Read Online Justice (Bad Boys of X-Ops Book 2) by Rie Warren - Free Book Online

eyelashes fluttered. Her smile became a softer curve of her lips.
    Her fingers traced all the way down to my wrist where a pulse pounded a heavy beat before she skimmed her hand to my thigh and down to the floor between us.
    She made my body thump and my blood race. She made sensations fire like a network of heat to the center of my groin.
    Maybe it was just the day, the night, the adrenaline rush that hadn't worn off and probably wouldn't. The same thing happened with every op—unleashed energy I usually slaked afterward by fucking. Fucking hard. Randomly. Anonymously. 
    Here there was no one to screw. Except Tilly.
    There was no escaping her presence either, and, man, did I want to fuck the living daylights out of her.
    I lifted one knee and casually—oh so casually—crossed a forearm over it so my hand nearly dangled in my lap, obscuring my growing hard-on from view.
    “You should stay in your quarters, Matilda.” My voice sounded like gravel, and I shifted again.
    “Is that a direct order, sir?”
    I sensed the half smile in her voice. I’d be handing out plenty of orders over the next couple of days, many of them probably unpleasant, so I merely grunted.
    She took that as the negative it was—an invitation, albeit unwilling—for her to stay, and settled more closely beside me.
    Suddenly I was glad I’d washed off the soot and sweat and grime earlier. She smelled so clean and looked so . . . untouched, I felt like I dirtied her with just my presence.
    Last time I’d tasted someone as fresh as her—touched, made love to, talked sweet with—had been too long ago to dig up the memories. The memories that still haunted me.
    “Is it lonely? Doing what you do? Never settling down?” Studying my face, she couldn’t possibly ignore the hard jut of my jaw, bristled with a day’s growth of blond stubble.
    “No. I prefer it.”
    Liar.
    I liked the job well enough. Hated solo missions though. At least when Walker, Storm, Bane, and I were together as a team I was never bored. I didn’t have to talk to myself inside my head, because I could rarely get a word in edgewise with those yahoos around. Any thoughts I had ended up scrawled in ballpoint on the page.
    I’d always imagined being a single child meant I was cut out for being alone. The opposite turned out to be true: sometimes in my darkest moments I wanted nothing more than my own busting-at-the-seams family. A loud house with lots of rooms filled with teasing and laughter and light and love.
    But that didn’t matter.
    I’d forfeited it all.
    And now I sat in dark and shadows, hid my true identity behind dozens of fake ones, fucked women I’d never see again.
    I lazily flipped the shuriken back and forth with every taut muscle of my body straining—tensile—toward Tilly like a cocked but unfired weapon.
    “Should I be worried, Justice?”
    Her hand moved back to my arm, and I knew I shouldn’t return her touch, but I laid the throwing star down and covered her hand with mine.
    I gave her what little I could while keeping myself carefully guarded like a goddamn fortress against this insatiable need to do something—to fight or to fuck with all the pent up ache growing in my body.
    Touching her wasn’t helping matters.
    I withdrew my hand and clenched it in a fist at my side.
    “You don’t need to worry until I tell you to. And when I do, you better act fast.” Placing another inch between us, I added, “And you need to be careful, Matilda.”
    My words amounted to nothing more than gruff comfort coupled with a helping of cold shoulder, because I knew it was the only way to keep my distance.
    She hissed in a breath when I said her real name, her full name, once again. “I’ll do that.”
    Silence beat between us, and the dark of the night was too close.
    Examining her profile, I took in the apples of her cheeks, the curve of her neck.
    “Can I ask you a question?”
    “’Course,” she answered.
    “Where’s your mother?”
    “My mom?”
    I