Page 11 of Dirty Sweet Cop

“Yes,” I say. But it doesn’t sound convincing, even to me.

She leaves her card. Tells me to call if anything changes. The door closes behind her and I stand in the hallway for a full minute, arms wrapped around myself, feeling the weight of outside judgment settle over me like a cold blanket.

Clayton comes home tense.

I can read his moods by now. The set of his shoulders. The way he hangs his keys—too carefully, too controlled—on the hook by the door. The quiet efficiency with which he checks the security system, the cameras, the locks. Cop habits. But tonight there’s an edge. Something simmering underneath.

“Rough day?” I ask from the kitchen, where I’m pretending to make dinner but really just stirring pasta I’ve already overcooked.

“Mm.” He doesn’t elaborate.

I find out why an hour later, when his phone rings and he steps onto the back porch to take it. The windows are open. I shouldn’t eavesdrop. I do.

“...aware of how it looks, Holloway.” A man’s voice. His captain, I’m guessing. “...moving a victim into your house. Eighteen years old, for Christ’s sake. The social worker’s report is going to⁠—”

“I don’t give a fuck how it looks.” Clayton’s voice, low and dangerous. “She’s safe. She’s cared for. That’s the end of the discussion.”

“...department gossip is⁠—”

“Let them talk.”

The call ends. Clayton stays on the porch. I watch him through the window—big shoulders silhouetted against the fading light, one hand braced against the railing, head bowed like he’s carrying something heavy.

I should leave it alone. I don’t.

“Clayton.”

He turns. Sees me in the doorway. Something in his expression shifts—the controlled mask slipping, revealing something raw underneath. Hungry. Desperate.

“Come here,” he says.

Not a question. Never a question with him.

I cross the porch. He meets me halfway. His hands find my waist, lift me, and my back hits the front door—we’ve moved inside without me noticing—and his mouth is on mine and his hands are everywhere and he’s not gentle. Not tonight.

He tears my leggings. Doesn’t bother taking them off, just rips them at the seam and pushes the fabric aside. His cock is already hard, straining against his jeans, and he frees himself with one rough hand and pushes into me with no preamble, no foreplay, just the wet, hot slide of him filling me in one thrust that makes us both gasp.

“Fuck,” he growls against my neck. “Fuck, you’re perfect. Taking my cock so good. My good girl. My perfect fucking girl.”

He fucks me hard against the door. Each thrust drives the wood into my back, rattles the frame. His hand is in my hair, pulling, controlling the angle of my mouth so he can kiss me deeper, harder, his tongue claiming mine the way his cock is claiming my body.

“They can talk,” he says between thrusts, his voice wrecked, filthy. “Let them fucking talk. You’re mine. This pussy is mine. This body. This heart. Mine.”

I come with his name on my lips, my inner walls clenching around him, and he follows with a groan that sounds like it’s been torn out of him, pulsing deep, filling me, his forehead pressed to mine and his breath hot on my face.

We stay there. Connected. Breathing. The door creaking softly with our weight.

That’s when it crashes.

I push at his chest. He lets me go, steps back, and I slide down the door to sit on the hallway floor, my torn leggings around my thighs, his come leaking between them, and something ugly and scared rises in my throat.

“You’re using me.” The words come out before I can stop them. “You moved a broken girl into your house and you’re fixing her and fucking her and calling it love but it’s not, it’s just—it’s just that you can’t stand anything that’s damaged staying damaged. I was a project. A wounded bird. And you’re the man who picks up broken things and makes them whole and then can’t let them go.”

He goes very still. His eyes—those dark, hungry eyes—fix on my face with an intensity that should terrify me. It doesn’t. It just makes the hollow in my chest wider.

“Is that what you think?” His voice is quiet. Controlled. The way it gets when he’s holding back something volcanic.

“What else am I supposed to think? You found me crying in a corner. I had no one. Nothing. And you swooped in and⁠—”