The Charlotte Chronicles (Jackson Boys 1)

I make a tunnel with my palms and slide it down over his penis. “Like this?”

He stumbles. “Shit. I can’t stand up.” With a breathless laugh, he toes off his jeans, which I hadn’t gotten around to completely discarding. He pulls me up to my feet.

“But I want—”

He cuts me off with a firm kiss. “I know, and so do I. But I’m going to fall over because I’m so turned on, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to sit on the end of the bed.”

“You’re going to teach me to give you a good blow job, though, right?”

His eyes bright with desire and laughter, he croaks out, “The best.”

18

Nathan

My time with Charlotte flies by. I had taken her presence in my life for granted, and it isn’t until she is gone that I realize how much she is part of my daily routine. Even before we touched each other in ways that I’d fantasized about, she was always here.

And now she’s not.

Nick feels it too. In the week following her departure, after the whispered private promises and the tear-filled public goodbyes—her tears, not mine—we are both uncharacteristically quiet.

“Miss her, man.” Nick powers down the car window as we speed to class. “Didn’t think I would because Skype and shit. And because she’s been out of school for weeks. But I still expect her to be home, ready to hear all the crap that went on at school.”

“Yup,” I answer. My feelings are too intense to give them much verbal play. I don’t want to sound like a preteen who is so insecure that he keeps checking his phone to see if the girl he likes has responded to his last text. But Christ, I do miss her in so many ways.

I miss her small body next to mine at night. I miss her fingers running through my hair as I sit on the floor to study. She’d lie on the bed and prop her chin on my shoulder, pretending to read but more often distracting me because she claimed I smelled too good not to lick.

Taking a deep breath, I drive those thoughts away so I don’t walk into the school with a hard on so massive my backpack won’t cover it. Yes. Fuck. I miss her.

“Guess you’ll have to get used to missing each other if you’re going to spend four years after graduation in the military,” Nick muses.

Guilt spears me because I still haven’t told Charlotte. I meant to, but then I was distracted by sex. I’m a seventeen-year-old male whose girlfriend wanted to be taught how to give a blow job. Nothing would have steered me away from that course of action. Not a tornado, a five-alarm fire, or confessions about future plans.

And there I go again. The jeans are feeling too tight again. I have to stop thinking about Charlotte and sex. At least for the next eight hours or so. After? Once I’m back in my bedroom, I’ll be jerking it like a madman. My hand will probably be calloused by the time she gets back. I can just picture it.

“Why, Nathan, your hand is so rough. Been working out much?”

“Yeah, I fapped every night for three hours looking at your pictures, smelling your pillow, and remembering your tongue all over my body.”

I’m not sure whether she’ll be disgusted or turned on. As if he’s reading my mind, Nick asks, “Think it will be hard to go without? I mean, like I can’t not have sex every weekend, or I think my brain processes shut down.”

“Nice, Nick. Real classy.”

“What?” He raises his hands, trying for the innocent look. “There are guys out there who are only pleasuring one woman, and there are guys—like you—who aren’t having sex at all. I’m doing both genders a favor by picking up the slack.”

Shaking my head, I snort. “If that helps you sleep at night. Hope you are wrapping it up. No need for little Jacksons running around before you graduate. Not to mention disease.”

“Thanks a lot for jinxing me. Next girl I see, I’ll impregnate. And I’m going to blame it on you.”

“You can blame anything you want on me. You’re the one whose life will end when Dad finds out.”

This shuts Nick down. “I’m mostly just sleeping with Josie and she’s more concerned about pregnancy than I am. I swear she’d prefer it if I wrapped twice. As it is she’s on the pill, wears a diaphragm and requires condom use.”

Josie is a senior at an all-girls Catholic school. She lives on the eighth floor. I’m sure Nick picked her because of the easy access. “Better than dating a girl who doesn’t know the first thing about birth control.”

When we get to school, I check the time. Charlotte is seven hours ahead, so right now she’s probably getting out of treatment or tutoring. We don’t have a good lock on her schedule yet. I send her a quick text.