What Happens After Dark by Jasmine Haynes Read Free Book Online Page B

reflecting back up to beam on her face. “Masturbate for you. In front of strangers.”
    The fantasy set something ablaze inside him, and he’d certainly been hard as a rock while he’d watched her and made up the story. He imagined showing her off, but at the same time holding all the cards. It would be like laying claim to her. And having her accept that claim. It would be as good as having her fall asleep in his arms last night. A first. But this was still the strangest relationship he’d ever had.
    “We’re not normal, you and I, are we.” He didn’t ask it as question.
    Yet she answered. “No. We’re not.”
    “Most men would hate for another man to see their woman.” He found the idea exciting, and his cock was hard again. He wanted her to lay in his arms, to make love with him, spend the night, yet he wouldn’t give up the other things they did, the cuffs, blindfolding her, slapping her ass. Most men wouldn’t like that either, but he wasn’t most men. She wasn’t most women. They sure as hell weren’t normal, but they were fucking good together.
    “You want it, don’t you?” she said, fork aloft, the French toast going cold on her plate.
    “I want Dickhead to see you’re mine.” Derek, the dickhead bruiser. But really it was every man out there who’d had her, every man who’d touched her and screwed her over.
    “I’d like that,” she whispered.
    He felt the tightness of need in his chest. If any man had tried to exercise such power over one of his daughters, he’d have beaten the guy to a bloody pulp. But for Bree, for him, this was right. This was some strange step forward for them. “Someday,” he said. It was a promise of so many things to come.
    She put her fork down and gave up all pretense of finishing her breakfast. “I don’t know how often I’ll be able to take care of your needs over the next few weeks.”
    She’d let him into her house, into her bed, allowed him to spend the night, and now she was backing off again? As if saying she’d do things for him at a sex club was like a bone she’d thrown him before she slammed him down. “Here I was thinking we were mutually meeting each other’s needs.” He heard the acid in his tone.
    She stared at her plate, her lips pursed, her hair falling forward to cast a shadow over one side of her face. “I have to move in with my parents over in Saratoga.”
    He was an ass for the relief he felt that she wasn’t going beyond his reach. “Is something wrong? Are you having financial problems?” Without question, he would help.
    She shook her head, breathed deeply and exhaled, not with a sigh but as if the air fortified her. “My father’s ill.”
    Her words sent a chill across his skin. He was always misinterpreting her, but then he knew so little about her that he couldn’t make accurate assessments. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    “He’s dying.” She spoke to her plate.
    Luke wanted to touch her, hold her hand, give her his warmth, yet in that moment, she was further away than ever. Still, she’d told him, and that meant a measure of closeness. “I’m a phone call away when you need me,” he told her.
    For the first time, she looked up at him, her gaze stark, pained. “I don’t want to go, Luke.”
    Something trembled inside him. He rose, rounded the table, hunkered down by the side of her chair and put his hand on her thigh. “No one wants to face losing their parents.” He had lost his. He understood.
    The next breath Bree took was shaky. “Do you think I’m an awful person?”
    “No,” he murmured soothingly. “I don’t.” He suddenly had a glimmer of why she’d called him yesterday. She needed him; he was her panacea, and that touched him deeply. “I’m here, baby.”
    She rolled her lips between her teeth, held them a long moment. “What if I call you up in the middle of the night for phone sex?”
    “That will be fucking hot.” He had the sense to realize that the phone sex would be less about