Free Bear This Heat (A BBW Shifter Romance) (Last of the Shapeshifters) by A.E. Grace

from her eyes, and parted the hair that was sticking to her forehead. She wiped her upper lip, felt it slick with beads of perspiration, and then wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, thinking for a moment that if her sweat rolled down into her eyes, she was going to smudge her mascara and eyeliner.
    Nearly half an hour passed and there was still no sign of Dylan. She tried to calculate how long it would take him, with long strides, to get here from where they had last spoke. Not more than thirty minutes, she should think, unless he took a break somewhere.
    Or unless he wasn’t coming.
    She decided that she would wait for an hour, and if he still didn’t turn up, she’d cruise around in blue five and look for him. Perhaps the superintendent was right. Maybe she should have just brought him in and sat on him for twenty-four hours to see what happened. Maybe the doctor would turn up with something.
    But she couldn’t help keep doubts from creeping into her mind, infiltrating her senses. What if she had been too eager to guess as to what Dylan Macready would do? What if the bait she’d laid wasn’t nearly so tempting as she’d thought it was? But she couldn’t shake the feeling that he would. She was not entirely convinced of Dylan’s guilt, but she knew he was connected to the whole thing. That was for certain. And the old adage about returning to the scene of the crime? That was truer than most people knew.
    Either way, he couldn’t have gone far. She knew if she needed to get him again she could just call it out on the radio and a uniform would pick him up. It felt odd to her that she was giving orders now. Just two days ago, she had been in a khaki-green uniform herself, with black boots and in a squad car that said in big red lettering ‘POLICE’ on the side.
    Now she was ducked down in an unmarked car that was like an oven, with a pair of binoculars, looking at the house where a possible murder was committed. She wasn’t sure if she had really moved up in the world. At least she was getting paid more. Being on the job and in uniform was lower-middle hell.
    But, when nearly forty minutes had passed, and Dylan still hadn’t turned up, she started wondering if she should pack it in. Sasha had always been the impulsive type. She trusted her instincts and believed in herself. She didn’t get to where she was today by playing it safe and not taking risks.
    She reached for her radio, pressed down on the transmit button and took a breath to speak, and then she saw him, Dylan Macready, walking down the other end of Lester Street. She let go of the transmit button, heard the radio give off its static buzz, and then she trained her binoculars on the man.
    He was walking slowly, staring at each house as he walked by, neck turned to the side so that a thick vein was visible, as well as the tendons that disappeared into his muscular shoulders. He obviously lived in the gym, and she pulled the binoculars down his body, for a moment forgetting that he was a potential murder suspect. He had a rockin’ bod. There was really no other way to put it.
    Gathering herself, she looked again at his face, saw that hard handsomeness, the polar opposite to the kind of pretty boys she had used to like when she was younger. She couldn’t deny it to herself. If she wasn’t investigating him, she would definitely be interested.
    And he had seemed interested in her, too, from the way he had looked at her, seemed to devour up her lines and curves, had smiled at her, first with curiosity, then with something akin to interest. She knew that she wasn’t particularly good at reading faces, and reading eyes, but he had definitely given off some vibes.
    Sasha chided herself or letting her mind wander. Through the binoculars, she could see that Dylan had spotted the yellow tape now, and he was making a beeline straight for Charlie Kinnear’s house. He looked genuinely surprised, as though he hadn’t expected such a large crime scene, or