Morgan's Mates (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (17 page)

“You have at least half a dozen new pieces under way back home.” Drake gave her encouragement. “You’re going to have a lot to show.”

Morgan was beaming with enthusiasm. “I feel inspired. There is so much I want to paint. I enjoy the process so much I really don’t even see why people should have to pay me.”

“Because you have to eat,” Hunter reminded her.

Morgan laughed. “That’s a good reason.”

Drake cleared his throat. Now was as good of a time as any to say what needed saying. He put his arm around her in the booth and looked down at her beautiful face. She was positively glowing. The feelings he had for her scared him, and the thought of her not always being a part of his life scared him even more.

“How are the three of us doing?” Drake started with a question.

She put a comforting hand on his arm. “I think we’re doing great.”

“So do I,” Hunter added.

“You know, Morgan…” Drake had to start over because there was a frog in his throat. Hunter gave him a disgusted look, as if to say
come on and tell her
.

“What is it, Drake?” Morgan asked him. She had an innocent smile on her face.

Drake would have to tread carefully. He didn’t want to do anything that would jeopardize her happiness.

Words failed him, so he reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a small jewelry box. Both he and Hunter had picked it out for her together. With something of a timid feeling, he handed it across to her.

“It’s from both of us,” Hunter told her.

Morgan was clearly stunned. Her hands were shaking as she accepted it, and a tear came to her eye when she opened it and saw what was inside.

A silver necklace and two diamond pendants.

“Two diamonds. Two men,” Drake told her.

“They’re beautiful.” Morgan wiped at her eyes with her fingers. She looked back and forth between both of them. “But not as beautiful as the two of you are to me.”

“Can I put it on you?”

“Yes. Please.”

Drake forced his hands to be steady as he brought the necklace around her shoulders. He fastened the clasp in back, and it hung down the
V
in her shirt and looked perfect, every bit as good as he could have hoped it would look.

“You’re beautiful,” Hunter said.

“Oh God, that is for sure,” Drake echoed. “I hope you like them, honey.”

Morgan was touching the two diamond pendants with her fingers, trying to look down her neck and see them against her skin. “I love them.” More tears were in her eyes, and for the moment she had stopped trying to fuss over them.

Drake took her fingers away from her neck. He held her hand out in his between them in the booth.

“When the three of us started this thing, Hunter and I were both pretty immature. We were wild, and we were crazy. But ever since you came into our lives, Morgan, we’ve started to change. You’ve changed us.”

Morgan was looking up at him with deep emotion. Drake just wasn’t sure what it was she was feeling. He didn’t want to rush her or put pressure on her, but his feelings were starting to flood out of him. He had kept them bottled for too long, and now he had to tell her how he felt.

“Hunter and I started this thing just to have some fun and chase a woman. Then we stayed on because we cared and wanted to help you while your man was away. Now, however, it’s gone beyond that.” Drake took a deep breath and decided to lay his soul bare. “You see, I love you, Morgan. It’s as simple as that for me.”

Hunter reached across the table, and Morgan gave him her other hand. “I love you, too,” he said.

They waited for Morgan to say something.

* * * *

Paralyzed, Morgan’s hands were held, one by each of her men. She looked between them and felt the tears well in her eyes.

She had come to a crossroads that would decide her future, and she trembled inside. Each of these men had grown so special to her over the last six months. In fact, she couldn’t imagine a world in which she did not live with them and have their strength to draw from each day.

But she pulled back in fear.

“Thank you, guys,” she told them. “I have come to care about both of you more than I can say.”

Drake was the first to realize her hesitancy. “Is it Nathan, honey?”

Morgan met his steady gaze. Then she turned to Hunter. She owed them both nothing but total honesty right now.

“Nathan is out there somewhere,” she explained. “He loves me, and I’m all he’s got in the world. I know he’s fighting to come home to me.”

Drake was patient but firm with her. “Honey, we’re not talking about Nathan here. We’re talking about the three of us.”

His words hit a target deep inside her psyche. She lowered her head. “I know what you’re saying. But how can I ever be true to you if I can’t be true to him?”

“We would never ask you to betray Nathan,” Hunter told her.

“I know you wouldn’t. You would never ask me to do anything wrong.”

Their steaks arrived. The three of them ate in silence. Morgan felt she was holding back on them. But not only was she holding back on the two men, she knew she was also betraying herself.

From the first day she met these two, somehow she knew she would one day be confronted with this choice. Now she couldn’t give them the answer they wanted. She could not be honest with them or with herself.

Drake took care of the check, and Hunter drove them back to her house. The first snow of the year had started to fall. The roads were slick and treacherous. But they made it home without incident.

There was little more conversation between them. The guys had laid out their feelings for her. Suddenly Morgan felt like a coward because she was not able to share the way she really felt with them.

“How about I get us a fire started.” Drake tried to sound upbeat as he went over to the fireplace and began loading it with wood from his own lumberyard.

“I’m going out to the kitchen and making us each a hot toddy.” Hunter headed out of the living room. He gave Morgan a smile as if to tell her everything was okay.

Morgan sat on her couch and moped. She felt somehow she had betrayed these two men, and yet here they were still trying to do everything in their power to please her. They were the one constant in her otherwise uncertain life, and she loved both of them.

Inside her head she had just said it to herself. Yes! She loved Hunter Cole and Drake Sinclair, loved them with all her heart. The feeling was out in the open now, and she couldn’t fight it anymore.

She wiped more annoying tears from her eyes. This time they were tears of joy and happiness.

A tidal wave of revelation swept over her. If she couldn’t acknowledge her love of these two wonderful men, she would be betraying them as much as she would have betrayed Nathan if she had left Wolf Creek when he needed her the most.

She had enough room in her heart to love all three of them, and she wasn’t going to waste any more time on worry or guilt. From that point on, she would do what was right for herself and all three of her men.

The future was going to be as complicated as hell, but they would have to work that out together when it arrived.

Hunter set down Morgan’s cup of hot toddy on the side table next to her. Drake had finished with the fire. He had a warm blaze going. He came back to sit on her other side.

“The drink ought to warm you up,” Hunter said as he took the opposite side of the couch.

“The fire should help, too,” Drake put in.

Both had a sure smile for her. Then they saw she had been crying.

“Hey, are you all right, honey?” Drake took her in his arms. Morgan gave him a monster hug and would never have let go except Hunter was on the other side, and he deserved a hug, too.

“What is it, baby?” Hunter asked her as he tried in vain to kiss away her tears.

Morgan had an arm around the shoulders of both men. “You are both fantastic,” she announced. Her voice was no longer sad.

“Hey, we already knew that,” Hunter joked.

“You don’t have to say anything, honey.” Drake gave her a gentle kiss on the top of her head. “We don’t have to change anything. We can go on just like we have. There isn’t any pressure.”

“But there is.” Morgan had never had more conviction behind her words. “I should have told you this a long time ago. I was scared I would do the wrong thing. I was a coward. But I’m not scared to tell you anymore.”

“Tell us what, baby?”

“That I love you both.” She reached up and gave them each a kiss in turn. “You are both inside my heart, and I am a better person for having you two shape-shifters in my life.”

They hugged her, and she was happy to hug and kiss them back in return. It felt like she had healed a wound inside them both with her simple words, and a wound inside Morgan’s soul was fast repairing itself as she gave herself the freedom to love them.

From this point forward she didn’t think anything could keep the three of them apart.

“I want you guys to promise me something.” Morgan was in the Jacuzzi hot tub inside her bathroom. Both men were in the tub with her. She was cradled in Hunter’s arms, her head up against his beautifully sculpted chest. Drake sat on the opposite side. In a few minutes, she would go over to him and take him in her arms and allow him to hold her, too.

The winter had arrived. Everything was cold, white, and beautiful in the mountains. Morgan’s love for Hunter and Drake grew each day. She could not imagine them not being in her life now.

A snow storm hit Wolf Creek and the surrounding area on Christmas Eve. On Christmas day, there was forty inches of snow outside the house. Morgan was snowed in with the two guys. The men made love to her in front of the fire all day.

Morgan decided to let them both have her together now. Why not? She loved them both. She had let them both inside her, not only in her body but into her heart as well. They were a part of her now.

The men didn’t like to sleep in the same bed together. They found it awkward. So after they made love to her and left her body completely satisfied down to her very core, they would take turns sleeping with her. She always was guaranteed to have one hard body next to her under the covers and a big muscular arm slung around her waist.

Tonight the guys had just made love to her. All three of them were exhausted. Now they were having a lazy conversation. Outside it was cold, and the snow came down. But in the warm waters of the Jacuzzi, it felt like paradise.

However, Morgan had turned the conversation serious. The men brought themselves up from their sex-induced lethargy to look at her closely.

“We’ll promise you anything.” Hunter was too quick to assure her.

“Let’s wait and hear what it is first.” Drake rubbed her knee under the warm water and stroked up her thigh, sending ripples of pleasure along Morgan’s already tired body. “What’s on your mind?”

“I want you to both promise me you’ll never leave me.”

Morgan moved across the rippling water of the Jacuzzi and into Drake’s arms. She looked back at Hunter. She wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding her feelings from them. But she didn’t have to. Not with them. Not ever with them.

Nathan was on her mind, and the two men knew it. Her first lover had left her. She couldn’t stand that kind of loss again.

“When we first met you, we told you not all men leave.” Hunter’s beautiful eyes were so sincere when he spoke. She could believe him.

“Nathan isn’t my favorite subject to talk about. But let me remind you that it wasn’t his fault that he left you, honey.” Drake wiped some hair out of her eyes. It was sweaty from the hot water and the even hotter sex they’d just concluded.

“It was a dumb question. Forget it.” Morgan tried to clear her mind of all bad thoughts. This was too nice of a time. She didn’t want to ruin it.

“There are no dumb questions between us.” Hunter reached out and took her hand. The two of them laced fingers. His smile made her melt. She wanted to have him again right there in the hot waters of the Jacuzzi.

“It’s just that I got burned before.” Morgan felt she should try and explain herself. “It hurt so badly when I lost Nathan.”

“We remember how bad you were hurting.” Drake scooted her around in the tub so he could give her a back rub, and he positioned her legs so Hunter could give her a foot rub at the same time. These two guys were masters of pleasure.

Morgan gave a low moan. Their hands massaging her in different places at the same time felt so deliciously good. “Nathan and I were very happy, too. Then everything went bad when he got sick. I’m afraid I’m almost too happy now. I feel like it won’t last.”

“I know what you mean.” Hunter was doing divine things to her feet.

“I think everyone’s felt that way at times.” Drake seemed to understand her line of thought. “You feel like you can only have so much happiness. You’re afraid of filling your quota of happiness. Then you worry about what will happen when you lose it all.”

“Oh, that’s good right there…” These guys made her so greedy for their touch, and Drake had gotten to a particular muscle in her shoulder she loved for him to rub. “But you’re right. I feel like maybe I was punished for being so happy before. I worry about what will happen now.”