Raising Kane (Rough Riders #9)(34)

But Ginger was wide-awake. Looking sexy as hell propped up on the pile of pillows on her bed.


“Here.” He handed her the glass of water and she drained it. “More?”


“No. But we worked up a powerful thirst, didn’t we?”


“More like a powerful hunger for me.”


Both her auburn eyebrows lifted. “There’s going to be a third round, isn’t there?”


“Uh-huh.” Kane kissed the top of her foot. “And a fourth.” He kissed above and below the bandage covering the gash on her shin. And the cute dimple above her knee. Then the bruises on her upper thigh.


“And possibly a fifth.” Finally he kissed the sexy curve of her hip. “Just not right now.”


She shivered.


“You cold?”


“Always.”


“Maybe I can warm you up.” He carefully pulled her into his arms.


She wiggled until she could press her cheek into his chest. Her cast clunked into his shin as she attempted to twine their legs together. “Sorry.”


“It’s okay.” His fingers trailed lazily up and down her spine.


After a bit, Ginger sighed. “Want to know something that’s embarrassing to admit? It’s been so long since I’ve been with a man, I was worried I wouldn’t remember how.”


Amused, he said, “Remember how to have sex?”


“No. Remember how to be a woman.”


His heart lurched. He wanted to reassure her she was all woman, but he didn’t interrupt, as he suspected this was something she’d never admitted to herself, let alone to anyone else.


“I’ve been asexual for so long, mother, professional woman, daughter, that I let the part of me that loves sex, that loves to be bold and fun in bed, the part that loves the feel of a man’s hands on me, his arms around me…God. Just to be held like this. Do you know how long it’s been? It’s like I slammed the door on that part of myself and never even peeked inside.”


“So, do you regret me kickin’ that door wide open?”


She laughed. “No. Never. Especially now that I know what I was missing behind that door with you.


Do you think it’s weird I had the overwhelming urge to tell you the truth?”


“A lawyer speaking the truth? What is the world comin’ to?”


Ginger laughed again.


“When did that door on your sexual being close?”


“Right after Hayden was born. I tried to recoup some of what I’d lost. But then I realized I never had it in the first place.”


“Was it Hayden’s father who did such a number on you?”


Her body went rigid. “I never talk about it. About him. Whatever.”


Kane ignored her clipped tone. “Then sugar, I think it’s long past time you did.”


Chapter Nine


Ginger had wondered if this would ever come up.


So far she’d avoided the subject with her son.


But she knew there’d be no avoiding it with this man.


But strangely, she trusted him. She wanted to tell him.


“Ginger?”


“Sorry. Just wrestling with where to even start.”


“How about at the beginning?”


She toyed with his chest hair, purposely not looking at him. “After I graduated from law school I landed a job with a big law firm in Los Angeles that specialized in contractual law in the entertainment industry. It was a highly sought-after job and I was damn lucky to have gotten it.”


“Good perks?”


“Amazing perks. Anyway, after my intern period passed, I was assigned permanently to the contractual dissolution team.”


“What’s that?”


“We were hired to find loopholes to break existing contracts.”


His fingers never stopped moving on her back. “Is that big business?”


“Very big business. I worked directly under the senior partner, Chas Daly. I admired him because he was brilliant and charismatic. He treated me like a rising star. He introduced me that way. ‘Here’s Ginger, our newest rising star.’ It was heady stuff.”



“I imagine.”


“With the late nights, case overload and me being a rookie who needed supervision, Chas and I spent a lot of time together. One thing led to another, and within a year of my assignment we were engaged in this torrid affair.”


At that comment Kane’s fingers stilled.


“Chas was married, which I knew. He fed me those clichéd bullshit lines about he and his wife drifting apart, she didn’t fulfill his sexual needs. The man had a voracious sexual appetite. In hindsight it was probably due to Viagra. I eagerly bought his lies, becoming the adventurous lover his wife wasn’t.


Even if we only hooked up in his office. I knew if I stayed the course, Chas would eventually leave her for me. Obviously that didn’t happen.”


“What did happen?”


“I found out three pieces of information that absolutely devastated me. One—his wife’s father had started the law firm and he was inexplicably tied to it and to her. Two—he was older than I’d thought.”