Capelli stared at the massive fire in front of him, absolutely unable to breathe. His brain, which had refused to lose its hard-wiring even in the face of his body’s adrenaline overload, catalogued everything in excruciating detail. The call he’d gotten from Sinclair that had roused him from his bed, where he’d slept alone for the first time in a week. The faster-than-was-safe drive to get to the scene. The fear and dread and high-octane tension that had ricocheted through his chest as he’d stood between Sinclair and Captain Bridges with the rest of the team, listening to events unfold on the Captain’s radio.

“Walker and Gates are clear with the victims,” Bridges said, and Capelli’s brain registered the sight of Isabella’s body loosening with relief from beside him. “Both men are unconscious, but breathing. They’re being prepped for immediate transport to Remington Memorial.”

His unfailing brain formed words, kicked them out of his mouth, and somehow, despite the riot in his chest, they were smooth, steady. “Have the trauma docs run a tox screen. Chances are extremely high you’ll find sufentanil in both of their systems.”

Bridges’s nod was interrupted by the crackle of static on the two-way radio at his shoulder.

“Command, this is Faurier. Slater and I are clear at the primary exit.”

“Copy that,” Bridges said. Tension that Capelli could neither rationalize nor ease cranked harder between his ribs. The countdown that had been steadily ticking down in his head ever since he’d last heard Shae’s voice on the two-way was dwindling fast—nineteen, eighteen, seventeen—and he stared at the front door as if he could ridiculously, impractically will her over the threshold.

Damn it, it was just like her to want to go back for Gamble. Brash. Impulsive. Reckless—

At the fourteen-second mark, the house exploded in a rush of fire, shattered glass, and ungodly noise.

“Shae!” Her name tore from his throat, covered in raw terror. Capelli’s brain—Christ, his stupid fucking brain that never fucking stopped moving—sent fragments of information past the slamming of his heart and into his awareness. The flurry of movement toward the fireball that had just blown through every window on the left-hand side of the first floor. The rough timbre of Bridges’s voice as he yelled into his radio. The pressure of multiple hands and arms on his body, holding him back as he involuntarily launched himself toward the brightly burning flames.

Shae had been in the house. The fire had flashed over. Vaughn had set the fire.

Capelli was going to find that son of a bitch and murder him, slowly and without a scrap of remorse.

“McCullough. Gamble. Report!”

Bridges’s repeat command echoed in Capelli’s head, and the burst of static that arrived a beat later took a direct shot at his knees and the center of his chest simultaneously.

“Command, this is McCullough. Gamble and I are clear. Repeat, we’re clear. We’re okay, Cap.”

Relief didn’t even belong in the same stratosphere as the feeling that left Capelli’s body on a sharp exhale.

Shae was alive. Talking. Unhurt.

He was still going to kill Vaughn.

“McCullough. Gamble. What’s your location?” Bridges asked, and finally, the hands on Capelli’s shoulders and waist—who he belatedly realized belonged to Sinclair and Hale—eased their vise grip.

“The ceiling collapsed in the hallway and blocked our primary escape route,” Shae reported through the two-way. She was alive. Alive. “We had to cut our tether and fall out through the Charlie side, first floor, but we got out before the fire flashed over. Returning to the rendezvous point.”

Less than a minute later, she appeared on the far side of the house beside Gamble, covered in soot and sweat and looking so beautiful it hurt, and of all the slideshows gathered in his brain, Capelli knew in that instant he’d remember this one the most.

His emotions surged in a rush so fierce and intense, it took him completely by surprise, paralyzing him to his spot on the pavement. He wanted to grab Shae and check every inch of her to be certain she was unhurt, to yell at her for her sheer stupidity, to kiss her until his lungs gave out. He wanted everything, he felt everything, with so much intensity that he had to fight it. He had to find his composure, his control.

Because if he so much as touched Shae right now, his emotions would flash over just like that fire, and he wouldn’t be able to stop them from burning him to the ground.

“Jesus, you two. Not so close next time,” Bridges said, his own relief palpable even as he sent a string of commands to the secondary firefighting units with the rest of his breath.

Shae nodded while Capelli forced himself to go numb. It was that or go crazy, and he could not—could not—let his emotions ruin him.

“It was a little hairy for a second or two, but we’re fine.” She slid a barely there glance at Gamble before trying on a lopsided smile. “I mean, my ears are ringing from that flash over, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to smell like a charcoal briquette for a couple of days, but other than that…”

Shae’s voice faded for only a second, then came back with the sort of determination that could only belong to her. “This fire was set intentionally. It’s definitely arson.” She looked around, her startled expression a clear indicator that she’d just registered the intelligence unit standing a handful of feet away. “The place was doused in gasoline, Capelli,” she said, and God, he felt the way she said his name in the deepest part of his bones. “There’s no way this wasn’t Vaughn.”

Capelli swallowed hard and focused on the curve of her earlobe, half-covered by a wisp of errant honey-brown hair. “We know.”

“The fire marshal has been called in,” Sinclair added. “Patrol officers are already canvassing the area for anyone who might have seen him.”

“There might be evidence inside the house. We can run secondary lines from Seventeen to help knock this fire down faster,” Gamble said, but Bridges stopped the guy’s forward movement with a hard shake of his head.

“Dispatch has three more engines en route, and their ETA is less than two minutes. You and McCullough have had enough for one call. You’re off-shift for the rest of the night. Not as a punishment,” he added, because of course, Shae had just opened her mouth to protest—“but because I like my firefighters in one piece, and that includes their minds.”

Gamble and Shae looked equally pissed off and put out, although neither one argued. Sinclair sent a glance over all the members of the team, starting and ending with Capelli, and fuck. Fuck, he needed to work, to push his mind to exhaustion in order to buy himself some order, some sanity.

And yet the only thing he wanted was Shae.

“CSU is on the way,” Sinclair said, his voice low enough to keep the conversation between the team, yet firm enough to allow no argument. “Once the fire is out, we’ll have them work with arson investigation to comb whatever’s left of this scene for any traces of Vaughn. Moreno, you and Hollister check in with the patrol officers running the canvas and pull all security cam footage within a mile of here. See if anything pops. Maxwell, you and Hale head over to Remington Memorial to sit on those victims. I want full statements as soon as they’re able to make them. In the meantime, I’ll go deal with the mayor myself so we can figure out how he’s connected to Vaughn. Capelli…”

Sinclair paused, and to anyone else, even the detectives in the unit, he probably looked like his regular old hard-assed self, giving out orders and running a case. But Capelli had no choice but to notice everything, right down to the muscle in the man’s jaw that tightened ever so slightly when he was about to say something he wasn’t about to budge on, and he braced for impact.

“Take Shae home,” Sinclair said. “I’ll call you if we find anything.” This part, he aimed at Shae herself, who had stepped into the circle of the conversation as soon as she’d been excused by her captain and looked primed to object to being sent home twice in one night. “But Bridges is right. You’ve had a hell of a night, and I’m going to need you both clear-headed in the morning once we get these reports lined up. So go. Get some rest.”

Capelli nearly argued despite the double dose of don’t you dare flashing in Sinclair’s steel-edged stare. But logic warned that the words would be a waste, so instead, he took a deep breath and locked his armor over himself as tightly as possible as he tested his voice with, “Copy that.”

He fell in next to Shae, mirroring her precise footfalls toward Engine Seventeen. They made it six steps—five of which had probably driven her crazy—before she looked at him and asked, “Are you okay?”

Capelli swallowed the “no” on his tongue in one gulp. He needed his default. He needed the facts. He needed them now.

“You had a really close call,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t want one of the paramedics to check you out?”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

Oddly, miraculously, she didn’t push further. His next series of movements were a blur—arriving at the engine, waiting for Shae to carefully store her gear in one of the vehicle’s side compartments, leading her to his car on the other side of the police barricade. The acrid smell of smoke permeated the air around them, leaving a bitter aftertaste on his tongue with every exhale. Capelli tried to smooth his tangled nerves by cataloguing everything around him, by keeping his brain busy with facts and tangible truths that might prove useful later. But his heart kicked in protest, as if Shae had suddenly switched places with true north and his default had been recalibrated to focus on her and only her, and oh hell. He needed to stamp out his emotions now more than ever.

“Let’s get you home.”

The trip to her apartment passed quickly enough. Blessedly, Shae had grabbed her keys and her cell phone and stowed them in the engine before Seventeen had left on the call, and Capelli walked her from the elevator to her door—twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four steps—and waited for her to free the deadbolt with a turn of her wrist.

“I need to take a shower,” she said, looking down at her sweat damp RFD T-shirt and sweatpants without chagrin. “Can you…” Her green eyes closed, just briefly. “Can you wait for me?”

It occurred to him in that second that for all her fierceness, Shae was still afraid. Exposed. Able to be shaken, and his answer was all instinct, out before his brain and lips knew it would form.

“Of course.”

Her thank you came by way of a smile that should have been simple, but instead, it was everything. She disappeared down the hallway, followed by the quiet yet definite rush of running water and the passing of time, and Christ, he shouldn’t be here. Shae was naked, vulnerable, less than twenty-five feet away in her shower, the same way she had been when Vaughn had broken in. The thought made something dark and sharp snap free in Capelli’s gut, and his hands cranked to fists so tight, his knuckles throbbed.

He wanted to kill Vaughn for what he’d done. He didn’t want to think twice. Didn’t want to ask smart, logical questions. Just wanted to put his fingers around the motherfucker’s neck and squeeze the life right out of him, to crush tissue and steal air and snap bones even though he knew it was deeply wrong.

And didn’t that just make him the man he’d been trying to hide for the last eight years.

Shae appeared in the entryway to the living room a few minutes later, her hair loose and damp over the shoulders of her bathrobe, and Capelli’s composure slipped by yet another degree.

“Do you want to talk about this?” she asked. His defenses lined up a logical answer, one that involved phrases like I should let you rest and I’ll just be on my way. But his legs—Christ, his stupid, mutinous legs—moved toward her like a magnet, his pulse joining the conspiracy by knocking faster at his throat.

“No.”

“Do you want to go home?”

“No.” Capelli took another step toward her, close enough to smell the citrusy scent of her shampoo and see the flash of gold at the ends of her sand-colored lashes. He wanted her so much he was dizzy with it, wild with it, absolutely fucking consumed by it, and his calm fractured like a hairline split along fragile glass. “I don’t want to talk, and I don’t want to go home.”

Shae’s eyes widened, but she remained unmoving, her voice perfectly level as she asked, “Do you want to tell me what you do want?”

“You, Shae. I want you.”

And just like that, his composure shattered.

Capelli rushed forward, slanting his mouth over hers as their bodies crashed together. He devoured her mouth in greedy kisses, hooking his fingers in her hair and tightening them—ah, God, yes—to hold her close. The deep strokes of his tongue were far from gentle, the dark, primal need fueling them even less so, but he couldn’t stop. Hell, he wanted Shae so thoroughly, he couldn’t even think, couldn’t hold back or hide.

But then there she was, kissing him back just as desperately and digging her hands into his hair just as hard, matching his movements as if she needed him with the same brand of intensity, and Capelli’s instinct flared. The urge to strip her naked and see every inch of her, to be certain she was unharmed, roared up from behind his sternum, and he slid his fingers to the edges of the thick cotton crisscrossed over her heart.

“Take this off.” He shoved the material aside without waiting for a response. His cock stiffened as he realized the reason her robe had fallen to the floor with so little effort was because Shae had reached down to loosen the belt before he’d even been done telling her to undress.

She stepped out of the light blue cotton pooled at her feet, completely and beautifully

bare in the light spilling through the living room. The firm, lean muscles of her shoulders gave way to the plane of her chest, the swell of her breasts forming a generous curve on either side of her body. The soft, blush-pink of her nipples juxtaposed the firmness of the tightly beaded points, but then again, it was just like Shae to be sweet and full of sin, all at once. A bruise was starting to form on her rib cage, still just a shadow hiding beneath her skin, and Capelli’s breath slid between his teeth in a hiss.

Her chin snapped up. Realization burned in her eyes, sudden and hot. “It happens from time to time at fire scenes. I’m fine, Capelli.”

He looked at the bruise, the shape and size of it instantly stamped in his memory. He’d thought she was dead. He’d thought—

“I’m not fine,” he said.

But instead of filling with concern, her eyes flashed with pure, uncut certainty. “You need to see it, right?”

“What?”

The question shocked him into stillness on the floorboards in front of her, but God, she didn’t hesitate.

“That’s the way your mind works, isn’t it?” Reaching up, Shae brushed her fingers over his temple, the move oddly reverent given the flush of desire that colored her naked body, and Capelli wouldn’t have been able to rip his gaze from her if his ability to breathe depended on it.

She closed the space between their bodies just shy of actual touch. “If you see something happen, you’ll remember it in detail. You’ll know it’s true, and you’ll never forget it.”

“Yes,” he said, his voice caught in the no-man’s-land between a whisper and a growl.

“Well, if that’s what you need to know that I’m here and I’m okay”—her fingers skimmed a path from his face to the tip of his chin, coming to a rest directly over his slamming heart—“if it’s what you need to be okay, then take it. Fuck me any way you want. Just make sure you watch.”

The last scraps of Capelli’s composure disappeared as if they’d never existed. He yanked at his clothing, his shirt flying over his head and to the floor beside them in one swift movement, his boots and jeans and boxers following suit. Pausing for only the briefest of seconds to grab a condom from his wallet, he placed it on the coffee table before turning back toward Shae, walking her to the end of the couch and angling her ass against the well-cushioned armrest.

“Look at you,” he said. He’d never had to try to memorize anything in his life. But right now, with this woman standing in front of him, bold and unabashedly naked and brimming with trust, he made sure to catalogue everything. Like it was a movie rolling out in his mind’s eye, Capelli saw her peach-colored mouth part, her breasts flushing with desire as his eyes raked over them and lingered. His cock—already hard as a rail against the lower part of his belly—jerked in encouragement, and there was no holding back his moan as he pressed forward to taste one nipple with a hard swirl of his tongue.

“Ah.” Shae’s cry melted into his sharp exhale. With his eyes wide open, he wrapped one arm around her rib cage below her shoulder blades, cupping her breast with his opposite hand while keeping his attention on her nipple. Focusing on the rapid-fire flutter of the pulse point at the base of her neck, Capelli learned the topography of her body with his lips and teeth and tongue. He watched her pulse leap when he licked softly, and he saw the hitch of her chest when he abandoned lighter touches in favor of ones filled with dirty purpose. He watched Shae’s nipple darken and grow slick from his ministrations, his brain greedily taking in her lust-blown pupils and the arch of her back as she wordlessly begged for more. And even though he knew, in the very far-off place that housed what had once been his decency, that he should slow down to regain the control he’d clung to for the last eight years of his life, he didn’t.

Instead, Capelli did what Shae had told him to do.

“You want me to see everything, right?” he asked, and there was no hesitation in her nod.

“Yes.”

“Good, because I want to watch you come before I fuck you. I want to see exactly what you look like when I make you scream.”

Grabbing the condom from the coffee table, he tore open the package and rolled it into place even though each touch made his cock ache with equal parts pleasure and pain. He shifted back to the spot where Shae stood, coaxing her up to the arm of the couch with little more than a press of his palms. Her spine bowed as she arched up to kiss him, and he instinctively stepped toward the cradle of her hips at the same time her thighs parted to allow him access.

“You’re a work of goddamn art, you know that?” Capelli asked, and oh, how he meant it. Christ, she was perfect, so passionate and fierce. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful too,” Shae said, the words vibrating against the sensitive skin of his lips.

Unable to cage it, he laughed, even though the sound held little joy.

She heard plenty, though. “You still don’t believe me?” she asked, widening her thighs in invitation. “Let me show you. Watch while you make me come. Watch how beautiful you are.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. Reaching down, he gripped his cock and slid it over the seam of her sex. But rather than burying himself in the sweet heat of her pussy the way his instinct screamed at him to, he stayed where he was, with his length notched where she seemed to need it the most.

“Oh, God. Capelli, please don’t stop.”

Shae thrust against him, testing every bit of his fortitude. But he let her, dropping his stare to the spot where the length of his cock slid up and down over her clit, and good Christ, he’d never seen anything so perfect in his life than this woman working him with her body.

“I won’t stop, baby.” His words were all promise. Affirmation. Oath. “Let me see. Let me see what you need.”

She did. Bracing one hand on the arm of the couch beside her and the other on his shoulder, Shae anchored him in place. Canting her hips against his, she rocked again and again, the hard knot of her clit rising and falling against his dick until the tension in her body began to break.

“Oh God. Oh God,” she swore.

To Capelli’s ears, it was all benediction. “There. There you are. Show me.”

She thrust again, one last time before she started to shake. Blood rushed in Capelli’s ears, and the sight of Shae’s face, so completely caught up in the pleasure of her orgasm, branded itself into his memory for just a split second before his instincts took over. Shifting back, he grabbed her hips, turning her roughly and burying himself between her legs before she’d even stopped trembling.

“Oh…” The noise that crossed his lips was more moan than word. Sensations crashed through him like a tidal wave—her soft skin beneath the bite of his fingers, the sweet yet insanely erotic pressure of her slick inner muscles, gripping him hard with the force of her continued release. Capelli dropped his chin, focusing on the spot where his cock disappeared inside Shae’s body, and something primal unraveled in his chest, commanding him to move. He edged her feet a little farther apart on the floorboards, testing her body with a shallow slide of his cock, out an inch, then right back home.

“Fuck.” The word came from her mouth, not his. But he loved the pared-down sound of it, the way she wielded it with the power of what she was feeling and what she so clearly wanted.

So Capelli gave it to her. “You like this,” he said, pulling out of her pussy a little farther this time before removing all the space between his hips and the provocative swell of her ass.

Although her moan was answer enough, Shae whispered a “yes” anyway. His position behind her gave him the perfect vantage point to watch, and as he started to move, he captured everything. The fall of her hair over her back. The flare of her hips. The flex and pull of the muscles where her leg tapered up to the sugar-sweet curve of her ass. With each thrust, he took everything Shae had wanted him to see, every last part of her wide-open and willing and unequivocally his for the taking.

“Capelli.” Her voice was thick and loaded with need. Arching her back, she slid her feet wider, exposing the cleft of her ass. His heart beat so fast that he was nearly dizzy, but he didn’t care. His physiology was nothing compared to how badly he wanted her.

He moved one hand from her hip to the base of her spine, watching his fingers trail over her skin as he continued to fuck her from behind. Fanning his fingers over that deep, wicked curve of her lower back that he’d loved since he’d first glimpsed it in the grocery store, he skimmed his thumb lower over her ass until he found the tight ring of muscle hidden there. Capelli pressed, not hard enough to gain entry, but with just enough pressure to heighten the pleasure of it.

Shae gasped, not in surprise, but something darker. “Please,” she whispered. “You want to see what I need? I need you.”

She looked at him over one shoulder, and Christ, she was perfect.

“I need you, Capelli. Let go and come for me.”

The words made his balls tighten in dark, dirty pleasure. But they also made something break free deep in his chest, something warm and good that said I have you, and the feel of it shoved him right over the edge. He thrust into the heat of her, over and over, filling her fully each time. Release built, fast and hot between his hips, but there was no drawing it out or holding back. He fucked Shae in deep, hard strokes, his thumb pressing again until she cried out in bliss. Her orgasm squeezed his cock, and the sensation, the sight of her body that went with it, was too much. Capelli’s climax rushed at him from every direction, wringing a shout from his chest as he went bowstring tight on one final thrust. Pleasure flew apart beneath his skin and stole his breath, but still, he never took his eyes off Shae.

And in that moment, with her name on his lips and the image of her fierce, flawless face tattooed in his memory, Capelli knew he was in trouble.

Because not only was he falling for Shae, but he didn’t want to do a damned thing to stop it.