I cross the room and immediately, he sets the panel down and rocks back on his heels to look up at me. His eyes go straight to my face, checking.
"Was it bad?"
Crouching down in front of him, letting him wrap me up in his big arms and pull me close, I exhale.
"No, not that bad. Everyone thinks I’m being too hasty, that the suspension won’t stick. They don’t know that’s not why I’m leaving."
He kisses me on top of my head, one hand coming up to brush my hair back from my face, and I lean in and kiss him before he can ask me anything else.
He kisses me back. Slow at first, until I curl my hand around the back of his neck and don't let him pull away to ask the next question.
His hand at my hip tightens and somehow in the middle of it he gets his other arm around me and shifts so I am sitting across his thighs instead of curled up against him. I've pushed my hand into his hair, and I feel the heat of him against me through his shirt. His thumb traces the line of my jaw and then the side of my throat, and his mouth follows it down, and for a long minute all thoughts of the precinct just vanish entirely.
When he eventually lifts his head, his hand stays splayed against the small of my back.
"Tell me."
"They tried to talk me out of it. Said I should take the medical leave and ride it out. That between rescuing Ivy and bringing Amber home they know they can’t actually fire me, not for keeping a source confidential. It’d be a PR disaster." I rest my forehead against said confidential source and breathe him in. "I said no anyway."
Because there’s no way I can do my job and keep Beau’s, and every other shifter that I meet, secrets safe. Constantly lying tomy colleagues doesn’t sit well with me. And now that I know just how many shifters there are living among us, protecting them feels more important to me right now than anything else.
"And?"
I rest my palms on his chest and stare at my pale fingers resting against his impressive pecs.
"And they mentioned Dimitri. He got jumped in the yard last week. They had to move him to the medical wing. He’s singing like a canary, desperate to get a plea deal before Black can get rid of him permanently. Reckons he saw you there and shot you three times. That you have to be dead."
Beau is quiet for a beat. His hand on my back doesn't move.
"And?"
I scoff.
"They didn't seem surprised to hear you were there, but that you got shot? No way." I pause, His relief reaches me through the bond. "I didn't tell them anything, Beau."
His dark brown eyes lock with mine.
"I know."
He brings his hand up to the side of my face and looks at me, and the next thing I feel through him is the guilt, sitting underneath everything else he's holding for me. He has been carrying it since the day they suspended me for refusing to tell them exactly what happened at the warehouse.
And he is still carrying it now, no matter how many times we have this conversation.
"Stop that," I whisper, giving him another kiss just because I can.
He doesn't answer. His thumb moves across my cheekbone.
"I didn't quit because they made me, or because you made me," I say, “so frankly, Beau Lennox, you can put the guilt down whenever you're ready. I’m a big girl. I’ve made my choices and I’m happy with them. You wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t."
His mouth twitches.
He pulls me closer and kisses me again, deeper this time, his hand moving up under the hem of my jumper to splay across my not-so-flat stomach. When his thumb grazes the underside of my swollen breasts, I gasp, craving his touch.
Cradling me against him, Beau turns us and lays me down gently on the pale carpet, looming over me with a wicked smile on his face.
“You’re happy then?”
I roll my eyes. “You’re just fishing for compliments now, and I, for one, am not going to indulge this ego trip.”