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Definitely not me.
Ben guides me to lie back on the bed, staring deep into my eyes. I can feel my heartbeat hammer in my chest, because I know the promise in his eyes is as intense as the pleasure he gives me will be. He pulls the cover away from my body, baring me to his view. I lick my suddenly dry lips, My gaze never leaves his face as he looks down at me. My body feels like molten lava, hot raging liquid, and it all pools in my center, sliding down the inside of my thighs.
“You’re so fucking beautiful, Junie,” Ben murmurs, bending down to kiss along my collarbone. I never in my life felt beautiful—not until Ben.
He makes me feel beautiful.
Ben’s hand begins to make a heated path down my stomach when his phone rings, breaking the spell that he was weaving around me.
“Shit,” I whimper, feeling as if I’m on fire.
“I’ll ignore it,” he grouses.
“It might be important,” I remind him, because an early morning phone call for anyone else is not the same if you are sheriff.
“Don’t move,” he orders, reaching across me to get his phone.
“Hold that thought. I’m going to run into the kitchen and grab us some snacks,” I tell him, turning to get up off the bed.
“What in the hell for?” Ben grumbles, grabbing his phone.
“Because I’m hungry, and you’ll be on the phone wasting what little time we have. If I feed you in bed, that means I get you in bed for my morning workout.”
“Hold on a minute,” he barks into the phone. “What if I’m too worn out from giving you a workout to get mine?” he asks, his eyes full of hunger and laughter.
“Then I guess you’ll have to just let me take charge, and I’ll give you my mouth,” I mutter, sticking out my tongue as I grab his shirt off the floor and pull it over me.
“Fuck,” he growls. “You better hurry and get your sweet ass back here with a promise like that,” he orders, and I laugh all the way to the kitchen. I don’t give Ben my mouth often. I enjoy it, but I will admit that sometimes memories from my past try to get in my head. Ben is so understanding. He never asks me or puts pressure on me.
God, I love my man.
Once I’m in the kitchen, I open my fridge. There’s not a lot in there to be honest. We’ve been spending most of our nights at Ben’s house. Soon, I will have to talk to Ben about either him moving here or me moving in with him. I honestly don’t care. I just know that I love Ben, and I don’t want to be apart from him. I also don’t want to keep living out of an overnight bag, so something needs to give—and soon. I settle on the small board of cheese I have in the fridge. I have some apples too. I’ll peel those and chunk them up to serve with the cheese and some crackers. It’s not a great breakfast, but it will work.
I put it down on the bar, and that’s the first time I actually look up.
When I do….
I scream.
Ben
There are some things that will take years off your life. Hearing your woman scream to the top of her lungs, in a sound that’s so blood curdling that you can’t breathe—will definitely do that.
“What in the fuck was that?” Danny says in my ear.
“That’s Junie,” I growl, tossing my phone without even hanging up. I take off running, not worrying about putting any pants on.
It just takes me a minute to the kitchen, but it feels like a fucking eternity. When I get there, she’s standing in front of her breakfast bar. She has her back to me, but all I can think is thank God she’s okay. When I heard her scream, I had visions of her bleeding and dying… thoughts of her fucking ex, or even Atticus coming back from the grave came into my head and gave more power to my fear.
Even as I’m feeling relief that everything seems okay, I take in the fact that she’s trembling all over. My first instinct is to come up behind her and pull her into my body, but I’ve seen enough crime scenes to know that could terrify her more. I move so that I will approach her from the side and soften my voice. “Junie? Baby, are you okay?”
She jumps, I’m still behind her, approaching softly but now I’m at more of an angle. Junie lifts her head, turning to acknowledge me. Her face is ashen white and there are tears in her eyes.
“He was in my house,” she whispers, turning her head slowly back to the bar and that’s when I see it.
On the counter there’s a bouquet of flowers. I’m a guy and we’re not great with the names, but these look like the flowers that vampire chick on that old black and white TV show the Munster’s would clutch when in bed. They’re creepy as fuck and in a black vase. Beside it there’s a large butcher knife—I’ve seen it before because it’s Junie’s. It’s sticking straight up in the air in a way that you know it’s lodged into the laminate on her counter. As I take a step closer, I realize it’s stabbed through a photo. I want to yank the photo out from under the knife, but I have enough training that I don’t do that. I need this scene preserved, in hopes we can pick up some type of forensics to pin this crime against Rat Boy. There’s not a doubt in my mind that he did this and that’s before I get a good look at the picture.
It’s a photo of me and Junie from when we were outside, and I had her pinned against the side of the house. The fucker was close. Hell, from the camera angle, he had to be almost directly behind us. How in the fuck was that possible? The knife is slammed through, stabbing the photo right where the side of my face is, and it had to take a fuck of a lot of force to go that deep into the laminate. I think the message is clear and by the way Junie is shaking, I’m sure she understands too.
