her skin like he’d won a war.
CRASH.
Something clattered to the ground behind them. Sharp. Hollow. Like a tombstone had cracked. Or a shovel had dropped.
They both froze, his breath still hot on her neck. Her hands still bound. Her skirt still bunched in one of his fists.
“What was that?” she whispered, head tilting.
“I’d say divine punishment and bad timing,” he muttered, straightening slowly, “but I suspect a specter just lobbed a gargoyle arm from your family plot. Probably your mother. She’s never liked me. Or a tree branch fell, pick your story.”
*
Blackwood family plot
Beyond the veil…
Gran gasped. “Celeste, did you just throw that?”
Celeste crossed her arms and didn’t even look sorry. “They were dry-humping beside a mausoleum, Alice.”
“They were in love!” Gran cried. “They were tangled up like ivy vines! Did you see how he palmed her bosom?”
“I saw,” Celeste said through her teeth. “It’s burned into my corneas.”
“You’ll thank me one day. When they’re married and scandalous and deliriously happy.”
“I’ll be thanking myself,” she snapped, “if they wait to consummate until there’s a roof over their heads!”
Gran tsked. “You were such a prude in life. You’re a bigger one in death.”
“Give me a break. I just died of cholera!”
Gran waved her hand. “So dramatic.”
Celeste stood with her arms crossed over her ghostly chest, eyes narrowed like twin musket barrels.
“Oh dear,” Gran said fondly, watching Thea and Alaric from afar as they both tried (and failed) to look unaffected. “You’ll come around. Those two are destiny wrapped in sarcasm and suppressed longing.”