Page 45 of Spade

He looked down at me, upside down, and I watched his expression change. The flatness softened into something rawer, something that looked almost like grief, and for a second I thought he was going to stop. I thought he was going to remember who he was and what he’d left behind and pull away.

Instead, he bent down and kissed me. Not the hard, closed-mouth thing from before—this was slow, almost tender, his split lip smearing copper across my mouth. I tasted him, and something broke loose in my chest, something I’d welded shut a long time ago.

“Shaw,” I said against his mouth.

“Don’t.” He pulled back just enough to look at me. “Don’t say my name like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like it matters.”

I reached up and grabbed his jaw, my thumb pressing into the cut on his lip, reopening it. “It does. That’s the problem.”

He went still above me, breathing hard, and I watched the war play out behind his eyes. Duty and desire and fear and want, all of it colliding behind the flat surface he wore like armor. I’d seen men look at me like that before—like I was a grenade they couldn’t decide whether to throw or hold—but this was different. This wasn’t a calculation. This was a man watching the last wall come down and knowing he couldn’t rebuild it.

“Look at me,” I said, echoing his own words back to him. “Really look.”

He did. His eyes dropped to my mouth, my throat, the tattooed hands on his face, and then back to my eyes. Something shifted in his expression—a crack, then a fracture, then a full collapse.

“Everything,” he repeated, and the word sounded like it cost him something. “You want everything.”

“I want you to stop pretending you’re here for any reason other than this.” I pressed my thumb harder into his lip, watched the blood well up and spill over my skin. “You turned around. You came back. That wasn’t the badge, Shaw. That was you.”

He caught my wrist, pulled my hand away from his face, and held it above my head against the couch arm. His grip was tight enough that the cuffs’ marks on my skin screamed, and I leaned into the pain like it was a confession.

“Don’t,” he said again, but softer this time, almost pleading.

“Don’t what? Don’t tell you the truth?” I laughed, and it came out raw, stripped of the performance. “You want me to lie? You want me to pretend this is just fucking? Because I can do that. I’m very good at that.”

His jaw tightened. I watched the muscle jump under his skin, watched the vein in his neck pulse. His cock was still hard against my thigh, leaking onto my skin, and neither of us moved to do anything about it. We were past that now. This was something else.

“Say it,” I whispered. “Say it so I know I’m not alone in this.”

He closed his eyes. For a long moment, I thought he was going to get up, put his clothes on, and walk out the door for good. I thought I’d pushed too far, cracked the shell too hard, and now he’d retreat into whatever safe room he’d built for himself behind that badge.

Then he opened his eyes and looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time. Not the suspect. Not the body. Not the case. Me.

“It matters,” he said. “You matter. Is that what you want to hear?”

The words hit me like a physical blow. I felt them land in my chest, in my stomach, in the places I’d locked up and thrown away the key. My throat closed, and for one terrible, beautiful second, I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t do anything except stare at him and feel the mask I’d worn for years crack straight down the middle.

I turned my face into his wrist, pressed my lips against the pulse point there, and felt his heartbeat hammering against my mouth. Fast. Steady. Real.

“Shaw,” I said again, and this time I let it mean everything it meant. Not the flat, controlled syllable I used in the clubhouse or the sharp one I used in interrogation rooms. This was something else entirely. This was the sound of a woman who’d stopped performing.

He heard it. I watched him hear it—the way his eyes went dark, the way his grip on my wrist loosened just enough to turn into something that wasn’t restraint but holding. Like he was afraid I’d float away if he let go.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, and I hated how small my voice sounded. Hated how honest it was. No other man had ever brought that out in me. “I’m right here.”

He let out a breath that shook, and then he was kissing me again, slow and deep. I kissed him back with everything I had left, which was more than I wanted to admit. My free hand found the back of his neck, fingers digging into the muscle there, pulling him closer until there was no space left between us.

When he pulled away, his forehead rested against mine, and we breathed the same air for a long time.

“You’re going to ruin me,” he said, and it wasn’t a complaint. It was a fact, delivered with the same flat precision he used for case notes.

I smiled against his mouth. “Probably.”

He moved then, shifting his weight, and I felt him slide back inside me—not my ass this time, but between my legs, where I was still wet and swollen and aching for him. The angle was different with my head hanging off the couch, my throat exposed, my pulse hammering where anyone could see it. He braced himself on one arm, the other still holding my wrist above my head, and started to move.