I tilt my head, studying him the way I’d study a crime scene that doesn’t match its preliminary report.
He doesn’t flinch.
Doesn’t retreat.
But I notice something. Subtle enough that anyone without a decade of reading body language would miss it entirely. His nostrils flare—a micro-movement, involuntary, the kind of biological response that the body produces before the conscious mind can intervene. He’s catching my scent. Processing it. His jaw tightens fractionally, the muscles along his neck engaging as he fights the instinct to lean in, to close the remaining distance, to breathe me in the way Alphas do when they encounter a scent that their hindbrain has flagged as significant.
He wants to smell me.
But he’s not moving to do it.
Interesting.
The restraint is notable. Most Alphas in his position—young, confident, biologically compelled—would have leaned in already, would have manufactured some excuse to close the gap, to inhale deeper under the pretense of casual proximity. This one holds his ground, absorbing whatever his senses are telling him without acting on it, maintaining the boundary I’ve established by proximity alone.
Discipline. Either he’s well-trained or he’s actually respectful.
Or both.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, Martinez. A pretty scent and good manners don’t mean shit in a department that’s already proved its capacity for betrayal.
“Name,” I say.
Not a question. An instruction.
His smirk softens into something more genuine—less performance, more personality—and he drops the crossed arms to extend a hand.
“Deputy Oakley Torres. Assigned to the oversight unit, specialty in community liaison and field operations.” His grip is firm, warm, calloused in places that suggest work beyond desk duty. The handshake lasts exactly long enough to be professional and precisely short enough to be deliberate. “Ma’am.”
I release his hand and give him a second assessment—slower this time, recalibrating my initial read with the additional data of his name, rank, and the practiced ease with which he delivered both. Deputy. Not senior. Not lead. Which means?—
“You’re not the lead, huh.”
He grins. Full wattage now, the kind of smile that probably makes waitresses forget his order and bartenders lose count of his tabs.
“Nah.” The word comes out easy, unbothered, utterly devoid of the resentment that most officers carry when acknowledging they’re not the one in charge. “Too young for that, apparently.”
“How old are you?”
“Thankfully, I’m thirty.” He shrugs, the motion rippling through his lean frame with the casual athleticism of someone whose body is a tool he maintains without obsessing over. “But I probably don’t look it. Genetics.”
He delivers the word like a punchline, that lopsided grin punctuating it with the kind of self-aware charm that straddles the line between cocky and endearing.
Thirty.
Only two years younger than me.
Why does he look like he should still be carded at bars?
I roll my eyes—the genuine article, none of the restrained, professional eye movements I employ for public consumption—and let out a huff that carries more amusement than I intend.
“You’re a cocky fucker, aren’t you, Oak?”
The nickname slips out before I can censor it—an abbreviation born of the same impulse that makes me shorten every colleague’s name within the first five minutes of knowing them. A dominance thing, according to my old department’s psychologist. A familiarity thing, according to Jamie. An inability-to-waste-syllables thing, according to me.
He laughs.
Not a chuckle. Not a polite exhale. An actual, full-bodied laugh that crinkles his green eyes at the corners and makes the scar above his eyebrow dance and sends a ripple of his scent—blood orange and cinnamon, warmed by genuine amusement—rolling through the space between us.
