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
Dominance Never Dies
Masters and Mercenaries, Book 11
Lexi Blake
Dominance Never Dies
Masters and Mercenaries, Book 11
Lexi Blake
Published by DLZ Entertainment LLC
Copyright 2016 DLZ Entertainment LLC
Edited by Chloe Vale
eBook ISBN: 978-1-937608-51-4
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.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to the usual suspects—my editor and all around girl Friday, Kim Guidroz. To my wonderful beta team—Riane Holt and Stormy Pate. Thanks to my dear friend Liz Berry for always championing this series. To my wonderful publicist Danielle Sanchez and the whole staff at Inkslinger. To my family for standing beside me no matter what. And special thanks to Steve Berry for being the single best mentor a writer could have.
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
Chapter Eighteen
Author’s Note
Submission is Not Enough, Masters and Mercenaries 12, Coming October 18, 2016
An excerpt from Ruthless, A Lawless Novel, Coming August 9, 2016
An excerpt from Elegant Seduction by Mari Carr and Lila Dubois
About Lexi Blake
Other Books by Lexi Blake
PROLOGUE
Dallas, TX
Seven months ago
Mia stepped out into the club, her eyes wide with curiosity. Sanctum. She’d seen it when she was taking her class, but this was something completely different. During the training classes, the place looked neat and clean, with crisp white walls on some levels and rich paneling on others. The lounge area was done up like a swanky living area. The locker room was better than anything she’d been in at expensive gyms.
But on play nights with the lights on and the thrum of industrial music, Sanctum became a decadent adult playground.
She’d expected a sex club to be nasty, to make her feel dirty.
She hadn’t expected it to make her feel free.
“Hey, don’t wander off.” Kori walked up behind her, her best friend, Sarah, following after. “I got a special permission slip from the big guy himself in order for you to come out here without Javier tonight. You’re not allowed free-range rights until after your training class is over.”
She glanced up at her new friends. Kori and Sarah ran the beginning training classes for submissives at Sanctum. They were funny and kind and had explained all the basics, been open to answering the craziest of questions. Mia had gone into the class expecting to have to endure the entire process. She’d known she had to get through it to achieve her goal, but now she had to force herself to focus on the prize because she’d come to genuinely love this place and these people.
She’d come here with a purpose—to find her friend’s killer. Now she prayed he wasn’t here and she wasn’t going to tear up her new friend’s world. In a week or so Kai Ferguson’s brother was set to show up to begin the process of filming his new movie. The trouble was Mia was almost certain that Kai’s brother was a serial killer. It was the entire reason she’d infiltrated Sanctum in the first place. She’d come in undercover in order to get close to Jared Johns and his entourage.
She hadn’t expected to fall madly in love with a Taggart.
Taggarts, it seemed to Mia, were their own special class of gorgeous, heroic, sexy as hell men.
God, they couldn’t be working with a serial killer. She just didn’t want to believe it. Those stunning men who made her feel so safe and protected couldn’t possibly be covering for their friend’s brother.
“Did you talk to J
avier?” Sarah asked, adjusting her scarlet corset. “He knows you’re here, right?”
She nodded as she looked out over the lounge. “He does. I swear Javi and I are nothing more than friends. We made a deal about three minutes after we met that we weren’t a match.”
Kori stared at her like she’d said something miraculous. “Javi is the manwhore of Top. He thinks his dick matches anything with a pussy. And yes, I mean anything. I’ve seen him in sex toy stores.”
Mia had figured her training Dom out about two seconds after meeting him. He was a gorgeous man, but she’d been engaged at the time. Not that she was interested in Javier. “I talked about how much I love weddings and hope to have my own very soon.”
Sarah laughed, her bare shoulders moving with the force of her amusement. “That would do it. So he’s probably comfortable with you talking to other men.”
“He practically shoved me at the first dude to come along.” And that dude had been Case Taggart, with his massive muscular body, sandy blond hair, and that aw-shucks smile that made her heart pound. She’d actually been a little star struck staring up at him.
That was when she’d known she wasn’t getting married. Not to her fiancé. She’d put it off, but she knew she had to break things off with him.
No matter what happened with Case, she wasn’t in love with Jeff and she couldn’t go through with it. She’d said yes mostly because it seemed like the right thing to do.
Fuck. She’d said yes because Jeff was a nice man and he’d asked her in front of like a million people and she hadn’t wanted to hurt him. She’d said yes because it was her nature to please people.
Somehow taking the training class that was supposed to teach her submission had brought out something else. In her job she could be aggressive all day long. She took shit from no one because her work was important.
What she’d learned here at Sanctum was she was important, too. Her personal needs, her sexual needs, they were important.
“Stick with us,” Kori said. She was kind of the mother of the group. Not that she was older. She simply took very good care of her friends.
Sarah leaned over, her voice going low. “I think she’s going to want to stick to someone else.”
Yes, she was because there was her man and he was wearing the sexiest set of leathers she’d ever seen. When she’d first realized she was going to have to go undercover in the leather scene, she’d expected skeevy dudes. Now she wasn’t sure she could ever want a man who didn’t fill out a set of leathers the way this one did. He wore all black, from the vest that covered most of his broad chest, to the pants that clung to his muscular legs, right down to a pair of cowboy boots.
At her brother’s company she was surrounded by geeks who cared nothing about their clothes and metro men who made peacocks look humble. They wore their thousand-dollar suits and made sure their hair was properly dressed and had freaking skin care routines.
So why was it Case’s low-key masculine beauty that called to her?
“You are so in trouble,” Kori whispered her way. “You know what he’s been through, right? I’m a little worried that he’s not in a good place.”
His brother. Case Taggart had recently lost his twin brother. She feared for a world that had two of him in it. And she had seen his pain the minute she’d met him.
She knew what it meant to lose family. It created an aching hole that would never be filled.
Case looked up at that moment and a brilliant smile crossed his face.
“Never mind. I take back everything I just said,” Kori whispered. “You make him smile like that and I say you can break every rule this club has. Now I understand why Big Tag was so eager to let you in.”
“You made his brother smile again.” Sarah sighed as if it was all too romantic.
Her heart was doing that thudding thing again, and suddenly the room felt electric. Case Taggart was walking her way. Walking? The man kind of swaggered in an “I saved the world and didn’t break a sweat doing it” kind of way. He’d been a Navy SEAL, one of the youngest. He’d been decorated during battle, recruited by the CIA, and then he’d dropped it all to work with the brothers he hadn’t known he had according to the work-up Riley had done on him.
Riley, her brother. Riley and Drew and Bran. Case sort of reminded her of them. It was there in his strength, his devotion to family.
Would he be so devoted to a woman? Would he take care of her, adore her? Would he let her adore him?
“Hi, Mia, welcome to Sanctum.” He grimaced. “That sounded stupid. You’ve been here.”
She was not about to let that man get awkward on her. “Not at all. It’s so different at night. I’ve been on the tour, but most of our classes are on the main stage and I’ve certainly never seen the place lit up like this. It’s amazing. I mean what I’ve seen is amazing so far.”
He was definitely amazing. So heartbreakingly beautiful.
He held a hand out. “Then please let me show you around. Kori, I talked to Javi earlier. He asked me to look after her for tonight.”
Kori frowned, but there was a twinkle in her eyes as though she knew she was playing the gatekeeper and was definitely going to have fun with the role. “She’s not allowed to play.”
“I’ll follow the rules. We’ll talk and watch some scenes and I’ll have her back to you before closing,” he promised.
She moved next to him. If she went with him, he would require her to stay close all night. Sanctum, she’d discovered, could be a little traditional in its roles. Until the submissive had completed the training course, there were rules about how the Doms would treat them. Even after, there would be politeness and courtesy, but until she proved she could handle the BDSM aspects she was only allowed to play with her vetted training Dom and only under certain circumstances.
She was a little like a debutante submissive.
She wanted to break those rules with this man. Mia let her hand slip into his. So big and strong. He tucked her arm beneath his as Kori and Sarah gave her a wave.
“Shall we?”
She nodded up, feeling like Cinderella and the prince had asked her to dance.
And like Cinderella, she was here under false pretenses, wearing a mask to hide her reality.
Let it go for one night. For one night just be Mia and he can be Case and we can see where it goes. He’ll forgive you. He’s that kind of man.
He had to be.
Two hours later, Mia let him lead her through a door at the top level of the club. To her right was the hall that led to the privacy rooms. When he’d first suggested they go upstairs, she’d worried a little that he was trying to hook up.
Her body was all kinds of ready to go, but she didn’t want him to be the kind of guy who hooked up with a girl before he’d even taken her on a proper date. And yet here she was, following him god only knew where. Was this his personal privacy room? She was confident she could handle him. She was well trained in self-defense, but beyond that, she was pretty sure this was a man who would take no for an answer.
She expected to be led into a bedroom, but a cool breeze hit her skin.
“This is a part of the club they won’t show you,” Case explained as he led her on to the rooftop. “I’m afraid the founding members keep this for themselves. I’m not a founding member, obviously, but they let all the McKay-Taggart guys up on the roof. Wait here for a sec while I get the lights on.”
She was left standing on the roof, the night soft around her. She’d ditched her shoes about an hour in while she and Case watched a couple of scenes and then had a drink in the bar. The scenes had been lovely, filled with a combination of heat and deep affection, and then they’d sat and talked. He’d told her about how he’d come to McKay-Taggart, complete with the craziest story of how he’d raided his own brother’s building on a helicopter and gotten his ass kicked.
She’d told him very little and that hurt. Only a few more weeks and she would tell him everything. She would tell him about her brother
s and the company they’d founded. He would see how alike they were.
She walked out onto the roof. Someone had used outdoor-style carpet to cover the floor. It was a little scratchy on her bare feet, but she liked it. The lights of downtown Dallas were soft around her. Most of the buildings in this area of town were businesses and dark, but a few had decorative lighting and the blues and greens and whites made the world seem a little hazy and surreal.
And then she was surrounded by twinkle lights.
She smiled because she was in one of the most romantic settings she’d ever seen.
To her left was what looked like a gorgeous outdoor living area complete with a fire pit. A pergola wound with the soft white twinkle lights covered the space.
“This is beautiful.”
Case walked over to the side of the building. The top was lined with sturdy walls that he leaned against as he looked out over the city. The taller buildings loomed over them, like giant trees in the middle of a concrete forest. “I like to come up here to think. It’s quiet at night. I don’t have a balcony at my apartment.”
“I don’t either.” She kept a small place in Austin, but she was on the road for her job so often she was rarely there. She’d rented an apartment here in Dallas and she’d brought up her favorite keepsakes. She’d told herself it was all about her cover, but she liked the city. The last six weeks she’d felt more settled than she had in years. “I have to admit, the older I get the more I think about buying a house.”
Case groaned as she joined him. “I don’t know about that. Theo bought a place and immediately had to replace all of the damn plumbing…well, Erin did. After…”
“She still lives there?” She asked the question in a quiet tone because he didn’t usually mention Theo.
