Chapter 10
Roque
I t’d been two days since our snow barbecue, and I still wasn’t convinced every part of me had thawed out. My toes might never forgive me. According to Sayla, that was the entire reason for what we were doing right now—just a routine check to make sure I hadn’t suffered any frostbite to my so-called vital extremities.
Vital, of course, meaning my cock—which was currently buried deep inside her, with her on all fours in front of me, knees braced, ass arched high in the air like it was made to be touched.
She’d woken up in a mood this morning. Not irritated or grumpy—horny. Wildly so. Her version of foreplay had been slapping my ass and growling, “Get to it,” before rolling over and sticking that perfect ass in my direction.
Yeah, my cautious, guarded, always-in-control little angel had fully committed to her horny bunny era, and I had zero complaints. Judging by the way she kept pushing back against me, trying to take me even deeper, harder—neither did she.
I reached over her back, wrapped a fist in her hair, and tugged gently until her head tilted back. Leaning in close, I whispered against the shell of her ear, “How hard do you want it?”
Sayla moaned—but muffled it into her arm. That wouldn't do.
She knew I wanted to hear everything —every gasp, breathless sound, and raw noise she made. So, I pulled back slightly and smacked her ass, watching as she flinched and clenched around me with a surprised gasp.
“ Louder, ” I said firmly, my voice rougher than I meant it to be.
But instead of throwing a glare over her shoulder, she let out a ragged groan and pushed back harder. “ Harder, ” she demanded.
I responded the only way I knew how driving into her with more force, my rhythm shifting to match her demand. But apparently, I was only halfway there.
“That,” she growled, “and thespanks . ”
Well, shit.
We’d never gone here before, but if this was the direction she wanted to take us, I was all in. My handprint was already blooming pink across her pale skin, and something about the way it stood out against her curves had my head spinning. She was gorgeous like this—wild, free, mine .
So I did it again, sharp and unexpected, and that’s all it took.
She shattered around me, gasping and crying out, her walls tightening in pulses I felt through my spine. She wasn’t quiet this time. She sang for me, and I was so gone I didn’t even realize how close I was until it hit me.
I grabbed her shoulder, anchoring her in place as I spilled into the condom, groaning through gritted teeth. My forehead dropped to the space between her shoulder blades as we rode the aftershocks, still entangled and panting.
I didn’t want to pull away yet, didn’t want to lose the connection of her body wrapped around mine. But eventually, I eased out slowly, one hand holding the condom in place, careful not to break the moment with something stupid. Even though Ihatedwearing one with her, nothing about it felt natural. But I’d never in my life skipped it, never even considered it—until her.
Yeah, that was something else entirely.
Still trying to catch my breath, I flopped onto the bed beside her, heart pounding, brain foggy with the kind of satisfaction that should be illegal.
And yet, as amazing as it felt, part of me winced.
I didn’t want to come the second she did, I wanted to hold off and to draw it out. To feel her come apart around me again before I gave in. Once wasn’t enough, not with her.
There had to be a podcast about that, right? Or some tantric sex masterclass? Hell, I’d listen to a dozen if it meant keeping up with her.
Making a mental note to look it up later—privately, in incognito mode—I let my hand drift lazily across her back, smiling as her breathing started to slow. She’d completely flipped my world upside down, and I loved every second.
Still, we wouldn’t be us without a bit of fun, right?
So I gave her ass a sharp smack just because I could. She yelped and jumped, more out of surprise than pain, and shot me a breathless glare over her shoulder.
“It doesn’t count if you’re not inside me,” she hissed, still panting slightly, her voice dripping with sass. “What was that for?”
“You know what it’s for.” And she did—we had an agreement—a very clear one. The rules were simple: deals were made, and consequences were served. No welching allowed.
She groaned dramatically and burrowed her naked body into my side, draping herself across me like a human blanket. “But it’scoldwithout the covers and your furnace-level body heat.”
I lifted my hand in warning, fingers twitching like I was about to do it again.
She caught me off guard—completely—when a cushion came out of nowhere and smacked me right in the face. I blinked, stunned, more impressed than annoyed, considering I’d been distracted by the tempting view of her bare ass.
“Fine,” she grumbled, tossing the pillow aside. “You insensitive asshole. I’ll do it. But only because it’s my turn, and I actually honor my commitments—unlike some people.”
With exaggerated martyrdom, she flung the covers back and rolled out of bed, standing tall and gloriously naked in the soft light filtering through the window. Her ass was perfectly on display, taunting me. It would’ve been a crime not to take advantage.
I reached out and swatted her again before she could take her first step. The sound echoed like music in the room.
She squeaked, instantly clapping both hands over her cheeks and whirling around to glare at me. And not just any glare— the glare. I’d seen enough of them by now to start naming them like storms. This one was all haughty indignation, the kind that could wither a lesser man.
But then it shifted into something that stopped me cold—a smile.
Not a sarcastic smirk or smug little twist of her lips, but a genuine, sweet-as-sin smile that hit me right in the chest. Soft, warm, and affectionate, in a way that made my throat tighten just a little.
That was exactly why I didn’t trust it.
And sure enough, she leaned in close, brushed her lips against my ear, and whispered with lethal sweetness, “Just remember—you can’t hideallthe scissors in this house while you’re asleep.”
I froze, she wasn’t joking. Iknewshe wasn’t. I could already picture waking up with my hair hacked into some disaster—spots, stripes, spikes—hell, she’d probably add glitter to make a point.
I groaned. “You wouldn’t.”
She gave me a wink over her shoulder as she strutted toward the bathroom. “Wouldn’t I?”
Damn it, I liked my hair way too much to test her.
Rolling my eyes like I didn’t give a damn—even though I obviously did—I waved her off with a lazy hand. “Go on. Your turn.”
She groaned like I’d just asked her to scale a mountain barefoot instead of letting the dogs out and checking the snow levels outside. Still, she shoved her legs into a pair of sweats with aggressive determination, like they were the enemy. The sweats were followed by a tank top, a thermal, and finally, a hoodie—all layered in a clear declaration of war against the cold.
The fact that she didn’t bother with a bra didn’t escape me—but now wasn’t the time to bring that up. Barely resisting the urge to comment, I kept my mouth shut and watched her stick her tongue out at me over her shoulder before heading for the door.
“C’mon, boys!” she called out, her voice light and teasing.
A second later, the telltale scrabbling of nails on the wooden floor echoed through the house, and my small, amused smile stretched into a full-blown grin. My pets weren’t just animals—they were family. They each came with their own quirks and baggage, and not everyone could handle that, but Sayla saw them. Really saw them. She talked to them like they understood every word, and maybe they did because they looked at her like she hung the damn moon.
She belonged here.
I was halfway out of bed, tugging on a pair of jeans and trying to pull a hoodie over my head, when I heard her shout my name—a sharp, high-pitched squeal that snapped me to attention like a gunshot. My blood went cold even as the adrenaline kicked in.
What I didn’t hear was barking, that was what got me.
If someone had been outside—someone unfamiliar—the dogs would’ve gone off, no question. The silence was more alarming than noise unless they were distracted in the garden… or something worse.
In this job, you saw everything—things you couldn’t unsee. Things that happened fast, things you never thought could be real until they were splattered across your reality. And after a while, your brain stopped writing things off as “impossible.”
I tore through the hall, feet skidding on the hardwood as I rounded the corner into the kitchen, ready for anything.
Sayla was standing by the back door, still barefoot, her cheeks pink from the cold. She turned to me, eyes wide—not with fear but with awe—and pointed outside.
“The snow’s stopped,” she breathed. “And I think there’s less than there was yesterday. Look—there’s the sun.”
I stepped up behind her and looked past her shoulder through the frosted glass. She was right, the clouds had finally broken, spilling golden light across the icy white world like a blessing. A single ray glinted off the icicles hanging from the eaves, and I just stood there for a moment, letting the sight sink in.
It was asmallthing, but after days of relentless whiteouts, ice, and bone-deep cold, it felt like the final scene in some disaster movie. Like we’d survived something bigger than we realized, and maybe we had.
It was wild how much I’d taken for granted before this storm. This was the calm after the chaos.
And standing there with Sayla, surrounded by dogs and morning light, I realized something simple but solid. I didn’t want to go back to before. What waited for me at work wasn’t just a mess—it was ametric and imperialshit ton of it, piled high and stinking worse by the day. The daily grind of policing came with its usual share of headaches: everyday criminals doing dumb, destructive shit, victims who actually needed help, cases that needed solving and rarely had clean answers. But then there was the other layer—the thick, festering rot beneath the surface. The kind that didn’t come with ski masks or crowbars but with polished boots, pressed uniforms, and shiny badges.
And we were closing in on them.
The deeper we dug into the corruption infecting Palmerstown P.D., the less likely it seemed I had a future there—at least, not one I’d want. The things I’d learned and the people I’d trusted , it changed how I saw everything. I didn’t know if I could keep serving in a department where half the leadership played with criminals they should’ve been locking up.
Yesterday, Judd called with another update—this one from Ailee, Sayla’s former neighbor and our unexpected informant. What she told him damn near had me braving the tail end of the snowstorm just to knock some crooked heads together.
Right before the storm hit, she’d overheard a phone call between our Chief and someone we now knew was the sheriff of a town over a hundred miles away. They were discussing plans to move another barbershop operation into Palmerstown. Not just any shop, though, afront. Another cog in their well-oiled machine of money laundering and God knows what else.
After I got off the phone, I did my own digging. I looked into the new businesses that had popped up in town over the past few years. Nothing jumped out on paper, but when I put it all together, there were three new laundromats, four nail bars, and eightbarbershops.
In a town this size, that didn’t scream “thriving business”, it screamedcover operations. It was right in front of us—hiding in plain sight, and its scale hit me like a sledgehammer. They’d been laying this groundwork slowly, methodically, for years. This wasn’t just some backroom side hustle, it was an organized, multi-town network of criminal enterprises operating under the protection oflaw enforcement .
My department.
My colleagues.
And I was supposed to show up daily, salute the flag, and pretend everything was okay? Yeah, That wasn’t going to happen.
I didn’t know where this investigation would end or if there’d be anything left of the P.D. when it did. But I did know this—Palmerstown needed to be gutted, rebuilt from the ground up. When that happened, we had to decide if we wanted to be part of it or if we were already too far gone to care. Right now, it was definitely the latter.
The snowstorm was finally letting up, and with it came the quiet reminder that reality would come crashing back in. As much as I wanted to pretend the world could stay paused a little longer, the melted edges of ice on the windows told me that wouldn’t happen. I’d be wading back into the chaos sooner than I wanted—into a job that felt less and less like a calling and more like a minefield I was navigating blind.
Still, for now, we were here—just the two of us, wrapped in our own little bubble.
I walked up behind Sayla as she stood by the window, arms folded, eyes distant as she watched the snow taper off. Sliding my arms around her waist, I pulled her close and rested my chin on her shoulder, breathing her in. She smelled like mint tea and warmth and everything I didn’t realize I’d been needing.
“As shitty as this storm’s been,” I murmured, “I’ve kind of liked having our own little world.”
She sighed softly and leaned back into me, her body relaxing against mine. “I was just thinking the same thing,” she said quietly. “Sadly, bills can’t be paid with snowballs.”
I chuckled, even though she was right, too damn right. This temporary break—this illusion of peace—wasn’t sustainable. The outside world was still waiting, and soon enough, we’d have to go back to answering it.
But even as her words settled, my thoughts drifted elsewhere. I hadn’t heard from Kemble in days, which was unlike him. He usually sent me pictures of the kids, updates about their weird little milestones, or dumb memes at random hours. At the very least, I’d get a text every day—sometimes a few. I’d messaged him twice to check how they were holding up through the storm, but he hadn’t responded. Maybe they’d lost power and couldn’t charge their phones, or perhaps they were too busy keeping the kids warm and fed to worry about texts.
Still, the silence gnawed at me.
He lived only two hours away—not exactly across the world. If I needed to check on him, I could make the drive. But even the idea of something being wrong with him or the kids sat wrong in my gut. Kemble wasn’t just a friend—he was family . The closest thing I had to a brother. The guy I’d crossed nearly every milestone of life with—every first, every fuck-up, every win. We’d been literal partners in crime when we were younger before life shoved us into our current roles.
“What are you thinking?” Sayla asked gently, squeezing my arm. Her voice was soft, but it cut through the fog.
I blinked, pulling myself back to the present. “Kemble. I'm just wondering if his generator went down or if they’ve just been offline. It’s weird not hearing from him this long.”
She turned in my arms to look at me, her expression sympathetic. “Now that the storm’s passing, I’m sure they’ll get the power back soon. He’ll probably text or call the second he’s able to. Maybe they’re focused on the kids and trying to make sure everything’s okay on their end.”
I nodded, but it was more out of habit than agreement. “Yeah. Maybe.”
The weight in my chest didn’t ease, though. Between the storm, the ticking time bomb that was work, and this sudden silence from one of the people I trusted most in the world, I felt off. Like I was bracing for something I couldn’t quite see coming.
Letting out a breath, I released Sayla and stepped over to the back door, calling softly to the dogs as I cracked it open. Cold air rushed in, biting at my skin, but the dogs came bounding toward me, tails wagging, full of life and energy. At leastsomeonewasn’t feeling the weight of everything right now.
Maybe I was overthinking it. Perhaps I just wasn’t ready for the storm inside to start up again now that the one outside had finally calmed.
But either way, I could feel it coming, and I wasn’t sure how ready I was.