Seth stripped off his workout clothes and stepped into a steamy shower. He sighed when the hot water pelted his back and shoulders. He tilted his head back to let the stream rush through his hair. He rubbed the bar of soap between his hands and began working the suds down his aching, energized body. The endorphins from his workout were still coursing through his veins, combining with the soothing heat of the water to create a heavenly experience. As he turned and tilted his face into the water, he closed his eyes.
Immediately, he was looking at her.
Gentry. The woman with the angelic voice and the long brown hair. Swaying under the fuzzy white stage lights in her blue dress, looking like every star had aligned to make her glow.
He opened his eyes again. “Damn it,” he murmured.
Seth could not get her out of his head. She had appeared in his dreams last night, enchanting him even as he slept. His body grew warm at the sight of her. He didn’t want to blink and miss a second of her magic. She stirred something within him that had been sleeping a long time. And something else, too.
He groaned as his hand wandered down his slick, sudsy body. His fingers slowly slid around his cock and it twitched in his hand, growing harder. He thought about her. Those dark doe eyes fringed with long, thick lashes. Her full, red lips with the perfect cupid’s bow. The way her hair spilled over her bare shoulders and drew his eye downward to her cleavage. He imagined what her breasts must have looked like underneath that dress. When she shifted in the right light, he could see the delicate outline of her nipples, perky under the silky fabric. If her nipples were stiffening to peaks, he could only imagine what was happening between her thighs.
He began to stroke himself slowly, up and down, trying to hold back. He hardly knew the woman; it was not appropriate for him to think about her like this. About her shy smile and the way she bit her lip when she looked at him. About what it would feel like to run his hands down her back and grab that bouncy, perfect ass.
“Stop,” Seth whispered gruffly to himself.
He pulled his hand back and turned around to reach for the tap. He turned down the heat and gritted his teeth as cold water hit his back. He hurried through the rest of his shower routine with goosebumps, then hopped out to dry off and get dressed for work.
But even as he climbed into his car and headed across town, his mind kept circling back to Gentry. The sun was shining, the city of Miami was coming to life, and Seth kept wondering what she was doing right now. Where was she? Who was she with? Or was she alone?
“Snap out of it, man,” he grumbled to himself as he pulled up to the station.
He needed his mind clear for a day of police work.
And besides… he planned on seeing Gentry again tonight.
6
Lincoln
Within the beige walls of the Miami-Dade Police Department, the typical soundtrack was playing. There was the persistent clacking of fingers typing away endless reports and emails. A constant wave of soft chatter permeated the station, from casual small talk in the break room to neat, formal questions and answers. There were always at least two or three phones ringing at the same time, with countless other lines picked up already. Muffled, one-sided discussions beat out alongside the scratch of pencil on paper, the crinkle of Post-it notes balled and tossed across a cubicle into a wastebasket. The ever-present echo of footsteps on hard laminate combined with the mechanical whir of printers and scanners.
In the middle of all this action was Linc, dressed in his everyday uniform of black pants, beige shirt, black shoes, and assorted badges. He was sitting back in his black roller chair with his dark eyes narrowed and fixed on the computer screen in front of him. One hand rested on the mouse, and the other gently tapped a pencil under the desk, softly enough that no one else could hear. But if they could have listened to it, they might have noticed a repetitive rhythm to his tapping.
Linc had a song stuck in his head. In fact, he had an entire evening stuck in his head. Every now and then, he even tapped that pencil against his temple, as though he could gently shoo away his circular thoughts. Not that anyone around him had any idea where his mind was. He looked for all the world like he was concentrating on some deep, dark, morbid case. Running the details of a murder scene or processing a criminal’s narrative.
But instead, his mind was full of bright stage lights.
He could see her so vividly in front of him, like he was transported back in time and space, across town to Miami Blues. He could hardly believe the twist of fate that had brought him to the same place as such an angel. Miami was a huge, densely populated city. Linc rarely drank, and therefore rarely patronized locations like the blues club. He didn’t want to be the sober guy dealing with a bunch of tipsy friends. And even though there was a time in his life when he would have described himself as a lover of live music, that simply wasn’t his life anymore. Besides, most bars didn’t play the kind of music he enjoyed.
Last night, he had discovered something different. Something just around the corner from him, and yet seemingly from some other mystical universe at the same time. Before he had even seen the girl herself, her voice had reached out to him. That soulful soprano weaving through the notes of a song that he had heard before, but never truly listened to until he heardhersing it. That old crooner tune became a siren’s song that beckoned to him, and once he saw the siren herself with her blue dress and her long brown hair, he knew he was caught. Marooned in the storm with only her voice and her face to guide him, but what else did he really need? In that moment, Linc had felt something awaken within him. A long-sleeping desire, one he had pushed down so deep he had started to believe it would never surface.
He reminded himself that he had consumed one beer last night. Sure, it was only one beer, and he’d nursed it over the course of an hour, but maybe it’d had some kind of unexpected effect on him. Maybe it was just that tiny taste of alcohol that made him ache for Gentry like a lovesick Romeo. Maybe it was the cause of the tingling warmth in his limbs, the flutter in his chest, the flash of hope when he looked at her. Or perhaps she was just a pretty girl with a beautiful voice, and Linc was a sucker for the blues.
He wondered if he would find out tonight, when he and Seth returned to Miami Blues as they had promised Gentry they would. His heart thumped hard. He couldn’t believe he was going to see her again. And so soon. He hadn’t even had time to figure out his feelings about their first meeting, much less prepare himself for whatever emotional journey he might have to go on when they met up again. What was it that drew him to her?
Whatever it was, Linc had to push it out of his mind for now.
Luckily, he didn’t have to wait long for a distraction. Everyone in the office was turning toward the front entrance, waving and smiling. Linc knew who was coming before he even saw the guy. He smiled as Seth came grinning into the room, high-fiving people as he made his way.
“Hey, bro! You get home okay last night?” joked one of the beat cops from the bachelor party the night before.
Seth snorted and nudged the guy in the ribs. “Me? I was stone-cold sober, buddy. You’re the one who had to get strapped into a cab like a kid in a car seat!” he teased.
“You happen to get that pretty bartender’s number by chance? She was all over us, right?” the beat cop asked.
“You think if I got her number I’d do her dirty by giving it to you?” Seth ribbed. “Come on, man. I respect women more than that.”
“Sure you do, loverboy,” the guy joked back.