or just breathe him in.
Breakneck passed her with the constables flanking him, and something in the air shifted. For a heartbeat, just one startled, impossible heartbeat, he stopped moving. Those storm-gray eyes, colder than steel and twice as cutting, flicked down to her shirt, skimming the RCMP crest like it meant something, like he’d memorized it before he even understood why.
Blair’s breath snagged. Her whole body leaned toward him without permission, drawn by the violent pull of his presence. She was mesmerized by his face.
“Sergeant Brown…”
The way he said it, low, rough, scraped raw from pain and cold and whatever hell he’d been dragged through, curled through her in a slow spiral, whispering across every inch of her skin. His voice was the kind that came from waking up in a combat zone, from sand in the lungs and blood in the throat. It slid under her guard so fast she didn’t have time to brace.
Those eyes snapped back to hers.
“You’re all in danger,” he rasped, voice gravel and warning. “You need to listen to me. Now.”
The words hit her gut like a blow.
She tore her gaze away long enough to glance at Jaffe and Bessel, of course it was them, hauling him like they’d bagged themselves a trophy, but the world blurred at the edges. Nothing seemed solid next to the raw presence of the man in front of her.
The constables jerked him forward.
Blair snapped back into motion, pulse spiking.
“After you book him, put him in Interrogation Two,” she blurted, needing breathing room for a moment, but needing answers more, needing to understand what the hell this was.
The man twisted just enough to look at her again, his face drawn tight with pain and fury and something that looked a lot like desperation.
“We don’t have time for this!” he shouted, voice cracking like a whip across the hallway.
The constables yanked him onward. He kept eye contact with her until he was swallowed by the bright light of the processing bay.
Blair stood rooted to the floor, pulse thundering, breath caught between shock and heat and something dangerously close to fear.
Whatever this man was, whatever had been done to him, whatever he carried in those gray eyes, had just walked straight into her station and warned her the world was about to burn.
Blair stopped at the observation window, her gaze dropping to the pistol holstered at her hip. She hesitated only long enough to acknowledge the thought. It wasn’t procedure to disarm for a cuffed suspect, but something about the man in that room made her pulse thrum with a strange awareness. Not fear. Something sharper.
She rested her palm on the grip, grounding herself, then pushed the door open.
Bruises mottled his ribs. Dried blood streaked down one arm. His gray eyes lifted the moment she entered, sharp and assessing, flicking once to her firearm before meeting her gaze.
He wasn’t looking at her gun like a threat. He was looking at it like he understood its weight, its reach, the exact second he could take it from her if he wanted to.
A shimmer of heat ran up her spine.
He tracked every inch of her.
“Sergeant Brown,” he rasped, voice sandpaper and warning. “Shut the door.”
The metal door shut behind her with a solid thud as Blair stepped into Interrogation Two, tablet in hand, breath steady. She’d braced herself for a violent criminal, the kind who needed two constables to keep contained. What a flimsy word when applied to him. She had not braced herself for…him.
Dylan Cross sat with his arms still cuffed behind his back, shoulders pulled tight, body bent slightly forward from the way the chain forced his balance. His torso was a sweep of bruised muscle, darkened ribs, and deep shadows where hands and fists had left their mark. His skin glowed with a warm, sun-burnished tone, even under the unforgiving overhead light. A faint sheen of dried sweat clung to him, making every contour more defined.
Her gaze rose despite herself, and she finally got a full dose of his face now that they were alone, isolated, the door shut behind her.
His punk-cut hair only added to the outlaw look, black as midnight, the unruly, straight strands catching the light like silk, wild across his forehead from whatever violence he’d crawled through. A smear of dried blood cut across his cheekbone and more shadowed the hard line of his jaw. He had stubble, rough, grown in under duress, giving him that dark, dangerous gunslinger look, coarse enough she imagined it scraping her palm if she touched it.
His mouth was full and carved, a perfectly disreputable line that might have been sensual if it wasn’t tight with pain. A small split marked his bottom lip, a bead of dried blood clinging to the corner, and all she could think about, shockingly, stupidly, was the instinct to brush her mouth there, kiss the injury as if that could ease it.
He was truly, forcefully beautiful, in a way Blair found not only intimidating but criminal. She had to tear her gaze away before her brain misfiled what she was supposed to be doing. His skin held the heat of exertion, flushed down his throat and across the hard line of his collarbones. Even bruised, even bleeding, he was devastating.
