The Naughty Corner by Jasmine Haynes Read Free Book Online Page B

taken that final step. There’d always been something that came between her and her man. Maybe it was being a therapist; she analyzed everything too much.
    Lola didn’t say that, though. She’d said it too many times in the past.
    “He could sense exactly what you need,” Charlotte went on. “A take-charge man who sweeps you off your feet and orders you to be his woman.” A fire lit the depths of her green eyes.
    “It’s just sex.” Lola flapped a hand. “He likes to spank women. The twins are a convenient excuse for him to play his kinky games. Don’t get carried away with this whole relationship thing. I don’t need any entanglements.” But what the coach had given her, well, yeah, she could have that again. More than once. A lot . She’d felt not only physically satisfied—huge understatement—but special as well with every sweet word he’d said.
    “You just don’t like entanglements because in a relationship something is required of you, and you’re not sure you can give it. So you reject every man before he can reject you.”
    “I do not reject them,” Lola defended. “I choose men who aren’t interested in a relationship either.”
    “What about Ben?”
    “He got too serious.” Ben was the last man she’d dated, euphemism for the last man she’d had casual sex with over the period of a few months.
    “He wanted a relationship. He asked you to live with him.”
    “Which meant I would have had to sell the condo or he would have to sell his house. It was too complicated.”
    “He was a nice guy.”
    “They’re nice when they don’t live in your house and can’t tell you what to do.”
    Charlotte shook her finger. “See? You rejected him before he could start treating you the way Mike did.”
    “That’s not true.” All right, maybe a little. She just wasn’t interested in giving a man sway over her life. She didn’t want to feel like she needed to become someone else, someone better. “I like my life the way it is.” And then she tried a little redirect, because honestly, she didn’t want to argue the same old argument with Charlotte. “And I can’t wait for the twins to misbehave so I can get my next punishment.”
    The distraction worked, thank goodness. “Ooh,” Charlotte enthused. “You did like giving up a little control for a while.”
    “If it’s sexual, then yes.” Because it only lasted for a few hours. And boy, had those few hours been totally worth it.

5
    SATURDAY MORNING, AS HE SHOUTED OUT COMMANDS, GRAY reflected that running a multimillion-dollar conglomerate was easier than coaching sixteen boys five days a week. Especially with his son and Lola Cook’s nephews as three of the sixteen.
    Rafe was sullen, but then he usually was around Gray. As the adult, Gray should know what to do to repair their relationship, but he was clueless. Everything he tried just seemed to push them further apart. It was far easier to order a subordinate to fix a problem than it was to divine the workings of a teenage mind when he hadn’t been one in twenty-five years.
    Harry and William were a different story. They delighted in flouting authority. He’d forbidden cell phones, so they’d brought small gaming devices that he’d never even seen before. They distracted the other boys until Gray had to take those away, too.
    That conversation had gone the way every conversation did with those two.
    “You can’t take that,” Harry said militantly. “It’s a prototype from my dad’s company.”
    “Yeah.” William added a glare.
    “You will get them back at the end of the day,” Gray answered.
    It had been his inclination to tell them to grab their toys and take a hike, but he’d made a bargain with Lola. And they’d certainly given him more than enough ammunition for getting her back into the naughty corner.
    So he’d locked the devices in his office and made them run two laps. But throughout the morning, he could hear the whispers.
    “Your dad made that?”
    “Yeah.