She shook her head. “Yes, it’s how you see me and until now, it’s how I’ve acted. I’ve been a scared little mouse. I’ve let you give up everything for me. But not anymore. When we go home, I’m going to help you. I’ve learned a lot in the last few years. Papa made me learn how to hack into systems. I’m really good. I can write code, too. I can be helpful.”
“I don’t want that for you.” She’d been trying to get out of this world for her sister’s sake.
“And I don’t want you to lose the man you love, but I have to deal with it now, don’t I? No, if we can’t run from this world, then there’s one thing to do.”
Her heart hardened slightly as she realized the truth of her sister’s words. “We have to rule it.”
Chelsea nodded. “This world runs on information. So we become the center of it all. We use them the way they used us.”
She found her feet, her sister steady against her. They were just two girls against a world of black operations and money-fueled crime.
Suddenly she knew that she would win. She would have her husband back and she would bring down everyone who tried to stop her. Optimism. She had to have it. She had to believe that she could do everything she needed to.
If there was one thing she’d learned in her lifetime, it was that the world was a game.
She would win or she would die.
Dallas, TX
Five Years Later
Ian Taggart looked across the table at his previously dead wife and took in the changes the last five years had brought.
She was older. There were fine lines around her eyes that had been previously absent. Her hair was a reddish blonde, but it looked oddly good on her. It went with her stark blue eyes.
Death had been damn good to her. She was still the most stunning woman he’d ever seen. Her return from the dead had stirred more than his curiosity.
His cock was rock hard, but he wasn’t going to give in. Nope. Not this time.
“Tetraodontidae?” Ian asked after a very long, very tense few moments. He was curious about what she’d used to fake her death. Tetraodontidae was a good bet.
She’d shown up on his doorstep, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and calling him Master. She’d gotten past his incredibly rigorous security system. His brother liked to call him paranoid, but Ian knew the truth. The world really was out to get him. That was what happened to spies. They rarely made it to old age, even the ones who got out.
He’d watched many of his colleagues die, some painfully and under torture. This was the first time one had come back from the other side. Of course, when he’d married her, he hadn’t exactly realized she was a spy. He’d known something was wrong with her, but he’d thought she’d been in trouble. He’d been a fool.
He’d invited her in because it was only polite. And because he was going to figure out what the fuck she wanted from him.
And because he couldn’t help himself. Fuck, he couldn’t help himself at all. He didn’t like the feeling any more now than he had back then. From the moment he’d seen her, he’d known he would have her no matter what it took, and that feeling was taking root in his gut again.
“The puffer fish neurotoxin?” She shook her head. “No. I mean I think it might be based on that, but it was a pill. I had to take a pill, and then it was mostly like going to sleep.”
He nodded briefly. When he’d realized it was really Charlotte standing on his doorstep, he’d put it together. Too bad he’d been too stupid to back then. “I heard rumors that the Agency has been working on a zombie drug. I guess I got out before I really needed to use it. Lucky me.”
A zombie drug was used to fake an agent’s death. The puffer fish had a neurotoxin in its body that would render a human lifeless, seemingly breathless. The victim would appear dead. The victim would almost always end up dead, but apparently someone out there had perfected the mix.
She shuddered a little. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“What about the blood?” She’d been covered in it. He’d gotten covered in it. Sometimes he could still smell that coppery scent mingling with the lavender soap she used on her body. He’d loved the smell of lavender until that day.
“Oh, he really shot me. He gave me the drug and then he pulled the trigger.” She pushed one side of her blouse toward her shoulder, showing off the puckered scar below her left clavicle. “It was close enough that I suppose the blood made you think it was my heart.”
He wanted to shove that material off and take a look at every inch of her skin, looking for the new scars she would have, skimming his fingers across the ones she’d had when they’d gotten married.
Before she died. Before she came back.
The first time he made love to her he thought she had a bad Dom in her past. She had more scars than most of the men he knew, and they were all Special Forces.
For now, he would settle for having his questions answered. He wasn’t going to give in to the heart-pounding adrenaline of having her back. His first instinct had been to wrap himself around her and never let her go. His second had been to drag her to the dungeon and take out all of his anger. But no. He would do neither of those things during this little interview. He would view it as a post-op debrief. It was the kind of thing he would do with his employees. He would sit them down and go through a million questions in an attempt to figure out just how the little fuckers had screwed things up.
This time he was the one who had completely gone off the rails, and he was deeply curious just how far it went.
“Who?”
Charlotte frowned as though the whole meeting wasn’t going quite the way she’d planned. She’d no doubt expected him to give in to instinct number one. “What do you mean who?”
He liked the fact that she was off balance. She couldn’t seem to get a handle on his calmness. He couldn’t blame her. He’d always been a dipshit passionate idiot around her. She didn’t know the real Ian Taggart, the one he’d been before he’d married her, the one he’d found his way back to after long years of mourning. He was cold, calm, collected. He was a professional. “Who shot you, Charlotte?”
She stilled. “You’re not going to like it, Master.”
“Ian, please. I’m not your Master, sweetheart. I would prefer you use my given name. I keep the honorary title for the submissives I top.” He kept his voice at the same even keel, but the word “Master” did something to him when it came out of her mouth.
“You’re always my Master,” she said, her voice sweet and a little sad. “And I’m your submissive.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that.” Or he could shove her over his knee, work those jeans off her hips, and slap her ass silly. Charlotte could take it. Charlotte craved it.
Who had been smacking her cheeks and tying her up and fucking her until she screamed? Because there was no way she went without.
“Master, I need you to listen to me.” Her blue eyes fairly pleaded with him. Those eyes were what had gotten him in the first place. Oh, he’d loved her breasts and her hips. She was solidly built, and that just did it for him. He wanted a woman he could fuck for hours and not worry about breaking, but her eyes were striking. Ocean blue, like the waters of the Caribbean reflecting a crystal sky. He’d been drawn into those eyes.
“I’m listening, Charlotte.” A thought occurred to him. “Is that the name you’re going by now or should I call you Kristen? I have no idea what your real name is.”
Her hands made frustrated fists. Ah, she hadn’t changed her little tells. Those fists always made an appearance when she thought he was being stubborn. Her hair might have changed, but he could still tell when he was getting to her.
“I’m Charlotte Dennis and you damn well know it. You checked me out the first time. I never lied about my background.”
He raised a single brow.
She bit into her bottom lip, her eyes sliding submissively away. “I apologize, Master. I shouldn’t have cursed.”
He shook it off. It was just a habit. Disciplining her had been a habit, the same way her sinking to her knees at his feet and rubbing her cheek to his leg had been a habit. The way he’d been able to relax and think as he’d petted her hair and enjoyed the contact before he would inevitably pull her into his lap and start to make love to her.
Yep. Just a habit. He could break habits. He hadn’t had her in five years and he’d survived perfectly well. “Curse all you like. I probably would if my boss had shot me and then dosed me up with puffer fish toxin. Do you think he expected you to live?”
He tamped down the panic that flared at the thought of someone shooting her and dosing her up and leaving her there on the floor of their flat like a sacrifice. The protectiveness was a habit, too. She wasn’t his to protect, and she never had been. She hadn’t really been his sub. She’d been his opponent, and the first round had gone to her.
But she wasn’t going to win this one.
“He wasn’t my boss, babe. He had something I needed, and I thought he was the only one who could do the job. After I met you, I realized just how stupid I was.” Her eyes were cloudy with tears, and she started to reach out for him. He moved his hands and leaned back out of her reach. “I should have talked to you but by then the man I was working for had Chelsea. After he killed my father, he took her as insurance that I would do the job. I couldn’t risk Chelsea.”
“Of course not.” He had no idea who Chelsea was. Probably her dog. “I would like a name, Charlotte.”
Her jaw tightened, and she looked down at her hands. “Chelsea is my sister’s name. I know I didn’t tell you about her, but she’s younger than me. She’s more…fragile. You remember how I told you about my father?”
Her Russian mobster dad. Yes, Vladimir Denisovitch. He had a rap sheet about twelve miles long in twenty-two different countries. If he’d followed the Russian mob practice of tattooing his crimes on his body, Ian was sure there hadn’t been an inch of skin left on Vlad’s flesh. But his crimes against Charlotte were even worse. However, Ian no longer cared. “I asked for a name. I don’t need to know about your sister.”
“You’re going to be difficult.”
He shook his head. “Not at all. If you don’t want to talk, you should feel free to leave. There’s nothing at all difficult about it.”
She took a long breath before speaking. “I’ll tell you, but I want you to stay calm.”
Everything fell neatly into place. There was only one name he could think of that would truly enrage him. Or would if he really gave a shit about her. “Then it’s Eli Nelson. That makes sense. I thought I would find him at the bottom of this particular shit pile.”
Nelson seemed to be at the bottom of all the nasty shit that happened to Ian these days.
At the time he’d met Charlotte, Ian had been working a complicated case involving the Irish G2 intelligence unit, MI6, and a purported Russian terrorist. Eli Nelson had been with the CIA, but the case was Ian’s operation. Unfortunately, Ian had been distracted by the lovely Charlotte Dennis—as Nelson had planned. Nelson had gotten away with a couple of million in bearer bonds and set himself up as an arms dealer.
Ian had gotten the fuck out of the CIA.
“I didn’t know you when I agreed to help him.” Charlotte did nothing to stop the tears running down her cheeks. “I didn’t love you.”
“Yes, well, I figured that out a few moments ago when you showed up on my doorstep.”
Her blonde and red hair shook. It actually suited her quite nicely. When he’d known her she’d had black hair. This warmed up her skin. “No, Master. I meant I didn’t love you when I began the operation. That changed so quickly. Please believe me. I never meant you harm. Master, I love you so much. I’ve been working for five years to get back to you.”
“A plane ticket would have done it. You should have tried the airport.” He wasn’t going to buy this line of bullshit. “I made it from London to Dallas quite nicely.”
Of course he’d done it on a private jet because MI6 had to cover up his wife’s death. At the time they believed her body disappeared in an attempt by the Russians to make Ian look guilty and throw the whole operation into chaos. Now he knew it had just been good old Eli Nelson, American-grown fuckwad and all-around criminal.
He was going to find Eli Nelson. He was going to rip Eli Nelson open and play with his entrails while the fucker was alive to watch it. He would go old school on his ass. No fancy schmancy waterboarding for Nelson. He wouldn’t send the bastard to Guantanamo. Simple. He would keep it simple. Just him and a ball gag and one of Sean’s filet knives. He would let his brother play, too. Sean would likely enjoy castrating Nelson, sautéing up his dick, and force-feeding it to him. It could be a family project. Maybe they could take a weekend.
“Why do you look so happy, Master?” Charlotte asked. “It actually frightens me.”
He forced the smile off his face. Lately, his revenge fantasies made him far happier than the sexual ones.
Because the sexual ones all revolved around her.
“I’d ask for a detailed accounting of everything you know about Nelson, but I wouldn’t be able to trust a word you have to say, would I? I can very likely toss that e-mail you sent in the trash bin.” Just moments before he’d opened the door, he’d gotten an e-mail with all sorts of intelligence on Eli Nelson. Now it was useless because it came from her. He was ready to end this little interview. There was a bottle of fifty-year Scotch calling his name. Where was his phone? He needed some music.
“I’ll tell you everything you want to know. I sent you the e-mail because I want to help you find Nelson.” Charlotte stood, moving around the table and getting to her knees in front of him. “Master, I know I have so much to make up for, but I’m going to do it. I’m going to help you. I already did. I saved Alex. I did that for you.”
He felt his eyes narrow. “That’s right. You put yourself in front of a bullet for Alex.”
She’d been playing a longer game than he’d given her credit for.
She nodded her head. “Yes, and I would do it again because you love Alex and I love you. I watched over them. I guided them back together. Do you think I don’t remember how you talked about them? You wanted us to all live close together.”