Page 39 of Taken from Her
Diana set down her equipment bag, suddenly aware of how the discovery had left her hands shaking. Three weeks of investigation, and they'd finally found proof of what had happened to women whose faces had haunted her dreams.
Diana looked at Lavender's hand on her arm, at the concern in her eyes, at the way filtered sunlight caught the silver in her hair.
"I couldn't have done this without you," Diana said. "Any of it. The investigation, understanding the community, finding this place."
"Diana—"
"You've changed everything about how I work, how I see people, even how I see myself." The words came out in a rush. "You're nothing like anyone I've ever been with. You're all warmth and intuition and emotional intelligence, and I'm all control and professional distance."
"And yet we work perfectly together," Lavender said, stepping closer.
"We do." Diana's voice carried wonder and something deeper. "I've spent years keeping people at arm's length, convinced that caring too much would compromise my judgment. But caring about you makes me better at everything."
Lavender's free hand found Diana's cheek, thumb brushing across her jawline with tender precision. "You don't have to choose between being strong and being human."
Here was permission Diana had never given herself, offered by someone who saw her completely.
When their lips met, it was with the desperate urgency of people who'd been fighting attraction while pretendingthat professional boundaries could contain what was growing between them. Diana's hands found Lavender's waist, pulling her closer, needing more contact, more proof that this was real.
The kiss deepened, three weeks of tension and connection and careful distance dissolving. Diana had forgotten what it felt like to want someone this completely, to crave not just physical contact but emotional integration.
"Are you sure?" Lavender asked against her lips, hands already working at the buttons of Diana's uniform shirt.
Diana’s answer was another kiss, deeper this time, her own hands finding the hem of Lavender’s shirt.
She pulled it up and over Lavender’s head, revealing skin kissed by the sun and time, breasts full and natural, and soft curves. Lavender’s was the kind of beauty that didn’t beg for approval but commanded it. Diana’s breath caught in her throat.
Lavender reached for Diana’s shirt again, unbuttoning it with aching slowness. The brush of fingers against her chest made Diana’s breath hitch, not just from arousal but from the intimacy of it—how deliberate and loving it felt. When Lavender pushed the crisp uniform shirt off Diana’s shoulders, her hands lingered over the badge and holster, the weight Diana wore like armor.
Piece by piece, Lavender helped her shed it all.
“You don’t have to hold the world up right now,” she murmured, eyes locked on hers. “Just let me hold you.”
Diana’s throat tightened. No one had ever said that to her. Not once in twenty years. She nodded once, tightly, and then kissed Lavender again, fiercely trying to pour everything she couldn’t say into her mouth.
Their bodies collided like magnets. Lavender’s hips pressed against hers; her hands gripped Diana’s waist, pulling her in close as they stumbled down onto the sand together. The heat between them bloomed fast and full. Diana could feel every point of contact—breasts brushing against each other, thighstangling, and the press of Lavender’s knee between her legs—igniting sparks along nerves Diana had nearly forgotten how to listen to.
She let herself be guided as Lavender coaxed her onto her back. The sand was warm, and Diana’s skin prickled with anticipation as lips began trailing down her neck.
Each kiss was a small undoing. Down her throat, across her collarbone, then between the swells of her breasts. When Lavender finally closed her mouth around one nipple, Diana gasped aloud. The heat of her mouth, the slow flick of her tongue, the suction—god, it sent pleasure surging straight between her legs.
She arched into the touch, helpless to do anything but feel.
Lavender alternated nipples, her tongue teasing, then sucking—first gently, then harder as Diana moaned and buried her hands in her silver hair. Each drag of Lavender’s tongue across her nipple sent pulses of arousal spiraling lower, coiling hot and tight in her core.
And then Lavender moved lower, kissing across Diana’s belly, lingering at the softness just above her waistband.
Diana propped herself on her elbows, her voice rough. “Don’t stop.”
Lavender looked up at her, her smile playful and sensual. “I wasn’t planning to.”
She unfastened Diana’s pants, sliding them down along with her panties. The ocean breeze hit wet heat as Diana lay fully exposed beneath the shifting light. She should have felt vulnerable. Instead, she felt...powerful, desired, even craved in a way no other woman had made her feel.
Lavender’s eyes roamed over her body like she was taking in a painting she’d always wanted to touch, then she leaned in and pressed a kiss to Diana’s hipbone, another to the crease of her thigh, then lower.
Diana’s breath hitched as Lavender’s mouth hovered—there—the heat of her breath sending a tremor straight through her.
When Lavender’s tongue finally found her clitoris, Diana’s whole body jolted.
