“Then let’s go, Chief.”
We go.
The shots are lined up—ten of them, arranged in a row of clear liquid that catches the bar’s amber lighting like tiny windows. Tequila. The good kind, smooth enough that the burn is a warmth rather than an assault.
One.
Two.
Three.
I match him shot for shot with the practiced, mechanical ease of a woman who learned to drink at the academy—where the social currency was alcohol tolerance and the competition extended to everything including who could stay vertical longest on a Friday night.
Four.
Five.
And the world shifts.
Not dramatically. Not the stumbling, vision-blurring overconsumption of a woman who has exceeded her limits. The softer shift. The loosening. The specific, warm, inhibition-reducing transition that occurs when the alcohol reaches the concentration that tells the nervous systemyou can stop clenching now. My shoulders drop. My smile widens. The music’s bass line, which has been a background presence, moves into the foreground and becomes a physical experience—a pulse that I feel in my ribcage and my hips and the soles of my feet.
I’m tipsy.
Gloriously, warmly, fully tipsy.
Oakley chuckles. “Okay. Maybe time out on the shots.”
I’m giggly.
And I don’t mind. Don’t mind the way my laugh comes easier and louder and without the monitoring apparatus that usually governs its volume and duration. Don’t mind the way my body gravitates toward Oakley’s with the unguarded, unapologetic physicality of a woman who wants to be close and has stopped making excuses for wanting.
I pull him down.
My hands on his collar. The fabric bunching in my fists as I drag his face to mine with the specific, non-negotiable urgency of a woman who wants to kiss this man and considers the three seconds it takes to close the height differential an unacceptable delay.
I kiss him.
Hard.
Not the tentative, permission-seeking contact of our early interactions. The full, uninhibited, alcohol-encouraged, five-shots-of-tequila-deep kiss of a woman who has decided thatpublic displays of affection are not a vulnerability but a freedom and she is exercising that freedom with extreme prejudice.
He groans.
Into my mouth. The sound vibrating through the kiss with the involuntary, dragged-from-somewhere-deep quality that Oakley’s vocalizations carry when his composure slips. His arm hooks around my waist, pulling me against him, keeping me crowded against his body in the specific, full-contact configuration that blocks out the bar and the music and the hundred other people in the room.
We’re making out.
On a dance floor. At a bar. In a town where people are watching and gossip travels at the speed of light. And I don’t care. Don’t care that this is visible. Don’t care that it will be talked about. Don’t care that somewhere in the crowd, someone might be documenting the fact that Officer Hazel Martinez is kissing an Alpha in a public venue with the enthusiastic, thorough commitment of a woman who has been denied this for years and is catching up.
Then I smell him.
Alaric.
The burnt vanilla arriving before the contact—his scent threading into the space behind me with the warm, grounding weight that his proximity always carries. His body close. His chest against my back, the heat of him bracketing me between two Alphas in a configuration that the bar’s ambient crowd absorbs without comment because packs are normal and public affection between packs is expected and the only unusual thing about this particular display is how long it took the woman in the middle to allow it.
I break the kiss.
Turn my head.
