Journee and Zyair do not have a book of their own. This couple appeared in my short holiday romance Rekindled. They are both the best friends of the heroine and hero, Maven and Kai. A reader asked if Journee and Zyair would get their own story and I’m considering it. But with my long backlist of stories that still need to be written, I wanted to see if these two had a story to be told. Seems they do. Adding them to my to-write, and here’s why…
Journee & Zyair
….”But was it two sneezes or three?”
“Huh?”
Journee sighs, then rolls her eyes. Her blue snow boots sink into the freshly fallen white snow beneath her as she makes her way up the stone walkway.
Ahead of her, slabs of wood horizontally layered to form the body of the cabin, hold up the most perfect wooden roof she’s ever seen. The structure does a decent job of distracting her for only a moment.
“The sneezing,” she continues, peeling her eyes off the outside of the property. “Did he sneeze twice or three times?”
“Journee,” Maven, her best friend, says on the other end of the line. “Girl, I do not remember. All I know is he sneezed a couple of times.”
“So, twice?”
“Journee!”
“Maven, it’s important you pay attention to this kind of stuff.”
“Dear God, Journee. You left only four hours ago and you’re already trippin’?! What is this? You don’t trust me?”
“Of course, I do.”
“So then, what is up?”
Journee shakes her head as she walks further up the walkway, heading to the front door of the cabin. She’s following behind her husband, Zyair, who’s pulling their roll-on luggage behind him, and shaking his head to himself.
“This is Zyair and my first-time leaving Vance with anyone for this long.”
“But Kai and I are not just anyone. We’re his godparents.”
“Yeah, godparents who can’t remember if their godson sneezed either twice or three times.”
“And why does it matter, again?”
Journee grunts. She arrives on the welcome mat at the threshold of the property and stomps her feet a few times to remove the snow wedged between the waffled soles of her boots.
It really has been too long since she’s been to the cabin. Between surviving the last trimester of her pregnancy during the holidays the year before and having to be a full-time mom to a growing baby boy, she and her husband Zyair have had no time to visit Colorado.
“It matters because the moms in my baby group swore three sneezes usually meant a cold was near.”
“Oh, here we go.” Maven giggles on the line and Journee balls her lips in response. “Journee, you know none of those women are doctors, right?”
“You’re right,” Journee counters, “they aren’t. They’re better than doctors. Most of them have several children, which means they have a wealth of experience. So they’re more valuable than a doctor who has none.”
Vance coos in the background and Journee’s heart melts at just the sound of his little voice through the phone.
“Aww,” she whines. “No. I can’t do this. I’m coming home.”
“No, you’re not,” Zyair says at the threshold, gently removing the smartphone from Journee’s ear.
“Hey!” she hollers while trying to reach for the phone, but Zyair pulls it too far back for her to get it.
He presses the phone to the shell of his ear and says, “Maven, you’re doing great, keep up the great work.”
Journee crosses her arms over her chest, covered by her puffer coat. “Oh yes, she’s doing such a phenomenal job not knowing if her godson is sick or not.”
“We will see you in two days,” Zyair continues, paying Journee no mind. “Yes, okay. I definitely will. Didn’t I just say I will?” He chuckles. “Aight. Take care.”
“Wait!” Journee rushes into the cabin to grab the phone out of his hand, but Zyair ends the call with Maven and drops Journee’s phone into his back pocket.
Warmth greets her the moment she enters the cabin. The aroma of cedar wood and pine cohabitate in the air creating a scent profile that has become the cabin’s signature. It brings in a flurry of memories that helps with distracting Journee from her worries.
She drops her arms at her sides and allows her eyes to wander around the property. High wooden ceilings, grandiose floor to ceiling windows with picturesque views of Aspen’s landscape in the distance. Christmas was in three days, but the scene outside told a more believable story that it had already arrived.
She inhales the air and flutters her eyes closed for only a moment.
“Yes, there you go,” Zyair whispers as he wraps his arms around his wife.
His dark full beard and bald head catch glints of light from the overhead fixture, something Journee notices the moment she opens her eyes again.
“Take it all in,” he encourages. “Ground yourself in this moment for me.”
“Zyair–“
He lies a finger against her pouty lips to keep her from speaking. “Be more present and worry less.”
“But–“
“Maven and Kai got this,” he interjects, running his fingers through her wild black curls. “I promise.”
Journee looks away, but he guides her eyes back to his by maneuvering her chin with his fingertip.
“They are responsible adults who are getting married in four months and want to start a family soon after,” Zyair reminds. “Taking care of Vance for two nights won’t hurt anyone and this will be excellent practice for them.”
“But why does my baby have to be their test dummy?” she fusses.
“Journee, he’s my baby too, you know?”
Her eyes soften.
“And I wouldn’t do anything to endanger him, either. I trust our friends,” he says, nodding with confidence. “They have babysat for us enough times.”
“For a few hours or overnight but never for three days Zyair.”
“We need this,” he states firmly. “This time alone? We need this.”
Journee blinks in response.
“Between my overly booked production calendar and award season taking up what’s left of my time, we’ve had no time for us.”
“We’re parents now.”
“Yes, we’re parents and yes, Vance is our priority, but we need time for us, too. We cannot pour from empty cups.”
Zyair pulls her closer to him and she obliges, leaning her head against the chest of his down coat.
“Mommy and daddy need a few days to reconnect and just chill. We need to cultivate that thing that turned our team of two to three, aight? Trust your man on this one.”
Journee sighs once more and concedes with a nod.
Zyair leans away for only a second so he can bend his legs at the knees to be at nose distance with his wife. He tilts his head to the right and leans in, kissing his wife on the cheek.
“Maven told me to give you that for her.”
Journee smiles coyly.
He straightens his legs when he pulls her closer and she drops her head back to look up at him as he lowers his lips to hers.
“And this,” he says against her mouth, “Is from me.”
Journee melts against him when he parts her lips with his. She moans when his tongue caresses against hers. Zyair draws her tongue into his mouth and sucks on it twice. Journee moves even closer to him, and he welcomes her more into his space and rewards her move by wrapping his arms around her tighter. It’s a kiss that steals her breath away. Like the kiss they shared during their first date years ago. Journee went against dating rules and allowed the man she’d eventually take vows with to kiss her like they weren’t strangers. Like they were long-lost loves reunited. A kiss filled with patience and sensuality, like they were making love with only their mouths. That kiss swept her right off her feet and was doing the same thing right now, a few years and a baby later.
He palms her ass and uses it to lift her up with one hand. She responds by wrapping her legs around his waist.
He smiles at her cooperation, swiveling on the arch of his snow boots toward one of the cabin’s bedrooms.
Against her lips, he says, “Let’s see if the bedroom’s acoustics are still the same.”
The moment they cross the bedroom’s threshold, Zyair lowers Journee to her feet, and she walks him back against the bedroom’s wall.
The sun hasn’t set yet. Its rays peeks through dense clouds floating by their window. The shard of sunlight provides all the light the two need to make out the lust in their eyes.
Journee pinches the zipper on Zyair’s coat and pulls down. The zipper hisses as his down comes undone. He removes his coat, and she does the same with hers, before dropping to her haunches in front of him. She unbuttons and unzips his pant in search of one of her favorite parts of him and he drops his head back against the wall when she finds it.
Journee wastes no time sliding the length of him between the walls of her mouth, sucking them in as she bobs back and forth beneath him.
“Mmmm, Journee, damn,” he groans.
Time has been too tight and too little for them to indulge in this type of play, her favorite kind of play, so she goes slowly, activating her mouth’s muscles as she guides him in and out with no hands.
He hardens and gently takes her by her curls, removing himself from between her lips. It’s Zyair’s turn to take the lead when he pulls her to her feet and walks her to the bedroom’s dresser. He tasks himself with removing her sweater and winter pants until she’s left in only her matching nude bra and panties.
The bed is their next stop, where he instructs her to sit at the edge. He drops to his knees and removes the thin fabric of her underwear before planting his lips between her thighs.
The space behind her knees rest on his shoulders as he twirls and circles his tongue on her pink nub. Her walls contract and her resistance is no match for his oral skills.
She never could last and nothing has changed because she’s fisting the seams of the mattress and angling her rolling eyes to the ceiling, succumbing to a sensation that sweeps her from her head to her toes.
Zyair doesn’t even let her catch her breath before he takes his position over her, kisses his way from her stomach to her lips, and guides himself in between her thighs.
Her back arches, and her eyes open to his. Zyair’s lids are low as he pumps his hips back and forth between her legs. He palms her right cheek and buries himself deeper. Journee wines her waist beneath him, running her manicured nails up his back and the back of his neck.
He lowers his lips to her neck, and she caresses his bald head as he picks up the pace. Before she can get too lost in the feeling, he flips her over to her favorite position, on all fours, and guides himself back in.
Her hair is his gentle grip when she throws it back against him and he receives it like he always does.
Their moans are in sync like a well orchestrated song, their bodies like percussions as her ass slaps against his thighs.
Her body warms with a familiar sensation that snatches her attention and makes her focus on it and only it as it flows from the inside out, rendering her speechless. Her legs give out, but Zyair’s got her like always, moving with her as she falls to the bed beneath her. He slows his pace because after she told him her orgasms lasted longer when he does that, he’s locked that fact to memory.
She shakes beneath him, bites the sheets with her teeth, and rides the gentle wave of her climax.
Inside, she’s contracting and releasing as Zyair hardens. He buries his face in her hair when she holds him there by clasping her hand behind his neck. His heavy exhales as he spirals down his own release, warms the back of her neck, and she smiles against the sheets. Yet again, her man was right….
