Chapter 16 #3
“Everything,” he repeated, and the word sounded like it cost him something. “You want everything.”
“I want you to stop pretending you’re here for any reason other than this.” I pressed my thumb harder into his lip, watched the blood well up and spill over my skin. “You turned around. You came back. That wasn’t the badge, Shaw. That was you.”
He caught my wrist, pulled my hand away from his face, and held it above my head against the couch arm. His grip was tight enough that the cuffs’ marks on my skin screamed, and I leaned into the pain like it was a confession.
“Don’t,” he said again, but softer this time, almost pleading.
“Don’t what? Don’t tell you the truth?” I laughed, and it came out raw, stripped of the performance. “You want me to lie? You want me to pretend this is just fucking? Because I can do that. I’m very good at that.”
His jaw tightened. I watched the muscle jump under his skin, watched the vein in his neck pulse. His cock was still hard against my thigh, leaking onto my skin, and neither of us moved to do anything about it. We were past that now. This was something else.
“Say it,” I whispered. “Say it so I know I’m not alone in this.”
He closed his eyes. For a long moment, I thought he was going to get up, put his clothes on, and walk out the door for good. I thought I’d pushed too far, cracked the shell too hard, and now he’d retreat into whatever safe room he’d built for himself behind that badge.
Then he opened his eyes and looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time. Not the suspect. Not the body. Not the case. Me.
“It matters,” he said. “You matter. Is that what you want to hear?”
The words hit me like a physical blow. I felt them land in my chest, in my stomach, in the places I’d locked up and thrown away the key.
My throat closed, and for one terrible, beautiful second, I couldn’t speak.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t do anything except stare at him and feel the mask I’d worn for years crack straight down the middle.
I turned my face into his wrist, pressed my lips against the pulse point there, and felt his heartbeat hammering against my mouth. Fast. Steady. Real.
“Shaw,” I said again, and this time I let it mean everything it meant. Not the flat, controlled syllable I used in the clubhouse or the sharp one I used in interrogation rooms. This was something else entirely. This was the sound of a woman who’d stopped performing.
He heard it. I watched him hear it—the way his eyes went dark, the way his grip on my wrist loosened just enough to turn into something that wasn’t restraint but holding. Like he was afraid I’d float away if he let go.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, and I hated how small my voice sounded. Hated how honest it was. No other man had ever brought that out in me. “I’m right here.”
He let out a breath that shook, and then he was kissing me again, slow and deep.
I kissed him back with everything I had left, which was more than I wanted to admit.
My free hand found the back of his neck, fingers digging into the muscle there, pulling him closer until there was no space left between us.
When he pulled away, his forehead rested against mine, and we breathed the same air for a long time.
“You’re going to ruin me,” he said, and it wasn’t a complaint. It was a fact, delivered with the same flat precision he used for case notes.
I smiled against his mouth. “Probably.”
He moved then, shifting his weight, and I felt him slide back inside me—not my ass this time, but between my legs, where I was still wet and swollen and aching for him.
The angle was different with my head hanging off the couch, my throat exposed, my pulse hammering where anyone could see it.
He braced himself on one arm, the other still holding my wrist above my head, and started to move.
Not fast. Not slow. Somewhere in between, a rhythm that felt less like fucking and more like a conversation neither of us had the vocabulary for. Every thrust was deliberate, measured, his eyes never leaving mine. I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said, his voice rough against my ear.
I laughed, and it came out wet. “You first.”
“I’m thinking I should have done this a long time ago.”
“Yeah?” I rolled my hips up to meet him, felt him sink deeper. “How long?”
“Since the first time I saw your file.” His mouth found the scar on my jaw, traced it with his tongue. “Since I realized you weren’t going to stop.”
“I’m not.” I turned my head, caught his earlobe between my teeth, bit down just hard enough. “That’s not going to change.”
“I know.” He pulled back, drove forward again, and the sound I made was embarrassingly close to a whimper. “That’s what scares me.”
I looked up at him, at the man who’d come back through the door, at the man who’d said you matter like it was the hardest sentence he’d ever constructed, and something behind my ribs cracked wide open.
I stopped fighting it. I stopped performing.
I stopped being the woman who needed to be in control.
“Then be scared with me,” I said.
His rhythm stuttered. Just for a second, just long enough for me to feel it, and then he was moving again, harder now, his grip on my wrist tightening until the bones ground together.
I didn’t flinch. I leaned into it, let the pain bleed into pleasure until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said, and his voice had dropped to something I’d never heard from him before—low and rough and stripped of every layer of control he’d built around himself.
“I know exactly what I’m asking.” I arched my back, took him deeper, felt him hit the spot that made my vision go white. “I’m asking you to stop pretending this is just an investigation. I’m asking you to stop pretending you don’t feel it.”
He made a sound—half groan, half something that sounded like it had been torn out of him—and his hips snapped forward with enough force to drive the couch an inch across the floor. The legs scraped against the laminate, a sound like nails on bone, and I laughed because it was either that or scream.
“Say it,” I demanded, my voice breaking on the last word. “Say it out loud so I know I’m not crazy.”
His forehead dropped to my chest, his breath hot and ragged against my sternum. I felt his lips move against my skin, felt the words before I heard them.
“I feel it.” Barely a whisper, but it hit me like a fist. “I feel all of it.”
I let go of his neck and brought my free hand—the one he wasn’t pinning—to his face, cupped his jaw, felt the stubble scrape against my palm. His eyes were open, looking up at me from where his head rested on my chest, and what I saw there made my breath catch.
No mask. No performance. No detective, no badge, no strategy. Just a man who’d given up pretending and was staring at the wreckage like he couldn’t believe he’d survived it.
“There you are,” I said, and my voice cracked on the last syllable.
Something broke behind his eyes. I watched it happen in real time—the last wall crumbling, the last door swinging open, the last piece of armor hitting the floor with a sound only he could hear.
His grip on my wrist went slack, and I pulled my hand free, both of them now cradling his face like he was something fragile, something worth holding.
He turned his head, pressed his mouth to my palm, and I felt the wet heat of his tongue against the center of my hand.
Then his teeth, just enough pressure to mark, and I let him.
I let him because nobody had ever looked at me like that before—like I was the thing he’d been searching for and dreading finding.