Page 2 of Dirty Sweet Cop

I don’t think. I reach for her.

My hands are big. Scarred. I’ve broken bones with these hands. I’ve held dying men with these hands. But when I lift her—Jesus, she weighs nothing—and tuck her against my chest, something shifts. She fits. Her face presses into the hollow of my throat, her fingers clutching at my shirt, her whole body trembling against mine.

She smells like sleep and salt and something sweet underneath. Vanilla, maybe. Something innocent.

My arms tighten around her. One hand cradles the back of her head, fingers threading through that dark hair. The other spans the width of her back, feeling every vertebra through the thin cotton.

“I’ve got you,” I murmur against her hair. “No one’s touching you again. You understand me?”

She nods into my chest. A small, desperate movement.

Good girl.

The thought arrives fully formed, filthy and possessive. She’s not mine. Not yet. But the want is already there, coiling low in my gut, a hunger I haven’t felt in years. I want to keep her. Not just safe. Mine.

I want to lay her down in my bed and cover her with my body. I want to push inside her slow and deep until she forgets what fear feels like. I want to fill her up, breed that tight little belly until she’s round with my kid, until there’s something—someone—tied to her that means she’s never alone again.

The thoughts should scare me. They don’t. They feel inevitable, like the moment I walked through that door and saw her huddled in the corner, something in me recognized what she was.

Mine to protect. Mine to claim.

My partner appears in the doorway, takes one look at the girl curled against my chest and the way I’m holding her, and raises an eyebrow. I shoot him a look that says not now. Not ever. He backs out, closing the door behind him.

I shift her weight, one arm under her knees, the other supporting her back, and stand. She’s light. Too light. I’ll fix that. I’ll feed her. Keep her. Make sure she never goes hungry or scared or alone again.

“I’m taking you somewhere safe,” I tell her, my voice dropping to that register I use when I need someone to listen. The one that leaves no room for argument. “You’re not staying here tonight. You’re not staying anywhere I can’t see you.”

She looks up at me, those honey eyes wide and trusting, and something cracks wider in my chest.

“Okay,” she whispers.

One word. And just like that, the battle-hardened detective with fifteen years of cynicism and scar tissue decides he’s keeping the orphan girl who called 911 in tears.

The streets can have the rest of the world. She’s mine.

two

. . .

Winny

The man who broke in is gone. The detective who broke down my door is still here.

And he’s looking at me like I’m already his.

I should be terrified. The things he’s saying—low, rough promises about keeping me safe, about no one touching me again—they’re not the kind of things a stranger says to a grieving eighteen-year-old girl he just met. They’re the kind of things a man says when he’s decided something. When he’s made up his mind.

But his hands are so careful.

He sets me down on the couch and kneels in front of me, those big scarred fingers moving over my arms, my shoulders, checking for injuries with a gentleness that doesn’t match the rest of him. He’s built like something carved from stone—broad shoulders, thick forearms, a jaw that looks like it’s taken hits and given worse. Twice my age, easy. Thirty-five, thirty-six. Old enough to be...

I don’t let myself finish that thought.

Because while my brain is still catching up—still raw from the funeral three weeks ago, still drowning in mortgage statements and insurance forms I don’t understand, still waking up expecting to hear my mom’s voice down the hall—my body is doing something else entirely.

It’s melting.

Every place his fingers touch goes warm. Every low, growled reassurance sinks into my skin and settles there. When he pushes my hair back from my face and his thumb brushes my cheekbone, I lean into it without thinking. Like a plant turning toward the sun.