Chapter 18: Consequences

The front door clicked open and I could see Nick standing in the entryway, still in the clothes he’d worn to work, his hair slightly messy, like he’d been running his hands through it. I braced for the explosion—the one I’d be preparing for in Roxie’s car the whole way home. I was ready for anger, disgust, the cold, quiet kind that meant the marriage was already over and he was just deciding how to tell me.

What I got instead made my stomach drop harder than any of that.

He looked at me, and his eyes went dark in a way I’d never seen directed at me. Not angry. Hungry. His gaze dragged over the short black dress that was now wrinkled and riding high on my thighs, the one with the large, not yet dried streaks across the front that I knew he could see under the porch light. He stepped forward, closed the distance in two strides, and kissed me like he was starving. Deep, open-mouthed, one hand sliding into my hair and the other gripping my hip hard enough to bruise. I tasted whiskey on his tongue. When he pulled back, I could tell he was drunk. His voice was rough and low against my mouth.

He kissed me again before I could answer, slower this time, like he was trying to memorize the taste of whatever had happened on my lips. My hands stayed frozen at my sides. I couldn’t move them. I couldn’t kiss him back. My brain was still trying to process the fact that he was hard against my stomach through his pants.

“You saw everything?” I whispered when he finally let me breathe. The words came out small and cracked. “The videos?”

“Yeah.” His forehead rested against mine. He didn’t look away. “All of it. You dancing with him. His hands on you. The way you kissed him back. The rest. And I have never been more turned on in my entire life.”

The shame hit so fast and so hard that my knees nearly buckled. I saw the club again in a rush I couldn’t stop—Alan’s thick fingers pushing against my crotch on the dance floor while Roxie watched and smiled, the way I’d let him cup me through my thong and grind against his hand because the animal inside me had been screaming “yes” even while the rest of me wanted to die. The way I had acted in the hallway and how I had pulled his cock out and stroked him while he groaned. The way he had begun to move, his cock sliding up and down my fist until I felt the hot stripes of cum land on the fabric of my chest. How I’d just stayed there, holding his cock until he was done, until my fingers were sticky and my panties were soaked through

Nick leaned in to kiss me again, and I pushed him away hard enough that he took a step back.

“Don’t,” I said. My voice shook. “Don’t kiss me. Don’t touch me right now. I am dirty. I feel disgusting. I can’t believe you watched that. I can’t believe Ryan watched that. How the fuck are you okay with any of this? How are you not angry?”

“Sarah, I love you. I think you are the sexiest woman alive. I know you didn’t mean anything by what you did. It was a game.”

“I drove it,” I snapped. The words tasted like bile. “I didn’t just let it happen. I wanted it. I got wet for him, Nick. I opened his pants and stroked his cock until he came on me because some part of me liked how wrong it felt. Don’t stand there and tell me I didn’t mean it. I meant every second of it while it was happening, and I hate myself for that, and you should too.”

He tried to step closer again. I shoved past him into the house, the click of my heels too loud on the tile. The roses he’d brought me earlier in the week were still on the side table, perfect and red. I wanted to throw them.