Wicked Lovers 01 Wicked Ties (28 page)

“Jack.”

Morgan’s shaky voice pushed into his consciousness, bringing him back. She shivered, and this time not from desire. Damn, it was cold out here. And yet, she’d endured. No, she’d excelled, outshining anything he’d imagined her capable of in that moment.

He wrapped his arms around her, doing his best to shelter her from the wind. “The air is brisk, huh, cher?”

And because he couldn’t resist, he tucked her head beneath his chin and stroked her back with one hand. His other fit perfectly over her breast, his thumb lazily flicking the still hard nipple.

She whimpered.

Any urgency to shepherd her into his playroom and hoard her in there for hours—days—that had left his body zinged back to life in that one sound.

He reached into his pocket to find his keys with every intent to command her to warm herself with a quick warm shower, then meet him in the playroom in fifteen minutes. Fuck breakfast. He’d rather fuck her.

“Bonjour,” a faint, familiar voice rasped from just around the corner, near the front door.

Morgan gasped, stiffening in the circle of his arms. “Is that…your grandfather!”

Yes. Who else has such impeccable timing? Biting back a nasty curse, he eased Morgan away from his sheltering warmth, shoved the remnants of his shirt in her hands, and urged her inside the cottage through the side door.

“Go. Shower and dress. We’ll finish later.”

She hesitated, going wide-eyed at his words. Indecision spread across her flushed face. “Jack, I—I… Maybe we should talk about this.”

“Bonjour?” Brice’s voice sounded closer.

Time had run out.

Quickly, he pressed a hard kiss to her mouth, then spun her around, through the open door. With a sharp slap on her ass, he propelled her inside. “If you want. But we will finish this later.”

Before she could sputter a reply, he shut the door between them.

Morgan’s reluctance to continue what they’d started was both obvious and frustrating. Just when he thought he’d reached her… Granted she wasn’t saying no, but she hadn’t given him the sweet little “yes” his body craved—and expected after her response this morning. Disappointment and anger gushed through him, confusing him, as he turned to face his grand-pere.

Together all the urges concocted an astonishing brew of resolve not to accept another moment of Morgan’s hesitation, no doubt equal in strength to her uncertainty. And he wanted to understand. What was hanging her up? It was something more than simple modesty or fear of the unknown.

Jack sighed. The question he should be asking was, what the hell was wrong with him, that he was suddenly so determined to have this woman? Apparently, he’d lost his mind.

But it felt more like he was in danger of losing much more…

“Ah, there you are,” Brice said, rounding the corner. He shuffled down the long stretch of the wrap-around porch.

“Morning, Grand-pere.” Jack offered a seat back on the chair in the corner with a wave of his hand. “Coffee?”

“Non. I came to check up on you and ta jolie rousse.”

His pretty redhead? Not at the moment. She might be one step closer now if it hadn’t been for an untimely interruption. He bit back a curse.

“Morgan is fine,” Jack muttered, sliding into the chair beside his grandfather.

He licked his lips and still tasted her sweetness there. That flavor—and the memories of her legs spread wide for him, her uninhibited moans echoing around him—wasn’t doing anything to reduce his raging erection.

“Have you seen…more of her since my last visit?” Brice cackled and winked. “You were slow to answer my greeting and never noticed my knocking on the door, yeah.”

“I didn’t answer the door because I didn’t hear it. I was out here. And it’s early. I hardly expected company.”

“What time it is?” Brice frowned.

Jack didn’t buy his grandfather’s innocent act for a minute. “What time is it?” he corrected. “It’s way too early for social calls, but early enough to catch us at something if we liked to start the day off right. Isn’t that what you were thinking?”

“Mon petit-fils, you are suspicious.”

“I think I have a right to be, since the ‘warm and practical’ clothing you brought Morgan looks like it came from the X-rated version of the Victoria’s Secret catalog.”

His grandfather’s laughter made Jack roll his eyes. “But you have enjoyed the…sights?”

“No comment. Why would you do such a thing? Wave an open invitation in my face to have sex with her. I know you want me to remarry, but you’d never met Morgan before that stunt.”

The old man tapped on his chest. “Live long enough, yeah, and you know things. Them dreams, Jack, they mean something. Down through the generations, they’ve always meant love.”

“Just because it did for you—”

“Non, not just me. My grandfather, too. He took a job in San Francisco for a few years. No more Acadian country for him, says he.” Brice waved a dismissive hand at that. “He started having dreams, did he, about a beau blond.”

“Hell, I’ve had a fantasy or two about a gorgeous blonde in my lifetime.”

“For months straight, mon garçon?”

Jack sighed, both because he hated being called anyone’s boy and because reasoning with the old man was never an easy task.

“No,” he finally answered.

“You see there, yeah. My grand-pere had these dreams about a lady at a ball. He met her and discovered she was his boss’s young bride. Since his love was already married, he believed the family legend was wrong. But he kept on dreaming of her. The dreams were hard on his heart.

“Two weeks after meeting son amour, the big earthquake struck San Francisco. Nineteen-oh-six. The lovely lady’s husband, he died. And my grandfather married the pretty blonde a year later. Six enfants and over fifty years later, they was still in love.”

Staring at the old man, Jack wondered if he was serious. Was it even possible, even a bit?

“And his grandfather before him,” Brice went on, “was wounded in battle and captured by the Yanks at the end of the Civil War. His bride, she was a Union nurse in the field hospital. He kept a journal that said dreams of a faceless beauty kept him sane during months of battle, yeah. When he met her, it was a shock. They married three days after the war ended.”

Three men of his blood all dreaming of faceless beauties. Jack had dreamed endlessly of one with sparkling red hair glowing in the sunlight. And just this morning, Morgan had manifested herself as his dream image. Did that explain his insane desire to lay claim to her, as if she wasn’t taken, as if she was more than the instrument of his revenge? As if walking away from her wasn’t possible?

Shock jolted a dizzying bolt through his system. Jack stroked his chin and tried to regain his balance. The concept of predestined mates and dreaming of them was so…otherworldly. So weird. Not that he hadn’t grown up with the knowledge; he’d just never believed it.

“None of us want to believe that there’s any truth to this malédiction. But facts is facts, yeah. It happens to every man in our line. And now, it’s your turn, with Morgan.”

“How did you know when it happened to you?” Jack asked, struggling to accept his grandfather’s claim. “What made you sure, besides the dreams, that Grand-mere was the one?”

The old man smiled, deepening lines around his eyes and mouth, leaving no doubt the man had spent a lifetime smiling wide and often. “The moment I met her, I fought a crazy urge to grab her up tight and convince her to be mine. I never wanted to be away from her or see her blue. Most of all, cher garçon, I wanted her happy and I knew deep inside here,” he pointed to his heart, “that I could make her so. Comprenes-tu?”

Oh, yeah. Jack understood all too well. Hadn’t he been feeling the same way from nearly the instant he’d met Morgan? The insane desire to touch her, the willingness to do most anything to keep her safe, the snarling anger toward her stalker? He hated her dismay, but the key to her happiness lay in her caged sexuality. “Listen to your gut, Jack. Follow your instincts.” “They don’t make sense.”

The smile lines bracketing Brice’s mouth deepened. “They don’t have to. The heart ain’t meant to makes sense. You ever feel this way about anyone else? About Kayla?”

The old man all but spit his ex-wife’s name.

Jack just shook his head. No. Never. Not even close. He’d married her because she was pregnant, and he was very Catholic, even if she hadn’t been. She’d miscarried in her fifth month. The marriage ended a few months later when he’d found a videotape of Brandon Ross fucking her, while she’d supposedly been grieving the loss of her baby too deeply to have sex with her own husband. Looking back, his divorce had been a guilty relief. And a bitter humiliation. Brice had been with him, expecting to see an episode of CSI Jack had promised to videotape for him. They’d viewed a whole different sort of action instead.

“You see now, yeah?” Brice murmured.

“It’s complicated. Morgan belongs to…to someone else. They’re engaged.”

Jack couldn’t tell his grandfather that Morgan belonged to the man who had been with Kayla in the videotape. Brice would know that he’d lured Morgan under his roof in the name of revenge. He’d have a pretty good idea of what Jack had done to her to obtain that revenge. And the old man would flay the skin off Jack’s back with his old hunting knife and pour Tabasco in the wound.

Grimacing, Jack couldn’t deny an unsettling sense of shame bubbling in his gut.

And if Morgan ever found out… Oh God, she would find out. The minute she talked to Brandon. And stopping it was damn near impossible.

He let loose a vile curse. There was no way he could take back the email he’d already sent. Damn! He wished he’d heeded his instinct at that moment, which told him emailing the video was a mistake. And once Morgan and Brandon talked…he’d lose her for sure then. The thought filled him with a snarling, towering panic.

Unless he found some ironclad way to bind her to him before he told her the truth… Yes! He had to.

Brice shrugged. “Now, boy. Why worry? She and this man, they is not married. And why not? Maybe she knows this other man is not for her. Yeah? Maybe she gives you a kiss or two because her heart and her body know what her mind don’t.”

“That she doesn’t love her fiancé?”

“Exactement.”

Was it really that simple? That Morgan was his…soul mate, and that she responded to him, had allowed him so much liberty over her body because somewhere deep inside her she knew he was meant for her? It seemed so…surreal. Fucking hocuspocus.

Was it possible she wasn’t a cheating sort of woman, just a confused one? Just as confused as he was?

Jack sighed and held his head in his hands.

A slur of disgust rose from Brice’s throat. “Ah, you young now. No sense of romance. Keep resisting. Make yourself miserable. Love will wear you down.”

Love? The thought couldn’t have been more alien if it was green and sported antennae.

“I want her. I don’t love her.”

“You know that, do you? You already know that you will always not love her?”

Jack slumped back in his chair. Damn the man and his questions. “No, I don’t know that.”

Brice sent him an all-knowing nod. “I brought some jeans and shirts for Morgan. You can fix me some mornin’ grub, yeah. After that, you tell me if you want me to get them from the boat…or take `em back with me.”

Leaving Morgan in nothing but tempting lingerie.

Immediately, the memory of her in that golden camisole and thong bombarded his brain, engorging his cock. Oh yeah, Morgan looked hot in that get-up. But just the visual alone couldn’t fire him up to something between a boil and a blaze that quickly. Hell, he’d seen hundreds of naked women, especially hanging around Alyssa and her girls. They’d get a rise from him every so often, but this feeling scraping at his logic and peace of mind until he felt raw… Jack could only term it a caveman urge to claim. Like he had to know she was his and be secure in the knowledge that he would always keep her safe and happy. The thought of succeeding, of being able to convince her to be his in every way, jacked up his temperature another ten degrees.

Holy shit.

At this point, he couldn’t think of a single argument that might prove his grandfather wrong.

In fact, if he wanted to have Morgan, and keep her, he was going to have to form a stronger bond between them right away. Something that might shake but wouldn’t break when she learned why he’d agreed to be on her TV show—and that he’d bribed her buddy Reggie to make it happen. That he’d done it all for revenge. And he’d tell her…but not yet. Not until they were solid.

First, he had to earn her trust on a visceral level, teach her body that he would always put her care first. The bedroom was a good place to start breaking down her barriers. Once she’d surrendered, then they could talk. The rest would fall into place.

Knowledge, rightness, and a plan clicked into place in that moment, like the piece of a puzzle that had been hovering just out of reach.

Finally, he said, “I don’t need time to think about it. Take her clothes with you, Grand-pere. Don’t bring them out here again.”

Brice smiled wide, showing crooked white teeth against Cajun-dark skin. “Laizzez les bon temps roule!”

Oh, yeah. Let the good times roll…

We will finish this later.

Jack’s vow rang through Morgan’s head as Brice charmed her through breakfast.

She chastised the older man for bringing her lingerie and nothing else. With dark eyes twinkling, he gave her a sanguine grin and a shrug, but wasn’t apologetic in the least.

But Jack…his gaze burned, telegraphing his earlier words. We will finish this later.

Morgan wished she could close off the memory, drown out the voice in her head. Over scrambled eggs, which both men doused with Tabasco, Jack stared at her as if she was a cross between a confounding puzzle and a tasty treat. And above all, something he coveted. Someone he meant to possess.

Damn it, why had she ever said yes to Jack and his playroom? Trying to say no after the exquisite pleasure he’d given her seemed nearly impossible.

But saying yes in that moment had been easy— imperative—with his mouth hovering over her and an enormous climax pending. Now that pleasure wasn’t destroying her ability to breathe and think, Morgan wasn’t sure that giving in, giving him everything he wanted, was a good idea. It would not only change everything between them, but change her forever. Since being around Jack, her fantasies had become more urgent, more explicit. Impulses she’d always had now came with remembered sensations—and the memories also came complete with Jack’s sigh-worthy face to haunt her.