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

could with her palm. Without thought, without receiving another command, she set it to the side and reached for the next item. This one really was a thong. She untangled the blue lace from a green-and-white-striped bra. Somewhere in the pile were the matching panties.
    She even folded the thong, wrapping it around her hand and tucking it into a neat triangle. She set it next to the T-shirt though, because those two things shouldn’t be stacked together.
    She purposely, intentionally, didn’t dwell on the fact that she was obeying orders. She should have felt degraded by the man who’d burned her the worst way possible. She’d been eighteen and probably expecting a little too much. That didn’t mean he’d needed to hide her the way he had. He shouldn’t have dropped her like she was something dirty when her own father had offered him something better. She’d at least deserved a farewell before he left for Spec Ops training. A promise to pick up the way they’d been was out of the question. She hadn’t been that naïve, but an “It’s been fun, honey,” would’ve taken some of the burn out of his abrupt, heartbreaking departure.
    There was no explaining this. There was nothing real. Why was she still kneeling?
    He had hardwood floors too, though covered with a lushly woven rug. Her legs were still getting sore. The pain was working its way from her knees into her hips.
    She didn’t leave. He hadn’t said she was supposed to stay there, and even by his orders she would have to get up to put things away in the drawers and on the vanity. But she folded and tidied everything up where she was. Though she had to stretch forward to reach some far-flung items, she did it without slipping out of position.
    And she felt strong for it.
    God, she was fucked in the head.
    Finally, she stacked her hands on her knees, palms up. Her breathing was slow, steady. Her eyes weren’t burning anymore. She could breathe again. Deep, filling gusts of air loosened her grip on the world. “May I get up?”
    He let her twist for a moment. Like her, Evan hadn’t shifted from his position on the bed that would presumably be hers. On it was a soft purple blanket that she wanted to bury her face in. He ought to have looked less intimidating on a blanket that fuzzy and feminine, but nothing about Evan would ever be less . The slim jeans he wore only accentuated the thickness of his thighs. He’d rolled back the sleeves of his button-down when they were still in the hospital. His forearms were covered with golden hair. In the silence he built for her, she could see each muscle as it shifted.
    “What will you be doing?”
    “Putting things away.” Something inexplicable made her voice go up and down in a strange way.
    “And?”
    “Righting my mess.” How she knew the words to use…she wasn’t sure. But they hovered there, at the back of her tongue, waiting to access the part of her that responded so well to orders and simple rules. She’d thrived in boarding school. There had been girls who slipped out the windows to talk to boys on the main road. Girls who hemmed their school-issued skirts to be just an inch shorter. Girls who’d cracked under the pressure and begged to be returned home.
    Kat hadn’t begged her father to come home. She’d known better. He wouldn’t have brought her back to Boston, anyway. He’d have been stationed in Georgia or California or Kansas, not living in the home her mother had seamlessly shared with flighty in-laws. Her dad’s parents, Nana and Pop, had always been a mess, zooming off on two seconds’ notice to follow art commissions that could take Nana years to complete. Maybe they’d passed their wanderlust to their only son. It had fallen to Katsu’s mom to maintain home —a place for everyone to return to, no matter how scattered.
    And it wasn’t like Katsu could have taken care of herself during his deployments. She’d have been a fourteen-year-old living on omurice and miso soup. The