“Go,” Blake snarled, sending Pember skittering backwards. The thread of desire pulled tight, almost yanking Pember back. “Go, omega!”
So Pember did, stumbling back towards the police station and leaving Blake behind him.
CHAPTER 15
BODICE RIPPER
Pember
Comparingthe colour of Pember’s face to beetroot would have been the understatement of the century. Even wearing a blue face mask and pulling the collar of his lab coat up could do little to contain it. His toes still tingled, and his stomach muscles ached from the sudden, shuddering shift.
Pure adrenaline had allowed him to tear his way out of the woods and back to the police station; whether it was fear or something else, he couldn’t be sure.
“Alright?”
Pember jumped as Maya strode over, her black pumps squeaking on the plastic floor. She bumped his shoulder, staring at him until he looked up from the microscope.
“Yep,” he replied, readjusting his face mask.
The microscope was just for show. Sure, he’d placed a sample slide under the light, but his mind was racing so badly he may as well have been looking at microscopic space rockets firing lasers at one another.
The silence between them stretched, and stretched, andstretcheduntil Maya finally dipped her head and sniffed his neck.
“You smell weird.”
“No, I don’t,” he replied,waytoo quickly.
“Yes, you do. Like… death. And sex? You haven’t been shagging any corpses at the morgue, have you?”
Pember snorted. “That’ll be ano.”
Bumping him with her hip, she said, “You coming into heat or something?”
“I…er… I changed my medication recently. That’s probably it.”
Yep, yep, yep, that was most definitely it, and not because of the six foot something alpha I just left in the woods.
“If you say so,” Maya said, and began typing on a nearby computer. “I got the results for the rape victim’s samples, by the way.”
Pember looked up. “Oh yeah? Anything?”
Maya nodded, running her tongue over her teeth. “Yeah. There were five separate seminal profiles. Not four, like the victim originally thought.”
“How awful,” he replied, swallowing thickly and stepping away from the microscope. “Poor guy.”
“Mhm. We’re running the samples for DNA next week. Falkington probably have their results by now, but we’re doing ours for continuity.” Maya rubbed her eyes, yawning into the crook of her elbow.
“Why next week?” he said.
Maya held out both hands, tipping her head with a lopsided smile. “Isn’t it obvious? The murder takes priority.”
Pember sighed, the pang of guilt from their previous conversation making a return. “That’s shit.”
“Right? But in a toss-up between five rapists and a murderer… who do you think the alphas in Major Crime have more interest in?”
“That sounds like the beginning of a very bad joke,” Pember snorted behind his hand.
Maya grinned. “Yeah, I don’t think I’d want to be walking into that particular bar.”
