Sarah's Seduction (18 page)

Mark Tate was a handsome man, if you could get past the overbearing, sulky expression on his dark, tanning booth-tanned face. His hair was a light brown, cut almost military short, his eyes a soft hazel. His body was toned from hours at the gym and his clothes were always tightly pressed and the height of male fashion. He had drained damned near every last drop of money she had keeping himself attired.

“Checking to see what a crazy woman looks like,” he grunted, moving to the coffee pot and snagging one of the cups from the cupboard as she moved out of his way.

“What the hell did you sic the sheriff on me for, Sarah? That was low. And who the hell attacked you the other night? Haven’t you figured out you’re messing with trouble with the Augusts?”

Sarah saw the signs of his building anger. They were easy to read. The pouty look around his mouth, the surliness in his eyes. He could carry on for hours, his comments like serrated knives tearing at the skin. Over and over, hour after hour until she gave in, did whatever he wanted, just to make him shut up. Just to get him off her back and to find the peace she needed so desperately. The divorce was supposed to facilitate that. He wasn’t supposed to return as though he still lived there.

“I’m not in the mood for your irrational tirades, Mark,” she told him firmly, sitting back down at the table. “So you can just mosey on home to Lolita and leave me the hell alone. You should have never brought her here to begin with. This is my home.”

“Her name’s Jackie,” he reminded her sullenly.

“Whatever.” Sarah raked her fingers through her still damp hair and covered her yawn.

“When’s August due back?” he asked her suddenly, snagging a chair and taking a seat across the table as he sneered the question in her face. Sarah looked up at him in surprise, wondering at the attitude.

“That doesn’t concern you, Mark,” she told him firmly. “Nothing I do concerns you anymore. Get used to it.”

“The whole damn town’s talking about your little spectacle at the bar the other night, Sarah.” His lips twisted into a grimace. “It’s making me look like a fool.”

Sarah blinked at him in surprise. After six years of his public infidelities, he had the nerve to say that?

“We’re divorced,” she pointed out. “It can’t make you look like anything.”

She watched his face twist in anger. He looked not quite rational, she thought with an edge of worry.

“You’re still carrying my name,” he threw back at her. Sarah watched him carefully, wondering if he had been drinking this morning.

“Not for much longer,” she assured him tightly. “So why don’t you just leave. Brock August, or what I do, is none of your business.”

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She controlled her flush of embarrassment as she remembered what he had done to her beneath that table, promising her no one could see. But she knew, most likely, no one had seen what his fingers were doing to her. Merely speaking to another man was enough to shame her in Mark’s eyes. What was good for the gander was definitely not good for the goose.

“Hell, Sarah, if I knew you wanted to play the whore, I could have accommodated you.” Mark smiled maliciously. “I have brothers. They liked you well enough to fuck you.”

Sarah set her coffee cup down on the table carefully, watching her ex-husband with mingled amazement and anger.

“You’re insane,” she bit out furiously. “Why don’t you take your coffee and just get the hell out of my house. I didn’t ask you to come here.”

“Like you asked August?” He followed her when she rose to her feet and stalked to the sink. “Dammit, Sarah, I thought you learned your lesson the night him and his brother nearly had you at that barbeque. What, did the thought of it turn you on as you got older?”

“Get out!” She was shaking with fury now. Fury and fear. She didn’t want to hear this, didn’t want to hear the truth of what she was trying so hard to walk blindly into.

“Sarah, I don’t hate you. I don’t want to see you hurt.” His voice was soft, edged with faux confusion. She didn’t understand this game or its rules. “Dammit, we were married for six years.”

“Six cheating, lying years for you,” she bit out, rounding on him. “We weren’t married, Mark. You just lived here.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that I always liked you, Sarah,” he breathed out roughly, trying one of his charming, shy grins on her. They didn’t work anymore. “Dammit, you’re not like his other women.”

“Look, Mark, I don’t want to discuss this with you,” she told him again, shaking her head as she tried to get away from him. “I want you to leave. This is none of your business.”

She made to move around him, to stalk from the room and pray he would just leave. Surprise shot through her system when he grabbed her arm painfully, jerking her around. Sarah stared into the flushed, more than furious face of the ex-husband who had never shown any violence towards her, until now.

“Let me go, Mark.” She tried to jerk away from him, then cried out painfully when he pushed her against the kitchen wall. Hard.

“Dammit, you will listen to me, bitch,” he snarled in her face, his nose inches from hers.

Sarah was in shock. She had never seen this side of Mark. She had been aware it existed, knew of his barroom brawls, but he had never brought it home. Lora Leigh

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“Mark, you’re hurting me,” she whispered, straining against the hard hands that held her arms to the wall. “Let me go.”

He was breathing hard, his hazel eyes glittering with his anger as he watched her.

“Do you bend over and let him give it to you up the ass like the other bitches did?”

he growled harshly. “Bend over and let me have it then.”

Sarah nearly choked on her incredulous fear. She couldn’t believe the rage reflected towards her. He acted as though she had somehow wronged him, instead of the other way around. Then, fear drove sharp and deep as he ground his hips against her.

“God. Mark, don’t do this.” She pushed against his chest, feeling the erection against her stomach, seeing the anger driven lust in his eyes. “What the hell has gotten into you?”

“Your ignorance,” he lashed out at her. “You think I want my friends telling me about that bastard shoving his fingers up your pussy at that bar? Did you think no one would check what he was doing for me?”

Her face flushed in embarrassment. No one could have seen, but they could have guessed.

“It’s none of your business.” She shook her head, fighting the fear washing over her.

His abrupt fury, the violence surrounding her made her choke on the words. She wanted to push away from him, escape the flushed, contorted features staring down at her, but he wouldn’t let her go. He held her hard and fast to the wall, his body, not as muscular or as strong as Brock’s, yet still more than enough to control her.

“You stink of him,” he bit out roughly. “I can smell him on you, Sarah, and you stink.”

“Then get away from me.” She shrank back from him, turning her head aside as his face pressed closer.

She struggled against him, fearing the irrational anger that seemed to have a hold on him, driving him to want to hurt her. He hadn’t gotten this angry when she had slapped the divorce papers in front of him.

“You had the sheriff drag me out of my home,” he bit out. “My home, Sarah.”

“It’s my home,” she argued uselessly. “It always was, Mark.”

“My fucking home, my fucking wife.” He jerked her arms, pulling her forward then flinging her across the room.

Sarah caught herself on the kitchen table, backing away from him, her eyes flickering around the room, searching for an escape route. The back door was the closest means of escape. It was still cracked open and would be easy to get past. If she ran to the neighbor’s or if they heard her, they would call for help. She watched his eyes narrow, reading her intentions. Before he could jump for her she turned and sprinted for the door. She flung it open, then came to a hard, bouncing Lora Leigh

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halt as something blocked her way. Before she could regain her senses, she was set aside with a gentle touch and Mark screamed out in pain. Sarah pushed the hair from her face, blinking in amazement at the madman gripping Mark’s throat, lifting him from the floor then throwing him from the kitchen out the back door.

“Want to die today, gnat?” White teeth flashed in a snarling grin as the enraged man faced her ex-husband.

“You bastard, Brock,” Mark screamed at him from a safe distance. “She’ll pay for what she’s done to me. You wait and see.”

“Evidently you do.” He started for the door.

Mark let out a furious curse before Sarah heard him run for the front of the house. Seconds later, the sound of a vehicle starting then roaring away echoed through the room. She stood still, quiet, watching the large man as he turned to face her with a charming smile.

“Mornin’, Sugar.” He made to reach down and kiss her, but Sarah moved quickly out of his way.

“Where the hell is Brock and why are you here?” she asked Sam August, an edge of hysterical fury working its way into her voice.

Sam grinned, a soft tilt to his lips almost identical to Brock’s. It was the eyes though that warned her of the difference. Sam’s, though crinkled with laughter, his lips edged with a smile, were shadowed and saddened.

“How did you know?” he asked, closing the back door and walking to the coffee pot. “We’re usually hard to tell apart if we aren’t together.”

She didn’t know how anyone could miss the differences. Brock’s brooding intensity was there on his face, in the small lines at his mouth and eyes. Sam’s was carefully hidden beneath a cheery false front. That deception worried her. He poured the last cup of coffee, then turned back to her, watching expectantly.

“You do not live here.” Sarah felt like stomping her foot. What the hell was going on? Men were going crazy today. “You don’t live here and you have no right to act as though you do.”

He lifted a brow in a gesture of curiosity.

“I just saved your virtue. Surely I deserve a cup of coffee?” He groused goodnaturedly.

“I didn’t have any virtue left to save,” Sarah bit out, shaking now in reaction and anger. “Your brother took care of that already.” Horror consumed her at the words coming out of her mouth. But she couldn’t seem to stop.

“Where was I?” He frowned in mock bemusement. “Surely he would have invited me for the last scrap of virtue. Brock was never a greedy person before.”

Shock held her immobile, her mouth open, her eyes rounded. She felt like a fish gasping for air. She shook her head, her hands gripping the sides of it as she felt reason Lora Leigh

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wash away on incredulity. He was admitting to it. As though it were no more than a kiss on the cheek, admitting to a lifestyle she could not comprehend, no matter the reason. And acting as though it were already a done deed. A forgone conclusion that she would participate.

“Get the fuck out of my house!” She kept her voice low, calm, despite the fury overwhelming her. “Get out and don’t come back and tell that moronic brother of yours not to come back. God. Damn it, I don’t need this shit.”

Sam leaned against the counter, smiling in that crooked way that so reminded her of Brock.

“It’s okay, Sarah. I didn’t come here to jump your bones. Brock had some stuff to take care of at the ranch that’s going to keep him a few hours longer than he expected. He asked me to come over and stay with you.”

Sarah frowned at that information. Her jaw tightened, her fingers fisting in her robe.

“Marly?” she asked him, her voice sounding strangled. She knew, saw it in Sam’s eyes, felt it in the tightening of her heart. It was this that she couldn’t accustom herself to. This knowledge, the acceptance Brock needed that he could bring another woman pleasure with her acceptance, her approval.

Sam shrugged. “Cade’s in a fit over this shit, Sarah. You won’t come to the ranch and we can’t stay here and still take care of things at home. He’s worried about Brock, and about you.”

“What does that have to do with Brock fucking Marly?” Tears came to her eyes as her hands shook, her body trembled. “Why didn’t you fuck her instead?”

The anger was nearly overwhelming. The years she had spent, humiliated by Mark’s infidelities surged through her mind. It didn’t matter that it was just Marly. Knowing why didn’t ease that terrible, first flash of pain. It didn’t ease the flash of curiosity either, and that one was the hardest to deal with.

“Sarah, that’s enough.” Sam’s voice firmed, somber concern filling it now. “I’m not the one with a woman in danger and up to her neck in stubborn. This isn’t about sex. I know Brock told you that.”

“But he’s having sex with her,” she bit out. “He went back to fuck her. How can he fuck her? He spent all night coming inside me.”

Sam grimaced with a flash of amusement.

“Damn, Sarah, stop making my own hard-on worse.” He grinned with easy humor.

“You think I didn’t want to stay? Instead I’m here with you. The least you could do is go easy on me.”

She threw the coffee cup at him instead, barely missing his head and turned to rush from the room. Sam caught her in the doorway, his arms wrapping around her, his head bending to her ear as she stood in frozen surprise at the feel of his erection at her back.

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Sarah stilled. She felt heat rock her body, felt her vagina tremble in awareness of his arousal for her. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, she protested silently. She wasn’t supposed to want another man. No other should arouse her, no other should draw her. She loved Brock. Knew she did, deep in her soul. Just as she knew how desperately Brock needed exactly what she was feeling.

She stifled a moan. The images Brock had painted in her mind rushed over her. Sam and Cade touching her, taking as he watched, reveling in her cries of pleasure. She bit her lip, fighting the wickedness, the depravity of the desire.

“He told you he would do this, didn’t he, Sarah? Did Brock lie to you?” he asked her softly, compassionately.