In Too Deep

by Dani Collins

  “Take off your jeans. I want to feel you,” she said, sweeping her hands over the silky hair on his chest and the hot skin of his waist and cupping the iron-hard shape of him behind his fly.

  His lips pulled back in a near-snarl and he rolled her over beneath him. Pinned her with his thigh against the backs of hers. His heat penetrated the rough denim while the scald of his chest against her back made her gasp.

  “You drive me insane,” he said, seeming to have a fetish for her neck because he was sweeping the hair away to kiss her there again.

  She had a fetish for the feel of his mouth there, quaking in helplessness every time he so much as breathed against her skin.

  “I like speed,” he said as he moved his hands over her, gentling her. “But sometimes you have to stop and appreciate the view. Take a moment to be grateful for where you are and all that you have.”

  She caught her breath, telling herself it was the precious kisses across her shoulders and down her spine that sent that searing sensation of joy through her.

  “Do you like where you are?” he teased, lips on her lower back as he eased her underwear down. “I do.”

  He swept the lace away and squeezed the backs of her thighs, parting them so he could slide his hand higher between. His first touch only lightly grazed. Shivers chased over her in reaction. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

  “Do I have you, Wren? Sweet, sweet mouse?” His voice was buried between her shoulder blades while his fingertips petted the damp hairs, strumming another, harder shock wave of sensual reaction through her.

  He rolled her over so he could see her face.

  She was so weak, she couldn’t even speak. Could only watch his face as he ran a possessive hand from her shoulder to her breast, down her quivering belly to her damp and aching mound and the trembling thighs that lay open in surrender.

  She expected the triumph she read in his gaze when he met her eyes. She didn’t expect the awe.

  On instinct, her hand lifted and she drew him to kiss her. She opened her mouth and let him taste what was in her. Told him without words how much pleasure he gave her and how small and scared she was and how deeply he affected her and how utterly she belonged to him.

  He gathered her in with a ragged growl and kissed her with unfettered passion. It was as wild as anything that had passed between them in Berlin, but tempered now. Not weakened. Strengthened. Made to withstand fire and storm and time.

  Now he wrenched open his jeans and kicked them away. He slid into her so deep he pushed a cry of joy from her throat.

  “Look at me.” He cupped her head as he slowly withdrew and slowly, slowly surged back.

  She wrapped her legs around his waist, tried to urge him to quicken his pace, but he was too strong. He was in control of this. Of her. He was everything. Her entire world.

  Her lashes fluttered and her mouth opened beneath his, but they didn’t kiss. Their breaths mingled and nothing existed but the superbly protracted movement of his body as he made love to her.

  They were slippery with sweat, both shaking with strain and intense arousal. She wanted to beg him to finish, but wanted this endless tide of retreat and return to last forever. It fed something in her soul that had never been reached before.

  When the heated tingles of climax began to gather and prickle over her, she moaned with despair. Yet the breadth of beauty and promise that opened before her drew her inexorably.

  As if he saw it too, he said, “Yes.” And thrust harder. Hard enough to snap the tension holding her in its grip before he tumbled with her into oblivion.

  Chapter Twenty

  Wren woke early and slipped out of Trigg’s arms into the shower, trying to recover from the intimacy of last night, afraid to name the emotion that had taken root like a vine inside her.

  While she held her face in the patter of the water, Trigg poked his head in. “Dog’s being an asshole. Meet you at breakfast.”

  He shut the door before she could say, “’Kay.”

  A minute later, she turned off the water and listened while she dried herself. Sometimes Murphy took off after wildlife or decided someone crossing from the staff house needed a loud greeting. Whatever he’d been doing, Trigg seemed to have him under control.

  Was Sky out there? Wren dressed and propped open the door, then stepped onto the walk-around balcony with wet hair, breathing in the clean, morning air as she looked over the pond and the mountain rising above it. Oh, she loved it here!

  “…say something like that to my daughter again, I’ll fucking kill you,” she heard Trigg say below her. “And if my wife hears a remark like that, you’ll wish I fucking killed you. Are we clear?”

  A minuscule: “Yes, sir.”

  “My marriage is not a joke. If you want to work here, show some respect.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tell your friends. Because I’m not going to repeat myself.”

  Wren backed into the room and silently eased the door shut. Holy shit.

  She felt even more a subject of scrutiny when she descended the stairs and headed into the dining room.

  Trigg was already there with Sky. He caught her hand as she passed him toward the buffet, letting her wrist slide through his loose grip in a friendly caress.

  If people took notice, she didn’t know. She kept her gaze on the plates and the food, telling herself she didn’t care what people thought.

  Trigg did, though. He cared enough to stick up for her. For all of them. It made her throat feel tight.

  “Was Murphy being a brat this morning?” she asked Sky as she came back to their table.

  Trigg was already on his feet, holding the chair next to his for her. “Dummy hates the wheelbarrow. Thinks it’s trying to kill whoever is pushing it. Goes ballistic.”

  “His leash was in your room.” Sky pronounced with disdain. “Or I would have put him on it before I took him out. I’m not going to the base with you today,” she added to Trigg. “I’m starting my homework.”

  “Great.” He picked up his phone. “I’m going to text Devon to come up when she has time, to discuss options for our rooms. You can go up with her and Wren. Do you think we need a kitchenette like Rolf and Glory’s place? Because I think Wren and I should take the middle room on the top floor and connect into the two rooms toward Rolf and Glory’s. We can put a living room between our bedroom and yours.”

  “I’ll be in Switzerland. Do whatever you want.” Sky sipped her white chocolate mocha—which was essentially a milkshake and supposed to be a treat, not breakfast.

  “So you don’t care which room is yours?” Trigg finished texting and set down his phone. He set his hand on Wren’s thigh.

  Sky’s mouth tightened as if she could see under the table. “What do you want me to say? That I condone your behavior? I don’t.”

  “Okay, that one’s not me,” Trigg said, squeezing Wren’s thigh as he grinned at her. “That sounds like something you would say.”

  Probably only a thousand times. Wren put down her fork and went to tuck her hands into her lap only to accidently find one tangled in Trigg’s.

  “I’m not clear on why you’re so angry,” Wren said. “You told me you like it here. That you don’t want to go back to Utah.”

  “So I could get to know my dad. Not so you could! Not after you wouldn’t even tell me his name all that time,” Sky hissed.

  In a few sharp words, Sky perforated the bubble of tentative happiness Wren had let form around her. It popped and left her cold and wretched.

  “Skylar,” Trigg warned.

  “It’s okay,” Wren said, trying to extricate her fingers from his.

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Trigg.” She looked him in the eye, letting him know this wasn’t the same as a landscaper with a crass sense of humor. “Sky has a right to be angry.” She pushed back from the table. “I have to start work.” In twenty minutes, but she picked up her half-finished plate, intending to take it into the office to finish it.


  “We’re staying married,” Trigg said as she turned away.

  She wasn’t sure if he was telling her or Sky.

  All Sky said was, “I’m staying mad.”

  *

  Most children get angry because their parents get divorced, Bruno texted her at one point. He didn’t understand. At least if your parents got divorced, you could complain about them to the other one.

  She had to watch Auntie Wren slowly take her stuff out of their room and listen to her dad say things like, You can spend all day with me. You know where I am.

  She was so mad at both of them. Mad enough to learn algebra out of spite along with plant structures and maps of the ancient world. She wrote a whole opinion essay on why divorce was actually good for children.

  She was counting the days, counted down all seven of them, until Onkel Rolf got back, which was the middle of the night. Her dad picked them up from the airport and said at breakfast they were probably sleeping in.

  “No need to tattle. I confessed all,” he said. Auntie Wren had stopped joining them for breakfast. She had lunch with Sky instead. Or walked around the pond with her and Murphy after work even though Sky was barely talking to her.

  Sky went upstairs, planning to sit on the top step until her uncle appeared.

  It smelled like sawdust up here. The door to what would be her bedroom had been taken off in preparation for closing in the wall. After a bunch of bashing, the workmen wrestled the tub from what would be a powder room off the living room and took it out the huge space where French doors would open onto the balcony.

  When Auntie Wren had brought Devon up here, Devon had said she loved nothing more than working her ass off to finish something perfectly, on time, only to bust it apart a few weeks later. But she’d been joking. She seemed to think it was nice that Auntie Wren and her dad were making like a family.

  Sky hated it, but had to admit she liked the view from her new room. The color palette Grandma had insisted she help pick out was pretty, too. Sky had sarcastically said she wanted a princess theme with a canopy bed and Grandma had almost gone through with it, totally taking her seriously. That’s when Sky realized Grandma was genuinely trying to make her happy and that made Sky want to cry. Grandma had sent her a bunch of links to furniture and Sky was afraid to open them, in case she fell in love.

  She folded her arms across her knees and buried her head in them. Why was her life such a mess? This ought to be a dream come true, but she had been totally, A-plus right about this marriage being something that only looked good on paper.

  A door cracked and she jerked her head up. Finally.

  Onkel Rolf looked tanned and sleepy, but he was shaved and showered, wearing jeans and a short-sleeved shirt with buttons and a collar.

  “Guten Morgen,” he said with mild surprise as she stood and dusted her butt.

  “Hi. Can I—” She remembered her manners at the last second. “Did you, um, have a nice trip?”

  “Wunderbar.”

  “Good. Um. Can I talk to you? Like, in private?” She looked back to his door.

  “Glory’s still sleeping.” He glanced at the open door into her new room. “Wonder what the new neighbors are like.”

  She rolled her eyes at his back and followed him in. He trailed through what would be their living room. The workmen were still wrestling the tub down the outside stairs.

  “Talk,” he invited, glancing in the bathroom that had a bunch of broken tiles where the tub had been.

  “My dad and Auntie Wren are—” she didn’t know how to say it “—married. Like, for real. They told me it was just so they could vote against the board, but they’re, like, carrying on.” That made her sound older than Grandma. “Having sex.”

  Rolf didn’t even blink. “And?”

  “I don’t think they should! Do you?”

  He folded his arms, looked for a second like he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, “If I had a nickel for every time I told my brother not to have sex with someone, I would have one nickel. Because I’ve only said it once. About Glory.”

  “He tried to have sex with Auntie Glory? Ew!”

  “It was preemptive. He was flirting with her, but he wasn’t serious. I was.”

  “Do you think he’s serious now? Because they hardly know each other.”

  “Here’s what I know.” Rolf held up his thumb. “Sometimes people have sex when they know they shouldn’t.” He added a finger, so he was making an L as he counted to two. “Telling my brother to stop doing something only works if he wants to stop doing it. He doesn’t care if I don’t like it.”

  “Do you like it? I don’t!”

  “I have reservations. And if he’s doing something when he knows I don’t like it, there really is no stopping him. Finally…” he held up another finger “…your aunt is too smart to let him take advantage of her. Which means she’s probably in love with him. Which is another thing people do when they know they shouldn’t.” One more finger. “And you can’t stop that either.”

  “I asked her if she loved him. She didn’t say yes or no.” Sky hadn’t bugged her for an answer because she didn’t know which answer she wanted. “Do you think he loves her?”

  “If I had a nickel for every time my brother and I talked about our feelings, I would rather choke to death on a nickel.”

  Sky wasn’t satisfied with that answer and snarled her lip to tell him so.

  He came over and set his hand on her head. It was big and heavy, like a helmet that was sliding off, making her tilt her head back to look up at him.

  “Here’s what else I know. They both care about you very much. They aren’t trying to hurt you, so don’t take it personally. And thank you for coming to me.” His hand moved to her shoulder. “Talk to me anytime you feel you can’t talk to them. But right now, I need breakfast or I’ll eat you. Join me.”

  He hadn’t solved anything. Grown-ups were such a massive disappointment sometimes. But she let him nudge her out the door and went down to sit with him even though she’d already eaten.

  *

  Wren was covering a break behind the coffee bar when Glory shuffled in just before eleven o’clock. Her hair was partially contained in a hot pink scrunchie. She wore pajamas under a truly schleppy sweater over a T-shirt that was so big, it had to be Rolf’s.

  It didn’t matter that she looked so disheveled, though. The lunch crowd hadn’t started showing up yet and the lobby was quiet, too.

  Glory sat down on a stool and laid her head down on her outstretched arm. “Tarbender, I need a double shot of espresso and a cup of your finest drip brew to chase.”

  “We have an IV option if you’d like me to get the stretcher.”

  “So much,” she said, stifling a yawn without picking up her head. “Where’s my dad?”

  “He waited and waited, hoping you’d come down before he left, but he and Vivien ran into Kalispell. He said to tell you it’s a check-up, nothing to worry about, but it’s the specialist and hard to get into so he wanted to keep the appointment. How was your trip?”

  “Oh, my God. So magical,” Glory said with awe, sitting up, but she might have been expressing gratitude for the coffee. She balanced the tiny cup between two hands. “But forget my honeymoon! How was yours?” She laughed and set down the cup, holding out a hand. “Wait. I have to tell you this. It’s so funny.”

  Glory came to life then, sitting up straight and talking with her hands.

  “Trigg sent all his messages to Rolf in German. We didn’t even get anything until you were on your way back here. We were five days into our safari, which was mostly glamping, but we finally arrived at a proper lodge with electricity and Wi-Fi so Rolf decides to check his messages. And it was like an opera of F-sharps.”

  Wren winced. “I can only imagine.”

  “No, it was hilarious. It went like this.” She glanced around to make sure it was just them. “He starts with an annoyed little, ‘Fuck.’ Then he gets more emphatic. ‘Ah, fuck.’ Then
he gets serious, ‘You fucking c-sharp.’ Mad. I’m going, ‘What’s wrong, what’s wrong?’ He keeps reading, goes, ‘Holy, fuck,’ all astonished. That was the one where he read you married Trigg. Symbolic, right? Then he read about the meeting and he was like, ‘Fuck, she’s got balls of steel.’ Then he got to the gravel pit and he was like, ‘Fuck, yeah.’”

  “Oh, my God.” Wren covered her eyes, thinking of the way Rolf had bear-hugged her this morning, mashing her face into his pecs and releasing her before she realized what kind of car-compactor she’d been accidentally thrown into. “Do you know he offered me a job?”

  “When? To do what?” Glory frowned.

  “This morning. He said he wanted me to help cover his assistant’s maternity leave. Someone has been hired in Berlin, but he wants someone here. We’d have to work closely together to coordinate.”

  “He got that idea from me. I said if you weren’t so busy organizing our wedding, I would hire you to be my assistant and that I was going to ask you once we got back. He’s such a sneaky—” She grumbled something, then wrinkled her nose. “He could pay you more than I could, though. A lot more. Are you going to take it?”

  “I like this job.” Besides, things were complicated enough without her working down at the base. That was Sky’s territory with her dad.

  “Thank you,” Glory said as Wren set a cup of the daily grind before her.

  “No, prob.”

  “No, I mean thank you.”

  “Honestly, it’s fine. My job was on the line, too.” She wiped counters that were already clean.

  “But it’s still—Wren.” Glory folded her arms on the counter, waiting until Wren looked at her. “I love Trigg. On the surface he looks easy, but I know he’s just as bossy and stubborn and unwilling to compromise as Rolf. Rolf and I took a long time to get together and we didn’t have a Sky between us. Are you guys…”

  Wren could see Glory struggling with genuine concern and not wanting to pry.

  “Sky’s not happy about it.” She couldn’t even say ‘us.’ Wren threw the rag into the sink with a splat. “But if we can make it work, for her sake, we should. Right?”