by Lexi Blake
“I would bet Master T looks pretty good au naturel,” Erin said. “He looks nice in a set of leathers. He’s got a ton of scars though. Like a lot of us, he’s taken some damage. Is that going to bother you?”
Scars merely proved the body and soul were stronger than they looked. Scars didn’t bother her at all. “I think he’ll be lovely.”
Erin sighed and reached out, patting her hand. “He is and you’re in trouble, girl. I know that look.”
“Because you see it in the mirror?”
“I kind of wish I didn’t.”
“Why? You and Theo are so good together.” Most of the time, Erin and Theo seemed in perfect synch. There had been a few instances when they hadn’t known she was watching them when they’d seemed to fight. Erin would speak to him in low tones Faith couldn’t quite hear, but it had been obvious the redhead was upset. And Theo would always soothe her. He would find a way to get his hands on her and those fights always seemed to end with Erin wrapped around his body and him maneuvering them somewhere private.
“It’s hard for me,” Erin replied. “I didn’t expect to care about him. Honestly, I wish I didn’t. I tried not to, but circumstances kind of forced us together and he’s a sneaky bastard with ridiculously beautiful muscles. Dudes shouldn’t be that pretty.”
This was a side of Erin she hadn’t seen. It was so fun to have a girlfriend again. Again? She wasn’t sure she’d ever gossiped about men this way. Not since she was a kid. Hope was always so serious. She wanted to talk medicine and politics even when they were at a spa. “Circumstances? I thought you two met at work.”
“We did, but I tried to stay away from him. He’s not exactly my usual type.”
“What’s your type?” Theo Taggart was every woman’s type. Of course, so was Master T.
Erin sat back. “I don’t know. I’ve kept most of my relationships casual. I was in the Army for a long time. Not much chance at lasting relationships there. I’ve had a couple of boyfriends, but none like him. I’ve never dated anyone younger than me.”
“He’s not that much younger.”
Erin shook her head. “Ten years. He’s ten years younger than me. He’s shiny. You know the type. Hell, you are the type. You see the world in a way I don’t. Theo thinks people are good. He tries to see the good in them. I know they’re likely to shoot me. The crazy thing is lately, I kind of like the world Theo sees.”
“That’s good. I think it’s good for us to have partners who see the world in a way we don’t. I think you and Theo are adorable.”
Erin looked toward the door as though she thought he would show up at any moment. “I’m not a picket fence kind of girl. Theo’s going to want marriage and babies, and I knew a long time ago that wasn’t in the cards for me. I’m not built for it.”
Faith knew that feeling. “Sometimes I don’t think I am either.”
“You? Nah. You’re the kind of girl who ends up with a nice house and a nice husband and sweet kids. You deserve that.”
But Erin didn’t think she did? Some of her shiny mood faded. She was more like Erin than the other woman could know. She didn’t foresee some peaceful suburban life for herself. She loved kids. God, she looked at babies like most women looked at hot guys. They were precious, and she wasn’t sure she should bring one into this world around her. She’d been born to make it a better place for other people’s kids. “I have high hopes for you two. And you know what? I kind of have high hopes for me. I think Master T and I are going to get along nicely, and I’m going to have a very good vacation.”
She looked at Erin and realized something she hadn’t before. They were going to fly home together. To Dallas. To the home Theo was surprising Erin with.
“You’re not coming back to Liberia with me, are you?”
Erin’s eyes seemed to get the tiniest bit misty. “No. It was a one-time thing. I’m going wherever Ian tells me to, but it won’t be back to Africa.”
So this was the end of their time together, too. Damn. She was going to miss Erin. It seemed like the life she’d chosen meant a constant flow of humanity. No one ever stayed. She’d learned to enjoy life where she could. “So let’s have fun while we can. We’re stuck here so my dad can play the righteous politician who ignores all solid scientific data. We should have fun. I’ll call the liquor store tomorrow and find us the best tequila Germany can offer.”
Erin stood up. “That’s a deal, Doc.” She winked and left, going off to find her too-pretty prince charming.
Faith had given them the master bedroom. She didn’t need it. The smaller bedrooms in this place were more than enough for her. She hoped Erin and Theo brought some love to the place because she was fairly certain her father hadn’t.
She quickly read and responded to her other messages, telling her father she’d made it to the house safely and no she didn’t want to testify in front of congress on the impact of the West African Ebola outbreak and how it would impact the US. He wouldn’t like her answer. She would push for funding for research and better hospitals in Third World countries, rather than his answer to fund pharmaceutical companies who would then take the money earmarked for a cure for hemorrhagic fevers and divert it into the next plastic surgery wonder drug that they would make billions from.
The second was from the doctor she’d left in charge of the clinic, asking about vaccines. She explained where they were stored and instructed him to put the protocols back in place with the singular exception of the flu vaccines from last season. She’d pulled those out of the rotation. She’d explained in the e-mail that those vaccines were not to be used under any circumstances until further notice. She had some questions about them and she would find the answers when she got to the States.
Now that the crisis was dying down, the clinic could get back to its primary focus of well care for locals.
She sighed and closed the lid of her laptop. She would do exactly as Master T had asked in the morning. She would wake up and prepare and then send him a message.
She had a few weeks to get to know this man, to talk to him and let him get to know her. It was good.
It was really good because she was pretty sure she was going to sleep with that man.
When she slept, she dreamed of a man with golden brown hair and a smile that made her heart pound.
* * * *
Ten’s laptop chirped and he forced himself not to fall all over the place trying to answer it.
“Sounds like you have a message, boss.” The reason for his stillness turned his way with a stupid grin on his face. Hutch had a bag of gummy bears in one hand as he looked over the top of his monitor.
Ten continued to his seat. He’d gotten up to grab a cup of that heated motor oil Tag called coffee. He slipped back into his chair.
Big Tag walked in, a cup of coffee in one hand and a thick stack of papers in the other. He looked over at Ten as Ten’s computer chirped again. “You need to take that, lover boy?”
Ten glanced down and forced his face to remain perfectly blank.
Good morning, Sir. It’s afternoon here, but I thought you should know we’re enjoying our last day before coming back to the States.
Another ding and a picture came through. It was Faith wearing an oddly sedate bathing suit. Most women her age would be in a bikini, but Faith’s suit was a one piece with a little skirt around the hips. Still, it couldn’t hide her curves or the way the sun kissed her skin. Her face was up to the sun. He fought the instinct to reach out and brush his fingers over the picture.
He also fought his secondary instinct, which was to write her back, order her to go somewhere private and take that suit off for him.
Weeks of talking to her, flirting with her, were taking their toll. He wanted Faith McDonald. He wanted her underneath him, her legs spread, that warm smile of hers welcoming him deep inside her soft body.
“I think I can handle it, Tag. Why don’t you get started?” He quickly typed back a message. You look beautiful. I hope you’ll enjoy the sun
here, too. I’ve made reservations for the four of us at a friend’s restaurant the night you come in. I’m counting the hours.
He was disconcerted to discover he was actually counting the hours. Given the fact that Dallas was seven hours behind Munich, she would be going to bed soon to get ready for an early flight. He’d thought about picking them up at the airport, but decided to play it cool and simply meet her at Sean Taggart’s restaurant later that night.
So Ian was picking them up. Ian would be taking them to Theo’s new house. Ian would be hauling her suitcases around and it fucking rankled. Which was precisely why Ten wouldn’t give and pick her up.
“All right then. Hutch has gathered some intel on the sister and Chelsea’s been monitoring some activity from within the Agency,” Tag explained as he played around with the computer that was stationed in the conference room. He seemed to be loading something he wanted projected on the back wall. McKay-Taggart was big on graphics. “She’s trying to lay low for the moment so Simon’s going to relay her report. And we might have to stop because we’ve got a couple of guests coming in. Grace is going to show them in when they get here.”
Chelsea was laying low because Ten had been the one to hire Chelsea Weston. He was certain she was under a lot of scrutiny given her connections to McKay-Taggart. There was really only one question he wanted answered about the Agency. “Is there an active kill order on me?”
His laptop dinged again. I’m looking forward to it, Sir. I’m very excited to finally meet you in person. I feel like I know you already.
She knew absolutely nothing about him. Not even his real name. As far as she was concerned, he was Timothy Graham. He’d selected the last name with care. It had been Phoebe’s alias for years. He was used to using it. Typically, he would have used his foster father’s last name, but McDonald knew too much about Franklin Grant and his foster sons. So Graham had been a suitable replacement. It was best to go with something similar. Something easy for him to answer to.
Faith knew minor things. He’d purposefully kept his end of the conversation light. She knew he’d grown up in the south. She knew he liked barbecue and worked for a security firm.
Everything else he’d told her was lies.
Simon Weston sat forward, his face serious. He was dressed in a white dress shirt, slacks, and a tie. He’d hung up the suit coat, and that was about as casual as the Brit ever got. The only time Ten could remember seeing him without a tie around his neck was at Sanctum. “From what Chelsea’s found, the Agency isn’t actively looking for you.”
Me, too, sweetheart. I’m eagerly awaiting your arrival. Get plenty of sleep tonight and let Theo carry your bags. That’s my first command. Once you get here, there will likely be more.
Once she touched down in Texas, she was his sub. She was under his command. He’d spent most of his adult life with scores of assets under his command. He’d sent men and women into dangerous situations, some when he knew the likelihood was they wouldn’t survive.
So why was this so different? Faith was another mission. Why did the idea of having her under his command, of being able to demand she undress for him, that she submit to him—why did that make his whole body tighten?
“Just because they’re not actively searching for me doesn’t mean there isn’t a see/kill order.” It was simple. He ran into an operative. The operative saw him. The operative killed him. The Agency was down one more problem.
“Chelsea doesn’t think so,” Simon replied. “She thinks you took care of the problem. She asked me to mention a certain e-mail you sent to the director during your time in Saudi.”
Tag laughed. “The girl is good, Ten.”
He should have known Chelsea would figure that out. Franklin Grant had taught him well. Franklin’s final gift to his children had been a package of information he’d gathered over his thirty-year career with the Agency. Ten and Jamie and Phoebe had already received copies of the information after their foster father’s funeral. They’d each added to it during their own careers. When Jamie had died, Ten had added his brother’s information to his own before handing it over to Phoebe.
“Big Tag knows?” Simon asked. He sat back, watching Ten.
He knew Alex was Tag’s best friend and that Tag’s circle was pretty big, but Ten’s wasn’t. It was incredibly small. Hell, he trusted Tag more than he did anyone with the exception of Phoebe, and he hadn’t wanted this burden on her. “He knows where the information is and he knows to get it out in the event of my death.”
“An insurance policy,” Simon murmured.
Hutch nodded Ten’s way. “Boss practices what he preaches. When we joined up with his team, he told us it was important to keep track of things we’d learned. Especially the things that could damage the Agency.”
He had enough on the higher-ups that they wouldn’t want it to get out. He simply hadn’t been sure they’d gotten the message. He’d passed on what he’d learned from his foster father to his own men. He’d always been an Agency man, but Franklin Grant had known things could turn.
Damn but he missed the old man.
“I watch out for my men. You have to have insurance. If you don’t have leverage and the wrong people come into power, things can go bad quickly. As evidenced by me.” One day he’d been a power player with his own operational team. He’d been given a fairly free hand to do whatever he needed to do.
And then he’d come up against Senator Hank McDonald and he’d been disavowed overnight.
He had to wonder if he didn’t have a file documenting some of the Agency’s worse secrets, if he wouldn’t be dead already. If his men wouldn’t have been taken out one by one. It was the one thing he wouldn’t tell anyone. He hadn’t simply bargained for his life. He’d let it be known that if his men suffered any sort of odd accidents he would release the information. If anyone from McKay-Taggart went missing, he would release the information.
He was going to protect his team and when he was gone, Taggart would do the job for him. Big Tag would use the insurance policy to protect the men who had been loyal to Ten. And Phoebe. They’d had the conversation about the fact that no one was more important to Ten than his sister. He could relax because Jesse Murdoch would lay down his life for her and Big Tag would watch over them both.
I eagerly await your commands, Sir. I’m kind of counting the hours until I get to meet you in person. It’s been good that we spent time getting to know each other, right?
He’d gotten to know her. He’d gotten to know how sweet she was, how naïve and weirdly innocent. He wasn’t sure what to do with a woman who played so innocent.
What if she really was innocent? He didn’t mean that in a sexual fashion. Virginity meant less than nothing to him. But that lack of true cynicism was something he didn’t understand. Who did what she did? She gave up her comfy life to help people she didn’t know.
His eyes strayed back to that picture of her. He needed to understand her. “Tell me about the sister.”
Send me another picture.
He was fairly certain either Theo or Erin had been on the other end of the camera, so he was likely going to get ribbed about that. He could handle it. He wanted another picture of her.
“Hope McDonald.” Tag nodded toward the back wall where there was a monitor affixed.
A picture of a blonde came up. She was smiling but it didn’t reach her eyes. He sat back and looked at her. Smart suit. Perfect makeup. Not a hair out of place. On the surface someone might think she was prettier than her younger sister.
Those people were dimwits.
His laptop dinged and a picture of Faith filled the screen. Fuck. His dick was hard. She was smiling without inhibition. She looked into the camera and radiated outward. Erin stood beside her, smiling with her friend. Damn. Even Erin looked happy next to Faith. The two women were holding glasses of wine. Erin was drinking red and Faith a white. A Pinot Grigio likely. She’d ordered several bottles of Noir and Grigio off the Internet along with a case of beer and a
bottle of tequila from a local liquor store. She’d paid with her credit card and had it delivered with instructions to leave the boxes inside the courtyard of the chalet. He’d watched her every move, read her every e-mail for the last several weeks, watched every place she went to on the Internet.
She liked some fairly dirty porn. She was attracted to the fetish movies and she went there directly after their conversations. He could get her hot, give her what she needed. He’d done all the training he needed to be able to fit into his role, but he hadn’t really gotten it until he’d started talking to Faith. It had been something to learn. He needed to dominate this woman. He needed to top her. Only her.
And that disturbed him.
“Hope graduated from Johns Hopkins, did her residency at Massachusetts General. She worked as a surgeon specializing in neurology until she quit seven years ago and joined Kronberg Pharmaceuticals.” Tag clicked the remote in his hand and the picture changed. There was a list of the financials of Kronberg. Two billion a year in income. They were on the leading edge of medical technology. “She works in research, but she’s got a ton of connections, and that’s where Faith comes in.”
Beautiful, sweetheart. Enjoy your evening. Tomorrow, you’re mine. Let Theo take care of you in my absence.
“What do you mean that’s where Faith comes in?” His eyes trailed back to the pictures. He would hoard all the ones she’d sent him, looking at them over and over again. She liked to send him pictures of her relaxing, a glass of wine in her hand, but he’d seen her be serious, too. They’d talked over FaceTime at least once a day and she’d talked to him about her job. She’d told him about the clinic she ran and what it meant to her.
She hadn’t talked about Ghana. Even when he’d asked if there was anything about her job that scared her. She’d simply said losing children. Her mouth had turned down and she’d changed the subject.
Did she still dream about it?