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  “I can always trust Lexi Blake's Dominants to leave me breathless...and in love. If you want sensual, exciting BDSM wrapped in an awesome love story, then look for a Lexi Blake book.”

  ~Cherise Sinclair USA Today Bestselling author

  “Lexi Blake's MASTERS AND MERCENARIES series is beautifully written and deliciously hot. She's got a real way with both action and sex. I also love the way Blake writes her gorgeous Dom heroes--they make me want to do bad, bad things. Her heroines are intelligent and gutsy ladies whose taste for submission definitely does not make them dish rags. Can't wait for the next book!”

  ~Angela Knight, New York Times bestselling author

  “A Dom is Forever is action packed, both in the bedroom and out. Expect agents, spies, guns, killing and lots of kink as Liam goes after the mysterious Mr. Black and finds his past and his future… The action and espionage keep this story moving along quickly while the sex and kink provides a totally different type of interest. Everything is very well balanced and flows together wonderfully.”

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  ~Rho, The Romance Reviews

  “A good read that kept me on my toes, guessing until the big reveal, and thinking survival skills should be a must for all men.”

  ~Chris, Night Owl Reviews

  “I can’t get enough of the Masters and Mercenaries Series! Love and Let Die is Lexi Blake at her best! She writes erotic romantic suspense like no other, and I am always extremely excited when she has something new for us! Intense, heart pounding, and erotically fulfilling, I could not put this book down.”

  ~ Shayna Renee, Shayna Renee's Spicy Reads

  “Certain authors and series are on my auto-buy list. Lexi Blake and her Masters & Mercenaries series is at the top of that list... this book offered everything I love about a Masters & Mercenaries book – alpha men, hot sex and sweet loving… As long as Ms. Blake continues to offer such high quality books, I’ll be right there, ready to read.”

  ~ Robin, Sizzling Hot Books

  “I have absolutely fallen in love with this series. Spies, espionage, and intrigue all packaged up in a hot dominant male package. All the men at McKay-Taggart are smoking hot and the women are amazingly strong sexy submissives.”

  ~Kelley, Smut Book Junkie Book Reviews

  Cherished: A Masters and Mercenaries Novella

  Masters and Mercenaries, Book 7.5

  Lexi Blake

  Cherished: A Masters and Mercenaries Novella

  Masters and Mercenaries, Book 7.5

  Lexi Blake

  Published by DLZ Entertainment LLC

  Copyright 2014 DLZ Entertainment LLC

  Edited by Chloe Vale

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-937608-38-5

  McKay-Taggart logo design by Charity Hendry

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental.

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  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to my team—Chloe Vale, Riane Holt, and Stormy Pate. Thanks to Charity Hendry for the beautiful graphics. As always, thanks to Rich and my amazing family for all their support.

  This book is for Lee, who carries a piece of my heart with him always.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Author’s Note

  You Only Love Twice by Lexi Blake, Coming February 17, 2015

  Adored: A Masters and Mercenaries Novella by Lexi Blake, Coming May 12, 2015

  Ripper (Hunter: A Thieves Series) by Lexi Blake, Coming January 20, 2015

  Their Virgin Mistress by Shayla Black and Lexi Blake, Coming April 14. 2015

  About Lexi Blake

  Other Books by Lexi Blake

  Chapter One

  There was something deeply humiliating about begging and pleading while wearing a corset and a thong. Oh, Bridget Slaten was fairly certain it helped most women get what they wanted, but it didn’t seem to be working for her. Then again, she was kind of using the tools on the wrong crowd. Somehow, she didn’t see her gay hubby and female and straight best friend responding to her boobs hanging out.

  She looked across the room and saw Will Daley striding across the club toward the bar. Would he respond to her boobs hanging out?

  She consigned that line of thinking to the same place she always shoved the idea of writing that science fiction romance where her heroine was the only woman left on an earth made up entirely of Channing Tatums. Sure it was a fun idea, but it wouldn’t work in the long run. The man made her heart pound—Will in this case, though obviously Channing did it for her, too—but there was zero chance that she would have anything to do with either of them. Will was out of her league looks wise and she wasn’t looking for a one-night hookup, which was all a woman ever got from him.

  No way. No how. She’d gone through too much crap to willingly walk into the fire again. She hadn’t had sex since she’d kicked Benjy out, and that was probably the safest bet.

  Still, she couldn’t help but watch the way he moved, his every limb a testament to masculine grace.

  “If you don’t watch out you’re going to need a rag to catch the drool, honey,” Chris said.

  She turned to one of her two best friends. Both Chris Roberts and Serena Dean-Miles were sitting in the decadent booth where their Doms had left them. Bridget sighed because no one had ordered her to wait for him. She’d only been coming to Sanctum for three weeks. She couldn’t expect that she would find a regular in that time. She wasn’t stupid. She knew she was considered a bit difficult. She’d been training with two of the approved regulars, Jesse Murdoch, who was a sweetheart and a half, and Mitchell Bradford, who kind of scared the crap out of her, but he was good with ropes. Still, they weren’t hers and never would be. She was, as she always seemed to be, alone among the happily paired off. Time. It simply took time. That’s what she tried to tell herself. Some day her Dom would come and all that shit.

  She knew one thing though. It wouldn’t be gorgeous, smart, hunky, hot and manwhorey neurosurgeon Dr. William Daley.

  “I am not drooling. It’s just weird to see him here. He moved into my building last month.” She’d watched him moving his boxes in, the Texas heat causing him to sweat and get rid of that shirt he should never, ever be allowed to wear. His chest was a work of art, and he had those
notches on his hips she wrote about so lovingly in her romance novels. She’d stared at him and sighed, and he’d looked up at her with an arrogant grin right before three women walked up behind him, obviously helping him move. A harem. He had a harem of beautiful women who followed him around. They came to his condo at all hours of the day or night, sometimes in singles, more often as a slender, graceful pack.

  She’d already been one of many and she hadn’t even known about it until the end. She wasn’t going to walk into a relationship where the man was sure to cheat.

  “It’s all my fault. Well, not really mine. It’s Derek’s. I told him about the empty condos and he’s been mentoring Will. When Will changed jobs, he wanted a new place because of…well, because of the stuff that went down.” Serena’s voice trailed off.

  Stuff? There was stuff? Shit. She really wanted to know the stuff. Like now, but she forced herself to play it cool. She kept staring straight ahead and kept her tone as negligent as possible. “Stuff?”

  Chris snorted, a sound he somehow managed to make elegant. “Don’t even try it, sweetie. You can’t make me believe you aren’t interested in that man.”

  Serena bit her bottom lip and sighed—a sure sign that she knew something everyone else didn’t. She’d been best friends with Serena and Chris for a very long time, and she knew their tells. And naturally they knew hers. “I don’t know that being interested in Master Will is a good idea. Why don’t you let me set you up with one of the new guys? There are some seriously cute men Ian’s recruiting lately.”

  She’d seen them. She liked to call them baby Doms. From what she understood, they were almost all ex-military, and every damn one of them was seeing Sanctum’s brand new resident shrink. Since Eve and Alex were on the cusp of adopting, Eve had pulled back and so Ryan, Sanctum’s manager, and Ian Taggart, the owner of the club, had decided to hire a shrink—Kai Ferguson. He’d seemed to be some hippy dippy pretty boy until the first time she’d seen him wield a whip. Kai had approved her application but not before explaining that she had daddy issues and abandonment issues that she should really deal with.

  Yeah, like she didn’t know about those. In fact, those were exactly the issues she needed to deal with tonight. She tended to like to forget about her horrible, awful, very nasty parents, but her sister had made it so she couldn’t avoid them. Whatever secrets hottie Will was hiding would have to wait.

  “I need a date to my sister’s wedding.”

  Both heads turned.

  “What?” Serena asked.

  “I thought you weren’t going.” Chris shook his head as if to say that was a bad idea.

  She fricking knew it was a bad idea, but she was trapped. Of her entire family, she only still talked to her sister, Amy, on a regular basis. Amy, who she’d protected as a kid. Amy, who had begged her to come to the wedding and then screwed her over.

  She couldn’t leave Amy alone amongst the barbarian horde. She wished Amy had left her some dignity. “She’s my sister. She called me. I have to go. Besides, I should meet whatever douchebag my dad picked for her so I know who I need to kill later in life.”

  Serena leaned forward. “Maybe Amy’s in love.”

  “Maybe Daddy’s in debt.” Somehow she seriously doubted that Amy had magically fallen in love with the exact person who could boost her father’s company and who happened to want to get married at the exact right time. “Look, I know my father. He tried to pull the same shit with me. How do you think I got kicked out and disinherited? I wouldn’t marry the man he wanted me to. Larry Halford of Halford Properties. Dear old dad wanted to expand and he views his daughters as assets to be given away at his behest. He was born about a thousand years too late. He would have made a great feudal lord, and by great I really mean awful and unfair.”

  “Sheeeit,” Chris said in a slow Texas drawl. “Well, I’m glad you’re going. She asked me weeks ago and I hated the idea of going without you. I wasn’t going to tell you because I know how you feel about it.”

  Amy had met Chris and Serena several times. It didn’t surprise Bridget that Amy had invited her friends. And it made what she was going to ask a little simpler. “So which hot hubby are you taking, Serena? Because I really need to borrow the other one. Amy fucked up and told everyone I’m flipping engaged.”

  Serena’s eyes widened. “Are you serious? Why would she do that?”

  Bridget sighed. “She was at one of her many showers and the cousins started talking shit about me and how I can’t find a man to save my life because I’m fat—very original—and no man wants a woman who writes smut. No good man that is. The family has a problem with the way I make a living. Amy was the slightest bit tipsy and said I wasn’t only seeing someone, I’m freaking engaged, so now to avoid both my humiliation and hers, I need a fiancé. I’m thinking Adam. He’s perfect and he doesn’t scare me the way Jake does.”

  Serena’s head shook. “Jake is a sweetheart. He isn’t scary.”

  Jacob Dean was former military and unlike his brethren, Kai, he didn’t need to wear leathers and wield a whip for everyone in the vicinity to know that he was a predator. With a body to die for and a face that could have been hewn from granite, Jake Dean looked like a man who had once been a Green Beret and now served as muscle for one of the world’s premier security agencies.

  He would be at the wedding in a work capacity since McKay-Taggart provided security for her father’s corporation, but maybe she could pass off Adam Miles as her boy toy.

  Adam was a gorgeous piece of metro hotness. He was always perfectly dressed, always lovingly groomed, and the man knew how to take care of a woman. While Jake handled all of the heavy stuff, Adam was the day-to-day man. He took care of Serena’s schedule and made sure she didn’t forget to eat. He made sure she came back to earth after spending the day in her head making up stories. Both of Serena’s men adored her and they were both great fathers to their son, Tristan. Was it too much to ask that she kind of, sort of borrowed one for her sister’s wedding?

  “I know Jake’s a great guy, but I think my dad’s met him so I need Adam to play my fiancé for the week.”

  Serena looked at her like she’d grown two heads. “I’m not letting you borrow one of my husbands, Bridge. I love you, but they would protest. We’re going to Hawaii. I had to convince the guys to let me come, and do you know how I managed that? By offering them sex. Both of them.”

  They could have all the tropical sex they wanted as long as they didn’t do it in front of the wedding party. “Well, I didn’t plan on sleeping with him. Come on.” She pulled out the big guns. She touched her side. “Sorry. It’s a bit of pain from where I lost my spleen.”

  Serena went a little white. Serena always did when reminded of the day she’d almost been murdered by her vicious ex-husband and the husband of her and Bridget and Chris’s literary agent, who took extreme exception to his wife representing “smutty” authors. Douchewad. Bridget was happy they were all dead. Except Lara. She still missed Lara. Her new agent was a lesbian whose partner was a big fan, so that was a plus. Losing her spleen because she’d gotten in the way of all the murders had been kind of crappy, but it had caused her to reevaluate her life and it did give her a go-to when she needed some guilt to back her up.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Serena said.

  Chris put a hand out. “No, you won’t.” He pointed that terrifically judgmental right index finger of his Bridget’s way. “I told you the last time was the last time.”

  “But all I got out of it was the last Diet Coke in the fridge,” she complained.

  “I believe I pointed that out at the time. It’s been over a year. The spleen is now off the table and you can’t use it,” Chris pronounced. “Serena, you’re officially off the hook for something you didn’t actually do in the first place.”

  “It seems wrong to have traded my spleen for a Diet Coke,” Bridget grumbled although she knew she would happily do it on her worst days. She needed the caffeine. Still, it probably was wrong o
f her. “Fine. Let’s bargain. I’ll let you have the next two hero names we argue over.”

  They tried not to have the same names in their books to avoid confusion, but when one wrote ménage, hero names became difficult to come by. She swore her next set of ménage boys would be named Fred, Maurice, and Algernon. That was all she was going to be left with. It was a good trade.

  Serena’s eyes narrowed. Yes, there was some interest there.

  “It’s not going to work and you can’t trade your husband for use of the name Cash in your next book,” Chris argued.

  Oooo, she hadn’t thought of that one.

  “Dibs,” she and Serena exclaimed at the same time.

  Chris’s eyes rolled. “Seriously? That was a joke name. And I don’t think your family is going to buy Adam as your loving fiancé if he’s sleeping in Serena’s room.”

  Minor issues. “He can sneak out of my room at night.”

  “We’re taking the baby with us,” Serena explained. “I need both of them. Tristan is a handful. He doesn’t like to sleep. Like ever.”

  “Okay, we can say that Adam’s your manny.” She could write a backstory. After all, she was a novelist. She could craft a whole fictional story to obfuscate the truth that she was kind of sad and alone. “That’s how we met. I like that a lot. It’s a meet-cute story. I fell for him because of his amazing diapering technique.”

  “Do you even hear your own cray cray anymore?” Chris asked, shaking his head.

  “Adam isn’t going to Hawaii as the manny, Bridget,” a masculine voice said.

  Damn it. She turned and Jake was frowning down at her. Yep. He scared her. She tried to give him a grin. “Come on, Jake.”