by Lexi Blake
Praise for Lexi Blake and Masters and Mercenaries...
“I can always trust Lexi Blake's Dominants to leave me breathless...and in love. If you want sensual, exciting BDSM wrapped in an awesome love story, then look for a Lexi Blake book.”
~Cherise Sinclair USA Today Bestselling author
“Lexi Blake's MASTERS AND MERCENARIES series is beautifully written and deliciously hot. She's got a real way with both action and sex. I also love the way Blake writes her gorgeous Dom heroes--they make me want to do bad, bad things. Her heroines are intelligent and gutsy ladies whose taste for submission definitely does not make them dish rags. Can't wait for the next book!”
~Angela Knight, New York Times Bestselling author
“A Dom is Forever is action packed, both in the bedroom and out. Expect agents, spies, guns, killing and lots of kink as Liam goes after the mysterious Mr. Black and finds his past and his future… The action and espionage keep this story moving along quickly while the sex and kink provides a totally different type of interest. Everything is very well balanced and flows together wonderfully.”
~A Night Owl “Top Pick”, Terri, Night Owl Erotica
“A Dom Is Forever is everything that is good in erotic romance. The story was fast-paced and suspenseful, the characters were flawed but made me root for them every step of the way, and the hotness factor was off the charts mostly due to a bad boy Dom with a penchant for dirty talk.”
~Rho, The Romance Reviews
“A good read that kept me on my toes, guessing until the big reveal, and thinking survival skills should be a must for all men.”
~Chris, Night Owl Reviews
“I can’t get enough of the Masters and Mercenaries Series! Love and Let Die is Lexi Blake at her best! She writes erotic romantic suspense like no other, and I am always extremely excited when she has something new for us! Intense, heart pounding, and erotically fulfilling, I could not put this book down.”
~ Shayna Renee, Shayna Renee's Spicy Reads
“Certain authors and series are on my auto-buy list. Lexi Blake and her Masters & Mercenaries series is at the top of that list... this book offered everything I love about a Masters & Mercenaries book – alpha men, hot sex and sweet loving… As long as Ms. Blake continues to offer such high quality books, I’ll be right there, ready to read.”
~ Robin, Sizzling Hot Books
“I have absolutely fallen in love with this series. Spies, espionage, and intrigue all packaged up in a hot dominant male package. All the men at McKay-Taggart are smoking hot and the women are amazingly strong sexy submissives.”
~Kelley, Smut Book Junkie Book Reviews
Love Another Day
Masters and Mercenaries, Book 14
Lexi Blake
Love Another Day
Masters and Mercenaries, Book 14
Published by DLZ Entertainment LLC
Copyright 2017DLZ Entertainment LLC
Edited by Chloe Vale
ISBN: 978-1-937608-61-3
McKay-Taggart logo design by Charity Hendry
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the usual suspects: Kim Guidroz, Liz Berry, Fedora Chen, Stormy Pate, Riane Holt and Kori Smith. Thanks to my amazing husband and son who helped produce this book. Thanks to Danielle Sanchez at Inkslinger. I couldn’t do it without you!
Thanks so much to my Aussie girls – Rhian Cahill and Khloe Wren. Anything that sounds right with Brody is thanks to them.
This book is dedicated to Tiffany. I wish you happily ever after, my friend.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Author’s Note
Nobody Does It Better, Masters and Mercenaries 15 by Lexi Blake
At Your Service, Masters and Mercenaries~Topped Book 4 by Lexi Blake
Smoke and Sin, Perfect Gentlemen Book 4 by Shayla Black and Lexi Blake
Thieves by Lexi Blake
An excerpt from We Own Tonight by Corinne Michaels
About Lexi Blake
Other Books by Lexi Blake
Prologue
Sierra Leone, Africa
Stephanie Gibson stared at herself in the mirror, trying to decide if this was the worst idea she’d ever had or the best.
It was probably the worst, but then she was trying to be optimistic.
The good news was her boobs looked pretty damn good. The white silky gown she’d bought for the occasion skimmed her curves and the ivory tone made her skin look warm. Thank god it fit. She’d bought it off the Internet a month before but she’d been too afraid to use it. Now her time was up and she needed to look her best. She’d managed to borrow conditioner from Charlotte Taggart. For once her hair was soft and relatively tame. It was weird not to have it in a ponytail or a practical bun. When had it gotten so long?
The bad news? She was fairly certain Brody Carter would still take one look at her and laugh. Oh, he wouldn’t do it in a mean way. He would be kind about it. He would chuckle, that deep voice of his sending a shiver of desire through her right before he explained that despite the roles they’d played for the last few months, he thought of her as a kid sister.
Come on, Steph. Go chuck on some proper clothes, and we’ll grab a beer before I stroll out of your life forever.
She could hear him saying the words in his sexy Aussie accent.
Steph took a deep breath and thought about running herself. If she was careful, she could get back to her cabin without anyone seeing her. Maybe Brody wouldn’t even come back to the cabin he’d been staying in for the last six months. He’d been attending something called a debrief with Ian Taggart for hours. He would likely take a room at the hotel in the city where the McKay-Taggart team was set up and she might not see him again.
Well, except he’d left his big duffel bag behind. He might come back for that.
She sank down onto the bed he’d been sleeping on and remembered the first day he’d shown up at her clinic here outside of Freetown. She hadn’t been sure what to expect when she’d agreed to help McKay-Taggart with a long-term mission. They’d explained that their own operative would run most of the mission and her clinic would give him cover. She hadn’t expected for her long dormant sex drive to come alive the minute said operative walked off the plane.
Steph lay down briefly, touching the quilt she’d had made especially for him. At first she’d given him a regular cot, but after she’d realized what that had to be doing
to his massive frame, she’d paid a local worker to build this beautiful monstrosity. Brody had argued that he didn’t need it, but she’d held firm.
When he was gone, she would move it into her cabin. It would be ridiculous and far too much bed for her, but she wanted some kind of memory of him.
It was over. The mission was over and in a couple of days Brody Carter would be gone. There was no more need for him to stick around because they’d done their duty. That very afternoon the op they’d been prepping for six months had played out. Guns had been fired, men had died, and Theo Taggart was going home.
For six months she’d had a gorgeous, brawny, sexy Australian bodyguard who pretended to be her right-hand man. Together they had navigated the underworld of criminal activity on the continent, all in a crazy attempt to draw out the woman who had kidnapped Theo Taggart. Dr. Hope McDonald hadn’t stopped with Theo. She’d kidnapped several other men and ruined their lives, health, and destroyed their memories.
She was going to hold on to the memory of her glorious Aussie never-quite-a-lover.
The door opened suddenly and a massive presence filled the space. Six foot seven. Two hundred seventy pounds of pure muscle. Brody Carter. He stopped as though allowing for his eyes to adjust. It was inky midnight outside, and her camp was far from town. He would have walked in the darkness from his Jeep to the cabin.
“Steph? Luv, what are you doing here?” He stepped inside. “Is something wrong? Something happen at the clinic?”
Oh, god, he was here. What the hell was she doing? He was stunningly gorgeous and she was the shy girl who always sat at the back of the room and hoped no one noticed her.
Except she hadn’t always been that girl. Once she’d been the girl who answered all the questions, the girl most likely to succeed.
And then she’d taken her eyes off the road, and in a flash of blinding light and crushed metal, that girl had died.
She stood up. There was a reason she didn’t get dressed in lace and silk and try to seduce men. She wasn’t that girl and she never would be again. Now she was the girl who repented, the girl who tried to save the world because once she’d destroyed it utterly.
Did she have to stop the rest of her damn life forever because she’d made a mistake? Could she not have one night of respite? One night where she got the guy?
Deep down she knew she wasn’t thinking about just one night. Deep down she knew she was crazy about Brody Carter and this was her play.
“Steph, why the hell are you dressed like that?” The question came out of his mouth on a breathless huff, as though he’d just figured out she was half naked in his bedroom. “You shouldn’t be here.”
But the words were said softly, not with any force of will and not with the abject horror she’d been worried about. He hadn’t moved away. He’d walked into the room, his big body taking up so much space she could practically feel the heat rolling off him. He’d closed the door and now it was just the two of them.
“I want to be here.” There was no place on earth she would rather be. She’d dreamed about being right here since the moment Liam O’Donnell had introduced her to him. He’d brought Brody with him and they’d sat in a café in Freetown, discussing the mission ahead. She’d known it would be dangerous, but all she’d been able to think about was how amazing the man across the table was.
Over the months he’d become her friend, her protector, her pretend lover, but every single time she thought he would make their ruse into reality, he would turn away.
She couldn’t let him turn away tonight. It was her last chance. She could let it slip away or she could reach out for it and have at least one sweet memory.
A shuddering sigh left his chest and she saw the way his hand fisted at his side, as though he didn’t trust himself not to reach out and touch her. His jaw tightened and she watched him win the war. “No. I’m not good enough for you, luv. I’ve known it for a long time. Why do you think I haven’t tried to climb into your bed?”
“Because you don’t want me.” She didn’t think so, but she needed to hear it from him. If he told her he didn’t, she would be able to walk away. She would be humiliated, but she would have tried.
He was worth trying for. Somewhere along the way he’d decided he was a grunt soldier, pure cannon fodder, but she’d seen another side of the man.
The side she’d fallen in love with. The side that might make all the pain she’d been through worth it. The side that might bring her back to life.
“It ain’t that, and you know it.” He couldn’t seem to look at her. His eyes went to the floor. “I’m not the man for you. You need someone better. Someone more on your level.”
She wasn’t sure what level he was talking about. She ran a rough-and-tumble clinic in a place that mostly made the news for its outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever. If she had more than a hundred dollars in her bank account, she counted it as a win. “Shouldn’t I be the one to make that decision?”
“Not if you’re not smart enough to make the right decision,” he replied. “Someone’s got to look out for you. You won’t listen to your nurses and your head of security is a washed-up drunk. I’m going to hire someone else before I leave.”
She couldn’t argue with anything he’d said. “If you’re leaving then it doesn’t matter if we spend the night together.”
“It does because you’re not doing this for sex. You’re doing it because you think it might change my mind about staying here or about taking you with me when I leave, but I won’t. I won’t do that to you. Stephanie, you’re brilliant. You need to be back in the States, learning new techniques and charging a fortune for your expertise. You’re going to die out here.”
She might, but it would be okay. She’d always known that. Now that her mother was gone, she didn’t have any reason to go back to the States. It was better that she stay here where she was needed, where she could do the good work she’d promised to do.
Where she could eternally punish herself.
He took a step back and she thought he would leave. He would pick up his pack and she wouldn’t see him again.
One last desperate plea. That was all she had left. She happened to know that he spoke another language, a private one that eased him and softened his soul.
Stephanie dropped to her knees, hoping that weeks of practice had perfected her form. Knees wide, spine straight, head down, and palms up on her thighs. The offering of a submissive to her chosen Dom.
Or at least that was how the books of Serena Dean-Miles explained it. Avery had sent them to her along with a few books by Serena’s friends. She’d looked at the salacious covers and rolled her eyes. She’d wanted fiction, not porn.
But then Brody had joined her and one night she’d found herself picking up The Mercenary I Loved and falling into the story of Shane and Gabriella, and she’d found a whole new world.
Brody cursed under his breath, but his boots came back into view. She could feel him looming over her. “You don’t know what you’re offering.”
“I know exactly what I’m offering.” She didn’t lift her head. “I’ve never had a Dom. I won’t have another one. Not out here. I want the experience, Sir. Or do you have a submissive at home in London?”
His hand touched her head, fingers sinking into her hair. They slid along her scalp, lighting up the skin he touched. “You know I don’t.”
“Then I don’t see the problem, Sir.” She had to hope the word Sir worked the same kind of magic on Brody that it did on Serena’s heroes.
The hand on her head lifted. “The problem is that you’re going to want more from me than one night in the sack, Stephanie, and I can’t give you more than that. I’m not the kind of guy who settles down. I’m not the one for you.”
Yes, she’d heard a whole lot of that. What he really meant was she wasn’t the one for him. It wasn’t his fault he wasn’t attracted to her. She’d misread the situation and it was time to retreat.
She stood up, swearing she wasn’t going
to cry. Nope. She’d been through way worse shit and one guy rejecting her advances wasn’t going to break her. Her inner tough chick made an appearance and she found herself straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin. She rose to her feet. When she thought about it, she was horny. That was all this was about. He was gorgeous and close to her and the adrenaline of the day had affected her.
Yeah, inner tough chick was good at deflection.
“Sorry about that. I didn’t understand. I get it now.” She held out a hand. “It was nice to meet you, Brody Carter. Have a good life.”
He looked down at her hand and sighed. “Steph, let’s sit down and talk. I don’t think you do understand what I’m saying to you. I’m not trying to hurt you, luv.”
He didn’t even want to shake her hand? She eased around him. Inner tough chick had started biting at the bit Steph kept in her mouth. Irrational anger poured through her, but she had to keep a lid on it. It wasn’t Brody’s fault that she’d gotten her hopes up. “Not necessary, man. It’s all cool. I’ll see you sometime.”
She started for the door.
“Please, Steph, I don’t want to say good-bye like this. I don’t want you angry with me.”
But she was. It wasn’t fair, but he was one more disappointment in a lifetime of them. She might deserve it, but it hurt. This one particular snub cut deep. She’d known deep down that she would be alone, but she’d thought there might be moments of respite. These weeks with Brody had refined her need.
Never let them see you hurt. It was far better to look like she didn’t care than to sit down like an obedient little girl and let him explain all the ways she wasn’t good enough for him. She was certain he would tell her it was the other way around, but what she would hear was that she wasn’t sexy enough, her boobs weren’t big enough, she was on the thin side, and he was a man who needed curves on his lovers.
