Two Strikes Read Online Free PDF Page A

subconscious brain hadn’t been any better at figuring it out, either.
    She let him help her up.
    He helpfully brushed the dirt off her bottom.
    She slapped his hands away. “You’re such a goddamned opportunist.”
    “Let me touch it when I want, and I wouldn’t have to be.”
    She gave him a glare that would have made any other man’s nuts shrivel, but he was Max. The Dark Dom wasn’t so easily affected.
    He winked at her. “I love your intensity.”
    “Some Dom you are.”
    “Since when did we play by the rules? You told me a long time ago that you weren’t interested in abiding by them.”
    Her mouth and brain didn’t always work in sync. She figured he didn’t need to know what, though. “And my pussy’s just so good you’d take me any way you could get me, huh? Yeah, right. You know I don’t need theatrics and head games to get off, and you just want easy sex sometimes.”
    His smile drew in. “I’ve been telling you for years it’s not about that.”
    “Whatever, Max.” Smoothing the wrinkles out of her button-down shirt, she took a bolstering breath and started toward the management offices.
    Start with an apology, state what you did, and promise to pay it all back. Don’t get defensive.
    She already knew she was going to have trouble with that last part.
    Max followed closely on her heels.
    She turned, and he stopped just before his hard chest squashed her breasts. “Dammit, don’t you need to go track down your weekend toy?”
    “No, she happens to be two centimeters from me.”
    “Fuck you, Max.”
    “That’s what I’m trying to get you to do, amongst other things. When you get off, you can come with me.”
    “I’m going to get fired. The very last thing I need is to hang around here and get fucked by the Dark Dom. It’s highly likely I’m going to get escorted off the premises.”
    “Shit, G, just what did you do?”
    She put her hands up. “I don’t want to talk about it right now.” She turned and continued toward the offices. “Call me later if you’re not too busy plowing someone.”
    “I already told you I’m not plowing anyone tonight. I came here to see you since you don’t take my calls anymore. I begged off work this weekend so I could be here.”
    She stopped again, but didn’t turn.
    He said no to work?
    She didn’t know that was allowed. Then again, she wasn’t exactly sure for whom he worked. She’d previously assumed he was self-employed, but certain clues hinted at otherwise. Whether he worked for the government or some private agency, she didn’t know. Didn’t want to know. She just knew he’d been shot enough times to convince her that chances were excellent that one day he was going to be killed on the job. Just like her father.
    Her brain started that nauseating spinning again. She closed her eyes tight.
    God, don’t want to think about that.
    She didn’t want to think about how her father had been shipped home in a box and how her mother still hadn’t recovered.
    “Y-you…took off work?” she asked.
    “I did.”
    “You’ve never done that before.”
    “I can learn new tricks outside of fetish clubs, Queen G.”
    “Squash that noise.”
    She started walking again, and tried her damnedest to ignore Max at her heels. If he thought he was going to follow her all the way to Ms. Gibson’s office and listen to her lay it all out, he had another think coming.
    She passed reception and kept up her pace as she strode down the hallway where the offices were situated. The dull thud of Max’s boots hitting the ground behind her had ceased, and she turned her head just enough to verify he hadn’t followed.
    She stopped in front of the general manager’s office, took a deep breath, smoothed her white skirt, and knocked.
    Nothing.
    She checked her watch and pulled off her sodden right glove.
    Where else might Ms. Gibson be this time of day?
    Ms. Gibson normally took lunch in her office or on the go. The consummate perfectionist took the idea of a