Once Upon a Time in Bliss

  Nights in Bliss, Colorado Prequel

  Once Upon a Time in Bliss

  Come back in time to Bliss’s first happily ever after…

  CIA operative John Bishop arrived in Bliss, Colorado, seeking a respite from the high-stakes game of blood and lies that sent him to the worst corners of the world. A week playing the role of vacationing professor Henry Flanders would recharge his batteries, especially if he found a submissive plaything to occupy his time.

  Nell Finn has spent her life focused on helping others, but when she meets the tall and mysterious Henry Flanders, she can’t stop imagining what he might do for her. When Nell and her mother are threatened, Henry comes to her, offering his protection and comfort.

  But as the threats escalate out of control, Henry discovers that the beautiful and innocent Nell is much more than a plaything. Can he save the woman he loves without exposing the secrets that would drive her away?

  Genre: BDSM, Contemporary, Western/Cowboys

  Length: 74,703 words

  ONCE UPON A TIME IN BLISS

  Nights in Bliss, Colorado Prequel

  Sophie Oak

  EVERLASTING CLASSIC

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

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  ONCE UPON A TIME IN BLISS

  Copyright © 2013 by Sophie Oak

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-62242-474-0

  First E-book Publication: February 2013

  Cover design by Les Byerley

  All art and logo copyright © 2013 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

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  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

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  DEDICATION

  For Kim, who always believes.

  ONCE UPON A TIME IN BLISS

  Nights in Bliss, Colorado Prequel

  SOPHIE OAK

  Copyright © 2013

  Prologue

  Five years before present day

  A classified location in Colombia

  The man known only as Bishop looked down at his handiwork.

  So much fucking blood. Why did the human body have to contain so much blood? The average male body contained six quarts of blood. Thirty-six quarts of blood. That was what he’d spilled today. Thirty-six quarts of evil, drug-running blood, and it wasn’t enough and it never would be. The US government would make sure of that.

  Bishop took a long breath, the hot Colombian air humid in his lungs. He was so fucking sick of foreign countries. He didn’t go to the nice ones. He went to the pits of the world—the places where humanity and rights were a distant dream. Somalia. Afghanistan. Iraq. Now here in a drug-torn section of Colombia.

  The SEAL team he’d gone in with high-fived and smiled. They were heroes. They’d done their job, and they’d done it with precision and the perfect amount of mercy. They didn’t play with their targets. They took them out quickly when they could, giving the vicious killers an easier death than they deserved, but they were soldiers, not animals.

  Not like Bishop. Bishop did know what it was like to play with his targets. He was well versed in the art of getting what he needed. He knew the fine line between torture and reward and when to walk it. Yes, he knew how to get what he needed.

  The question that was increasingly plaguing him was what did he want?

  Lieutenant Wilder walked up, a smile on his face. Wilder was a big man, six foot seven at least. He dwarfed Bishop. He was lean and mean, and Bishop would bet Wilder had nothing on him when it came to brutality. “Hey, Mr. Bishop, are we done here? What more do you need from us? I’d like to call the extraction team and get my boys home.”

  Home. For SEAL Team 4, home was Little Creek, Virginia. For Bishop, home was a one-bedroom in DC with nothing in it. He lived out of a suitcase. He roamed from place to place with nothing to call his own. Nothing except the next bloody plan.

  Wilder’s brow furrowed as he looked at Bishop. “Come on, man, you gotta be happy about this. We just took down the biggest drug cartel in Colombia. Do you know how much coke we’re going to keep out of the States?”

  He didn’t have the heart to tell Wilder the truth. Even if he had, he was contractually obligated not to. This operation wouldn’t keep an ounce of cocaine off the streets. The CIA and the American government had taken down one cartel to give the business to another. A more US-friendly drug dealer. One that would prop up the US-approved government.

  But SEAL Team 4 was just a tool, and they didn’t get to make the big decisions.

  Fuck, the world would be a better place if they did. “Yes, Lieutenant. We’re done here. You can call the extraction unit.”

  The choppers would come for them all, and he would be taken right back to Langley where he would debrief all the right people and say all the right things, and spend a night or two in that bland apartment that held nothing of his soul before being shipped out to the next hellhole.

  What was his soul? He was thirty-five years old, and he had no idea who the hell he was. He was who the Black Ops team had made him. He was who the CIA had molded him into.

  His parents were gone. His home had never really existed.

  He could get on that chopper, but it wouldn’t take him anywhere close to home. He didn’t have one. He’d given up his search for a home the minute he’d decided to join the CIA and forgo t
he whole “have a life” thing.

  At the time, it had seemed like the right thing to do. Years and experience had proven otherwise. He hadn’t made a difference. He’d just made it easier for blood to flow and the power players to get exactly what they wanted.

  There was no such thing as good. No such thing as humanity.

  He sat down in a chair that had likely been chosen by a dead man. He didn’t want to get on that helicopter, but he didn’t know where he would go. He had no place. No friends.

  Well, he had one. Bill Hartman, his former CO. He hadn’t thought about Bill in years. Bill had been the one who told him he shouldn’t leave the Army to join the CIA. Bill had offered him a job in his business back in Colorado. He’d been like a father, but Bishop hadn’t had a father in so long, he’d forgotten to listen.

  What if he didn’t go back to DC? What if he decided to come in from the cold and find somewhere warm and private? What if he walked away from it all?

  His real name was gone. Erased. He had no home. No family. No life.

  He was nothing. Nothing at all.

  Bishop sat in the dead man’s chair, the sun moving over the horizon like a veil closing, beckoning him to choose a side. The comfortable side? The one where he was a ghost and he didn’t have to worry about anything but completing his next assignment? Or something new?

  Time passed, the sun waning in the background as the blood around him cooled. It was a mess that would be left for someone else to clean up. His brain worked but nothing really congealed. He was stuck. He was lost.

  He had no idea how to be found.

  “Hey, Bishop,” the lieutenant began as the thud thud of the chopper blades could be heard in the distance. “We need to get to the extraction point. We’re green in five minutes. Back home. First beer’s on me.”

  It was a false promise the lieutenant made. He knew damn well that once they hit US soil, Bishop would walk away and they would likely never see each other again. CIA operatives didn’t go out for a cold one with the team afterward. CIA operatives didn’t get close to the soldiers they might have to sacrifice like chess pieces in a nasty game.

  How long since he’d sat down for a beer with a human being who knew his real name? Sometimes it seemed so fucking far away. He needed a week. Just a week and then he’d go back to this life he’d chosen. Surely they could wait one week.

  He had passports the CIA didn’t even know about. He wasn’t stupid. He knew he could be burned at any moment. He had money and IDs stashed. He could say he’d gotten a lead and had to follow on the down low.

  One friend. Maybe it was time to visit him. Just for a week to clear his head.

  “Go on. I’ll make my own way back,” he said, rising from the chair, his choice made.

  Wilder gave him a thumbs-up. “Good luck, Bishop. Fight the good fight.”

  The SEALs jogged out in their tight formation. The good fight? He’d thought he was, but now he wasn’t sure. Maybe there was no good to be fought for.

  He turned his mind to his friend. The last he’d heard, Bill was in a little town in Colorado. Bliss.

  Bliss was a good thing to seek. He hadn’t had a whole lot of bliss in his life. And he didn’t have a family anymore. He hadn’t really had a family in a long time. It had just been him and his mother, and after she’d died, he’d been through a long stream of foster parents until he’d made his way into the Army. Bill had been his family for a while.

  He didn’t have a home to go to. Maybe a friend was the closest thing. If Bill even recognized him now.

  Bishop started the long walk to Cartagena. To the airport.

  To Bliss.

  Chapter One

  Two Days Later

  Bliss, Colorado

  “What should I call you this time?” Bill Hartman asked the question with a little uptick of his lips that let Bishop know he was amused. He was also naked.

  Bill Hartman, former commando and wildly successful venture capitalist, now ran a nudist colony called the Mountain and Valley Naturist Community. It had been a shock to walk in and realize everyone was naked. Really, really naked.

  “Henry Flanders.” It was his private ID. He’d bought it off a man in Mexico City. It was one of three passports the Agency didn’t know about. Bishop was a careful man, and he knew damn straight that even the best agent could be thrown under the proverbial bus if it suited the needs of the CIA. Bishop didn’t intend to get ground under those really large wheels. He’d always had an out if the Agency decided to burn him.

  So he was Henry Flanders for now.

  “You look every inch the college professor. Where did you get the glasses?”

  It hadn’t been hard to change his appearance. He had one of those blandly attractive faces that people tended to forget. Throw on a pair of glasses and a blazer and everyone assumed he was an academic. “They’re not real. Just regular glass. I thought this would be a good cover in a place like Colorado. I thought about doing the cowboy thing, but Henry just didn’t seem like a cowboy name.”

  Bill frowned from his wingback chair. Bishop had seen a lot of odd things in his time, but a naked man behind a power desk was one for the books. “I don’t know that would be a good thing. Our cowboys take their lifestyle quite seriously. If you aren’t prepared, they would figure out your ruse fairly quickly.”

  Bishop doubted it. He was exceptionally good at what he did. If he’d created a cowboy persona, he would have written himself a history that no one could challenge. But he’d decided to go brainy. Henry Flanders loved history and shit. Maybe by playing the role of a guy who had all the answers, he could find some answers for himself.

  “Are you all right with me staying here for a couple of days?” Bishop asked. He waited for Bill’s judgment. He felt oddly vulnerable even though Bill was the one without a stitch on. Bishop was waiting for Bill to give him a reasonable excuse why he should find a place in town instead of rooming at his precious resort. He hadn’t felt that way in a long time. Not since he’d been a twelve-year-old kid sent from home to home, always being packed up because he knew damn well no one really wanted him.

  Fuck, what the hell was he doing?

  Bill leaned forward, his face open and concerned. “Of course. You don’t need to ask. John, my home is your home, son.”

  It felt oddly good to hear his real name. Years. It had been years since he’d heard it. He’d had so damn many names that he wondered at times if he still existed or if he’d become the ghost the Agency claimed he was. “Thank you, sir.”

  Just for a week. That was how long he could give himself. He’d given his handler some dumb-ass excuse of chasing down a lead. He’d been intentionally vague. It would buy him some time. He’d earned back enough goodwill since the incident in Chechnya that got him sent to South America. Now South America was hopping with all kinds of potential threats so going silent wasn’t so unheard of. They wouldn’t give him hell for a few days.

  If they realized he wasn’t where he said he was, that was when the trouble would start, but by then he would be back in the game.

  Just a few days of freedom.

  “Are you going to be all right with the lifestyle?” Bill’s lips quirked up. He leaned back as though trying to show Bishop just how relaxed he was with having his dork hanging out.

  “I think I’ll manage.” Running around naked actually freaked him out a little. Clothes were such a part of his daily ruse that the thought of not being in costume was a bit disturbing. He glanced at the window to his left. Snow was falling lightly, blanketing the ground in a pure white powder. The mountains were beautiful here. Deadly, of course, since all things were, but beautiful. “So how do you handle the cold?”

  “Well, I wear a coat outside, and I spend a small fortune keeping things toasty warm inside. I really wish you had come in the summer. There’s nothing like the high valley in summertime. It’s beautiful and you haven’t lived until you’ve gone swimming in a mountain lake with nothing but the water and the sun on
your back.”

  Bishop felt himself frowning. There was so much he didn’t understand about his former CO. “How do you do it, Bill?”

  “Well, I take off my pants first. Some people will tell you to deal with the shirt first, but really it’s the pants that chafe.” Bill seemed to catch the deeply unamused look Bishop knew he was sending out. “Sorry, I was having some fun with you, son. Listen, the first few years out of the military were hard. I won’t lie to you about that. Some of the missions haunted me, but I found this place. I came up here with a friend who was in the lifestyle. I think I was a little lost after my discharge, and he seemed to understand that. For the first few days, I laughed at everyone. I kept my clothes on. They were idiots. But slowly I came around. It was stupidly difficult to take off my clothes. Sounds simple, huh?”

  No. It didn’t sound simple at all. It sounded slightly terrifying, and now Bishop was wondering if he’d made a mistake, but he simply nodded and allowed Bill to continue.

  “It’s not. It’s hard. Clothes hide so much of who we are. They’re an armor of a sort. The first time I took off my clothes and joined the group, I actually worried that they could see through me, that they would know the things I’d done. I was sure they would tell me to leave their paradise. I stood at the edge of the party like some blushing nine-year-old. And then this woman, this lovely, amazing woman, walked over and took my hand, and suddenly I didn’t see a dumb hippie liberal. I saw kindness and beauty. When the older couple who founded this place retired, I bought it and now I run this place not just for me, but because I want to make this mountain a place of peace. It’s everything I fought for, got my hands bloody over. This mountain is my reward for serving my country. I thought I had given up pieces of my soul, but this place and that woman gave them back to me.”