Morgan's Mates (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Read Free Page A

suggested. She really wanted to stay here and finish setting up her studio in one of the spare rooms and continue with some of the landscapes she was painting. They were her passion. But at this point, anything that would get Nathan back to himself she would gladly do.
    “I’m a shifter,” Nathan said. “I was never happy living back in Chicago. I prefer to make friends out here.”
    “We haven’t made too many friends out here yet,” Morgan reminded him. “I guess we’ve both been too busy with our work.”
    “I’m a shifter, Morgan,” he repeated to her. “Would you like me to share you with another man?”
    This had come out of left field. Morgan was left without any answer to give. They had never discussed this before. She knew shifter men liked to share their women. But she just figured that what she and Nathan had was special. They didn’t need anything more in their relationship except for each other.
    Morgan climbed off his lap and turned her back on him to look out the window at the mountains and what remained of the winter snow.
    “I don’t want another man,” she said quietly under her breath and didn’t even know why she had to answer to an idea that, in her mind, was nothing but foolish. “I want you to be the happy, carefree young executive I met in grad school three years ago.”
    Nathan got up from his desk and stood behind her. He wrapped his arms around her waist and held her back against his hard body. “I don’t want you to ever be alone,” he told her and moved her hair out of the way to kiss down the back of her neck.
    His kisses felt wonderful. But his words scared the hell out of her.
    “If ever I’m not here, I want you to take other men—other shifter men like me,” he whispered into her ear. “They’ll love you and take care of you. You are so wonderful, Morgan. You have so much to give. You deserve the best from life and from your lovers.”
    Morgan closed her eyes. She wanted to tell him that he was the best because that was how she really felt deep down, except that now, with him acting like a stranger, she wasn’t sure what the right thing to say to him was.
    She was confused. Why did he think she would be alone and looking for other lovers when she had him and he was all she wanted?

Chapter Three
     
    Three weeks later, the first day of spring arrived. The weather in the mountains slowly began to turn nicer and warmer. However, the sickness inside Nathan grew worse.
    Nathan shifted every night now, but he also shifted in the day. He spent hours away from Morgan and his house. It had gotten so he was a wolf more than he was a man. Though he missed Morgan because he loved her, she was the only part he missed of himself as a man.
    Nathan needed to be the wolf now and found it painful to be a man. He knew he was getting worse. His sickness was of his body, and because he knew he might lose Morgan, it was of his soul, also.
    He could barely stand to see or talk with Morgan because he knew he had failed her. He was ashamed of himself and his own miserable weakness. Fight it as he might, he was not strong enough to overcome his desire to be the wolf, and the sickness inside his body.
    Nathan had talked with a doctor in Wolf Creek and then with his parents, who lived on a farm thirty miles away. He now knew the details of what was wrong with him, but he could not tell Morgan. His desire to protect her and see her safe had never been stronger. If he told her the worst, it would only cause her more pain, and there was nothing she could do to help his physical condition.
    If he got better, the world he had known as a man would wait for him. The only problem was Morgan might not.
    He met her as he was walking along a mountain trail that morning. He had not spoken with her in over two days. He knew she would be pissed with him and have every right to be so. To speak with her now was hard. He just couldn’t let her inside, and she had no idea what was happening to him or the