It’s like I’ve forgotten I don’t like to be touched. Because I love to be touched by her. I’m an absolute goner where Morgan is concerned. How has she changed me in just a few days?
I’m nowhere near good enough, clean enough, or just plain enough to earn her, but I decide I’ll take what she’s willing to give me. Starting with her mouth on my torso, her taking my length onto her tongue…I palm her head as my abs clench, pleasure shooting through my limbs. I’m seconds away from losing my mind when I haul her up and flatten her on the bed. Over her, I smile and she grins up at me, and I swear I want to freeze this moment for the rest of time.
This perfect, precious moment where there is only us and the pain of my past has receded. It’s distant, blurry. I kiss her, leaving her lips only for the time it takes to roll on a condom. Then I am over her again and her arms wrap around my neck. Her eyes on mine. I slide home.
And that’s when it hits me.
I’m home.
I never thought of home as being a safe and comfortable and loving place, but Morgan is all of those things. I bury myself in her body and lose my senses in her soft gasps. She touches me everywhere, yet I feel as if I can’t get enough. I take her where she needs to go and she brings me to the ultimate point of release. Spent, sweaty, I collapse over her, sharing the same air and so overcome by how close I feel to her.
Before I think about it, I open my mouth, and “I love you” comes out.
Those three words are a wheeze of air at best, but she heard me. I’m still on top of her, holding my weight on my arms, my fingers nested in her hair. Her hands grip my arms and she opens her mouth. I watch and wait, my heart thundering, my mind spinning. I want to hear her say it back. It’s unfair to her in every way, but I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything.
Her beautiful lips part. “Tucker…” she starts.
I’ve gone numb with anticipation, but she doesn’t say more. She pulls my face to hers and kisses me while I shut out every thought in my head about how disappointed I am that she doesn’t love me.
It doesn’t matter. She gave me her body, and for a guy like me, that precious, unreturnable gift should be enough. Hell, it was too much. But she was here, willing and open and just…here. Who else would have stayed? No one.
I disconnect from her and hold her close, my forehead resting on hers. She doesn’t have to love me, but I love her.
Loving Morgan is the biggest revelation of my life.
Chapter 16
Home Sweet Home
Morgan
It’s 3 a.m. or thereabouts when Tucker convinces me to get up. I know why he wants to leave now rather than wait. How much longer can we hide now that my father knows the truth?
I lied to Tucker, and I feel horrible about it. I told my dad the truth. I always tell him the truth. I explained that I didn’t go voluntarily with Tucker—at first. I told my dad that Tucker was desperate, afraid, and saw me as means to an end. That Tucker’s tactics were less about him wanting to harm me and more about him wanting to scare me into complying. I was his only hope. I still am.
My father said he would prosecute Tucker and that I was a victim. He said, “I swear if you’re hurt, Morgan, I will spend my life and fortune making sure Tucker Noscalo pays for what he’s done to you.”
I interrupted to tell him I wasn’t hurt. I was fine. Then he started behaving like any intelligent, connected lawyer whose daughter was taken against her will by an ex-convict: He freaked out.
“I’m calling the police right now,” he said and I heard a dial tone hum from the speakerphone in his home office.
“No!” I shouted, frantic. “You can’t! Tucker’s father—”
“Needs to know where his son is and what he’s capable of. Morgan, how could you have let him brainwash you like this?” He started dialing and I panicked, blurting out Tucker’s entire story. I didn’t want to rush through it indelicately, but my father left me no choice. I told him about Tucker’s abuse, Jeremy’s molestation, and their father’s involvement. I told him about their mother being kept in the dark because of how heartsick she’d been over Jeremy’s suicide. It was the wrong way to share—too fast, too messy.
I was able to get through to my dad before he punched the last digit for the Baybrook Police Department into the phone. I heard the telltale click of him turning off the speakerphone, and then he’d said, “Swear you’re okay.”
“I swear,” I told him, followed by the promise that I’d be home in a few hours. He argued I come home “now,” but I stood my ground and told him, “Soon.”
I need to get ahold of that videotape and show my father. If I don’t, there isn’t any hope of him believing me. He thinks I’m a victim and not thinking clearly. He has no idea how deep in with Tucker I’ve fallen.
I spared him the details of Tucker and me getting physical. I figure if there is one thing that sends my dad right off a cliff, it’ll be that I had sex with my kidnapper. I may always tell my father the truth, but I also know to omit the details of my sex life.
My dad would never understand how beautiful it was to hear I love you roll off Tucker’s tongue. How could I convey how amazing it felt to have Tucker trust me, lie next to me, touch me when there was a time he didn’t want to touch or be touched? He’s come so far. And I brought him to this point. Not only did he allow me to touch him, but he learned what love was and he loves me.
I didn’t say it back. I’m not sure I can trust what I’m feeling. Despite my assurances to my father that I’m fine, I’m not sure that I am. What if, in a day or a week, I see things from a new perspective? After seeing things so unclearly with Drew and me, I wonder if I’m really good at ignoring the signs others see clearly.
Tucker drops his duffel and a plastic bag filled with food from the fridge into the trunk. “Leaving food to rot here wouldn’t be right.” Thoughtful, my kidnapper.
I stare at the contents of the trunk until he slams the lid. It was where I was once curled into a ball, tied up and praying it wasn’t my last night on earth. That night seems like a lifetime ago. That man, like someone else entirely. I climb into the car, resisting the urge to joke about how much better the view is from the front seat, and buckle my seatbelt. He pulls away from the hideaway we called home for a few precious days.
The moonlight shines like a spotlight on the road in front of us, the trees dark and looming overhead. Despite the inky landscape, the night is beautiful. Maybe it’s my perspective. Darkness can be scary, but it can also be intriguing. After being part of it, knowing it intimately…well, I don’t find it scary at all.
I yawn and cover my mouth. I didn’t get much sleep, and trying to keep my eyes open proves to be a challenge.
“Catnap, Angel.” Tucker slides a warm hand onto my knee. I love the feel of his palm on my bare skin. Even more when he slides his fingertips along the inside of my thigh.
“Sure you can find my house?” I smile.
“I know where you live.” He winks at me in the dim interior of the car.
“Stalker.”
He laughs.
“Maybe you can make a quick stop by your father’s house…”
“We talked about this.” His smile is gone. His jaw set.
“I want to get the tape—before you take me home.” My dad needs to see it or else he’ll call the cops, and then where will we be? I don’t know where Tucker is staying, but I worry the authorities will find him. I worry more what they’ll do to him when they do.
“No.” His tone is final. I blow out a deep breath of resignation. “I don’t want you anywhere near my father’s house,” he explains, “and I don’t want you anywhere remotely close to putting yourself in danger.”
“Well, you can’t meet with my father until you have it.” I cross my arms, frustrated that he won’t just do what I suggest. I want this all to be over as quickly and painlessly as possible.
He glances at me, then back to the road. I admire his chiseled face getting the strobe treatment a
s we pass beneath the occasional streetlamp. “Tomorrow, then.”
I look out the window. I can’t tell him I lied to him. My father wasn’t waiting eagerly to defend him, but would most likely have Tucker arrested the second he laid eyes on him. But with the tape, we can convince my dad. It will work.
It has to work.
I can’t lose Tucker to his maniacal father—who knew what more the man was capable of? I shudder to think.
I close my eyes, but I don’t sleep. Tucker must think that I do, because he is silent until we get to Baybrook. The moment we cross Main Street, I feel the warmth of his palm on my leg again.
“Almost there, Angel.”
“Why do you call me that?” He never explained and I’m curious.
But he doesn’t explain now, either. He points us in the direction of the “nicer” end of town. Toward my neighborhood.
“You never told me how you know where I live.”
“We don’t live that far from each other.” He tilts an eyebrow. “It’s not like we rode the same bus.”
I blush. He’s right. I didn’t ride the bus. My stepmother drove me to school every day until I was able to drive. Julia took over where my mom left off—and when my mom left Baybrook, she left for good. Julia, though…Julia was a great mom. I’ve never said aloud she was a better mom, but if I did, I wouldn’t be lying.
“Well…I don’t know where you live,” I say.
He stays quiet for the length of a traffic light and a left-hand turn, and I’m pretty sure he’s not going to tell me. But then he mutters, “Mulberry. An unassuming house on the back corner of the street.” When I think about what happened in that house, I have to guard my stomach against emptying itself against my wishes. I can’t think about the horrors that went on only two blocks away.
“Is it a big, gauche new-build? Or a stately older place like mine?”
“Stately. Definitely older. Thick trees, brick house.” His voice goes quieter, and since he seems sad I stop talking about it, even though I want to know more. I want to know everything and, at the same time, want to un-know much of it.
The duality is strange.
“I don’t want you to pull in the driveway.”
“Morgan.”
I don’t want my dad to see you yet. I want us to have the tape and see you and I want it to be daylight, when things make sense.”
“Things don’t make sense right now?” he asks, but I sense he’s asking something else. Like whether we make sense. Whether we will in the future.
“You know what I mean,” I murmur. He turns on the street that crosses mine and comes to a stop at the end of the block.
“I can drop you here,” he says, then eyes my bare feet. “If you’re okay to walk.”
“I’m okay.” A walk barefoot up a tidy sidewalk is bearable.
“Tomorrow morning,” he confirms. “Give me your father’s number and I’ll ask him to meet up.”
But I don’t want to give him my father’s number. I don’t want him to talk to my dad unless I’m there. “Just come by. I think that would be better.” Because I’ll be present.
“Morgan, I don’t want you involved.”
“I am involved.” He starts to shake his head, but I interrupt with “Eight o’clock. That gives my father enough time to wake up and have his coffee.” It also gives me enough time to convince him to hear Tucker out before he has him charged with kidnapping.
“Eight,” Tucker finally agrees. I’m relieved he doesn’t argue. “I’ll be at your front door. Videotape in hand.”
His face is shadowed by a behemoth of a house at the corner of my street. I lean into the dark space between us and brush his lips with mine.
“It’ll be fine,” I say, the mantra working. I’m actually starting to believe it.
“I love you,” he blurts out. “No matter what happens, I love you, Morgan. I meant everything I said at the cabin.”
I smile over at him, three words I can’t say hovering in my throat. I try to push them out but can’t. For the same reason I couldn’t earlier. My father’s sure and strong voice, determined to convince me I’ve been brainwashed, has made me doubt myself. I can’t promise Tucker I love him and then take it back. So until I’m one hundred percent sure, I refuse to say anything.
“Thank you,” I whisper. Weak, but I have nothing more to give yet. Not until I’m away from him for a while. I have to know if I can trust my heart this time.
Really know.
I climb out of the car, taking one last look over my shoulder before I start up the sidewalk to my house. My neighbors’ porch lights glow. All the houses’ windows are dark except for mine. It looks like every light downstairs is burning. As I get closer, I spot my father pacing in front of the windows the way he does when he’s nervous, his phone pressed to his ear.
I can only hope he hasn’t called the police.
I turn to look down the block where Tucker is idling, parking lights on, watching until I get to safety. I half expect to see police cars swarm him at any moment. I ready myself for the high-pitched wail of sirens. Instead there’s only the distant bark of a dog.
At the front porch, I catch my father’s attention when he’s on another pass by the window. His eyes go wide a second before his face crumples in an expression I’ve never seen before. A moment later the door is thrown open and he’s launching himself at me, pulling me to him, and holding me tight.
“Mo,” he says, his nickname for me. “My God.” His voice is strangled with emotion. I hug him back, tears flooding my eyes. I missed him so much. “Thank God you’re okay.”
After another lingering moment, he lets me go and swipes my hair from my face. His smile shakes then fades as he takes in my appearance. Tucker and I may have showered, but there wasn’t much in way of hair products or makeup. I know I’m a mess. And while Tucker did attempt to clean my white clothes, they are still stained with dirt.
“Morgan!” Julia rushes to me next, hugs me quickly, then takes me by the shoulders and steers me into the house. “Oh, thank God you’re okay. You’re…you are okay, right?” she asks.
I nod. “I’m okay.”
All things being relative, it’s the truth.
“Are you hungry?” she asks, steering me into the house while my dad follows. “Can I make you something? Eggs? I know they’re your favorite.”
The door shuts behind me and my dad says, “Let her make you eggs, Mo. She’s been worried sick.” I can see the evidence of worry on her face. Julia’s eyes are red and swollen like she’s been crying. “You can eat and shower and get some sleep.”
“We’ll figure out what to do about everything in the morning,” Julia interjects. She looks tired. I realize she’s cut her trip short to come home, which is my fault. Guilt is a sinking stone in the pit of my stomach. “Your father and I have so many questions, but we don’t want to burden you tonight.”
They exchange a glance that tells me this is her idea. My dad would gladly stay up another few hours and grill me. I’m grateful she’s convinced him otherwise. I don’t want to do a postmortem on my week. I’m not sure I have it sorted in my head yet.
“Eggs are fine.” I call up a tired smile because Julia deserves one.
My father looks out the window and frowns. “How did you get home?”
“Cab,” I lie. “I walked the rest of the way so I could think. Tucker is meeting with you tomorrow at noon.” Another lie. I don’t want my dad to have cops ready and waiting at eight a.m. If Tucker and I have any prayer of convincing my father, it’s best we catch him when he’s a little off guard.
“You can’t have him arrested, Daddy,” I say, making sure to get in just one preemptive strike. “Not until you see the proof.”
“If there’s proof,” he says between clenched teeth. “If he hurt you. If he…touched you.” He can barely get the words out, and I’m too ashamed to look at him for fear he’ll see the truth.
Tucker did touch me. I wanted him to touch me. I lon
ged, begged, to touch him. We connected in the most unlikely way….
But my dad would never understand.
“Aaron, enough,” Julia reprimands gently.
Hands on his hips, he gives her a look that is full of worry and anger in equal parts. She soothes with a hand on his arm and his shoulders relax some. They’re so good together.
“Go upstairs, honey,” Julia tells me. “Run a bubble bath and I’ll make your eggs.”
I nod and my dad comes over and presses a kiss to my forehead. It’s comfortable and familiar. “Get some rest, sweetheart. We’ll sort this out in the morning. I’ll get you whatever help you need to get through this.”
Counseling, his tone suggests.
I head upstairs, my sandals and sliced Kate Spade wristlet in hand. I’m weary and sore in places that make me recall Tucker between my legs. His powerful thrusts and solid chest…even now, heat pools in my belly and lower at the memory of being with him. And he loves me.
Me.
It’s humbling.
Maybe after I sleep a few hours, I’ll wake knowing if I love him or not. I just need to be in my own bed, surrounded by my own things. I need time away from Tucker to know how I truly feel. If I truly love him or if my father is right, and I’m a victim of some sort of brainwashing.
A tiny voice in the back of my head whispers that I already know how I feel about Tucker. My body is flushed and I tingle when I think of him.
You love him.
Of course I do.
I shut the door and start my bath, drizzling lavender-scented oil and dumping a scoop of sea salts into the filling tub. As I watch the colored salt turn the water a beautiful turquoise blue, I figure there is a good chance I’ll fall asleep in the tub. I crank the hot water down to just lukewarm so I’m not tempted to sit in there too long. But I have to bathe. I won’t sleep with grit under my nails or keyed up like I am.
In the mirror, I face my reflection. As I suspected, I look rougher than I’m accustomed to. And yet…there is strength in my eyes. In my posture. I no longer look like the dejected, rejected girl who left Pinky’s angry with Drew and Shayna. I look like a woman who has what she wants. A woman who asked for, then took, what she wanted. I survived a blow, and I don’t mean Tucker.
Forgotten Promises (Lost Boys #1) Page 15