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.”

“Yes, I am sure their hospitality will be wonderful. I have heard so many good things from our Middle Eastern friends.”

Oh, the Agency was going to want to know about those friends. But Ian wanted to know about other friends.

He took out a picture of Eli Nelson. It was from the year before, but it was all he had. Nelson had been careful since London. “Let’s have a talk. As long as you’re truthful, I think you’ll like my hospitality.” It went without saying that if he didn’t, the opposite could be true. “Is your boss involved with this man?”

“My boss is involved with many such interesting people. He is businessman.”

“He is criminal.” Ian pointed to the picture. It wouldn’t do to give up that he was going to take out Denisovitch as well. “But my people don’t tend to mess with your people. We leave that to cops. I’m interested in this man.”