Page 4 of Craved

“Do that.” He passes me the file, along with an envelope clipped to the cover. “Your flight and hotel info.”

That’s one of the downsides of being covert. I never fly on the company jets. But I have racked up a lot of airline miles. I’m about to rack up a few more.

A jittery feeling I haven’t experienced since training takes me by surprise, and I have to admit that I’m a little undone by the very real possibility that I’ll be seeing the only man I ever loved in less than twenty-four hours.

And the only man I truly hate.

Too bad they’re one and the same.

“Guess I should pack,” I say, impressed that my voice sounds normal. I am, after all, a professional.

“And Cami,” he adds, “if you see an opportunity to turn Maxim, take it. You’re the only one who might be able to pull that off.”

“I can’t,” I say firmly. Once upon a time, I’d believed in Maxim Wilder. But those days are long gone. “I’ll convince him that I’m on his side, though. That much, I guarantee.”

Chapter Two

“You know you jinxed yourself,” Brax says as he puts a mug of coffee in front of both Sabrina and me. “Telling him you’ll get in close with Maxim? Now you’ve kicked that totally out of the realm of possibility.”

“You’re such an ass.” I shift to face Brina, who’s sitting beside me at my round kitchen table. “Your husband is an ass.”

She takes a sip of coffee, then shrugs. “I think you meant to say, Your husband has a great ass. Because he really does.”

Brax just rolls his eyes. He’s back at the coffee machine filling his own mug, so that fine, denim-clad ass is facing both of us. “True,” I say. “I’d definitely give it an eight.”

“Eight?” Brax scowls at me with mock offense, then turns to his wife. “Are you going to stand for that?”

She shrugs. “We both know I’m the pretty one.”

She and I share a laugh as Brax murmurs something about putting up with women. Brina and I just let it slide. We both know he loves us. In decidedly different ways, of course. Brina with the fiery passion of star-crossed lovers for whom the gods finally decided to cut a break. Me with all the love of best friends who’d bonded under the pressure of training for the covert work that we still do.

We’d been in our early twenties when we’d met the way so many young people do—tossed into the back of a police van, then thrust into covert government work for the ultra-secret SOC with the FBI as a cover.

I’d been mourning the loss of my first—and only—love, Maxim Wilder. He’d been my refuge in a life full of pain in the form of a brilliant but abusive father and a junkie mother. Brax had been mourning as well, and we’d bonded over the loss of the people we most desperately loved.

That was more than fifteen years ago, and Brax and I have been tighter than tight ever since. Never romantic, although there had been a period when we’d slid into a friends-with-benefits arrangement. It had worked for us, then petered out, leaving a deeper friendship behind, albeit a non-orgasmic one.

That ended ages ago, and Brina knows the score, so there’s no jealousy of me from her end. And my only jealousy about their relationship is that they actually have a relationship.

Me? I have a hamster.

Not exactly the same thing.

Once upon a time, I’d thought I had with Maxim what Brax and Sabrina have. A Great Love. The kind that plays out in epic movies and inspires incredible scores from the likes of Hans Zimmer or John Williams.

I thought I’d been a part of something bigger than myself. It wasn’t just me and Maxim. It was MeAndMaxim. A unit. A couple.

He’d been my best friend, my confidante, my partner, my lover. He’d turned my life upside down, erasing the horror of the only life I’d known before, and leaving sunshine, chirping birds and blankets of rose petals.

Then he’d disappeared.

At first, I’d thought he was dead. He had to be. There was no other reason he’d leave me like that, and for weeks, I was despondent, moving through the world in a fog. Then I got a letter.

I had to.

That’s all it said. And those three little words just about killed me.

It was my recruitment into the SOC that saved me. There’s nothing like being pulled into a secret government agency to kick a girl out of her funk. Not that the longing had ever truly gone away. It was always there. Always under the surface. The desperate craving for him. The fear that something horrible had happened to him.