A View to a Thrill (Masters and Mercenaries Book 7) (5 page)

“I am willing to admit that he loves Charlotte. If he would do anything for me it would be out of duty.” She groaned a little and let her head fall back. “I love my sister. That’s why I don’t want her involved in any of this. She’s gone all baby crazy. She deserves to focus on having Satan’s child and being the happy goddess of the underworld. She doesn’t need the stress of watching after me.”

A very good sign. Since she’d walked into his life—technically since he’d dragged her kicking and screaming into his life—she’d clung to Charlotte like a co-dependent life raft. He simply needed to let her know that she could depend on more than Charlotte. If she needed to cling, it was damn well going to be to him. “That’s what this contract is going to ensure.”

“How?”

He sighed. She was going to question him every inch of the way. “Think about it for two seconds. Ian Taggart doesn’t live in the modern world. Much like my cousin, he believes himself to be the king of the castle and the protector of those considered to be his family. If you’re in trouble, he will take the responsibility for protecting you and that includes making all the decisions for you until such time he decides you’re safe.”

“That sounds horrible.” She shivered a little.

“You know it’s the truth.” He glanced back down at the checklist. “Let’s talk about impact play.”

“How is a flogging going to save me, Simon?”

Had she not heard a word he said? “There is one thing in the world Ian Taggart respects fully.”

Her eyes widened. “BDSM. You think if I sign a contract and become your sub then Satan will leave me alone.”

“First of all, you will cease calling the man Satan. It’s rude.”

“He calls me the bitch from hell.”

“Yes, I intend to talk to him about that.” He didn’t like it. Ian might say things like that in jest, but Chelsea needed affection. She didn’t need more reasons to put walls up. Once she signed the contract, he would protect her from everything, including her brother-in-law’s smart mouth.

“You realize how dumb this is, right? It’s just a contract. I can walk away. You can’t hold me to it. Despite what Ian thinks, this is still the twenty-first century and you can’t own a woman.”

“I’m not trying to own you. I’m trying to start a relationship with you that comes with well-defined boundaries intended to make both parties feel secure in their duties and responsibilities to each other.”

She frowned. “I never thought about it like that. Huh. Put like that it sounds better than dating.”

Now that he’d been in the lifestyle for a while, the idea of dating made him shudder. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go to dinner with Chelsea. He wanted to spend time with her, but in the vanilla world he couldn’t just come out and say what he needed. When he’d played it vanilla, he’d spent most of his time trying to read his partner’s mind. “I understand that you can walk away at any moment. I’m not naïve, Chelsea. I can only promise you that I will honor the terms of this contract. I won’t walk away.”

Her arms fell away and she finally sat forward. “I don’t love being tied down.”

“You let me do it in London.” He could still feel her skin under his hands as he worked the rope over her. Silky smooth. She was so soft under that rough exterior.

“It scares me.”

He gave her a moment, trying to leave an opening for her to talk. Silence fell between them. He nodded shortly and marked bondage as a hard limit.

She shook her head, her voice going low. “No. Don’t make it hard. Soft. It’s a soft limit with you.”

Ah, the second time of the night she’d taken him out of the cesspool she seemed to place all men in. When she’d turned to him and claimed that she wasn’t afraid of his cousins because he’d been there, he’d known this could work. By making rope bondage a soft limit, it gave them room to experiment. A hard limit would have meant absolutely none. “All right. It’s a soft limit. We’ll play a bit with it.”

She trusted him. Under all that swagger, there was a spark between them and he intended to fan that flame.

“When we’re not defusing bombs, you mean.” She groaned a little and stood up. “I don’t know when we’re going to find time to play, Weston. If you would let me get to work, I could probably figure this thing out and then we wouldn’t need a contract.”

“Have you thought about the fact that this contract can simply be in place? It doesn’t have to end when we figure out who’s trying to kill you. You need a play partner.”

“You don’t. You play with everyone.”

So the little brat was jealous? “I wouldn’t need to if I could play with you.”

That was about as bold as he was going to put it.

“What about sex?” She said the word like it was distasteful.

He tapped the contract to get her attention back where it needed to be. “We haven’t gotten to that part of the contract. We’ll cover it.”

“That wasn’t what I meant, Weston. I meant you will probably want sex from your play partner.”

“I don’t always get what I want.” God knew that was true. This whole thing was a big gamble with her. He could end up signing a contract with a woman who would never have sex with him. He didn’t think so. It was a bet he was willing to make.

“I have a hard time believing that.”

“Chelsea, you seem to think I’m someone I’m not. I appreciate your earlier defense of me, but the truth is I did leave MI6 before Damon could fire me. I made a mistake.” He’d made several. He’d followed some information he’d received down a rabbit hole that had almost led to the deaths of Liam O’Donnell and his now wife, Avery.

“You didn’t. You did what you should have done with the information you had.”

“Information supplied to me by the enemy.” It still stung. He’d gone over and over it. He’d been damn lucky Tag was a forgiving sort. Or perhaps Tag understood that a man who made that kind of mistake tried his damnedest not to do it again.

“You couldn’t know that. Damon should have trusted his agent. He could have told you he was bringing in McKay-Taggart. It’s Damon’s fault.”

She was huffing at the end of her declaration, her passion obvious. And that was why he was willing to gamble a few months of celibacy. It wasn’t like he was living it up as it was. He only wanted one woman. He had since the moment he’d seen her. His brother thought he was a playboy with no sense of responsibility and his cousins still saw him as a kid who needed protecting. He was a man and he wanted something beyond his useless existence. He wanted to see if it could work with her. Maybe he was a masochist at heart, but he wanted her.

“How about we leave the question of sex open? The Dominant and submissive can have sex at a mutually agreed upon time in the future if they so choose.” He flipped to the part of the contract mentioned and wrote in the lines needed. He had to wonder about her experience. She was twenty-seven years old, but he would bet she hadn’t had many boyfriends. There was an odd innocence about her that constantly battled with the blanket of weariness she wore. She was a study in contradictions.

“All right. I can handle that.” She stood up and started to pace. “Can you just skip all the bodily functions stuff?”

He gave her a little smile. He’d wondered how she would handle going over the more extreme fetishes. “I believe so.”

“It’s good to know you’re not into the seriously twisted stuff. I don’t think I can even watch blood play.”

“I’m a very staid and traditional pervert.”

The smile that lit her face made his cock tighten. “I like that.” She turned her face to the windows and stared out over the lights of Dallas at night. “It’s a weird world, but there are some things I like about it.”

“I would like for you to not be murdered by a sniper. Please come away from the window.”

She looked up as though shocked. “I…” She stepped back. “Damn it. I don’t make those mistakes. I’m not stupid. This isn’t exactly the first time this has happened.”

“It isn’t the first time someone’s tried to kill you?” He didn’t like to think about the years she’d been on the run.

“Nah. A couple of people figured out Charlotte and I were working them and they got a little pissed. A cartel. A jihadist group. You know, the usual suspects. And then dear old dad’s syndicate was always in play.”

Yes, there was a reason he didn’t like to think about it. “So the list of people trying to kill you is long.”

“Yes.” She sat back on the couch, well out of range of the windows. “You should think about that before you ask me to sign a contract.”

He sat back and watched as her arms crossed again, her walls coming up the minute she mentioned her father. “What have you found out about this particular attempt? I can’t imagine you haven’t already been out on the Internet searching.”

She had a hotspot device that went with her everywhere. If she’d had to ask him about his access, it was likely she’d already drained the battery, which meant she’d been searching.

Her gaze trailed to her computer. “I put some feelers out. I know you don’t believe me, but I really have been trying to be good. Ian gives me a lot of work. Most of it’s mindless, but it keeps me busy. He got me on with the Dallas PD as a consultant so I had a lot of fun a couple of weeks back busting kiddie porn sites.”

Because she was like an addict. She didn’t have anything else to focus on so Ian had given her a little methadone to keep her away from the hard stuff. She’d become addicted to being powerful on the web because she felt like she had so little power in real life.

“And none of these feelers have come back?”

She shook her head. “No, but these people I sent messages to have multiple addresses and they don’t necessarily check every day. It could be a while. I also set up some searches that could take a couple of hours.”

“All right. Can I discreetly call Adam in?” Adam Miles was McKay-Taggart’s resident communications specialist, and by communications they meant hacker.

Her eyes rolled. “There’s nothing Adam can do that I can’t and he’ll tell Ian.”

“I doubt that. I’m bringing Jesse in. I can assure you he won’t talk if I ask him not to.” Jesse Murdoch was loyal to the team, but Simon felt like he could trust him implicitly. “I don’t care what you say, we do need backup.”

“All right.” Her eyes came up, staring straight at him. “You know my limits, Simon. We don’t need to do a one by one listing of them. You’re avoiding getting to the bad stuff. Why don’t you tell me what you require?”

Well, she’d summed him up pretty well. He did know her limits. She didn’t like to be naked in public, but he’d managed to push that limit while they were in London. He intended to get her used to being nude in private, used to being intimate with him. He knew what she liked when it came to sensation play. He also knew she wasn’t going to like his list of must haves. “Fine. I require obedience in the field.”

She nodded as though she’d known that one was coming. “Not when we’re alone?”

“Anything having to do with this case and your protection fall under my purview and you will obey me. I’ll take your lead on all the Internet stuff, but if I feel it’s dangerous to you, I’ll shut it down. If we’re intimate then I’m in charge, though you should always know you can stop me. I’m going to ask you to give it a chance. If I ask you to be still, I’m doing it to enhance your pleasure. Do you understand?”

“Sort of. Is that all?”

“No. If I’m your Master, you’re going to join me in daily exercise. I’m going to tailor a program to suit you.”

Her face screwed up in a mask of distaste. “Why? Are you trying to say I’m pudgy?”

“No. You’re quite slender but I fear that’s from poor dietary habits and not anything healthy. I’m going to make you strong. You can handle a gun, but a gun can be taken away from you. You need to be strong mentally and physically.”

“Simon, I think you’re forgetting about the fact that I have a bum leg. Or do you want to see the cripple try to exercise?”

He set his pen down and allowed the moment to sit between them as he gathered every bit of patience he had.

She fidgeted under his glare. After a moment of uncomfortable silence, she obviously couldn’t take it anymore. “What?”

“You should be very glad you haven’t signed this contract yet or you would find yourself with those pants down and over my knee. If I ever hear you use that word to describe yourself again, there will be punishment and it won’t be erotic. If I’m your Master I intend to protect you from everyone, and that includes that part of yourself that can’t help but stick the knife in. Are we understood?”

“I’m just honest with myself. I have a limited capacity. Running is difficult. My muscles were affected by the breaks. They never really healed properly.”

“And you’ve done physical therapy?” He knew the answer to that question, but he was interested to see if she would lie to him.

“No. Oddly enough my dad wasn’t big on fixing the things he broke. I was lucky that he needed something from Charlotte at the time or he likely would have let me die. I was the useless one in his eyes. Charlotte was the one he trained.”

Simon got to his feet and joined her on the couch. “You’re not useless. You’re one of the most competent women I’ve ever met.”

She laughed, a bitter sound. “Now who’s got rose-colored glasses on, Weston? I’m good at one thing and one thing only.”

“Because you don’t try anything else. It’s not too late to get the mobility back in your leg. We’ll start with yoga in the morning and then I want to work on building up the muscles around your knees to protect them. So, to sum up, all I’m asking for is obedience in the field and that you give me a shot at making you stronger.”

“And that I bottom for you.”

Yes, that was part of his plan. He needed time to show her it wouldn’t be so bad. Giving herself over to him could actually be quite pleasurable. He enjoyed taking care of a woman and she was in need. Charlotte had done her best, but Chelsea had never had a man watch out for her, never had a man who was dedicated to her pleasure in and out of bed. “Like you said, we probably won’t have much time for play.”

She laughed again, but there was a nervousness about the huffing sound that let Simon know she was very much aware of him physically, and not in a bad way. “Yeah, we’ll be too busy dodging bullets and stuff.”