“All that is true.” Morgan looked down at her lap. She seemed momentarily at a loss for words. “But he thought you were just doing work around the house and paying for things so I could continue to live there. And he thought in return for all of that I was allowing you into my bed at night.”
“So he thought it was a temporary fling,” Drake said, summing it up.
“Yes. And it might have started out that way.” There was a catch in Morgan’s voice. “Only I fell in love with you guys.”
“We fell in love, too,” Hunter whispered.
“I told Nathan that.”
“How did he take it?”
Morgan shook her head. Drake realized how hard coming here for her must have been today. “It’s not that simple. I love Nathan, too. I never lied to you guys. You always knew I loved him.”
Drake looked over at Hunter. They both nodded. They had always known where they stood, but like a couple of fools had barged ahead and gotten involved anyway and given away their hearts.
“Nathan supports me on everything, and he understands what happened.”
“But?” Drake asked her.
“But he’s asked me not to see you again after today.”
The pain hit Drake like a ton of bricks. Some shifters shared their women even when they were at home. Nathan McLaughlin was not one of those shifters.
So now it really was over for the three of them.
* * * *
Nathan shut down his Internet connection. He was finished with his work for the day. After being back for only two weeks, he had managed to rekindle two major contracts with a big corporation in Chicago. It looked as if his business was going to survive the year he’d been forced to take away from it. Now passion consumed him, and he wanted to get back into it and make it thrive once more.
His business was going to recover. However, he sensed his personal life may not be doing so well. Where had he gone wrong, and what could he do to change the tide? These were the questions that plagued him.
As expected, he found Morgan at work inside her studio. She spent most of her waking hours inside this room now, though she didn’t seem to be making progress. She hadn’t even started on a new piece since he had gotten home, and each time he checked, her old work had remained unfinished.
She barely glanced up at him as he walked inside to be with her. A lethargy seemed to have gripped her for the past few days, and it was alarming to see.
He stood behind her and put his arms around her neck. To let him know everything was all right, she reached up and gave him a loving pat, and he reached down and kissed the hand that stroked him.
There was something different about her, and he brought up a tiny silver necklace with two pendants hanging from it around her neck. He didn’t have to ask her what it was. He already knew. It would cause her too much pain to mention it, so he let the little pendants drop back down her chest.
“What are you working on?” he asked her instead.
She swiveled around her easel so he could see. It was a completed painting. At least this was some progress. He saw it was a painting of him. When he looked closer, Morgan had placed herself in the piece as well. Standing by her were the two men she had known while he was away. She had put all four of them in the picture together.
“I started on this piece before you came home.” She looked up and brought one of his hands back to hold her again. “I was in it, along with Hunter and Drake. But I didn’t like the piece at that time. Something was missing from it. Then when you came home I realized you were what was missing. I just added you to it today. Now I like it much better. Suddenly it seems to be complete.”
“It’s not like what you usually paint.”
“No. That’s because I’m doing it for me. I’m not going to put this one up for sale.” A hurt look came over her face as she watched him look at her work. “Don’t you like it?”
“I do, but I don’t think I understand it.”
She got up and began to take it down. “Don’t worry. Now that it’s finished, I’ll put it away. You won’t have to see it anymore.” She took the necklace off and laid it on the worktable next to the discarded painting. “I’m putting this away, too. Neither one of us should be reminded of the past. It’s just too painful.”
If she had been mad at him, it would have made him feel better. But the hurt and the sadness in her voice, the apathy she moved about the house with, all of these things scared him.
“Morgan?” he asked her, his voice turning serious. “Am I losing you?”
She wiped back some tears from her eyes. When she came to him and gave him a giant hug, he had never felt so relieved in his life.
“You’re not losing me.”
He stroked back the hair on her head and gave her a kiss. “Then what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong with us.” She gripped him harder as if she was trying to reassure him even though she was the one who was clearly in pain now.
“Something is wrong,” he chided her. “I’m not going to let us leave this room until you tell me what it is.”
She dried her eyes with the back of her hand and sat down on her work stool. “When I met you, I had never been in love before. You were my first. For a long time you were my only love.”
Nathan leaned against the table and took her hands in his, lacing their fingers together. “Then you met Hunter and Drake and you fell in love with them, too.” He spoke the words for her because he realized they would be too painful for her to speak.
She gave him a smile and looked around her studio. “Do you know they even made love to me in this room?”
He smiled with her. “Would you like to try it again?”
She got up and stood between his legs as he sat on the edge of her worktable. She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Are you trying to distract me with sex?” she asked him as she kissed his lips.
“Only if it’ll make you happy.” He took her back into his arms and brought her in for another kiss, holding her around the waist and holding her body against his own.
“Sex with you always makes me happy,” she told him between his kisses.
This was all the permission he needed. He helped her to slide the painter’s smock she wore down her shoulders. Beneath it she wore an old T-shirt, and he made quick work of that. When she stood before him in her bra, she turned to give him access to the clasp in back. He undid the clasp and ran the bra down her arms. His hands reached around to her front and cupped her breasts, his fingers pinching her nipples and forcing them to swell.
When she turned around to face him, she still wore her jeans but was topless. He took a step back from her.
“Let me look at you.” He marveled at her body. It took his breath away. “You are so beautiful.”
They had been lovers for a long time. She was unashamed as she stood before him and allowed him to look his fill. Her eyes were still red and tear-stained from the emotions she had dealt with earlier.
That was when it hit him. Something was missing. He went back to her worktable and rummaged over it until he found the discarded necklace with the two little pendants. He gazed down at the delicate object in his fingers. It was actually very lovely and belonged with her, on her body.
He moved forward to put it back around her neck.
“Nathan?” She was shocked when he stroked her hair out of the way so he could place the necklace back on her. “You know Hunter and Drake gave me this? It was a symbol of their love for me. I told them I would never take it off. But that was when I didn’t think you were coming home. Are you sure you want me to wear it now?”
He already had finished clasping it behind her neck and stood back to view his handiwork. The pendants hung down her chest to just above her red and swollen nipples.
“It is beautiful. You shouldn’t ever take it off.”
“Even considering the meaning it has for me?”
“I can accept it and all it stands for if you can.”
She looked confused but left the necklace in place.
Nathan walked back to the worktable and picked up the painting of the four of them. He regarded it silently for a moment. “And this painting,” he continued. “This is really one of your best pieces. You should be proud of it. I’m going to find a place in our home to hang it.”
“It’s from my imagination,” she told him. “That particular setting came from the bawdiest part of my mind. That was never a scene in reality. It is only my fantasy.”
He put the painting down in the easel where it belonged. Then he stepped back up to her. His hands cupped her breasts again, and he bent to kiss down the side of her neck.
He moved her hair back and whispered in her ear. “Sometimes fantasies have a way of coming true.”
His touch, but he suspected mostly his words, caused her to moan in delight beneath him.
“It’s every woman’s dream to have three men love her at the same time,” she whispered back to him.
“My mission in life is to make your dreams come true.” He claimed one of her nipples in his mouth and sucked on it until he had elicited another moan from deep in her throat. When he nipped her with his teeth, she coiled her fists into his hair and held him against her nipple for more. Her flesh tasted so pure. He had to restrain himself. He loved this woman so much he just wanted to eat up every inch of her body.
She had already lowered her fingers to his zipper and was taking it down. He ripped his shirt off as she was unbuckling his pants.
“Back here,” she said as she swiped her hand across the worktable to make room for them. At the same time she stepped out of her shoes and was taking off her own pants.
Both finally naked, Nathan helped her up to the table, her butt sitting primly on the edge. She opened her legs for him to go to work, and he fell to his knees on the floor before her. He worshipped her pussy, moving his mouth against her, using his lips and his tongue and inserting a finger insider her. These were all acts he knew she loved.
Her female nectar tasted so sweet, the feminine scent coming from inside her body the perfect aphrodisiac. Once his second finger was moving inside her pussy along with the first, he had her hips writhing above him on the tabletop. He enjoyed sexually torturing her like this and knew how much she craved it as well.
With his fingers into her up to the knuckle, he felt her pussy clench and her juices flow as she climaxed hard around him.
Still gasping for breath, he came back up from between her legs and kissed her, and his tongue explored her mouth and forced her to taste herself. She reached between his legs as he was ravishing her mouth and placed his engorged cock inside her pussy.
He began to pump her in desperate strokes. She had gotten to him, and now he needed to have his own release. He held out against it, waiting for her to catch up so they could orgasm together.
Finally she took him in her arms, her fingers pinching behind his neck. She was panting and whispering his name.
He moved her legs apart wide and hammered her as strong as he could. Soon he felt an orgasm sweeping through him, and his cock launched his seed into her.
When it was over, he fell on top of her across the worktable. She reached up to him, and they shared a kiss in the warmth of the afterglow.
“I’m going to work to bring those two men into our lives for you, Morgan.”
“Thank you,” she told him, and he felt he had started down the path to finally healing them both.
Hunter slammed his fist down on the table. Goddamn that letter. He had already read it three times, and it made him angrier each time he read it.
Drake came up the front steps leading to Hunter’s trailer. The door was open, and he walked inside, closing the door behind him.
Hunter didn’t even bother looking up or acknowledging his friend.
Drake walked around the table and saw the bottle of scotch sitting before Hunter. It was still unopened.
“I’m going to pour us each one shot and that’s all,” Drake told him and broke the seal on the bottle. “Wouldn’t do either one of us any good to get drunk in the frame of mind we’re in.”
“Well, you may change your mind about getting drunk when you read this letter.” Hunter pushed the envelope across the table to him.
Hunter took up the shot glass Drake had poured for him and downed the scotch in a single vicious swallow. He was a strong man and could normally handle his liquor, but today he had to agree with Drake. He didn’t think he could.
When Drake came to sit down next to him, he was holding up the check for a very large amount that had fallen out of the envelope with the letter.
“This is from McLaughlin,” Drake said, sipping his own scotch.
Hunter picked the check from the local Wolf Creek bank up in his big hands and tore it in two. Then he tore it again and again until the tiny paper shreds were falling on the floor of his trailer.
“That’s what I think of McLaughlin’s offer.”
“I agree.” Drake read the letter as he spoke. “There’s no amount of money in the world that I would take for the time we spent with Morgan. However, this letter just says he wanted to pay us back for the expenses we incurred while we were working out on that land. After all, he is the owner of the land. Makes sense he would want to compensate us. I believe McLaughlin is an honorable man.”