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 jeans 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.