Page 48 of Cruel Expectations

He peered closer.

Son of a bitch. His vision was perfect, as always.

“Where did you get that?” His gaze moved over the shirt she was wearing. No way could she just pull that garment out of her closet. It was one of a kind.

She stopped midway to the kitchen table. “What?”

“That shirt.”

“Out of your closet.”

His old football jersey had been stowed away in the bottom of his duffel bag in his closet. Though he never wore it these days—it didn’t even fit him after all the muscle the military had stacked on him—he kept the jersey for nostalgic reasons.

“What? How? When?” His voice rose slightly louder in pitch with every question. He settled his palms on the table in a quiet and purposeful move.

Colton gave him a sharp look. Any of his fellow SEALs knew when Hunter made that move he wasn’t messing around. First Ivy begged him not to tell Colton about sleeping with him. Now she was flaunting it?

Not surprising that Ivy was unaffected by his clear frustration with her. She walked over to the table. In his jersey. That she’d stolen out of his closet. Like she owned it.

She looked like a forbidden treat in it too.

It was too large for her, and hung off one narrow shoulder. She’d knotted it at the hip to make it more fitted, which drew his attention to those same hips that he’d grabbed over and over again while thrusting his cock deep in her tight, grasping heat.

She waved her hand like a royal acknowledging the attention of the masses she ruled over. “If you will follow me into the living room, I have the camera footage—”

“Ivy.”

She swung her gaze to him, a gleam of irritation in her eyes at his interruption.

“When were you in my room? In my closet?”

She tossed her head on a laugh and sashayed away, leaving him, and the others, gaping after her.

“We need one of those cameras on the door of the bunkhouse,” he muttered to Colton.

He only chuckled. He must understand the Gracey women better than Hunter did. Otherwise, why would Colton ever put up with Ivy’s dismissive behavior?

Hunter scraped back his chair to follow Ivy into the living room, his mind looping between Ivy in his shirt and her beautiful face as he slid balls-deep inside her.

She took up too much damn space in his mind.

At least it wasn’t the same old memory of the battlefield. His memory of those stolen moments with Ivy didn’t carry the same weight or torment as an op gone wrong—not at all. But it did echo inside him with a different strength he didn’t want to consider.

The only parts of the house Hunter had ever been in were the kitchen…and Ivy’s bedroom.

The spacious living room had a vaulted ceiling with rustic wood beams. The furniture was dark leather, but the room was surprisingly homey thanks to a calming shade of gray-blue on the walls.

A thick oriental rug anchored the seating group, and along one wall was the big-screen TV. Several laptops were set up on the distressed wood coffee table. Each computer and the TV had a video queued up.

Ivy twitched her cute little body over to the sofa and gracefully dropped onto the cushion. Hunter’s gaze fell over his player number—52—stretched across her breasts.

For a moment, he drowned in a memory of their forbidden moments. Her nipples were so damn sensitive. Her responsive skin broke out in goose bumps wherever his tongue caressed.

Meadow looked around. “Ivy, what is all this? How did you set this up?” She sat on the opposite sofa with Colton, who eyed the setup.

Again, Ivy waved a hand. Christ. Her nails were freshly painted a shade of red to match the numbers on his jersey.

“I’m good at these things. It’s no big deal.” She picked up a remote and clicked it at the TV. The view split into four screens, each with a different angle of the ranch on it. “What you’re seeing is today’s footage. We can keep an eye on it while we search the footage on the laptops. Meadow, you and Colton can work together. Hunter, you’re with me.”

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