by Molly E. Lee
Edge of Bliss
Copyright © 2016 by Molly E. Lee
All rights reserved.
ISBN# eBook: 978-1-946356-90-1
ISBN# Paperback: 978-1-946356-91-8
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you’d like to share it with. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Visit my website at www.mollyelee.com
Cover Designer:
Regina Wamba at Mae I Design
Editing:
Karen Grove
Interior Design and Formatting:
Christine Borgford at Type A Formatting
Table of Contents
Edge of Bliss
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Acknowledgements
About the Author
For Amy. Because you finally found your bliss.
Dash
NOTHING USED TO have the power to tear my eyes away from a tornado—didn’t matter if it was an EF1 or 5. Nothing could. Until Blake.
Her brown hair, barely contained in a ponytail, whipped sharply to the left as she grasped a handheld camera, videoing every movement of the EF-2 we were chasing in Liland, Texas. Where my eyes should be on the thick, dirty-white beast that snaked from the sky and churned up the field below it, instead they were on her. I marveled at the way she held her ground, though the monster was only a hundred yards away, Paul and John at least three hundred yards behind us.
Damn.
The woman was gorgeous, even with mud splattered over two-day-old jeans that hugged her ass perfectly. Fire burned in her dark brown eyes of hers, and it made me want her that much more as she stared the tornado down—both admiring its beauty and ready to take on the challenge if it shifted course.
How did I get so lucky?
With great effort, I returned my focus to the raging beast before us. It had developed quickly, and lucky for us, it manifested over an open field with easy-access backroads. Starting the storm season off with a catch was always a good sign.
“Check out that suction!” Blake yelled, using her free hand to point at the massive tree the tornado just ripped from the earth by its roots.
“Killer!” I zoomed my camera in on the area, mesmerized by the strength in its constant rotation.
The sky behind the funnel was bright, with only the connecting storm clouds to darken it. It made the tornado stand out that much more, and it was a sight I never tired of seeing.
There was no getting used to this life—there was only living it. Last storm season Blake and I had only just gotten together at the end of it, and her first trip down Tornado Alley had been a major bust—well, in the storm-catching sense, anyway. In the way that I got to hold her every night after a long day of chasing? It was a total win.
This year would be different. Not only had we hit tornado alley at the start of the season, but we also had more funds, which meant Blake and I didn’t have to share a room with Paul and John. Heat flared in my gut with the thought of christening the hotel bed and worshiping Blake’s body for several hours once we finished here.
“Dash?” Blake touched my shoulder, suddenly much closer than she had been moments before. “You okay?”
I blinked a few times, only now realizing the EF-2 was roping out—its once thick, strong funnel now dissipating until nothing would be left but the storm cloud that had birthed it. I smiled at Blake, wrapping my free arm around her waist and pulling her against me.
“I’m fine,” I said before pressing my lips against hers. She gasped and closed her eyes and opened up for me. Though I’d kissed her hundreds of times, it always felt like it’d been too long since the last, as if I couldn’t properly breathe unless she was against me.
“Really?” she asked against my mouth, her fingers fisting the hair at the back of my neck. “Because you looked like you fell asleep back there.” She turned to glance at the spot the tornado had just been before returning those gorgeous brown eyes back to mine. “This storm chasing business starting to bore you?”
I claimed her mouth again instead of answering, my thoughts one-tracked now that work was over. The fact that I could combine my two biggest passions—storm chasing and Blake—was some form of ecstasy I’d never thought possible, and I was having a hard time separating my need to capture tornadoes on film and the need to steal Blake’s breath at every possible opportunity.
“God, I hope not,” a voice said from behind us, and Blake instantly broke our kiss. I kept my arm around her, not letting her pull away from me as I turned to glare at Daniel’s horrible timing. “We’ve signed you for enough footage to create thirty episodes. First storm and you’re already bored? We’d need to renegotiate your contract.”
“No need,” I said, smiling at my new producer like the good employee I was. “We caught valuable footage on this supercell.” Gesturing to the camera—a new high-def handheld courtesy of the network that had approached my team to film a reality television series—I nodded. “It’ll blow your viewers away.”
Daniel slowly walked up to us, his hands in the pockets of his dress pants. At least the suit had enough sense to wear sneakers with it—guess he was trying to pull off a Justin Timberlake thing. His gaze lazily rolled over Blake, a little longer than I would like, but in reality, I never liked anyone looking at her like that. “I have no doubt of that.” He glanced over his shoulder, nodding toward the team of five set up behind him with production-level cameras hefted on their shoulders.
“Are they filming?” Blake asked, putting several inches of space between us.
“Yes,” Daniel said. “Important to catch everything the network could use for filler pieces. Tornadoes only last so long, you know. Can’t fill a thirty-minute episode with just one.”
“Really? You can’t? Huh,” she said, gritting her teeth before plastering a smile on her face. “I didn’t know that.”
I stifled a chuckle behind my fist and cleared my throat. We were all pumped that we’d been approached by the network—it gave us nearly unlimited funds to run analysis, tests, probe building, vehicle and equipment upgrades, everything a chaser could dream of—but all that came with a price, and that was dealing with people like Daniel. He wasn’t an all-around bad guy, he just lacked tact, and when it came to Blake, he severely underestimated her abilities in the scientific field. I’d corrected him on the matter more than once—the woman had gone through hell, increasing her class load, taking summer courses, all to graduate early.
Free of school, fresh off
our degrees, we were able to hit Tornado Alley the second storm season started, and with a new fully-backed team to boot. That made it worth dealing with incidents like this.
“I’ve been meaning to bring up another angle we were talking about with the network head last week,” Daniel pushed on like Blake hadn’t responded to him.
“Oh yeah?” I asked, handing off my gear to an assistant—a younger kid who looked like a studio intern—who ran up to me for that exact purpose. He took Blake’s next, smiling at her shyly before running back to the camera crew’s van to store the equipment. “What’s that?”
Daniel’s eyes jumped between me and Blake, who was now standing a full arm’s length away from me, her hands on her hips and her eyes firmly on the bigger cameras that were still rolling for some reason. “Well, it’s quite the story you two have,” he finally said.
I cocked an eyebrow at him.
“A meteorologist and a chaser, together, tearing up tornado alley.” He motioned to the two of us as if we were a product for a movie trailer.
“And?” I asked, wondering where the hell he was going with this.
He took a step closer to me, lowering his voice. “It would be great for ratings if you let us show some of that.”
I tilted my head. “Show some of what? Me and Blake?”
Blake jolted and broke the distance between us to properly hear the conversation. “What?”
Daniel sighed. “Romance sells.”
Blake snorted. “And standing a hundred yards away from a tornado won’t?”
I shook my head. “I’m fine with showing the world I love her,” I said, placing my hand on the small of her back, “but we’re not going to perform to boost ratings.”
Daniel nodded quickly. “Of course. We know that. We’re asking you to simply ignore the men behind the curtain.” He pointed over his shoulder toward the camera crew.
Blake’s eyes widened a fraction. “That’s what they were filming? Us . . . kissing?”
He raised his hands in defense. “Filler footage, my dear.”
She rolled her eyes, swallowing hard. “You—”
“Thanks for the heads up,” I said, stopping her before she said something she’d regret. I could tell by the way her muscles tensed, she was on the verge of a rant. And while I loved that about her, I didn’t want to see her waste her energy on Daniel. Especially over a non-issue. “We’ll keep it in mind.” I slapped Daniel on the shoulder and guided Blake away from him, past the camera crew, and all the way back to my truck where we’d left it in the safe zone a few hundred yards away.
Blake crossed her arms and leaned her back against my closed driver’s side door, her chin down as she stared at her black boots.
I tipped up her chin, smoothing back a strand of hair the tornado had freed from her tie. “You want to tell me where your head is at, or make me dig?”
She pressed her pink lips together to stop a smile, her eyes finally looking up into mine.
“Well?” I asked when she hadn’t answered.
“Thinking.”
I laughed. “You want me to dig.”
She wrapped an arm around my neck, her lips a breath away from mine. “Are you insinuating that I enjoy your torture methods when getting me to talk?”
“Torture?” I shook my head, nuzzling her nose with mine. “If that is what you think of it, then I’m doing it wrong.”
“Oh, no,” she said, her voice a whisper as she skimmed her lips over the edge of my jaw. Her free hand explored the surface of my chest, slowly dipping lower to graze over my abs, her fingers teasing at the hem of my jeans before bringing her hand back up to my neck. “You’re doing it right.”
“Sorry? I’ve completely forgotten what we were talking about.” I pressed my lips against hers again, this time slipping my tongue inside to caress hers. She sighed into my mouth, arching her head back to give me a better angle, and I pinned her against the truck.
She slipped her hands underneath my shirt, digging her fingers into the skin of my back, and I kissed her harder, my hands trailing her sides until I gripped her hips. Fire coursed through my veins when she moved against me, a breathy moan escaping the connection of our lips. Wanting a better position, I snuck my arms underneath her perfect ass and hoisted her up until she locked her ankles around my hips.
“Dash,” she whispered my name before teasing her tongue over the shell of my ear. “Take me home.”
I lightly nipped at her neck, and she arched, her soft breasts pressing against my hard chest.
“Home is a state away,” I said, despite knowing what she’d meant. Even though we’d been together a year, I hadn’t asked her to move in with me. She’d been in a relationship for so long with her asshole-ex, I knew I was lucky she’d taken the chance with me, and I wasn’t about to blow it by asking her to make a commitment like that so soon. But it wasn’t like I hadn’t thought about it . . . a lot. More than that. I wanted to lay every kind of claim possible on Blake, but, again, I knew she needed time.
I tried not to think about the ring burning a hole in my pocket.
Lucky for me, she and her irresistible English Bulldog, Hail, spent almost every night at my place anyway, so I hadn’t had to bring up either in my overexcited need to lay claim to her.
“Well,” she said, her voice breathy as she kissed me. “Take me back to the cheap hotel would’ve made me sound like a hooker.”
A laugh ripped from my lips, and she joined in, her body slightly vibrating against mine. She let her head drop to my shoulder for a moment before she jolted in my embrace. “Damn it,” she snapped and unwrapped her legs from around me.
I turned to glance over my shoulder, hissing when I realized the camera crew had followed us all the back to my truck. Moving Blake to open the door, I motioned for her to climb over to her side. She did, the mood shifting from the red-hot intensity it had been to the cold annoyance of our new situation. I didn’t know how to feel about it, but it was clear Blake wasn’t happy with the network’s side agenda of putting our relationship up for public viewing. Personally, I didn’t give a shit who knew how much I adored this woman, but if it bothered her, then it bothered me.
I climbed behind the wheel, throwing the crew a wave before reversing down the dirt road that had led us to the tornado. I slowed when I saw Paul and John, who stood outside the Tracker Jacker, their laptops out and on the hood.
“Anything?” I asked after rolling down my window.
Paul shook his head. “Not much, man. Possibilities are high tomorrow, but that bad boy looks like it was it for today.”
“Agreed,” John said, breaking his stare from the screen. “Some cells are gathering several hundred miles from here, but we’d have to drive straight through and leave now to catch it. I’d suggest staying the night here and chasing the supercells that are gathering for tomorrow.”
I nodded. “That’s why I pay you guys the big bucks.”
“You don’t pay us shit.” Paul scrunched his eyebrows.
“I bought your breakfast.”
John and Blake laughed when Paul flipped me off before closing his laptop. “Bar later?”
I glanced at Blake who nodded. “Much later.”
“Ugh,” John groaned. “Get a room.”
“We did. Bye!” I said, driving off before either of them could say another word. They both loved Blake, but we had been in the honeymoon phase for over a year—barely able to keep our hands off each other—and I highly doubted it would go away anytime soon. Perfect for me, nauseating for my boys. Too bad for them.
“So,” Blake said. “What’s the plan for the rest of the day?”
I took my eyes off the road for a split second to show her every intention I had.
A flush of red dusted her cheeks, and she bit her bottom lip, reading me as easily as a book. I pushed harder on the gas, nearing speeds I would on a chase. The need to get Blake alone was overwhelming—away from camera crews, friends, and nosy producers—where she was simply
mine for the tasting.
A year with her and my thirst had never been slaked. No amount of time would ever be enough.
Blake
“I DON’T SEE the issue,” John said, shooting a striped ball into the corner pocket of the pool table. We’d found the nearest bar to our hotel and hit it after Dash and I . . . well, when we’d finally come up for air. My lips were still swollen.
“What do you mean you don’t see the issue?” I asked, shocked enough to miss my attempt at dropping a solid ball into a pocket. “You can’t seriously think it’s a good idea?”
John shrugged as he walked around the table, surveying the balls to choose the best shot. “Look, I’ve been around you two for an entire year now, and you’ve barely stopped touching each other.” He shot again but missed this time. “Who cares if it makes our producer happy and our ratings spike? You guys never stop anyway.”
My mouth dropped open, but no words came out. When he put it like that, it made my outrage over being asked to put my relationship on TV silly. “It seems . . . wrong, somehow,” I said, taking another shot and missing. Damn it. “I mean, why can’t chasing storms and putting our lives on the line be enough? Why do they need this?”
John flashed me a soft smile and came around the table. He wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “Hey,” he said, noticing my frustration over the situation. “Did Daniel say it was a deal breaker? That you had to agree, or we’d lose our contract?”
I shook my head.
“Then don’t worry about it,” he said, squeezing me. “Do what you do best. Which, by the way, isn’t making Dash a miserable human being to be around with how moonstruck he is.” I chuckled. “It’s finding storms,” he continued. “Reading the data like no one else can. You have that freaky sixth sense that Dash does. Stick to that, and don’t worry about the other crap.”
I nodded, leaning my head onto John’s shoulder. “Thank you,” I said, glad to have a friend like him. A sense of happiness swarmed over me—I’d hit the lottery with Dash, because not only was he perfect, but he came with amazing friends who had accepted me as part of their tight group with barely a blink.
