On Her Master's Secret Service, Masters and Mercenaries, Book 4

by Lexi Blake

  “I have to go to the locker rooms.” And someone so needed to clean this floor. She was going to have to have a serious talk with Sean about the state of his tile. Sure it looked all perfectly clean when one was standing up, but from her vantage point, she could see the dirt. Ick. Another reason to be pissed off at Alex.

  She was pissed off at Alex. Like really and truly pissed off at Alex and ready to throw a hissy fit the minute she was able to. She kind of wanted to call him a bastard and tell him that if he ever wanted to see the inside of her vagina again, he better come crawling.

  She was mad. A little kernel of happiness lit her up. They had tiptoed around each other for years, politeness their refuge against any strong emotion. She’d hidden her irritation with him and he’d been a frustrating well of patience with her.

  It wasn’t healthy. Couples in love fought. Couples in love got irritated and ranted and raved at each other.

  She’d told herself years ago that she’d fallen out of love with Alex. She knew she would always love him, but their real passion had burned away in the aftermath of what had happened. Alex had pulled away and she had gone into a cocoon where nothing could touch her, nothing could make her mad.

  Crawling on the floor made her mad.

  And she was damn straight going to do it.

  “Uhm, is there a reason you’re making like a baby?” Kristen asked. “I can help you up if you need a hand.”

  Oh, no. She was going to crawl every inch of the way. She wasn’t going to give her Master any reason to say she didn’t comply. It would have been so easy for him to give her a good couple of slaps to the ass, but he’d chosen this. “The Master wants me to crawl to the locker rooms. I am doing my Master’s bidding.”

  “Shit. Wow. Well, I’m coming with you because we have a few things to work out. Can you crawl faster?”

  Eve turned her head up, frowning at the redhead before restarting her slow crawl without saying a word. She pushed through the backside of the kitchen and into the quiet hall that led back to the lockers.

  “This is dumb.” Kristen got to her knees beside Eve, crawling in time.

  “You could just go and wait for me.”

  Kristen’s voice went low. “Was that Jacob Dean?”

  Eve nodded. “Yes. Alex brought him in for the day.”

  “And I wasn’t told.”

  “Neither was I. I don’t think informing us was high on Alex’s list of priorities.”

  “This is my op, damn it. I laid out some ground rules, the chief one being that I approved every member of the team.” Kristen whispered the words, but there was no way to mistake the fact that she was angry. She bit the words out through clenched teeth. She stopped in the middle of the hallway. “This floor is really gross. Is Master A trying to give you Ebola? I think I see some just to the left of you.”

  Thank god, she was at the door to the locker room. She got up and entered, walking straight to the sink because while she was pretty sure the floor was hemorrhagic fever free, she couldn’t say the same thing of staph. She washed her hands. Thoroughly.

  Kristen walked around the locker room, checking the stalls before coming back and joining her at the sink. “We can talk. I already did my daily bug check and we’re alone now, so it’s safe. I want to know why your husband is trying to fuck me over?”

  It was an interesting reaction. Kristen seemed so calm, so very patient, but Jake’s appearance had her rattled. “I don’t think he’s trying to do anything to you. This is his op.”

  She shook her head. “No. It’s mine. I mean it’s my story. I brought you all in to this.”

  She didn’t understand the way they worked, and this was so much more than a story for Alex. “And Alex has been hunting for this man for years. He’s trained. We all are. You have to understand that Alex is responsible for us. You aren’t.”

  “I’m not going to let anyone get hurt. Do you have any idea how long it’s taken me to get my ducks in a row? And then Alex McKay waltzes in like he owns the place.”

  “You did make him the Dom in Residence. He kind of has to act that way. Do you have a specific problem with Jacob?” It didn’t make a lot of sense. Kristen had come to them. She’d known they were a team. Why was she trying to pick and choose now?

  Kristen dried her hands, her face closing off. “I just don’t like surprises. That’s all. Who’s going to show up next? Is Taggart going to be at my doorstep when we get home?”

  “Ian’s stuck in Dallas.” He’d called late last night. “There’s some kind of issue with our bank accounts. He’s pretty sure it’s Eli Nelson. Some very large accounts got frozen. Ian’s having to jump through a bunch of hoops to bring them back online.”

  Kristen’s face was turned away, her voice a little distant. “That’s terrible. This Nelson person, who is he?”

  Eve shrugged a little. “He’s kind of like Ian’s nemesis. Let’s just say they’re on opposite ends of the professional spectrum.”

  “He should take care of that then. We can handle things here.” Kristen took a step back. “I don’t like surprises, Eve. I’m willing to share information with you. Hell, I’ll open the files I have and let you make copies, but I require the same courtesy.”

  “Files?” Alex hadn’t mentioned files.

  She wrinkled her nose a little, looking like a kid who had gotten caught with her hands in the cookie jar. “Yeah. I might have hacked into the feds database and gotten all the files they have on Evans.”

  “Seriously?” It wasn’t the easiest thing to hack into a government database.

  It was Kristen’s turn to shrug. “It’s a hobby. I thought you might like to look at the new stuff and see if you could maybe update your profile. But I get that you’re just here for Alex now.”

  The manipulation was a little blatant. Eve didn’t rise to the bait. She was kind of saving all her irritation for Alex. It was a bit disconcerting to realize that she was just waiting for him to walk through that door. She didn’t want the peace that came from being alone. She wanted the electric feeling she’d had any time she was near him in the last week. “I’ll take a look at the files, though I seriously doubt he’s changed his motivations.”

  Although there now seemed to be a serious money component, as evidenced by the clubs. He’d made small changes before, using his followers to bring in their paychecks and running tiny meth labs. He’d spent everything on his terror campaigns. His bombs had been more sophisticated and deadlier than the usual homemade stuff.

  What was he trying to do now? Yes. She would like a look at those files.

  Kristen looked down, her eyes catching on something. “I would appreciate it. And I would appreciate if I could be considered a member of this team. I get it. Master Alex is too controlling to give over, but I’ve been helpful. I want that acknowledged. At the end of all of this, I want everyone to know that I did good, damn it. There’s dirt all over your knees. It’s probably infectious knowing what goes on in this club.”

  Kristen turned and walked out, the door sliding shut behind her.

  Eve winced. Her knees were streaked with dirt. Someone was so getting yelled at over housekeeping issues. She walked back and started one of the showers. Even if he hadn’t told her to get cleaned up, she wouldn’t have been able to leave it like it was. She shed her clothes, her brain working on the conversation she’d just had.

  Good. It was an odd word. I want everyone to know I did good.

  It played in her brain, that one sentence looping over and over. Eve groaned a little as the hot water hit her skin. Alex had been easy on her. She barely could feel where he’d spanked her. She liked it harder and he knew it.

  I did good.

  Kristen was a writer, a good one at that. She’d been nominated for a Pulitzer. Her grammar should be impeccable. Unless she hadn’t meant it the way Eve had taken it. I did good could be a grammatically incorrect version of I did well.

  Or it could mean that she did right, good.

  Why wa
s Kristen so concerned with everyone on the team knowing she’d done something righteous? It wasn’t the first time she mentioned it. She’d talked about wearing a white hat for once.

  But all of her stories helped people. She was a writer who championed the underdog and exposed corruption. So why did she sound like she was seeking redemption?

  The stall opened, but Eve didn’t scream. She’d known he would be here. She’d known it from the minute he’d ordered her here.

  And she’d known that he would be done playing games with her. She’d seen it in his eyes.

  Five whole days he’d tortured her with intimacy and no sex. That was done now, and she had the feeling it wasn’t going to be a soft and sweet lovemaking session.

  Alex stood in the door of the stall, not a stitch of clothes covering his hard body. She glanced over, her eyes taking him in. He glared down at her, his hands on his muscled hips. The big bad Dom was in the house.

  He was built like a linebacker, all hard muscle and perfectly sculpted skin. His broad shoulders barely fit in the door of the stall. Those shoulders tapered down to a lean waist and a six-pack that still made her mouth water. His legs were strong, long and thick. And his cock. God, she longed for that damn cock, and she’d had it a thousand times.

  So why did it feel new now?

  It had to be the whole mission thing. She hadn’t been out in the field with him this way before. It was a rush, and being exposed to danger could bring people together. She had to remember this wasn’t the real world. They weren’t really together.

  “You want to explain what you’re doing, Eve?” Alex’s voice was a low, silky threat. It was the voice he used to employ when he really wanted her to think about what she was going to say to him because a wrong word would bring some punishment.

  Fortunately for him, she wasn’t afraid of his punishment. His spanking earlier had been more of a tease than anything else. She was still jittery and unfulfilled from those barely there blows and five previous days of sexual denial. “I’m taking a shower because my asshole Master forced me to crawl on a dirty floor.”

  His expression changed suddenly. “It wasn’t dirty. I saw them cleaning earlier. They were mopping.”

  That was why she’d always trusted him. It took everything she had not to just dissolve into a puddle of goo at his feet. Yes, he was a Dom and yes, he needed control, but the last thing he would ever do was hurt or humiliate his sub. She let a good portion of her irritation go because she was more than his sub right now. She was his partner.

  And it was kind of a nice thing to be. Not the real world. She forced the words to go across her brain. In the real world, Alex had rarely treated her like a partner. She’d been precious to him, something to take care of, but she couldn’t go back now. She’d changed.

  She reached out and touched his chest, letting her hand run over all that silky skin and hard muscle. It felt good to be able to reach out and touch him. The minute her fingers brushed his skin, his cock twitched. She still had that power over him. Her anger was dissolving in the heat of longing. She tried to hold on to it. “Your version of clean and mine are quite different, Master.”

  A hard look came back into his eyes. She was done with her hissy fit, but it looked like his had just begun. “I meant what the hell were you doing out there, Eve?”

  Did he really want to have this conversation here? Maybe he wasn’t done with his torture. She gestured toward the door. “Master, we might not be alone.”

  “Don’t shake your head at me. I locked the door, and Sean is keeping everyone else busy. So you can answer the question before I start your punishment.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “I deserve punishment? You haven’t heard the explanation yet.”

  He crowded her, forcing her back against the tiled wall of the shower. Her mind got a little mushy when she felt his cock pressing against her belly. He seemed intent on reminding her just how much bigger he was. “I don’t need an explanation. You disobeyed me. We had a plan going in. We talked about it this morning.”

  She hated how breathy her voice got. She had to force herself to fight with him because all she was thinking about now was how good his punishment was going to feel. “You had a plan. You didn’t even tell me about Jake until we were here.”

  “I didn’t know he was going to make it, and I don’t have to tell you a thing. I’m in charge of this operation. I have to know that you’re going to obey me in the field, and you didn’t today. You shouldn’t have moved from your place. What the hell were you thinking?” He loomed over her, those green eyes of his dark as he stared down.

  His adrenaline was still up. He’d been like this whenever he’d come home from a particularly rough case. When his adrenaline was still coursing through his veins, he’d been practically insatiable. In the last few years, he’d exchanged sex for a treadmill from what she’d seen. After nearly losing Sean and Grace to Eli Nelson over a year ago, she’d caught him on mile nine of what turned out to be a twenty-mile run.

  He seemed to be falling back into familiar patterns. He’d gotten scared and now he needed to burn off the feeling inside her body.

  She should stop him. She should step out of the shower and give them both a chance to calm down. Alex could be crazy possessive, and he’d had to show her off to men he didn’t trust. He’d had to watch her get close to a drug-dealing terrorist. He just needed a few minutes and some calm to put things on the right footing.

  And it wouldn’t hurt for her to tell him the truth.

  “I was thinking that you didn’t know what you were doing,” Eve admitted.

  His hand tangled in her hair, pulling on it. He wasn’t being gentle with her now. He tugged, lighting up her scalp. God, she’d missed this. “What did you say to me?”

  She was pushing his buttons, and she couldn’t seem to stop herself. She knew that if she stepped away, he would probably let her. But all she seemed to be able to do was push him further. “I said your theory was flawed and you needed me to fix it for you. I didn’t have time or a place to talk to you about it, so I took one of the GPS units out of your pocket when I stumbled into you and I placed it for you. I couldn’t exactly call a time-out to explain it all. And you’re welcome. In a few hours, when our bad guy leaves, we’ll know where he’s going.”

  His mouth dropped open as though that was the last thing he’d expected to hear. “I got the GPS into one of their jackets. I had it handled, Eve. You placed yourself and the mission in danger.”

  She shook her head despite the fact that he still had a nice grip on it. He seemed to really enjoy her longer hair. “I did what I needed to do. You’re not thinking about what could happen. He could drop that jacket at any moment. He probably has several of them. If he has a place here in the States, he’ll likely leave it here and then all we’ll know is where he likes to sleep when he’s in town. But he won’t leave those shoes behind. And let’s talk about dry cleaning.”

  She gasped because he turned her and before she could protest, he’d laid ten quick smacks to her ass. The sound cracked through the shower stall. He wasn’t playing this time. Her eyes watered, her flesh flaring with pain. It raced on her skin, lighting every bit of her up and making her feel alive. She wasn’t sure why this did it for her, but it did. She was just a woman who liked a bite of pain.

  She’d fought to get this back, battled to be able to enjoy this again. And Alex had been there with her. Even when she’d treated him like hell, he’d still been there.

  “You want to push me, angel?” He had his mouth right against her ear. “It took me a while, but I know this game now. You need this. You need me to take control. You need to play and know that I’m going to give you what you need. But you’ve opened this door again and I don’t know that I can shut it. You might be the smart one. This little play of yours might have been smarter than mine, but know this, the next time you disobey my orders, I will keep you on the edge for hours. You think the last five days have been bad? They will be heaven
compared to what I’ll do. I will tie you down and your ass will be more than red. I will plug you and spank you and take you right up to the point of orgasm and then sit back and watch you squirm.”

  That sounded perfectly dreadful. She was a logical woman deep down. There were days when spending an afternoon being edged would be interesting, but not now. Not after the way he’d primed her for days. She needed him.

  She needed to take a different tactic. He’d been scared and maybe it was real progress. She’d pushed the mission forward, but he seemed much more worried about the vague possibility that she’d been in danger. Even though she really hadn’t. He was trying. He was putting her before the mission. She couldn’t help but soften up a little.

  “Alex, I don’t want that and I don’t think you want that, either. We don’t have much time in here. We have to get cleaned up and you have to spend the rest of the day with Chazz. Do you really want to spend the little time we have withholding my orgasm? Have the last couple of days really been so easy on you?”

  He turned her back around, his eyes on her mouth. He was already wavering. “You know they haven’t. But I should spank that ass until you can’t sit down and then I should force you to your knees. I should make you suck my cock and take everything I have, and then I should walk away because you need to learn a lesson. I’m in charge when we’re out in the field.”

  He was so frustrating. “I do understand, but I’m right about this, Alex.”

  His fingers reached for her nipples, twisting them lightly, making her shiver. “I don’t care if you’re right or not. You have to obey me. He could have hurt you. He could have hauled you away somewhere. He could have…”

  She put her hands on his hips, snuggling closer. He needed reassurance. Sometimes it was easy to forget that the Dom needed to feel safe, too. “I’m fine. I promise I will fight like hell if anyone tries to take me again. I’ll scream and shout and I will do everything I can to get back to you.”

  He sighed, his anger seeming to deflate. “Did you fight Evans?”