Master No (Masters and Mercenaries, #9)(12)

CHAPTER TWO



Hello. How was your flight?

Faith couldn’t help but get a thrill as she looked at the message. There were three messages waiting for her on her laptop. One from her dad, one from the clinic, but it was the one from Master T that made her heart speed up in her chest. She looked at the delivery time. It was only ten minutes before. He might still be at his computer.

She hesitated. This was crazy. She was starting a relationship with a man she knew next to nothing about except that he’d passed a background check and her friends liked him.

And he was gorgeous. That shouldn’t matter. That didn’t matter. Not really. But damn the man was hot in his pictures.

She could still get out of this. Was it a good idea to get close to a man the submissives at his home club called Master No? Erin had passed on that tidbit of information. Apparently Timothy Graham was a bit of a hardass when he wanted to be.

Still, she found herself typing.

It was nice, Sir. And hello to you. She winced as she pressed the return button. She didn’t want to get out of this. This might be the first positive step she’d taken in forever. She’d taken back her professional life after what had happened in Ghana, but she’d allowed herself to stay stagnant in her personal life. Roger had been predictable and that was what she’d liked about him. He understood her. She understood him. Boring and yet comfortable. Like a pair of sweatpants.

She wanted her love life to be better than a pair of sweatpants.

I’m glad your flight made it in on time. I thought I would check on you. I sent you an e-mail. Did you get the contract?

The Sanctum contract. The one that basically gave large portions of her life over to this man. Of course, it was only a piece of paper. It was the symbol of it all that was making her stomach flutter with anticipation. Or anxiety. Maybe a bit of both. I did. I’ve read it over. I would like to talk to you about some of the points of the contract when you have time.

Of course, but for tonight, you get some sleep. You’ve had a long day. Write me when you wake up.

I don’t want to disturb you if you’re sleeping, Sir. Why don’t you give me a good time to contact you?

I’m always awake. Contact me when you’re ready. Good night, Faith.

Good night, Sir.

She sat back and read through the brief correspondence again. Master T. Her Sir. He’d known when she was scheduled to get in and he’d waited to welcome her back to the Western world.

“Hey, we’re going to head to bed. I’m afraid I’m going to be horrifically jetlagged tomorrow. You need anything?” Erin asked as she poked her head through the open doorway.

She turned and smiled. “No, I’m good.”

Erin frowned. “What happened? That’s not a smile I’ve seen on you before.”

She stopped herself from covering her face in a deeply girlish gesture. God, she needed to get a handle on this. Just because the man was hot—okay super hot, like Hollywood hot—and polite didn’t mean she should lose IQ points when she thought about him. She was a doctor. She’d been to medical school and done her residency and ran a clinic. She was not a giggling schoolgirl. “I talked to Master T.”

Erin grinned and walked through the door, setting herself on the bed across from Faith. “Seriously? He already called you. Eager beaver.”

So she did kind of sound like a schoolgirl. She had to admit it was refreshing. It was far from the doom and gloom of the last few months. Months? She’d been doom and gloom for years now that she thought about it. It was kind of nice to have this bubbly feeling. She was thirty-two years old and it was fun to feel sixteen again. “He sent me an instant message. But I thought it was kind of sweet that he remembered when I was getting in. You know him, right?”

“Yeah. I work with him, though not specifically with him. Usually I work with a man named Liam. He’s like my big brother. Well, if my brother was Irish and nice and had the coolest wife in the world.”

“Don’t you have a bunch of brothers?”

Her smile faded a bit. “Yeah, three. Trust me. Li is way cooler than my brothers. The place where I work…it’s like a family. It’s the best place I’ve ever been. I joke a lot. I know I have a dark sense of humor, but I really love where I work. I have to warn you though. Your man can be a dickwad. And he thinks he’s the shit at covert ops, but we took his ass down.”

“What?” Covert ops? He was supposed to work for a security firm not the freaking CIA. God, that was the last thing she wanted to get involved in.

Erin shook her head. “Sorry. Every now and then Master T and Big Tag play war games. A couple months back T decided to invade the office and dude got his ass kicked. Oh, he got some good licks in on Tag, but he lost and now Big Tag gets to punch him at random.”

She felt her jaw drop. “What?”

“Sometimes I forget you’re a civvie, Doc. It’s all fun and games. Well, and broken noses. But hey, that’s just cartilage and I personally think T was too pretty before Tag broke his nose.” She leaned in. “I kind of wish someone would break Theo’s nose. He’s so f*cking pretty I find it intimidating. He’s even prettier without all those clothes. It’s not fair.”

Faith was getting into a world that she didn’t understand. But maybe that was all right. She’d spent all her time around serious scholars and super-ambitious people. They never broke each other’s noses. Ever. Of course, most of the super-ambitious people she’d spent her life around hadn’t looked like Master T or Theo. And most of them wouldn’t have remembered when her flight was supposed to land and wouldn’t have stayed by the computer to make sure she’d gotten in. They had important things to do.