Love and Let Die (Masters and Mercenaries) Read online

  She’d decided Eli Nelson was the devil.

  She finished emptying her stomach and turned, her legs dangling. She looked at her left shoulder. A bandage was wrapped around her.

  “Yes, dear, I rather thought I should have them take the bullet out before you woke up. I couldn’t have you unable to run. The pain must be excruciating. I congratulate you on your fortitude.”

  “Who took it out? They suck.” She now had one more scar on a body full of them.

  Nelson’s lips lifted in a ghastly imitation of a smile. “I took care of it. I didn’t want to leave any pesky evidence behind. I have a man on the inside here who let me in after all the formalities were over. The sutures might not be perfect, but they did the job.”

  God, would she ever stop shaking? It was so cold. Had it really been hours ago that she’d been warm in Ian’s arms? Now she was here. She recognized where she was.

  A morgue.

  She was in a morgue because she’d died and now she was alive again. Lazarus in high heels. Her clothes were covered in blood. What the hell was she going to do now? She couldn’t think about the future. All that mattered was the answer to one question. “Where is Chelsea?”

  Nelson gestured to someone behind him and the door opened.

  “Charlotte.” Her kid sister shuffled in, her braces scuffing across the floor.

  Chelsea was all of twenty-two years old, but she seemed so much younger. She was thin and weak because their father kept her that way. To their father, Chelsea was nothing but a tool to get Charlie to do what he wanted. Despite the fact that they were technically adults, their father still ruled them with an iron fist. After he’d found them and kidnapped them from Mama, he’d made it impossible for them to leave Russia. Until Eli Nelson had shown up with his devil’s bargain. Now Chelsea was here and they could run. They could hide.

  Would he find them?

  “Your father is dead,” Nelson said bluntly. “I kept up my end of the deal. MI6 will likely find his body in a couple of days and they’ll believe that everything is over. Eventually they’ll figure out that your dear papa wasn’t the one trying to buy uranium, but for now they’ll believe what I want them to believe. Thank you, dear. That little bit of chaos wouldn’t have been possible without you.”

  With shaking hands, she clutched her sister, pulling her behind her body in case everything went to hell. “I don’t understand.”

  Nelson shrugged a little. “You aren’t supposed to. You did a halfway decent job leading Taggart around by his dick, and I appreciate that. You’re looking at me like I’m going to kill you. If I had wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t have faked your death. I would have made it real. Do you understand how complex this was? No, dear, I want you alive. You’ve proven to be very resourceful when it comes to information retrieval. I could use you in the future. In fact, I want you to start tracking a few key players, including your beloved.”

  Ian. Ian wasn’t dead. She breathed a deep sigh of relief. If Ian had been dead, she might have crawled back into that coffin-like box and let the madness take her. “I thought this was a play to kill him.”

  Nelson chuckled. “Oh, no. I never sacrifice a pawn until I need to. Right now our mutual employers are working so hard to deal with Mr. Taggart’s issues that they’re not looking at me, and that’s how I want it for a while. I have some plans for Mr. Taggart’s operatives that require that his attention be aimed elsewhere. Not that you need to know what my plans are.”

  No. She was just another of his pawns, exactly like she’d been for her father.

  Nelson handed her a set of keys. “There’s a BMW in the parking lot with new passports, plane tickets, and a briefcase with fifty thousand dollars inside. Contact me when you settle in the States. I expect great things of you, Charlotte Dennis.”

  She almost said it, almost corrected him. Her name was Taggart. She’d been Charlotte Marie Taggart for thirty-two days, and she would never have another name because she would never take another man. She belonged to her Master and always would.

  Nelson turned and started out the door. “You should hurry, dear. Your corpse will be missed soon. It’s not every day one just goes missing. I’m leaving enough evidence behind to point to your husband or the family who so dearly loved you. I wouldn’t want Taggart asking too many questions after all. Scotland Yard will suspect Taggart, and Taggart will suspect your recently deceased father and his men. My guess is I went easy on dear old dad. I just slit his throat. I bet Taggart would have done something worse.”

  He whistled a little as he let himself out of the morgue, his cronies following along behind. The door shut with a little swish and they were alone.

  “Charlotte, are you okay?” She asked the question in the language of their childhood, the language of their mother—English. Their mother had baptized them with American names. She’d managed to run, to get away for years, before their father had found them again. For years all they had spoken was Russian. Except in their secret places. When they were alone, they had kept up their English. Their true language. When she’d heard it, she’d known she was safe.

  Chelsea. She had to think of Chelsea. Chelsea was completely helpless, and her husband could take care of himself. “We have to go. He’s right. I can’t be found here.”

  “They drugged the night guard and apparently Nelson has some of the employees on his payroll. We have a few minutes. Is your arm okay?”

  “I think it still works.” They would be a pair. Chelsea with her limping walk and she with a bullet wound in her arm. Yes, they were real physical threats.

  “Charlotte, do you think he’s really dead?” Chelsea asked, the question ringing in the near-silent room.

  Vladimir Denisovitch. Their father. Their abuser. The man who had beaten Chelsea so badly that her legs had never been the same again. The one who had turned Charlotte into a trained killer because no one would suspect such a soft girl. “I don’t know.”

  She wouldn’t believe it until she saw it. But her father’s death would only solve one of her problems. It probably opened up a hundred more, including the fact that her husband would eventually suspect she’d been lying to him. She’d worked so hard to gain his trust, and it was all shattered now.

  “Are we going back to the States? I want to go home, Charlotte. Not to where we lived, just back to America. But what if Dad’s men find us?”

  “Then we’ll have to kill them.”

  Chelsea looked up at her, and for the first time Charlie saw the deep strength in her sister’s eyes. For so long, Chelsea had been her burden. She loved her sister. She’d also sacrificed most of her life for her. But now, Chelsea reached for her hands and steadied them. “Did you really marry that man? Ian Taggart?”

  “I love him.” At least one person in the world should know the truth. “I didn’t mean to. It was stupid, but I love him.”

  “Can we go to him?”

  And risk Nelson taking them all out? God, would Ian even speak to her after everything she’d done? “I don’t think so. I don’t even know where he is. I’m not sure why Nelson thinks I’ll be able to track him. Ian is an operative and a damn good one at that. I think I need time to figure everything out.”

  She needed to find a way to be worthy of him. If she walked back into his life now, he might actually kill her. Her husband was a dangerous man, and she’d placed him and his entire operation in peril. He would take that seriously. There would be no light spankings followed by a little withheld orgasm.

  No, his sub had betrayed him. He wouldn’t trust her again.

  Unless she found a way to make it up to him.

  Chelsea nodded. “Then we take our time and we get strong. I want to be strong now. I’ve figured a few things out. We’ve been trying to get out of this world, but we can’t. It will always pull us back in. We will always be Denisovitch’s daughters. We can shorten and Americanize our last name all we like. The men like Nelson will always know and they’ll want to use us.”

 
“We have to stay away.” She’d been trying to get out for years, but she’d become known for everything her father had trained her to do. He’d found her again at the age of thirteen and hadn’t waited long to start teaching her what it meant to be his daughter. He hadn’t had any sons, so he’d treated Charlotte like one. She’d run her first long con at fourteen. She’d made her first kill at the age of fifteen. Robbed her first bank on her seventeenth birthday. She’d done it all because her father would have killed her if she didn’t, but the stains were on her soul all the same.

  And when she was twenty-six, she’d finally figured out what love was when a man who looked like a Viking had taken her in his arms and shown her an entirely different world. A world where she could trust someone enough to submit to him.

  “He won’t let us. You heard what he said. He expects you to call him.”

  Charlie nodded. “Yes. Me. Not you. When we get back to the States, you’re going to college, and I’ll handle this.”

  Her sister held on to the table and looked her straight in the eyes. “I am done with letting you ruin your life. Hear me and hear me now. I know you think I’m just a cripple.”

  “Chelsea, no.” Her sister was fragile, but she never meant to make her feel bad about it. Since their mother had been killed, Chelsea was her whole life.

  She shook her head. “Yes, it’s how you see me and until now, it’s how I’ve acted. I’ve been a scared little mouse. I’ve let you give up everything for me. But not anymore. When we go home, I’m going to help you. I’ve learned a lot in the last few years. Papa made me learn how to hack into systems. I’m really good. I can write code, too. I can be helpful.”

  “I don’t want that for you.” She’d been trying to get out of this world for her sister’s sake.

  “And I don’t want you to lose the man you love, but I have to deal with it now, don’t I? No, if we can’t run from this world, then there’s one thing to do.”

  Her heart hardened slightly as she realized the truth of her sister’s words. “We have to rule it.”

  Chelsea nodded. “This world runs on information. So we become the center of it all. We use them the way they used us.”

  She found her feet, her sister steady against her. They were just two girls against a world of black operations and money-fueled crime.

  Suddenly she knew that she would win. She would have her husband back and she would bring down everyone who tried to stop her. Optimism. She had to have it. She had to believe that she could do everything she needed to.

  If there was one thing she’d learned in her lifetime, it was that the world was a game.

  She would win or she would die.

  Chapter One

  Dallas, TX

  Five Years Later

  Ian Taggart looked across the table at his previously dead wife and took in the changes the last five years had brought.

  She was older. There were fine lines around her eyes that had been previously absent. Her hair was a reddish blonde, but it looked oddly good on her. It went with her stark blue eyes.

  Death had been damn good to her. She was still the most stunning woman he’d ever seen. Her return from the dead had stirred more than his curiosity.

  His cock was rock hard, but he wasn’t going to give in. Nope. Not this time.

  “Tetraodontidae?” Ian asked after a very long, very tense few moments. He was curious about what she’d used to fake her death. Tetraodontidae was a good bet.

  She’d shown up on his doorstep, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and calling him Master. She’d gotten past his incredibly rigorous security system. His brother liked to call him paranoid, but Ian knew the truth. The world really was out to get him. That was what happened to spies. They rarely made it to old age, even the ones who got out.

  He’d watched many of his colleagues die, some painfully and under torture. This was the first time one had come back from the other side. Of course, when he’d married her, he hadn’t exactly realized she was a spy. He’d known something was wrong with her, but he’d thought she’d been in trouble. He’d been a fool.

  He’d invited her in because it was only polite. And because he was going to figure out what the fuck she wanted from him.

  And because he couldn’t help himself. Fuck, he couldn’t help himself at all. He didn’t like the feeling any more now than he had back then. From the moment he’d seen her, he’d known he would have her no matter what it took, and that feeling was taking root in his gut again.

  “The puffer fish neurotoxin?” She shook her head. “No. I mean I think it might be based on that, but it was a pill. I had to take a pill, and then it was mostly like going to sleep.”

  He nodded briefly. When he’d realized it was really Charlotte standing on his doorstep, he’d put it together. Too bad he’d been too stupid to back then. “I heard rumors that the Agency has been working on a zombie drug. I guess I got out before I really needed to use it. Lucky me.”

  A zombie drug was used to fake an agent’s death. The puffer fish had a neurotoxin in its body that would render a human lifeless, seemingly breathless. The victim would appear dead. The victim would almost always end up dead, but apparently someone out there had perfected the mix.

  She shuddered a little. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “What about the blood?” She’d been covered in it. He’d gotten covered in it. Sometimes he could still smell that coppery scent mingling with the lavender soap she used on her body. He’d loved the smell of lavender until that day.

  “Oh, he really shot me. He gave me the drug and then he pulled the trigger.” She pushed one side of her blouse toward her shoulder, showing off the puckered scar below her left clavicle. “It was close enough that I suppose the blood made you think it was my heart.”

  He wanted to shove that material off and take a look at every inch of her skin, looking for the new scars she would have, skimming his fingers across the ones she’d had when they’d gotten married.

  Before she died. Before she came back.

  The first time he made love to her he thought she had a bad Dom in her past. She had more scars than most of the men he knew, and they were all Special Forces.

  For now, he would settle for having his questions answered. He wasn’t going to give in to the heart-pounding adrenaline of having her back. His first instinct had been to wrap himself around her and never let her go. His second had been to drag her to the dungeon and take out all of his anger. But no. He would do neither of those things during this little interview. He would view it as a post-op debrief. It was the kind of thing he would do with his employees. He would sit them down and go through a million questions in an attempt to figure out just how the little fuckers had screwed things up.

  This time he was the one who had completely gone off the rails, and he was deeply curious just how far it went.

  “Who?”

  Charlotte frowned as though the whole meeting wasn’t going quite the way she’d planned. She’d no doubt expected him to give in to instinct number one. “What do you mean who?”

  He liked the fact that she was off balance. She couldn’t seem to get a handle on his calmness. He couldn’t blame her. He’d always been a dipshit passionate idiot around her. She didn’t know the real Ian Taggart, the one he’d been before he’d married her, the one he’d found his way back to after long years of mourning. He was cold, calm, collected. He was a professional. “Who shot you, Charlotte?”

  She stilled. “You’re not going to like it, Master.”

  “Ian, please. I’m not your Master, sweetheart. I would prefer you use my given name. I keep the honorary title for the submissives I top.” He kept his voice at the same even keel, but the word “Master” did something to him when it came out of her mouth.

  “You’re always my Master,” she said, her voice sweet and a little sad. “And I’m your submissive.”

  “We’ll have to agree to disagree on that.” Or he could shove her over his knee, work those jean
s off her hips, and slap her ass silly. Charlotte could take it. Charlotte craved it.

  Who had been smacking her cheeks and tying her up and fucking her until she screamed? Because there was no way she went without.

  “Master, I need you to listen to me.” Her blue eyes fairly pleaded with him. Those eyes were what had gotten him in the first place. Oh, he’d loved her breasts and her hips. She was solidly built, and that just did it for him. He wanted a woman he could fuck for hours and not worry about breaking, but her eyes were striking. Ocean blue, like the waters of the Caribbean reflecting a crystal sky. He’d been drawn into those eyes.

  “I’m listening, Charlotte.” A thought occurred to him. “Is that the name you’re going by now or should I call you Kristen? I have no idea what your real name is.”

  Her hands made frustrated fists. Ah, she hadn’t changed her little tells. Those fists always made an appearance when she thought he was being stubborn. Her hair might have changed, but he could still tell when he was getting to her.

  “I’m Charlotte Dennis and you damn well know it. You checked me out the first time. I never lied about my background.”

  He raised a single brow.

  She bit into her bottom lip, her eyes sliding submissively away. “I apologize, Master. I shouldn’t have cursed.”

  He shook it off. It was just a habit. Disciplining her had been a habit, the same way her sinking to her knees at his feet and rubbing her cheek to his leg had been a habit. The way he’d been able to relax and think as he’d petted her hair and enjoyed the contact before he would inevitably pull her into his lap and start to make love to her.

  Yep. Just a habit. He could break habits. He hadn’t had her in five years and he’d survived perfectly well. “Curse all you like. I probably would if my boss had shot me and then dosed me up with puffer fish toxin. Do you think he expected you to live?”

  He tamped down the panic that flared at the thought of someone shooting her and dosing her up and leaving her there on the floor of their flat like a sacrifice. The protectiveness was a habit, too. She wasn’t his to protect, and she never had been. She hadn’t really been his sub. She’d been his opponent, and the first round had gone to her.