by Dani April
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.
Chapter Nineteen
“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.”
“Nothing will happen now,” Hunter told her. “Except I’m a foot man. Always have been. Rubbing your feet like this always makes my cock raging hard.”
Morgan looked down in the waters between his legs. She gave him a smile. “I’ve noticed,” she said.
“The only thing that’s about to happen now is that we’re going to make love to you again,” Drake assured her.
“You get to pick. The bed or the tub?” Hunter asked as he started kissing along her calves and up behind her knees.
“I don’t think I can make it all the way back to the bedroom with the way I feel.” Morgan had closed her eyes. The steam from the hot water and the hands of the men had taken her mind away to a fantasy land. All her worries had momentarily been suspended. “I want you both now in this tub. I can’t wait.”
The men obliged her.
* * * *
Hunter and Drake had to go to work and keep an eye on their business. Their time away from home gave Morgan a chance to work in her studio. At night when they came back, she always had a home-cooked meal waiting on the table for them.
Each night it was a new thrill when they would walk through the front door, a cold winter wind chasing inside with them. Morgan would meet them and give them both a welcome home kiss. They, in turn, would take her in their arms and ravage her with kisses of their own. Sometimes Hunter couldn’t wait and would sweep her in his arms and take her down the hall to the bedroom.
But on this night, they were both tired from a hard day spent helping their men plow out the snow from their lumberyard. They complimented her on her dinner, and the three settled into happy conversation around the dinner table.
Morgan had an agent now in Chicago handling her work. She would go out into the white-covered forest most days. Her new work was centered on winter landscapes of the mountains.
“How’s that new agent up in the city working out?” Drake asked her.
“He’s very good at what he does. He thinks he can sell the last group of paintings I sent to him.”
“I said you were going to get rich off your work,” Hunter boasted to her.
“I’ve been working on something new, and I’d like you two to see it.”
The guys looked at each other. Morgan normally refused to let them see her work before it was completed.
“This is different,” she told them. “I’m not going to sell this one.”
Morgan got up from the dinner table and reached out for her men. They each took one of her hands in theirs. “Come on. I’m going to show it to you.”
She led them down the hall and back to her studio.
“This is getting to be my favorite room of the house,” Hunter reminded her. The two of them had made love countless times in her studio, usually in very unique positions. Morgan smiled when she thought of all the forbidden things he had showed her in there, but she turned around to him and gave him a stern look that was meant to tell him to be serious.
The painting she was working on was of the three of them. She was painting it not from real life but from images in her mind. Her love of the men had inspired her to create this piece.
She was in the middle. The men were on each side of her and off to the front so she could look at them both at the same time. She hoped the expressions of the love they felt for one another were clear on the faces she had created. Hanging around her neck in the painting was the pendant the men had given her. She never took it off now, not in the shower or the bathtub. Never. It was a constant reminder to her of what she had built with them.
“It’s very good, Morgan.” Drake seemed to have a but in his tone.
Morgan looked over her shoulder at him. “Only what?”
Drake pointed to the center of the painting. “This spot is empty. It’s a real big area of the canvas.”
“I’m not sure what to put there.” She knew what he meant. There was a blank spot. Though she had tried to gloss it over with colors, it was an obvious missing piece nonetheless.
“Remember, this is coming out of my heart and not from any reality,” she reminded him. “I guess my heart was confused about how to fill up all that space.”
“I think it is wonderful.” Hunter grabbed her by her waist and lifted her up into the air. His arms were around her, a hand fondling her butt wickedly, making her squirm under his touch.
Their lips locked.
“It’s just something I felt like doing,” Morgan said after Hunter had put her down. “I wanted to portray our relationship because that’s such a big part of my other work. Even though that other work is just mountains and trees, in order to see the world as a beautiful place I always think about us.”
Now it was Drake’s turn to give her a long, sensuous kiss on the mouth. It was a promise of what he would do later that night to her in bed.
“Your work is a lot more entertaining than managing a lumberyard and handling labor disputes,” Drake told her.
“But it doesn’t pay me as much.”
“You don’t ever have to worry about money again,” Hunter assured her.
She turned off the light, laced fingers with both of them, and led them out of the studio. “Sorry, guys. Maybe I got ahead of myself in showing you that piece. Come to think of it, I don’t think it’s finished yet.”
Hunter went down the hall to take a shower and get cleaned up from his hard day. Drake took her in his arms and whispered his love in her ear and interrupted her from picking up the dishes off the table and washing them.
“What would you have liked to put in that empty space of your painting, sweetheart?”
Morgan tried to shoo him away so she could get the last of the dishes loaded in the washer. But his arms felt awfully good around her body, and she was losing the battle to resist.
“I don’t know what’s missing,” she told him. “Everything is almost perfect for this one little period in our lives. Possibly I’m just not good at painting people. I think I’ve always been better with inanimate objects.”
“You know Hunter and I will always be there for you?”
She reached up and brought him down to her lips. “I have complete confidence in you both.” She heard Hunter finish up in the shower. Wanting to lighten the mood, she patted Drake on his all-too-cute behind. “Now it’s your turn to go get cleaned up. When I’m finished with the dishes, I’ll meet the two of you out in the dining room for a game of poker.”
“Strip poker?”
“You’re on. I can’t wait to get the two of you naked again.”
Much later that night, they all ended up back in her bed, entwined in an erotic ball, writhing and sucking and loving until the wee hours of that cold winter night.
Morgan was well satisfied and very happy with the two men and with her life. If she could have, she would have just stopped the progress of time and stayed in that moment forever.
Chapter Twenty
Morgan had slept late. She rolled over in bed. She was alone. Both the men had gone.
Next to her bed the sun was shining brightly in her window. It was March now, and there was still a thin residue of white outside to make everything radiant.
Hunter and Drake were going to drive into Wolf Creek and attend to business this morning. They said they wouldn’t be long. Then they were coming back home. When the snow cleared, they had promised to take her on a long hike in the woods, and it was sufficiently melted now for such an outing.
A rustling out in the living room told her they had made it back early.
She rubbed some sleep out of her eyes. She felt lazy for having overslept. She felt responsible to get up and make them breakfast or at the very least a hot cup of coffee. The sex had just been too good last night, and every joint in her body was stiff and wonderfully sore. Hours later, the afterglow still put a smile on her face.
Jumping out of bed, she pulled on her bathrobe and cinched it around her waist to cover her nakedness and slipped her toes into her house shoes.
One of the guys was now out in the kitchen, rummaging in the refrigerator from the sound of things.
“Don’t mess up my kitchen!” she yelled down the hall to them. “I’m coming to get our breakfast.”
On her way out to them, she opened up the curtains in the living room to let the morning sun inside. It was going to truly be a beautiful day out, the kind of day that only living in the heart of the mountains could provide. She could hardly wait to go out hiking with the men later that afternoon. Maybe they could even stay out and watch the sun set and build a fire. It would be a nice trip.
“I said I’m going to get breakfast started,” she called out to scold whoever it was rummaging through her kitchen again.
When she got out to the kitchen, she stopped dead in her tracks. For a moment she saw only a stranger in front of her. Then she brought the man into focus, and she knew what was happening.
“Nathan?”
The man standing before her had a beard and long hair. He wore tattered clothes and looked as if he had not had a good meal in about a year. He looked wild and unkempt, but he was very definitely a man, and he was very definitely Nathan.
“Morgan.” He spoke her name in a whisper, as if speaking of a deity and not a person.
For a long, terrible moment she didn’t know what to do with him standing there. The house was his, after all. He had come home to it and to her.