Remember When...

by Scarlett Finn

  Shane couldn’t even lie because his expression said it all. “How did—”

  She shrugged. “It’s not a memory as much as it’s common sense. You went on the offensive, which is what you do when people hurt me. Your childhood was fine. No problems through your teen years. I’ve been paying attention in therapy, you know.” She smiled and kissed his cheek. “If they’d just been awful people, you’d have told me. ‘There’s something wrong with them, they’re not capable of loving anyone except themselves.’ That’s what you said. Owen said, ‘Everyone told him that screwing with young underlings was a bad idea, and his family thought he could do better…’ So, I figure… they hate me.”

  “A little bit,” Shane said, looking genuinely sorry, but she tossed her head back and laughed.

  “Oh, Shay, if that’s the worst we have to deal with bring it on.”

  Kissing him again, she shifted into a static, half-backstroke and lifted her feet to his hips. He kept treading, but gripped her toes and his brows went up.

  “What you playing at, Mrs. Warren?” he asked when her toes hooked into his waistband. “Our son is watching, you know?”

  She knew that, but dug her toes in and wrenched his shorts as far down his thighs as she could before using his strong body as a push off point to glide back toward the shore. “Race you back,” she called over her shoulder and swam with everything she had toward the shore and her boy, leaving her husband behind her, eating her spray.

  25

  Ginger had won, but it hadn’t mattered because everyone was so ecstatic by the time they got back to the shore that no one was keeping score. If she’d thought about it, she’d have known that Shane would never have left her out there and raced past her. Her husband was always going to follow, never lead, in the water at least. He kept Cam while she showered and then they switched for him to wash off.

  Ginger was pumped, ready to fight, ready for action, ready for something. Murphy came to say he was taking Rocky for a quick walk before therapy, so she passed off her son to his uncle who agreed to take him in his stroller.

  She’d just closed the door behind them when Shane came out of the bathroom, rubbing a towel in his ear. “Where’s our prince?” Shane asked, scanning for Cam and peeking into the crib to only find Raa there.

  “I’m not mommy right now,” she said.

  “Ok.” Shane tossed the towel from his shoulders toward the door next to where she was, but the other stayed around his hips. “Who are you?”

  Strutting toward him, Ginger said nothing and planted both hands on his chest to thrust him back onto the bed. While he was still in shock, she shimmied her panties down her legs, slid the straps of her dress from her shoulders and climbed on top of him. “I’m your wife,” she said on his mouth a breath before she kissed him.

  Shane was as ready as she was for the kiss and his arms closed around her body, but she wouldn’t let him flip her over, wouldn’t let him take control. Ginger fought to stay on top, driving both fists into the mattress at either side of his head.

  With her freshly-shampooed hair tumbling around their faces, she licked her lips. “I don’t want to wait,” she murmured. “Say it, Boo. Tell you that you love me.”

  “I love you,” he said, his strong hand sliding up her spine and disappearing into her hair to clasp the back of her neck to try for another kiss. “I do, I love you.”

  “Now tell me I’m allowed. Give me permission.”

  “Permission for what, sweetheart,” he asked, dazed by her kiss, drugged by the passion and the strength of their need.

  “Everything. Anything. Permission to do whatever the hell I want with you.”

  The corner of his mouth curled. “Damn right you have permission. You are—” Yanking his towel open, Ginger seized his dick and held it tight. He muttered out a curse, but she wasn’t done. Sitting up, she took him into her body in one slick, confident move, which had to be another example of her muscle memory coming in to play.

  Shane crunched up, his torso coming half off the bed as he groaned and sputtered. “Shit, fucking holy hell! Fuck!”

  Thank god Murphy had taken Cam out of the house; she just hoped they were gone already. But it didn’t really matter, she was enjoying the sensation of riding her husband, and as she got used to the rhythm, she picked it up, moving faster as she slid her hands over his hard abs and squeezed the girth of her cock in her pussy.

  “Oh, fuck, baby, slow it down,” Shane panted, his hands skimming her back and clutching her hair. “Fuck, Gin!”

  “Come,” she said, pressing her hand into his groin and using her thumb to stimulate her clit. She didn’t want her hands, she wanted his. Grabbing hold of one, she pressed it to her abdomen, low down, right at her pubis. “Come here, Boo. Come deep inside me. Right here… Oh, Shay, your cock is amazing.”

  Bouncing up and down on him, she closed her eyes and panted toward the ceiling begging to feel him inside her like this forever more. “Bit,” he hissed out through his teeth.

  “Rub my clit,” she said, turning his hand to push his fingertips against her. “Yes, baby, oh like that… I’m so close… yes…” Pushing his fingers harder with hers, Ginger yelped and screamed and squeezed him hard with the power of her unparalleled release.

  Shane reared up. His hips bucked from the bed and he pumped himself into her as he dragged her down for a kiss that left her breathless.

  Their bodies were still connected when she finally relaxed and let her cheek rest on his chest. “Boo,” she whispered, trailing her hand up and down his rib cage. “You were… incredible.” He didn’t say anything and his hands weren’t on her body. She was too lost in her own endorphins to think too much about it. But in time, as she cooled and began to return to reality, she panicked and sat up… Except he was still inside her so they both flinched. Trying to find his eyes, she worried when she saw they were fixed on the ceiling. “Shane… did I do it wrong?”

  Another score of seconds passed before his gaze lowered and landed on hers. He looked so stunned that her heart began to race again as fear edged in. “There are no fucking words for what just happened,” he said, his voice barely above a grumble.

  “Oh, I did it wrong, did I hurt you? I—” Ginger tried to lift her leg, but he grabbed her hips and held her on him.

  “I’ve missed you, Bit,” he said and breathed out, emptying his lungs. “There’s no distinction anymore… you are her. No doubt about it.”

  The confident woman in the videos, the one who took control of her man, who played and tested him. Ginger blinked at his belly button. “But I… I don’t remember so much.”

  He laughed and sat up, taking her neck in one hand and her ass in the other. “You are my Ginger, that’s all that matters to me. You are the woman I fell in love with. The woman I love. The mother of my child.”

  Gasping, she looked down. “We weren’t careful.”

  “You told me to come and I came.” Yes, she’d actually ordered him to do it, and her cheeks heated when she remembered what she’d said and how she ordered him around. “I like the blushing thing, we should keep that,” he said and leaned in to kiss her neck.

  Ginger was laughing as his tongue tickled her ear lobe when there was a call from downstairs. “Therapy!”

  They kissed again, but it couldn’t last. But before she got off his lap, Ginger put her fingers to his chest. “I did it right?”

  “Perfect,” he said, making her grin as she got off his lap and ran to the bathroom.

  They should really shower again, but there wasn’t time this minute, so she figured it would wait. They’d just finished cleaning up and dressing when there was another call for therapy. Great, that meant they were holding everyone up.

  Running down the stairs together, Shane came up short behind her when she stopped abruptly behind the couch that Owen was seated on. “I just had sex with my husband.”

  Why had she said that? Why had she declared it like that? Ginger didn’t know, but it felt important
and she felt better for saying it. Owen twisted to look over the back of the couch, but instead of looking at her, he looked over her head at Shane, just like Murphy and Doctor Guinness did.

  “Why are you all looking at me?” Shane asked and put his hands on her shoulders. “I didn’t know we were going to declare it like that, but, yeah… she did.”

  “You had sex with him or you had sex with each other?” Doctor Guinness asked as Ginger went around the couch to sit next to Owen who had Cam on his lap.

  Shane went to his brother and dropped onto the couch in his usual position. “Does it matter?” Shane asked. “I definitely did my bit… at the end.”

  He and Murphy fist-bumped, as she moved Cam from Owen’s lap to hers. “It’s been an emotional day for Ginger,” Doctor Guinness said. “An emotional few days actually. Owen and Murphy have been filling me in on what they know about last night… with Calvin.”

  “Yeah, we were down here doing the therapy thing while you were upstairs getting laid,” Murphy said. “Does that mean she’s cured?”

  “I do want to go back to California to see my mom,” she said, letting Cam rest back against her and giving him a finger in each hand. “I think maybe it’s time Cam and I went to see what life is like out there.”

  “That’s progress,” Doctor Guinness said.

  “I feel like this is wrong,” Owen said, frowning at them all. “Shane, switch places with me.”

  Owen got up and went over to Shane, shooing him off his couch. He gave Shane little choice but to join Ginger on hers. There was a free couch, but she didn’t mind having Shane at her side, especially when he sat so close that their thighs touched, and he stretched his arms along the back of the couch so that one of them was behind her. “I should get Cam something to eat,” she said, thinking about her baby who she’d neglected this morning.

  Passing him to Shane, she went into the kitchen to get him a banana, it only took her a minute to mash and mix it up. Ginger brought it back into the living room to find that Shane was lying on the couch with his ass up close to the arm so his legs dangled off the end. Cam was using his father as a seat, leaning against his thighs, his baby butt on Shane’s abs.

  There wasn’t much space for her, so she scooped a hand under Shane’s head and he lifted his shoulders enough to let her sit and then dropped his head into her lap. Scooping up some banana, she leaned over Shane to slip it into Cam’s mouth and rested the bowl on Shane’s shoulder.

  “Wow, this is some kind of fucked up,” Murphy said.

  “Language,” Ginger and Shane said at the same time. Her husband stopped playing with his son’s feet and lifted his eyes to hers, and she bent down to kiss his mouth.

  “Look at them,” Murphy said and everyone turned to see him holding an open palm toward the couch that she and Shane were occupying. “They’re a little fucking Warren family.”

  “Language!” she and Shane said at the same time again, but this time, Shane stretched an arm off the couch and pointed a finger at his brother.

  “Do it again and we’ll have a problem.”

  Rocky, who’d been lying on the rug in front of the fireplace until now, lifted his head to bark. “Lie down,” she and Shane said in unison.

  Owen laughed. “Oh, this is too funny.”

  Cam saw his uncle laughing and laughed too, spitting banana goo all over his father’s tee-shirt. “Thanks, Cam,” Shane said, tickling the baby’s feet.

  “What a shame I have an excuse to get you out of your clothes again,” Ginger teased, sliding a hand into the neckline of his tee-shirt.

  Shane grinned and bounced Cam’s feet together. “I gave you permission, remember? Anything you want to do, any time.”

  “Do you think underwear picnics are going to be a regular thing in the Warren house?” she asked.

  Shane laughed. “Until Cam is old enough to notice, sure, then I think they might become a Warren mommy and daddy thing.”

  “Then they’ll just end up being naked picnics,” she said.

  “True,” Shane nodded, lifting one of Cam’s feet then the other in a rhythm as she fed the baby more banana. “And let’s be honest, who needs the food?”

  “The food?” she asked, cleaning Cam’s chin with the spoon. “We can skip the entrée, but I’ll have to insist on dessert.”

  His eyes were smiling when they ascended to hers and they said together, “Chocolate pudding.”

  “What else?” she asked and they shared the laugh.

  They both stopped when Doctor Guinness stood up and closed his binder. “What’s up, doc?” Shane asked.

  Doctor Guinness looked stern and Ginger thought for a second that they’d done something wrong, then he smiled. “Our work here is done. You have my card if you need any follow-up and I’d be honored to come to California to work with you some more.” Doctor Guinness moved to the couch and stood in front of her. “You don’t need a retreat now. You need your family… and you have them right here.”

  The doctor shook Shane’s hand and walked away up the stairs. Ginger was stunned as the men exchanged looks. Cam broke the silence with a babble and he tried to lunge forward to grab the banana bowl from his father’s shoulder, but Shane grabbed it up just in time and picked up his son too so he could right himself on the couch.

  With the baby on his lap and the banana bowl in the same hand that held Cam, Shane curved his hand around the side of her neck. “Bit?”

  Turning to him, she was… astounded. “We… we’re a family.”

  “Yeah,” Shane said, his smile was slow and he let his hand slither to her belly. “Maybe a growing one.”

  And that wasn’t a scary thought, it was exhilarating. “Yeah… maybe.” But she had to be wary. “But Calvin and—”

  “I already called to file protective order paperwork,” Owen said. “I told Boyd at the lodge this morning, he and Calvin took their business associates and split not long after… they don’t want the truth of what he did getting out, it would be devastating for his business.”

  Calvin was gone. Out of her life. She was safe. She was happy. In love. A mother. A wife.

  Shane was still holding his breath, waiting for something from her. “Let’s get married,” she said in a rush of breath.

  “What?” Murphy asked. “You’re already married, how can—”

  “Shh!” Owen swooned though she and Shane couldn’t take their eyes off each other. “It’s romantic, you idiot.”

  “Yeah, Bit,” Shane said, scooping his hand under her ear to pull her to him. “Let’s get fucking married.”

  And before she could chastise him, he sealed his mouth over hers, taking control of the moment, their lives, and their family. After all, he was the daddy.

  Read on for an excerpt from:

  ONE

  “Lyla Malloy.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Lyla said, sinking into the isolated steel-framed chair that stood in front of a panel of four people.

  Only one of those people worked in her department, though all of them were executive-level employees with the entertainment channel she worked for. Channel Prem, one of the most successful commercial channels in the country.

  “Do you know who Nairn Strickland is?” Alan Bunyan, the network director asked her.

  Bunyan, who was sitting in a larger chair than the other three on the panel, was the only one who’d spoken thus far, but he was known for his need to be at the center of attention any time he was in a room.

  His question was silly enough that Lyla stopped tugging on the cuffs of her oversized sweater and actually smiled; something she didn’t think she’d be doing in this intimidating meeting. “Of course,” she said, glancing at each face before continuing as it seemed they wanted her to do. “He’s the station’s biggest star. He hosts Boys Night three nights a week with Noah Tate and Nathaniel Green.” Known as the ‘Threens’, the three of them were often seen around town together, drinking, partying with different women, and just generally being boys behaving badly. �
�He has a show on our radio station late Sunday night and he hosts Truth or Dare, one of our flagship quiz shows.”

  Truth was, Nairn was everywhere, and while his reputation appealed to adult audiences, he was huge on social media too with fans in most age ranges from teenagers to middle-aged men and women from many backgrounds. Men wanted to drink with him, women wanted to screw him, and the younger fans idolized him.

  This was a first for Lyla, being addressed by the network director. When she’d been called into this meeting, she was sure that she was being fired because the only man she knew would be here was Ritchie, her direct superior. Though she had thought it was weird that he was pulling her into a meeting in one of the fancy boardrooms as opposed to into his office where she’d seen people lose their jobs before.

  Ritchie was sitting at the end of the long table, saying nothing; he was more like a decorative paperweight than a bookend. He didn’t seem to have any useful task other than to bulk out the numbers or fill space. Her boss was in his forties and always seemed stressed; she’d never once seen him crack a smile.

  Bunyan was older than him, using the features of his appearance alone, the lines on his forehead and the thinning of his hair, she’d put him in his sixties, but she knew he was actually only in his mid-fifties. Maybe the trials of his job added years—she could understand that. But it would probably help if he kept himself in better shape. Although he was tall, he carried more weight than he needed to and seemed to sweat a lot too. Lyla wasn’t sorry she hadn’t spent more time around him, his bluster made her uneasy.

  “Good,” Bunyan said, looking to his colleagues before taking a breath and looking her square in the eye. Uh-oh. “We’re going to need you to marry him.”

  The universe went onto pause. Lyla wasn’t even sure what he’d said and she knew three languages; comprehension wasn’t usually a problem for her. “I’m… I’m sorry, what?”