“Physically, yeah, I know, but… what if I trust you both and you break me all over again? Or worse, you smother the part of me that makes me Juno Jones just when I’ve finally found those lost parts of me again.”
Silence filled the small space. I started to respond, but Langston beat me to it.
“That’s it.” Juno’s sharp squeal had me wincing as Langston picked her up by the waist and carefully set her down in his chair. Gripping the armrests on either side, he leaned in, brows pulled in tight. “You tell me everything that fucker did, and I swear to you I’ll give it back to him a hundred times over. He fucked with you, which means he’s a dead man walking in my book. Tell me, Juno, or I swear on my damn cat that I will turn your ass red until you do.”
With a wince, I adjusted myself to relieve the pressure. His bossy, protective nature had always been a turn-on, but when it was directed at Juno, someone I was also attracted to and wanted to keep safe, it was almost too much. Just imagining her over his knee, bare ass in the air, had precum soaking my boxer briefs.
“Okay,” she whispered, cheeks flushed pink as she blinked up at him. “But you have to back up a little. I’m fighting the urge to either smack you or beg you to follow through on that punishment.”
Langston stood tall and crossed his arms. “Have you ever been spanked before for punishment or pleasure?”
Her head rolled from side to side against the back of the chair. “No, but I’ve lived a thousand different lives in the books I read.” The pink staining her cheeks darkened. “Fuck, what am I even saying right now? You’re putting some kind of lust-induced spell on me or something.”
“Same, shortcake. Now.” He reached behind him, pulled the coffee table until it was a foot away from the chair, and sat, his knees encasing hers. “Talk.”
Blowing a raspberry, she looked at the ceiling. “The two people I never wanted to see again, ever, who you so rudely brought to my little sliver of Alaskan paradise—” She cut a frustrated look at Langston, who just shrugged like it didn’t affect him, but I saw the stiffness in the movement, the downturn of his lips. “—are Eric Adler, my former fiancé, and Stephanie Wilson, the woman I caught him cheating on me with.” She paused, her gaze flicking between us. “Oh, and bonus, she’s my sister.”
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
13
JUNO
My stomach rolled saying those words out loud. My fiancé cheated on me with my sister—well, stepsister, if we were technical about it. Mom married Stephanie’s dad after mine left us high and dry. Apparently, he wasn’t “happy,” and that meant it was okay for him to bolt. So for almost two decades, Stephanie had been my sister. We were opposites in every way, but we had loved each other like biological sisters would.
Hadbeing the key word. Though I guessed I did still love her—I just didn’t like her after catching her kneeling on our kitchen floor giving Eric a blow job when I came home early from work. Why did I do that? To get an early start on my birthday dinner, which I had planned to cook like I had done years prior. That was how it worked with Eric and me. Anything that was special or important to him was important to us both equally, but if it was something for me, well, then it was only special or important to me.
I realized the absurdity of that now, months removed from the somewhat emotionally abusive and controlling relationship.Eric was as selfish as selfish could be, and our entire relationship was about him.
It shocked me that Stephanie would go behind my back like that or do anything that soiled her reputation. Between the two of us, she was the sweet one, the naturally beautiful, submissive one, the… everything opposite of me. I knew that because my stepfather loved to remind me how perfect she was while I wasn’t, not by a long shot. After hearing that so many times, I attempted to mold myself to mimic her, but it never stuck.
“Can you repeat that last part?” West stood from the cozy leather couch, crossing his arms over his chest, and I couldn’t help but stare at the way his shirt sleeves stretched to the max around his thick biceps. I bet he was that buff everywhere, and I desperately wanted to find out for myself. And there was this frantic need crawling under my skin to touch him, to wrap my hand around his cock just like Langston had last night.
I jerked in the chair at that thought. There had been something very wrong with me lately. Those kinds of thoughts, desperate sex thoughts, were not me. Even when I was with Eric, I didn’t enjoy being touched all that much, and I for sure was never excited for sex. Though, considering the two men in front of me could make me wet with a heated look, I wondered if the problem wasn’t with me but Eric.
“Juno,” Langston snapped, directing my blurred gaze at him. I shook my head to clear my thoughts and focus on him. “Did you really say she’s your sister?”
I nodded slowly. “Well, stepsister. I’m sure you noticed that already, though, since she and I look nothing alike. She was always the pretty one,” I murmured.
“Like fuck she is.” With both hands, Langston shifted his ball cap from side to side. I noticed he did that a lot when he was really agitated, which meant constantly when I was around. “She’s a fucking beanpole with zero curves and so much of thatshit on her face that I bet I wouldn’t even recognize her without it. Oh, and that nasty fake hair.” He huffed while I just gaped at him.
“If you can’t tell, Lang and his sister, Mattie, are very close.” I blinked up at West, who didn’t notice, too busy smirking at his best friend. I wondered what it was like when they kissed.Didthey kiss, or was it just sex? “Which is why he has a cat, a gift from her, why he loves Hallmark movies, her favorite, and how he knows about hair extensions. Because of her job, she’s surrounded by fake people and complains, in detail, about their fakeness.”
“Don’t fucking distract her,” Langston sighed, but I caught the curve of his lips, an almost smile. “I need more detail than that, Juno. Your reaction earlier was sheer panic.”
Staring at my lap, I pulled at a loose thread on my sweats. “Besides catching them in the act, on my birthday,” I griped, disdain dripping from my tone, “it was more about what I came to realize after I left that makes me panicked to see him. I’m not sure if I’m strong enough yet to face him.”
“Did he hit you?” Langston asked, so gently it took me by surprise.
“No, which was why it took me so long to realize….” I took a deep breath. “No, he didn’t hit me, but he was controlling, manipulative, and so selfish that he was a borderline narcissist. Everything revolved around him: what he wanted to do, what he liked, what he needed. For the longest time, I thought that was normal, how every relationship worked. It didn’t start out that way, though. It was great at first, but then the little things I’d do here and there were never good enough.
“Like, the food I made wasn’t flavorful enough, or I didn’t have enough food on the table. Or I wasn’t presentable enough to go out with him unless I was totally put together; anything less, I heard about it the entire time we were out. Or if he wasunhappy, then he made sure I knew about it, so then I started pouring all my energy and time and focus and own happiness into keeping him happy because, well, things were just easier that way. And then after I found him and my sister, he said I caused him to cheat.”
“The hell?” the two men said in unison.
“He blamed his cheating on you?” Langston asked, completely confused. “How?”
“Because we weren’t having enough sex, of course,” I stated bluntly, staring just over Langston’s shoulder so I didn’t have to see his reaction. “And it was true, we didn’t, and that was on me. I’ve never really been an overly sexual person anyway, but I needed a deep connection with him towantthe physical aspects of the relationship, and it wasn’t there. I tried to like it?—”
