Sophie Oak - Lost in Bliss

“What were thinking, Cam? Did you already have your bags packed when you came to see me? Do you honestly believe you can waltz back into her life? What do you have to offer her? You going to bring her back here?”

Cam’s leg came out, sweeping across Rafe’s ankles and knocking him down. Cam kicked himself up, years and years of martial arts practice turning the move into a graceful dance. Cam moved well for a man of any size, much less for a man who weighed in at two hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle.

“And what are you going to give her? Are you going to bring her back to your condo and turn her into some trophy for your goddamn wall? She never meant anything to you. She was just a prize. You only wanted her to fuck with me.” Cam stopped, his face going dumb for a minute. “Damn it, Rafe. What the fuck are we doing? I’m…” Whatever Cam was going to say was utterly lost on Rafe. All he knew was they had had this fight before. He was so fucking sick of having his money shoved back at him like it was something to be ashamed of. Cam wielded his impoverished childhood like a sword, and Rafe was so done with it. City boy was done taking country boy’s shit. With ruthless precision, he brought his foot up and kicked out.

His heel met with Cam’s cock, and Cam went down with a long, animal-like moan of pure agony.

Rafe rolled over and shoved himself to a standing position. He wiped the blood off his face. It was time to have a long talk with his ex-partner. They used to be best friends, and damn, but Rafe missed the dumbass country boy.

“You got any beer in this hellhole?”

Cam’s face was mottled up in a mask of pain. He cupped his crotch, but he nodded toward the fridge. “It tastes like piss, but it’s cold.”

Rafe grabbed two beers and helped Cam to the couch.

“You’re a fucking bastard.” Cam groaned as he gingerly lowered himself to the cushions.

“Yeah, because you’re so damn upstanding.” Rafe’s jaw was still throbbing as he propped his feet on Cam’s wobbly coffee table. He took a long drink of the beer. Cam was right. It tasted like piss.

“I don’t try to come off as Captain America.” Rafe rolled his eyes. “Well, at least I don’t try to be the tough guy every minute of the day. Look, I really was concerned about you. I don’t want you going off the deep end again.” Cam was too obsessive. Now that Rafe was looking around the tiny apartment, he was even more concerned. There were printouts stacked to precarious heights. The only books in the place seemed to be about coding, and all over were handwritten lines of code. They seemed to be written in a weird foreign language. Cam had always been the guy who sank into a case. He needed someone to pull him out, and Rafe hadn’t been there.

“That was the best year of my life,” Cam said quietly.

Rafe knew exactly what he meant. That year before Laura had left had meant the world to him, too. It had started as a joke. They had dared the gorgeous blonde profiler to date both of them. She had told them she didn’t have the time. They would have to date her together.

They had gone to a movie and then a bar. The three of them had sat and talked until they were kicked out. It had only gotten awkward when they dropped her off. No one had gotten a kiss that night. And then they had settled into a friendship.

Months had passed, and she had somehow become the center of their worlds. Rafe had been unwilling to push her to choose because she seemed to care about Cam so much. Cam had come alive. His thick, protective shell had cracked. Rafe had felt like a better person for knowing her.

And they had fucked up everything in a twenty-four-hour period.

“I have to see her again.” Rafe had to stand in front of her, if only to beg her forgiveness.

“Do you still want her?”

“More than I want my next breath.”

A long sigh came from Cam. “I want her, too. I’ve tried dating.

I’ve been so mad at Laura that I’ve tried to fuck her out of my heart. I just feel…god, this is stupid. I feel dirty after I sleep with someone else.”

“It’s not stupid, man. I feel the same way.” His dick had languished in limbo for the last eight months. He belonged to Laura.

It was wrong to sleep with someone else.

“What the hell are we going to do? She walked away from us.

Even if, by some miracle, we can make her want us again, she didn’t want to choose.”

“Okay, so we don’t make her choose.”

Cam sat up. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“If we want to have a chance with her, if we want to get her to forgive us, we’re going to have to give her everything she wants.”

“Everything? I thought what we did that night was perverted.

That’s what you said to me the next morning.”

“Well, we fucked the same girl at the same time. I think that’s a little perverted by anyone’s standards.” Rafe let that sit for a minute.

“But it was also hot. I liked watching. I think we can make it work.

We can share her. People do it. Somewhere.” Rafe let his head fall back. Damn, he’d missed Cam. “I think I have a plan on how to get her to accept us, well, force her to accept us. Though it will probably make her really mad. We’ll have to hang out in that little town of hers for a while. And it totally takes us off the case.”

“I’m okay with that. Laura’s the important thing here.” Cam was right. They had put the case above her feelings before. It was time the case took a backseat.

“So we’re going to Bliss. What a name.” Rafe tipped back his beer. “You know, we’re going to have to be aggressive. We’re going to have to go after her hard and fast and together.” Cam settled back. “That might not go over so well in a small town.”

“So what? You aren’t a guy who minds a little scandal.”

“Nope. But I didn’t mind being the bad boy of the Bureau, either.

It might bother you.”

“She’s worth it.” Rafe wasn’t going to let some societal taboo keep him from Laura. Never again. Five years without her had taught him what he really wanted. He’d spent years feeling incomplete. He couldn’t go the rest of his life without knowing where she was, and he was pretty sure that once he found her, he would do whatever it took to stay in her life. If he had to share her with his best friend, then that was what he would do.

An hour later everything was in place, including his airline ticket and a rental car. Within twenty-four hours, they would be in Bliss.

Rafe just hoped Bliss was ready for a little scandal.

* * *

Deep in the night, he watched. It was easy to blend into this particular part of the city. All he had to do was look hungry.

That wasn’t hard. He was always hungry.

That little meal he’d had the week before hadn’t even begun to take the edge off what he needed. The whore had gone down far too easily. A few taps and she’d knelt at his feet. The fight she’d put up had been halfhearted, as though she hadn’t really minded dying.

Oh, she’d minded the pain. She’d howled, but even that had been sad compared to…

When he closed his eyes, he saw her blonde beauty stretched out on his rack. He saw her eyes filled with rage. She wouldn’t have gone down easy. He could have played his game with her for days and never gotten bored.

Oh, the plans he’d had for her until the clever little bitch had managed to escape.

She’d won that session. She wouldn’t win again.

He’d known all he had to do was follow the idiot men. They would do the work for him. The rabbit had run, but she couldn’t hide forever.

Now all his plans were coming together. It was fate. He hadn’t actually meant for the feds to find his latest kill, but he wasn’t upset about it either. It would throw them off.

He adjusted the device in his ear as he took another long drink of the green tea he’d placed in a forty-ounce beer container. There he was. Just another bum looking to get drunk on a Thursday night. He pulled the hood over his head despite the heat.

He’d listened in on Cameron Briggs’s completely worthless life for years. Now he finally had something to show for it.

Bliss, Colorado.

He got up, and by the time he reached his car three blocks away, he’d shed his bum persona. No one would know him now.

He’d found his little rabbit. It was time to go hunting again.

Laura Niles looked at herself in the mirror. She had to admit the peach color Brooke Harper had selected for the bridesmaids’ dresses looked nice.

“I don’t think there’s enough fabric in the world,” a sad voice said beside her.

Laura looked over at Callie Hollister-Wright. She was almost eight months pregnant, and she was lovely to Laura’s eyes, but she was also very, very large. “You look beautiful. Brooke just needs to let it out a little bit.”

Callie sniffled as she looked at herself in the mirror. She hadn’t been able to zip up the back of her dress. “Maybe I should let someone else take my place. Brooke can’t keep letting the dress out.”

“Yes, I can,” Brooke said with a vibrant smile. “For what Stef’s paying me, I will happily let that sucker out twice during the ceremony if I have to.”

Brooke patted Laura on the shoulder. She leaned in. “I need to take up your hem, but I’d like to get Callie done first. Do you mind?” Callie needed to be off her feet. Laura took a step back. “Not at all. I don’t have to be at work today. I’ll sit down with Nell and Holly.

You let me know if I can help.”

Laura couldn’t miss the way Callie gave her a once-over as she stepped away. She could guess what Callie was thinking. Callie was wishing she had Laura’s body. How could Laura tell her that she would change bodies with her in an instant? She would do it without ever missing her own body because despite her perfect size-six figure, she would never be round and full like Callie was now. She would never complain about swallowing a beach ball or how she waddled or how often the baby growing inside her kicked. She could never be pregnant, and Callie couldn’t know how that made her ache inside.

“I think it is so nice of you to write that man,” Nell was saying as Laura made her way from the makeshift dressing room through the souvenir aisle. Laura walked into the teeny-tiny tea room at the Trading Post that overlooked Main Street.

“Well, I figured he must be a little lonely. He’s in a foreign country after all,” Holly said, taking a sip of tea as she looked over a letter.

Laura banished her sad thoughts and felt a smile crinkle her lips.

Holly was such a bullshitter. “Are you seriously trying to pass off your prison love letters as some community service project? Nell, she and Alexei have been trading flirty letters. She’s not trying to save his soul.”

Nell looked up and smiled that ridiculously brilliant smile of hers.

Whenever Laura got in a bad mood, all she had to do was get Nell to smile to force one of her own. Nell genuinely believed all the crap she pushed. She believed in the good of man. She believed in saving the Earth. Nell believed, and Laura thought it was a lovely thing. “Well, it wasn’t like Alexei did something terrible. I mean the ‘killing people’

thing was awful and all, but have you heard about what the Russian mob does? It’s horrible. And they don’t recycle.”

“And it’s not prison love,” Holly said with a prim little sigh. “It’s witness protection friendship. He’s in witness protection while the trial is going on. I have no idea if it’s going to go anywhere once the trial is over. It’s just friendship. With a little flirting. I don’t know if he’s flirting. I still can’t tell half the things he says to me. He doesn’t write English any better than he speaks it. Like this—‘Holly, you are very cold woman. I wish to see you once more to spend the times with you, not to do hooking thing, but to talk, to know the real womens inside you.’ Seriously? I think he might think I’m a cold-blooded prostitute with multiple personality disorder.”

Laura let her head fall back, the giggle coming from a place deep inside her. It was easy to let go of the pains of the past when she was surrounded by her friends. “Oh, I don’t think so, sweetie. Let me translate for you. He thinks you’re a very cool woman. He wants to spend time with you, but not to hook up. He wants to know who you are inside. He’s crazy about you.”

Holly flushed, her skin turning almost as red as her hair. “I doubt that. I’m almost forty. I have a teenager.” Nell reached across the table, her hand rubbing over Holly’s.