Page 46 of Spade

Not fast. Not slow. Somewhere in between, a rhythm that felt less like fucking and more like a conversation neither of us had the vocabulary for. Every thrust was deliberate, measured, his eyes never leaving mine. I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said, his voice rough against my ear.

I laughed, and it came out wet. “You first.”

“I’m thinking I should have done this a long time ago.”

“Yeah?” I rolled my hips up to meet him, felt him sink deeper. “How long?”

“Since the first time I saw your file.” His mouth found the scar on my jaw, traced it with his tongue. “Since I realized you weren’t going to stop.”

“I’m not.” I turned my head, caught his earlobe between my teeth, bit down just hard enough. “That’s not going to change.”

“I know.” He pulled back, drove forward again, and the sound I made was embarrassingly close to a whimper. “That’s what scares me.”

I looked up at him, at the man who’d come back through the door, at the man who’d said you matter like it was the hardest sentence he’d ever constructed, and something behind my ribs cracked wide open. I stopped fighting it. I stopped performing. I stopped being the woman who needed to be in control.

“Then be scared with me,” I said.

His rhythm stuttered. Just for a second, just long enough for me to feel it, and then he was moving again, harder now, his grip on my wrist tightening until the bones ground together. I didn’t flinch. I leaned into it, let the pain bleed into pleasure until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said, and his voice had dropped to something I’d never heard from him before—low and rough and stripped of every layer of control he’d built around himself.

“I know exactly what I’m asking.” I arched my back, took him deeper, felt him hit the spot that made my vision go white. “I’m asking you to stop pretending this is just an investigation. I’m asking you to stop pretending you don’t feel it.”

He made a sound—half groan, half something that sounded like it had been torn out of him—and his hips snapped forward with enough force to drive the couch an inch across the floor. The legs scraped against the laminate, a sound like nails on bone, and I laughed because it was either that or scream.

“Say it,” I demanded, my voice breaking on the last word. “Say it out loud so I know I’m not crazy.”

His forehead dropped to my chest, his breath hot and ragged against my sternum. I felt his lips move against my skin, felt the words before I heard them.

“I feel it.” Barely a whisper, but it hit me like a fist. “I feel all of it.”

I let go of his neck and brought my free hand—the one he wasn’t pinning—to his face, cupped his jaw, felt the stubble scrape against my palm. His eyes were open, looking up at me from where his head rested on my chest, and what I saw there made my breath catch.

No mask. No performance. No detective, no badge, no strategy. Just a man who’d given up pretending and was staring at the wreckage like he couldn’t believe he’d survived it.

“There you are,” I said, and my voice cracked on the last syllable.

Something broke behind his eyes. I watched it happen in real time—the last wall crumbling, the last door swinging open, the last piece of armor hitting the floor with a sound only he could hear. His grip on my wrist went slack, and I pulled my hand free, both of them now cradling his face like he was something fragile, something worth holding.

He turned his head, pressed his mouth to my palm, and I felt the wet heat of his tongue against the center of my hand. Then his teeth, just enough pressure to mark, and I let him. I let him because nobody had ever looked at me like that before—like I was the thing he’d been searching for and dreading finding.

17

Spade

How was I going to explain fucking the same detective who wanted me put behind bars? Or did he? What the fuck had happened less than two hours ago?

I needed a drink in the worst way. Double whatever my usual was.

The clubhouse smelled like citrus, a scent that tried its damndest to kill the smell of cigarettes and booze. I walked in wearing the same jacket I’d worn before fucking Shaw—Sergeant at Arms patch catching the jaundiced light—and let the door close soft behind me. The slot machines in the main room were dark, but the inner circle glowed hard under the fluorescent strip over the long table. I took a mental roll call:

Selene at the head, chair back so straight it looked welded to her spine. Joker in the shadow on her right, arms folded like a padlock, one boot hooked over the rung. Aces standing, broad shoulders squared, both hands planted flat on the battered table. Glitz cross-legged and perfect, ringed fingers steepled in front of her, eyes already dissecting me for weakness. Nines with her notebook, pen ready but not yet in motion. Tempest in motion, stalking a tight loop by the cinder block wall, boots squeaking on lemon-slicked concrete.

Nobody told me to sit, so I didn’t. I stood at parade rest and waited for someone to break the ice.

Selene didn’t speak first. She kept her gaze on my hands, like maybe this was the night I’d bring the weapon inside. When she blinked, Joker spoke up, voice dry as chalk.