Page 114 of Morally Gray Daddies

“Yes. Thank you.” At first, with each bite my hunger felt as though it were increasing rather than diminishing. When he let me take the last forkful, however, I did feel better than I had when he’d first set the container in front of us.

“Do you know who lives here?” I asked, looking around.

“Not really. A team.”

“A… team?”

“Mmhmm. Operators. Independents. Like me.”

I glanced back toward the living room. “Do they do the same things you do?”

He shrugged. “Some do. Some don’t. I suspect this team doesn’t.”

“Why would you say that?”

“They have a woman living with them. Most teams don’t. That’s a complication that requires a degree of finessing most operators steer clear of.” He looked around. “If I had to guess, I’d say these guys run recovery ops for Colbie, or extractions. Wet work, but not the same kind I do.”

“Oh.”

‘Wet work.’ I’d seen enough episodes of The Blacklist to know he meant killing. He—and the team whose house we were staying in—killed people for a living.

God, what have you gotten yourself into, Aubrey?

He got up. Grabbing the empty container and silverware from in front of us, he took them to the nearby sink, rinsed them off, and placed everything inside the dishwasher.

“I’ll be back,” he said, then turned and moved off deeper into the house.

He’d likely picked up on the same details I had earlier: the little arrangement of candles in a semi-circle on the cabinet in the living room, the pictures on the wall in the kitchen that weren’t of some sports team or out of a Cabela’s catalogue. None of those things had to mean a woman lived here, but that he’d picked up on it same as I had felt comforting for some reason.

It wasn’t long before he returned to the kitchen.

“Come with me,” he ordered quietly.

I got up from the stool and crossed the room to where he stood at the entrance to the hallway down which he’d disappeared. He flicked off the kitchen lights, and I followed as he turned and moved off. We were almost to the end of the hall when he stopped, indicating an open doorway.

I stepped through. Into a bedroom.

There wasn’t much in the way of decorations or indications of personal belongings, which suggested it was probably a guest bedroom. What little there was in terms of furniture was a single chair near the only window, a chest of drawers with a mirror above it, and…

A bed. A single bed.

I stopped, then slowly turned to where he stood just inside the closed door, his arms crossed.

“Come here.”

I did as he ordered, approaching slowly. When I was within inches, I came to a halt, staring down at the floor.

“You’re going to sleep with me tonight,” he said in a low, forceful tone. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, Sir,” I whispered in reply.

He brought a finger up under my chin, tilting my head back until I was looking into his eyes. “Good girl. Now take off your clothes.”

I swallowed. Reaching for the hem of my T-shirt, I slowly brought it up and over my head. As I did, he didn’t react but simply watched as I followed his orders. I dropped the shirt to the floor, then undid the clasp of my bra and let it fall away, too. He’d already seen me naked, but this time was different. At Sonja’s, his actions had been sadistic yet methodical, and he’d gone through them with an almost workmanlike detachment. That wasn’t the case now. I could see it in his gaze, the heat in his eyes. He was savoring this.

I slipped out of my socks and sneakers, then shucked off my jeans. Taking a deep breath, I slid off my panties and stood naked before him. He looked me up and down slowly, drinking me in, and where once there’d been cold cruelty, now there was simply passion.

“Get on the bed,” he ordered.

---