Little Secrets Read online

  “Are you?”

  “I’ve been having my share of sexy ones,” she admitted. “Honestly, I don’t mind. A nice wet dream once in a while? What’s wrong with that?”

  “And the…other?”

  “No,” Ginny said firmly. “I don’t dream of slicing my husband open with a knife, Peg. I think that was just your particular brand of crazy.”

  Peg didn’t seem offended. “I just wanted you to know that if you were having some problems, I’d be willing to listen. Pregnancy can put a strain on any marriage, and so can a big move. And especially, hon, when you have the considerations you do—”

  Ginny threw up a hand to stop her. “Honestly, Peg, I’m completely burned out on this type of discussion. Yes, I had some problems before. But that was then, this is now. And I’m damned tired of everyone waiting with bated breath for me to lose this baby. That’s it, that’s all.”

  “I’m sorry,” her sister said quietly. “That’s not what I’m doing. But can’t you understand why Sean might be worried?”

  Ginny looked at her with narrowed eyes. “What’s he said?”

  “Nothing to me. He talked to Dale. Said he thought you weren’t really facing things, that you wanted to forget what happened, and he was worried it was affecting how you were dealing with this pregnancy.”

  “I haven’t forgotten!” Ginny cried. “As if I could ever forget!”

  “He says you won’t decorate the nursery.”

  Ginny shook her head, refusing to get herself worked up over this. “That’s not forgetting. That’s being practical. The baby will come home from the hospital and stay in our room for the first few months anyway. And we don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl, so why should we spend a lot of time and effort on something that might turn out to be…wrong? And babies have personalities,” she continued. “What if we go with a jungle theme and our daughter turns out to be a princess sort of girl? What if we have a boy who’d really like trains? Or, hell, the other way around, I don’t care. I just want to focus on the baby.”

  She stared at Peg, who stared back.

  “I just want to think about the baby,” Ginny said quietly. “Not the color of the fucking walls. Okay?”

  “Okay,” came Peg’s equally quiet answer. “Okay.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Ginny wears gartered stockings.

  High heels, black patent leather, red soles. Shoes she’d never buy in real life, but here they fit her perfectly. Here she walks like a queen in expensive stilettos, and she never thinks of falling.

  The stockings swish, swish as she walks. The bare skin of her thighs rubs together. She wears silk panties. Red, she thinks. Yes, red. A matching bra of red and black, pushing her breasts forward, giving her cleavage that turns men’s heads.

  Oh, she wants to be that woman. The one who makes men stare. She wants to walk into a room and have them stop whatever they are doing. She wants their eyes to bulge out, their tongues to loll, to make them cartoon wolves with an AROOOOGA noise. She wants to be desired.

  There’s power in this. These clothes, this walk. The sway of hips, the jiggle of her breasts. She is all woman. She is not just desirable, she is desire.

  What will he think when he sees her? When her shirt unbuttons, one at a time, to reveal the slope and swell of her breasts? When she unzips her straight black skirt and lets it fall on the floor? When she steps out of her clothes and stands in front of him dressed like a wet dream, will he get hard for her right away, or will she have to kiss him first?

  Oh, how she wants to kiss him.

  It’s all she can think about. That first kiss. How his mouth will taste, how his tongue will feel stroking hers. There have been nights when she can’t stop from touching herself to the idea of that mouth, those lips and teeth on her flesh. He will kiss her mouth. He will kiss her face. He will kiss her jaw, her throat, the slope of her shoulder.

  He will kiss her all over, every place she wants him to, and his hands will follow along the path his mouth makes. He will part her thighs and find her heat with fingers, tongue, cock, and she’ll take him into all of her body’s secret deep places.

  She will take him all in.

  * * * * *

  Ginny woke without opening her eyes, pleasure coursing through her and the shreds of the dream slipping away. She moaned before she could stop herself. When she opened her eyes, Sean was staring at her over the edge of his iPad.

  “Nightmare?”

  A nod made the lie easy. It would’ve been harder with words, but since she couldn’t manage to find any, she settled for sitting up and scrubbing at her face.

  “Must’ve been a doozy,” Sean said. “You were really wriggling around.”

  Embarrassed, Ginny let her fingers pressing her eyes keep her from meeting his gaze. “I don’t really remember it. What are you still doing up?”

  “Reading.” He tipped the screen to show her, though she couldn’t possibly read the text from this far away. “You’ve only been asleep for about an hour.”

  “It felt like a lot longer.”

  He looked concerned and pulled her closer, though it wasn’t comfortable for her to snuggle up to him the way he wanted her to. “You want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “Was it about the baby?”

  “Sean, no.” Ginny sighed and pushed away. “I have to pee.”

  She padded to the bathroom, her habit, as always, to leave the light off and needing it even less with the light from the bedroom. She peed with her elbows resting on her knees, her face in her hands.

  She remembered that lingerie. The bra and panties, expensive and sexy. An impulse purchase. They’d fit her perfectly. She’d tried them on about a dozen times but worn them only once. They were still in her drawer. She’d never wear them again, she knew that, but she hadn’t been able to get rid of them, either.

  At the sink she washed her hands and looked up without intending to see anything. Usually she averted her eyes anyway in case the irrepressible urge to shout out “Bloody Mary” three times overtook her. That old story had scared the bejesus out of her as a kid. Tonight, though, she was more awake than usual and there was more light. She saw her silhouette, the flash of her eyes and flip of her hair as she bent to the sink.

  And then, something else.

  A figure, a shadow, drifted past the bathroom door. Indistinct, but definitely there. Startled, Ginny whirled, ready to confront a sneaky Sean trying to scare her, but there was nothing there. She was frozen for a minute or so, waiting to see it again. She stared, hard, but saw nothing. Ginny cocked her head to listen for the sounds of anything from downstairs. Was that the creak of a footstep? The squeak of a cupboard. Ah. A late night snack. Satisfied she’d solved the mystery, Ginny headed back to bed.

  He’d turned the light out before going down, at least he’d done that. Ginny crawled into bed with a sigh and settled into her pillows. The dream had faded but the memories lingered. Closing her eyes might bring them even more into focus, so she stared instead at the wall, the darkness…

  Something touched her.

  Not something, someone. A hand stroked down her back, cupping her rear. Ginny shrieked and fought against the blankets and the touch, trapped by the tangled sheets at her feet and the pillows she’d propped herself up with.

  “Hey, hey! Honey! Ginny, babe, it’s me!”

  Sean snapped on the bedside lamp, but it took her a few seconds to stop fighting him. Ginny blinked rapidly. “When did you get into bed?”

  “What do you mean, get into bed? I’ve been here the whole time. I got tired while you were in the bathroom. I figured I’d—”

  “You turned off the light!” she accused. “I couldn’t see that you were in here!”

  Sean frowned. “Where else would I be?”

  “I saw you go into the hallway. I heard you g