Deep End

I FIRST FEEL IT IN MY SHOULDER BLADES, SUDDENLY PRESSED against the wall with too much strength. The back of my head could have suffered the same fate, but Lukas’s hand cushioned the impact, one palm wrapped against my nape as the other curls around my jaw.

It starts simple enough—lips crushed together, his chest as flush to me as it can physically be, given the differences in our heights. When his tongue brushes against mine, there’s an explosion at the base of my spine. Tentative, testing, gentle.

Then, instantly, not at all.

All at once it’s filthy. Deep. Sharp. Lukas’s lips are hot. His tongue is hot. His fingers, framing my face, are hot.

My entire body is on fire.

He hears the catch of my breath and takes advantage of it, tilting my head farther, an impossible angle that allows him to control the kiss, to lick inside my mouth and leave no place untouched.

It’s all-consuming. My mind whites out. I loop my arms around his neck, fuzzy brained and blurry edged, and he finds a way to pull me even closer. He rumbles something, but it’s not in English. So I focus on his hand traveling down my backbone, palm wide, like he wants to use all of it to feel me, won’t miss a single inch of flesh. It reaches the place where the hem of my shirt brushes against my lower back, gently lifts it, and his skin finally—finally—touches mine.

I fist my nails in his shoulder.

A whiny sound crawls up my throat. A needy grunt punches out of his.

We breathe fast and loud in each other’s mouths, and his grip shifts to my hip, rough and demanding, slipping under the waistband of my joggers—until noise seeps in from the outside.

A cart being pulled. Stacks of books falling. Hushed apologies. We both freeze, coil-muscled, long enough to regain some common sense.

Or at least, for me to do that. I unwind my arms from his shoulders, inching back against the wall to put space between us. Lukas seems to have a harder time letting go. Even after his hands leave my waist and my cheeks, he’s still unwilling to pull away. He remains there, hulking into me, a cage of bone and muscles and hungry eyes, fists white-knuckled against the wall, on either side of my head. His tattoos clench and release.

He’s trying to get himself under control, but he’s not quite there.

I reach up to touch the freckles that fill the hollow under his cheekbone, and he exhales a slow laugh, no more than a puff of breath against my temple, stymied and hot. A smile builds inside me in response, and I lift my chin to kiss him again. This time it’s a slow thing, even as his heart races against my skin. His lips slip against mine, quiet, almost sweet, and my hand closes in the fabric of his shirt, a silent, reassuring I’m here, I’ve got you.

I savor his face buried in my neck, the tickle of his stubble, the rough, throaty groan as he inhales my skin. His warmth and scent and sheer size, pressing into me. Odd, how this started out frenzied and wild, but evolved into something languid. Just easy.

“We need to stop,” I say evenly, running a hand through the short hair at the back of his head. When he draws away, his eyes are open and earnest.

He pulls a chair back, hair a little tousled. It’s an invitation to sit down and give him space.

“You okay?” I ask when we’re both at the table.

His nod is quick. When I smile, he smiles back. Tense, maybe, but sincere.

“Do I have to read your list?” I ask, eyeing the still-folded sheet. “Can we just . . . skip that part?”

His eyebrows knit. “No.”

“No, I don’t have to read it—?”

“No, you cannot skip it.”

“Says who?”

“The rules.”

I tilt my head. “Who made the rules?”

“Me.”

Tilt it more.

“I think you’re okay with that, Scarlett,” he says.

Tilt it more.

“Hard for me to buy that you don’t like me taking charge, given what I just read.” His words are calm, but my cheeks glow. He’s right. In a sense, he might know me better than anyone in the entire world.

I’m not sure how to deal with that.

“You know I’m not some kind of pushover, right? This is about sex. I’m not looking for some kind of twenty-four seven arrangement.”

His eyes harden. “Scarlett, you need to read my list, because the only way we can do this in a healthy and sane way is if we both know what to expect.” His stare is measuring. “What are you afraid of? That there will be things I want and you don’t want, and I’ll ask you to do them anyway?”

I glance away.

“The opposite, then.” He sighs, and it’s tender, the way his fingers move across the table, knuckles brushing my own. An electric spark, liquid, searing, travels through my nerve endings. I’m convinced he’ll take my hand, but he pulls back almost immediately.

A wise move, all things considered. Maybe we shouldn’t be left alone at all.

He leans back in his chair, the line of his shoulders once again uncompromising. “Scarlett, you—”

A phone—Lukas’s phone—rings. He checks the caller ID and tilts his head back with a muttered, exhausted word. Once again, not English.

“Are you okay?”

He mutes the call. “I have to go.”

“Oh.” A mix of disappointment and relief flickers in my stomach. On the one hand, respite. On the other . . . I’m not sure I want to not be with him right now. “Anything I can do?”

He shakes his head, massaging his left eye with the heel of his hand. “Eighteen people were cut from the team this week.”

“Eighteen?”

“I know, it’s a fucking mess. Some of the guys were preferred walk-ons and are not happy about it. The coaches are the bad guys, so they’ve been talking to us to figure out options.”

All his cancellations. Captain stuff. “I’m sorry.”

He nods and leans forward, elbow on the table. “Listen, keep my list. You can take your time, but you’re going to have to read it before we . . .”

He doesn’t finish. I understand, anyway. “Okay.”

“I don’t know when the cuts shitshow will clear up, but I need you to know two things.”

I force myself not to squirm under his gaze.

“You say stop, I stop.”

I nod. Nice of him, to remind me that—

“No, Scarlett. There’s going to be some trial and error, for sure, but I need you to understand that it doesn’t matter how or when. You say stop, I stop.”

My mouth is dry.

“Repeat it back to me,” he orders.

I may have forgotten how to breathe, but still manage to say, “When I say stop, you stop.”

He nods, pleased. “Do you want another safe word?”

I think about it, then shake my head. I know safe words tend to be unique, and this may not be best practice, but I’m confident that I won’t say stop unless that’s what I want from him. “What’s the second thing?” I ask, hiding my trembling hands in my lap.

He exhales a small laugh and stands, grip tightening around the strap of his backpack. “The second thing is that I’ve read your list. And there is not a single thing you want that I don’t want more.” He leans into me for a kiss that’s at once chaste and clinging. By the time he pulls away I’m off-balance, confounded by his heat and his smell. “No need to repeat this one to me.”

I watch him walk away. Something occurs to me only when his hand closes around the door handle. “Lukas?”

He turns.

“What about Pen?”

His expression is blank. “What about Pen?”

“Will she mind?”

“You do have a terrible memory.” His eyebrow lifts, amused. “Pen and I are no longer together.”

“I know, but she’s also my friend. I need to be sure that she’s okay with this. I need her to know that I’m not trying to . . . this is going to be just sex. I’m not trying to start a serious relationship with my friend’s ex.”

For a moment, I think he will protest. But right as my heart is about to sink, his face an inscrutable mask, he promises, “I’ll take care of it.”

It’s not until much, much later that night—after dinner, and my mental exercises, and two hours spent watching one of those political thriller movies that only middle-aged Republican men and Maryam seem to truly enjoy—that I allow myself to think about Lukas’s list again.

I lie in my bed, the mint of the toothpaste sweet in my mouth, the day’s exhaustion dragging me into sleep, and . . . it’s nice, being too tired to work myself up to a panic. Shaking the piece of paper open and reading through Lukas’s sharp, neat handwriting doesn’t seem like a big deal. In fact, it’s almost fun.

He took my sheet when he left, which means that I cannot stretch the two lists side by side and spend hours on an in-depth comparison. But that’s not necessary, because I remember every single thing I wrote. And Lukas’s—it could be the mirror image of mine.

What I want done to me, he wants to be the one doing it.

Oh, I think.

Oh.

Suddenly, the kiss in the library makes lots of sense. I roll into my pillow, smile, and fall asleep that way.