it’s better if you don’t say anything more because—”
“I know it seems like too much, too soon, Lucy,” he interjected, feeling compelled to bare himself with her as he had with no other woman, “but after last night, we owe it to ourselves to be honest.” Pausing, he laid it on the line. “Lucy, with you, I don’t want to play the usual male-female games. There’s something more here, something real.”
Her eyes had fixed behind him again, on the piled covers, making Morgan realize how shy she was. Probably that was why she’d left off the lights last night. “You’re such a sweetheart,” he murmured.
“No, I’m not,” she denied hoarsely, taking a weaving step toward the bed. “And I think something really strange happened here last night. I think you’ve misunderstood….” Her voice trailed off. “Morgan, I really don’t think you should say—”
“Anything more?” Gently, he pushed aside the covers. Forgetting his nakedness, he rose and strode boldly toward her. “You’re wrong. What happened in this bedroom last night wasn’t strange. Just better than we expected. Maybe we didn’t count on it being the beginning of a relationship. Maybe we figured it would only turn out to be a one-night stand. But that’s why we need to talk about this, Lucy.”
Seeing how overwhelmed she was, his heart went out to her. “What are we going to do?” he asked reasonably, molding his hands over her shoulders and gazing deeply into her eyes. “Make a casual date? Go out to dinner? Start all over again and pretend we haven’t already made each other insane with lust?”
“No, Morgan,” Lucy whispered, rapidly shaking her head. “No!”
“That’s right,” he agreed, relieved she was on the same wavelength. “We can’t pretend we didn’t share the kind of passion that keeps people together forever.”
“Morgan.” She ground the word out.
Something in her tone stopped him. “What?”
“Get a grip!”
Why was she getting so upset? “We don’t need to get a grip. We need to let go, Lucy, to follow this wherever it takes us.”
Her face had turned sheet-white. “Morgan,” she said in a rush, “there’s something I have to tell you.”
Was there another man—as there had been with his ex-fiancée, Cheryl? Or had Lucy taken a job in another city? Was she moving? This didn’t sound good, but Morgan wanted to earn her trust. “You can tell me anything, sweetheart. After last night, nothing you say could change how I feel.”
“I doubt that,” Lucy announced ominously.
Blinking sleep from his eyes, Morgan suddenly realized that even though she was practically in his arms, she no longer had any effect on him physically. That was weird. Just a few hours ago, the simplest touch had aroused him beyond compare. Had the sparks already burned out? The magic vanished?
His fingers curled more possessively over her shoulders, and he bit back a curse, wanting to recapture those feelings and wishing she’d quit staring behind him. Last night’s intimacy was serious stuff, but was she really so shy that she couldn’t even look him in the eye this morning? Suddenly, he froze. From behind him, he could swear he heard the covers rustle, but that was impossible.
Lucy’s in front of me, he thought. He was touching her, so he knew he wasn’t dreaming. No, somebody else was in the room! Just as another rustle sounded, he realized that Lucy’s dress felt as cold as ice. Maybe she really had come from outside. In tandem with a missed beat of his heart, Morgan’s eyes widened, and very slowly, he turned and craned his neck to stare at the bed.
Behind him, the covers wiggled. Because of the print on the sheets and duvet, bright blue waves seemed to be undulating and pink whales seemed to be swimming as whoever was buried under there punched their way out. Quickly, Morgan tried to tell himself that he, not the covers, was moving. He’d almost convinced himself that he was just woozy from having too much great sex when, with mounting horror, he saw evidence that he’d slept with someone other than Lucy.
Her hand appeared first.
Slender, pale and long-fingered, it groped over the pillow, extending French-manicured nails that Morgan instinctively knew had left the welts pleasantly tingling on his shoulders. When the covers were whisked back, bare skin flashed right before a whale and cresting wave respectively were pressed to breasts that were definitely smaller than Lucy’s.
No WonderBra was involved, after all. A blue turban was half tangled in hair that was plastered to a head with dried green goop the color of split pea soup, but Morgan barely noticed that because his worst fears had just been realized. He was staring at the lust machine with whom he’d spent the night.
“Three words,” he whispered.
It’s Vanessa Verne.
2
LATER, VANESSA would curse herself for not throwing Morgan out of Lucy’s bedroom immediately, but when she dragged herself from wildly sensual dreams, punched her way out of the covers and saw him standing there stark naked, her response was to feel so soft, warm and female that the hands clutching the sheet to her breasts loosened a fraction and her throat constricted, aching with emotion. Had she really spent the night in those strong arms? Pressed to that naked, muscular, hairy body that had a temperature hotter than molten lava?
Later, after Vanessa fully registered how Morgan felt about her, she’d berate herself for feeling shivers prickling between her shoulder blades at that moment and she’d deny she sighed wistfully while staring with unchecked adoration at the dark, devilish and very naked angel who’d shamelessly pleasured her until dawn.
He had rich, brown-black hair that curled like chocolate shavings on the world’s most delectable dessert. He had dangerously dark, gleaming eyes. For a second, everything in their expression said he enjoyed last night’s fall from grace, but then the look vanished, leaving only high cheekbones. Long smooth cheeks. A straight nose and a mouth that was by turns petulant or bemused. An indentation in a rounded chin as if gently pressed there by a loving thumb.
Even in dark lackluster suits, Morgan Fine was…well, fine, but now he was stripped to the buff and towering over Lucy, one of his huge, strong hands enveloping her shoulder. His bare skin was sleek and glowing, except where wild black hair erupted, looking far coarser than Vanessa recalled it feeling against her fingertips. Inhaling sharply, she averted her gaze, since it landed where he was unabashedly exposed…
Meet me in broad daylight, he’d said.
“Indeed,” whispered Vanessa, her eyes widening.
Suddenly she realized Lucy was trying to inch away from his grasp. “Uh, hi, Vanessa,” Lucy managed to say.
Lucy! Only now did Vanessa register that, when they’d made love, Morgan thought she was Lucy! Not that the misunderstanding would matter, she assured herself—she and Morgan had been so perfect together—but Vanessa felt self-conscious. She was still nude in Lucy’s bed, and when she casually raised a hand to her hair—realizing in the process she’d broken a nail—she dislodged the turban, which fell to the mattress. Wincing, she gingerly probed the green-coated strands of hair plastered to her head and almost groaned out loud. Why
