Page 13 of Dirty Sweet Cop

“Those are the options,” I say. My voice is wrecked. I can hear it. “No pressure. No manipulation. Just…tell me what you want. And whatever it is, I’ll make it happen. I swear to God, Winny, I will make it happen even if it kills me.”

I don’t move. Don’t cross to the couch. Don’t reach for her. For once in my life, I stand still and let someone else decide.

The silence stretches.

She looks at me. Really looks. Her eyes track over my face—the scars, the hard lines, the set of my jaw that hasn’t softened in fifteen years. She looks at my hands. My big, scarred hands that have broken bones and held dying men and cradled her head like it was made of glass.

She looks at the living room. The fortress I built. The cameras. The deadbolts. The evidence of how afraid I am of losing her written across every surface of this house.

She looks back at me. And she doesn’t speak.

My heart is in my throat. Literally. I can feel it pounding against my Adam’s apple, each beat a small agony. The toughest cop in the precinct. The man who walked into armed standoffs without backup. The detective who’s taken bullets and kept moving. And here I am, standing in my own living room, watching the woman I love try to decide if I’m worth keeping, and I have never been more afraid in my life.

One path means freedom for her. A life built on her terms. No possessive bastard twice her age crowding her, controlling her, watching her sleep. She could date boys her own age. Go to college. Live in a house without cameras. Be normal. Be free.

The other path means me. Forever. My obsession. My protection. My cock inside her every night, filling her, breeding her, claiming her in ways that should scare her but somehow don’t. It means belonging to someone who would burn the world down to keep her safe. It means never being alone again—but also never being entirely your own.

I watch her think. Watch the emotions move across her face—fear, longing, uncertainty, something softer that might be hope. I watch her hands twist in the blanket. Watch her bite her lower lip the way she does when she’s working something out.

And I wait.

I wait like I’ve never waited for anything. Not moving. Not breathing. Just standing there, offering her everything I have and everything I am, and hoping it’s enough.

Hoping she chooses me.

The silence stretches so long I start to hear my own pulse in my ears. The refrigerator clicks off. The security system hums. Somewhere outside, a car passes, headlights sweeping across the ceiling.

And Winny looks at me. Takes a breath. Opens her mouth.

And says⁠—

eight

. . .

Winny

I say the only word that matters.

“Stay.”

One syllable. Quiet. Certain.

His face does something I’ve never seen before—something breaks open, something raw and vulnerable and completely unguarded, and the toughest man I know looks like he might collapse.

I cross the living room. Put my hands on his chest. Feel his heart hammering under my palms, wild and irregular, and the power of that—of reducing Clayton Holloway to a trembling mess with one word—sinks into me like warmth.

“I choose you,” I say. “The cameras. The growling. The breeding. All of it. I choose you.”

His hands find my waist. Not gripping. Resting. Like he’s afraid if he holds too tight, I’ll disappear. “Winny. Baby girl. Are you sure?”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.” I rise on my toes. Press my mouth to his. A soft kiss. Nothing like the desperate, consuming ones we’re used to. This is something quieter. Something that tastes like a beginning rather than a claiming.

He kisses me back with the same care. His big hands framing my face, thumbs brushing my cheekbones, and when he pulls back his eyes are wet. Actually wet. I watch a single tear track down the scar above his eyebrow and something in my chest cracks wide open.

That night, something shifts.

The desperate energy that’s defined us—the frantic fucking, the tearing clothes, the wall sex and the counter sex and the everywhere sex—settles into something slower. More deliberate. I initiate. Climb into his lap on the couch while he’s watching some true crime thing he’s not paying attention to, and kiss him with a patience I didn’t know I had.