“Don’t move,” Morgan ordered, pushing her shoulders down firmly and holding her in place with trembling hands.
“Why?” Thea asked, a little hurt by his tone and his actions. There was alarm in her face as her eyes opened fully to his. Her first thought was that she was doing something wrong.
“Honey, if you keep moving, it’s going to be over too quickly. I’m trying like hell to make this work for both of us. Let me have control, Thea,” Morgan coaxed.
Humbled by his honesty, she bit her lip so she wouldn’t sob with frustration or gratitude.
“You have no idea what you’re asking of me,” Thea told him, gritting her teeth while she fought to keep still as Morgan rocked again. And again. And again harder.
When Morgan had finally completed the deed in a thorough way, and Thea felt him buried deeply within her, another keening moan escaped as mother nature provided a second peak to show Thea what could be.
“Morgan, I don’t know if I can do what you want much longer,” Thea warned, her breath a sob of both torture and profound recognition of his ownership of her body in that moment.
Holding himself still inside her depths, Morgan counted to ten, and then to twenty for good measure.
“No turning back now,” he told her finally, his voice steady in her ear.
Thea arched up into his voice until his lips streaked across her cheek to her mouth where he held her hovering on the edge of mindlessness as he kissed her.
Morgan slid out half-way, and then plunged all the way home hard to prove the point he wanted to make to both of them.
“See,” he said roughly, holding her straining body as still as he could. “Virgin no more. Hot, wild woman instead.”
“Morgan,” she called. “I can’t wait any longer.”
“One more minute,” he pleaded, holding her on the shimmering edge as he felt her tight as fist around him and pulling him in as deep as he could go. “Okay. Okay. I can’t wait either.”
Then Morgan stopped holding back. He just plunged into her over and over as Thea called his name out over and over. Her legs fought his and then wrapped around him—first in demand, and then in surrender.
Five minutes was all it took after that point for Morgan to reach climax himself.
It was without question the best five minutes of his life.
Until his heart stopped beating, he would never forget how it felt to make Thea Carmichael his. She had shimmered around his every thrust with an extended orgasm silkier than the gown and robe she had worn tonight.
When Thea was at last silent, and deathly still beneath him, Morgan made himself stop kissing her and lay down to cover her body fully with his. It was another action new to him.
He had never wanted to linger inside a woman before.
Still breathing hard from the exertion, Morgan raised his head and saw Thea was completely pink, coated with sweat, and looked drunk as a hell. Looking at her, he was suddenly dizzy with a need for Thea not the least bit sated by what they had just done.
Sexual bliss wasn’t going to be enough, Morgan realized, fighting not to be shocked. He definitely wanted exclusive rights to this woman, only this woman. Since it was a damn scary feeling, Morgan pushed it away ruthlessly, telling himself it was just because it was their first time together.
“You are without doubt the sexiest woman I have ever known, Thea Carmichael,” Morgan told her sincerely.
“And you are a very talented man in bed, Morgan Reed,” Thea told him. “You were definitely worth the ten-year wait.”
Morgan thought his satisfied grin was probably adding all kinds of new wrinkles to his face.
“Thanks for the compliment, but I was thinking we probably need a second time tonight to be completely sure your virginity is all gone. How about an hour from now? Another ten years seems an awfully long time to wait for round two,” he teased.
“Okay,” Thea said, reasonably. “You deserve another chance if you want one. My orgasm was like a twenty on a scale of ten. I know I was worried about how it would go, but what we did was really, really good for me.”
Morgan smiled and rolled off her completely. “Actually, what we did was really torturous. In the end, I lasted five minutes. Trust me, Thea. You haven’t seen good yet.”
Thea groaned and rolled to her side into a fetal position. “You’re leaving in four months. I don’t want to like you or get used to having you. Don’t be better than this.”
Morgan laughed loudly at her confession and her subsequent pleading. The woman held nothing back in bed. She was both vulnerable and demanding. Her body was nice, but it was the whole package that hooked him.
He’d had her, but he still wanted her just as much as if he hadn’t. If Morgan had been twenty-five, he knew he’d have already been back inside her, taking her high and hard until she screamed in shock with an orgasm she didn’t know was possible. Hell, at forty-four, he wasn’t far from being ready to do it now just from thinking about giving one like that to her.
Morgan looked at Thea’s exhausted body, her eyes were closed, her hair disheveled, and her legs now spread in relaxation as she had rolled to her back trying to politely listen to him.
Oh yeah, he still wanted her. It was all he could do not to go after her with teeth and tongue. If tonight hadn’t been the first time for her in ten years, nothing short of death would have stopped him.
“Okay look, I don’t want to cause you any long-term problems, Thea. I’ll make sure to be really lousy in bed during the last couple of days before I have to leave. After that, you’ll be glad to see me go,” Morgan teased.
“Well, okay. I would appreciate that,” Thea teased back.
Then she got caught off-guard by a vicious yawn, making Morgan laugh again. She rolled back to her side, laughing at herself.
Morgan pulled covers up around Thea, who fell asleep the instant she stopped talking. No encore tonight, he thought, kissing her cheek. The main event had taken too long and had been way too mentally and emotionally charged.
Next time they were together—and Morgan believed they were going to be together until he was gone—he was going to let Thea cut loose on him with the passion that he had forced her to restrain from expressing tonight. Now that the first time was over, he wanted badly to know the full extent of what she would do. If their lovemaking ended too soon, he’d just happily start over again. He’d learned a lot about what turned Thea on tonight and was thrilled at the thought of using the knowledge again.
Morgan went to the bathroom, and then came back to slide into bed beside Thea, spooning around her lovely rear as she backed into the heat of him. He rubbed a possessive hand from Thea’s hip to mid-thigh and back to her waist to wrap an arm around her to keep her close. No one’s body had ever seemed to offer as much comfort to him as hers did.
Even his leg wasn’t bothering him, despite what they had done. If it hurt tomorrow, he’d just smile knowing the reason for it.
It wasn’t long before a smiling, proud-as-hell Morgan followed a contented Thea into sleep.
Chapter 9
When Morgan woke for the third time in four hours, it was to the sound of the shower shutting off. For a moment, he wondered where he was. Then when a fully dressed Thea emerged from the bathroom smelling of citrus, things came back in a rush.
It was the morning after the most astounding night of his entire life.
She walked slowly to the bed, and Morgan scooted to give her a little more room to sit beside him. Her disheveled hair was now tamed and pinned up with a clip. The earrings she had on were sedate hoops. In a pink T-shirt and jeans, Thea looked every bit as innocent as the woman Morgan had taken an hour and half to seduce the night before.
But virgin? No, definitely not. Althea Carmichael was the most experienced and generous woman he’d ever known.
The woman now sitting quietly beside him had woken him up twice since three o’clock in the morning. And what the woman had done to him with her mouth was illegal in many st
ates. He distinctively remembered begging her to stop and her laughing as she kept right on doing what she pleased.
Not that he hadn’t done his best to even the score the second time he had awakened, which had been somewhere around four-thirty or five. Giving in to the need to make sure she remembered him, he had done all that he’d imagined doing, with every muscle he had rebelling in protest as he pounded ruthlessly into her. His leg was still aching from the effort, but her scream at the end had been worth every second of it.
The tears of wonder he’d kissed away afterward had sealed her place in his heart.
Now he lifted a hand to her face in wonder.
“I had the craziest dream last night,” Morgan told the quiet, fully dressed version of her. “I dreamed you were a virgin and it took like an hour and half just to have sex with you the first time. What do you think that was all about?”
Thea laughed and felt a blush creeping up her neck to her face.
“You know how dreams are,” she teased.
“Tell me how the hell you can blush after what you did to me?” Morgan asked her. “I’ll be lucky to walk today.”
“Stop teasing. You’re only making it worse,” Thea told him, knowing her face was probably beet-red by now. “I’m—I must be making up for lost time.”
Morgan raised himself up in bed and dived straight into her mouth with one hand behind her head to hold himself upright. His tongue stroking hers was way too inspiring. How could he possible want this woman so badly again already?
“Lucky me. You are a hell of a woman, Thea,” Morgan said, when he made himself let her go.
Thea opened her eyes and sighed. “I have errands to do and people to see before going to the restaurant. I hate to leave, but. . .” She stopped when Morgan put a finger over her lips.
“You have work. I get that. I have a project at Dad’s I’m trying to finish and physical therapy at one, providing I can walk by then. Why don’t I swing by tonight and keep you company while you take care of the dinner crowd?” Morgan suggested.
“That works for me,” Thea said softly, feeling the firm finger over her lips change to a caressing one. She grabbed his hand and put a hot kiss in his palm.
“Thea, you still haven’t seen how good I can be yet,” Morgan said, laughing and lying back down as she got up. He was going to grab another hour of rest if he could. After last night, he was very aware of the fact he was still healing.
“Well, let me know when we’ve hit your idea of good. You hit mine on the first try,” Thea said, laughing as she practically ran out the door to keep from climbing back into the bed with Morgan Reed.
*** *** ***
The next couple of weeks fell into a comfortable pattern of Morgan working mornings at his father’s house on projects and spending the afternoon and evenings with Thea. Most nights he stayed over at her place, but he made time for lunch with his father even if it was just at the restaurant.
It was several days into the pattern before Morgan realized that he’d forgotten that he still hadn’t solved the mystery of where his father’s money was going. He’d been at Thea’s house often enough now that he could have easily looked at her computer, which resided on a desk in the spare bedroom she used as an office. There were also a couple of file cabinets and a desk with ledgers stacked on the side of it. None of it seemed to be secure, and the office door was never closed.
Any number of times he had been left alone in the house and could have done a discreet search to rule her out completely, but it had taken him several days before he could bring himself to do so. When Morgan finally did make himself search through the office and other rooms of the house, he still never found even a single concerning thing in Thea’s business or personal accounts that alarmed him or prompted him to dig further.
It relieved him greatly to have that necessary evil put behind him. Morgan had developed a sincere affection for Thea and liked her too much to comfortably harbor sordid thoughts about her potentially being a bad woman. He pushed aside his lingering fear of violating her trust, telling himself he would never do such a thing again.
In fact, if he hadn’t been out shopping for ingredients for the pasta he was making that Friday night, and if he hadn’t just swung by the restaurant at precisely the moment his father was passing a fat white envelope across the counter to a pained looking Thea, Morgan honestly would have never suspected she had anything to do with it at all.
But here he was, seeing reality—even though he didn’t want to see it.
And he was shocked as hell.
Morgan stood mutely on the street, arms full of groceries, looking through the small window of the restaurant door, watching the transaction go down in front of his own disbelieving eyes.
Thea shook her head and looked ready to cry. Gerald pushed the fat envelope to her and kept talking until she finally picked it up and clutched it to her breast. Through the door, Morgan couldn’t hear the conversation, but then what was the point of words?
It wouldn’t change the fact it was Thea receiving the money.
Unless there wasn’t money in the envelope. But instinct and fifteen years of doing this sort of work told Morgan otherwise. It was about the same time of the month as all the other withdrawals.
Even the pained look on Thea’s face was logical to him.
By now Morgan knew that Althea Carmichael would definitely feel remorse for taking the money because he sincerely believed she was mostly a good person. Like so many others he’d seen over the years, Morgan figured this situation was just some error in judgment on Thea’s part. The only thing he didn’t know now was why she needed the money and what she did with it.
In the many years he’d been doing investigative work, Morgan had never walked away from a situation no matter how uncomfortable it was to delve into it. People he worked with thought he was a hard man with iron-clad ideas about what was right and wrong.
And Morgan mostly would have agreed with them.
Until today when he saw a woman he was sleeping with and genuinely cared about taking an envelope of cash from his father.
Suddenly, Morgan had no idea what was right any more.
He took his pasta ingredients and went back without a word to the SUV and drove away. It gave him time to check the files Morgan had downloaded from Thea’s computer and to go through electronic copies of her records one more time to find what he had missed, because he had to have missed something.
When he came back to the restaurant two hours later, it was with the single goal of discovering the truth before the evening was out. He couldn’t put it off, having seen what he’d seen, and Morgan was hoping to make Thea give the money back before she had a chance to spend it.
The only way to do what Morgan knew must be done was to put himself completely into investigator mode, which would mean giving up any further ideas he might have had about a normal relationship with Althea Carmichael.
Morgan pushed away the initial nausea this decision caused him, but couldn’t do much about the pain in his chest every time he thought about never being with Thea again.
Putting off the inevitable for a little while, he carried the ingredients to the restaurant kitchen and started preparing for dinner.
*** **** ****
At three-thirty, Thea flipped the new sign to closed, knowing she would be flipping it back to open in two and a half short hours. She turned back and sighed at the amount of work left to do to prepare for the evening.
Bussing the remaining three tables, she wiped them down and carried the dishes to the back where Morgan was busy boiling large pots of water and stirring sauce in two pans on the stove.
“Everything alright?” she asked, concerned more with his quietness than his cooking.
Morgan nodded. “Food will be ready when they get here. We’re doing instant salad tonight. You could cut costs by doing fresh romaine yourself, but there would be some additional prep.”
Thea nodded and loaded the dishes quickly into the
commercial dishwasher, sending the last full load through the cycle.
“I’m going out to get the tables ready,” she said.
“Good luck,” Morgan said, keeping his gaze on the bubbling pots and not on her.
Ten minutes later, he reduced the pots to simmer. When Pete took a smoke break that Morgan knew would take at least another ten minutes, he walked silently down the hall and slipped into Thea’s office.
It wasn’t hard to find her purse in the bottom of the unlocked desk. On top of the purse was the envelope his father had passed to her with Thea’s name written on it in his father’s handwriting. Morgan glanced inside the envelope and saw a stack of bills confirming his intuition.
There was no time to count the bills, but also not much need, Morgan decided. The amount would be whatever amount had been withdrawn from his father’s bank account. He could easily guess it would turn out to be a number in the vicinity of seven hundred dollars like all the others.
He was just passing the freezers on his way back to the kitchen when Thea popped up in front of him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, searching his face and seeing concern there that she couldn’t define.
“Looking for extra cheese,” Morgan lied. “I found some, but it was the wrong kind. Don’t worry. Pasta will be fine without it.”
“I’m not worried about the pasta,” Thea told him, putting her hands on Morgan’s arms and rubbing. “I just don’t want you to be upset if no one shows up to eat it. That won’t be about your cooking. I hope you know that.”
Morgan looked into Thea’s earnest gaze and wondered how she could pull off such innocent caring and concern. She must be one of those people with an intense rationalization of her actions, he thought. After nine months of repeating the pattern, Thea had probably convinced herself there was nothing wrong in taking the money from his father.
Morgan went back to the pots on the stove and finished the preparations in short order. At four-fifteen, he walked out into the main area, looking in amazement at the tables covered in bright white cloths with glass bellied candles on them glowing softly.
The Right Thing Page 9