Deeper. Megan Hart

he looked uncertain. His hair dripped, and the hems of his jeans. His bare toes, coated with sand, gritted on the tile as he took a step toward her, hand outstretched but quickly pulling back when she shrank against the counter. “Bess…it’s me.”

      Her guts tumbled inside her, and she couldn’t breathe. She sipped at the air in uneven, hitching gasps. “I thought…I thought…”

      “Hey.” He soothed her, coming closer.

      She could smell him. Salt and water and sand and sun. The way he’d always smelled, back then. Bess found more air. Took a deeper breath. Nick didn’t touch her as she stared. His hand hovered an inch from her shoulder.

      “It’s really me,” he said.

      A low sob forced its way from her throat and she launched herself forward. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her face to the damp fabric of his shirt. She breathed him in, deep and deeper.

      It took him a second to put his arms around her, but when he did, his embrace was firm. Warm. He rubbed her back, then slid up a hand to cup the base of her skull.

      Bess, eyes closed, shuddered against him. “I thought I was dreaming last night.”

      She remembered stumbling up the beach, peeling off her clothes, tumbling into bed without even bothering to dry her hair or brush the sand from her skin. She’d woken to find the pile of salty, sodden clothes staining the rug, and her bed a shambles. The passion of the night before had been replaced by a pounding head and slightly sick stomach.

      Nick’s hand rubbed a small, tight circle on her back, between the shoulder blades. “If you were dreaming, I was dreaming, too.”

      Bess held him tighter. “Maybe we’re both dreaming, because this can’t be real, Nick. It can’t be real.”

      He put his hands on her upper arms and pushed her back far enough to look into her face. She’d forgotten how small he could make her feel. How deceptively bigger he’d always been.

      “I’m real.”

      His fingers on her arms felt real. Solid. Strong. Her cheek was wet from where she’d pressed it to his shirt. Heat radiated from him as though she stood in front of a furnace, and the smell of him, that lost, welcome smell, filled her head until there was nothing else inside her. Tears blurred her vision and she blinked them away. Then she pushed herself out of his arms.

      Bess looked at him. Salt water had spiked his hair, but had ceased sliding down his cheeks. His clothes had started to dry, too. He took up as much space as he ever had. His touch was as warm. Time hadn’t changed him, hadn’t painted lines in the corners of his eyes and mouth or silver in his hair.

      Bess touched Nick’s cheek. “How can this be? Look at you. Look at me.”

      He put his hand over hers, then turned his face to press a kiss to the center of her palm. He closed her fingers over it, but said nothing.

      His smile broke her.

      “Oh, no,” Bess said. “Oh, no. No.”

      She pulled her hand from his. Neither of them moved, but the distance between them grew vast. Something flickered in Nick’s eyes, an emotion she couldn’t read.

      “How many people have a second chance?” he asked. “Don’t push me away, Bess. Please.”

      He’d never asked her for anything. Blinking, Bess turned back to the sink. She’d left the water running, and flicked the handle of the faucet down. Without the rush of water pouring from the spigot, the sound of the ocean outside filled the space between them and brought them together.

      “How?” she asked.

      “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

      “It should.”

      He smiled and sent the same old twist into her belly, and lower. “But does it? Really?”

      When he bent to kiss her, the taste of him chased away logic. All reason. And that, too, was the same as it had always been.

      “No,” Bess said, and opened her arms for him again.

      The bedroom she took him to wasn’t the ground-level, closet-size room next to the carport she’d used in the past. She’d claimed the master bedroom now, with its private deck and bathroom. Not that he’d have known the difference. She’d never brought him home before.

      Nick seemed to hesitate in the doorway until she took his hand and led him to the king-size bed. Bess had stripped the sheets first thing this morning, but only managed to get a fitted sheet back on the mattress before the promise of coffee and breakfast distracted her. Without the mountain of decorative pillows and coverlet embroidered with seashells, the bed looked bigger. The pristine white sheet, stretched tight, begged to be rumpled.

      At the foot of the bed Nick bent to kiss her, but Bess was already stretching on her tiptoes to reach his mouth. She pushed and he let her, and she was on top when they fell together onto the vast empty bed. She straddled him as they kissed, mouths opening and tongues stroking. His hands came around to grab her ass and press her to his damp, denim-covered crotch.

      Bess broke the kiss long enough to reach between them and tug open the button and zipper. She reached inside as Nick lifted his hips with a groan. She found more heat, and she cupped him for a moment before working to get the wet jeans down his thighs. They didn’t want to go, but she was determined. Once she got them to his knees it was easy, and she pulled his jeans off and tossed them to the floor as Nick sat up to pull off his T-shirt. He wore only a pair of thin cotton boxers, the front of which tented impressively.

      Bess paused, heart pounding. She reached to fill her palm with his erection, at first with the cotton barrier between them and then skin to skin when he helped her tug those down, too. Naked, Nick lay propped on one elbow on the bed, one leg bent at the knee and the other straight. Bess knelt beside him, the hem of her shortie nightgown brushing her at midthigh.

      She looked at him, then down at herself. Beneath the thin nylon gown she was bare. Her nipples had already poked out the front of the bodice. Lower, her thighs rubbed together, already slick with her arousal. She looked at him again and found the old familiarity of his body. The dip of his belly next to his hip bone and the pattern of hair leading to the thick, dark nest around his cock. She touched him again, curling her fingers around the root of it and stroking upward with a firm grasp that made him moan.

      He was silk and steel against her palm. She stroked again and twisted her hand around the top of his prick before sliding down again. Nick’s cock jerked under her touch, and her body pulsed in reply.

      Bess looked at him. His eyes shone and a faint flush had begun creeping up his chest and throat. His mouth parted. His tongue swept his lips. His head tipped back and he sank all the way onto his back when she added her other hand to his balls, cupping and stroking. He muttered what sounded like her name, and Bess smiled.

      She straddled him again, his cock trapped between the bare flesh of her thighs. She moved, teasing him with the brush of her pubic curls. Nick put his hands on her hips, his fingers bunching the material of her nightgown as he pushed upward.

      His cock rubbed her clit as he rocked against her, and Bess’s lips parted in a sigh. She licked her mouth just as he had moments before. The way Nick’s eyes glittered at the sight of her tongue sent shivers of pleasure dancing down her spine.

      “Nick.” She murmured his name, tasting it. She thought saying it might feel unfamiliar, but like the sight of his body, the sound of his name hadn’t changed.

      “I want you,” he said in voice as rough as the grit of sand on tile. His fingers tightened on her hips as he nudged his prick along the seam of her slick folds. “I want to be inside you.”

      Bess nodded, unable to speak. She shifted, lifted, and he moved to help her. She bent her head, waiting for her hair to fall and shield her face as she guided his cock to her entrance. She’d forgotten she’d pulled it up to keep it from getting tangled as it dried,