Chapter 16 #2
Rowan couldn’t help but push her hands into the back pockets of Juniper’s jean shorts as she walked Juniper backwards across the beach. She squeezed two handfuls as Juniper laughed into her neck. The brush of warm breath tickled her skin and sent shivers of anticipation racing down her spine.
“Okay, we saw the oyster stuff. Now where are you taking me?”
“Ah. Got distracted.”
“I know.”
“Follow me.”
She grabbed Juniper’s hand and led her across the beach.
The networked stems of the tall saltmarsh cordgrass thrashed at their shins until they made it to the shorter, fluffier salt marsh hay that crunched underfoot.
Once they were a couple hundred yards away from the coastline, the soil firmed up and opened into drier land.
“The oyster midden is that way,” Rowan indicated with a head nod to her left, “but I wanted to show you this first.”
They approached two very distinctly different trees that looked to be growing out of the same spot on the ground. Rowan let Juniper’s hand drift out of hers as she approached the trees in wonder. She stayed back to watch Juniper in the same way.
“What’s happening here?” Juniper asked while turning her head slightly back, a curious expression playing across her face.
“I thought you might like this. It’s a red cedar growing intertwined with a loblolly pine.”
Then Juniper turned fully back around to face Rowan with the brightest smile.
“You know what a red cedar is also called, right?”
“Of course. It’s a juniper.”
“Yes, she is.” She smiled back. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” she added.
“Me either. I couldn’t wait to show it to you.”
◆◆◆
Juniper walked around the side of the tree, her fingers tracing the sharp edges of the fan-like sprays of skinny, scaly leaves of the cedar. She pointed to a spot, and Rowan approached and leaned over to look with her.
“I like to pick the berries when they’re in this in-between stage of green mixing into mostly blue.”
Rowan picked one and studied it between her fingers. “What do they taste like?”
“Both bitter and sweet.”
Rowan flicked the berry at her. “Did your mom know that about juniper berries before she named you Juniper?”
“Ohh, you think you’re funny. I was going to tell you one of the ways we used the berries, but now I think I’ll keep that to myself.”
“No, I’m sorry, tell me,” Rowan pleaded through a laugh as she tugged on a lock of Juniper’s hair that had fallen out of her braid.
Juniper ran her hands along the outer edge of Rowan’s sleeveless t-shirt and gripped, pulling her into her mouth. But she didn’t kiss her. Instead, she moved her lips to her ear and whispered, “Maybe I ought to make you earn it first.”
“I would do anything.”
Juniper smiled against her cheek before kissing it. “Anything, really? Not here though. I need softer conditions.”
She waved her hand across the craggy ground around them. Rowan caught it and wrapped it around her waist before she slipped her hands back into the back pockets of Juniper’s shorts.
“I think I know a spot.”
“I hope so.” A glimmer flashed across Juniper’s eyes. “Should I continue on with my lesson in the meantime?”
“Please, Ms. Banks.”
Juniper couldn’t find it in herself to ease the vice grip she now had on Rowan’s shirt. She leaned up on her tiptoes to brush her lips against Rowan’s. “Don’t play with me, Birdsong,” she breathed out against her lips, unable to pull herself any further back.
“I would never.”
Juniper finally managed to free her hands, but Rowan’s shirt still bore the vestiges of her fingers twisting into it. She blew out a breath and took a half step back.
“We crushed them and used them like pepper.”
“Do you want to take some back with us?” Rowan asked, slowly sliding her hands out of Juniper’s pockets and onto the small of her back.
“Yes. I’ll make us something to eat with these later.”
Juniper was not going home to her house. She knew that much. She finally stepped all the way back and rounded the tree collecting a few of the berries in her palm as she went. After collecting herself as well, she felt a little less chaotically turned on.
“Do you know what would cause this to happen? The trees growing together like this?” She asked.
“I looked it up after I found them. It’s called inosculation, when two different trees sort of converge together. I couldn’t find any examples of this happening with red cedars though.”
“Interesting. It’s like they’re friends,” Juniper mused. She often spoke of plants that grew together symbiotically as friends.
“Or they’re in love,” Rowan offered.
Juniper couldn’t help the speed at which her eyes darted over to meet Rowan’s. She held her gaze for a moment. “Maybe friends who fell in love?”
Rowan smiled softly at her. “Something like that.”
Juniper smiled back. “Yeah, something like that.”
They explored the oyster midden for a while before the midday sun bore its full heat against their skin.
They made their way back to the boat, and Juniper set about fixing the picnic spread she had made for them on the beach.
After they were full and hydrated, Juniper leaned back against her palms on the sand.
“Wanna go in?”
“I’m sorry what?” Rowan croaked as she shook the daze out of her eyes.
Juniper noticed the focus of Rowan’s intense gaze was on the bare and glistening brown skin of her thighs. “I caught you staring, Birdsong. I was asking if you wanted to go in, like in the water to swim?” She asked slowly, punctuating each word of the question.
Without missing a beat or waiting for an answer, Juniper jumped up and dusted the sand off the back of her legs.
Rowan looked up at her from her spot on the beach and chuckled. “I’ll go anywhere you go.”
“Good,” Juniper declared, with a little ego-driven shoulder bump to the sky.
She quickly threw off her t-shirt and revealed a strappy bikini top. She pulled off her shorts and kicked them with one foot toward Rowan’s face to expose the similar bottoms. Rowan grasped the shorts and clenched them into a ball before setting them beside her.
“You’re staring again, Birdsong.”
“Junie, I’m going to 100% stare at anything you show me.”
“Good,” she declared again.
Juniper took several steps into the water and untied her braid before she dove in. She emerged from the cool water and swept back her long hair, turned black from the water. She turned back to the shoreline to find what she expected to find, Rowan tracking her every movement.
“Come in,” she called out.
Rowan smirked and leaned back on her palms. “I don’t have a swimsuit.”
“Ok, and? You have on something underneath, right?” Juniper flicked her finger up and down in the air sizing up Rowan’s body.
Rowan stood up and moved right to the edge of the water. Crossing two arms over her waist, she pulled the hem of her shirt up and over her head revealing a sports bra.
“Today’s the day you decide to wear a bra,” Juniper tutted.
Rowan chuckled and looked down the shoreline as she pulled her baseball cap off and scratched the back of her neck.
Juniper was transfixed on her lips that morphed into a smirk so smug, so sexy, she was barely controlling the impulse to climb back onto the sand and pull the damn bra off herself. Along with the rest of her clothes.
Rowan’s eyes darted back to Juniper’s, and she quipped, “Are you trying to get me naked, Juniper Banks?”
“Absolutely. And you can’t swim in those anyway,” Juniper quipped back as she now pointed at Rowan’s basketball shorts, “or you’ll drown.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” she responded innocently, “that’s just too much fabric. It’s a matter of science.”
“Ah. Science is it. You’re advising me on the buoyancy of basketball shorts now?”
“Mhmm.” After a pause, a coy smile crept across Juniper’s face. “I’ll throw in this added variable. For this experiment in how I finally get you undressed.”
Juniper swam toward Rowan’s spot on the beach until she could kneel in the water in front of her.
Without breaking eye contact, she moved her hands behind her back and untied the bottom strap of her top and lifted it over her head.
She flipped the wet top over to Rowan, slinging water down her half-dressed body.
This time Rowan didn’t even bother catching the article of clothing Juniper launched at her.
She just let it hit her body and fall to the beach in front of her.
Looking up at Rowan from this point of view, who was now standing almost directly over her, with water dripping down her bare stomach, made her heart beat against her rib cage.
“Don’t be shy now, Birdsong.”
Rowan’s eyes narrowed coyly. Juniper loved the way the outer corners angled up when she did this, like they were kissing the sky.
“A lot’s changed in fifteen years. I think we both know I’m not shy anymore.”
Rowan slowly untied the cinched waist of her shorts, and they fell on the sand of the beach.
“You’re staring again,” Juniper whispered.
This time her voice had less resolve, more lust. She bit her lip as she treaded backwards in the water.
“I am,” Rowan husked, in a tone that Juniper briefly closed her eyes to fully take in.
Juniper treaded out to chest-high water with Rowan wading out, inches away in front of her.
Her heart raced when she felt Rowan’s hands slide around her waist and then down her hips to pull her legs around her.
Juniper let out a surprised gasp as she slid her arms around Rowan’s neck for balance.
The slide of slick skin against slick skin was almost too much to hold back from exploring.
Juniper throbbed as she kissed Rowan, who deepened it to the point Juniper fully surrendered to its power.
Rowan’s lips left hers so her smoldering dark eyes could travel down Juniper’s face, drinking in the brown freckles on the tops of her cheeks, the slope of her nose, to the curves of her plump lips.
Juniper had never felt assessed in this reverent sort of way, and she felt heat flush across her face.
“The salt air makes your hair wavier.” Juniper traced her finger through the half-loops of almost curls that snuck past the brim of Rowan’s hat and above her ears.
“It’s getting longer,” Rowan acknowledged.
“You’re really cute.”
“No, you’re really cute.”
Juniper flirtatiously took Rowan’s hat off and put it on herself. “Trying to see if I can pull this look off. Nerdy lawyer by day…” Then she flipped the hat backwards and added in a deeper voice, “rugged ecologist by night.”
“Which do you prefer?”
“Well, both are equally you. Why would you make me choose?”
Rowan shook her head and softly smiled. “I wouldn’t.”
Judging by the softening look in her eyes, that sentiment seemed to mean more to Rowan than what Juniper intended.
She let her hands trail down Rowan’s shoulders to her biceps. Sun glistened off the water on her body, and all Juniper could think about was how she wanted to meander her tongue along the rivulets that formed down Rowan’s neck, mixing the wetness from her mouth with the bay water on her skin.
Rowan pulled her in closer to brush her lips against hers, so tender that it made Juniper feel needy.
Like she needed to beckon something from Rowan’s soul.
She felt her hard nipples brush against Rowan’s breasts, aching from the contact with fabric and not skin, the way she craved it.
She slid a finger against the skin under the band of Rowan’s bra, and without needing to say anything, Rowan must have understood what she wanted.
“Hold on to me,” Rowan requested, barely above a whisper.
She leaned the upper half of her body back, took off her bra, and threw it back toward the beach.
She took the hat off Juniper’s head and threw that back too.
Then she drew Juniper’s body back in close to her and their bare skin touched each other’s in this way for the first time.
Juniper ran her hands through the back of Rowan’s hair and moaned into the kisses she started to place down Rowan’s neck.
“Junie,” Rowan whispered, almost as a question.
Juniper pulled back. She felt like Rowan’s eyes were searching hers for one more indication she was sure she wanted this too.
Rowan parted her lips but waited a few moments to speak. “I’m in love with you,” she finally admitted.