Read Own (Command Force Alpha #1) for Free Online

much to admire there.
    “Ready,” came a falsely chipper voice.
    Katsu stood in the doorway to her bedroom. Evan hadn’t dared go in there. It was probably another HAZMAT-level disaster area, with the added torture of her bed at its center. Hearing the shower turn on had dragged a groan from his dry throat.
    She held an oversized camouflage duffle bag in both hands. The straps were so long—or she was so short—that the bulging bag almost rested on the floor. Her hair was towel dried and combed straight. Her shirt was a bright yellow V-neck. The lace of a candy-cane-red bra poked out here and there. Although she could look like a doll, she didn’t have the figure of a Japanese woman. Photos of her mother, Tamiko, showed a woman who was graceful and thin like a ballerina. Katsu had a hell of an ass. He remembered grabbing hold and pressing their bodies together. She’d always moaned, then smiled, when she realized how turned on he was.
    Her rack was astonishing. She wasn’t any bigger than a scant C-cup, but her petite frame accentuated their lush fullness. So did that goddamn red bra and skintight top. “Thank Grandma Stafford for my curves,” she used to say. He’d simply marveled at genetics and his own dumb luck.
    Now he cursed time and circumstance. He had a mission, and that mission had nothing to do with taking up where he and Katsu had broken off. It was a hard thing to admit. The six weeks he’d spent with her that summer before he left for Special Operations training had been some of the freest, happiest moments of his life. She was joy and light, when he’d known little of either. She was resilience and strength, when he admired both immensely. They’d laughed and they’d burned up the sheets, as hot and heavy for each other as only young, dumb, don’t-look-at-tomorrow kids could be.
    He’d never be that young man again. And he’d never have Kat in his life again, not the way he’d dared picture years ago. He hadn’t known what it was like to live undercover, to get used to the idea he was already dead and just didn’t know it yet. It made no sense, but survival was easier that way. Kat had become a sunshine memory, like their brief affair.
    That she was back in his life, with no hope of rekindling what had been an easy firestorm to set alight, was the toughest part of his assignment—and the least anticipated. He should’ve known better.
    He nodded to the bag. “It’s all shoved in there?”
    “Aye-aye, Captain. We wouldn’t want it any other way, now would we?”
    The eagle, globe and anchor of the Marine Corps emblem was front and center on the duffle. Any man who wagered the bag hadn’t belonged to her dad was a fool.
    “Let’s go.”
    She picked up a backpack and sighed. Evan locked the apartment behind her.
    “So damn secret squirrel,” she muttered. “But you probably have some special-trained PR type to smooth things over, like how you got a copy of my key.”
    “We do. She’s excellent.” But the goal was keeping things muted enough that Katsu wouldn’t have to meet her.
    Twenty minutes later, they were back in his car and heading north on I-93, having cut through downtown. They stopped on the outskirts of Charlestown to gather supplies, because Evan kept little other than canned goods and staples at his house. He forced lunch on Kat, against all her protests. That she inhaled two cheeseburgers and a milkshake made him grin inwardly, even if she refused to acknowledge he’d been right.
    Then it was back on the highway, away from Boston proper. The farther he drove, the quieter Evan became. Inside and out. He loved leaving the city behind. Fall was his favorite time of year. The leaves still clung to their homes on branches, but they’d begun to lose their bright green color. Orange, yellow and red took over. A flaming canvas as the sun curved westward. He rolled down the window, breathed in the scents of autumn in New England…and kept driving.
    “Hey, where do you