“I need to see you when I come,” he growled. “You’re gonna make me come, and I’m gonna look you in the eyes while you do it.”
“How do you know?” I breathed, whimpering. “How do you always know what I need?”
“Because it’s what I need, and for some fuckin’ reason, we seem to be built to need the same things.” His eyes were locked on mine as I rose up, hesitated a brief instant, and then slammed down to sink him into me again. “We’re just…”
He couldn’t quite say it.
I could. “Made for each other.”
“Yeah,” he groaned, his hands on my hips again, thumbs pinioning against the hollow where hip meets thigh, letting me decide the rhythm, the speed, the force. “That scare you at all, June?”
I shook my head. “N-no.”
“Take your hair out of the braid,” he ordered.
I balanced myself on him, still rising and falling slowly, rhythmically. Snapped the tie off the end of my braid, worked my fingers through the woven strands to free my hair from the braid, and then shook it out. Loose like this, my hair draped around my shoulders and obscured my breasts. He brushed it back, fingering through it.
“Fucking gorgeous,” he muttered. “You are so goddamn perfect, June.”
I rode him, then. With wild fury and primal abandon, I rode him. Braced my hands on his chest and slapped my ass down against his hips, spearing his cock into myself, screaming breathlessly with each thrust.
“Oh fuck, June,” he breathed, and I felt him drawing close again— I knew, now, without a doubt what he felt like as he reached the edge.
There would be no stopping it, this time.
“Come, Rem,” I gasped. “Come for me. Give it to me.”
He strained up into me, face twisted in the agony of ecstasy. His fingers gripped my hips with bruising strength. He fucked wildly. Madly. Furiously. Driving up into me—and all I could do was take it, ride through it. This was all him now—all control was his.
I was his. He took me, made me his own.
If I was orgasming, it was a climax of the heart, a release of the soul—I felt it in my pussy, felt it searing through me like a physical orgasm, but it was detonating in my very being. It was brought on by him—by his power, his utter male beauty, his driving, primal, possessive strength, his raw need. I shook, trembled—my breasts jounced painfully as he fucked me, and I gloried in that ache, seeing how it maddened him all the more. I clutched my breasts, pinched my nipples, and let them bounce, thrusting down against him with absolute abandon to make them bounce all the more just for his benefit.
“June!” he whispered my name as he came.
“Rem…yes!” I cried out, uncaring how loud I knew I was. “Rem…god—Rem. Come for me, right now. Come!”
“Fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, June—I’m coming!” This was a tense roar, not loud but searing in intensity. “Look at me! Look into my eyes.”
“Say my name while you come, Remy.”
He palmed my breasts for a handhold and I clutched at his hips, and then I sank forward onto him, smashing my breasts against him and snaking my arms around him. His hands sank into my ass and lifted me, slammed me down onto him.
“Juneau—” His voice was hoarse, now.
“June…” Stripped of power, dominating in its vulnerability.
“Oh god, June. Juneau…” Exquisitely surrendered.
I felt him, all of him. Felt his cock spasm as he emptied himself inside me, thrusting madly through it—he clung to me, hands clawed into my ass cheeks, guiding my movements, his face buried in my throat. I felt each juddering slap of my buttocks onto his thighs, felt each spearing thrust of his cock into my spasming channel, felt his voice shudder as he lost the ability to speak, and could only grunt helplessly. I felt him throb, felt the warmth inside me as he came and came and came.
He wasn’t grunting, I realized—he was saying my name. Groaning it.
June—June—June. Juneau—Juneau…
Again and again as he ravaged into me, our bodies writhing together, my own unexpected final climax coming on the heels of his, brought on by him, by his, by this, by everything.
My arms were wrapped around his neck, my face in his chest. His hands roamed my body, caressing me everywhere as he stilled, finally, panting breathlessly.
How long did we cling together, like that? Just breathing together, gasping. Bodies joined, sweat-slick and trembling.
I lifted up, eventually, and his eyes met mine.
Something moved between us—an awareness, a knowledge that what just happened wasn’t at all normal.
“June…” He sat up, keeping me on his lap, and I wrapped my legs around him, sitting on him, facing him, my arms on his shoulders, one hand brushing affectionately through his thick blond hair. “That was…”
“Everything,” I finished.
He released a pent-up breath, running his hand compulsively over my breasts, as if making the most of the opportunity to just touch them. “Yeah. It was everything.”
“More than everything.”
He looked…shaken. “Juneau, we…” He shook his head, hunting for words. “What did we just do?”
I felt as shaken as he was, but I was less surprised by it. This was why I’d resisted him for so long, why I’d tried to keep this from happening.
“What we just did is what happens when things go way, way beyond merely fucking.”
He exhaled sharply. “Yeah, that was a lot more than just fucking.”
“A lot more.” I toyed with his hair. “You look scared.”
He laughed. “Yeah, I am.”
“Why? Of what?”
“Because I’ll never want anything else but that.” He clamped his jaw shut, flexing it, and then spoke as if the words were being torn from him. “And I’m not sure I know how to do that.”
I laughed, falling against him, burying my face in the side of his neck, my words muffled against his salty skin. “Why do you think I tried so hard not to like you?”
“Because you saw this coming?”
“Hell yeah, I did.”
He frowned. “And you assumed if it did—when it did—it’d only end up with me leaving you hurt.”
I nodded, not even pretending otherwise. “Yes, exactly.”
He cupped my cheek in his big, rough hand. “You’re always underestimating me, Juneau.”
“Even in that?”
“Especially in that.”
I felt a pang in my heart. “Rem, I…” I breathed slowly through my nose. “Remember what you promised—no promises you can’t keep, and no bullshit.”
He cupped the back of my head, stared into my eyes for a long moment, and then…
He kissed me.
And this one eclipsed all the others—it was manic, furious, fraught with intensity, wild with desperation, tender and rough, aching with surrender, needy and confident…all of this at once.
“Look into my eyes, June.” I did, and he spoke with a rough growl. “Now tell me you think I’m bullshitting you. Tell me you think I’m making a promise I won’t keep.”
I couldn’t.
Tears burned my eyes, because I honestly wanted to tell him he was full of shit. I wanted to tell him I knew he was just saying whatever he could to get me to sleep with him once more. I could have saved him the effort—I’d fuck this man as many times as I could, and he didn’t need to blow smoke up my ass about some emotional connection.
None of that applied.
The connection was real, and undeniable.
He didn’t have to say a damn thing, because I knew.
And so did he.
We both knew, and it scared the shit out of both of us.
13
Remington
It was four in the morning. Neither of us was asleep, though we had both been drowsing in almost-sleep for hours. I’d like to say I lost count of the number of times Juneau and I had fucked, but that’d be a lie—I never started counting.
Fucked.
T
hat’s the wrong word.
Truthfully, I knew what it was—I knew the most accurate phrase for what Juneau and I had shared at least half a dozen times in as many different positions, always fraught with manic intensity and a wild passion that shook me to my core.
I just couldn’t get the phrase to go through my brain.
“Rem?” Juneau’s voice was quiet in the word-thick silence.
“Hmmm?” I rolled over and stared at her; Juneau’s brown eyes glittered in the darkness, searching me.
“What happens next?”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “I…I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Neither of us is denying that this thing is…” she trailed off, at a loss for the right word.
“Something?” I suggested.
I saw the slight curve of her lips in the darkness. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s something.”
“But then, I knew it’d be something the moment you ran into me and I caught you,” I said. “I stared down into those gorgeous brown eyes and I knew…” Now it was my turn to trail off.
“Knew what?” Juneau pressed.
I rolled a shoulder. “Just that it’d be…something.”
“Is it as hard for you to sleep as it is me?” she asked.
I huffed a laugh. “I’m fucking exhausted, but yeah, I can’t sleep.”
“Having someone in my bed when I’m trying to sleep is…weird.”
“Same.” She hesitated, but I could tell she had something to say. I brushed a long tendril of black hair away from her face. “Whatever it is, just say it.”
She bit her lip, and I only just barely resisted the urge to smooth it away with kisses—we were, even in this state of exhaustion and satiation, powder kegs of sexual tension, and if I kissed her now, the conversation would be over. So, instead, I brushed my thumb along her lower lip, tugging it free of her teeth—it backfired, because she closed her teeth over my thumb, capturing it, and then wrapped her lips around my thumb in an erotic suggestion.
I felt a growl rumble in my chest. “June—quit playing with fire.”
She sidled closer to me. “You started it.”
I tugged the white flat sheet up higher, covering her so I wouldn’t be tempted by her flesh—I knew in my gut that whatever she was hesitating to say was important; if there was ever a time for me exercise self-control and restraint, it was now.
“I can see you mulling something, Juneau. What is it?”
She sighed. “I just…I don’t want to presume anything…”
“But?”
“But right now, we’re acting like two people sharing a bed. We’re in this bed together behaving like two people used to sharing a fun time or two that’s never going to go anywhere.”
My gut flipped. “Because that’s what we are—two people used to sharing a fun time or two that’s never going to go anywhere.”
“But if this is something—no boxes, no labels, just…something, right?” she prompted; I just nodded, and she continued. “Then maybe we could…act more like we’re two people exploring the boundaries of our something.”
I chuckled. “The S word.”
She frowned, an adorable wrinkling of the bridge of her nose that had some odd part of my chest feeling all…melty. “The S word? Which word is that?”
I slipped an arm under her neck and rolled to my back, bringing her with me—like two pieces of a puzzle fitting together, she sank with instinctual, natural perfection into the crook of my arm, resting her cheek on my chest, a hand on my stomach. “Snuggle. The S word.”
She giggled, a sound I felt in my heart and my cock at the same time. “Oh.” She slapped my stomach playfully. “You say S word like it’s some dirty secret, or a swear word.”
“For a lifelong, avowed bachelor, there are three dirty, forbidden words: the S word, the C word, and…the L word.” I lapsed into silence, letting her try to figure out what they were.
“Hmmm. The S word is, according to you, snuggling. Which means the C word is probably…cuddling?”
“Ding-ding-ding.”
“The L word?” I could tell by the tightness and hesitation in her voice that she knew the answer already. “Love.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Got ’em in one.”
“There’s another C word, you know.” She twisted her head to look up at me.
“Oh?”
She grinned. “Commitment.”
I faked a disgusted, frightened shudder. “Ugghhh! Quiet, woman—you’ll scare me away.”
She didn’t laugh, though I’d meant it as a joke. “Rem…I wasn’t suggesting anything.”
“I was joking, June. You’re not gonna scare me away.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not that fragile, babe. The thought of what this could be…yeah, if I think too far ahead, I get a little dizzy.” I tightened my hold on her. “But this, right here? This is all I need. The rest we can figure out as we go.”
She nuzzled closer. “I like that answer.” Her voice was drowsy. “I think I could fall asleep, now.”
“Me too.”
And so…we did. And I’d never slept better in my life.
We were awoken by the muffled sound of a ringing cell phone. Juneau shot up, dislodging the sheet.
“Shit!” She dove off the bed, rummaging under the pile of clothing for her purse. She found it, dug her phone out, glanced at it, and promptly freaked out.
“SHIT!” She put the phone face down on her thigh, sucking in a deep breath, holding it, and letting it out. And then, remarkably calm, she answered. “Daniel, hi. Um…I’m so sorry. I’ve overslept. I know you have court this morning. I’m sorry, and I’ll be there in a few minutes. Twenty or so? Thanks, Daniel. See you soon, bye.”
She tossed the phone onto the bed and stood up, naked and beautiful. “I was supposed to be at work thirty minutes ago!”
She quickly got dressed, finding a pair of bright, flower-patterned underwear in her dresser, and a bra hanging off the doorknob. It looked practical, functional, meant for support and comfort rather than the male gaze…not that it stopped me from gazing with great interest and attraction as she hooked the eyelets together in front of her, then spun it around, shrugged into the straps, and then tucked her boobs into the cups.
Her eyes went to mine, a grin on her lips. “What? You’re staring at me.”
I just grinned back. “I don’t know—it’s weirdly hot watching you get dressed. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather you either stay naked, or strip you all over again, but I like watching you get dressed.”
She shook her head. “Weirdo.”
I shrugged, not minding the term in the slightest. “This tiger’s stripes ain’t changin’, sweetheart.”
Her smile was tender as she grabbed a brush from inside her purse and dragged it through her long, raven-black hair. “Good. I like your stripes just the way they are.”
After a few dozen strokes of the brush, she braided her hair with swift, practiced ease, and then went to her closet and chose an ankle-length dress with long sleeves, a high neckline, and a sweater to go over it.
Then her eyes went to me, to my tattoos, and she put the dress back, and the sweater. Instead she chose a black ankle-length skirt, and a green top that was opaque over her torso, gauzily transparent from the cleavage up—baring her tattoos.
I grinned at her. “That’s my girl.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be patronizing.”
“I’m not!” I said. “I mean it. I’m genuinely proud of you for choosing to wear your ink openly. I know it’s not an easy thing for you to do.”
She put on the sweater while sliding her feet into a pair of black ballet slipper-type shoes. “I’m only putting on the sweater because it’s chilly in the office.”
I smirked. “You know, you owe me zero explanations.”
Another eye roll. “Oh, shut up.” She snagged her purse off the floor, shoved her brush and cell phone into it. “I have to go. Daniel’s probably
going to fire me when I get there anyway, though. He’s pretty cool most of the time but he’s got zero patience for tardiness.”
I tried to bite down on the comment lodged behind my teeth, but Juneau saw, and sighed.
“What, Rem?”
“Maybe instead of him firing you, you should put in your notice.”
“And do what?” she asked; I just lifted an eyebrow, and she sank down onto the bed, perching on the edge. “No. I can’t. I can’t!”
“Why not?”
She exhaled sharply. “I can’t have this conversation with you right now, Rem. I have to go.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you.”
She shook her head as she stood up. “You and Ink—you both act like I can just defy the expectations of my entire family, like it’s as easy as just…doing what I want, regardless of my duty to my family.”
I waited until she was halfway out the bedroom door. “Hey, June?”
She stopped, glancing back at me. “What?”
“Lunch. Twelve-thirty. I’ll pick you up at your office.”
She just stared at me for a long moment. “Make it one. And it’ll have to a be a short one to make up for being late.”
I pointed a finger at her and clicked my tongue. “You got it, sexy.”
She laughed, rolling her eyes at me. “Are you gonna hang around naked in my bed until then?”
I slid out of the bed, sidling naked over her to her—watching the way her eyes roamed. “Nope.” I yanked her up against me, palmed her cheek, and kissed her hard.
She pushed me backward. “Not fair.”
I just laughed. “I never claimed to play fair.” I kissed her again, a quick, soft peck. “Can I make one small suggestion before you go?”
She eyed me. “What?”
“Put on some deodorant and perfume or something, because you smell like sex.”
She paled. “I was in such a rush to get dressed I forgot.”
“That’s why I’m reminding you.”
She dropped her purse on the floor, shrugged back out of her sweater—which she shoved into my hands—and then vanished into the bathroom, closing the door. I heard water running, and some rustling, and then she came out of the bathroom a minute later, zipping her skirt back up and righting her shirt.
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