Page 58 of Ex-SEAL Bad Boy

“You OK?” I ask, hoping I hadn’t hurt him.

“Better than OK.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I kind of like it when you take charge. That never happens with other women. I think I frighten them.”

“So, maybe I’ve awakened a hidden desire within you.”

“Maybe.”

“You know, if this was a psychology class, they might say that your latent desire to have a woman take control is because your mother was a strict disciplinarian. It’s learned behavior.”

“You think so?”

I nod.

“Sounds bogus,” he laughs, “but if that’s discipline, I don’t mind taking a little more of it.

“Is that so? Well then, Mr. Blackwood, you’ve been a very bad boy for a very long time, and I fully intend to make you pay for it.”

23

ETHAN

“Good lord, when you said punishment, you weren’t kidding,” I say, rolling out of bed and ruffling my hair.

Everything hurts, especially my leg, which is stiff and throbbing.

“Didn’t seem to bother you too much last night,” she points out.

That much is true.

I sit in a chair by the window and gently pull back the bandage on my wound.

It actually looks pretty good. The skin around where I had closed the front side of the hole with a field stitch is more pink than red.The back side, repaired with a pair of suture strips, looks angry but seems to be healing.

“I’m going to take a shower,” she says, making an exaggerated display of stretching. “Feel free to join me if you want.”

I grab my phone to check the news.

“Holy shit!”

Sophia comes racing out of the bathroom. Her eyes wide,

I turn the screen so that she can see.

Billionaire Industrialist Found Dead

Harrison Whitmore III was found dead in his home this morning as federal agents were there to serve an arrest warrant. As authorities failed to receive a response to their knock on the door of Whitmore’s home, they found the door unlocked.

A deceased male, later identified as Whitmore, was discovered on the floor of the living room, a single gunshot wound to the head. Whitmore was under federal investigation on multiple charges, including statutory rape and solicitation of a minor.

The investigation will continue as additional suspects have been identified. The FBI and local authorities will release further details as they become available.

Whitmore … dead?

I can’t say I’m not relieved.

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