The Pleasure of Sin by Shauna Hart Page B

“What?” he asked, his eyes still clouded with hunger.
    Jade’s hand came up to cover her mouth as she took a steadying breath. Tears welled up in her eyes, but anger refused to let them fall.
    “At the club. It was you.”
     
     
     

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 13
     
    She could tell by the look on his face that he was waging an internal battle against himself on whether he should tell her the truth or not. She set her jaw to let him know that she wasn’t going anywhere without the one thing that he had denied her.
    “Jade…” he began, but stopped.
    Confusion set in before he could respond any further, demanding more answers. “But how did you even get in? You’re not a member,” she reasoned more to herself than to him.
    His next words were more damning than any evidence she could have found.
    “I am a member.”
    Jade felt the room spin violently as realization set in, smacking her in the face with the brutal truth that he had been lying to her from the beginning. Her face contorted in humiliation as she remembered how passionately she had given herself to him in the club. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes, but she would not let them fall.
    She wouldn’t give him that.
    He had already taken too much.
    * * * *
    Clay stared into her dark, stormy eyes. He could only imagine what she was thinking right now, and none of it painted him in a very good light. The worst part of it was that the truth would only be that much worse for her to stomach. He’d acted like a selfish ass. Hell, he knew that. But remembering the way she felt naked and writhing in his arms, he couldn’t even say that he was sorry. He’d wanted her from the beginning and the second he had the chance to have her, he had taken it.
    He wasn’t sorry for it.
    He would do it again.
    But looking into her eyes, he couldn’t deny the guilt that drove into his side at what his admission had cost her. Answering her questions wasn’t going to make things any better. In fact, it would probably make things a lot worse, but it was too late for caution now. He had personally assassinated it the day she walked back into his life.
    It was time to give her what she thought she wanted.
    “I’ve been a member for a few years,” he confessed.
    Her mouth fell open, clearly shocked with his honesty. “You and Ruby…” She trailed off, unable to voice the question.
    “No. I didn’t even know she was a member until I ran into her one night.”
    She glanced away, as if she was afraid to look at him. Her tongue snaked out to wet her lips, making his cock twitch.
    “Did you ever ?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
    “No.” His harsh reply filled the room. “It was over between us a long time ago. It was over long before it ended.”
    He didn’t tell her the rest.
    He didn’t say that nothing happened because he had turned down her offer to ‘remember old times.’ More important, he didn’t tell her that, for him, it had ended the minute he touched her at the party. She had too many reasons to run from him right now.
    He didn’t need to add to the list.
    “But that first night…were you following me?”
    He shot her a probing glance. “No, I was early. I saw you leaving when you were supposed to be meeting me in a half an hour. Curiosity got the better of me. Then, when I saw where you were going, I had to know why.”
    She shook her head, her brows furrowing together on a frown. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded angrily.
    His eyebrows arched high. “What? That I belong to the club? Somehow, it never came up in conversation,” he replied sarcastically.
    “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
    She didn’t have to finish the question, because he knew what she was thinking. Why hadn’t he told her before they had sex? It was a question he had known would come, but one he still wasn’t ready for. In truth, he had only wanted some answers when he followed her into the club that night. But one touch, and he had been like