A DETECTIVE AND A CRIMINAL

ELIJAH STONE POV

“I’ll make you a deal,” He tells me, leveling me with a cocky gaze. He knows it’s getting to me, I try to hide it, maybe he sees right through me, or he’s incredibly self centered, my guess is the second, or maybe I desperately hope it’s the second.

“Take these handcuffs off and i will kiss you so hard you’d beg me to touch you.”

Heat rushes between my legs, pressing against the fabric of my briefs. I shift where I stand, jaw tightening.

 He grins like he knows, like he is daring me to fall apart first. I cannot fall apart. I cannot lose control.

 I am a detective, he’s the criminal.

 If I screw this up, it’s not just my pride on the line, it’s the case, and everything else.

 No matter how his brown eyes that looked like he was always in a constant state of being half asleep, half awake, makes me feel… no, I shouldn’t feel this way about another man, simple.

 Mave–– a fellow detective–– scoffs from beside me, and I pull my eyes away from the man I put behind bars, and instead focus on what I got from searching him. A lot of receipts, elastic bands–– I look up at him, his hair is tied on top of his head in a man bun, it looked so soft and… I swallow, looking back at the items from his pockets, mostly useless stuff, it nags at me.

 “A stalker and an ass licker?”

I wince at the words, they aren’t directed at me, still they could have been missiles, I am not an ass licker, yet it felt like the words pierced through my skin.

“You don’t have to worry, I don’t want to lick your crusty ass, it’s his I want, the tall one with the blond hair.”

Nobody has to tell me who he was talking about, in a team of five, just one person is blond, and the one person is me, yet I don’t acknowledge him, I keep my eyes pined on the his ID like it’s a lifeline. Jesse Harding.

In the photo on his ID, his hair slightly shorter, eyes just as lazy, just as sexy, they stare at me with a knowing look in them, even from the plastic… I catch myself, passing the ID to Jake to run a check on him.

 “Too bad for you then, Stone has a girlfriend, also not an ass licker.”

I should stop them from discussing me like I am not here, I should say something and break whatever it is going on here… but I can’t wrap my head around it, my life as I know it has been spiraling before my eyes for more than half an hour.

 “Then why did he grab my dick like that earlier?”

That pulls me straight into the conversation, I look up to find Jesse, if that’s his real name, smirking at me, his tongue running along his teeth. I can’t believe I find that hot.

 “I was searching you, I didn’t mean to touch your…” I swallow, the feeling of him still a ghost in my hand, it was really an accident, I didn’t mean to, but my hand dipped, cupping him and I may have rubbed on him? I can’t even remember clearly. What I do remember is the weight of him in my hand.

 I shake my head, breathing hard. What the hell is wrong with me?

I’m on my feet before I realize it, chair scraping back behind me. I push open the door and step into the night. Cool night air hits me like a slap, but it does nothing to ease the pressure below my belt.

 That started the second I pulled his hoodie off, saw that smirk, that wink.

Jesus.

I lean against the railing, taking deep breaths, eyes shut, hoping the cold would kill the heat crawling up my spine.

“Get it together, you have a beautiful, hot, amazing girlfriend waiting for you back home…” Even as I whisper the words to myself I feel sick to my stomach. Viv… the guys agree that being the leader of the team didn’t give me as much respect as being Viv’s boyfriend did.

 Taking deep breaths, I prepare myself to question the man. My head is a mess–– too little sleep, too much stress. That’s all this is. Just stress. Not him. Not a man. .

 By the time I return inside, his eyes follow me, I look away but I feel them, I can also feel him teasing me, too bad, he chose the wrong person to tease, nothing has ever come between myself and a job.

 “The ID is real, a high school graduate, works as a free lance art curator, no priors, maybe wrong place, wrong time?” Jake asks watching me. Jake is the quiet, smart kid of this team, he for some reason looks up to me and while this might appeal to others, it makes my stomach clench.

 “The ‘day’ is almost here, we have to eliminate every possibility before we can dismiss it as a coincidence.” I tell him, leaning over Jake’s computer and looking through Jesse’s records myself, this time I avoid looking at his picture. He grew up in a small town far south, and after high school he hasn’t gone back, I wonder why. No college attended as well.

 “Free lance art curator, is that an actual thing?” I ask, still reading.

Jake makes a small noise at the back of his throat, adding no comment.

 Finding nothing else suspicious, I let myself into the holding, where he would be questioned. The team never really had a reason to make arrests, so we don’t really have any questioning rooms.

 Jesse beams when I walk in, looking more at home than a prisoner in his baggy jeans, relaxing against the wall. He is taller than me by at least 10cm, bigger too, and suddenly I wanted to know how it would feel if we were pressed against each other.

 I halt right there, leaving the distance between us, it was dangerous to go closer. I swallow, mind whirring, trying to remember all of my training.

 And me, who graduated top of my class, genius and gem of the academy, pride of every alumni, cannot remember any single thing from training.

 Actually, I cannot remember anything. My mind is blank.

 “So pretty boy, what do you want to know?”

“Pretty boy?” I choke out. I hope everyone else is busy, and disinterested in what is going on in here. Jesse on the other hand, he grins, he knows the effects he has on me, I am losing my grip on the power toggle going on.

 I would lose to him if he saw how much he is affecting me––later, I would dissect why–– now? I have to take back the reins.

 “Would you rather I call you haloed sin?”

Now I am gaping, mouth closing and opening like a fish out of water. What is this? What’s going on? Why did it make me feel good? Why do I want to know what other nicknames he could come up with for me?

 He shrugs, loving this,

 “Give me five minutes, pretty boy, I’ll have a nickname that makes you blush.”

 I shake my head. Nope, I don’t want to know why he was answering my unasked question, I have to stop him.

“Did you know whose house it was, when I found you hovering around it?” I go straight to the point, ignoring the handbook guide that says we have to start the interrogation with bringing them over to our side.

 Jesse is not a normal assailant.

 “Everyone knows it’s the Prime Minister’s house.” he says with an exaggerated eye roll, my stomach curls in on itself at the sight.

Blinking and swallowing, I look past his head, at the wall behind him, I could do it, I just had to avoid looking at his eyes, his hair, his height, his body, his voice, him.

 Or maybe this interview was never going to go as planned.