Burning for the Off-Limits Captain

He's the one man in this city I'm not allowed to want.

I've spent three years building a reputation nobody can question — Fire Investigator Marisol Reyes doesn't cut corners, doesn't play favorites, and definitely doesn't fall for the men she's assigned to investigate. Then a warehouse fire on the south side turns into something bigger than arson, and the man standing in the wreckage, soot-streaked and furious and impossibly in charge, is Captain Beckett Donovan — my father's golden boy, my department's rising star, and the one man whose file I am professionally, absolutely forbidden to close with anything but a signature.

He doesn't ask permission for anything. Not the way he looks at me. Not the way he plants himself between me and every threat that starts circling closer once we realize the fire wasn't random — it was a message. Someone wants what I've found buried in the evidence, and they're willing to burn half the city to get it back.

My father would end both our careers if he knew how Beck looks at me when he thinks no one's watching. The department would call it a conflict of interest. I call it the only thing that's felt inevitable since the night he pulled me out of a building that should have killed me.

He says he doesn't share. He says I'm already his, whether I've signed anything or not. And when danger forces us under one roof, with nowhere left to hide from what's building between us, I stop asking whether I can afford to want him — and start wondering if I can survive walking away.

Some lines aren't meant to be uncrossed forever.

Tropes: Forbidden Romance, Possessive Alpha Hero, First Responder Hero, Forced Proximity, Slight Age-Gap, Suspense/Danger Subplot

High heat. Explicit adult content. 18+ readers only. All characters are consenting adults.