“Trust me, those two are experts at this. They know how to fuck up. They fucked up for years before getting their shit together. You should listen to them,” Max said, sarcasm dripping.
Zane stood up, and his face turned into a mask of intimidation. He bared his teeth at Max, and then sat back down and sipped his Scotch while looking up at Nate. “He’s right. We were dumbasses for years. We wasted a lot of time that we could have spent with Callie.”
Nate put a hand on his partner’s shoulder. “That’s in the past.”
He looked over at Rafe, who seemed to be assessing the situation, as he always did. Though he’d gone through all the training and knew how to read body language and size up a subject, Rafe was the one with the true talent for it. Rafe wasn’t on Laura’s level, but he knew what he was doing. When Rafe’s shoulders relaxed, Cam calmed down.
And Stef Talbot smiled. “There. That’s what I’m talking about. Rafe just decided we’re not out to get them, and Cam took his cue. Now we can talk.”
“Are you sure you’re not a profiler?” Cam asked, surprised someone had read him so well.
“I am many things,” Stef replied. “But for now call me a concerned friend. Laura isn’t happy.”
“When she talked to Rachel earlier this afternoon, Rach said she’d been crying,” Rye explained.
“She had a rough afternoon.” Rafe’s eyes were downcast. They had all had a rough afternoon. There had been moments of pure joy, but now all Cam could feel was an aching sadness.
“Yes, I watched the whole thing.” Nate took off his Stetson and set it down on the desk. “I also know that you two did what you could to protect her. The trouble is she’s not protecting herself. Now, I know a bit about what happened. Stef and I have looked into this. We don’t know all the details, but we can read between the lines. Laura handed in a profile of the serial killer that neither one of you agreed with.”
He nodded. His guilt was an uneasy knot in his gut. “We backed the senior special agent’s report. Laura was upset because we were involved at the time.”
“All three of you?” Stef asked.
“We had started a relationship the night before,” Rafe explained. “We hadn’t worked out the details yet.”
“So she was unsure about your intentions,” Stef continued. “And then she was taken and tortured.”
“But we were there for her,” he argued. God, there was a part of him that was still trying to figure out what had gone wrong.
Zane shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Look, I know what I’m talking about. When you’ve been through something like that, you feel utterly powerless. I know that some people would curl up and sink into the first affectionate person they could find, but people like me and Laura, we leave. I’m not talking about merely walking away. We leave emotionally. We retreat because it’s easier than feeling. I was lucky. I had someone who wouldn’t let me fade away. Laura has made a comeback, but it took her a while. I don’t pretend to know exactly what she’s feeling, but everyone here has seen the way she looks at the two of you. She’s just scared.”
“I don’t know about that,” Rafe replied. “I think there’s a certain amount of anger in there, too. I think she blames us for what happened to her.”
“Then you make it up to her,” Stef said resolutely. “Are you in love with Laura?”
“Yes.” The word came out of both of their mouths at the same time, sounding as though their voices were one.
“Then you have to quit fighting and work together,” Nate said. “The whole screwing her in my office was a good play, even if it was a little messy. But you need to take it further. You took turns.”
Everyone shook their heads at Nate’s announcement.
“Like I said, amateurs,” Max whispered.
Max might get that ass kicking everyone thought he wanted.
His twin stepped forward. “You can’t view it like that. You have to take that girl down, and the best way to do it is together. You see, women are like horses. They’ll kick and buck and resist that saddle until you prove you can handle them. Then they like a real nice, smooth ride, if you know what I mean.”
Cam was pretty sure he didn’t. “So, like at the same time?”
“He learns,” Max snarked.
“We’re not idiots,” Rafe interjected. “We’ve taken her together.”
“Have we?” Cam asked, suddenly kind of getting what they meant. “We’ve been in the same room. One of us has held her while the other one fucked her, but have we really taken her together? Have we worked together or just been voyeurs?”
“It’s the same way in life as it is in sex,” Nate added. “You have to talk things out between the two of you. Cam, you picked her up and walked out today. You didn’t look to Rafe. You left him behind to quit his job and deal with all the Bureau shit. Now, that’s fine and dandy if that’s the way your roles work. Trust me, I handle anything that requires a modicum of delicacy, and Zane’s job is to make sarcastic remarks.”
He wasn’t sure delicacy was the sheriff’s strong point. Maybe he and Rafe made a better team. Damn. Was he the sarcastic one?
“And to give Callie multiple orgasms,” Zane interjected.
“I don’t need to hear that, Hollister,” Stef said with a sigh. “The point of this exercise is to let you two know that we’re here for you if you want advice or need to talk about how to make a ménage relationship work.”
“And we need your input, why?” Max asked. “You’re in a ménage with Jen and your collection of sex toys.”
Stef nodded and looked awfully superior. “Yes, that’s because I’m the smart one. None of my sex toys talk back. Well, that new one from Japan does.”
Nate looked at them seriously. “Are you two really interested in trying this? None of that taking-turns shit. You have to be in this together. You have to be a team.”
Cam looked at Rafe, almost afraid of his reply. Rafe had far more to lose than he did. Cam’s mother would sigh and then get another beer. She wouldn’t reject him. Rafe was running a risk.
“Cam has always been my partner,” Rafe said. “Even when we weren’t working together. Yes, we’re serious.”
“Then you need a plan, my brother,” Rye said with a friendly smile. “We’re good with plans.”
Max looked at his brother like he’d gone insane. “No, we’re not. We’re horrible at them. Rachel always sees right through them.”
“Well, I’m good at them,” Stef said with complete confidence.
There was a loud snort from outside the office.
Every male eye in the room rolled.
“That’s ten, love,” Stef called out. “Do you want to make it twenty?”
“Fine,” a feminine voice called from behind the door. “We’ll go. Callie has to use the bathroom anyway. And Rachel needs to feed Paige.”
Max flushed. “My life was easier when the only ones hanging off my wife’s boobs were me and my brother.”
Cam finally laughed. Long and hard. It was ridiculous. It wasn’t normal. He was standing here talking about how he was going to share the woman he loved with his best friend.
And he felt happier than he had in a long time.
Rafe doubled over, his hand coming out to balance against Cam’s shoulder.
He stayed still so his partner didn’t fall.
He was quiet as they started to talk about how to win Laura.
* * * *
His pretty rabbit paced, her arms crossed. She could feel the connection. He was certain of it. There was a tension to her body that let him know she was anxious. She was impatient. He wondered if she’d missed him.
They had an intimate connection—far more intimate than any sex she could have had. He’d held her life in his hand. For the hours they had been together, he had been her god.
He was going to do it again, and no one could stop him. Certainly not the two morons who sat beside him, talking about the case and making plans. They had sat beside him for yea
rs, never realizing that the killer they were looking for was right in the room.
This was why he needed her. She was the only one to see through him. Oh, for certain, she hadn’t seen past his mask, but he wouldn’t make that mistake this time. This time he wouldn’t wear the mask. No theatrics between them.
His cock hardened. It almost never did that anymore. Certainly when he was with one of his charges, administering discipline, he would become aroused, but almost never when he was simply thinking about it.
His rabbit did this for him.
He wouldn’t be able to hold it in. He answered his colleague on some meaningless point of procedure, but his brain was looking around the room.
So many ladies. And so many of them were naughty.
He would have liked to play with the one who tried to take her clothes off in a public forum, but her husband had saved her.
A pretty redhead walked behind a man.
“You don’t have to do this, Caleb. I can get a ride with Laura,” the woman said. “I live right next door.”
“No.” The man simply herded her out the door.
Obviously they weren’t married. He wondered if the man with the gold and red hair would drop her at her doorstep. He doubted those two were having sex. These cabins were so easy to get into. No one here protected themselves. He wondered if his rabbit would appreciate a friendly gift.
“I’m heading back to the motel,” the Marquis de Sade said, stretching and standing. “Nothing’s going to happen tonight. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
They nodded and gave him a friendly good-bye.
On his way out the door, he bumped into that obnoxious reporter. She rolled her eyes.
“Excuse you,” she said with a huff as she fixed her hair and charged into the room past him.
He watched her ass sway in her tight skirt. She was a loose end. She’d been useful over the years. Jana Evans had been more than willing to report what he told her to report. He’d always been careful with her. He used disposable cells to call her, and never the same one twice. He gave nothing of himself. It had been mere coincidence that his rabbit had been involved with such a piranha.
Of course, piranhas had nothing on sharks.
He turned and followed the redhead and her escort. It was time to announce that the Marquis de Sade had arrived in Bliss.
Chapter Fifteen
“I don’t see why I can’t go to the bathroom, Logan.” Laura had to glare up at the deputy. This close, she could see the tired look in his eyes. Lately he’d taken to wearing a pair of aviators everywhere he went, but tonight he’d left them off, and there was no denying the red rim to his eyes. Logan Green was on the edge of something, and damn if Laura could figure out how to help him.
“Because you could be brutally murdered.”
“In the ladies’ room?”
He shrugged. “I don’t see why not. I was almost brutally murdered in my boss’s office. It happens.”
And that was the trouble. Months before, Logan had been tortured by members of the Russian mob who had come to Bliss looking for a painting of Jen Waters’s. Logan had endured hours of painful questioning. It was a miracle he’d survived, but the sweet boy who loved comic books and napped at work was gone. That Logan Green had died, and Laura wasn’t sure how to get to the one who had taken his place. “Logan, you can stand outside, if you like. All the other women are allowed to go to the bathroom.”
He looked down at her, an unmoving slab of granite. “I’ll let you go, but I stand outside the stall.”
She closed her eyes in frustration. She didn’t need to go. She simply wanted a minute alone.
“All the other women are not being hunted by a serial killer,” he said without inflection.
He had been like this for thirty minutes. He followed her around, not speaking unless he needed to. He’d been a hulking presence as she talked to Stella and her husband, Sebastian, about helping with cleanup, and then Brooke Harper about how they were going to get Nell into a bra before Stef and Jen’s wedding. Not once had the deputy cracked a smile.
“Logan, do you want to talk about it?” she asked quietly. It looked like she wasn’t going anywhere until Nate Wright decided to un-sic Logan.
There was only the fine tightening around his eyes to let her know he’d even heard her. He looked older than his twenty-three years. The last six months had given Logan a body to die for. It had toned and tightened him until even his face had lost its boyish charm and was replaced with a hard masculinity. But he’d also lost his joy.
“I know what it’s like,” she said. “You feel utterly helpless. You know what it means to be in someone else’s power, and it’s horrible. It changes you, but it doesn’t have to ruin your whole life.”
But wasn’t she letting it ruin hers? Hours she’d spent agonizing over letting Rafe and Cam go. Was she doing it for the right reasons? Or was she simply afraid?
No. She couldn’t think that way. It was selfish. She wasn’t afraid of them anymore. She’d loved them once, but she’d proven that she could live without them, and happily at that. This was her home, and her friends were her family. Rafe and Cam would give up eventually, and they would find a life that made them happy, too. Rafe would go back to the FBI, and Cam would find someone to build a family with.
Logan simply stared at her as though he could read her thoughts. “Sure. Voice of reason, huh? You’re totally adjusted, Laura. I’ll take that under consideration.”
“There she is!” Jana’s flat, Midwestern cadence broke through the chatter surrounding Laura. Laura knew she’d cultivated that accent. Jana was from Jersey. “You look…fine. I think the whole small-town girl thing will sell this story.”
She stared at Jana, wondering what to say. Laura had been reconsidering this little plan of hers. Maybe Rafe and Cam were right. De Sade would come after her anyway. All she was doing by taunting him was bringing Bliss back into the spotlight. She was about to open her mouth to tell Jana to go to hell when Rafe and Cam walked back into the hall, looks of grim determination on their faces. Stef, Nate, Zane, Max, and Rye walked after them. Every man walking in looked at her.
What the fuck was going on?
Whatever it was, Laura had the feeling it was going to be interesting.
Cam walked straight up to Jana. “You, go away.”
“I will not. I have an interview. Laura promised me. If I don’t get my interview, I’m going to run the story anyway. I can make her look good, or I can make her look like the cowardly FBI agent who doesn’t care that women are being killed.” Jana’s perfectly sculpted lips curled into a sneer. “I can make her look like the hero, or I can make her a complete pariah. It’s up to you.”
Laura was going to defend herself when Cam stared down at the reporter. “And I promise that if you attempt to smear her in any way, I will find a way to make your life hell. I am damn good with a computer. I got a stern talking-to from the government at the age of twelve because I managed to hack into several of their systems. They were kind enough to decide I wasn’t a criminal and took an interest in getting me into the FBI. I will turn criminal if that’s what it takes to fuck with you.”
Rafe turned to her as well. “And I have connections. I will use those connections to ensure that you are not hirable.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You can’t do that.”
Stef Talbot smiled lazily as he stepped forward. “Oh, I assure you I can. I happen to know that several of the heads of the networks are great lovers of art. A well-placed word and your career is in the toilet. If I can’t influence them with my status as an artist, I assure you my status as a billionaire and the heir to Talbot Industries will influence them.”
Laura saw the minute Jana knew she was defeated. She turned the burgeoning scowl into a placid smile. “Mr. Talbot, I think there’s been a misunderstanding. Laura is a dear friend. I’m merely surprised that these men would think to curtail her freedom as a woman.”
Oh, not even Nell wou
ld have been fooled by that one.
“Well, if you think we’re cavemen now,” Cam said with a grin before he leaned over and shoved a shoulder in Laura’s midsection. Laura found herself in a fireman’s hold before she could think to protest.
“Cam, put me down!” Laura shouted, although she was shouting it to his butt. It was a really nice butt encased in some fairly tight blue jeans. She had the sudden, wicked urge to cup that ass because it belonged to her.
That was a dangerous thought.
“No can do, baby,” Cam said with an easy confidence. “We’ve decided we outvote you.”
“I didn’t realize we were a democracy,” she shot back.
Rafe was suddenly on one knee. He gently pulled her head back so she was forced to look into that gorgeous face of his. His olive skin practically glowed in the low light, and those dark eyes of his got her every time. “There are many things we intend to make you understand tonight, bella. The first of which is you will not be speaking to that woman.”
Cam started to carry her out. She bounced against his body, straining to see as he walked. “Damn it, Cam. Put me down. You can’t manhandle me like this.”
“Yes, I can,” he said, a weird cheeriness to his voice. “I’m doing it right now.”
She heard the door open and close, and the world around her got a lot darker as he left the building and walked out into the parking lot. She saw Rafe walking behind them. Maybe he was going to be more reasonable. “Rafe, this is not exactly legal.”
“Take it up with the sheriff.”
Laura strained, and she could make out Nate Wright standing in the doorway looking out over the parking lot. He did not look like a man about to arrest someone, which was surprising given his predilections.
What had gone on in that meeting? “Let’s talk about this. I’m willing to admit that talking to Jana was a mistake, but I’m not going to put up with this. We’re adults, and we should discuss this situation rationally.”
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