On Her Master's Secret Service (9 page)

She stepped in front of him. He was the very picture of decadent beauty. Ian Taggart was a Viking of the first order. He was roughly six foot five and had not an ounce of fat on him, but she could see the weary set of his brow. Blond hair and startlingly sharp blue eyes didn’t make him any less of an actual man. He still had his sorrows. He still needed comfort. He just didn’t always take it. Ian Taggart was practically a demon, and even demons needed friends. “Well, if one of them was that little skinny blonde, I’m okay with it.”

He chuckled a little. “I wondered when you would notice that Mandy has a thing for your ex.” He shook his head. “You go and defend your Dom. And if you wouldn’t mind doing it in a vat of Jell-O while wearing a bikini, that would really liven up the day.”

She sank to her knees before him, a sign of respect. “I can’t leave you, Sir.”

“Fuck.” He took a long drag from his glass. “I didn’t expect anyone to be here. Church is too serious about his job.”

But Ian’s pride wouldn’t let him retreat. She totally understood that. “Want to talk about it?”

“Want to talk about what happened between you and Alex?” It was a challenge.

“If I don’t, I’ll have to walk away, right?” This was the way Ian played things. He was a great believer in making bargains. She was sure he thought she wouldn’t live up to her side.

“Yeah. So just go now.”

“But if I do talk, you’ll tell me why we’re reliving the eighties?”

His eyes narrowed. “You don’t talk about your shit.”

She didn’t before, but he severely underestimated how much she cared about him. “I was raped.”

His gorgeous face went tight. “Don’t do this to me. I already know the story.”

But it was what he needed. He needed to open up and the only way she could make it safe for him to be open was to be open herself. Ian might know the facts, but he’d never heard her say them. “I was raped, and Alex couldn’t handle it and he turned away from me. It nearly killed me, Ian.”

He closed his eyes, but his hand came out as though it had a mind of its own. He touched her hair, drawing her closer.

“I thought he cared more about punishing the man who hurt me than he wanted to be with me.” The words were nearly stuck in her throat, but it was easier because she’d made the decision to give them another chance. She had to talk about it.

“Eve, he loves you.”

But he might love revenge more. It didn’t matter now. Michael Evans was a million miles away. “I’m thinking about renegotiating our contract. Now, I’ve talked. Why are we listening to hair metal?”

He frowned, those full lips turning down. “Because I like it.”

“It doesn’t seem to be making you happy.”

“Can you leave this alone?”

She laid her head down on his lap. She knew just how to manipulate Ian Taggart. What the other subs didn’t understand was that Ian responded to tenacity, gentle, loving tenacity. “Yes, I can leave it alone.”

She gave him a couple of seconds of quiet. She knew he would make the right decision. He would never leave her hanging.

“Manipulative little brat. You know me far too well. Fine.” His hand soothed back her hair. “I had a woman I…cared about.”

Well, of course it was about a woman. And he wouldn’t talk about it normally. He would hide it. She was catching him in a vulnerable moment, but she thought he needed to talk. She didn’t know about any woman he’d really cared about except his high school girlfriend named Holly. From what she’d been told, they’d been engaged, but Holly had broken it off during his first stint in Iraq. As Alex explained it, one day he’d had a fiancée and the next he had a Dear John letter.

That was right about the time he’d discovered BDSM. Had he been mourning her loss for all these years? As long as Eve had known him, he’d always been surrounded by subs. He was a sub magnet, but she’d never seen him fall for a single woman. If he said he’d cared about a woman, then he had very likely loved her with his whole damn soul. “Is this about Holly?”

He snorted a little. “Holly? No. I thought Holly was the queen bitch of the world. Then I met Charlotte. No. I’m not pining over Holly. I wish Holly and mid-level lawyer husband number two all the fucking best in the world.”

Charlotte? She didn’t know a Charlotte, and she couldn’t very well push him. “Charlotte is a nice name.”

She could only soothe him. Any aggression or outright curiosity at this point would send him into his shell.

“Yes. A lovely name for a lovely woman. But she was a crazy bitch.”

For Ian, that was practically a term of endearment. He was a man who appreciated a righteous bitch. She softened her voice and hoped she wasn’t going too fast. “What happened to her?”

It couldn’t be good.

His expression never changed. It stayed a careful blank. He took a long drag off the Scotch. “I can’t make her leave. She’s in my head. I can’t get her fucking out. Never met anyone with skills like Charlotte. She could make me run in circles and I liked it. Do you know what’s it like to not be able to get a woman out of your head?”

So he’d been in love. God, Ian in love was probably a sight to see. “Why don’t you call her?”

There was a long pause. She couldn’t imagine that a woman wouldn’t fall madly in love with Ian Taggart. He was gorgeous and had that crazy, impossible wall up that seemed to call to most women.

He took a long breath before answering. “No point. If you and Alex can’t make it, there’s no hope for a dumb shit like me. You two had it all. You were what I was aiming for.”

She felt tears blur her eyes. Ian never talked like this. Just looking at him, she wouldn’t really guess he was plastered. His hands were steady and his voice was perfectly controlled, but the words coming from his mouth proved it. When Ian was sober, he would very likely never admit he wanted more than sex from a woman. “Well, we’re just human, Ian.”

“Nah. You were more. You were happy, and then shit happened and it all died.”

It was a little more than shit. She’d been brutalized, and Alex couldn’t handle it. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find a good relationship.”

He laughed a little, but there was nothing humorous about it. “Good? You think I can find a healthy relationship with some nice woman out there? Maybe raise a few kids? Hey, we could find a four bedroom with a white picket fence and a dog named Cuddles. Who the fuck do you think I am, Eve?”

It was then that she noticed the envelope on the floor next to him. She recognized it from this morning. It had been delivered along with the flowers. “I think you’re one of my oldest friends and you deserve some peace.”

His eyes darkened. “That’s only because there’s so much you don’t know about me, honey.” His mouth flattened, and he let his head drift back. “I really do care about you, Eve. And not simply because you were Alex’s wife.” He took a long breath and looked back down at her. “Are you sure you’re done with him?”

She could answer that honestly. “No. I don’t know that I’ll ever be done with him, but I also don’t know that we can live together again. I’ve changed since we got married.”

“You got stronger. I actually thought you weren’t a good match for Alex. You were too submissive in the beginning. Alex needed a challenge. It’s one thing to have a sub in the bedroom, quite another when your partner, the woman you rely on, is utterly dependent on you for every decision.”

She felt her eyes narrow. “I certainly was not.”

“He picked out your clothes every morning, Eve.”

It had started out as a game. He would pick out her clothes for their dates and he always selected her lingerie. Somewhere along the way, they had fallen into the habit of him laying out her clothes and admiring her. “It was just for fun.”

“Was it?”

“I wasn’t completely dependent on him.” She said the words and she meant them to some extent, but looking back, she knew she had been far more dependent on him than she was really comfortable with. And yet those were some of the sweetest times of her life. “I can’t be that girl again. I don’t know that Alex will accept anything less.”

“Alex has accepted the crumbs you’ve given him for years. He’ll take anything. If I met you today, I would say you’re too cold for him. Back then you were too submissive.”

Ian didn’t pull punches. Damn, hearing that hurt. “So you think I should let him go.”

Let him go to the likes of the
Amandas
of this world? Younger women or subs who weren’t damaged and set in their ways? Women he could settle down with into a happy, congenial partnership where he made most of the decisions?

“I think you need to take all the sweetness of the woman you were and merge it with the strength you have now. I think you should stop fucking lying down and fight. We’re all fucked up, Eve, but at least the rest of us are walking wounded. At least we’re trying to get somewhere.”

A little kernel of anger lit inside her. “Oh, really? Just where are you going, Ian? Because from where I’m sitting, you’ve been in one place for a really long time, or are you trying to tell me that you go through a sub a night because you’re looking for ‘the one’?”

He snorted, a sound sure to be ridiculous on a lesser man, but Ian made it sound elegant. “Yeah, that’s my story. No. I already found ‘the one’ and she’s dead and I think Eli Nelson had something to do with it.”

She felt her mouth drop open. She’d known Ian and Nelson had a history, but how far back did it go? “What?”

“Fucker sent me a card. I already tossed the flowers out. I nearly hit Phoebe in the head. She’s going to quit one of these days.” He nodded toward the envelope at his feet.

Eve pulled the card out. It was all hearts and flowers, sappy and sentimental, and it announced Happy Anniversary. It was unsigned, but the mailing address was London, England, Eli Nelson’s last known whereabouts. The rogue CIA agent had been causing trouble for the entire group since he’d attempted to use them to steal industrial secrets for his Chinese handlers. A few months ago, they’d all learned that their ties with Nelson went back much further than they had known. He’d ruined the operation that cost Liam years of his life and then tried to kill both him and Avery after running off with the information he’d been willing to kill for.

And Ian had struck back, rendering that information useless. They were two titans taking massive swings at each other.

“Why would he send this to you?”

Ian shrugged. “He wants me emotional. He wants me off my game. And he definitely wants me to think he killed my wife.”

Eve felt her eyes go wide and her heart drop into her stomach. His wife? Ian had been married? “How long has she been gone?”

Maybe he’d been right when he’d said there was a lot she didn’t know.

“Years. Minutes. Sometimes I think I still see her. What am I doing? She played me. She was working for Nelson all along, and she got burned. This is stupid. I need to be working on a case and I’m sitting here like some fucking teenager listening to music and crying over a girl.”

He wasn’t crying. His face was a block of stone. Eve had about two million questions, but it seemed wrong to intrude. He was so private. He would regret every word he said later, and she couldn’t stand the thought of anything humbling him. She laid the envelope down and moved to her feet.

“I’m going to hug you now.”

Ian’s eyes came open and a wary look crossed his face, as though she’d just warned him something terrible was about to happen. “Why?”

“Because you need it, Sir, and you can’t accept it from one of the other subs because they all want something from you. I only want something for you.”

“Everyone wants something, Eve.”

She made the bold play. She sat in his lap and put her arms around his neck. He was the brother she’d never had, and she couldn’t leave him sitting here like this. “I want you to be happy. And I think I finally want to be happy, too. You’re right. I’ve been a zombie for years, and I need to start living again. And you need to figure out what you want.”

His voice was a low rumble. “I want to tear Eli Nelson’s balls off and shove them down his throat and then, when he’s gagging on his own testicles, I want to hang him with his large intestine.”

Well, at least he had a goal. “Can I do anything for you?”

He was silent for a moment, and then his voice was deeply weary. “You can sit with me. Do you know how long it’s been since someone just sat with me? Since someone touched me and didn’t want a damn thing except to make me feel better? It’s been five years. Not since she died.”

She let her head rest against his broad shoulder, taking comfort from the closeness. There didn’t have to be anything sexual about it. “It’s been five years since I let Alex kiss me. I miss him, Ian.”

“And I miss Charlie. And if you ask me when I’m sober, I’ll pretend she doesn’t exist. I’ll pretend I never married her. I’ll pretend I didn’t hold her dead body in my arms.”

She felt tears fill her eyes for the second time that day. Something seemed to have opened up. “I am so sorry, Ian.”

His hand drifted to her cheek, and he swiped at a tear with his thumb. He held it up and stared at it. “Eve, you’re crying. You never cry unless it’s a scene.”

She pulled back and looked at him. “Yeah, well, apparently now that I’m walking wounded instead of zombie girl, I can cry again. Just a little.”

His lips curved up, and he was so beautiful when he smiled. “There’s my Eve.”

The music stopped entirely, the whole place going dead quiet in an instant. Then a cold voice spoke. “Your Eve? Is there something I don’t know about?”

She damn near jumped out of Ian’s lap at the sound of Alex’s voice, but she stopped herself because she hadn’t done anything wrong. It was her place as a submissive to offer kindness. Hell, it was her place as Ian’s friend to offer him comfort. How many times had she caught Alex snuggling with some sub whose Dom had left her or who’d had a bad day? They were touchy-feely people, but the way he was looking at her now made her want to cringe.

“I think you should move now.” Ian’s hands were held up and away as though showing Alex he wasn’t trying anything funny.

Eve moved off his lap, turning to face her ex. “Calm down, Alex.”