Page 36 of All In

“Come here,” she says, voice wrecked, tugging at my shoulders. “I need you. All of you. Now.”

I move up her body slow, kiss her deep, let her taste exactly how much I want her. She reaches between us, slides her hand inside my underwear and wraps her hand around me.

“Fuck,” I groan.

“Naked, please.”

I quickly remove my boxers, then we have the awkward conversation where I admit I don’t have condoms because, of course, I wasn’t planning on this. But after assuring me she’s on something and we know we’re both clean, I’m mentally preparing to take this woman bare.

Her hand finds me again, this time guiding me to where she’s slick and ready and waiting, I have to stop for a second, forehead pressed to hers, just to breathe through the sheer size of what’s about to happen.

“Leo.” Her voice is gentle. “You okay?”

“I’m perfect.” I mean it completely. “This is perfect. I just don’t want to go off to soon. Because despite my lack of experience, I know that this would not be this amazing with anyone but you. I want to be here for every second of it instead of getting lost in my own head.”

“Then be here. Eyes on me.” She presses a slow kiss to the corner of my mouth. “With me. That’s all I want.”

I sink into her slow, watching her face the whole way, cataloguing every flicker of pleasure crossing it. When I’m finally seated fully inside her, I go still. Her legs come up, wrap around my waist.

I understand, with a clarity I haven’t felt about anything in years, exactly why I waited. It was never going to be like this with anyone else. It was always going to be her. Because she is my person. My other half. My soulmate. Whatever you want to call it, Juniper is mine.

We move together slow at first, finding the rhythm with each other. Her nails leave half-moons against my shoulders that I’ll probably feel tomorrow. I whisper her name like a question, and she says mine back like a vow.

When she comes again, she shrieks my name. I follow her over almost immediately, burying my face against her neck.

There’s a part of me that wants to do a victory lap for making her come twice. Pretty good for someone who was, for all intents and purposes, a virgin going into this.

Afterward, we lie tangled together in the lamplight, her head on my chest, her fingers tracing slow, idle patterns over my chest.

“Wow,” she says again.

“Definitely a wow,” I agree.

I look down at her—hair a mess, cheeks still flushed, looking thoroughly, gorgeously pleased with herself—and feel something in my chest settle into place. I love her. I am in love with this woman and I don’t even know her last name.

“You were definitely worth the wait, Juniper.”

She smiles against my chest, tucks herself in closer, and I hold her a little tighter. Because as it turns out, she’s the answer to a question I didn’t know I’d been asking my whole life.

chapter

eleven

Juniper

I wake up tangled in a stranger’s sheets, except he’s not a stranger anymore, and the sheets smell like him, and there is a solid, warm, entirely shirtless Leo curled around my back with his face mashed into my hair like he has no intention of ever moving again.

I don’t move either.

For a while, I just lie there, doing the math on my own life. Three days ago I packed a suitcase with a sword in it and worried about whether Eric would ruin my weekend. Now there’s a man’s arm slung heavy across my waist, and I can feel his heartbeat against my spine, slow and steady, and I genuinely cannot locate a single part of myself that wants to be anywhere else on earth.

This is either the best decision I’ve ever made or the most catastrophic, and at six in the morning, lying in this particular gold light, I find I don’t actually care which.

“You’re thinking very loudly,” Leo mumbles into my hair.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You don’t have to. I can feel you contemplating everything against my arm.” He presses a kiss to the back of my shoulder, slow and unhurried. “What’s the verdict?”