Beach House & Boundary Lines — Bonus Chapter

The First Summer Back
by Aurora North

This bonus chapter takes place one year after the events of Beach House & Boundary Lines. It contains explicit sexual content and is intended for readers 18+.

The First Summer Back

The first thing Rowan noticed when they pulled into the sandy lane was that nothing had changed.

Salt Line sat at the end of the road exactly as it had a year ago — dove-gray clapboard, white trim, the wraparound deck with its ceiling fan turning slow rotations against the June sky. Sea oats lined the path. The ceramic frog guarded the key.

“June left tomatoes on the porch,” Kaia said, killing the engine.

“Of course she did.”

“Shower,” Rowan said. “The outdoor one.”

“It’s two in the afternoon.”

“I know.”

“In broad daylight.”

“I know.”

“The kitchen window—”

“Has a direct sightline through the slats. I know. I’ve known since the first week.” Rowan put her hands on Kaia’s chest. “Last summer, you stood in that shower and I watched you from this kitchen and I didn’t understand why I couldn’t look away. I understand now. And I want to be in there with you. I’ve been thinking about it since March.”

“That was the morning you came into the shower and made us forty minutes late for brunch with Nora.”

“Nora sent me a text that said I know exactly why you’re late and I don’t want details.“

“Nora is a liar. She absolutely wants details.”

Kaia kissed Rowan. Hard, brief, a promise. Her teeth caught Rowan’s lower lip on the pull-back. Then she took Rowan’s hand and led her to the wooden shower stall.

Cedar slats with half-inch gaps. Open to the sky. Smooth river stones underfoot. The afternoon sun came through the gaps in bars of gold — a cage made of warmth. A confessional with no roof.

Rowan pulled her sundress over her head. Nothing underneath. The sunlight striped her naked body in parallel lines of gold and shadow.

Kaia stripped. She stood in the spray with the water streaming over her body — the lean muscle, the strong shoulders, the dark hair between her thighs that the water was turning sleek.

A year hadn’t diminished the wanting. It had sharpened it. Knowing a body didn’t dull desire. It made every touch more precise. Every sensation carried the memory of every sensation before it, and the accumulation wasn’t weight. It was depth.

They stood chest to chest, slick and warm, breasts pressing together. Rowan’s hands slid down Kaia’s wet back, over the curve of her ass. She gripped. Pulled. The slide of wet skin on wet skin made them both gasp.

“I want you against this wall,” Rowan said.

“Which wall?”

“All of them. We’ll work our way around.”

She pushed Kaia against the cedar. Kissed her throat. Took her breast in hand and rolled her thumb across the nipple. “I love your tits,” Rowan said against her skin. “I think about them constantly. When you wear that gray tank top that doesn’t fit properly and I can see — everything.”

“That tank top is a weapon and you know it.”

Rowan’s mouth found Kaia’s nipple. Sucked gently, then harder, teeth grazing. Kaia’s hand flew to the back of her head. The sound she made — a low, guttural moan — was the sound Rowan had spent a year cataloguing and still couldn’t hear without losing her train of thought.

Then Rowan knelt. The river stones were warm under her knees. She looked up at Kaia through the spray.

“You’re so wet,” Rowan said. “Is this from the shower or from me?”

“You. It’s from you. It’s been from you since you took your dress off.”

“I want your mouth on me,” Kaia said. “I want your tongue on my clit and your fingers inside me and I want to come so hard the entire island hears it. Is that specific enough?”

Rowan grinned against her thigh. “That’ll do.”

She put her mouth on Kaia. Long, flat, slow — her tongue tracing the full length of Kaia’s slit. Kaia’s head fell back against the cedar. The sound she made was barely human.

Rowan found her clit. Circled with her tongue. Slid two fingers inside, curved upward to the spot that made Kaia’s thighs shake. She established a rhythm — then slowed down. Eased the pressure. Kaia whimpered.

“Don’t stop — Rowan, god—”

“I’m not stopping. I’m taking my time.”

She brought Kaia to the edge twice. Held her there. Kaia’s whole body was taut, shaking, suspended at the peak.

“Come for me,” Rowan said against her. The words vibrated through the sensitive flesh and Kaia shattered — visible, full-body. She cried out Rowan’s name mixed with profanity mixed with sounds beyond language. Rowan stayed with her through every pulse, every aftershock.

Kaia’s legs buckled. Rowan caught her. They sat tangled on the warm stones. Kaia was shaking.

“I can’t feel my legs.”

“Good.”

“My turn,” Kaia said.

She turned Rowan face-first against the opposite wall. “Hands on the wall.” Her voice was low. Steady. The voice she used when she was about to be very, very thorough.

Kaia’s mouth traced Rowan’s spine downward. Her hands came around from behind — one on Rowan’s breast, the other sliding between her legs where Rowan was so wet Kaia’s fingers slid through without resistance.

“You’re soaked,” Kaia murmured. “This is from going down on me?”

“Every time. You know that.”

“I love that making me come turns you on so much you can barely stand.”

Kaia slid two fingers inside her from behind. The angle was deeper — the pressure immediate and intense. Rowan cried out. The dual sensation — fingers inside her, hand on her breast, mouth on her neck — dismantled every remaining thought.

“More,” Rowan gasped. “Harder.”

Kaia gave her more. Relentless. Precise. Then she withdrew her fingers.

Rowan nearly screamed. “What the fuck—”

“Turn around. I want to see your face.”

Kaia dropped to her knees. Put Rowan’s leg over her shoulder. And put her mouth on her with the focused, expert attention of twelve months of study.

Kaia slid her fingers inside again. Two, then three. Her tongue kept its rhythm — constant, relentless.

The orgasm built like a tidal wave. Rowan came with the sky open above her and the sun striping her body in gold. She came so hard her vision went white and her knees gave out and the only things keeping her upright were the wall behind her and Kaia’s hands on her hips and the stubborn, beautiful fact that some things you build on a barrier island in Georgia turn out to be permanent.

They collapsed onto the warm stones. For a long time neither of them moved.

“I’m lying naked on the floor of an outdoor shower in the middle of the afternoon and I can’t feel my face and I’m pretty sure the entire bird population of Sable Key is traumatized and this is the happiest I’ve ever been.”

“We should do this every summer.”

“I was so scared of you,” Rowan said. “Not of you. Of wanting you. I thought desire was a trapdoor. And it turned out it was a door. The regular kind. The kind you walk through on purpose and find a room you didn’t know existed.” She traced the scar through Kaia’s eyebrow. “You were the door.”

“That’s very poetic for a woman who just had three fingers inside her.”

“I’m a writer. I contain multitudes.”

Kaia kissed her — slow, deep, tasting of salt water and sex. They stayed on the shower floor until the water ran cold.

Then they dried off on the deck in the sun, and ate June’s tomatoes with salt and olive oil and their fingers, and Kaia photographed Rowan on the porch railing — hair drying in wild curls, face caught in the act of laughing — and the photograph would hang in their apartment beside the first one. Two portraits. Two women. One who was trying not to fall apart and one who had already landed.

The boundary lines were right where they belonged. Not gone. Not erased. Not pretended away.

Just theirs.

The way everything was now.

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