Depths

by Liz Reinhardt

  It was going to go on and disrespect Maren more, it was going to get racial, and I wasn’t standing for a single second of it.

  Pulling my arm back feels amazing. Maren’s shriek doesn’t feel quite as good.

  But then my fist slams into Jason’s mouth, and that feels beyond fucking incredible. I’m stoked that he isn’t so drunk that he can’t swing back, and swing he does. A nice wide arc of arm slashes my way and his fist hammers under my jaw and detonates an explosion of sparks behind my eyes, then his other fist wails up and whacks me square in the nose, giving me the perfect excuse to punch the bastard back.

  His efforts throw him off balance and he knocks over a chair at the table next to us and topples back. I hurl him up by his collar, because I don’t hit an asshole when he’s down. When he sways back and forth on his feet, I slam into his nose twice, fast, and smash the side of his face.

  For a single, spectacular second, there’s just the slow motion twist of his body and the fine spray of blood as he drops to the floor. The entire scene has a dreamlike quiet.

  Then the sound and action rushes back at hyper speed. Maren is beating on my back, screaming in my ear. The manager and several staff members are rushing forward. Ally, all her pouting forgotten, races on too high heels to Jason’s side, where she sinks to her knees and sobs over his moaning form.

  The manager is screaming and pointing at me, and it’s then that I realize I might be in deep shit. Luckily, Jason sits up woozily, helped by Ally’s frantic arms.

  “I’m fine!” Jason yells, holding his gushing nose. “He took a cheap shot. Just get this border jumper out of my face.”

  I lunge at him again, but Maren yanks my arm back, and the manager sicks two dark-skinned busboys on me. Luckily, their investment in causing me any harm only goes as far as getting me to the doors, where their boss can still see them.

  “Good fight, man,” the younger one says in heavily accented English. Jason picked a particularly stupid slur. If he stays at the restaurant, I’d wager he’ll ingest a pound or two of scorned busboys’ bodily fluids hidden in his food. “You beat the piss out of that asshole.”

  The other claps me on the back. “That guy is such a pendejo. He can besa mi culo. He had it coming. Nice job.”

  I gasp and nod, thanking the guys between wheezes. I’m glad when they walk back in and I can try to catch my breath in private, until I realize I’m all alone with Maren, and she looks totally, absolutely disgusted by me.

  Shit.

  Some girls love a guy who fights. Kensley would orchestrate fucked-up scenarios just to see me throw down, but Maren is obviously more dove than hawk.

  I lean over, blood dripping out of my nose and onto the sidewalk. I glance up at her, my hair in my eyes. “He shouldn’t have talked to you like that,” I argue, though she hasn’t said a single word.

  Her mouth opens and shuts like she’s searching for something to say back to me, but she settles on just shaking her head. I want to pull her close, tell her that I’m sorry I messed things up on our first real date, but my nose is still spurting blood, and I feel a little bit like I might pass out any second.

  “Give me a minute. I’ll take you home.” I tilt my head back and feel Maren’s cool hand on my neck.

  “You stupid ass,” she mutters, bending my head forward with the gentle press of her fingers. “You’re just making the blood drip down your throat. Tilt forward.”

  She leads me to the curb and we sit. Her fingers come close to my face and she clamps them at the bridge of my nose, tight.

  “I’m sorry.” I try to look over at her, but her wrist blocks my view of her face. A few long seconds tick by. “Apology not accepted?”

  Her sigh shifts her entire body. “I don’t think you should try to make me feel bad about not accepting your apology, because I don’t think your apology means a damn thing.” I can barely catch her words, like she’s looking away from me. From us. From this disaster of a date.

  “I mean it,” I insist. Her second sigh is deeper and way more irritated. “I mean it because I really am sorry that I ruined our date. I was having a great time, and I hate that it got fucked up.”

  “Or that you fucked it up?” she corrects.

  “That’s kind of cold. Jason deserved it.” But I sound petulant, even to myself.

  “Okay. Maybe he did. He’s had that coming for a long time. And it’s not exactly wrong that you kicked his ass. It’s just…look what we traded for it.” She’s got this wistful tone going in her voice, and I hate it. “I’ll always think of our first date now and remember Jason.”

  “So?” I loosen her fingers from my nose and pinch it myself, because it’s driving me insane to not be able to see her. Funny how I haven’t been able to see her for all of five minutes, but the second she’s back in my line of site, I’m shocked all over again by how damn gorgeous she is.

  Those big blue eyes blink with confusion. “So, I don’t want Jason to have anything to do with the new part of my life. I want him to be part of my past, period.”

  I start to laugh, but stop before I dislodge another blood clot. “I don’t think it works like that, Maren.”

  “Like what?” She straightens her back and squares her delicate shoulders, getting even more gorgeous as each pissed-off second ticks by.

  “Like, you don’t get to move on and just blow your past away. Everything you do, every new move you make is all tangled up in everything you did.” Her eyebrows slam down over her eyes because she clearly hates what I’m telling her. “I’m not saying you don’t move on and grow. Just, you can’t disconnect yourself from who you were.”

  “But what if who you were was just who you were being while you waited to become the real you?” She turns her head and looks at me intently, like she wants me to give her an answer. Not just any answer, either. The right answer.

  In the name of saving this date, I’d be happy to do just that. But I have no clue what she wants to hear. I doubt it’s what I’m going to say.

  “Um, I think this is pretty philosophical for a guy who just answered a couple of insults with his fists, but I can tell you what I think. I think you are who you are. There is no waiting. There’s no pausing any of this. And if you feel like you’re on a break or whatever, okay. But you better get back to it. Life goes fast, and who wants to sit any of it out?”

  She presses a hand to her eyes and lets out a little shuddering sound.

  “Maren?” I take her free hand, and, when she doesn’t pull away, I wrap an arm around her. “What’s wrong? I promise you, if it’s this whole bullshit fight, I’ll march back in there with my damn tail between my legs and make nice. You’re right. I am an ass. Even if that tool deserved it.”

  Her laugh borders on a wet hiccup. “It’s not that. I mean, yes, you are an ass, but, yes, also, Jason deserved every punch he got. I just…” Her voice wobbles as she tries to get the next words out. “I just want this part of my life to be over for good sometime soon. Erased. Gone.”

  I could totally tell her that she can do that if she wants.

  But I don’t.

  “Why?” I ask instead. “That’s me erased, too, at least partly. That’s me and you talking on the phone all day at work, watching baseball together, hanging at the beach, making out in my kitchen…all that. You want it gone?”

  She shakes her head and rubs under her eyes hard with her fingers. “No. No. I don’t want to erase anything about you. But everything else?”

  “Jason is a dick, but would you really want to not remember anything? If you magically got to cut him out of your memory for good, you might wind up with someone like him again, right?” I can’t believe I’m defending Jason’s right to any space in Maren’s brain, even hypothetically.

  But it’s not really that. It’s more like I’m trying to let her know that it’s totally okay to fuck up. More than okay. It’s normal. Our fuck-ups make us who we are, and if we don’t accept that…well, there’d be nothing but more potential fuck-ups
in our future. Or, worse, we’d just freeze up and stop doing anything at all.

  “I just need…a clean slate I guess. I just need to fix this all and be free to start over.” She looks up, her makeup smudged, her smile shaky, and touches my nose gingerly. “It hurts like hell, right?”

  I nod.

  “See? Wouldn’t it be great if you could make it go away?” Tears slide over her lips.

  I shake my head.

  “No?” she double-checks.

  “I wouldn’t change a single thing about tonight. I know it’s not right that I liked kicking his ass, Maren, and I am truly sorry that it ruined the night for you. But no one is ever going to talk to you like that in front of me. I know you want me to say that I won’t do anything like that again, but I can’t.” I let go of my nose, which seems to have stopped spurting blood, and hold her hand, still damp from mopping up her tears. “I care about you. I’m not going to let anyone walk all over you. Not happening. Ever.”

  She pulls her hand away from mine and nods tightly, like she’s done with me. Sometimes I wish I was a better liar.

  Then she turns, grabs my face in her hands gently, and kisses me. It’s light at first. I did just get my face half bashed in, and I guess she’s trying to be careful.

  But I have her. In my arms, the scent of her surrounding me, her body pressed on mine. And, more importantly, I have her happiness to be with me, her forgiveness, her excitement. So I kiss without worrying about my smashed nose, and every time I think the pain is going to get so extreme I honestly might pass out, I run my hands over her, let my fingers get lost in her soft hair, run my tongue over hers, and readjust so she’s pressed closer to me, twined tighter around me, and let my mind jump wherever it wants to go. Which is some pretty lowdown, awesome places.

  “Thank you,” she whimpers, pulling away.

  “You’re welcome,” I say, dragging her closer, rubbing my hands over her shoulders. “What are you thanking me for? Because I kind of feel like I should be thanking you.”

  She cups my jaw, running a thumb over my cheekbone, her nose rubbing my against my face as she breathes me deep. “For taking care of me. No one, seriously, no one does that for me. I’m sorry I was mad at you. I’m just so used to being ignored. I’m so used to being the one taking care—”

  She interrupts her own ramble, which is breaking my damn heart, and kisses me again, harder, with little nips of her teeth on my lips, and nuzzles her face against my neck. My hand drags up her dress, making the skirt ride high on her thighs, then heads up along her stomach, over the bumps of her ribs, and between all that lace that’s been teasing me through dinner. I brace my other hand at the small of her back as I run my thumb over the soft curves pressed high in that sexy bra.

  She feels so good through the fabric, but I want my hands on her skin. I want her naked. I want her moaning. I want her all.

  “Come home with me,” I say softly against her ear.

  She bucks and rubs closer, letting out a long, “Mmm,” that lets me know she’s at least tempted.

  And that shred of temptation is all I need.

  “Come home with me because I want to strip you.”

  14 COHENShe stops moving against me, and I wonder if I pushed it too far already, but her hands squeeze at my shoulders expectantly, so I tell her, in plain words, everything we’ve danced around and hinted at for all the weeks we’ve wanted each other so badly. “I’m going to strip every last shred off of you, Maren, because just thinking about seeing you naked gets me hard.”

  Her fingers dig into my shoulders and she moans, making me feel brave enough to say more, to let her know how sexy she is and how turned on I am around her.

  “And once you’re naked, I’m not going to stop kissing you and sucking on you until you come for me.”

  Her breath catches in her throat and she rocks against me so softly, I don’t even know if she realizes she’s doing it. I unleash the words I’d hold tight unless I was in the dark, secret confines of my bedroom. I do it because I have a hard time containing anything I feel for her.

  “And I don’t mean once. I want it over and over, so you’re slick as hell. I want you to come when I lick you and when I’m inside you.”

  She presses her face closer, until her mouth is right up against my mouth. She’s not thinking about my nose and how much it hurts, and I don’t blame her. The promises I’m making are pushing me right through the pain.

  “I want to touch every inch of you. Do you want that?”

  She nods, her hair rubbing against my face, the coconut-sweet smell surrounding me.

  “Now?”

  It’s the only thing she’s said since I told her what I want, but it’s all I need to hear.

  Without a word, she stands and tugs my hand. I help her into my car, and the longest ten minute drive in the history of my life begins. Every curve of the road I have to slow down for or residential reduced speed section makes me frustrated, but maybe it’s good to have something to focus my aggravation on. Because when I glance over at her, she looks so nervous, and so damn completely gorgeous, I don’t know…

  I grip the steering wheel hard. Is this too fast? Too crazy? The wrong time?

  I don’t know. I don’t know the answers to any of those questions.

  I do know that I just gave her a big, bold speech on the usefulness of mistakes. And I hope with everything in me that the two of us and what we’re about to do will never wind up labeled a mistake by her.

  I know I could never think of it that way.

  Things with Maren were supposed to stay neat. We both like things in their own little compartments. But I can’t promise any of that anymore.

  In fact, I can pretty much guarantee the opposite.

  But she scrambles out of the car before I can open the door, and she’s already kicked off her shoes by the time I catch up. She runs the bottom of her foot over the sandy step of my front porch, watching the key slide into the lock with an intensity that makes my hand shake.

  We don’t say a word as we make our way into the house, Maren ahead of me. I shut the door and she turns, her eyes fixed. On me.

  I try to get a handle on my body, suddenly shaky and unsure.

  She puts her hands at her hips and grabs fistfuls of fabric on either side of her skirt. It inches up, exposing more and more leg, and I’m so focused on every revealed bit of her, I’m blindsided by the way she drags it over her head and drops it on the floor.

  The bra is a little bit of scrappy purple lace. Her thong matches. She’s still in her heels. Her finger is crooked.

  At me.

  There’s no way in heaven or hell I’m not going to follow.

  She paces backward as I walk her way, stopping when she hits the steps.

  It’s been ten seconds, a half-dozen steps, but my body reacts like I’m an hour into the world’s sexiest striptease.

  Like she can hear my thoughts, she turns her back to me and presses down one bra strap, then the other, and pulls her arms out, one hand moving to the clasp in the back.

  I lock my breath in my lungs and wait for the fall. It’s excruciatingly slow, like that lace is clinging to her skin the way I want my hands and lips to be. Then the tiny bit of fabric is floating to the stairs and Maren backs up, climbing with careful steps.

  “Do you want me?” she asks, her voice husky, her dark pink lips trembling.

  “More than I’ve ever wanted anything.” I make sure my words are clear, that I say it so she’ll have no doubt whatsoever.

  Her thumbs hook in the waistband of her thong, and she slides it down an inch, then pulls it back up, down and up, her fingers playful against her own skin.

  I pull my shirt over my head, kick off my shoes, and unbutton my pants. I half-think she’ll stop or get spooked, but her hands run up from her waist, lingering under the swell of each of her perfect tits. She brushes her thumbs over her nipples and they stand at attention, ready.

  So am I. Holy fuck, I’m so damn ready.


  I tug down on my fly and step up two steps. She’s higher than I am. My mouth is level with her nipples, and I make use of that particular vantage point, catching one lightly between my teeth and sucking in with firm pressure, licking at it until she grips the bannister and her head drops back. I switch to her other side and let my hands run over the soft fabric of her thong, my fingers dipping in under this last shred of lace that barely covers anything and pulling back out before I go too far.

  Maren leans forward and down, pressing my face against the soft, sweet swell of her tits. Her hands grab at the waist of my pants and push so hard, my boxer briefs half go down with them. She braces her hands on my shoulders and looks over my head and down my back, where my ass is half-exposed by my falling clothes.

  She pushes my face away and steps down, crouching on the step I’m on, her face eye level with my dick, which is still held back by the thin cotton of my half-on boxers. And then, with one more yank, I can step out of everything and appreciate the way her lips barely brush the skin of my upper thighs and my eager, over-stimulated dick.

  “Wow.” She eyes it and lifts a brow.

  I’m so hot, I wouldn’t doubt it if my face was bright red.

  “Don’t be embarrassed,” she says softly, cupping the tip in her palm, her fingers brushing along the shaft with slow, steady motion.

  I reach down and pull her up to eye level. “I’m never embarrassed with you, Maren. I’ve never been so comfortable with anyone. Never. I feel like…I’ve known I wanted you since the day we met. It’s weird, but I feel almost like we need to hurry up and have sex so we can just seal it all, make everything between us official.”

  Before she can respond to everything I’m saying even though I shouldn’t be, I scoop her into my arms and hold her tight to my chest. She lets out a little gasp, then rings her arms around my neck and grabs on to me. I walk to my room, the same room I left her alone in the night she slept here. The same room I imagined barging into so I could rub against her sweet, curving body all night long.

  This time I barge in with her in my arms, and she giggles as I set her down on the bed.