Dungeon Royale (Masters and Mercenaries) (21 page)

No. No charm there. He seemed a little unhinged in fact. The cool, calm operative looked like a mad boyfriend.

Hope sprang up inside her. He was overdramatic, and Nigel was utterly wrong about him. He wasn’t uncaring. He felt too much. There was a well of passion under his placid exterior.

“I’m not leaving, Damon.” She turned her chin up at him. Everyone was looking at them. “Now, we should get back to The Garden. We don’t have much time for my training.”

He stopped, his eyes finding hers. A slightly horrified expression hit his face and he took a step back. “I’m not training you. I can’t train you.”

He was going to be stubborn, and she wasn’t sure how to handle it. “You have to. It’s our cover. I’m your sub.”

He stared at her. “No.”

“Yes. Or you’ll be pulled off the assignment, too. They won’t let you go without me. I’m sorry it’s so distasteful for you, but you’re stuck with me.” She needed time to figure out how to deal with him. She couldn’t just come out and tell him he was being foolish. She had to find a way around that massive wall he’d erected.

He seemed to realize everyone was looking at him. He smoothed back his hair and his expression calmed, but the tight set of his jaw gave him away to her. “You’re right. We’ll discuss this at home.”

She followed him out.

He didn’t know it yet, but he was in for the fight of a lifetime. She wasn’t going to leave him. If she had her way, she might never leave him.

Chapter Ten

“What did he do?” Charlotte Taggart’s voice went deadly quiet though Penelope couldn’t possibly misunderstand her. Charlotte had carefully enunciated each word.

Penelope turned. They had just left the meeting Damon had called to fill the team in on the new setbacks. She’d been forced to spend hours and hours with him, first clearing up everything with SIS and then having her firearm issued along with her cover identification. Damon simply stood back, watching her like she would disappear on him. She’d offered to take the Tube back. That hadn’t gone well.

The long car ride back had been utterly silent without even the sound of the radio to break up the gloom that seemed to sit between them.

She was right. He cared for her. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have fought so hard to keep her safe.

But she had no idea how to break through his reserve.

“What are you talking about?” She hoped Charlotte didn’t know what had happened. She’d been out of the room when Damon had thrown his hissy fit. She’d hoped the Tennessee fellow had kept a gentlemanly silence about her humiliation. “Mr. Champion? I thought Damon explained that quite nicely.”

He’d set up the meeting from his mobile and the entire team was sitting in the conference room joking and laughing when they walked in. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Ian Taggart’s crew was relaxed as though they knew they could handle it, as though they really had each other’s backs and that made everything all right.

She and Damon didn’t even talk about it.

Now she was banished to the dungeon where Charlotte was going to show her things Damon should be sharing with her.

Charlotte’s red and blonde hair shook as she paced down one of the dungeon’s brick inlayed paths toward the bar area. “No. I know what Baz did. I’m talking about Damon. What did he do to you? Because when we left you were glowing like a woman who’d just figured out sex is pretty awesome and now you’re pale and pinched up again.”

“Again?”

Charlotte reached the bar, slipping behind it. “Sorry. It’s just you’re all tight and tense. And Damon’s shut down.” Her eyes narrowed as she pulled out what looked like a bottle of tequila. “Unless you were the one who did it.”

Suddenly, she didn’t really want to be the one “who did it.” She got the idea that Charlotte wouldn’t like someone who did something bad to her friends. “It wasn’t me.”

“It was Damon. He’s an asswipe just like all men.” Chelsea Dennis walked into the bar, her computer in hand. “Sorry, I kind of got the gist of it. Satan had a meeting with Ten this afternoon and I totally listened in on it. If it makes you feel any better, Ten decided Damon’s an asshole. Only he said it in a really slow Southern accent.”

Embarrassment flooded her system. “No, it really doesn’t make me feel better. Were you able to figure out where the bug was transmitting to?”

“Oh, that was easy peasy. It was being sent to a hotel room on Gloucester Road. When the MI6 boys went there, Baz had left it running with a note that Damon better show up when he calls. Well, the sex tape part was also running. He saved the files from the last couple of days. Mostly it was nothing more than you on the Tube and eating sandwiches and cleaning up your house. And the session this morning was just audio and several hours of staring at Damon’s really sparse kitchen.”

She’d set her bag on his bar before going to bed. Apparently they’d been loud. “Who else has seen it all?”

“Just me and Adam. But he was listening in with me on Satan and Ten.”

“Chelsea!”

Chelsea glanced her sister’s way. “Adam and I modified our laptops with hypersensitive microphones. I wanted to see if it worked over Skype. It does. Adam says you should give Damon a second chance because he was trying to protect you, but I say we set him up as an escort on the Internet. I can have that website built out in an hour. He’ll start getting phone calls shortly after.”

Charlotte groaned, pulling out shot glasses. “Use your powers for good, please. Are you telling me he tried to get her thrown off the op? After what happened last night?”

“It was this morning.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. It wasn’t like she could call up her sister and explain that the man she was in love with had dumped her and hurt her because it was better than getting her brutally murdered by a turncoat agent.
Oh, and I don’t actually work for a staid publishing company. I’m SIS. How are the kids?
That would go over well.

And I might have to betray him on a level he’ll never forgive me for.

She didn’t even want to think about that.

“He made love to you this morning and then tried to get you fired?” Charlotte poured out a nice shot of amber liquid. Three glasses all in a row. “And after you apparently made a sex tape with him?”

“I eradicated it,” Chelsea said, taking a seat at the bar.

The man had a complete bar in his house. His building. He owned a whole building. Was she fooling herself? She shook her head. “I don’t really drink much.”

“That’s part of your problem.” Charlotte handed her a shaker of salt.

“And I’m the bad influence?” Chelsea licked her thumb and then salted it, picking up a lime wedge with the opposite hand. “He didn’t just try to get her fired. He told her he didn’t like sleeping with her and he’d done it all for the mission. It was cold.”

Come to think of it, maybe she should drink more. The idea of Ian and Tennessee feeling sorry for her made her want to crawl into her shell and never come back out again.

Charlotte’s eyes widened. “Bastard, son of a bitch, cocksucker.”

Chelsea completed her shot, chuckling a little. “I don’t get why cocksucker is a bad thing. You talk about it all the time.”

“Stay on topic. And oral is very nice. I’ll remove that one from my repertoire. I can’t believe he did that. Well, I can. Damon can be a shut-down asshole, but he was totally into you.” She frowned. “Damn it. Adam’s right. He’s trying to protect you. What is wrong with men? Why can’t they just say what they’re feeling? What would you have done if he’d held your hand and begged you to walk away because he couldn’t stand the thought of losing you?”

Somehow, she couldn’t see him doing it. “I would have done anything he asked me to. Well, until I could find a way around it. I don’t want to leave him alone. He’ll get in trouble. He’s not thinking straight when it comes to Baz.”

And his heart might explode.

Charlotte held up her glass. She didn’t bother with the niceties, merely tipped it back and then poured another one. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.” Her eyes settled on Penny. “I know Damon pretty well. He’s always been very careful with women.”

“He wasn’t careful with her according to Ten. He made her cry.” Chelsea turned in her chair, looking out over the dungeon. The sun had waned and the entire place was encased in twilight. Chelsea looked older than her twenty-seven years. Harder. “He’s just like the rest of them, sis.”

Charlotte groaned a little, a sure sign that this was a well-worn argument. “Yes, all men are evil. They’ll screw a woman in the end.”

Chelsea sucked down another tequila shot. “Do you know what I would give to look at a vagina and just want to hit that? I wish girl parts did it for me. Unfortunately, I like dicks. Do you know the problems with dicks? They’re attached to bigger dicks.”

“She’s talking about men,” Charlotte explained.

“Yes, I believe I understand. She’s not happy with her sexual orientation.”

“She’s not happy with anything, but that’s because she’s fighting the inevitable,” Charlotte said. “And so is Damon, if you decide to go after him. I’ve been around that man for a while, and I’ve never seen him look at a woman the way he looks at you.”

Penny bit her bottom lip and decided. She could sit around and try to think this through or she could lean on someone else for a change. “I don’t know how to fight for him. I don’t even know if I should. When he first said what he said, I was devastated.”

“That’s because he was an asshole,” Chelsea agreed.

She needed to ignore Chelsea if she was going to get anything done. “I don’t know how to reach him. Even if it’s true, I don’t think me talking to him about it is going to change things.”

Charlotte waved a hand, obviously dismissing that line of thought. “You can’t talk to him. Men are not logical enough. Trust me. I went through hell to get Ian back. I tried to give him a very simple explanation about why I betrayed him and let him believe I was dead for five years, but does he listen to me? No.”

Penny had read Damon’s very thorough file on the Taggarts. If they could be together and in love, then anyone could. “Then how did you get him back?”

“Sex, of course. It’s really the only language men understand.”

That was what she was afraid of. “I’m not very good at sex. I don’t have much experience.”

Charlotte frowned her way. “You’re going to be one of those women, aren’t you?”

“Here comes the speech,” Chelsea said under her breath.

“One of those women?” Penny wasn’t sure what that meant.

Charlotte crossed her arms under her breasts, leaning forward. “The kind who spends all their time worrying about what they’re not. ‘I’m not sexy. I’m not pretty. I’m not worthy.’ When you do talk about what you are, it’s negative things like ‘I’m fat’ or ‘I have cellulite.’”

She felt herself flush. Yes, she might be guilty of some of that, but it wasn’t the whole story. “That’s not true. I think I’m smart and nice.”

Charlotte shook her head as though Penny had just proven her point. “Only because people tell you that. Do you really believe it? Deep down inside? Or do you keep trying to prove it over and over again? Do you let people take advantage of you because you think the only thing you have going for you is that you’re nice?”

It wasn’t true. Except it sort of was. She spent a lot of time trying to prove how nice she was. And she spent absolutely no time being nice to herself. That needed to change. She needed to take a real inventory of herself. “I like my eyes. I think they’re pretty.”

“Yes, they are.” When Charlotte Taggart smiled, she could light up a room.

“All the guys think you’ve got a nice ass.” Chelsea leaned on the bar and gave her a reserved smile. “I listen in on everyone. It’s for research.”

“They like my bum?” She’d always thought it was way too big.

Chelsea giggled a little, her face softening. She was quite pretty when she relaxed. “Yes, I believe Jesse said, in his always intensely literate way, ‘Dayum, that’s a juicy ass.’ But y’all say arse. Why do you do that? It’s not very sexy.”

Maybe the word wasn’t sexy, but apparently her arse was.

“You aren’t going to win your man by worrying about cellulite,” Charlotte explained. She turned a pointed look to her sister. “Or by treating him like he has the plague.”

“He’s not mine,” Chelsea said quickly.

“Only because you act like a jerk.” Charlotte pushed one of the shot glasses Penny’s way. “She’s got a huge thing for Simon and he totally wants her too. They’ve circled each other for months and months and they’re both irritable because no one’s getting laid. Do you want that? Wait, was Damon good in bed? I mean he could be horrible and he could make you feel like shit and then it’s a good thing that he dumped you.”

“Oh, no, he’s very good. And he made me feel good.” Her confidence was rising with every word Charlotte said. “We were good together.”

They had been. He wasn’t closed down with her in bed. When he’d smiled, there had been actual emotion in him. She was sure of it. He was always so controlled, except for today. He’d lost it and it hadn’t been all because of Baz. His anger was cold, controlled, but his fear came out in screaming fits and every single one of them had been directed her way.