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Standing up to injustice was always the right thing to do.

“I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you later if I have time.”

“Wait. You’re just gonna leave me in here?”

“Yeah.” He scoffed. “I am. Maybe you can use the time to think about how you’d like to conduct yourself in the future if Brady can get you out of this. And that’s a big if.”

“Fine,” I whined, but it felt really shitty to frustrate him like this. He had a lot going on in his life with grad school and running the center, and that was besides all the people at Ace’s House every day and all the fires he had to put out with them.

But did no one besides me care about the big jerking redneck across the street?!

When he was gone, Abey came back into the holding room. Seriously, the place was a dump. The two small cells were so old and weak, I probably could’ve pried the door open with my fingers. I didn’t though. It wouldn’t have earned me much goodwill with the Sheriff’s Department, with Theo, Red Graves, or Abey.

And… okay, fine. I didn’t want to make her mad or make her job harder either. She had kind of been all I could think about this past month. Her and her long fingers and her hot mouth and the way she looked up my body when she was between my legs, the heat in her eyes…

But the point was that we hadn’t really talked since then, not about what had happened between us or if we were going to do it again. Or if maybe we wanted to go out for dinner? Or… I had no idea. Something? Anything!

I just wanted to be around her when we didn’t have to talk about the illegal things I had done or when I wasn’t locked in handcuffs. Maybe it was why we hadn’t talked. Maybe her need to uphold justice was the thing that had kept us apart.

But crazy things happened to my body when I remembered that night. Heat and moisture welled between my legs, my nipples would harden to the point of pain, and if I wasn’t panting harder than a bear in a summer drought, then I wasn’t remembering it right. Like now, even though I was behind bars.

And she didn’t even try to make it easy on me. Her work shirt was unbuttoned because the sheriff’s station was like a sauna, and I could see the hint of her curved waist beneath her white tank top underneath. The flare of her hips was like a siren’s call, and even her worn work boots were sexy.

Ughhh.

My dirty mind went straight to imagining pushing under that tank top, lifting up to caress the undersides of her breasts while my tongue was in her mouth. God, her breasts. I bet she didn’t have any clue just how mouthwatering they were, and how sexy they looked, spread across her chest when she lay flat on her back for me on the floor, with my mouth between her?—

Gah! Snap out of it!

“Got yourself in a pickle this time, didn’t ya?” she said. She was trying to hold in a silent chuckle, but she hadn’t hid it very well.

I didn’t reply. What could I say that wouldn’t embarrass me further?

“Alright, well, the sheriff says I can release you on your own recognizance. You ain’t gonna run, are you?” She eyed me, narrowing her gorgeous, bright blue eyes in mock suspicion.

“No.”

“Good. Step back.”

I held my wrists together, like a prisoner in a maximum-security ward, and took two steps back from the door, waiting for the warden to cuff me for transport.

“Funny,” she said. She opened the door and hooked the cell keys to a clip on her belt. “You’re free to go. But Devo, stay away from Red. In fact, you might just go on home and hunker down there until you can talk to your lawyer.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine.”

Turning, she lifted my bag from the stainless-steel table behind her, then handed it to me.

I rolled my eyes again. I couldn’t help it! The smug smirk on her face irritated me to no end. I wanted to wipe it away with my lips. I swiped my stuff from her hands, trying with all my might not to remember how they’d felt on the insides of my thighs, when the tips of her fingers grazed my wrist.

When I turned away from her to get the hell out of the station and the mortifying situation I’d put myself in—again—she whispered, “I thought about you last night.”

I stopped in the doorway.

Wh-wh-what? By now, I’d figured my proclivity toward lawlessness had turned her way off.

“Yeah,” she said, “I think about that night a lot.”

“How nice for you.” I winced. That wasn’t at all what I wanted to say, but the fact that she wouldn’t do anything about Red was pissing me off more and more.