Chapter One
“HOLD THE DOOR!”someone yelled.
Marlow knew the voice—from the TV, from podcasts, and from sarcastic diatribes against an allegedly incompetent police force. It was a memorable voice. He considered pretending to be deaf for a second. It was the morning after the moon before and he didn’t need this, but his better self won out. Life was hard, and it was stupid to pass up a chance at some good karma. He juggled his coat, keys, and coffee as he tried to free up a hand to do as asked. That didn’t work. He stuck his foot out instead and let the elevator doors bounce off his shoe.
The elevator dinged at him in reproach and slid open again. The “this” he didn’t need, otherwise known as Cade Deacon, grabbed the edge of the door before it could try to close again. He was naked except for the electronic tags that dangled around his throat. His feet were grass-stained, and leaves still matted in his curly dark blond hair.
“Thanks,” Cade said in a rough, warm tone as he squeezed past Marlow. The clammy heat of him, all fresh sweat and old blood, washed over Marlow and coated the inside of his mouth. He imagined that was what Cade would taste like if he licked him—salt, copper, and musk—and then tried to focus on the thought of what Human Resources would say if he did that.
He could see the headlines now: “Night Shift cop licks head of private security firm in inter-company dominance display.”
They wouldn’t be happy. Neither would he when Cade knocked his teeth down his throat.
Marlow hit the button for his floor and watched as Cade selected the fourth floor. The morgue. He took a drink of his coffee—it was cold and had never tasted that good, but it was still coffee—and pushed his sunglasses more firmly up onto his nose. Three floors down from the ground floor and fifteen minutes paperwork, then his good deed for the day would be done. He could clock out and leave the whole building to Cade Deacon.
Neither of them said anything. Cade stretched, reached back, and scratched his ass.
It was rude to make it athingthat time of the month. Marlow chewed the inside of his cheek and managed a whole floor before he snuck a quick look at Cade’s backside. He wasn’t going to pretend he’d not noticed it before. The fitted suits that the head of Cold Winds Security favored showcased it nicely when Cade came in to consult with the chief or rip the Night Shift—including Marlow a couple of times, although he doubted Cade remembered—a new one for throwing one of his asshole operatives into the Crate. This was the first time Marlow had seen it in the flesh, though.
He’d expected the ripe curve of moon-pale skin and tight muscle, but the scars that licked across it were a surprise. Thin raised welts of white keloid crisscrossed his ass, with the tail ends of scars wrapped over his hips and down his lean thighs. He briefly wondered how that had happened. Or when.
“Either ask or look somewhere else,” Cade told him.
Marlow felt the flush crawl red and hot from his collarbones up to his ears. It made them sting. He looked down at his feet—the fabric of his worn Converse had started to come away from the sole and had maybe a week left in them—and cleared his throat.
“None of my business,” he said.
“You knew that already.”
Fair enough. Marlow shifted his weight from one foot to the other and swore under his breath when the elevator stopped on the second floor. There wasn’t even anyone there, just an empty hallway and a briefcase left to hold their spot.
He leaned forward and mashed his thumb against the “door close” button. Someone had told him once that it didn’t actually do anything except give you something to do, but he held it down anyhow.Come on, come on, come on.
“If nothing else, I have to respect the work ethic of San Diego’s tax-funded LEOs,” Cade drawled, his voice low and clear. “Not only here first thing in the morning, but dressed and already looking like shit.”
Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between dominance games and flirting. Apparently not with Cade. Marlow could appreciate that.
“I’ve been on shift for … ” Marlow paused to figure it out, his brain at that stage of tired where everything worked, but just 20 percent slower than usual. It was November, so the Night Shift was usually split into two. Except Harrison and Toledo had both called in sick, so he’d caught their consecutive shifts. “Seventeen hours. The only thing I want is to sign my kit back in and go home.”
And some good coffee. Or more bad coffee. He wasn’t fussy.
“Oh, that makes sense,” Cade drawled. “You’re one of the fun police, tired out from ruining everyone’s good time last night.”
Marlow’s ribs ached from the impact with a skip in an alley down in the garment district. His knee had that loose, overworked Play-Doh feel that might ease overnight or might seize up and leave him hobbled for a week. When he came in tomorrow night, there’d be a stack of paperwork as thick as a dictionary to log the damage to his patrol car after someone jumped onto the roof and crumpled it.
“That’s me,” Marlow said. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes and just leaned forward to jab the button again. “The fun police. You know, there are lockers on every street corner you can keep a spare set of clothes in.”
“I know.”
They finally reached Marlow’s floor. He decided to believe hammering the button had worked. The doors slid open, and Marlow had never been so glad to see the institutionally green walls. He didn’t exactly bolt out of the elevator, but the doors hadn’t opened all the way when he dodged through them. He was almost free and clear when Cade cleared his throat.
“Officer… Marlow, wasn’t it?”
So much for not knowing who—what—Marlow was.
The cold paw of his grandma’s ghost clouted Marlow about the ear. She’d not spent years chewing manners into Marlow for him to be rude to someone higher ranked than him now. Karma, Marlow reminded himself. He would get credit for this.
He turned around, stiff and reluctant, and his brain promptly fell over and flapped like a gaffed fish. Cade had leaned back against the wall of the elevator, his hands braced on the rail, and his smile showed teeth that were a bit too sharp and crinkled eyes that were bright honey brown. It wasn’t as if it was asurprisethat Cade was hot. Marlow didn’t like the idea of a private police force, and he didn’t particularly like the acerbic CEO of it either, but he wasn’t blind. Cade was handsome in a hard, uncompromising way that had nothing soft or pretty about it, with broad, freckled cheekbones and an angular, clean-cut jaw.
