Own (Command Force Alpha #1) by Katie Porter Read Free Book Online

me.”
    “I wasn’t joking. You will get down on your knees this instant and pick up that mess.”
    Another gasp. Her lush lips parted. The two front teeth of her slight overbite were driving him insane. “You are a pig. You have no right!”
    This was either going to help them both, or it would turn his house into an insane asylum for the next few days. Because Evan…Evan had a hunch. She needed this as much as he did.
    Giving her every chance to refuse, he placed his hands on her shoulders. Slowly, resolutely, he pushed her to the floor. The look she angled up at him was confusion and sex and anger and…pleading. She swallowed audibly. She made no move to push off her knees.
    “This isn’t a joke, Katsu. Untangle your bras and your panties. Smooth out your nightgown. Put them in the dresser drawers, and organize your cosmetics by the vanity mirror.” He settled onto the bed she’d sleep in, mere hours from now. “I’m staying here to make sure you do it right.”

Chapter Five
    Kat reached for a shirt. Worn and thin, she’d meant the T-shirt for wearing to bed. It had once been blue, but a thousand washings had turned it something closer to the color of the sky before snow. She balled it up slowly. Held it to her stomach.
    Her head was bowed. Not a lot. Her hair created a black curtain around her face. She could think behind that curtain. She’d always found a way to keep it inside, there in boarding school when missing her mother and father had been so hard. The tears were for later.
    She wasn’t anywhere near tears this time.
    She could hardly make sense of what was going on inside her. There was shock, of course, supercharging her blood. And there were discordant threads of something uncomfortably close to arousal, in the way her jeans suddenly felt super tight over her hot sex. She shouldn’t be hot for it, hot for anything . Evan had rammed into her life once more, and her dad was in the hospital.
    But she was…centered. Ordered. Calm.
    The whirlwind in her head had gone quiet at his touch—not when he’d held her hands in his, but when he’d pushed . He’d forced her down onto her knees. His orders had dropped like stones into a crystal-clear pond, leaving ripples behind, yet still perfectly visible.
    “I didn’t make the mess,” she said, but her voice was less forceful than it should have been. She wasn’t filled with piss and fuck off and get away . She was quiet as a bird’s wing.
    “You did when you shoved it into your bag,” he said, completely implacable. “I only exposed the disaster.”
    She licked her bottom lip and drew it between her teeth. “Evan…”
    He didn’t respond. Normally, in conversation, one’s name drew forth an answer. Perhaps a “Yes?” or a “What?” Not this time. Not from Evan. He didn’t move from his spot on the bed. He was as steady as a rock. As unwavering as a mountain. He watched her like he had nowhere else in the world to be.
    Maybe she liked that.
    The bouncing, pinging thoughts inside her head were fading. They weren’t gone . There wasn’t anything as magical as that, not considering the last look she’d gotten of her father and the way, even while sleeping restlessly, dark shadows had carved under his eyes. But that never-ending chant of don’t die don’t die don’t die had faded into the background so that she could fold the shirt she clung to.
    It was an old shirt, stolen from her dad so many years ago that she couldn’t count them all. Once it had trailed down to her ankles. She’d wrapped up in it for bed when Dad had gone away to Bosnia. She’d been five. Grabbing it tonight had been a matter of instinct. Now it made her sad to see the wrinkle down the front from the way she’d had it shoved into her drawer, and more wrinkles because of how she’d shoved it again into her duffle bag.
    She held it by the shoulder hems and flicked it out flat, then folded it in thirds. Military style. She smoothed out the wrinkles the best she