by Lexi Blake
Yeah, that did something for her, too.
“No. We’re going to start this out right, darlin’. Like I told you, plans have changed and I’m going to be more in charge than you imagined. Poor baby. She thought she was getting some pushover, sissy Dom who would let her take what she wanted.”
“I knew your nickname was Master No. I really didn’t think you were a pushover.” She defended herself, but she could tell what he was doing. This was one more flirtation. Though she was pretty sure he wasn’t what she’d bargained for. No, she’d thought she would find someone she could hold herself apart from, but it sure as hell wasn’t a sexy as sin cowboy with a dirty mouth that threatened to melt her insides.
His hand slid back down. This time a single finger slid through her thoroughly juicy pussy. “I’ll show you how little of a pushover I am tonight. We’re going to Sanctum and I’m going to have fun showing off my pretty sub. You should behave today because there could be consequences this evening if you’re not careful.”
She was going to be at a club tonight with this man at her side. It made her want to glow. Clubs were one place where she could simply be. In a club, she didn’t have to be a doctor, didn’t have the responsibility of hundreds of lives. In a club, she wasn’t Senator Hank McDonald’s daughter. In a club, her background didn’t matter. She got to be Faith, her own self.
Well, she also got to be Master T’s sub, and that was another reason to glow.
His finger slid inside, his thumb finding her clit again. “Who gives you pleasure?”
“You do, Sir.”
“Do you take it from me?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m sorry. I was eager. I’m usually better behaved than this, but now I think it was because I didn’t want my last Dom the way I want you.”
“Oh, I gotta say, I do love a manipulative brat. That kind of praise is going to get you what you want.” His lips lowered again, moving against hers as his hand found a rhythm. “But don’t try to take one from me again. I’m the Master here. I’m the man who takes care of you here.”
He added a second finger, fucking her while his thumb pressed down. There was nothing to do but let him have his way. Yes, this was what she needed. He was right about that. All her inhibitions melted away. She didn’t need them.
“Look at me. Don’t close your eyes,” he commanded.
She looked up into his serious blue eyes. He was so lovely, with his square jaw and blade of a nose. Her Master was the very definition of masculine beauty. “Yes, Sir.”
His hands never stopped moving, and she was so close now as he watched her. “I want to see you come, darlin’. I want to watch you come for me and then it’s going to be my time. Then you’re going to roll a condom over my cock and I’m going to take you fast and hard. I won’t be able to hold back, Faith. I want you, too. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted another sub.”
His words warmed her, but she couldn’t think about it for too long because her body was taut, right on the edge. She couldn’t breathe as he sent her flying over it. Pleasure coursed through her, but when she opened her mouth to scream, he covered her. He kissed her, drinking down the sounds of her pleasure like a man dying of thirst.
So good. It felt so right to be here with him, and now she wished they weren’t wearing so many clothes. She wanted to curl against him, skin to skin.
His hand eased out and he gave her one last kiss before bringing his fingers to his mouth and thrusting them in, tasting her with obvious pleasure. “Damn, girl. You make a man feel good responding to him like that.”
She had to smile. “Yeah, I think that’s a ‘you’ response.”
It was only for him.
“We’re going to keep it that way. After I have my time, I’m going to feed my pretty sub and then we’re going to talk about moving to my place. But for now, how about we get out of all these clothes and get to know each other even better?” He was reaching for her tank top when there was a short knock and then the door opened.
“Hey, sleepy head, I brought you some coffee. Well, Theo’s version of coffee. It tastes like shit to me. Oh, hey, Ten.” Erin grinned. “I noticed you weren’t on the couch. I thought you’d gone out.”
Faith felt herself flush. She was likely a nice shade of red.
Ten just frowned at Erin. “No. I didn’t leave. Now reach over there, pass me that box of condoms, and go away.”
“Oh, that’s probably not happening,” Erin said with a rueful shake of her head. “Big brother’s here. Apparently Tag knows who tried to kill Faith and he’s all pissy about it.”
“Yo, Ten,” a masculine voice shouted. “Dude, I have my daughters here. Could we keep this family friendly? Get your ass out here. You’re going to want this intel. And dear god, make sure you’re dressed and calm and stuff. Sweet baby girls don’t need to see that kind of thing, do they? No, they don’t. Tell Uncle Ten to put away his junk. Yes.”
“Oh my god. Fatherhood has turned him into a complete idiot.” Ten groaned.
Erin tossed Faith a robe and put the coffee on the side table. “I tried to tell Tag you weren’t here, but he bet Theo that you were likely in here, you know. Doing it. Though Tag doesn’t say the words around the babies. He makes a deeply junior high gesture.” She made a circle with the thumb and forefinger of one hand and inserted a finger into it.
Ten rolled out of bed. “He’s an asshole.” He put his head out the door. “You’re an asshole. A cock blocking asshole, and this intel better be good.”
“Dude, language around the girls. And it’s fucking really good,” Theo’s brother replied.
“It can wait ten minutes while I take the world’s fucking coldest shower. I hate him.” The door to the bathroom slammed shut.
Erin sat down on the bed. “So you totally…”
“Nope. I mean I had a pleasant morning, but we didn’t get as far as that.” She sat up, now happy she hadn’t gotten naked. She couldn’t help but grin back at her totally juvenile friend. She knew she should be a bit more interested in whatever information Theo’s brother had discovered, but she kind of wanted to leave that to Ten. It was more fun to talk to Erin about relationship stuff. Of course, she could only do it because she trusted Ten to take care of the security aspect of her life. Maybe she shouldn’t, but her every instinct told her she could trust this man with her life. “But seriously, when you make that gesture and you’re talking about Ten, you should use two fingers. Maybe three.”
That skinny finger Erin was using didn’t describe her Master in any way.
“I can hear you, Faith,” Ten growled through the door.
Her poor Master. She dissolved into laughter with her friend.
* * * *
“God, you’re a bastard, Tag.” Ten strode into the kitchen ready to kill someone, but Tag had his bulletproof vest on, and by bulletproof vest Ten really meant there was a damn baby in his arms. Even he wasn’t horrible enough to shoot through a tiny, wriggling baby.
Tag’s face split in a shit-eating grin. “Hey, remember when you tried to cock block me in India? Payback’s a bitch, brother.”
He didn’t like to admit it, but when Ian Taggart called him “brother” it made Ten want to kill him less. With Jamie gone, Tag was the closest thing he had. “Yeah, well, I remember you greeted me at the door with a revolver and threatened to shoot the next person who came between you and your wife.”
“See, I taught you, but you didn’t listen. You should have shot Erin on sight.”
“Hey,” Theo said with a frown as he entered with the second baby in his arms. Tag’s actual brother shook his head Ten’s way. “No shooting my girl. No matter how much she deserves it. This one’s diaper is changed. Jeez, man, what are you feeding her? That was horrible.”
Maybe he didn’t want to be Tag’s brother if it meant having to change diapers. “He should be paying you to do that, and you do understand that this is an op, right? We’re alone. You don’t have to keep your cover up. Erin took Faith
out to pick up a few things she needed.”
“Hey, this might be an op, but she is my girl. And this stinky thing is my niece. I have a blood obligation to ensure her backside is clean while her momma is at yoga class.” Theo shifted the baby on his shoulder. The little girl seemed to settle in for a nice nap. “I personally think it’s great that Charlotte is finding her Zen. She’s going with Phoebe, Eve, and Avery.”
“Serena and Grace claim they have a prior engagement. I happen to know they meet every Saturday morning for mimosas and beignets. It’s their form of relaxation. I’m kind of with them on that one.” Tag took a drag off his coffee. “And this isn’t a cover for Theo. He’s in love.”
“Tell me you’re not serious.” The last thing Ten needed was his backup operatives having their own soap opera going on.
Tag laughed as he shifted the baby and dragged the rag on his shoulder off, wiping down her mouth. “This is my child. I mention the word love and she barfs.”
Theo rolled his eyes while Tag cleaned up his unromantic child. “Erin and I are good. That’s all anyone needs to know. Erin and I are going to be perfectly fine after the op is over. She even likes the house I bought for us.”
“Yeah because you totally used this op to seduce her,” Tag shot back. “You better keep her happy because I’m firing your ass if she sues us for sexual harassment.”
“There’s no harassment. There is some truly beautiful lovemaking though,” Theo explained.
Tag’s face screwed up in a truly disgusted expression. “Oh, god, Kala, I think you’re going to have to clean Daddy up this time.”
Ten was done with the drama. “Is anyone going to explain why the two of you thought it was important to screw up my morning? I would like to point out I’m the one who actually needs to fuck someone for his mission.”
The minute the words were out of his mouth, he wanted to take them back. They felt wrong, which was precisely why he stood strong. It was the truth. No matter how good it had felt to sleep with her the night before, she was a mission. Faith McDonald was a means to an end and nothing more. He wouldn’t let her be anything more. It didn’t matter that she responded to him so beautifully or that he was crazy about how open she was.
It could all be a lie. It could all be a way to draw him in, and he would do well to remember that.
“Oh, I’ve found Erin is so much easier to be around when she’s been sexually satisfied. Trust me, I’m doing us all a favor.” Theo’s face lit up with a supremely satisfied grin. “Mostly me though. That woman is hot as hell and she’s all mine. She might not know it yet, but that honey is going to marry me.”
Tag shook his head. “You’ll have to forgive him. He’s overly pleased with himself.”
“Hey, she’s happier now. She’s less caustic. She smiles more,” Theo said. “She simply needed to know she’s lovable.”
Ten groaned. “Are we on a secret Oprah episode?”
“Fine. Fine,” Tag allowed. “I’ll get to the good stuff. You, my friend, are dealing with the Ukrainian mob.”
“That’s the good stuff?” He and Tag had very different definitions of good. “Explain.”
“We got a hit on your corpse. As we thought, he was already in the system.” Tag slid a folder across the table to him. “He’s an American with Ukranian ties. His parents emigrated when he was a kid. His father was a minor figure with the San Francisco based part of that Odessa mafia. You killed John Kozak. He’s been nabbed for murder for hire. Yes, you got yourself an actual mob assassin. Fun way to start your day.”
“Shit. What the hell do they want with Faith?” Even as he asked the question, his gut twisted.
“Should I enumerate all the ways she could be in bed with them?” Tag said with a hint of nauseating sympathy in his voice.
“Don’t. We need to look at her financials. And I’d like to see her vaccination programs.” It made him sick to his stomach, but he understood the con. Faith’s sister’s company would be convinced to donate vaccines and drugs to her clinic. The mob would be the ones running the transportation company that handled the shipment, and they would switch out the real drugs for placebos. They would take the real drugs and sell them on the black market for fun and profit that they might or might not share with a doctor who tipped them off on the shipment.
Could Faith be working a con? She wouldn’t be the first doctor to do it. She certainly wouldn’t be the first naïve idiot to think she could make something of herself in Africa only to be ground down and left barren.
It could have happened. She could have taken the bait when she needed money. Or she could have seen a good deal and taken it. She could be looking out for number one.
“You think Faith’s working with them?” Theo patted the baby’s back as he paced.
“No, I think she was working with them and now they’ve decided she’s expendable. We need to figure out why.” No matter what she’d done, he needed to keep her alive until he’d gotten the dirt on her father. He had to figure out how she’d fucked over the Ukrainians and protect her until such time that he no longer needed her and then they could take her.
Or he could take her and punish her and bend her to his will and make damn sure she never did anything criminal again. He could keep her all for himself once he’d properly spanked the criminal out of her.
“That doesn’t sound like Faith,” Theo said, a frown on his face.
It struck him that Faith had liked Theo. Faith had asked about Case because she liked Theo so damn much. She’d obviously charmed him to the point that he couldn’t see her as a criminal. “So she should have given you a pamphlet detailing her crimes? Is that what you expected? Did I train you at all?”
Theo’s eyes narrowed. “Of course you did. You trained me to make judgment calls. To really look at people and figure out what they’re capable of. She’s not capable of this. She wasn’t working with the mob. What would she do with them? You think she was selling drugs? Because I’ve watched that woman beg and plead for anything she can get for her patients.”
Of course she did. She was likely Mother Theresa in public. She was likely very useful to her father as well. Being able to parade around his saintly doctor daughter would be good PR. “I want Hutch to pull absolutely everything he has on the relationship between Faith and her father.”
“She’s got a love-hate relationship with the man,” Theo replied.
“I don’t want to hear about your perceptions.” It was obvious Theo had taken a big dose of Faith’s Kool-Aid. Of course, Ten himself had woken up this morning basically vowing to protect her. “I want solid proof. I want their e-mails to one another. I want anything I can get my hands on. These people are smart. They won’t show their colors in public.”
“McDonald certainly won’t,” Tag agreed. “He’s been a politician for almost forty years. He started in state politics when he was straight out of college.”
Tag wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. “McDonald’s family is political royalty. His family has held a seat in congress or the senate for the last fifty years. There’s talk about Hope eventually following in her father’s footsteps. So this is a family who knows how to keep the skeletons hidden. We need to dig deeper. We need to figure out how Faith is involved in her father’s schemes.”
“Or we can accept that she’s not.” Theo laid the baby he was holding down in her carrier thingee. When he stood back up, his hands were on his hips, judgment plain on his face. “I think she’s exactly what she looks like. She’s been nothing but kind to everyone we’ve met up with and she’s done wonders with Erin. I don’t think Erin’s ever had a female friend like Faith, so you need to understand that I’m going to look out for her. Erin cares about her, and that makes her my responsibility.”
Tag looked down at the baby in his arms. “It’s time to vomit again, Kala. Uncle Theo’s going to break into song.”
“She’s not your responsibility. She’s the target and now I’m worried that I have to
work against my own team.” He faced off with Theo, who he’d trained. Theo had been trained to see deeper, to view the world through the filter of the mission. It seemed to Ten like Theo had gotten too comfy with his target. “I know you’ve spent months with her. I know you care about her, but even if she’s not involved with her father’s business, you getting emotional about this is going to get Faith killed. I’m going to ask you some serious questions and I want you to answer me like the operative I know you can be.”
Theo’s jaw had tightened, his shoulders straightening as though he couldn’t help himself. “Yes, sir.”
“Can you give me one good reason for the Ukrainians to send an assassin after her?”
Theo’s eyes closed briefly and they were colder when he opened them. “She’s gotten involved in something that could compromise their operations.”
“And what do the syndicate’s operations consist of?”
“Obviously they’re criminal enterprises, Ten. I know where you’re leading. You want me to add one and one and come up with two. If she’s involved with the mob, then she’s involved with something criminal.”
The boy could be led to the proper conclusions. “And if she’s involved with criminal operations, it only makes sense she’s also involved with her father. It would be awfully coincidental if her father kept her in the dark, but she still managed to find her way to his lifestyle. Can we connect the senator with the mob?”
Tag sighed and sat back, his big hand cradling the baby. She rested along her father’s forearm, her head in that strong hand. Her eyes were closing because that baby wasn’t worried about anything. She was completely certain that her father would take care of her.
Ten had read the reports about himself. He’d been a fussy baby, crying even when held, as though he’d never once trusted the person who held him. It had been a factor in moving him from home to home even as an infant. No one wanted a fussy baby.
Faith had curled in his arms, as though she totally trusted him. The night before she’d turned over in her sleep and draped her body over his like they’d been sleeping together for years. He’d been stiff at first and then he’d relaxed, enjoying the way she felt. Well, everything but his cock had relaxed. That looked like it would stay stiff all fucking day.