That was the wall between them, the chasm. She hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him what was happening. She hadn’t loved him enough to give him the truth.
“What would you have done, Ian?” She stared up at him. Sometimes he seemed so remote, aloof, but it was all an act. It could be hard to see past that gorgeous face and perfect body, but deep down he was just a man and she’d hurt him. “What would you have done if I had come to you? I was afraid you would kick me to the curb and then I wouldn’t be able to save Chelsea. There was a tiny piece of me that was afraid you knew everything and you were playing me.”
“I would have killed Eli Nelson. I would have gotten your sister.”
She shook her head. He saw everything in black and white. “My dad had her. He wasn’t going to let her go.”
“I told you I would have gotten your sister. If anyone got in my way, I would have taken them out, and I very likely would have enjoyed killing your father.”
“You were on an op.”
He sighed, looking past tired. “You were more important than any op. I would have turned over the op to someone else. You were my wife. I made vows to you that I never made to another woman. I won’t ever make to another woman. I would have walked away from the Agency and taken care of your problems and then I would have brought you back to the States and bought a fucking house with soapstone and shit and I would have gotten you pregnant and we would have a couple of kids by now, and then I wouldn’t feel this hole inside me every single fucking day of my life. I would be some dumbass dad who takes his kid to soccer practice and bitches about the coach. I would be a husband who just likes to spend time with his wife at boring barbecues and family dinners.”
The life they could have had. It played in the corners of her mind always, a dream she couldn’t quite catch. “I don’t know that we could ever have had that life, Ian. I think I made a mistake by coming back to you. I love you. I wish I’d made better choices, but in the end they’ll always come after me.”
“Can we not make decisions tonight?” Weariness had invaded his voice. “Can we just get through this crisis before we have to deal with the next one?”
Because the next crisis would come. “Yes. I’ll be good. You can untie me.”
He snorted a little and moved away from the wall, pulling his shirt over his head. “I think I’ll keep you the way you are. That way I can sleep without having to keep one eye open.”
“Ian, I promise.”
“And I promise to gag you if you don’t stop talking.”
“God, you’re such a bastard.” He made her crazy. He said the sweetest things and then left her trussed up like a piece of meat on a hook. And who the hell had hooks built into his headboard?
He got down to his boxers and then the bed moved as he tossed his body on it. “Are you cold?”
“Ian, I’m tied up. I’m not worried about the cold.”
His big hand came down on her belly, flattening over it possessively. “I’ve never had a woman in this bed.”
“Yet you have hooks in the headboard.”
He laid his head on her breasts, cuddling down like they were pillows. “I’m an optimist.”
He was a bastard, and she still loved him. And she definitely wasn’t cold.
With his arms around her, his body warming hers, she found it oddly easy to fall asleep.
“What the fuck are you doing with my hard drives?”
Why hadn’t he thought to have his bedroom soundproofed? Ian came awake to the shrill sounds of his sister-in-law fucking up his very carefully laid out plans. He’d planned on waking up and easing into Charlie’s pussy before she’d really opened her eyes. He’d planned on starting the morning better than the way they had ended the evening.
“Keep your fucking voice down.” Simon’s low command came through loud and clear.
“Do they have to argue in front of our room?” Charlie groaned a little and turned toward him. He’d freed her after she’d fallen asleep. He’d never really meant to leave her tied up all night. It would have done terrible things to her joints and made her awfully crabby. Sleepy eyes opened, and she laid her head on his chest.
It was simple to curl his arm around her, drawing her close. He hated the fact that her referring to the room as theirs sounded so fucking right. But he wasn’t going to fight it anymore. Fighting it had only made him miserable.
So he was having an affair. With his wife. He wasn’t going to look past that and keeping her alive for today.
“I swear to god if you don’t give me back my hard drives, I’m going to take your balls off.”
“I would love to see you try, little girl.”
Charlie whined a little. “Make them go away, Master.”
If only he could. He gave her a squeeze and rolled off the bed, not bothering with clothes. If they wanted to throw down outside his bedroom, they could deal with the fact that he had morning wood.
He threw the door open and Simon was standing over Chelsea, his face red. Ian could practically see the steam coming out of his ears. “You two both shut the fuck up. Where’s Damon?”
Simon stood down. “He and Baz left early this morning. They’re meeting us at the office in a few hours.”
At least they hadn’t been listening to Chelsea scream about her hard drives. “Then why the fuck are you two standing outside my door, wrecking my morning? I had a late fucking night what with all the killing and burying bodies and listening to Alex hand his balls over to Eve.”
Chelsea turned, her face a stubborn mask. “I want to see my sister.”
Ian wanted a lot of things that he wasn’t going to get. “I want to fuck your sister but I can’t because the two of you won’t keep it down long enough for me to take care of business.”
There was a chuckle from behind him and then Charlie’s arm wound around his waist. Her body hugged his from behind. “You have no discretion at all.”
Sleep seemed to have done his sub a world of good. Or maybe it was the fact that he’d stopped the macho revenge bullshit. He’d halfway expected to wake up and find her missing, but instead, she’d been wrapped around him, a little smile on her face. “Discretion is useless in this case. Now, in your sister’s case, it could very likely get you killed if she keeps running around screaming about her hard drives.”
“I want them back.” Chelsea didn’t seem to be in the same good mood as her sister. Maybe Simon should have tied her to a bed.
“Not going to happen. I traded them for your sister’s freedom.”
Chelsea huffed a little. “Bullshit. I could have gotten us out of that. Charlotte, you can’t believe this asshole. He’s one of them.”
He waited for Charlie’s deeply detailed defense of him, but she just put her head against his back and sighed. “No, he’s not.”
Neat. Succinct. To the point. He liked it.
“Charlotte, you can’t let him do this to you,” her sister pleaded. Her face twisted in a little frown of disgust. “Can’t you put that thing away?”
His cock was tenting out of his boxers, poking its way through the fly. “I told you how to make it go away, but you’re still here.” Charlie chuckled behind him, her mouth on his back sending the little laughter reverberating through his skin. It did nothing to get his dick to slow down. “Besides, it looks like Simon there has wood of his own. You’re not complaining about that.”
Simon flushed. “God, you’re a fucking bastard, Taggart. It’s my deep pleasure to tell you that fucking your wife is going to have to wait. Liam’s on his way in. He bagged a Russian and he managed to not kill his, so we’re bringing him into the interrogation room in five.”
Fuck all. He really couldn’t screw his wife. Damn it. His day was already going to hell. “Fine.”
“You have an interrogation room?” Charlie asked, her voice incredulous.
“Doesn’t everyone?” He wasn’t going to apologize for having a proper home. Dungeon. Check. Interrogation room. Check. She didn’t even know that he’d turned the shed in the back into a detention cell. Now that he thought about it, he really had made this house into a home. He just needed Charlie to pick out shit like curtains. Should he put curtains in his detention cell?
“I’ll take this one off your hands.” Simon had an oversized paw on Chelsea’s elbow.
She pulled away from him. “Don’t think this is over. Charlotte, I don’t care how good he is in bed. You can’t let him wreck our future.”
“The future in which you blackmail high-ranking officials?” Charlie asked, finally showing some irritation. “The one where I get renditioned because you can’t keep your hands out of the pie? Just tell me you haven’t been hacking MSS. I don’t think even Ian can work a deal with the Chinese.”
Her sister flushed. “No. I stayed away from them. You have to understand that the officials I’m working over deserve it. If you only knew the kind of things they do, Charlotte.”
“I don’t have to know,” Charlie shot back. “You shut that shit down now. We’re out of the information business. If Ian can settle everything, we’re going to keep our noses clean and stay off the radar.”
Chelsea huffed away looking like a kid who had just had her favorite toy taken. Simon followed after her.
Ian turned to Charlie, allowing her to twist until she hugged him, his cock up against her belly, the easy intimacy comforting. “So you’re on board now?”
She turned her face up. God, he loved how pretty she looked without an ounce of makeup on. “You’re right. At least half of the people looking for me will go away if we give up the business, but Ian, you have to know that my uncle won’t stop. I can’t hide here forever.”
He had no idea what he would do with her if she could stay. There was still so much between them, so much he couldn’t trust about her. Still, he didn’t want to fight more. He hugged her close. “We’ll figure it out as we go along. Now go and take a shower and then deal with Miss Frowns A Lot. She and Simon would be so much happier if they would just get it over with and fuck.”
“That’s your solution to everything.”
It was his solution to his massive hard-on. Now that he was kind-of, sort-of done with shoving her away, he should really be able to fuck his wife. He had five years of fucking to make up for. He pressed his cock against her, his hands finding her hair. “It’s a really good solution.”
He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to hold her still and explore her mouth lazily. They could start the morning right. His lips hovered right over hers.
“Ian!” Liam’s voice rang out. “I caught us a nice fat fish.”
There was a flurry of Russian curse words and Charlie tensed.
Fuck.
He pulled her close, forgetting about his stupid, needed-more-than-it-was-going-to-get cock. “It’s going to be okay, baby. I’ll deal with this fucker.”
“Are you going to kill him?” There wasn’t an ounce of judgment in her question, just an offhand curiosity.
He’d thought about it, but he didn’t really want to bury the dude in his backyard and Alex’s was already full, so he was going to make another deal. “Li’s going to hold him here until the Agency can pick him up. They’ll take him along with the files and then it’s out of our hands. I really only have a couple of hours to talk to him, so go and get cleaned up. We have to be at the office by noon.”
She nodded and squeezed him one more time. “All right, Ian. I’ll watch out for Chelsea and make sure she doesn’t get into more trouble.”
He stared down at her. “You’re really going to take a shower? I expected a fight.”
She shook her head. “Nope. You take care of douche-nozzle assassins and I’ll make myself pretty.” She sobered a bit. “I trust you, Ian. I made a mistake the first time, but I’m not making it again. I love you. I’m handing this problem over to you. Please fix it for me.”
God, she couldn’t know what that did to him. It made him want to wrap her up and never let the world fucking touch her again. It made him want to stand between her and anything that came her way. “I will, baby.”
She walked away and after a moment, he heard the shower turn on.
“Hey, I’ve got the fucker in the interrogation room.” Li frowned. “What are you going to do, mate? Are you going to threaten him with your dick? You should put that thing away. You’re going to scare me with it.”
He flipped Liam off and went to grab his pants.
Ten minutes later, he stared at Yuri Zhukov, who looked a little worse for wear. “What did you do to him? Or was his nose always three inches from the middle of his face?”
Li smiled. “Nah, that was Karina. He got a little handsy with her, and she put him in his place. She’s a crazy bitch. I like her. I think she cheats at cards, though. And she broke a nail. She says that will cost you extra.”
Great. Now he was paying for mani-pedis. He glanced at the mirror to the side. Alex and Eve were behind that mirror, watching everything that happened. Eve would be profiling the man, talking to Liam through a Bluetooth device. “Did he say anything in the car?”
“Beyond ‘please don’t lock me in the trunk’ and ‘don’t kill me’? Some stuff in Russian, but the great news is I don’t speak a lick of it. It’s so much easier to kidnap people when you don’t speak their language. All the crying becomes background noise.”
Liam was talking out his ass, trying to get a rise out of the Russian. That much Ian got because the man he was describing was not the man sitting in the interrogation room. Zhukov was deadly silent, his face a mask of darkness.
And he damn straight spoke English. Everyone in the syndicate did. Of course, the good news was, Ian spoke Russian.
“
Dobroye utro
,” It was Russian for “good morning.”
A black brow rose above the assassin’s eyes. “Ah, someone who has brain in head. You must be Taggart. My boss send his regards.”
His boss had sent a couple of bullets his way, but at least they weren’t going to have to conduct the interview in Russian. “So, you’re going to drop the tough-guy act?”
“This is no act. I have been with syndicate for twenty years. Now I am dead man.”
Because the syndicate didn’t forgive and forget. Even if Zhukov managed to get away, they would assume he had been disloyal and kill him themselves. “The Agency will keep you safe from the syndicate for as long as you’re willing to talk to them.”