Chapter Eight

Holy shit. Dex in cuffs. Her cuffs. And a hard-on the size of the goddamned state of Texas. And the abs of a twenty-something-year-old. He had a hell of a lot of nerve looking like that at his age. It was all ridiculously chiseled, and Amber wanted to touch him so badly. The sight of him was permanently burned into her mind, replaying over and over. He had a smattering of hair across his chest, dark with some silver shooting through it. She caught herself wondering if it were coarse and wiry, or soft and smooth. The trail leading down to his tight boxer briefs looked very happy indeed.

But that bulge. Holy hell, that bulge just looked delicious.

She was having hot flashes.

He had no business looking so freaking sexy this early in the morning.

Amber swiped a hand across her brow, determined to put him out of her mind, and stalked toward the deputy holding the clipboard in front of the tape.

Taking it from him, she said, “Get someone to tape off that man’s carport and set it up.” She pointed at the house Dex had said was his. “We’ll work there next. Witness says there was someone over there right before the explosion. Could be our shooter.”

Going over the clipboard, she filled in her name and information before letting herself under the tape. She walked over to the scene of the explosion, noting there were no cars in the carport; hopefully, no one was home and hurt.

Amber did her job and did it well. When it came to investigations, she was good at it. Working in a small-town police force had given her the experience of having to do everything herself. There wasn’t a whole lot of “that’s this department’s job” or “that’s that department’s job.” In Serendipity, it had all been her job along with four other deputies.

So she knew how to process a crime scene. It was lucky that she’d been assigned this call. When her supervisor had called and said the others were on the opposite side of town and she was closest, Amber jumped at the chance to prove herself better than paperwork.

She would process the shit out of this crime scene.

Amber spent the next twenty minutes taking pictures, then she gloved up and spent another two hours scouring the carport for anything to give any indication of who had done this. A police officer came and told her who the house belonged to, a Carson Mims, which meant nothing to her. But she wrote it in her notebook and filed it away in her brain for later as she got back to work on her scene.

Gabby showed up, coffee and a bag of pastries in hand.

“How’d you get on the scene so quick?” he asked around a mouthful of sweets.

Amber affected a nonchalant shrug, not wanting to give away the fact she had sped here from her house, about six blocks away, as soon as she’d heard the call. She’d been drinking her morning tea, just waiting for time to come into work, looking at all the boxes in her living room.

“I only live a few blocks away.” She sipped the coffee he passed her. He hadn’t figured out she didn’t really drink coffee, but she was thankful for the effort.

“I hate being the first on a scene. So much paperwork.” He looked around the neighborhood, eyes squinting at her car. “Who’s in the back of your car?”

“Dex Hollerman lives across the street, where the shot was fired from. I caught him sneaking around when I got here.” Attempting the professionalism she needed when speaking about Dex was harder than it seemed. Her voice wanted to go all breathy, but she managed to steel it. Gabby looked thoughtful.

“Well, that’s certainly an odd coincidence, but you don’t think he had anything to do with it, do you?”

Odd coincidence indeed. No, she didn’t. Not really. But the coincidences were a bit more than odd when she took into account the number of times he’d just bumped into her. Not that any of that was on the books, so she couldn’t really let Gabby know of her suspicions.

Besides, Gabby would just tell her she was making more work for herself. God, he needed to retire.

“Not really. At this point, though, he was hindering my securing of the scene, so I put him in my car to teach him a little lesson.”

Gabby’s chuckle was almost infectious. She knew it would be a downright belly-laugh if she told him Dex was in his underwear. Some part of her felt a little bit bad for him, though, and didn’t want him to be the butt of some inter-force joke.

“It’s a Carson Mims’ house. Ring any bells?”

Gabby took another bite of whatever he was eating, and it left an ever-widening ring of sugar around his lips. “Yeah, he’s on the City Council. Pretty outspoken about the traffic situation downtown. You ever get stuck in that? It’s a nightmare.”

“Hmm …” It must be random, then. She couldn’t imagine anyone blowing up things in Austin because of traffic. Still, it gave her something else to look at. As she turned around and saw Dex in her car, her thoughts jumped back to him.

Now that things had calmed down a little, and she was in the zone of work, Dex in her car wasn’t unhinging her anymore. The weather was nice, and her crime scene did need to be secured. But still, he needed to stop showing up while she was working. Maybe this would get that point across to him.

More members of the task force had shown up, and Gabby left to go get them coffee and pastries, not that anyone had asked. They all worked in a comfortable silence, even if the task force detective did question everything she had done when he got there before begrudgingly nodding his approval.

Then Amber went over to the house across the street. In the carport was one spent shell casing. Picking it up with the end of her pencil, she read the numbers .243 on the bottom. A deer rifle bullet. She placed a tent card on the spot where the bullet was and made a notation, taking pictures and documenting everything.

She’d learned that mistake the hard way and lost her first case because she’d gotten butterflies and started gathering willy-nilly. Now she was methodical as she went over Dex’s carport with a fine-toothed comb, noting the stacked locking cabinets, the SUV she’d seen him inside yesterday—washed to a gleaming shine—and the locked door into the side of his house. It was a middle-class house, a middle-class neighborhood, with no landscaping to speak of and a neatly mowed lawn. Non-descript. Neatly kept. Not even a fake rock to keep a house key in, which any law enforcement officer would never do. Those fake rocks all look the same, and everybody had one.

While she processed his house, the detective went over to question Dex. Amber watched from the corner of her eye as the detective laughed at Dex before settling in to take some notes. Apparently, he was buying Dex’s story. Amber wanted to hear it, but she couldn’t. Instead, she was doing her job. Thankfully, the detective came back over to her.

“Good job locking him in your car. If you hadn’t done that, he’d be all over this scene, helping. He can’t help himself.” Detective Chavez was the head of the task force, and Amber liked him well enough. “I left him in there, but I don’t think he had anything to do with this. I’ve known him a while.” His grin spoke volumes about the grief he’d probably already given Dex for ending up handcuffed in a cop car.

Chavez could say what he wanted, but Amber knew from experience that just because you worked with someone did not mean you knew them.

It was three hours after putting Dex in the car before she went back to him. Most of the other cops had left—it was just her, the arson investigator, and the poor sap stuck keeping the scene secure. It wasn’t that she’d forgotten about Dex, it was that she couldn’t think about him or she’d make herself crazy.

Because as much as she didn’t want it to be so, she really had a gut feeling he was connected to all this somehow.

Putting her game face on, Amber stalked back over to her car and leaned on the open window. He watched her with that sexy glint in his eyes, like it seemed he always did.

She’d managed to get his body out of her mind, but now she was looking at it again, and it slammed into her full-force. Chiseled abs, rock-hard chest, biceps for days, all that power scrunched up in the backseat of this car.

It made her warm inside, and she hated it.

“Okay. Tell me what you know. You didn’t tell Chavez about your assignment, did you?”

“Can you take the cuffs off?” His eyes twinkled, but he was pleading with her, trying to look pathetic, which he sort of did. A pang of sympathy hit her, and she acquiesced. A light sheen of sweat coated Dex’s chest and forehead, and she felt a little bad. It wasn’t super-hot, though, and he’d live.

“Okay, I’ll let you out. I’ll walk you home so you can put pants on. Then we’ll talk. Got it?” And maybe she would insist on a shirt. Yup. Definitely a shirt. At least the bulge in his boxer briefs had gone down.

He nodded, relief evident in his face. Amber opened the door and swung it wide so he could unfold his frame from the car. Dex stood and spun around for her to release the cuffs.

She ignored the muscles in his back, the large muscles on his slim hips that swelled to the taut globes of his ass, the underwear stretched so tightly over to be nearly see-through. Yup. She didn’t hardly look at that at all. The cuffs clicked loose, and his arms went up into a stretch as he turned, and Amber went stupid as all the muscles and ridiculously smooth looking skin took over her vision. A forty-something-year-old ex-cop had no right looking like he did.

She barely noticed his arms coming back down around her, gripping her shoulders as he spun her around and pinned her to the car. Amber let out a squeak of indignation as one of his hands sank into her bun at the base of her neck and the other went around her waist, pulling himself toward her.

Amber should have used some of her self-defense moves on him. She should have sounded an alarm, even though she was the one of last ones here. She should have at least protested somehow. But it all surprised her so much, and aligned perfectly with her wayward thoughts, that she wasn’t the least bit surprised it was happening.

Instead, she breathed deeply and savored the warmth of his hard body pressed up against hers, the cool car metal on her backside.

“Your car doesn’t smell like you yet,” he murmured as his eyes trekked across her face, landing on her lips.

“It’s not mine,” she responded stupidly. Why couldn’t she talk around this guy?

His eyes traveled down to her modestly buttoned uniform, making her feel practically naked. Whatever he imagined made his eyes darken to a dark blue and her insides started quaking.

“Your focus is sexy, Amber.” Her insides shivered at the way he said her name. “I’ve been making myself crazy watching you all morning.”

Her hands reflexively went to his chest, but she found her fingertips stroking his skin, rubbing over the coarse smattering of chest hair. It was coarse. That was good to know. One less thing to worry about while she wasn’t sleeping at night.

“I’m going to taste you now,” he muttered before he moved. He leaned down, and she found herself swimming in the impossible blue of his eyes. Or drowning, she couldn’t tell, but she didn’t care, either. Then his lips brushed against hers while his hands tangled in the bun at the base of her neck.

Sparks fired through her, starting in her belly and spreading through her chest until she felt like she was on fire. If all that happened with just the brush of his lips …

Oh, sweet Jesus …

Amber looked over his shoulder to find the rookie on his phone and the arson investigator squatting down, both had their backs to her. She couldn’t do this with Dex. But his massive hands were still tangled in her bun—which was about to give up the fight—and his erection was pressing against her thigh. Her hormones took a step forward to remind her exactly how long it had been since a man had held her like this.

Exactly never.

Amber pressed up on her toes and flattened her mouth against his, willing him to do this and do it now. Quick. While no one was looking. Yes. She lost her damn mind for a moment and forgot all the reasons she wasn’t going to do this, and it felt—

Fucking fantastic.

His tongue did things to her mouth that should have been illegal.

Amber pressed against him in a wanton display of lust. It had been so long since anybody had wanted her this way, had pursued her like Dex did, or had made any sort of moves on her, she was at a loss as to what the appropriate reactions were.

So she wound her hands around his neck, tangled her fingers in his hair, and held on for the ride.

Dex kept his hands in her hair while he plundered her mouth, but his pelvis pressed against hers. Deliciously. She felt his erection as he wedged it between her legs, right where she wanted it, notched as if they were made to go together. With a whimper, Amber pressed her legs together, trapping it between hers, which only made his attack more insistent.

When he broke the kiss, she realized what she was doing and tried to take a step back, but the car was still there.

He was breathing hard, but his words were clear. “Come back to my house with me.”

Clarity dawned on Amber like being doused with a bucket of cold water. “I think it’s best if we meet up at the station.”

“Over dinner,” he begged.

“Coffee,” she capitulated.

“Fine.” Dex kissed her again, a lingering yet way more chaste kiss than before. “Coffee this afternoon.”

Wordless, she pulled out her phone and handed it to him. “Do you need someone to bring keys to your house?”

“Yeah.” He punched in a bunch of things on her phone and handed it back to her. He was smirking at her, and the rookie assigned to the tape for another two hours was watching them. The young woman was practically drooling at Dex as if she’d never seen a hot guy before, and Amber felt an indescribable possessiveness that just pure pissed her off.

She was so not in control of this situation. Part of her was terrified of what would happen if her boss or IA found out she was seeing Dex everywhere and kissing him and stuff. Another part of her loved every minute of it.

As she watched him saunter across the street, still in his underwear, she murmured to herself, “I am in so much trouble.”