Back in Bliss [Nights in Bliss, Colorado 9] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)
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Nights in Bliss, Colorado 9
Back in Bliss
Logan Green is back in Bliss, but only for a few weeks to help out at the sheriff’s office. Everything changes when Seth Stark strolls into town with Georgia Dawson on his arm.
Seth’s arrival is anything but a happy accident. He always dreamed of a big house on the river and a wife he could share with his best friend, Logan. After building a software empire, his only goal has been to make that dream come true. He just needed the perfect woman.
Georgia is still haunted by the dark, troubled Dom who saved her life. She can’t get Logan out of her head. Her boss brought her to Bliss to help him outfit his new summer home, but when Logan Green walks through the door she discovers Seth has something different in mind.
Seth has a plan for their mutual happily ever after, but he never dreamed that coming home would put all their lives in danger.
Genre: BDSM, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Western/Cowboys
Length: 110,234 words
BACK IN BLISS
Nights in Bliss, Colorado 9
Sophie Oak
MENAGE EVERLASTING
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting
BACK IN BLISS
Copyright © 2013 by Sophie Oak
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62242-900-4
First E-book Publication: April 2013
Cover design by Les Byerley
All art and logo copyright © 2013 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
Dear Readers,
If you have purchased this copy of Back in Bliss by Sophie Oak from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.
Regarding E-book Piracy
This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.
The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.
This is Sophie Oak’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. Oak’s right to earn a living from her work.
Amanda Hilton, Publisher
www.SirenPublishing.com
www.BookStrand.com
DEDICATION
Logan’s story is a long time in coming and I feel the need to say a few words about how he’s changed and grown over the course of eight books and two different series. I didn’t intend for him to be such a player. He was a throwaway character, meant only for comic relief. And the Russian mob came to town and he became so much more for me. Logan doesn’t have a terrible background. There’s no grand pain in his childhood. In fact, it was almost idyllic. I got to write a character from the moment he learned the world was broken to the moment of his realization that he has the power to heal. For me, Logan has gone from a silly boy to a man who can make the choice to survive and thrive—the same choice many of us make every single day. I thank you all for taking this journey with me and for becoming a part of my own personal heaven—Bliss, Colorado.
I hope we have many more adventures ahead of us.
BACK IN BLISS
Nights in Bliss, Colorado 9
SOPHIE OAK
Copyright © 2013
Prologue
Bliss, Colorado
Fifteen Years Ago
“Please don’t tell his moms.” Seth had to talk for Logan because his teeth hadn’t stopped chattering yet. And his lips were just the slightest bit blue.
Seth took a seat at the bar, the smells from the kitchen making his stomach growl. It was stupid. He always ate more here even though he lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. His mother liked to tell him that the world revolved around Manhattan, but he never got mac and cheese there. Ellen Glen-Bennett always made mac and cheese.
And chocolate chip cookies. Gosh he liked cookies even though his parents thought carbs were the devil. He lived for the three months he got to spend in Bliss.
Ellen frowned his way as she placed a steaming mug of hot chocolate in front of Logan. “I do not understand boys. I swear. What on earth got into Logan’s head? The river is still very cold even during the summer. Did he fall in? Were you boys horsing around?”
He and Logan looked at each other. No horsing around. Just Truth or Dare. Jamie had bet Logan that he couldn’t last two minutes in the cold waters of the Rio Grande, and Logan had decided to jump into the river rather than tell Jamie how often he masturbated.
Seth would have just told him. Not the total truth, of course, but some approximation of it. But not Logan.
Ellen shook her head as though she knew she wouldn’t get an answer out of them. “I’m going to get another blanket and throw his clothes in the dryer. Boys?”
Logan trembled in the seat beside him, his head swinging toward Seth. His teeth chattered as he spoke. “Don’t tell Ellen about the dirt bike. We can fix it up.”
It was a summer of what his mother would likely call “very bad choices” and what Seth just labeled as fun. The week before, Jamie had taken their friend Max up on the bet that he couldn’t drive their brand-new dirt bike up the mountain. He’d gotten it up, but he’d come back down really fucking fast. Like way faster than the bike. The bike had kind of smashed into Jamie’s head.
It had been cool and funny, and Logan was right. Ellen would be pissed. She might not let them stay out at the man cave again. He loved the man cave. Sure, it smelled bad, but even that was kind of cool.
“How did you do it, man? That water was so cold.” Logan had just stood there and took it like a man while Jamie had counted down the seconds and Noah held a lasso ready to catch Logan in case the current swept him away.
Maybe they hadn’t thought through that plan as thoroughly as
they should have.
“The key is to just survive ten seconds, man. You can survive anything for ten seconds. And then you go for another ten seconds and another and before you know it, you’re done. I use it when my moms are lecturing me on getting my school work done, too.” His voice was almost back to normal, but his hands were still shaking.
A heavenly aroma hit Seth’s nose as Ellen returned with another blanket. She opened the oven and took out the cookies after tossing the blanket around Logan’s shoulders. Noah and Jamie joined them, looking at their stepmom with worshipful eyes.
Ellen frowned as she opened a jug of milk and poured four glasses out. “So now that we know Logan is going to survive, would anyone like to explain why Jamie looks like he went through a meat grinder?”
She was so calm. If Seth had walked in like that, his mother would have had a conniption fit, not because she loved him and was worried about him, but because she would have been deeply concerned about what the neighbors would say.
Jamie shrugged. “I fell. It’s cool.”
He’d fallen down a mountain and they’d spent days trying to heal him.
Ellen sighed. “All right, but next time call me. I’ve got to start dinner.”
She turned away and disappeared into the pantry. The tension deflated and everything was normal again because everything was always normal in Bliss. He felt normal in Bliss.
“Way to deflect the mom unit, man.” Noah held up his hand for a high-five.
Jamie slapped his palm against his brother’s. “That’s the way we do it, brother. I learned from our dads. That’s how you handle a mom. It’s how we’ll handle Callie one day.”
Noah’s eyes rolled. “We’re not marrying Callie. She’s like our sister.”
“She’s the most devious thing ever. We should totally marry her,” Jamie said.
Callie had been the one to come up with the plan to fix Jamie up. Sure, he was going to scar, but he was alive. Seth had to admit, Callie was pretty cute, but she had a thing for Max and Rye.
Noah gagged a little. “Not happening.”
Jamie sighed. “But I like Callie.”
Seth looked over at Logan. “Who are we going to marry?”
It was said with the trepidation of a boy who wasn’t sure of his place. He’d always been at the top of his class, but that wasn’t where he’d wanted to be. He wanted to be here. With his best friend and his family.
Logan shot him a grin even as he pulled the blankets tighter. “Do you really think we can find someone to marry us? I don’t know. It’s a tall order.”
But it was everything he wanted. A family with his best friend. In his town.
“Damn, man. I think any woman would want to marry you after she finds out how long you can stand in the river,” Jamie said with an admiring glance Logan’s way. “We’re going to call you River Man from now on.”
“No, Captain Freeze because his balls didn’t drop off,” Noah offered and then frowned. “Tell me your balls didn’t drop off, man.”
And then they were all joking and laughing and downing chocolate chip cookies.
He only had twenty-two days until he had to go back to New York, and then a whole year would pass until he could come home again. He would count every single day off, marking it on a calendar. But one day…
“Yeah, we’ll find someone.” Seth was sure. It was his destiny. His and Logan’s.
Chapter One
Georgia Ophelia Dawson looked at her boss and gave him what she hoped was a brilliant smile. He was the best man she’d ever met, and he deserved this huge crowd that obviously idolized him. They admired him for his brilliant mind, but Georgia was falling for the softer side of the man. “You know Seth Stark is a big deal.”
Seth turned to her, the lights of the stage shadowing his face. He was so sweet, and she couldn’t imagine how he was going to walk in there and talk to five thousand stockholders, but she’d made sure he looked damn good. His Armani suit fit him perfectly, and he’d been shined to a brilliant jewel. He was really quite hot once she’d forced him to trade his glasses in for contacts and gotten him into the right clothes. And the man liked the gym. She hadn’t had to fix his lean, six-foot-two-inch body.
Seth’s lips quirked up. “You make me feel that way.”
She kind of sort of loved him. But she still couldn’t get freaking Logan Green out of her head. Why was she stuck on a small-town deputy when she had a sweet-as-pie, brilliant billionaire in front of her? Not that Seth was really interested.
It was her damn brothers’ fault. They’d just gotten married. To the same woman. Natalie Buchanan-Dawson hadn’t had to choose between super-brilliant Chase and sweet, stable Ben. She had the best of both worlds. Georgia was starting to think she wanted the same.
Georgia winked at Seth as his name was announced on stage. The crowd went crazy, applauding and shouting. Seth had made everyone there a ton of money. He was smart and had a business head that blew her away, but still he needed her.
Yet even as he walked away, she felt another type of power. Logan Green looking down at her.
You will never pull that shit again, Georgia. I’ll put you over my knee. Do you have any idea what I’ll do to your ass?
God, she could still hear his voice, see that handsome face looking down at her. She’d been working for Seth for six months, living in absolutely no sin with him for five and a half, and she wondered if she could make it happen between the two of them.
She watched him as he started to talk. He was confident and strong, like Logan. He’d built a whole company, a ridiculously successful business. Seth Stark was brilliant. He didn’t really need her. If she walked away, he could find another admin.
Had Logan found another sub?
“Hey, baby sister,” a deep voice said.
Georgia gasped and turned, her whole heart coming to life. “Win!”
Winter Dawson stood in front of her, perfect in his ridiculously expensive suit. He was like all of her brothers—gorgeous and confident, completely alpha in every way. Win Dawson had never sat up at night wondering if there was a place for him in the world. He just made one. “Hello, sweetheart. How are you doing?”
She winced inwardly. He was asking that because he knew she’d lost pretty much everything. Their distant and unloving father had finally decided to cut her off financially, and she’d been left with nothing. She gave her oldest brother what she hoped was a winning smile. “I’m great. I love New York.”
She loved parts of it. She loved the city and the rhythm she felt when she walked the streets of Manhattan. There was a pulse to the city that invigorated her. It started in her toes, and after a while, she was filled with an energy she’d never known in LA.
So why did she miss small-town Willow Fork? It was the ass end of the world, but just for a moment, she’d been necessary for more than filing paperwork and keeping an appointment book. She’d helped her brothers Ben and Chase track down a crazy, psychotic asshole who liked to sell women into slavery. Oh, sure she’d gotten shot and nearly sold to the highest bidder herself, but she’d felt necessary for about two minutes.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Win said, holding his arms open. Georgia didn’t hesitate. She walked into her oldest brother’s arms and gave him a bear hug. “I missed you, brat.”
She squeezed him tight. “You know, I know what you mean by that.”
Her brother was a Dom. He was into all things BDSM, and he meant something a little different by the word “brat.”
I will slap that ass silly, brat. Do you know what I want to do to you?
Logan Green had been a Dom, too. There was no way to mistake his domineering nature, the way he oozed authority. He’d been the one to pull her out of the fire, to hold her close when the going had gotten really tough. And he’d been the one to walk away.
“That is totally disturbing.” Win frowned down at her. “Look, you need to tell me what Ben and Chase let you do because I totally didn’t beat the shit out of
either one of them in deference to the whole ‘finding someone crazy enough to marry them both’ thing. Don’t get me wrong. I like Natalie a lot. She’s a great girl, but I question the sanity of anyone who willingly marries Chase. Seriously, I sent in a shrink.”
“Nat is perfectly sane.” Nat was so awesome it hurt.
“That’s what the shrink said, but I think Ben and Chase paid her.” Win was six foot forever and towered over her. His normally hard expression softened a little as he stared down at her. “I’m worried about you, baby sister. Why don’t you come back to LA with me? You can be my assistant.”
And not be with Seth? The very idea made her stomach turn. God, eventually Seth was going to get his head out of business and he would find a girlfriend, and Georgia would have to watch them. The girlfriend would almost certainly make her move out, and then she wouldn’t be able to sit on the terrace with Seth and have her coffee in the mornings, and they wouldn’t sit together at night and have a cocktail.
“Georgia? Are you all right?” Win stared down at her. “You just went pale. Have you been eating properly? We can leave right now if you like. I can have you at my place in Malibu in a couple of hours. You don’t have to work at all. You can go back to your acting classes. I’ll take care of everything.”
That was Win. He walked in and took care of things. And the problem with Georgia Ophelia Dawson was that she’d been allowing it to happen all of her life. She’d always had someone to take care of her. It was nice to take care of someone else for a change. Yes, she lived in Seth’s house and cashed his checks, but she had a job and responsibilities. It was a lovely thing. “I like it here.”