Lost and Found (Masters & Mercenaries: The Forgotten #2)(60)

“I started a part-time D/s relationship with her.”

A wolfish grin lit Theo’s face. “And the parameters were?”

He was starting to see this in a different light. “When we’re together, we’re together. We didn’t put limits on it or say when we would or wouldn’t see each other. We merely said that when we wanted to, we would see each other and then she was mine until we ended the session.”

“So a session could start at any time,” Theo mused. “How did she respond to you topping her?”

A vision of her leaning over that couch and offering him everything he wanted echoed in his brain, and he wished he hadn’t gotten out of bed at all. He could still be there with her tangled around him. He could have fucked her again and maybe she would have forgotten all about the lawyer. “She’s sexually submissive and she’s not ashamed of it. I don’t know that she ever considered a relationship like this before, but she’s not opposed. She’s eager to experiment.”

“Excellent. Then this is all about ensuring you have the opportunity to help her experiment,” Theo said. “What do we know about her date?”

“It’s a blind date,” he explained. “She was set up by a friend of hers. I’ll be honest, I expected her to cancel it this morning. I meant to convince her to spend the day with me instead, but that prick showed up and I walked out because that note of hers was staring me in the face. I found a note this morning on the bar. It had all the information for her date written on it.”

“It bothered you?” Theo asked.

“It would bug me,” Tucker said, pulling out a chair and taking a seat. He unwrapped his breakfast sandwich.

Owen rarely ate breakfast. He wasn’t sure why. It didn’t intrigue him, but this morning he’d gotten two croissants because he’d wanted to share them with her.

“I don’t know why.” Robert completed the circle, relaxing back into his chair again. “Your dates literally have men lined up, Tuck. Like she has to ask you to leave because her next appointment is there and she needs to clean up.”

“I wasn’t talking about hookers,” Tucker replied, though he seemed to talk about them an awful lot. “I was saying if a lady I was interested in basically kicked me out because she had some other dude coming over, I would be…hurt. Sorry. I had to think about that for a minute. If one of the other Tags had been here, I would have said something more manly like I would have been pissed or jealous AF. No. I wouldn’t have said AF. That’s probably hipster or something. What does Big Tag have against hipsters?”

The youngest of the Tags ignored Tucker. “Are you already in deep with this woman?”

Was he? He liked the hell out of her. He wanted her. He wasn’t sure he was capable of anything beyond that. “I enjoyed my time with her. I like the thought of topping her on a regular basis. She’s smart and sexy as hell.”

“See, that would be AH. Like why is as hell okay but AF isn’t?” Tucker mused. “The last time I used the phrase Big Tag slapped me upside the head and told me I wasn’t twelve. I don’t think twelve-year-olds are allowed to say fuck. Do you think that’s why they use AF?”

“Eat your breakfast or I’ll send you back to Ezra’s,” Robert promised.

“You know you’re going to walk away at the end of this, right?” Theo seemed very capable of ignoring Tucker’s antics.

He nodded. “Of course, I am. I’m either going wherever we go next or I’ll go home.”

He wasn’t sure where home was. When all of this was over, would he end up back at The Garden, working and watching as Nick and Hayley and Damon and Penny grew their families? Would he be the weird “uncle” to Brody and Stephanie’s son? Would they always watch him, waiting to see if he would betray them again?

“Have you considered at all that this is the one woman in the world who might be able to fix you?” Theo asked.

“There’s no fixing us,” Owen replied. “Not those of us who got the later doses. You and Robert, for sure. But I thought the theory was the rest of us got the final drug.”

According to their research and the few documents that had been smuggled out of McDonald’s labs, Robert and Theo had been considered part of the A Team, the group she took care of above all others. Dante, Sasha, Tucker, and Jax had been the ones she initially experimented on. She’d meant to use the final drug on Theo that day, but Big Tag had been smart and had embedded an operative deep inside McDonald’s team. So Owen had been the last man to get it, the last to fall prey to her dark games. The final drug was the one supposed to wipe the memory completely.

“Just because she said it would work doesn’t mean it will,” Theo said, his voice deep. “According to what we’ve discovered, she’d only started testing that final drug. We don’t know how it’s going to work long term. Rebecca Walsh might though. She might be the one who can break it. Have you thought about sitting her down and asking her?”

Only every minute he’d lain beside her the night before. “I don’t think she was ever knowingly involved with McDonald. This woman is kind. I don’t think she can fake it. But I also don’t know how she would react if I introduced myself as an operative looking for a bunch of old files of a colleague of hers. The way she tells it is this is a collaborative business, but there’s always someone trying to get a leg up, if you know what I mean. Her own ex-husband tried to take ownership of her work. Do you honestly believe she’ll buy that we were experimented on? No. She’ll look us up and find out most of us are wanted for one thing or another and she’ll call in the authorities.”