Page 73 of Back for Seconds

“Just what? Give yourself some credit. If everything hadn’t happened as it had, we wouldn’t be here right now.”

Finally, she broke into a smile. “That’s pretty cheesy.”

“Am I wrong? Do you wish you’d never met me, Jaybuggy?”

“I might regret saying this…but I wish I’d somehow only met you.”

I inched closer to her, a smirk on my lips. “You’re obsessed with me.”

She laughed and flopped backward again, landing with an arm over her eyes. “Can we just start over?”

“Nah.” I traced the motion of her tattoos, trailing down over the softness of her stomach and hips. “Why would you want to? This…” I lowered my lips to the valley between her breasts, pressing a kiss to her skin. “This is why we need each other.”

June let her arm fall away, drawing her bottom lip back between her teeth. “Yeah.” She pushed a hand through my hair. “For what it’s worth, I think you know how to love people really well.”

“For what it’s worth…” I mumbled, scooting further down between her legs, trailing my lips down as I slipped my hands underneath her lower back. A soft hum of pleasure escaped her lips. “I think a lot of people haven’t had sex in two years.”

June’s core vibrated with a laugh. “Most people on earth, probably.”

Chapter 23 June

This was always how it was going to go down, wasn’t it? Forget lacy lingerie and fifteen tips for seducing your new man and candlelight and coming back into my sexuality all at once with the power and force of a tropical storm.

Of course, I was going to cry. And panic. And try to make a run for it.

I wasn’t just June anymore. Never again would I be the type of person capable of reckless abandon. Who believed love was enough to hold two people back from hurting each other. Who saw sex as a simple, magical, transcendent act capable of healing souls and minds.

I’d been rejected. I’d learned the hard way. I’d climbed back out of the darkest, deepest hole of my life, feeling the earth come loose underneath me with every step forward.

I was a June who’d been left with no answers, only the persistent terror that everything bad that had happened to me was entirely my fault. That I was lovable until suddenly, inexplicably, I was not. This had been a fear that had dogged me my entire life: that there was a correct way to be (small, quiet, compliant) and one day they’d passed out instructions for how to be normal and I’d just missed it. Brian had taken that small kernel of terror and cultivated it. Watched on with satisfaction as it grew. I would be tearing up the weeds of my first marriage for the rest of my life. That’s who I was now.

And so, that’s who I was with Joey.

I wasn’t kissing someone for the first time or fucking for the first time. Even though letting Joey’s mouth chase mine as my lips traveled down over his chest made it feel that way. Like I was discovering something precious and rare.

I was confronting my deepest pain—I was glancing into the abyss and then throwing myself, full speed, over it knowing full and well that the last time I’d dared to launch myself, I hadn’t quite made it.

I couldn’t be anything else. Not right now.

Joey was right. We needed each other. And I needed him for this. To feel safe enough to try again. I trusted him—with my heart, with my body, with my fears. I knew he would take care of me in this moment. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me—at least not tonight.

We stumbled up the steps, our mouths only pulling apart when we needed to double-check our foot fall, to make sure we didn’t trip. Joey’s firm, gentle hold on my waist guided me backward, his tongue tracing the angle of my jaw, teasing the sensitive skin underneath my earlobe. I raked my fingers up and down the width of his arms, feeling the defined muscles of his body.

“Tell me exactly what you need, ok?” he breathed against my neck.

“I’m fine.” I tried to will the blush creeping up my neck to retreat. “I don’t need you to—”

He quieted me with a kiss. Gentle, soft. Fingertips dancing over my hairline, over my cheekbones. When he pulled away, Joey kept his forehead pressed to mine. “And I’ll tell you what I need too. Deal?”

I nodded. “Deal.”

Joey brought his lips back to mine, and we stumbled back through the darkness of the hallway, back into his bedroom, moving as one until I felt the soft pressure of his mattress against the back of my thighs. He slipped his hands under my ass and eased me backward onto the cool duvet. I moved backward, pulling him with me, goose-pimpling at the sensation of his muscular, downy thighs and already hard dick dragging up over the sensitive skin of my inner thighs. He settled between my legs, the thick length of him pressing into me.

“You already feel so good.” His voice was a hot whisper against my upper lip as he rocked his hips against me, sending sparks of pleasure through me. “You’re fucking heavenly.”

I pressed up into him, arching my back, as his mouth, slow and hungry, traveled down over my neck, teasing every inch of my skin until he pushed away my bra and took one of my nipples into his mouth. All the anticipation, the start and stop, the pure pleasure of his steady mouth discovering and rediscovering every electrified inch of me, had me shivering—quaking.

All of my desire, all of my desperation, could have turned my insides to diamond.