Forbidden: A Sinful Shares Romance Read online

  Harry cracked up and mimicked Pops. “Get over yourself. Ya ain’t that special.”

  “You’re right about that! But you know who is special? You! And as my brother, you have a special role to play when we get married.”

  She quipped as dryly as she could, “I did not get a vote in this.”

  Harry giggled. “What do I gotta do?”

  Robert’s grin was enormous. She loved seeing him so happy, and his joy made her smile. Harry’s instant acceptance and sibling comedy gave them a memorable moment. It didn’t get much better than this. She soaked it all in, so she could share with Mom and Pops later.

  “First is a hair cut. And then a tuxedo.”

  “I’ve never been to a wedding,” Harry exclaimed.

  “So I guess there’s supposed to be some formal asking, right?” Robert searched her face, and she eagerly nodded her agreement. “Harry Peyton, brother. Would you stand with me when Kristal and I get married? Will you be my best man?”

  Kids are such straightforward thinkers, and Harry proved the point when he asked, “Does that mean I’m in charge?”

  “It means you’re in charge of Robbie and Pops, and Izzy will get me and Mom. So yeah, in a way, you’re both in charge.”

  He pointed his finger at her and Robert. “No stupid stuff, okay? When my music teacher got married last year, he dressed like the opera phantom. Why? Why would anyone do that?”

  She crossed her heart and fist bumped the wisdom of a kid. “Just to be clear? You’ll all do whatever I say. Get back to me next week after I’ve pored over a stack of bridal magazines.”

  Harry looked back and forth between them and muttered, “Guys, this is so cool.”

  Robert’s happy smile was reflected in her heart. The wall she’d carefully constructed was no more. The stack of bricks to keep away the forbidden vanished to dust. Everything would be all right. Hell, it would be better than that.

  Harry burst into the house, rushing past Robert as he held the door for Kristal. “Mom! Dad!” he yelled. “Guess what?”

  Mara was coming from the laundry room with a basket in her hands. “What? What’s got you so excited?”

  “Where’s Dad? He’s gotta hear this too! Dad! Dad!”

  Kristal’s hand slid against his palm and their fingers twined. His whole world felt right.

  “What’s all the racket?” his dad asked as he turned the corner from the living room. He had a game controller in his hand that made Robert chuckle. His old man was an Xbox fan and had a thing for Assassin’s Creed.

  Harry went off like a firecracker. “They’re gettin’ married, and I’m in charge!”

  Mara dropped the laundry basket and let out a squeal that had to have shocked every dog in the neighborhood. She ran to Kristal, shrieking like a crazy woman. His father threw his head back and produced a world-class belly laugh. Harry jumped up and down, yelling and screaming, because that was what kids did when adults lost their shit.

  With his fiancée ripped from his grasp, Robert watched the commotion with happy amusement.

  “Son, you’ve made your mom and I proud.” They shook hands and embraced. “Takes balls to go for it. I like your style, my boy.”

  He smirked self-consciously because of all the dirty stuff he and Kristal were getting up to and reduced everything to a simple truth. “We’ve been dating for years without admitting it. She’s my best friend, and the only girl I’ve ever loved.” He made a face. “Why wait?”

  His father answered gravely—the words touching Robert’s heart. “You honor the woman you love by making things formal right away. A gesture like that speaks to the man you are, Robbie.”

  Taking care of Kristal was something he had always done, and now he would get to do it as her husband. The idea was so thrilling that he was having a hard time holding his excitement in check.

  “Robbie.”

  He heard the soft plea in her voice and turned. She met his eyes. He saw the sparkle of tears, murmured, “Excuse me, Dad,” and flew across the room.

  Mara was in mid-meltdown. A really, really, really emotional meltdown. He could see that she was starting to freak Kristal out.

  He slid a hand into the small of Kristal’s back, staked his claim and asked what was going on. “Mom?”

  “Oh, Robbie,” she gushed. “This is just so … you are … I love you both … Jeremy?”

  Harry had his arms around her middle when his dad chuckled and came to Mara’s side. “Yeah, okay.” He snorted as a deep husky laugh ripped from his throat. “Everyone into the living room. Grab some cushion.”

  Harry side-eyed him and whispered, “See? I told you. She’d got a secret.”

  Kristal all but climbed inside his clothes and clung. “Oh, my god. What’s that mean? Do you think something is wrong?”

  He gave it a second of thought and said, “Wrong? No. That’s not the vibe I’m getting. Dad is too calm.” He thought a second longer and added, “And he’s only fifty-one, so I doubt he’s retiring.”

  Rubbing the tension from her back, he kissed Kristal’s cheek and urged her into the living room. “Did she like the ring?”

  She laughed. Good. That was what he wanted.

  “Are you kidding? She started to cry and said something about true love.”

  “Well, let’s go find out what the mother of the bride and groom has hidden in her apron pocket.”

  They were barely into the room when Mara burst out, “We’re having a baby! I’m pregnant!”

  Harry screamed so loud the walls shook. Kristal gasped, covered her mouth for a second, and then did a crazy running in place thing complete with shaking hands and happy squeals. His dad stood next to Mara and beamed.

  Over the screams and shouts of joy, Jeremy Peyton chortled and said, “Sorry for stealing your thunder, boy, but us having a baby after all this time totally makes your pathetic grab for notoriety sort of lame.”

  Robert chuckled. And then he laughed. His laugh turned to ecstatic guffaws.

  A group hug ensued. Harry was over the moon. Robert smiled. The year his little brother turns eleven was shaping up to be quite memorable.

  Kristal clung to him, and it felt so damn right. Her face was illuminated with happiness.

  Dad and Mara acted like blushing newlyweds. He was so thrilled for them that he didn’t know where to start. Their back stories were so similar. Young parents with shitty co-parents. In a way, Mara was lucky. Kristal’s biological other signed away his rights while his own biological mother took eight years to decide suburban family life wasn’t on her agenda.

  It was years into their marriage before Harry came along, and Robert just assumed that nature had not cooperated much. Mara was only forty-six. In today’s world, babies born to moms in their forties was an everyday thing.

  He hugged Kristal close and kissed her forehead. “Is this enough of a happy every after or do you need more?”

  She tsk’ed so cutely that he grinned like an idiot.

  “More? Why, Robert. We haven’t even begun. Our H-E-A starts with a wedding and a baby in that order.”

  Quickly so nobody would notice, he fondled her ass and whispered close to her ear, “New activity - When You Need It Most. Second cousin to When Least Expected. For the purposes of baby making, this option requires vaginal insertion.”

  She chuckled. “I’m listening.”

  THE END of Robert and Kristal’s Forbidden Sinful Share.

  Epilogue

  So there you have it. The sexy, dirty love story of Robert and Kristal.

  I have a confession of my own, dear readers! This is a very special Sinful Share not just because because their love story is unique, but because it’s real. How do I know this? Because we’ve been friends for years!

  Update:

  The Devin-Peyton nuptials took place on a warm Saturday evening in July. It was a beautiful wedding which sadly, for those of us attending as guests, did not include an opera phantom.

  In November, just in time for the h
appiest Thanksgiving celebration of all time, Mara and Jeremy Peyton welcome a beautiful baby girl to the family. For dessert, the newlyweds had an announcement of their own.

  Seven months later, James Jeremy Peyton made a memorable arrival by peeing on the obstetrician who delivered the chubby eight pound, four ounces boy.

  Congratulations all around! This is one sexy happy ever after that passes the sniff test!

  XXOO

  Mandi B.

  ~Sex with No Apologies~

  The End

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  Halliday Ever After

  Excerpt of HIDDEN

  HIDDEN

  Sinful Shares

  Copyright 2018 Suzanne Halliday

  “Good work, ladies. Wrap your leg real tight around the pole and give it a good, slow, sexy slide. Nice and easy. Just like lowering onto your man’s dick.”

  Laughter and groaning snickers broke out. She wondered how the three lesbians in the left corner felt about the sexist remark but from their bawdy laughter, Amy surmised they got the joke.

  “Tom would have a heart attack if I tried any of this on him.”

  She swung her head to look at Missy Sanderson and captured a giggle with a hand over her mouth as her friend and pole-mate slid, jerked to a stop, slid again and jerked to yet another stop.

  Poor Missy. If that’s her idea of a slow, sexy slide, no wonder Tom couldn’t work up any interest.

  “Let me try,” she griped as Missy bowed and waved her on.

  “Amy!”

  She looked at the instructor as the former stripper turned dance teacher motioned with her body. “Remember, the pole is your friend. Don’t fight gravity. Make it work for you!”

  “Make gravity work for me?” she muttered irritably under her breath. “Get back to me in forty years when my tits are bouncing off my knees.”

  Grabbing the pole as instructed, she flung her weight and swung around, shifting her body until with a mighty test of her muscles, flipped upside down, wrapped her leg around the pole, held on for good luck and gracefully slid to the floor.

  She gave her performance a solid seven-point-five. Now the dismount? Look away everyone because scrambling back to her feet required a modified forward roll, two grunts, and an awkward front handspring.

  “Bravo, Ms. Peters! Not quite sure what happened at the end,” Missy laughed with her face comically scrunched. “But the slide was damn impressive.”

  Feeling goofy, Amy bent, put her hands on her knees and made a white girl’s lame excuse for a butt twerk.

  “Oh, my God!” Missy shrieked and melodramatically. Covering her eyes with one hand, she waved the other. “Help me. I’ve gone blind!”

  A ruckus across the room got their attention. Their instructor, dubbed Pole Dance Barbie, enthusiastically encouraged a team of baby boomers making the whole sliding on a metal rod exercise look good.

  Their group of a dozen women of all ages and sizes wrapped up this week’s dance maneuvers class by applauding everyone’s efforts.

  Pole Dance Barbie cheered and beamed, “See you next week, gals. And don’t forget. A slow, sexy slide is what everyone man wants.”

  Missy snickered and made a rude gesture.

  “What every guy wants,” she murmured so only Amy could hear, “is to feel like a man. The rest is wrapping paper and ribbon.”

  Skirting a gaggle of yoga mat toting ladies and groups of kids waiting to be picked up, they made their through the dilapidated community center located a short subway ride from her Brooklyn neighborhood.

  The whiff of a musty funk in the old building’s hallways gave way to an aroma cloud of coffee and what smelled like popcorn when they hit the main lobby. Colorful signs and handmade posters were quite literally everywhere her eyes looked. She liked the rundown hotspot. It had real Brooklyn character—not like those gleaming million dollar gyms and fancy meeting rooms popping up in the more affluent sectors of the city.

  “Good God, Missy,” she squawked when her companion dropped everything on the floor and swooped down on an ancient water fountain hanging on the wall. “You’re the only person I know who doesn’t run screaming from the communal spout. Ew.”

  Her friend shrugged off the comment and wiped her chin in a scathingly self-deprecating way. If anyone had less blue-collar experience in life than Melissa Sanderson, she didn’t know who that person was.

  Born the only daughter to a wealthy family of powerful industrialists with ties reaching back into the nineteenth century, Amy’s mom called her an upside down girl. Despite access and privilege most regular folks only dream of, Melissa Sanderson lived by modest means and had no more in the way of luxuries than anyone else they hung around.

  She also had an older brother who lacked the opportunity to be anything other than what he is—an heir with a secure, if somewhat dull, future.

  And Amy knew this about him because she’d been secretly sleeping with David Sanderson for the last two years.

  Her touchy conscience let out a groan and asked, ‘Why secret?’

  Because she worked for him. And also because his mother was a domineering bitch with a personal ax to grind. As head of Beck Industries, Quinn Sanderson insisted on a hard and fast rule of zero tolerance for employee fraternization of any kind.

  There was a shit ton more to the story than that, but she wasn’t in the mood to be picking it apart.

  Missy fumbled with the buttons on her jacket and asked, “What do you have on for tonight? Are the Knicks playing?”

  Seemingly random questions about the Knicks were as close to acknowledging the elephant in the room, as they would ever get. And another reason why she adored her quirky friend.

  Once David owned his feelings for her, and they went from messing around to a real relationship, he moved heaven and earth to create a level of secrecy surrounding their involvement rivaling anything the government could dream up. And he did it to protect her not because he was a pussy and afraid of what his mean mommy might say.

  The obvious answer to their dilemma was simple to outside eyes. Because he was the guy in the executive suite and could hardly walk away, she should take the bullet and resign from her position at Beck Industries.

  David, thank goodness, would have none of it. He was the first person to cheer her on. In her nearly seven years with the company, skill, hard work and perseverance, had moved her from all-around gofer to senior team leader.

  Amy was confident that if she played her cards right, she’d be in line for a killer promotion . Well, once she finally finished her graduate degree in business. But until then they were living a hidden life.

  There were just two people besides her and David who knew what was going on. Missy and her boyfriend, Tom.

  She and David approached their arrangement with a double helping of cloak and dagger. They operated in a world of burner phones, secret credit cards, and a small apartment ten blocks from the house her family had lived in for generations.

  They never went out in public together. Ever.

  David’s sudden fascination with the NBA was nothing more than duck and cover. Season tickets and a hard and fast rule that no one disturbed him when the Knicks played plus the occasional out-of-town game thrown in for shits and giggles gave them a well-planned second life where their love flourished while they made quiet plans for the future.

  And that’s the way it would have gone until in a horrible fluke of bad luck they stumbled upon Missy and Tom at an outdoor flea market. In Connecticut of all places. Who the hell does that happen to?

  From that awkward moment on, they’d never once discussed the incident. Not directly. Missy asking about the Knicks was a quiet nod without stepping over a line.

  “I’m making lobster mac and cheese.” She adjusted her heavy shoulder bag when they stopped at the front door. Two little kids raced by and nearly knocked Amy over on their way out.

  “Yum! Lobster!
Let me guess,” Missy chuckled. “Pinterest?”

  She rolled her eyes and pulled a face. “Guilty.”

  Winding a scarf around her neck as they stepped into the gloomy, damp cold of a mid-November Saturday afternoon, she made light of her latest online addiction.

  “Hey! Don’t be dissing Pinterest. As a resource that shit is platinum! I’m serious,” Amy howled when Missy laughed her off. “Wait till you see the theme for the project reveal. What we’re trying to do is such next level stuff that I felt the launch needed shaking up.”

  Walking arm-in-arm along the busy sidewalk, Missy steered them away from a potential face-plant hazard. “What? Watery shrimp cocktails and pigs-in-a-blanket don’t float your boat anymore?”

  Gritting her teeth, she dialed back the sneer in her voice. “Your mother will be there. Dim Sum and Champers won’t do it.”

  There wasn’t much more to say after that. After setting a date to meet early in next week for lunch, they went their separate ways with Missy grabbing a cab and Amy riding the subway rails.

  The cold, hard seat under her butt didn’t offer a lot of comfort as the metal subway car bounced and creaked along. At each stop, a blast of cold, stagnant air accompanied the whoosh of the sliding doors opening and closing.

  She was irritated and getting more put out the second. Not because of the cloying perfume wafting off someone nearby or the obnoxiously whiney voice of the gum chewing girl arguing with her mother sitting directly across from her.

  No. Her angst came from a growing aversion to the multi-layered covertness pervading her life. It was one thing to remain professionally aloof from her lover in public and another altogether to stand silently by while he paraded the crusty-bitchified Violet Brubaker on his arm under the approving gaze of his mother.

  If only life could be as she saw it in her head. Like maybe Violet accidentally tripping and falling flat on her face while Amy and a carefully placed foot surreptitiously helped.

  The only reason she hadn’t scratched the other woman’s eyes out was that she knew the bald truth of the so-called relationship between the fabulously eligible bachelor and his society approved arm candy.