No time period, you can decide for yourself!
Of all the many faces she's seen of James Dempsey, this is the private one, reserved for her. Not the Lieutenant.
The man who cares enough to buy her flowers. To get her home when she gets drunk at nightclubs, fizzing with angry, sexual frustration and bound by protocol. Last night she was tearful and tipsy at the wedding reception, unable to deal with the women who tried to chat him up whilst they held onto their secret. He mopped her face after she'd thrown up in his bathroom and fed her toast and tea, held her.
He is asleep in his bed, his head face forward in the pillows, one arm over her and the other bunching the feathers, exhausted but magnetic in sleep as awake.
He cracks open an eye, dark and watchful from the white cotton tangle of bed linen. His head moves and his mouth is grinning in disbelief. Earlier his lips were bitten and swollen as his stoic expression became a symphony. She is pleased with his reaction, he's often angry, lustful or amused, and she has now seen everything in between as his hips moved with hers, and she relished the sweet agony of how he filled her.
Her private dick. The memory makes her giggle quietly, enough to stir him further, his back muscles moving and trapping her gaze as he rolls over knowing revealing himself. Her eyes drop down his body to see him wanting her, as she wants him.
She thought that was her Dempsey, but she likes this one too.
She gets a thrill in the midst of one of his stories. Persuasive, often arrogant and yet enigmatic. A hero disguised as an animal, with a bigger heart than he first revealed, dressed in jeans and black shirt. His mind is more diverse now she's had the time to explore and challenge. It's exhausting sometimes, but she's never been more alive.
And his body is beautiful. His hands on her hips, his strong, runners legs tense against her body when she rides him, slower, so he moans. If asked, she'd confess to a morbid rush of erotic fulfilment when he emerges from another fight or shootout, feeling as primitive as he does. Her mate, her alpha male.
He's at her hips again, angled and then, there's a snarl and a fresh wave of morning lust. This is good, they're so good.
She won't say so, because her heart is too cautious, but she loves him more than anything when he's kind to children and animals. His gentle manner and how he respects them. He speaks to kids as adults, and she knows he'd be a good father. Another time.
Right now this is everything. She picks up her pace, clenching around him and sees his reaction. Pain and pleasure. Much like when they argue, there's a fine line between the love and frustration. In the early hours of this morning, they made up for lost time. His warm hand was enough grip on her neck as she wilfully gave herself over to him, and his fingers gentle but firm in her hair as he drove into her roughly from behind. Reclaiming her and showing her no other women matter.
When he is hers is her favourite. Perhaps. She likes being his too. When she can make him forget other women. They had their turn, now he's mine. She hopes he thinks the same, she's trying to understand that he's a show, not tell, man. He'll say what he thinks when he's ready.
"Harry…" His voice is a warning call. His voice, low and gravelled in bed for her only.
"Dempsey, please, now."
He looks delighted at her raunchiness, then he's taking her with him as he lets go. She feels him; the sink of his teeth into her shoulder, the hard roll of his muscles beneath her and the hitching of his breath, between the call of her name. She rides this with him, trying to keep a little of herself back to watch him come gloriously undone, feeding off his desire to fuel her own, a partnership.
This incarnation of her man is her favourite.