“Unlawfully.”
“You didn’t seem to mind my unlawful behavior last night when you were whispering sweet nothings into my ear at the station.”
His nostrils flared. “That’s it.”
The handcuffs snapped shut around one wrist before she even registered the movement. Cold metal. Fast fingers.
“Alaric!” she gasped.
“Keep mouthing off,” he murmured, hauling her bodily off the ground and into him with terrifying ease. “See what happens.”
“Oh no,” she whispered, faux-innocent. “Is the big, bad detective going to punish me?”
That was the moment he snapped.
He slammed her back against the nearest crypt, one large, gloved hand flattening beside her head as the other dragged the cuffed wrist behind her. His mouth crashed onto hers.
Hot.
Hard.
Holy hell, finally.
Thea didn’t know what shocked her more, the click of the cuffs tightening behind her back, or the sound Alaric made when he finally gave in. It wasn’t a growl. It was a low, ruined noise, like something sacred breaking.
One second she was smug and mouthy. The next, she was against the stone, and his mouth was on hers, claiming, devouring,warning.
“You don’t get it,” he bit out against her lips, before pushing away. “You never have. You think I don’t see you?” he rasped. “You think I haven’t wanted you every time you flashed that mouth and made my job a bloody nightmare?”
She moaned.
He laughed. Dark. Sinful. “You should’ve stayed home, sweetheart,”
Rain slipped down the back of Thea’s neck like a thief, soaking beneath the collar of her dress and teasing its way down her spine. She shifted in her wet boots, hands pinned in cold iron, heart thundering so loud it echoed in her ears.
Alaric stood before her, dripping, steaming, smoldering, looking like every grudge she’d ever held against authority and every fantasy she hadn’t dared admit out loud. He was scowling. Of course he was. He always scowled. But now his jaw twitched with something hotter, hungrier, and far more dangerous than simple annoyance.
“You lied,” he ground out. “You promised no more graveyards.”
“Andyoupromised to respect my work,” she snapped back, even as her pulse fluttered like a lunatic moth in her throat. “We both tell fibs when the moon’s full.”
His gaze dipped—to her lips, her chest, the sodden fabric clinging to her curves—and then darted back up with visible effort, like looking at her hurt. Hell, it might have.
Thea lifted her chin, refusing to wilt. “So what now, inspector?”
He stepped closer. Close enough to smell the rain on him. Leather, cedar, and storm. His fingers brushed her cuffed wrist, firm, warm, and unshakably sure.
His voice dropped like a stone in the water between them. “Now I teach you what happens when you push me too far.”
Thea opened her mouth to say something cutting, something clever and smug and wildly inappropriate, but the words got caught on the edge of his gaze.
He stepped in. Close. Until her back brushed the crypt wall behind her and the breath between them turned thick enough to drown in.
“Turn around,” he said.
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Turn around,” he repeated, lower this time. Rougher. The syllables scraped like gravel and thunder, and her stomach flipped so violently she almost laughed. Almost. But then his hand slid to the small of her back. Firm. Possessive. He didn’t push. He didn’t have to.
