Read Mr. Sir (Ball & Chain) for Free Online

suggested a contractor he knew and trusted when Owen told him he wanted to reinforce the old foundation and drop the floor in one of the low-ceilinged rooms.
    “Mike was a great recommendation. I’m sure I’ll use him again.”
    Brad nodded and looked pleased, albeit distracted.
    Owen led him through the kitchen to the basement. The pantry—or rather what Grace thought was going to be a pantry—was just to the left of the staircase. She had the short, wide basement window open with a stand-up fan on a table to blow the fumes outside. She was facing away from them, singing along with Led Zeppelin’s Going to California playing on the classic rock station.
    She let out a little whoop of surprise when she noticed them in the doorway.
    “Hey, Brad,” she said, laughing a little as she set the paint roller in the tray and turned the radio off. Owen watched a little crease flicker then disappear between her eyebrows. He looked at Brad, who was looking at her with an expression he didn’t much care for. “What do you think?” she asked, gesturing to the walls.
    It took Brad a moment to look around.
    What the hell was going on? They’d known the Millers almost as long as they’d lived there and he’d never once caught him looking at Grace that way before.
    Although, in the black tank top and jean shorts she was wearing, her feet bare and bright hair in a ponytail, he’d been doing a lot of looking at her that way himself.
    “It certainly doesn’t look like it’s going to be your usual dingy pantry,” Brad said after a heartbeat, looking down at the two steps that led into the room and around the perimeter of the floor. “What color are the walls going to be?” he asked Grace.
    She looked at Owen. “I think we’re just going to stick with white?” She nodded when Owen agreed then looked back at Brad, smiling. “We’re going with white.”
    They weren’t going with white, but she’d find that out in time.
    “Those boards are stacked over here,” Owen said.
    When all the old pantry shelves were loaded into the back of Brad’s truck, Brad closed the tailgate and gave Owen another strange look.
    “Listen,” Brad said, going around the bed and opening the back door of the cab. All the blood rushed from Owen’s head when he came back around with the duffle bag. “You accidentally gave me this when I picked up the kids’ soccer equipment from you the other day.”
    Owen had filled in as substitute coach for Brad earlier in the week. He felt a little sick to his stomach as he took the bag from Brad. By the look on Brad’s face, he could tell he’d opened it and had seen what was inside.
    “Are you and Grace members at a club?” Brad asked.
    For a long moment there was nothing but the washing machine sloshing of his pulse through his ears as his heart started beating again.
    His eyebrows went up. “Excuse me?”
    “There’s a club about an hour and a half from here,” Brad said, hands tucked into pockets. “I figured you weren’t members since Laura and I haven’t seen you there.”
    Owen had been wrong about the look he’d just seen Brad giving Grace. It wasn’t just the look of a red-blooded man looking at a beautiful woman—it was the look of a fellow Dom assessing a potential submissive. Man, he’d been away from his own kind for too long if he couldn’t recognize that look any longer.
    “Grace and I haven’t played with others since we had the boys,” Owen said as calmly as he could manage while still trying to recover from the shock of thinking he’d been found out.
    Brad looked at him steadily for a long moment.
    “That’s a shame,” was all he said.
    Owen crossed his arms and Brad added, “I went through that for a long time after the kids were born. She was mine. She’d had my children,” he added, punctuating his sentences by jabbing his finger into his chest. “I didn’t want anyone else to touch her.”
    Owen nodded in agreement. He’d gone through the exact thing when