Wicked Lovers 01 Wicked Ties (43 page)

As he’d hoped, Morgan had surrendered utterly, totally, given him every bit of herself, her body, her passion. He’d wrung from her the sort of abiding submission he’d been seeking since the moment he’d first seen her.

She’d told him that she loved him.

So how the fuck was he going to tell her now that he’d arranged their meeting and plotted to fuck her, strictly to get revenge against her fiancé? Ex-fiancé. There was no way he was giving her up to Brandon Ross after today.

Problem was, what if she wanted to go back to the pansyass bastard?

He was going to have to come clean, explain how and why he’d arranged their meeting, and swear on his life that his every intent had changed, virtually from the moment he’d touched her.

Hell, he should have done this a long time ago. Jack sighed, clenched his fists. When revenge had taken a backseat to winning Morgan for himself, he should have been honest, laid his cards out on the table. Dreaming up ways to win her trust, only to confess that he’d lied, had been the stupidest freakin’ idea ever.

Shoving down the gut-tightening fear that he was going to lose her, Jack kissed her awake.

Please God, don’t let this be the last time she let him touch her.

Slowly, her eyes fluttered open. Her languid blue gaze, sated smile and catlike stretch all jabbed at his heart. She wasn’t just beautiful to him, but perfect for him. He loved her like…he’d never loved any woman. And if he didn’t play his cards right, she could walk out the door forever. raised a mean-looking Browning Hi-Power and pointed it at Jack.

He held in a biting curse. “Now!”

“Morgan. Cher…” he whispered.

Now what? Where were his suave words. How the hell could he phrase this?

“I have to tell you something,” he murmured.

Her ginger brows sloped down in a tired frown. She yawned, covering her mouth with the back of her hand in a gesture both womanly and childlike at once.

Tenderness jerked his heart as anxiety kicked him in the teeth. God, he’d almost rather cut his balls off with a dull rusty knife than shatter the bond between them.

“Hmm.” She moaned. Her eyes drifted half-closed as she sent him a sleepy smile.

Behind her, Deke shifted, his hand lowering, curling around her hip. Then he let out a snore. Morgan giggled.

Ignoring Deke, Jack took hold of her face, gaze delving down into hers. “I love you, cher. I have to know something. You and Brandon…”

That brought her eyes open. Wide open.

She gasped. “Jack, I—”

“Do you love him?” he demanded.

Morgan hesitated, clearly searching for words. Pain stomped his gut. Damn it, this was going to rip his fucking heart out to hear that she did.

“Yes, but not the way you think. He—”

Something—someone—pounded on the door. A moment later, wood splintered in a deafening sound. The door crashed open, slamming against the wall.

Jack scrambled in front of Morgan and faced the threat that stood in their doorway.

Brandon Ross wearing a business suit and a snarl from hell.

“Get your fucking filthy hands off her, Cole.” Brandon

“Brandon!” Morgan cried, peering around Jack’s shoulder.

Her half-brother’s thin, elegant frame filled the doorway. Fury morphed into shock when he realized she was in bed with two men. Mortification blasted open a pit of dark dread in Morgan’s stomach. Too bad she couldn’t crawl into it and disappear, she thought as she scrambled to cover herself with a sheet.

“Put the gun down!” she demanded.

He ignored her, instead scowling at Jack as if the fires of hell lurked in his eyes.

On her left, Deke had awakened and leaped in front of her, beside Jack, to protect her.

“This isn’t the way it looks, Brandon,” Jack assured.

“Yes, it’s exactly the way it looks.”

Morgan couldn’t mistake her brother’s growl, but it barely registered. Besides that unnerving gun, she was stuck on one fact…

“You two know each other?”

“Oh, shit,” Deke muttered and eased off the bed to put on his jeans. “Here we go…”

Even Deke knew what was going on? Morgan frowned and shot Jack a questioning glance, scrambling mentally to understand. Jack’s face tightened with anger, regret. And unmistakable guilt. What the…? She was having as much success deciphering this situation as she would watching a soap opera in Swedish.

“You didn’t tell her?” Brandon said incredulously. “No, of course you didn’t. That would have made getting your revenge much harder. But this way, not only did you get to fuck her and get back at me, you obviously shared her with your GI Joe buddy here for payback with interest, since it beats the hell out of anything I did to you.”

Revenge? “What is going on?” Morgan demanded, frowning.

She couldn’t follow the conversation…but what she did understand seemed damn ugly. Jack had taken her to bed to get back at Brandon? For…?

“Let me explain.” Jack turned and took her shoulders in his hands. “This is going to look bad and sound worse, but I swear—”

“He’s a sneaky son of a bitch looking for any way to stab me in the back,” Brandon spat. “Get away from him, Morgan. Don’t listen.”

“I told you how I felt, cher,” Jack vowed in a whisper. “Whatever you hear today, my feelings are real. I didn’t lie about that.”

Until this moment, she hadn’t doubted it. Now, dismay infected every breath Morgan took. She knew, just knew, something was really wrong. And that she wasn’t going to like it.

“But you lied about something else?”

“I told you to get your hands off her!” Brandon waved the gun at Jack again.

“Take it easy, man.” Jack eased off the bed and slowly reached for his jeans. “Let’s have a calm conversation about this situation and—”

“No, let’s tell Morgan the truth and see if she feels like having a calm conversation.”

“You don’t know the truth!” Jack snarled, tendons standing out in his neck, fists clenched. “You know what this looks like, but you don’t know shit.”

“So you didn’t pursue Morgan and bribe her production assistant, Reggie, to forward your name and IM to her for supposed use on the show?”

Morgan looked to Jack for a denial. He said nothing.

“Why would you do that?” she asked.

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I…”

“Because he wanted to meet you. No, that’s not right. He wanted to lure you to his side, fuck you, then make sure I knew about it so he could get his pound of flesh. Literally. Isn’t that right, Jack?”

Thick horror slid through Morgan. She turned her gaze to Jack, hoping, praying for his denial. He closed his eyes and bowed his head. The guilt on his face came raging back, digging into his furrowed brow.

Oh, God. Brandon was telling the truth. Morgan’s stomach lurched as betrayal stung her heart. Shock blanched her blood. “You did…all this to me? For revenge? How could you?”

Jack opened dark eyes swimming in shame. “The way I planned things…that isn’t the way it ended up happening.”

The pleading on Jack’s face, the seeming sincerity, tore at her. But she’d believed him before. And he’d apparently lied.

“Sure it is.” Brandon kept digging up ugliness. “The video footage you emailed me of you fucking Morgan certainly drove your point home. Thanks for that. I clearly saw her back against the door, her nails in your shoulders, while she screamed that she’d never had it better. Well planned.”

Brandon’s sarcasm ripped at the already raw wounds blistering inside her. Jack had made a video of them? When? Her back against the door, nails in his shoulders… Oh, God. That first time they had sex, after he’d caught her masturbating in the tub. Had to be. Jack had filmed that without her knowledge and sent it to Brandon? And he’d arranged it all in advance. Unbelievable.

Her happiness curdled, froze. Her trust…evaporated in an instant. And he’d done all that for payback? Unforgivable.

Morgan lifted a trembling hand to her mouth. She was going to be sick. This was like a nightmare, gut-wrenchingly terrible, something she wished she could just wake up from. But it was too intense and vivid to escape. Brandon and Jack were playing out some drama here, with her squarely in the middle.

“You emailed him a video of us… W—why?”

Jack hesitated, clearly trying to gather his words. Or his lies? The question ripped through Morgan.

“You want to tell her about Kayla, or should I?”

“Brandon, shut up,” Jack snarled. “She knows about Kayla.”

Kayla? Who the hell was… Oh, Jack’s ex-wife. Morgan had never heard the woman’s name, but that had to be it. Yes, she knew about Kayla, knew that Jack had found his best friend and his wife having sex on video…

The full implication slammed into Morgan, stealing her breath, replacing it with pain so intense, she nearly doubled over.

She stared at Jack in dawning horror. “Brandon…he was your friend. He was the one in the video having sex with your exwife.”

“While we were married,” Jack snapped. “He betrayed years of friendship and trust.”

And it had all hurt Jack’s pride.

Morgan trembled with disbelief, with anger. With pain. Deke put an arm around her to comfort her. She elbowed him in the gut, clutched the sheet to her chest, and glared at them all.

Then she zeroed in on Jack. “You betrayed my trust, too. The things you persuaded me to do…” Her face flushed hot in remembrance. “The way you made me question everything about myself… Damn it, I believed in you. In us. God, I was an idiot! You must have laughed a hundred times.”

“I never laughed. Morgan…cher, I never meant to hurt you. I—”

“You never even thought whether it would hurt her or not,” Brandon accused. “You didn’t care.”

“That’s not true.” Jack eased toward her and reached out to her.

Morgan jerked away from Jack before he could touch her. Anger and anguish combined on his face, rolled through the taut, lean muscles rippling across his chest and shoulders.

No, it was an act. All for revenge. She wouldn’t worry if he actually hurt. As Brandon said, Jack hardly cared whether he’d hurt her.

“Swamp, you son of a bitch. There’s your safe word. Don’t touch me again.”

Her rebuff slashed pain across Jack’s face, and he turned on Brandon.

“You’re not exactly Mr. Clean here,” Jack growled at her brother. “You’re the one who seduced Kayla while I was married to her, made her believe you loved her—”

“So you seduced me in return?” Morgan shouted at Jack. “Pushed me to change my perception of myself and my sexuality. You made me believe you loved me, that I loved you, too. I said it to you while...” She gasped as the awful truth washed through her blood in an icy rush. “That must have been the ultimate revenge, having me tell you that I loved you during sex, just like Kayla said to Brandon. Did you know it would work out that perfectly, or just hope?”

“Cher, it was nothing like that. I swear. Honest. I—”

“Dear God! Did you do to Morgan what you did to Kayla?” Brandon broke in, his voice booming with incredulity. “Did you mess with her head and try to turn her into some submissive robot?”

“Does she seem like a robot to you?”

“Kayla couldn’t handle what you wanted from a woman, and after you, she was afraid of every man. I no sooner had her, than she left me.” Wearing a furious, incredulous scowl, Brandon grabbed Jack by the arm. “Have you done the same thing to Morgan, you bastard?”

“No!” Jack insisted. “Morgan is wired for what I need in a woman. She is my woman. I awakened her, which is more than you can say. I gave her everything her body yearned for, even a ménage when the thought of it twisted my guts in two, all because I wanted her happiness. What did you do besides ignore her sexuality, then leave her when some sick stalker followed her, masturbated on her bed, then shot at her in public? Yeah, that’s love for you.”

“He shot at you, sweetheart?” Concern transformed Brandon’s angry face. He dropped his gun to his side.

“Put that away,” she whispered, nodding toward the firearm.

With a reluctant sigh, one that communicated just how pissed he was, Brandon tucked his gun in the waistband of his slacks at the small of his back and turned to her.

When he tried to cup his hand around her shoulder, Jack snarled, “Don’t touch her!”

Then he jumped in and hit Brandon with a right cross to the chin. Brandon’s head snapped back, and he came up rubbing his chin with one hand and forming a fist with the other.

Jack blocked Brandon’s incoming punch. “I let you take Kayla from me. I didn’t love her, and we all knew it. But you’ll have to kill me before I let you take Morgan from me. I love her. I’ll always love her.” Jack turned to her then, his penitent frown ripe with a plea. “If you’ll let me explain and apologize. You can’t marry him.”

“She’s not marrying any of you!” screeched a half-wild voice from the open doorway.

Brandon turned and Jack leaned around her brother for a look at their new visitor, but Morgan didn’t have to see to know who’d just arrived. She knew that voice.

“Andrew? What are you doing here?” She leaned into his line of vision, still clutching the sheet over her bare body.

Her blood turned to ice when she saw menace mutating his cultured face into a snarl and the threat in his stance as he blocked the door. Fury vibrated off him, zinging around the room like its own lethal force. Adrenaline and anger crashed through Andrew, judging from the way he twitched as he held a gun in his hands—a gun he pointed right at her.

Morgan gasped, her mind racing to comprehend this turn of events.

“Someone has to stop you.” Andrew stared at her as if he barely knew her, taking in Deke and Jack, both shirtless and disheveled a few feet away…and drawing some accurate conclusions. “You fucked two men? I knew you were a whore, but this is even beyond what I believed you capable of. I can’t believe I nearly married you. You dating Senator Ross’s son infuriated me enough.” Andrew tossed his unusually unkempt salt-and-pepper hair as he nodded at Brandon. “You visited him, agreed to marry him. You slept with him. And now you’ve taken up with yet another man. Your bodyguard, right? Did you ask him to dominate you, too?”

Andrew’s sneer hung in the air, its hostility stinging her like a harsh slap to the face. She refused to be embarrassed by his words. But the gun pointed at her, making her heart pound, scared the hell out of her.