Exposed (9 page)

Nia gasped at the shout coming from farther in the house. She should have leaped away from Jack, but she was so startled that she leaped toward him, grabbing him around the neck.

"What the hell?" Jack growled.

"
What
is she doing here?" Sadie's voice screeched somewhere behind where Nia knelt embracing Jack.

It was just registering in Nia’s brain that it was Sadie as Jack lifted them both to their feet while demanding, "
How
did you get in here, Sadie?"

"Through the front door!" Sadie shouted. "What in the hell are you doing embracing my damn husband? Let him go!"

Nia wasn't turned to face Sadie yet, but she immediately tried to disengage her stranglehold on Jack while guilt and embarrassment shuffled through her body. But Jack held her against him.

"I'm
not
your husband anymore," Jack growled back at Sadie. "The front door was locked."

Jack had her plastered to his body, but Nia wiggled enough to turn and see Sadie, who was eying her with aggression. "So you two hooked up?" Sadie sneered. "Un-fucking-believable."

Nia didn't have anything to say to Sadie Andersen, who was dressed to kill.
Dressed as if she's on a mission to hook a man,
Nia thought. Sadie had her hair done in stylish waves, while wearing a dress that showed off her ample cleavage and high heels that shaped her legs. Her makeup was done with just the right touches of lip gloss and some smoky eye shadow that gave her a sexy and sultry look. Nia thought the jeans and summer top she was wearing paled in comparison, plus she had on no makeup and she rarely styled her hair in any fashion but blow-dry and go.

This is Sadie's home,
Nia thought, trying to back away from Jack to give them some privacy, while what could have been between her and Jack withered. "I'll just go and—" she started to say.

"No, you don't have to leave," Jack interrupted her, grasping her hand and bringing her knuckles to his lips. He kissed them while glaring at Sadie. Nia had to admit that it felt good having the tables turned on Sadie. Especially after Sadie had invaded her home.

Sadie frowned, cocking her rounded hip to the side. "The lawyer says I don't have to leave the house, Jack," she said while moving closer to him.

Nia felt Jack releasing her as he turned to face Sadie. "You'll have to have a court order for that. There is no way you are staying here tonight."

"You'd throw me out?" Sadie pouted her glossed lips, giving Jack a blatantly suggestive look. Sadie moved closer, invading Jack’s space. Her gaze tilted up to him.

Nia blanched
. Sadie wanted Jack back.
Jack looked confused.

"You were doing fine at Cooper's," he uttered. Then he stepped back and Nia moved to the side. Actually, edging toward leaving.

"I know I've been bad," Sadie said. "But just let me prove how good it can be again, Jack."

Sadie backed Jack into the counter. Nia scooted away. In the hallway, she heard Jack saying, "You've got to be kidding. Right?"

Nia heard Sadie's reply: "You don't want her, Jack. She's no replacement for me."

Nia gasped, clutching a hand to her chest, then she tiptoe-ran to the guestroom.

Oh my God.
Sadie was going to get both of them!

J
ack felt an unfamiliar tightness in his chest. Sadie
was
sober. He didn't smell one whiff of alcohol on her breath. Damn, she was close enough that he should have. Damn again, because he’d been hard, and now Sadie pressed into it in a way only she could do.

"Not interested," he tried, but he knew they could both feel his interest. Only that interest was for another woman.

"Jack," Sadie whispered seductively, and then her hand trailed over his hard ...

That was
for Nia
. He shook his head. Damn aggravated lust was getting him in trouble. He shoved away from Sadie, with thoughts of Nia galvanizing him. Thank God. He did
not
want Sadie. However, he was a very deprived man.

She followed him. Of course. She was after something. If only he could think after the hot and heavy make-out session with Nia's soft, responsive mouth.
Nia. Yeah, buddy keep thinking Nia.

"Jack, I just want to show you how sorry I am, honey."

Sorry? Honey?
The driving and overpowering need to hear an apology nearly overcame his resolve.
Never had orgasms. Think Nia.
He'd be the first man to tongue her.
Think Nia
.

"You fucking want money, don't you?" he blurted. Thank God, even running on hyper-turned-on, some part of his brain was practical.

"Jack, we have marriage vows, you cannot just leave me destitute."

Oh God, it
was
money. Damn. She tried to fondle him again. "What's the matter? Isn't your lover Cooper giving you some cash?" With that out of his mouth, his erection finally began withering at Cooper's name. "From what I saw, you’ve earned it."

Sadie's hand, which he’d been avoiding with small moves, lifted and slapped his cheek. Hard. "You bastard," she hissed.

"Because I married you, I’m not going to call you what I think you are. But, Sadie, get this: It. Is. Over."

Her face turned red and she stepped back. "You owe me money, Jack, and I am going to get it!
This
house too."

Before she stomped from the room, he shook his head, trying to clear it, and said, "I’ve put some money in your savings, Sadie. Just remember it will all be divided evenly and you will only get half, so spend it wisely."

She glared at him over her shoulder as she walked to the front door, and he followed.

"If you think I’m thanking you for giving me money that is mine, you can forget it. It was work being your wife, Jack, and I deserve that money."

He shrugged, knowing now that she had money she'd go get booze. "Don't show up here unannounced again, Sadie."

At the opened door, she growled, "I’ll be living back here very soon!"

Once the door slammed behind her, Jack made certain it was locked. "I know it was locked before," he muttered, walking slowly back into the kitchen.

He knew deep in his gut Sadie had just messed up things with Nia. If the tables had been turned and that had been Cooper catching them, and saying those things, he knew he'd be feeling insecure. He scraped a hand over his jaw.

He'd be wondering why he was jumping into bed with someone when he was barely divorced. Yes, he'd be thinking the hundred guilty things he knew had to be going through Nia's head, plus wondering about the dynamic between her and her ex.

Jack cussed and banged his fist once on the countertop. Man, was he messed up. He walked over and looked down the long hall. They couldn't go back now. Not right now. He needed to think. Something he hadn't been doing much of, because he was afraid if he thought about it sensibly, he and Nia would never be ...

He scraped that thought before it could solidify, and he walked to Nia's door, knocking lightly. He didn't expect her to open it, and he called through the door, "She's gone, Nia. She won't be back. You don't have to worry about it. I'm ..." He paused, leaning his temple to the door. "I'll go to bed, see you tomorrow."

There was a long pause when he wondered if he should say some more, but then he heard her saying softly, "Good night, Jack."

He thought it best to leave it at that. For now.

On the couch thirty minutes later, he lay on his back staring at the ceiling. It was dark, with just light from the streetlight out front. His gaze traced the weird patterns it made on the ceiling as he considered that he'd been so focused on the event of the TV show proving Sadie was cheating that he'd not thought much past it.

Of course, past it was where he wasn't married any longer. Maybe he'd just skipped that on purpose? But the event of getting the TV show to investigate Sadie, finding out she was cheating, the confrontation day, and down to his plans about the locks, had consumed him for months of preparing. The most he'd thought past it was once free he'd go out to get drunk and to get laid.

"See how that worked out," he muttered, shifting on his makeshift bed while pulling an arm under his head.

All of his preplanning couldn't have prepared him for Nia. The wife of the man cheating with his wife. Yet, from the first moment he'd seen her, somewhere in the back of his mind it had registered to him that she was very special. Cute ... okay, lovely, curvy, and all that stuff that could attract men, but it went beyond that. Perhaps it was the connection of their cheating spouses. She knew ... he knew ... they both knew feelings no one else could begin to understand. Was that why he felt so close to her? Wanted to get closer?

Then there was his overwrought arousal, which he knew stemmed from so much forced celibacy. He could be thinking more with his lower extremities in mind than he should. He wasn't the kind of guy to just love them and leave them, though.

"Man, you are not," he muttered.

He'd forgotten that, being married. But before he was married, he'd always been looking for "that one." He would only date and kiss a woman, never going further unless his intentions were more serious. If he wasn't thinking with his erection he'd have decided the same thing today. Nia deserved better than a fling. He deserved better. He wasn't thrown off enough by all of it to give up on marriage as a whole. He still wanted it.

That surprised him, and he grunted and sat upright, swinging his feet to the floor. He looked around the darkness of the room. No, he didn't want to be alone. He could learn from his mistakes ... make the next time better, he thought.

"Yeah, the goal is to find the right one," he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck.

Yet he'd meant what he told Nia earlier, and he was still surprised he'd been so honest and forthright about it. Where did that come from? He had suspicions it was Nia, drawing it out of him. Still, he didn't want plain marriage sex any longer. He wanted passion and adventure in the bedroom, and he wanted it to last.

"It started out with Sadie like that, though," he muttered. They couldn't keep their hands off each other before he'd asked her to marry him. Although he had to admit it was pretty straight sex ... no deviations. If he cataloged back, before she stopped giving him any sex, he could probably add up the positions they'd tried on two fingers. He'd wondered in the last over-a-year he'd been denied sex from her if that was his fault.

Maybe he hadn't tried hard enough to switch it up and she'd gotten bored. "That is
not
happening again," he vowed.

Now the woman he was more than a little interested in had just declared that she’d never had an orgasm with a man. Talk about making a guy nervous. However, when she was in his arms, no way did she feel stifled in anyway. She felt passionate and open. He couldn't forget her wanting those magazines.

"Jack?"

Jack felt his heart skip a beat as his chest muscles twitched, but otherwise he kept his surprise reaction under control.

"You okay?" he asked the air in front of him, turning his head to try to pick her out of the darkness. He finally saw her by the pass-through dining room entrance. She was like a ghostly image and he thought whatever she was wearing picked up light from the street.

"I don't know," she admitted.

He was wearing his boxers, and he wasn’t certain they should be having a conversation in their nightclothes, and he'd just gotten it all straightened in his head. What he'd gotten straight meant they shouldn't be in the dark, barely dressed.

Still, he found himself saying, "Come here."

She moved like a spirit and he picked out the sexy night attire she'd had on the other morning. He nearly groaned. But then her voice stalled him. "Are you going back to her, Jack?"

He never said anything as fast: "
No
way."

Nia made a strangled sound, and he just
knew
to open his arms and catch her as she flung into his embrace. All the reasonable things he'd been thinking previously fled his mind as he felt her settle into him with just the kiss of silk between them. He thought he felt tears on the crook of his neck where she pressed her face.

"Nia," he groaned, and she settled into his lap and onto his instantly hard erection. His hands found the best places to settle, curled around her slender waist, as his arms wrapped around her back and he squeezed.

"She came to seduce you ... and I thought ..." Nia muttered against his collarbone. His chest was bare and he could feel the prod of her nipples.

He tried to think. "Came for money," he uttered, barely able to form the words.

His mouth found the top of her bare shoulder and he began kissing it. He felt her shiver and the response arrowed into his groin. She felt so good against him, like the fit had been waiting a lifetime.

Her lips began kissing the side of his neck up to his jaw, and he lifted his head, turning it until their lips sealed together. The kiss wasn't awkward—now their lips knew each other, and his tongue swept inside her mouth. She pressed into him harder, moaning. Those were all the signals he needed to shred the last of his resistance. Who needed logic and planning anyhow?

He took her down to the couch and spread her out underneath him, as their kissing delved into new depths of tongue glides. His hand traced her hip, the side of her waist, and then up to her breast. The minute he cupped the mound in his hand, she moaned in his mouth, and his arousal soared. Her arms curled over his shoulders, holding him to their passionate kissing. When he found her hard nipple, brushing it with his thumb, her hips humped upward, moving her pelvis against his erection. They both groaned through their kissing.

He wanted inside her so badly his entire body was tense with the need, but he was also worried about moving too fast for her. He was old enough to know his dick was stupid where relationships were concerned. He broke the feasting of their mouths.

"Nia. Baby."

His voice was deep and rough as Nia gasped a heated breath against his lips. His hand fondled her breast with deep massaging motions, torturing the tense arousal in his body. He couldn't see her features clearly in the dark; he just needed to feel the movements of her body against his to know she was as aroused as he was.