“You did this? For me?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Blake,” I whispered as I crossed the short distance between us. He caught me as I launched myself into his arms, laughing right before our mouths crashed into a passionate kiss.
“I want you,” I murmured against his mouth. “Now.”
“But you’re . . .”
“Fine. I’m fine. Blake, please make love to me. Right here. Right now. Please.”
“You said you were hungry,” he said, looking straight into my eyes with a concerned expression.
“The only thing I want right now is you inside me.”
MORGAN PLACED HER hands on my chest, a look on her face I had never seen. My heart slammed against my chest as she reached down and pulled my T-shirt over my head. She tossed it to the side and smiled before placing a kiss on my chest.
Fucking hell. What is it about this woman?
She had the power to bring me to my knees. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for her.
When her hands went to my jeans, I grabbed them.
“Let me, please.”
I closed my eyes and dropped her hands, letting her unbutton my pants and push them down. I held my breath as she took me in her hand and slowly stroked my cock.
My breathing increased, and I somehow managed to get her name off my lips.
“Morgan, baby, I—”
Then she took me in her mouth, and my entire body jerked.
“Oh fuck. That feels so good.”
She moaned, and it vibrated through my dick and shot through my entire body, hitting every single nerve ending.
When I couldn’t take it anymore, I reached down and lifted her up, kicking my jeans off and away from me.
The way she looked at me told me she liked having control, and hell if I didn’t like her having it.
I lifted her T-shirt and pulled it off. She didn’t wait for me to remove her sweats; she did it herself. Then she laid back on the floor, right next to the Christmas tree I had put up for her.
Lowering my body over hers, I took one of her nipples into my mouth while my one hand went between her legs. She was so wet and ready it nearly made me dizzy pushing my finger into her.
“Yes. Blake, yes.”
“God, you drive me wild, Morgan. I can’t control myself around you. I want you so much. There isn’t anything I would deny you, Morgan.”
The words were out of my mouth before I could take them back. Hell, I didn’t want to take them back. I needed her to know how much I cared for her.
If I were honest with myself, I would admit I was falling head over heels in love with her.
Her leg hooked over mine.
“I need you inside me.”
Moving over her body, I positioned myself and slowly pushed in. Then she went rigid.
“Wait.”
That one word had my entire body freezing.
“Wait. Blake, wait. My birth control. I haven’t taken my pills.”
“I’ve been giving them to you. That first night you were so out of it and I called my dad, he saw your pills and told me to make sure you took them. I had no idea what they were. He had to explain.”
Her face went a shade of red I’d never seen.
“Your father saw my birth control pills and told you that?”
He laughed. “He’s a doctor, Morgan. I’ll bet he was probably happy to see them.”
She groaned. “How embarrassing.”
Pushing deeper into her, I kissed along her neck. “I want you to know I had to hear a lecture about how important it was I wore condoms. We’re playing with fire, Morgan. Not using them.”
Her fingers moved over my back lightly. “I love feeling you bare inside me. I love when you come inside me, but if you want to pull out, you can.”
I closed my eyes and moved painfully slow. In. Out. God, it took everything I had not to lose control.
My lips brushed over hers. “I want to come inside you. Always. You’re mine, Morgan. No one else can have what is mine.”
Her eyes sparkled. “I don’t want anyone else. Ever.”
“Good,” I whispered, kissing her softly. With one hand, I cupped the side of her face, my thumb stroking softly over her beautiful face. Then I let go of all my fears and worries. I told her how I felt.
“I love you, Morgan.”
Her chin trembled for the briefest of moments. When a tear made a path down the side of her face, I brushed it away with the pad of my thumb.
It felt like an eternity before she finally said something.
“I love you too.”
Smiling, I crashed my mouth to hers and made the sweetest of love to her. We came together in the most beautiful experience I had ever had with a woman in my entire life.
Morgan Barrett was it for me. The only woman I would ever love for the rest of my life.
And I was never letting her go.
The buzz on my desk made me jump. With a quick glance down, I saw it was Nash.
“Hello?”
“Are you free now? I’m downstairs in the hotel lobby.”
I stood. “I’m on my way down. Meet you in the Starbucks.”
“Okay.”
The line went dead as I grabbed my keys and headed out of my office. Grace, my assistant, looked up at me.
“Leaving for lunch?” she asked.
“No. Yes. No. I’ll be back in thirty minutes. I’m meeting someone downstairs.”
She nodded. I was behind with a project my boss wanted since I had taken Thursday and Friday off to be with Morgan. This morning I’d arrived to find him sitting in my office at my desk.
Asshole.
It still pissed me off he had let himself in. I would have been off today if Morgan hadn’t insisted she was well enough to go to work this morning. And she’d proven it at three in the morning, crawling on top of me and riding me until I came so fucking hard I saw stars.
“No one is to go into my office.”
Her cheeks blushed. It was Grace who had let Mr. Phillips in this morning.
Once I was in the elevator, I pulled up my text messages from Morgan. The last one said she had one more patient. A new patient. I knew she would most likely not be finished until after lunch, but I sent her a text anyway.
Me: I can’t stop thinking about you. About last night. About the last few days. Will you come over to my place and stay the night?
I pushed one hand through my hair as I used the other one to shove my phone into my pocket.
I needed to see her. Feel her against my body. It was driving me insane. All of it. The way I felt about her. The need to protect her, figure out how to make both of us let go of the past and focus on the future. On us. The hardest thing right now was trying to figure out a way to tell her about the baby and the night my mother died.
“Shit.” I mumbled as the elevator doors opened. I walked out and across the lobby to the Starbucks. Nash was sitting at a table, staring out over Congress Avenue. He wasn’t people watching. He was lost in thought.
“Hey,” I said, slipping into a chair.
He turned, and gave me a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Sliding the coffee to me, he let out a breath.
“You’ve got to explain this, Nash, because I cannot wrap my head around why you didn’t tell Morgan about the baby.”
His face went pale, and he looked down at the table.
“I told her I loved her last night.”
Nash’s head jerked up, and he pulled his brows in tight. “Why would you do that?”
I let out a harsh laugh. “Because I do love her.”
“You love her? You know after a few weeks? Hell, two months ago you were chasing skirts, and now you say you love my sister.”
Anger pulsed through my veins. “You don’t fucking know what I was doing two months ago. Or four months or, hell, four years ago. I already told you, I think I fell in love with her the first time I met her.”
He stared at me before exhaling. I could
tell he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t. I could only imagine the guilt he, himself, was dealing with by withholding the truth about Mike’s baby.
“I’m sorry. It’s just—she’s my sister, and I care about her.”
“And I care about her too. That’s why I can’t keep this from her, Nash. I vowed to her we wouldn’t keep things from each other. I need you to give me a damn good reason you didn’t tell her.”
Nash turned and looked out the window. He shook his head and closed his eyes. What he said next caught me totally by surprise.
LISA PRICE, A new patient of mine, sat in front of a canvas and moved her brush with ease. She wasn’t the best of painters, but she was trying. As she painted, I sat off to the side, working on the painting of Blake in the gazebo. Most of the patients took a few sessions before they opened up to me. Hell, before they even uttered one word, but Lisa soon set her brush down and stared out the large picture window. I had a bird feeder outside the studio window, and the patients seemed to be calmed by the birds and their singing.
Following her gaze, I smiled at the blue jay sitting on the very top of the feeder. He swooped down and got a piece of corn that was on the ground. I loved birds, and I might have been slightly obsessed with feeders, but my patients enjoyed watching them, too, and many ended up painting the birds. It was a win-win for me.
Picking up where I left off on the painting, I waited patiently while I worked. Then out of the blue, Lisa started to talk.
“I loved being his wife.”
Stopping what I was doing, I quietly set my brush down. When she’d made the initial appointment, she had told me she hadn’t served in the military, but that her husband had served. She had gotten my name from a friend whose husband was a current patient of mine. She opted not to give me the name of the referral, and I had thought that was strange, but I let it go.
“How long have you been married?”
“It would have been ten years this July. He died six years ago.”
“I’m so sorry, Lisa.”
She smiled and shrugged. “I have these dreams he’s standing over my bed with this big smile on his face. I sit up and ask if he’s come back, and before he answers, he looks to the right and sees another man in my bed. Then he turns and walks away from me.”
“Did you remarry?”
This time she turned and looked at me. “No. When he died, it was hard on me. I was lost and confused.” She slowly shook her head and wiped a tear away. “I was so lonely. His army buddies would come and check up on me. I don’t think I could have made it through without them. We had been trying to have a baby.”
I gave her a soft smile and nodded to keep her talking. She had trailed off and stared out the window.
“Shortly after my husband died, something happened between me and his best friend. Something sexual. One night after everyone had left. Neither of us wanted to stop it, so we didn’t.”
Oh dear.
“Were you both having the affair before he passed away?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“And you feel guilty that you moved on? That’s a normal emotion to experience, Lisa.”
She wiped a tear away and sighed. “I feel tormented for a few different reasons. One of them was sleeping with my husband’s best friend. Another was knowing that best friend wasn’t single.”
“Was he married?”
“No,” she softly said. “When it first happened, we decided it could never happen again. He was tormented by his own demons. He felt responsible for my husband’s death. Then with what happened between us, he felt so guilty he ended up asking his girlfriend to marry him. I know he loved her. I know he did, but he was so lost. With me he said he found he could be . . . himself.”
I had picked up my pad of paper and made notes. “And did it happen again between the two of you?”
“Yes. We tried so hard to stop. You have to know.”
Smiling, I tilted my head. “Lisa, I’m not here to judge you.”
Her chin trembled as she went on. This poor girl. I was hoping she wasn’t still carrying on the affair with this man. For the sake of all parties involved.
“It was like we both felt closer to my husband when we were together, as crazy as that sounds. He didn’t live in the same town as me, so he didn’t come to visit often. When he did, we enjoyed each other’s company. Sometimes it led to sex, and sometimes it just led to hours of talking. Then I got pregnant.”
My eyes jerked up to meet hers. Her expression concerned me, but I couldn’t put my finger on the reason.
“He came to visit me after he got out of the army. Told me he had to end things with me. He owed it to his fiancée to give her a hundred percent of himself. They had dated since high school.”
A strange rush of dread raced across my body, and I felt myself holding my breath as I waited for her to continue.
“When I told him about the baby, I was ready for him to freak out. But he didn’t. He told me he was confused. He loved me, but he loved her. I told him I couldn’t be his mistress. I needed a father for our baby. I gave him an ultimatum. I . . . I forced him to pick. Me and the baby or her.”
She covered her mouth and cried.
“It’s okay, take your time. If you need to take a break, we can.” I wasn’t sure which of us needed the break more.
With a shake of her head, she pulled in a deep breath. “No, I need to do this. He sat down on the sofa and cried. It was the first time I had ever seen this man cry, and I caused it. It nearly destroyed me. He already suffered so much, having nightmares about a mission gone wrong, about watching my husband die. And I’d only added to his misery.”
My pencil stopped writing, and I stared at the notes in my lap. My heart beat faster. Harder.
“Then he stopped crying and stood, like he was fine. He smiled and told me he would take care of everything. I thought he was okay. I dared to believe maybe we could be happy together—that he had picked me over her. I felt guilty for feeling that way, but I knew I gave him something she couldn’t. I filled a space in his soul, and I was making him a father. He loved her, but he wasn’t in love with her.”
I did not understand why I asked the next question, but I heard it coming out of my mouth and couldn’t stop it.
“Did you get pregnant on purpose to force his hand?”
“No. He visited two months before, and things got a little . . . different in the bedroom. It was more passionate. We hadn’t had sex the last few times he’d visited, and we both were hungry for each other. We didn’t use protection, and we stayed in bed together for hours making up for lost time.”
I stared at her. The truth pushed at the back of my mind, but I refused to let it in.
“Truth is, he filled the spot Lance had left.”
The room instantly felt cold as that name settled between us.
Lance. Mike’s best friend from the army.
Her gaze met mine. “I didn’t know he would do it. He left and said he would fix everything. I thought he meant he would tell her the truth, then he would come back. I found out three days later he’d killed himself.”
I gasped and stood, taking a few steps back and covering my mouth with my hand.
“I didn’t know he would kill himself, Morgan. I thought he would tell you the truth. Mike told me he would tell you the truth.”
With every ounce of energy I had, I willed for the room not to go black. I forced air into my lungs, and I closed my eyes.
Mike. How could you do this?
“I DIDN’T TELL her because Mike asked me not to.”
I dropped back in my chair, stunned into silence. “What? You fucking knew before he died? You knew and didn’t tell Morgan?”
Nash rubbed his hand over his face. “No! Just give me a second, will you? Let me explain.”
Motioning with my hand, I said, “Please do. I’m really interested in the excuse you and Butch came up with.”
With a sigh, Nash looked up at me. “Af
ter Mike killed himself, you can imagine how upset Morgan was. She blamed herself for not being able to see how bad things were with him. She blamed herself for not being good enough for him, for not loving him enough. Morgan was beside herself.”
“I know all of this. She’s told me.”
Nash pulled his brows in tight, then relaxed his face. “She talks to you about Mike?”
“She has some, yes.”
He reached for the back of his neck and rubbed it. “Morgan told me what was in the note. Mike told her he couldn’t live with the guilt anymore. Naturally Morgan thought he meant about Lance. But when she kept reading and found out he had cheated on her, she thought he was saying it to make her angry at him. Take the sting away of him killing himself. Butch and I agreed to look into it. It didn’t take us long to find out through Mike’s credit cards that he’d been going up to Fort Bragg fairly often. You wouldn’t really think twice about it because he always told Morgan he was going to visit his army brothers. Well, Lance’s wife still lived in North Carolina. He was visiting his army brothers, and they would go visit Lance’s wife, Lynn. But Mike would go back and stay a few extra days with her.”
“How do you know this?”
“Butch asked one of the guys about Mike’s last trip. Butch thought Mike had stayed a week, but the buddy said Mike never stayed more than a couple days with the guys. He hinted that he was with Lynn the rest of the time, and we knew his plane tickets were always for weeklong trips. That meant he was staying with Lynn. After the funeral, when everything calmed down, I went through my mail, and there was a letter addressed to me from Mike. He had mailed it the day he died. He confessed to everything: his affair, the baby. He said he’d come back to Texas to break things off with Morgan but couldn’t do it. He said the guilt of letting his best friend die, sleeping with Lynn, and hurting Morgan was eating him alive, and he couldn’t take it anymore. He asked me to not tell Morgan about the baby. He begged me. Said it would devastate her if she knew the full truth of his deception. I took the letter to Butch, and we decided to honor his wish.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said, scrubbing my hands down my face. “You’ve seen how his death had affected her. You didn’t think to tell her? So she’d know it wasn’t her fault?”
Adore Me ~ Kelly Elliott Page 15