: Chapter 28

Thunder rumbles from the ocean outside, and I pull my laptop higher on my lap in bed. My proposal for Midnight is coming along, thanks to the hard work of my team, but it’s undeniably missing the kind of personal touch I normally put into my pitches.

I haven’t been much into the game of meeting strangers for the last year or so, after my split with Bethany, and as a result, I’m a little out of the game.

But this thing with Juniper is starting to change that, and I find myself clicking out of the Midnight proposal I’ve been scanning through in my email, setting my computer to the side to grab my phone, and jumping into my ongoing Midnight chat with her just as the clock hits 12:00 a.m.

I haven’t heard much through June’s wall in a while, so I have a feeling she might be asleep, but that doesn’t stop me from trying anyway.

ThunderStruck: Are you up?

ElizaBeth: You think I can sleep when it’s storming like this? No way. And don’t even think about asking me to meet you on the balcony again tonight. I have enough nightmares of myself as a lightning rod as it is.

I smile. When June first started sleeping at our house during her parents’ divorce, she was terrified of the weather, and one particularly turbulent night when storms raged around us, I found her in my room, huddled under my comforter.

It was innocent—my room was on the lowest level of the house—but I still remember the pallet I made for her on the floor and that she slept there next to my bed all night.

ThunderStruck: Come over here and I’ll keep you safe.

ElizaBeth: I think you might be more dangerous than the lightning and thunder. I mean, the dirty things you made me do on the balcony the other night prove that…

I chuckle. The dirty things I made her do is a bit of an exaggeration. She’s the one who leaned over the small separation banister between our balconies and started kissing me. She’s also the one who thought it was a good idea to play a little game of show-and-tell. And by that, I mean June showed me what she had underneath her little sleep nightgown—not a damn thing—and I haven’t stopped thinking about how pink and perfect her pussy looked or how perky and soft her breasts appeared beneath the glow of the moon.

ThunderStruck: Only one way to find out. I’ll meet you at my door.

It takes a minute, but eventually, I hear the sound of her bed creaking as she climbs off it and makes her way out of her bedroom. I do the same, waiting at my front door just like all the other times I’ve asked her to sneak by in the last couple days, and look out the peephole until I see her.

She tiptoes like a cartoon cat burglar, and I laugh to myself before pulling the door open and ushering her inside.

“You, of all people, know Avery sleeps like a log, and yet, you’re walking around like you’ve just helped a coyote carry a burlap bag with a dollar sign on it out of a bank.”

“Hey, I’m new at this, okay?” She shoves a playful hand into my chest. “My teen years weren’t very eventful.”

I chuckle and shake my head. “I don’t know. That’s not quite how I remember it.”

“I didn’t start any of that,” she refutes. “I was an innocent bystander in all of Avery’s schemes.”

“That, I believe. But that doesn’t mean you didn’t find your share of trouble.”

Her forehead wrinkles in an adorable frown. “I thought you were going to comfort me from these storms or something? Or did I read that whole chat wrong?”

“You read it right,” I whisper, pulling her deeper into my apartment with my hands at her hips. I’ve been dreaming about seeing her laid out on my bed since I talked her into pretending to take the trash out for the first time a few days ago, and I desperately want to make it a reality now that she’s here and we don’t have to rush.

Fingers fucking crossed I can convince her to stay the whole night.

“Come on,” I say, grinning down at her. “It’s safer in my bedroom, under the covers.”

She shakes her head on a laugh. “You’re crazy.”

“What?” I wink and playfully squeeze her hips. “That’s where you always used to hide.”

“You’re right,” she agrees, but her smile turns teasing. “But I have a feeling this suggestion isn’t completely magnanimous on your part.”

“Oh, but, June, you’re so wrong. The things I want to do with you are one hundred percent with your pleasure in mind.”

“And your pleasure?” she asks, but her cheeks turn the most adorable shade of pink.

“When it comes to anything revolving around you? My pleasure is an unavoidable side effect.”

We walk into my bedroom together then, hand in hand, looking at each other the whole way. We’ve spent most of our lives around each other, but I swear, it’s like I’m really seeing her for the first time. Without this app, and our anonymous messages, I don’t know that I ever would have let myself.

Not because she’s not beautiful. Not because she’s not undeniably interesting. But she was off-limits in ways I never would have challenged. She was pigeonholed in my mind.

Our Midnight chats changed that.

Classical music plays softly from my phone dock on my nightstand, and our eyes hold as I pull her toward the bed and push her down on the comforter. Her red hair stands out on the dark green fabric, and I urge her back with a gentle shove, desperate to see it fanned out there.

She smiles up at me, and I lean down to kiss the apex of her collarbone. Her exhale is soft but meaningful, and suddenly, I need to taste even more skin.

One inch at a time, I work my way along her neck and back, moving down to her chest and up to her cheeks one at a time. Her hands explore my back, and my hands run the line of her sides. It’s a soft exploration of a place you’ve been before but have never taken the time to truly see.

It’s a visit to the Statue of Liberty for the first time after living your whole life in New York. It’s a swim in the ocean after staring at it from our view. It’s a hike in the Grand Canyon after only seeing it from above.

And I don’t ever want it to end.

She moans as my teeth tease at the neckline of her tank top, and I pull it down just enough to expose the lace of her bra. “Hear that thunder?”

“Hear what?” she asks, breathless.

Fucking perfect. I must be doing a good job, then.

In a quick move, I grab her hips and twist her as I fall to the bed myself, pulling her on top of me in a straddle. Her cheeks are flushed, and her eyes are wide, but her mouth is pulled up in an undeniable smile.

She leans down to kiss me, her whole body pressing into mine like it can forge us together, and I pull her hips forward as the thunder rumbles outside my sliding glass doors. If we don’t stop soon, I’m going to take it all the way.

“I want you, June,” I whisper against her perfect mouth. “I want to feel all of you.”

“I want that too,” she answers, her lips kissing mine greedily.

“Are you sure?” I question, pulling back to meet her eyes.

“Beau, I’ve been waiting since the moment Avery first brought me to your parents’ house,” she says with an adorable giggle. “I’m pretty sure.”

“Yeah,” I say with a smile. “I’m pretty sure too. Though, for clarification purposes, I have not been waiting that long. You were…very young.”

Juniper laughs and I shake my head. She grabs both sides of my face and sinks her hands into my hair, putting her lips just barely against mine. “I’m not young now,” she whispers there, earning a smile from me that disappears straight into a kiss.

It’s hot and heavy and deep, and I grab her hips and rock her forward, making sure she feels how hard I am for her.

She moans in my mouth, and I roll us back over, putting her back on the bed and taking over again. Fingers curled around her waistband, I pull her pajama shorts down the length of her legs and off over her pretty feet, kissing her pink-painted toes as I do.

She giggles, and I relish the sound, inching my lips back up the inside of her leg, one kiss at a time.

Her breathing is erratic and heavy by the time I make it to her thigh, her sheer pink panties staring me right in the face when I get there. I push her legs open wider with gentle hands, sealing my mouth over the top of the thin fabric and inhaling every bit of her delicious warmth. Her back arches, and she moans, fisting chunks of my comforter in her small hands.

“God, Juni. I can’t fucking wait to taste you.”

“Beau.”

“You want that, don’t you? My mouth on your pussy?”

She digs her teeth into her bottom lip as her hips jolt up toward me. “So bad.”

Slow and steady, I grab the thin sides of her panties and pull them down her body, tossing them to the floor with her shorts and resuming my position between her legs. Her thighs quake lightly as I put my mouth right to the top of her pussy and blow.

“Oh my God,” she says softly, her voice way more ragged than smooth.

I lick around her clit just once before sealing my mouth over her pussy and drinking in the smell and taste of her with greed.

She arches again, putting her heels on my shoulders to find purchase and rocking her hips into my mouth. It’s anything but shy and the complete opposite of what I expected.

I fucking love it.

I lick and taste and tease until she’s wet in my mouth, and then I climb up her body and fall between her hips. Her eyes are shuttered and hazy, and I swear if I didn’t need to be inside her so fucking badly, I’d eat her for the rest of the night.

“I need my cock inside you,” I tell her, kissing her chest and pulling her top down to take a pert nipple in my mouth. She gasps as I suck hard, and she grabs my head to pull me up and press her lips to mine.

I kiss her hard and deep, but she’s quick to steal control, sinking her hands into my hair and skirting my tongue with her own. When she pulls away, she’s nearly breathless. “Beau, I want you. I need to have you.”

I nod feverishly, reaching with one hand to shove my shorts and boxer briefs down and free myself. I stand up in front of her and stroke myself for a long moment, my hand firm and slow, my eyes completely fixated on how fucking incredible she looks sprawled out on my bed.

A goddess, that’s what she is. A fucking goddess.

She watches avidly, pushing up on her hand in the bed, the skin of her chest, thighs, and face all mottled in glorious shades of pinks and reds.

“I just have to grab a condom,” I say, rounding the bed to my nightstand, my hand still on my cock while she watches. I swear, I’ve never had a woman watch me the way June is—looking at me like I’m the best thing she’s ever fucking seen, tasted, touched.

It’s powerful and addictive, and even in the throes of exploring each other, I’m desperate for more of it.

Snagging the condom from my nightstand drawer, I rip it open with my teeth and roll it on before joining June again, my hips between hers and our chests fused together.

Her blue eyes shine and glitter as they bore into mine.

“God, June. You are so beautiful.”

“You don’t have to say that,” she whispers, uncertainty worming its way into the downturned corner of her mouth.

“What do you mean, I don’t have to say it?” I question without hesitation, my eyebrows drawn together as I run a hand through her perfect red hair. “June, I’m not just saying anything. You’re beautiful. Always have been.”

“Beau, please.”

I shake my head. “Oh no, baby. Now, I have to go slow.” I push inside her gently, my stroke so labored, I’m barely moving. “Now, I have to fuck you until you believe me, no matter how long it takes.”

June’s head drops back as I fully seat myself inside her, but I pull her head forward again, my hands at the sides of her face, forcing her to look at me.

She feels so good, I’d sell my soul to stay here for the rest of my life.

“June,” I whisper.

“Beau.”

“ThunderStruck has entered the chat.”

She bursts out laughing, and so do I, our bodies meshed together in harmonic vibration. I stroke slow and deep, grabbing her hips and rocking us together in a sweet symphony of the greatest pleasure I’ve ever felt.

This sex is different. This sex is new.

This sex is what happens when it starts soul-deep.