Dominance Never Dies (Masters and Mercenaries Book 11)

by Lexi Blake

  February

  “It’s time. I’m packed and we’re heading out in the morning. It’s just me and my brothers and Li and Kai. Erin is coming with Avery and Charlotte on a separate plane. It’s going to kill her to leave TJ with Grace, but she wants to be there. They’ll stay at a secure location, but she needs to be close. Faith is going to meet us in Freetown and Ten will be there for backup. This is it. I want you to come with me. I want you on that plane beside me tomorrow morning. If I could go back and change one thing, it would be the way I made you feel. You’re so smart. You’re strong and brave. I think you might be the best part of me. If I don’t come back, know that I was better for loving you. That’s what I’ve figured out. Even if you can’t ever forgive me, can’t ever love me, I wouldn’t take it back. I love you. I think I’ll always love you and I’m a better man because I love you. Michael has a key to my place. If anything happens to me, there’s a box in the hall closet. It’s got some pictures and stuff from my Navy days. It’s not much, but I’d like you to have it. If you don’t want it, I guess give it to Ian. But that’s not going to happen. I’ll be back in a few days and we’ll have Theo. And then I’m coming for you. So you should think about that. I’m going to prove to you that I can be the man you need me to be. I’m going to go to New York and help your brothers. I’m going to be in your world. I’ll be there when you need a kiss. When you need strong arms around you, holding you close, I’ll offer mine. If you get lonely at night and need a man who’ll worship your body with every part of his soul, I’ll be down the hall, waiting for you. I’m going to win you back, Mia. It’s going to be my mission in life. I love you. Yeah, get used to hearing that because I love you and I won’t keep that inside anymore. See you soon.”

  Austin, TX

  Mia stared at her brother. “You want me to do what?”

  Riley stood in front of her, a phone in his hand. “I want you to listen to your voice mail.”

  She sighed. The flight from Paris had been a long one and the layover at DFW had been particularly rough. Case lived in Dallas. All she had to do was get in a cab and she could be at his apartment in twenty minutes. She could stand in front of him and ask if he’d missed her at all, if he ever thought about her. Did he wish he’d done things differently?

  She’d forced herself to sit in the small Irish pub in terminal C and drink a single glass of wine while Ezra had a beer. She’d reread the first two chapters of her book on Damon Knight and when it had been time, she’d gotten on the plane to Austin and come home.

  Where she would have to tread very carefully because according to Drew, Case was now a part of the “take down all our enemies and crush them into dust” team. And Drew seemed to not hate him. Awesome. So now she could run into Case at 4L or right in the hallways of Drew’s place. She would have to stay in her room until she was ready to go to New York. She shouldn’t have given up her condo, but Drew wanted everyone close.

  Would Case be coming to New York? What the hell would she do if Case came with them on the Castalano job? How would she smile at him and pretend like she wasn’t dying inside?

  Six months had done nothing to fix her broken heart. Nothing. The ache was still fresh.

  “I’ve listened to my voice mail. It was nothing but my literary agent asking when the book would be done.” Work was what she’d thrown herself into. She’d gotten some amazing opportunities out of left field. She’d been asked to do a feature story on a Navy SEAL team that had eventually been sold to freaking Time magazine. Apparently the Navy had wanted a female reporter for a different point of view. She’d gotten an interview with the king of Loa Mali, who was attempting to change the way the planet used energy. And then she’d gotten the deal to write a book about a British military unit and the untold story of their heroism. Naturally that had led her right to McKay-Taggart London. Damon Knight had talked about the Taggarts with great fondness.

  Everywhere she’d turned all she could see was Case.

  Six months should have erased her feelings for that damn cowboy. Or at least muted them. She’d spent six months with the gorgeous Ezra Fain at her side. After the first few weeks of being depressed, she’d tried to get herself to consider him. Why the hell not? Ezra was a stunning man. He had dark hair and piercing eyes, and an unnatural affection for taking off his shirt when she was around. He found very thin excuses to show off how hot he was.

  Nothing. Her girl parts didn’t spark. No deep desire to shed her panties. No desire at all. Ezra was a lovely man but he was like a painting to her. Something to admire, but not touch. She’d been relieved when he would disappear for chunks of time, leaving her with a female bodyguard McKay-Taggart had sent so he could take a couple of days off.

  Kayla Summers was awesome. She was up on all the TV shows and never minded when Mia wanted to walk the streets to get some inspiration. Kayla just viewed any super-long city walk as a chance to try all the local street food.

  One of the things she intended to talk to her brothers about was a change in bodyguards. Ezra had been perfectly pleasant for the most part, but something about him bothered her. Now that her attention wasn’t constantly on Case Taggart, she’d had time to study Ezra. She’d noted his secrecy. Oh, he tried to pretend he didn’t take phone calls in the middle of the night that suddenly stopped the minute she walked in the room. And then there were the trips to Dallas that he lied about.

  At first she’d thought about declaring herself bodyguard free, but then she’d started to feel like someone was watching her. It had begun in Loa Mali. She’d felt eyes on her, an instinctive sense that someone was watching. It had followed her back to Austin. She was probably paranoid, but she wasn’t giving up the bodyguard.

  Which meant until she could convince Kayla Summers to come on full time, she was stuck with Ezra.

  Which meant she had to tell Ezra about the e-mail she’d gotten from Tony. He had a new line on Theo and he was willing to meet her here in Austin. Naturally, he’d done the whole song and dance about not telling anyone and meeting in complete privacy, but like she was going to do that. Ezra was good at making himself scarce and still being around. He’d proven that in London when she’d had a nasty run-in with a guy who wanted to steal her bag.

  And again in Paris right before they flew home. Someone had been in her room, but Ezra had managed to run the man off.

  Thieves, it seemed, were everywhere.

  “You haven’t checked the voice mail on this phone,” Riley said, setting the phone on her dresser and striding over to sit next to her. “That’s your old phone. I might not have turned it off when you asked me to.”

  “Did you forget? I knew I should have asked your secretary. Wait. Does Bambi know how to call and get a phone turned off?” Her brother tended to hire his assistants based on their boob size.

  He held his hands up. “Her name was Brooke and she turned out to be not what I was looking for in an assistant.”

  Mia felt her lips curl up. The work relationship tended to get messy once Riley had slept with his assistants a couple of times. “Got clingy, huh?”

  Riley’s eyes rolled. “I didn’t actually sleep with her. I think I’m getting old. I got tired of having to do my own work because she couldn’t figure out the word processor. She quit after Taggart yelled at her. Well, he didn’t actually yell. He did that super-cold voice thing and told her if she didn’t get her hands off him he would call his sister-in-law and let her take care of the situation, and that might include actually chopping off her hands. I think Brooke believed him. Not only did she not touch his abs anymore, she quit. Now I have a very nice legal secretary named Tom who’s totally in good with the rest of the staff, brings me all the helpful gossip, and makes an excellent latte.”

  “Well, I’m glad you figured that out. You’re not getting any younger. It’s time to hang up your manwhore clothes and get serious about making me some nieces and nephews.” Serena would have had her baby by now. Had it been the girl she’d wanted so badly? She wonde
red how Erin was doing with baby TJ. He would be sitting up by now, probably babbling like mad.

  A look of pure horror crossed her brother’s handsome face. “Don’t count on that. I’m not about to settle down, much less start pumping out kids. I’m not that old. I’ve got many years of manwhoring in my future, thank you. Once I get through flirting with Ellie Stratton, I’m going to come home and have some fun.”

  “And if you fall madly in love with her?” She’d seen a picture of Ellie Stratton. She was a serious-looking young woman, but there was something about her eyes, a little light that let her know the CEO of StratCast had some sparkle inside her. Riley was going to ruin her life. It didn’t seem fair since she hadn’t been the one to kill their parents. That had been her father, but this was the only way to get to Castalano. Their first target. Revenge was her brothers’ main goal in life.

  Was it Erin’s now that she had her baby? Or would she give it all up just to see Theo one more time?

  Thinking about Erin brought her back to something Riley had said before. “Why would Big Tag let Erin defend his honor? I should think his wife would do it.”

  “I didn’t say it was Big Tag. It was Case. He was a big hit with all the women here, but he let them all know he was taken,” Riley said with a smile. “I think he was going to sic the redhead on Brooke. He said she hadn’t killed anyone in over a year and it made her twitchy. Your man’s pretty funny for a dude who can kill another dude about five hundred different ways.”

  “He’s not my man.” Of course every woman at 4L would want Case. It was a tech firm. Most of the men who worked there were like twenty nothing and spent more time in front of a keyboard than at the gym. Case Taggart had probably walked in and every woman in the room had fallen at his feet.

  This was exactly why she’d stayed out in the field for so long. She’d known Case was working with Drew, and the last thing she’d needed was to see him flirting with another woman. A woman who would be his perfect submissive, always deferring to her man. His perfect sub would do everything right and never question him.

  She kind of wanted to throat punch his perfect sub. Which again proved he wasn’t the man for her. He would likely look down at throat punching. Even though he’d said he liked his women a little crazy. That had obviously been one more lie to get her to sleep with him.

  Riley frowned. “I like him. I didn’t think I would. I need you to understand that I went into the first meeting with him fully planning on hating his guts and maybe figuring out a way to screw him legally.”

  “And then you met him and you fell for his blue eyes and perfect shoulders?” She was being heinously sarcastic. She knew what it was about Case that drew people in. There was a heroic quality to him. He was a man you could depend on to save you when the chips were down.

  If only he’d been the type of man who could have loved her.

  “I ended up admiring him,” Riley admitted. “He walked in and he offered to train me. I told him to fuck himself. I didn’t need training. I’ve taken self-defense and I’m not planning on getting in some kind of shootout, so I told him he could take his macho, douchebag, asshole self and find another idiot to dupe.”

  She felt her jaw drop. “Did he punch you?”

  “He laughed and sat down and started to explain to me that self-defense didn’t teach me everything I needed to know. He wanted to train me to be aware of my surroundings, to learn to listen to my instincts because even though I’m going into an office building and not a war zone, I’m trying to take down a dangerous man.”

  That didn’t sound like her Case. “Wow, I would have expected him to flip you off and walk away. He’s not very patient.”

  “Oh, that’s not the Case I’ve come to know. He’s been infinitely patient with me. I think it’s because he’s so madly in love with my sister.”

  Mia stood up. It was obvious Case had been working double time to keep her family’s business. “He’s just good at his job, Riley. It doesn’t mean anything. We’re worth a couple million a year to his company, and believe me that company means everything to the Taggarts.”

  Family meant everything to them. It was one of the things she loved about the Taggarts. You didn’t have to share their name to be one of them. If one Taggart loved you, the rest of them brought you in and made you feel welcome. They were a big family of non-blood relatives who stood by each other no matter what.

  She’d wanted so badly to be a part of that family.

  “I think you mean more to him.” Riley stood and straightened his jacket. It looked like he’d come in straight from the office. “I’ve spent a lot of time listening to him talk about you. He’s made me tell him every story I can remember from our childhood and when I ran out, he moved on to Bran.”

  He’d asked about her past? He’d seemed to almost shy away from the subject and she’d been more than happy to avoid it. Now he knew every nasty detail since he’d taken on the role of advisor to her brothers. Why had he done that? Why ask about her? He’d made it clear he was done with her. Had he wanted to know how awful and scandalous her past was so he would know he’d dodged a bullet? “Well, I hope you told him everything. I hope he knows how kids at my school would find out who I was and ask if I would go crazy one day like my dad.”

  Riley put a hand on her shoulder. “Yes, he knows about that, too. I think if that man could go back in time, he would murder a couple of kids.”

  Tears were forming in her eyes. Why couldn’t she be reasonable about that man? The idea of him being in her home, asking her brothers about her past got to her.

  He hadn’t called her. Yes, she’d changed her phone, but deep down she’d known that was a test of sorts. She’d wanted to see if he would push his way back in. It was what Case Taggart did. He punched his way through all obstacles. He didn’t care what she needed. He would go after what he wanted. If he wanted her, he would have bullied his way back in. She’d gotten nothing. No attempts at forcing his way into her life. Nothing after he’d gotten the report on the drug. He’d been content to work for her brothers, never reaching out to her. Six months had passed without a word from him. How could she believe he truly wanted her?

  “It’s over between the two of us,” she said. “It’s been six months. Believe me, if Case Taggart wanted me, he would have come after me. I should have listened to him in the first place. He didn’t want me then. He doesn’t want me now. I was convenient and gave him some good intel. That was all we had between us.”

  Riley rolled his eyes. “Sure it was. I didn’t shut off your phone because he kept calling it. After that morning when you shoved that phone in my face and told me to kill the number, I meant to do it. I was going to, but he left a voice mail. I thought I should listen. I thought he would make an ass of himself and I could happily make it impossible for him to reach you. He thanked you for some report and then he started talking about how sorry he was and how much he missed you.”

  “He did?” Case Taggart rarely apologized. It just wasn’t something he would do.

  Riley picked up her old phone again. “Listen to him. I had tech reprogram the phone so your mailbox wouldn’t get full. It’s a lot. It’s pretty much his life for the last six months. I think he needed to share it with you.”

  “He left messages for me?” She stared at the phone in his hand.

  Riley stepped toward the door to her room. “So many. I know way too much about that man. The good news? Everything I know made me like him more. And don’t ever tell him I listened to those messages. He can punch hard. I should have told you sooner, but every time I’ve mentioned him you kind of growl and look ready to kill someone. I thought you needed some time or you might have deleted them. But you have to listen now, Mia. I’m begging you to listen to them now.”

  Had Case really called? Had he left a bunch of messages?

  She had to know. Mia picked up the phone and pressed the button she needed.

  “Hey, sweetheart…”

  Mia sat and listened
to what Case had to say.

  An hour later, Mia stood up, completely panicked. Case had left the last message early this morning. He was leaving tomorrow. He was heading to Sierra Leone and he was going into danger. Her heart constricted. He wanted her by his side.

  She was damn straight going to be by that man’s side.

  He’d left messages for her at least once a week since they’d been apart. He’d talked about how he’d gone into therapy so he never spoke that way to her again. He’d told her about his daily life as though nothing had meaning until he’d told her about it.

  Dear god, he’d told her he loved her.

  Mia wiped the tears from her eyes because she was getting her ass to Dallas. She had mere hours before he would be on a plane for the most important mission of his life. She wouldn’t let him go into it alone.

  He hadn’t ignored her. He’d changed for her. He’d made himself better for her. She could barely see as she grabbed her suitcase. It didn’t matter what went in. She needed clothes. Some clothes. Who cared? She could buy clothes.

  Mia tossed the suitcase. All she needed was her passport, her purse, and her phone.

  What if they left early?