In Too Deep

by Dani Collins

  “Are you really going to wait six years before you go after something you want, Schnecke?”

  In her head she was thinking she could show him. Prove to him that whatever curiosity had been aroused by their one kiss would fizzle once he realized how boring she really was.

  “I’m going to have a shower,” he said. “We can go to dinner after. Talk this out more. Or…” his expression altered, gaze heating while his mouth curved in a faint smile “…you can join me and we’ll finish this discussion there.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Trigg had shaved first, giving her time to come to him. Willing her to. Now he leaned a hand against the translucent bricks that made up a wall in the shower. The setting sun gleamed through them, throwing rosy luminescence onto the brushed nickel fixtures and ivory tiles.

  And she wasn’t here. Damn. He was going to have to switch the hot to cold. Or ease the ache between his thighs another w—

  The door clicked.

  He jerked his head up, pushed off the wall and swiped the fog from the glass.

  “This isn’t agreement to stay married,” she said. “But if it doesn’t work, there really is nothing to discuss.”

  He probably should have said something, but couldn’t form words. Especially when she wiggled as she dragged her dress up and over her head.

  The view fogged, turning her pale figure into a nymph in the mist, two bands of rosy pink splashed across the curves of her breasts and the flare of her hips. He squeaked his hand across the glass to clear a bigger circle, shaking the water out of his eyes.

  She took the time to turn her dress right side out and hang it on the hook behind the door. She seemed to hesitate for a breath of courage, then unhooked her strapless bra and dangled it over the knob. Her dark pink areolas were high, seductive dots atop the scooped ice cream of her breasts.

  His cock pulsed in approval.

  The only sound was the hiss of the shower. He swept a big Z, biting back a groan as she rocked her hips, wiggling her cheekies down her thighs to reveal a smudge of dark at the top of her thighs. She released the panties to land on the floor. Her hand wavered, as though to shield her pretty little bush. Then she picked her feet out of her panties and looked at him.

  He opened the door of the shower so the steam billowed out, rolling to engulf this sprite and draw her into this world where nothing existed but them. He offered a hand to steady her and the slightness of her fingers on his made his heart slam like an angry bull inside his rib cage, bashing powerfully, threatening to fracture his bones.

  He pulled her cool body against his hot one, the difference in temperature so great it made her gasp. Warm water rained down on her face as she blinked up at him, lips parting in surprise.

  He captured her wet mouth in the most possessive kiss of his life. No lead-in, no teasing her past inhibitions. He was too far gone and could only drag her into the hot, wet, blatant place he already inhabited.

  She blossomed after one startled second, opening her mouth to the rapacious sweep of his tongue and tickling hers against it.

  A jolt of electric thrill went through him. Triumph. She pushed her tongue into his mouth in a flagrant move that had him groaning with approval. Greed.

  He reeled from the sheer assault of sensation. The taste of her mouth, the shape of her ass in his hands, the slippery traces of soap on his chest that lubricated her breasts and stomach against his torso. A light, foreign fragrance came off her hair as it dampened, a scent he understood to be her. He inhaled deeply, wanting to memorize it.

  And then there were her hands. She skimmed them across his back, used her wiry strength to press so tightly against the shape of his hard cock, it should have left an indent on her belly. She wasn’t shy, seeming to want to learn him as thoroughly as he wanted to learn her, circling her palms over his ass and tracing his crack and touching the back of his thigh so his cock strained even harder with anticipation. Her other arm came up to circle around his neck, lifting her breast and resettling against him so she could go on tiptoes and kiss him.

  He filled both his hands with her plump cheeks, squeezing and massaging, lifting her against him so he could feel her mound against his cock, rubbed against her in mock thrusts as they kissed.

  She clung tighter, moving with him and making him want to eat her alive.

  With a growl, he cupped the swell of her breast and dipped his head to suck on her nipple. Hard. Harder. Without mercy so a keening noise left her throat. Her knees softened. He had to take her weight on his arm, but he loved it. Loved that her hands scrambled in his hair and pressed him into his work, begging for more. Such pretty little nipples. So sweet and firm as a raspberry against his tongue. So responsive.

  He twisted her for the lick of his tongue on the other breast, keeping one hand free to fondle the first. She was magic, sweet erotic magic, moaning with drunken pleasure and dragging his head back so she could kiss him. She ran her open mouth across his cheek and down to his throat. She bit his chin, then sucked on his bottom lip until his hair stood on end.

  She took him in hand. Two hands. Blatant and carnal in the way she rolled her thumb across his tip, but even sexier was the glaze of passion in her eyes when she looked up from her work to see if he liked it.

  He was going to explode if he didn’t take back control from her. Fast.

  He pressed her back against the tiles. Then he cupped her mound and spread her folds with two fingers. He tried not to be rough, but he was too aroused for finesse.

  He thought constantly about the way she came that day he had kissed her. And he had wanted this. He wanted the right to touch her like this, flagrant and thorough. He stroked her clit with little catches of friction, until she was biting her lip. He licked her neck, sucked briefly, licked to soothe and pushed his thick finger into her, making her whimper. Her nails bit into his shoulders.

  He made a noise of apology and started to withdraw.

  “No. It feels good. Really good.” She sounded on the verge of tears.

  He growled and bent to her breast again. Sucking as he rocked his touch deeper into her, encouraged by the way she clung to his intrusion, the way her breath changed to a ragged pant. He was utterly captivated by the tiny quakes that chased over her as though she stood on the edge of an orgasm.

  It was so entrancing, he made wordless noises, not even knowing what this dark and commanding thing inside him wanted to say. Only knew he was possessive and pleased and wanted to own her, yet he was dropping to his knees to serve her.

  It was self-serving, too. He parted and looked, thought the thud of his pulse echoed in time with hers. Then he licked. Claimed.

  A strangled noise escaped her. She shivered in this hot, humid place. Once, twice. Her legs trembled and her hands skimmed the slippery tiles as though searching for something to brace herself. He focused on the magnificent taste of her. On the sensual, agonized noises she made as he teased with swirls and dips and sweeps of his tongue.

  He stroked and licked and pushed a second finger into her. A sharp, deep spasm stole through her. She released more of those animalistic noises and bucked against his mouth and the contractions of her muscles tightened and released.

  He damned near lost it himself, it was so fucking sexy. When they began to fade, he moved his hand to her shaking thigh, bit once at her quivering belly and rose to roll his face through the spray before he slammed the water off.

  And finally he found a word. “Bed.”

  *

  She was so seldom touched. So seldom had the right to touch back. Not like this where she gave in to every lascivious instinct. She ran her hands greedily over him as they dried off, distantly thinking she had lied to herself. She had come in here pretending she wanted to prove what a mismatch they were. Secretly, deep in her heart, she had wanted this. To study every last tattoo, to feel the hardness of his jaw, to nuzzle her mouth against the damp hair in the center of his chest and chase her way to his small, tight nipples.

  His stomac
h contracted as she did it. His big hand cradled the back of her neck and his other one moved restlessly across her back.

  She lifted her head and twined her arms around his neck, wanting to feel him with every single inch of her naked body.

  If he had let her just do that, rub herself against him all night, it would have been enough. But he acted as though he was equally starved and determined to consume her.

  He picked her up without effort, just a flex of his bicep and a sweep of her feet. Then he carried her into the bedroom.

  Something biological in her went crazy for his steely muscles. He was hard everywhere, but especially there. He set her on the bed and his cock thrust imperiously against her thigh, turgid and thick. She couldn’t help reaching for him. Squeezing.

  Yearning swirled through her pelvis in enticing throbs and echoes of orgasm. She didn’t know if her eyes were open or closed. Her entire being was focused on the need to feel him inside her.

  She tore her mouth from his passionate kiss and squeezed him hard enough to make his nostrils flare and his breath hiss in.

  “I can’t wait.” She lifted her knee to his hip, brazenly offering herself. Inviting him to thrust into her.

  His muscles locked. “Condom,” he said distantly.

  “It’s okay,” she panted.

  Something completely untamed flared in his eyes. He shifted atop her and swept her legs apart with his knees, the move swift and powerful and primal. Then he paused, looked down, caressed her lightly, just enough to make her pick up her hips in lewd hunger. He licked the taste of her off his fingertip and settled his hips between her thighs, probing for entrance.

  As the crest of his head pushed into her, she threw back her head and groaned, knees moving reflexively to his rib cage, inviting him to sink deep in one dominant thrust.

  As he buried himself to the root, the breadth of him filling her to a degree that tested her limits, he peeled his lips back against his teeth in something too feral to be a smile. It made her blood run with hot pleasure anyway.

  His face pulled into such hard angles, he looked almost cruel, but pure sorcery glinted in his eyes. He moved with heavy, steady, intensely satisfying thrusts. The determined, inflaming working of his cock in her pussy was heady, taking her onto another plane where her arousal redoubled. His hips impacted her flesh, slamming greater and greater sensations upon one another, so the whole of her was rocked by the ripples of pleasure he was sending through her.

  She tried to withstand it, to hold back and wait for him, but her control shredded under each return of his body. She scrabbled her hands behind his neck, urged him to kiss her. He did, but as she grew taut beneath him, he lifted his head and said, “Let me see.”

  She couldn’t hold back, couldn’t. A force inside her gathered then released in a roll of shuddering ecstasy. And kept going. She was tossed into wave after wave of shimmering, intense and timeless pleasure. She heard noises at a distance, guttural and earthy and feminine. Her own voice breaking with joy.

  As her climax subsided, he gathered her and rolled onto his back, holding her and caressing her all over. He stroked her neck and the side of her breast. His tickling touch went into the dip of her spine and along the outsides of her thighs and into the cleft of her buttocks and down to where he was still buried deep inside her. Hard and invasive where her tender flesh was taut and wet and still pulsing with orgasm.

  She licked his neck and worked her way to his jaw, then found his mouth.

  Feeling drugged, she could only moan, already growing ravenous for more. They kissed and made free with each other’s bodies. She wasn’t like this, not usually, but he made it feel very natural to suck and nip at his nipples so she felt the rock-hard weight of him inside her twitch with pleasure. She bit his earlobe and fingered where he penetrated her and caressed his tight sac. Then she braced her hands on his chest and rode him while boldly—unreservedly—staring him in the eyes.

  He lifted his hips to meet her, so the act was energetic and sharp and made her feel as though she was held in the grip of an electric current that charged and burned through her veins. Finally, when she thought she couldn’t withstand it any longer, the fire gods threw her into a volcano as it erupted. Her world went dark and hot and airless while the ground shook and her whole body was held in a paroxysm.

  The mattress hit her in the back. He was over her, his arms catching behind her knees as he slammed his hips into her. He braced his hands on either side of her, elbows locked, holding her trapped in the vice of his body, face so intense it should have been terrifying, but she was exalted by his ferocity. Drugged with pleasure and wanting him deeper. Wanting all of his strength, all of his passion, every inch of his unfettered need.

  She wanted to be everything to him and gripped his roped forearms, bracing herself to receive him. She made crude noises of encouragement as his rapid, near-barbaric thrusts teased her toward another of those earth-shattering culminations he offered. Orgasm hovered, glimmered, broke and exploded as white light.

  He roared, dragging her into the vastness of the universe alongside him.

  *

  Trigg didn’t know what kind of out-of-body experience his wife had just fucked out of him, but he was wrung dry afterward, barely able to roll off her. He lay on his back, spent, too weak to open his eyes. He was pretty sure his heart had exploded, but he didn’t care.

  He liked sex. It was a better tension release than a good workout and when he combined a test of endurance with unadulterated—pun not intended—passion, his life was pretty much complete.

  He didn’t know what he had expected with Wren. Compatibility, maybe. Sweetly satisfying, but some work needed to get her past her tendency to hold back. They had chemistry. He’d known it would be good, but he hadn’t known it would be life-threatening. The way she had abandoned herself to him was something he’d never experienced. It had taken his own excitement to levels he’d never felt, turning this into something between an extra-terrestrial mating ritual and nuclear fission. His gut ached from the force of his orgasm, for Christ’s sake.

  Because they hadn’t used a condom? He always used a condom. Learned his lesson early on that one. And he had physicals all the time. He knew there was no issue on his side with going bareback.

  If she wasn’t using anything, however, he’d just got her pregnant. He ought to be kicking his own ass around the room, but she wouldn’t have risked it and he was not nearly as terrified as he ought to be.

  “Pill?” he asked, just to be sure.

  “IUD. Cheaper.”

  A faint smile found its way across his lips at what sounded like an authentically measured and practical Wren response.

  But he was still stunned.

  “That was wild.” Almost beyond control, which was really unnerving. She had been with him all the way, right? If he was kidding himself about that, he’d kill himself. He turned his head.

  She avoided his gaze and sat up on the edge of the bed, her slender back to him. His shirt was on the end of the bed and she picked it up to hug it to her front.

  It was such a defensive gesture, his heart stuttered.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she murmured, spine flexing as though his sex-roughened voice grated against her nerves.

  He slid so he could see the side of her face. Her profile was still pink with the remnants of her twenty-four carat orgasms. Most of her makeup had washed off in the shower, but a hint of smokiness lingered around her eyes. Her lashes blinked as she stared blankly at the wall. Angry? Hurt? He didn’t know how to interpret this.

  Her arms were crushing his pinstriped shirt across her breasts. She was such a delicate little thing. Her wet hair stuck in snake tails against her pale shoulder.

  He brushed at those little points, lifting the damp strands from where they had glued onto her skin, rubbing his thumb against the goose bumps that rose in response.

  She sent him a brief, nervous look.

  His
insides clenched. “Be real. Did I hurt you?”

  “No.” She sounded surprised, scoffing at the question. “Well, not… I mean, that was…” She swallowed and shook out the shirt, offering too quick a glimpse at her breasts before she shot her arms into the sleeves and drew it closed across her front. “It was fine. I liked it.”

  Fine. He didn’t think this was the ‘fine’ that a husband had to be wary of, but it still struck him as a prevarication. A way to hide how she really felt.

  Did she need to hear that he had liked it, too? ‘Like’ was about as tepid a descriptor as ‘fine.’ To say he ‘liked’ what they had just done would be to say he enjoyed having himself turned inside out so his heart felt as though it beat outside his chest and his soul no longer belonged to him.

  Was that how she felt? If so, he understood why she was looking so disconcerted.

  He swept his hand over the cool fabric across her back. “If you’re cold—”

  “I was just going to find my luggage and get dressed. Do you mind?”

  He realized what she was doing because he often did it himself. He retreated so physical intimacy didn’t become emotional intimacy. He was a man who pushed all the boundaries he came up against while keeping firm ones around himself. She was trying to erect hers against him.

  That should have told him this was a match made in heaven, but he reacted before he even knew what he was going to do. He sat up and swung around, moving to sit behind her, legs dangling off the bed on either side of hers. He folded his arms across her, drawing her into the cup of his chest and stomach.

  She tensed in surprise, then warily submitted to his hold.

  Heat penetrated the fabric between them. He moved all her hair to the front of her one shoulder so he could tug the collar of his shirt away and kiss the top of her spine, wishing he knew what to say. All he knew, instinctively, was that if she walked out right now, that would be bad.

  She didn’t relax, but didn’t try to pull away.

  “It scared the hell out of me, too,” he admitted. “That was off the scale. Incredible.”