face heated despite the air-conditioned room. She had learned something. Marc Swain might easily qualify as the most infuriating, overconfident man she’d ever met, but he was an infuriating, overconfident man with the most impressive dick she’d ever wrapped her hand around.
Thank God he was going to some godforsaken county sheriff’s department rather than the Bluelick PD. Once they graduated, she’d never have to deal with his sly comments or impressive dick again.
Chapter Two
Marc Swain ran a hand over his wet hair, scattering water droplets on the gray vinyl tile floor as he made his way to the Commissioner’s Office in the Funderburk Building of the KDOCJ. A summons to report, mid-shower, in a near-to-last week of basic training could mean a lot of things. Right now, he feared it might mean dear old Dad had come out of nowhere and done something to fuck with his plans to embark on a post-military career with the County Sheriff’s Department. What exactly, he couldn’t guess, but Gerome Swain grifted and conned his way through life, and if dragging his only offspring into the latest scheme benefitted him in some way, Marc never doubted for a minute the man would do it and throw him to the wolves in the process. Family motto? Trust no one, least of all family.
Nerves or no, he paused at the commissioner’s assistant’s cubicle, rested an elbow on the elevated ledge, right next to the small vase of roses he recognized as fresh, and offered Brad a smile. Nodding to the vase, he said, “Based on the clues, I’m thinking someone had a good date with Steve the law student.”
Brad—newly single and ready to mingle—blushed. “We had a nice time, yes.”
“I’ll take that to mean you practiced safe sex. Don’t break that boy’s heart, y’hear?”
The blush deepened, but he replied with admirable sass. “I’m not the heartbreaker in this conversation, Swain. You win that crown, if Marcy Atwell can be believed.”
He’d taken Commander Atwell’s daughter out for a drink precisely once, at her insistence, and paid for five overpriced cosmos at her choice of the trendiest, most expensive bar in Richmond. He’d listened with the attention of a born observer as she—a twenty-eight-year-old woman—complained about how her father frightened away every man who showed interest in her. He’d refrained from pointing out that her drinking habits or spendthrift ways might have done the job all on their own. Then he’d taken her tipsy ass home and poured her into her apartment. Alone, as he had zero appetite for a one-night stand with a woman who’d drowned her capacity to consent somewhere in her second cosmo and to gracefully take no for an answer somewhere in her third. Interesting to learn she was casting herself as the misused one in their extremely brief association. Broken heart? More like wounded pride, but now he had a new reason to worry about this summons to the commander’s office.
He aimed innocent eyes at the dark-haired man. “Can’t believe everything you hear.”
Brad laughed. “Not out of her, no. Go on in.” He gestured to the closed office door. “They’re waiting for you.”
They? That sounded ominous. His stomach tightened at the prospect of the unknown. “Who’s ‘they’?”
Brad, however, knew who signed his paycheck. “They who want to see you,” he replied cryptically and tipped his head toward the office.
Marc combed his hand through his still-damp hair, pasted a no-worries smile on his face, and walked through the door. Inside the beige-and-glass room, Commander Atwell sat behind his modular desk of brushed nickel with faux beechwood finish. Sheriff Malone—his new boss—leaned against the window wall, his arms folded across the chest of his blue uniform shirt, looking like Tommy Lee Jones with a burly gray mustache. Bluelick Police Chief Shaun Buchanan sat in one of Atwell’s three guest chairs. Cool-as-ice, cock-torturingly sexy cadet Eden Brixton sat in another.
Naturally, she’d cut off his balls and staple them to the incident report if he ever called her sexy to her face, but that didn’t change the fact. She fascinated him. Not just her looks, though they factored. Yeah. He took her in from the top of her sleek, dark ponytail to the spit-shined tips of her black tactical boots. They definitely factored. All that smooth, brown skin he craved to touch. A long, agile body that had been straddling him last night in a particularly vivid dream.
Though it shocked the shit out of him, even her unapologetic ambition and single-minded commitment to her training appealed to