Officer Condescending. Mister I-Don’t-Have-Time-for-Interns. The embodiment of everything that should make my skin crawl.
He pissed me off. No—heinfuriatedme. Treated me like I didn’t belong, like I was just dead weight in the backseat of his cruiser. Every word he spoke carried that same clipped, dismissive tone, and when he laughed at my ambitions—laughed—like they were some kind of fucking joke, I swear I saw red.
And yet, beneath all the irritation and anger, there’s something else simmering—a heat that coils in my gut and spreads low and slow, soaking through the fabric of my panties with humiliating ease.
I hate that my body doesn’t seem to care that my brain wants to punch him in the throat.
This is what I get for reading too many dark romances and obsessing over morally gray men with emotional trauma and control issues. My type? Apparently, assholes with badges and looks that should be illegal.
God,whydoes he have to be so obnoxiously hot?
I let out a long, exasperated sigh and lean forward, jabbing the touchscreen on my dash to switch from radio to Android Auto. The screen blinks, then loads Amazon Music. I hit shuffle on my “Favorites” playlist.
The opening beat of “Motley Crew” by Post Malone pulses through the speakers, bass thumping in time with my pulse.
Throwing the car into reverse, I ease out of the parking spot, jaw tight and knuckles white around the steering wheel.
I need a distraction. Preferably one that doesn’t come with a uniform, a brooding stare, or the power to completely unhinge my thoughts with one fucking look.
SIX
EMILIO
I’ve always hated ride-alongs.They’re a pain in the ass—plain and simple. Just another excuse to throw untrained civilians into the middle of situations they’ve got no business being in. Liability magnets. Distractions. Extra weight in a job that already demands everything you’ve got. But when your boss tells you to take one, and your overly eager partner agrees before you can object, you don’t argue. You grit your teeth, swallow the irritation, and deal with it.
So yeah—I wasn’t exactly thrilled when Rodriguez told Kline and me we’d be saddled with a ride-along for the first half of the shift. I didn’t bother hiding my annoyance. I didn’twantto.
But what I didn’t expect was that the rest of my shift would be haunted by the girl in the backseat—uninvited, persistent, and impossible to ignore.
Raelynn Carson.
All attitude and sharp edges, stuck in my thoughts like a goddamn splinter the second we dropped her off at Rodriguez’s office. I didn’t want to think about her, but she embedded herself in my mind anyway, uninvited and stubborn.
And beautiful.
God, was she beautiful. But not in some soft, delicate way—but in that quietly devastating kind of stunning that sneaks up on you and leaves a mark. She had a full color, half butterfly, half cherry blossom tattoo on her left forearm and a black and white lunar moth on her right bicep. Her dark brown hair had been thrown up in a messy bun thatbeggedto be undone, strands escaping just enough to tease. I kept catching myself wanting to run my fingers through it, to grip it and see if she’d still glare at me the same way.
And those lips…
When she spat my name out like it left a bad taste in her mouth, all I could do was stare at her mouth. Soft, full, pink. The kind of lips made for kissing. Biting.Bruising.
It took every ounce of self-control to will my cock not to pitch a tent in my pants like some hormone-wired teenager seeing a tit for the first time. And the second I caught myself drifting too far into those thoughts, I did what I always do when things get complicated: I shut it down.
Shutherdown.
I was an asshole to her. No sugarcoating it. Blunt. Cold. Dismissive. Not just because the morning had already gone to hell before she even showed up, but because the second I laid eyes on her, something in me short-circuited. She got under my skin without even trying, and I didn’t know how to deal with that, so I defaulted to the only thing I knew: keep her at arm’s length. Push before I could be pulled.
She didn’t deserve that.
She could’ve gone straight to Rodriguez with a complaint. Could’ve thrown me under the bus during her debrief or dragged my name through the dirt for being the exact kind of cop most interns expect to hate.
But she didn’t.
And I’ll be damned if that didn’t catch me off guard.
Especially after I laughed at her career choice, as if it were some kind of joke. Like her ambition didn’t matter. Hell, I don’t know what the fuck I expected her to say when I pushed, but it wasn’t that. Wasn’thersnapping back with fire in her voice and pain in her eyes.
And that’s what did it. That moment. That shift.
