Page 82 of Gloves Off

Where’d she get this? It fits me like it was made for me.

The sound of her footsteps has me looking up to the top of the stairs, and my jaw goes slack. My wife makes her way down in a tight black catsuit, every curve and dip of her body hugged by leather. Heels sky-high, pointy, and sharp.

In an instant, I’m half hard.

My watch goes off and I silence it. Why did we agree not to have sex again?

“You’re wearing that to your parents’ house?” I scratch the back of my neck. “Won’t they, uh.”

Holy fuck, she looks hot. This isn’t good.

“Won’t they what?”

“Hmm?” I jerk my gaze up, and her smile turns deadly. “You’re dressing likethatto a family event?”

She snorts. “My mom was the one who lent me these costumes.”

What? I picture a stiff-lipped older woman dripping in jewelry, with a permanent sour look on her face, like Emma’s mother.

This doesn’t make sense.

“Whatever.” I rub the bridge of my nose, praying for this evening to end quickly. “Let’s get this over with.”

The doctor directs me to a modest, two-story home in a quiet, middle-class suburb of Vancouver.

The feeling that I’ve been wrong gathers energy inside me.

My parents live three blocks away. They wouldn’t let me buy them anything expensive when I started getting the big paychecks,because my mom didn’t want to clean a big house. I said I’d hire a cleaner, and she just laughed.

ThoseGreenes wouldn’t live in this neighborhood. They’d live in Shaughnessy, in something like the mansion where the benefit took place.

We park the car, my wife gets out, and as she walks in front of me, my gaze falls to her ass in that catsuit. Her body looks incredible. Georgia Greene was born to wear a black leather catsuit.

She leads me to a house where the front lawn has been made to look like a graveyard, realistic-looking gravestones spaced out across the grass, fog spilling out among them. Ghost-like figures hang from the trees, swaying in the wind and illuminated by creepy lights. In front of the gravestones, mounds of dirt and?—

“Fuck!”I yell as a hand shoots out of the mound nearest me. My watch goes off again.

Georgia snorts. “It’s wired to a motion sensor.”

The hand retreats back into the dirt, and I give her a baffled look, my pulse returning to normal.Thisis her parents’ house? It’s average. Middle class. We can hear people inside, talking and laughing. Music playing.

She reaches to open the front door but my hand comes to her arm. “You’ll need to call me Alexei.” It never bothered me before, but it bothers me now. “We’re married. Married people don’t call each other by their last names.”

“You call me Doctor.”

“That’s different. Everyone thinks it’s a cute nickname.” The corner of my mouth threatens to tug up. “I could call yougniloy klubenif you prefer.”

If she knew what it meant, though, she wouldn’t prefer it.

“Right.” Her eyes narrow, the cogs in her head turning. “What does that mean again?”

“Sweetheart.”

“Hmm.” Her eyelids are tiny slits now. “I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t care.” I shrug. “But you’re my wife. You should call me Alexei.”

“Alexei,” she repeats slowly, and I’m distracted by the way her lips look.

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