Free Commanded by Stacey Kennedy

reminder of mortality. But tonight wasn’t about her, so she shoved those less-than-pleasing
     thoughts away as the couple vanished through the glass doors.
    After the doors whooshed shut, Sawyer finally said, “I want to kill him.”
    Chloe heard the battle between his desires and his morals in the coldness and hardness
     of his voice. “I’m starting to think that Travis deserves that fate.”
    Sawyer turned to her, the streetlamp above them highlighting one side of his face,
     leaving the other side in shadow. “Which would be fine if I wasn’t a cop and bound
     to uphold the law.”
    Chloe nudged his arm, giving a small smile to lighten the mood. “Well then, it’s good
     that you have someone working with you who, uh…”
    “Skirts the law?” he offered.
    “I don’t skirt the law,” she defended. “I stay perfectly within its parameters.”
    One brow arched at her.
    She laughed. “Okay, fine, I push against its limits. Is that better?”
    “It’s at least closer to the truth,” he said, very matter-of-factly. “Besides, pushing
     up against limits is something I can respect.” He drew in a long breath, seemingly
     controlling the rage within him. “Is Ashlyn all right?”
    “Yeah, she’s resting now,” Chloe replied. “Before she fell asleep, she said that a
     nurse had told her they did a rape kit, so I guess that’s good to have on file. But
     she also said not to say anything to your parents. She doesn’t want them to know.”
    “Not surprising,” Sawyer grumbled. “My mother would baby her, and I know Ash wouldn’t
     want that.” His mood altered, and the heavy darkness returned to the gorgeous man
     beside her. “How in the hell do you do this job?”
    Confused by his question, she said, “The same way you do this type of job.”
    “What you and I do is very different.” His haunted eyes met hers. “I don’t know the
     finer details of what happens behind a case. I also don’t know how the criminal affects
     the people he or she victimized. I get a list of charges against a person. Then I
     go and apprehend them, along with a team of men at my back. I don’t do this alone.
     You do.”
    She swallowed the emotion oddly shooting through her at his concern. “I do this job
     because it helps people. Sometimes that’s a wife who’s got a cheating husband, or
     a woman who’s being seduced by a man who plans to drain her bank account.”
    His eyes softened. “How do you stay so…
pure
?”
    “Pure?” She snorted. “You think I’m
pure
?”
    “I know you are.” His intense eyes searched hers for a long moment. “You have this
light
about you that’s unusual. I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. So tell
     me, how do you not allow all this shit to taint you?”
    She stared at him. Sawyer was such a contradiction—intense, yet sometimes gentle,
     too. “I don’t know how it doesn’t bother me. It just doesn’t.” She paused, considering
     his question more deeply. “Or I guess maybe it’s that I won’t let it.”
    Emotion passed over his face. “I hope you’ve been told, by somebody other than me,
     how amazing you are.”
    She blinked at the unexpected statement. He’d been bold in his physical attraction
     to her, yet this caring side was appealing. She’d never had a man take so much notice
     of what was inside her and liked what he saw there.
    For the first time since she’d met Sawyer, she didn’t fight this thing between them;
     she inhaled the warmth of it and let his affection spiral around her. Under his watchful
     regard, questions began swirling in her mind.
    Why am I refusing him?
Clearly on a physical level, they were attuned to each other.
    Does it really matter how long Josh and I have been broken up when the relationship
     actually ended a long time ago, just as Sawyer said?
    Why do I care how others perceive me when Sawyer seems to think the world of me?
    Things were different with Sawyer and amazing in a way she had thought