Then life had happened, as had five months of the police academy and another eighteen weeks of field training. While that night hadn’t been far from her mind during her training, there was a good reason that guy was at the forefront of her thoughts now.
Bedroom eyes stood at the front of the room behind a long table, addressing a group of ten police officers sitting in rows in front of him.
Maddox Hunt. Police lieutenant. Total badass.
From what she’d learned recently, he was also the resident heartbreaker. Or so she’d been told by her best friend, Emilia when she’d started in the west. Once Emilia had seen Joss drooling over Maddox, she’d said not to expect much in the way of getting a date out of him. Apparently, there’d been whispers around the station that Maddox liked his sex kinky and his relationships fleeting. But a guy with serious commitment issues didn’t deter Joss—it sealed the deal. Then and now.
A relationship had been the last thing on her mind at the nightclub. Even a year later, she wasn’t looking for anything long-term. She’d given six long years to Nick the prick, who’d then broken up with her after he found a better life in New York City. The blow had stung. She’d been hurt, devastated over the breakup. Nick had been her life for a big chunk of her high school years and during university, too. Most of all, she’d been angry with herself. When had she lost her backbone? Where had her voice gone? When he’d broken up with her, she’d sobbed like her life was over. Barf!
Never again.
Never again would she be that quiet woman who didn’t think of her feelings first. Never again would she stay silent and not speak up for the life she wanted. Never again would she settle for a man who didn’t touch her with the passion she deserved.
Leaning back in her seat, watching Maddox addressing the group, she remembered that she’d woken up the morning after the nightclub incident without a single bit of remorse. Even now, she didn’t regret a damn thing. The filthy, dirty sex he’d given her that night had been all she was after.
Still, though, even after seven days of working for the Seattle Police Department, she had a hard time accepting that he was her lieutenant. When she’d been offered the job with the Seattle PD in the west precinct under the command of Eric Dalton, the police chief and a close family friend, she hadn’t even considered that her one-night stand might be her superior.
Somehow, that meant she had to forget that everything Maddox did screamed sex. The way he moved like a tiger ready to pounce. The way he spoke, low and confidently. How his intense eyes watched her sometimes. It had only been one week of them working together, and already she couldn’t take any more. Hell, her deprived vagina was silently weeping.
“You really have got to stop looking at him like that,” Emilia whispered, dragging Joss’s attention to her.
Joss leaned to the side. Coming closer to Emilia, she whispered, “It’s near impossible when he looks like that. Couldn’t he have gotten…I don’t know…uglier in the past year? Seriously, I think he looks better than I even remember him looking before.”
Emilia laughed quietly.
She knew Joss inside and out, and she’d listened to Joss endlessly gush about Maddox for the days following the one-night stand before the police academy had taken over their lives.
Emilia was two years older, with warm, hazel eyes and honey-colored hair that she usually wore in a bun—mostly because the job required it. They’d met five years ago because Nick was best friends with Troy, the guy Emilia had been dating and who she’d ultimately married.
“You also had three martinis the night you two defaced the bathroom,” Emilia said with a sassy smile. “Maybe your head was a little fuzzy?”
“We may have christened the bathroom, but there was no defacing,” Joss defended.
Emilia snickered, a hand over her mouth. “Maybe, but regardless, you’re right. That guy…” She glanced toward Maddox standing at the front of the room and stared a little dreamily at him. “He’s seriously hot. And if I weren’t married, I would be so jealous that you got to touch him.” She looked sideways at Joss, a sly smile crossing her face. “Okay, maybe I am a little jealous. But protocol is a finicky bitch, and that sexy beast is now your superior, so stop looking like you want to eat him.”
“I don’t want to eat him.” Joss looked from left to right, glad no one sat anywhere near them. Most of her fellow rookies sat as close as they could get to Maddox. Not her. She didn’t want to smell his woodsy cologne and feel all that sexiness wafting off him. “I only want to lick him and claim him as mine.”