Dirty Sweet Cop (Dirty Sweet Heroes #2)

Chapter 1

one

. . .

Clayton

My foot goes heavy on the pedal before dispatch finishes reading the address.

I don’t know why this one hits different. Maybe it’s the “alone” part. Maybe it’s the tightness in the dispatcher’s voice. Or maybe it’s just the night—too quiet, too still, the kind of silence that makes my skin crawl because I’ve seen what fills those empty spaces.

I’m three blocks out when I hear it. The unmistakable pop of breaking glass.

I’m out of the cruiser before it fully stops, gun drawn, moving low and fast toward the side of the house where the sound came from.

Training takes over. Scan the perimeter.

Listen. One broken window, ground floor.

Lights on inside. The curtain flutters in the night breeze through the shattered pane.

Someone’s already in there.

The front door is unlocked. Sloppy. I slip inside, clearing the hallway with practiced efficiency. The house is too quiet. The kind of quiet that means someone’s holding their breath.

Then I hear it—a whimper. Small. Female. Terrified.

And a man’s voice, low and slurring. “Just want what’s in the safe, sweetheart. Don’t make this difficult.”

I follow the sound to the living room and there he is.

Mid-thirties, drunk or high, holding a kitchen knife and circling a girl who’s backed into the corner of the couch.

Her arms are wrapped around herself, knees pulled to her chest. She’s wearing pajama shorts and a thin t-shirt, and she’s shaking so hard I can see it from across the room.

The intruder hasn’t spotted me yet.

He won’t get the chance.

I step into the doorway. “Police. Drop the knife. Hands where I can see them.”

He spins, wild-eyed, knife swinging toward me. Amateur move. Predictable.

I don’t hesitate. Two steps forward, my forearm smashes into his wrist. The knife clatters to the floor.

My knee drives into his gut. He folds. I cuff him, read him his rights in the same flat tone I’ve used a thousand times, and drag him to the front porch where my partner, pulling up in the second cruiser, can take him away.

It takes less than forty seconds.

When I step back into the living room, the girl is still in the corner. But now she’s looking at me.

And fuck.

Everything stops.

Her eyes are wide, wet, the color of honey in the low light.

Tears streak both cheeks, cutting clean lines through pale skin.

Her dark hair is tangled around her shoulders.

She’s tiny—can’t be more than five-two, all delicate bones and sharp angles under that thin shirt.

Eighteen, the call said. But she looks younger curled up like that, like a child who’s just realized the world is a dangerous place.

Something cracks open in my chest. Something I haven’t felt in fifteen years on the force. Something raw and possessive and fucking primal.

She’s alone. The call said orphan. Parents gone. This house too big, too empty, too full of shadows for someone her size.

And I can’t leave her here.

The thought isn’t professional. It’s not even rational. It’s the part of me that recognized danger before I could name it, the part that decided the second I walked through that door that no one was getting near her again.

I holster my gun and cross the room. She flinches when I kneel in front of her, but she doesn’t pull away. Her eyes track every movement, trusting despite the fear. Or maybe because of it. She called for help. I came. That’s the only math that matters right now.

“Hey,” I say, and my voice comes out rougher than I intended. “You’re safe now. He’s gone.”

A sob breaks loose from her throat. Small. Broken. The sound of someone who’s been holding it together for too long.

I don’t think. I reach for her.

My hands are big. Scarred. I’ve broken bones with these hands.

I’ve held dying men with these hands. But when I lift her—Jesus, she weighs nothing—and tuck her against my chest, something shifts.

She fits. Her face presses into the hollow of my throat, her fingers clutching at my shirt, her whole body trembling against mine.

She smells like sleep and salt and something sweet underneath. Vanilla, maybe. Something innocent.

My arms tighten around her. One hand cradles the back of her head, fingers threading through that dark hair. The other spans the width of her back, feeling every vertebra through the thin cotton.

“I’ve got you,” I murmur against her hair. “No one’s touching you again. You understand me?”

She nods into my chest. A small, desperate movement.

Good girl.

The thought arrives fully formed, filthy and possessive. She’s not mine. Not yet. But the want is already there, coiling low in my gut, a hunger I haven’t felt in years. I want to keep her. Not just safe. Mine.

I want to lay her down in my bed and cover her with my body.

I want to push inside her slow and deep until she forgets what fear feels like.

I want to fill her up, breed that tight little belly until she’s round with my kid, until there’s something—someone—tied to her that means she’s never alone again.

The thoughts should scare me. They don’t. They feel inevitable, like the moment I walked through that door and saw her huddled in the corner, something in me recognized what she was.

Mine to protect. Mine to claim.

My partner appears in the doorway, takes one look at the girl curled against my chest and the way I’m holding her, and raises an eyebrow. I shoot him a look that says not now. Not ever. He backs out, closing the door behind him.

I shift her weight, one arm under her knees, the other supporting her back, and stand. She’s light. Too light. I’ll fix that. I’ll feed her. Keep her. Make sure she never goes hungry or scared or alone again.

“I’m taking you somewhere safe,” I tell her, my voice dropping to that register I use when I need someone to listen. The one that leaves no room for argument. “You’re not staying here tonight. You’re not staying anywhere I can’t see you.”

She looks up at me, those honey eyes wide and trusting, and something cracks wider in my chest.

“Okay,” she whispers.

One word. And just like that, the battle-hardened detective with fifteen years of cynicism and scar tissue decides he’s keeping the orphan girl who called 911 in tears.

The streets can have the rest of the world. She’s mine.