The Cornerstone Read Online Free PDF

my cock. They were so small and slim, I bet they wouldn’t fit all the way around my shaft.
    And fuck me, I couldn’t stop watching her stroke that bottle. I closed my eyes, and I could feel it, I could feel her skin against mine, and fucking hell , it had been too long.
    “Give me that,” I said, grabbing the beer away. It was barely cold and I couldn’t say I enjoyed beer this hoppy but I drank it anyway.
    “We could have ordered you one, dearie,” she said.
    “Unlikely,” I said. “You scared the piss out of Barry, and probably everyone else at this place.”
    Her laugh was a soft, breathy sound, and it was the most honest thing I’d heard from her all night. “You can’t say I don’t get shit done.”
    I couldn’t stay seated any longer. I needed something to do, a way to expel the misplaced desire hammering in my veins, and I was half ready to dive into the ocean and swim until I washed up on the shore. At least then I’d be too exhausted to think about wrapping all that red hair around my fist and forcing her to her knees.
    Stepping behind the bar, I grabbed our empty bottles and tossed them in the bin. Sam was drunkenly corralling his brothers—plus Wes, Erin, and Nick, the doctor who’d asked me an unending series of questions about tribal healthcare conditions in Pakistan and Afghanistan earlier in the evening—and leading them down the beach toward his cottage.
    That was the bullet I was taking for this team tonight: Wes was gathering intel on Lo’s in-laws while eyeing Erin, and I was left keeping a leash on Shortcake.
    But then I noticed her tracking me , and I realized this little girl and I were playing the same fucking game. How could I have missed such overt scrutiny? And no, of course she didn’t have a thing for IPAs.
    Yeah, the bitch had balls .
    “So you’re the tail.”
    “I’m what?” she snapped, and it seemed plausible that she’d have a trophy case packed with all the assholes she’d torn up.
    “The tail,” I repeated. “I know my objective here…but what’s yours?”
    She crossed her arms over her chest, jangling those stupid Slinky bracelets in the process. “Your sister seems to believe you’re going to kidnap and torture my brother. She wanted to prevent that.”
    “It’s called enhanced interrogation,” I said. “And that’s not my wheelhouse.”
    “That’s right,” she murmured. “I’m told you’re quite the commando.”
    I bristled. There was a lot of mythology surrounding special operations teams, and most of it was inaccurate or exaggerated. “We aren’t fond of that term, ma’am.”
    “In that case, I’m quite fond of it.” She eyed me up and down, visibly taking stock of my dive watch, the Gatorz sunglasses hanging from the neck of my t-shirt, and the frog skeleton tattoo peeking out from my sleeve. “What kind of commando activities have you been up to recently?”
    You wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I told you. “Afraid that’s classified, ma’am.”
    She stared at me as if she wasn’t accustomed to being refused anything, ever. And look at her. Those pouty lips, the ones that ordered everyone around as if they were on her payroll and they should be fucking thrilled to have that honor. That stubborn chin, angled just enough to communicate her superiority. And those eyes, big and dark, dark mossy green, twinkling as if she was amused by my insubordination.
    This woman was lethal.
    Tearing my gaze away from Shannon, I surveyed the beer selection and opted for another Summer Ale. “Why is Matt in such a hurry to marry my sister?”
    Before seeing Lo or meeting her fiancé, Wes and I endured one of the most stern lectures my father had delivered in years. It seemed the Commodore was drunk on the Matthew Walsh Koolaid. At the very minimum, my mother was force-feeding it to him. He officially warned us off any initiatives aimed at interrogating or otherwise scaring the shit out of our future brother-in-law. That didn’t mean I