Go Deep

Go Deep

Juniper Bell

A standalone sequel to Go Wild.

Beth is the shy, dreamy type. No one guesses at the wild
sexual thoughts she hides behind that quiet façade. She doesn’t even share her
secret longings with her husband.

Gavin loves his wife, but he’s tired of living in a marriage
in which neither he nor Beth reveal their true desires. When Gavin sees Beth’s
response to an erotic bondage photo in her framing shop, he jumps at the opportunity
to break through her barriers.

He accepts an invitation to a showcase match for the amateur
hockey team he coaches during Wild Nights, an infamous winter festival during
which “anything goes, nothing counts”. But he’s opened a sensual Pandora’s box—Beth
has some surprises of her own. When she meets Eagle, a free-spirited Wild
resident, she knows he’s the perfect man to help enact her erotic fantasies. And
once they go deep, there’s no going back.

Chapter One

The shocking photograph had appeared at Artfully Yours
during Beth’s lunch hour. A stranger had left it, along with a scrawled note
that he’d pick it up in a month. After a brief glimpse, she’d thrust it into
the stack of works to be framed. For days it sat, untouched, while she thought
about it constantly. It surfaced in her mind at the most awkward moments. At
breakfast with Gavin. In the shower. In the car, driving to work. In bed.

Especially in bed.

Gavin would die if he knew the dirty visions inspired by
that photograph. She had to shove the images aside during their usual gentle,
careful lovemaking. The world of that photograph didn’t belong in their tidy
home with the antique four-poster bed and rose-printed rugs inherited from her
mother. What would her mother say if she knew how that depraved photo had
invaded Beth’s imagination?

Beth shuddered with shame as she opened the door to the
storage room where the photograph lurked. Her mother would never know, she
reminded herself. Three years she’d been gone. Gavin kept telling her to stop
worrying about what a dead woman might think of her. One of these days it might
happen.

In the meantime, she was a professional with a job to do.
The photograph had to be framed. Some twisted soul considered it art. She’d put
it off long enough, and unless she wanted to decline the work on moral grounds,
it was time to face it.

The photograph, eighteen inches wide and twenty-four inches
high, waited innocently in the corner. Black and white didn’t quite describe
it. It glowed with a seductive, silvery sheen. Especially the woman’s naked
flesh. A man and a woman inhabited the photo as if nothing else existed in the
world. They saw nothing but each other, two parts of a whole caught in an
eternal sexual charge. This photo was about sex, but not the kind of sex Beth
was used to. Wrong sex, riveting sex, uninhibited, hellacious sex.

The woman’s hands were fastened behind her back with a pair
of handcuffs. Thick bands circled her wrists, which rested right above her
buttocks. One of the man’s hands rested there, poised to explore further,
deeper into the vulnerable opening beneath his palm. His other hand held a
leash attached to a collar around the woman’s neck. Her head arched back toward
him so her throat and torso traced a beautiful silver line against the dark
shadows of the photo’s background. Her eyes were half closed in an expression
of luxurious surrender.

Beth closed her own eyes to block out the sight, but the
image was scorched onto her eyelids. Except that in the darkness of her
imagination, the woman was moving. She was thrusting her breasts forward. As if
she were the woman in the photo, Beth felt the urgent swelling of her nipples,
the unyielding hardness of the collar around her neck, the heat of the man’s
hand on her ass. She wanted that hand inside her, ravaging her without mercy.
She wanted to be ordered to her knees, commanded to do unspeakable things.

Beth shook herself violently. What was going on? Usually she
could bury her unruly, churning imagination. She had a lifetime of experience
bashing such thoughts.
Get to work, lazy
, she scolded herself, hearing
her mother in those words.

She snatched up the photo and took it to the framing
workstation, where she laid it on the counter as if it were a lab specimen.
Perhaps it was just a particularly powerful piece of art. She’d managed nearly
a year at art school before her mother had gotten sick. The composition, the
lines, the contrasting textures of skin and leather all pointed to an artist’s
eye. She should find out who took the photograph. Maybe it was someone famous.

Something caught her eye in the shadows behind the couple. A
point of light she hadn’t noticed before. Just enough light to delineate a
figure lounging in the background.

Someone was watching this intimate scene.

Her whole body tightened. A watcher was enjoying this
spectacle, witnessing the woman’s arousal, the man’s mastery. Heat shot through
her lower body. She peered closer. She was wrong. The second man wasn’t only
watching. His hand stretched toward the hidden triangle between the woman’s
legs.

“Beth.”

She jumped about two feet backward into a stack of white mat
boards. Gavin caught them before they tumbled to the ground.

“Gavin! You scared the bejeepers out of me.”

The corner of his mouth lifted, the way it always did when
she used one of her mother’s phrases. “Judy-isms”, he called them. “Sorry, I
swear I wasn’t sneaking up on you. I said your name a couple times, but you
didn’t answer.”

She saw his black eyes flicker to the photo and took a
surreptitious step sideways to block his view of it. For some reason, she
didn’t want him to see the photo. Especially after he’d caught her so wrapped
up in it.

“What are you doing here?”

“Saying hi to my wife. Scaring the crap out of her. I’m a
romantic, you know.”

She relaxed into a smile. Gavin Thomason, her lawfully
wedded husband. Sometimes she still couldn’t believe it. A spattering of
snowflakes decorated his dark hair. His hockey skates dangled from one hand. He
must have just come from practice. He was a former high school hockey star and
current coach of the infamous Fairbanks Renegades. Everyone in town knew Gavin.
And everyone had been shocked when he’d married quiet, dreamy Beth Vale.

“How were the hooligans today?”

“My players behaved with complete propriety today, I’ll have
you know. Only two incidents of on-ice mooning.”

She shivered. Gavin’s players were young, hard-bodied
rowdies, so hot they inspired all sorts of guilty fantasies. Not that she’d
ever told Gavin that.

“Those etiquette lessons are paying off.” She edged closer
to the counter, hoping to slide the photograph under a piece of whiteboard.

“What are you working on?”

Darn those perceptive dark eyes of his. Gavin rarely missed
anything, as his players well knew.

“Nothing in particular. A photograph.”

He took a step closer. His muscular presence filled the
small room, giving her the sense of having nowhere to hide. He was well aware
of the power of his body, having used it to mow down opposing players at the
rink for so long. With her, he was always meticulously restrained, although
sometimes she caught a flash in his dark eyes or a ruthless curve of his mouth
that reminded her what a physical creature lurked inside.

Not like her. She was locked away in her own head. At some
point she’d thrown away the key.

He took another step forward. “Can I see it? I like photos.”

“It’s, um, kind of private. The client might not like other
people looking at it.”

He raised an eyebrow but stopped. “Framer-client
confidentiality? Never heard of it.”

“It’s an unspoken rule, kind of a Hippocratic oath of
framers.” With that, she turned and dragged a piece of cardstock over the
photograph. As soon as it was covered up, she felt safe. “Now where’s my
midafternoon kiss?”

He dropped his skates, reached for her and pulled her close.
The heat of his groin burned against her lower belly. Using both hands, he
angled her face toward his and cradled her cheeks in his palms. “My beautiful
wife.”

Under his intent gaze, warmth filled her. Gavin was so
handsome, all dark hair and eyes, strong, slashing eyebrows and rugged jawline.
He looked like a Spanish pirate, even though his family was Irish. Girls had
always gone nuts over him. She’d watched them in middle school, writing his
name in their notebooks, then in high school, using inventively skimpy outfits
to snare his attention. And now here he was, her husband, claiming a kiss in
the middle of the afternoon.

She sagged against him, letting his strength guide her. He
brushed his lips softly against hers. A shiver passed through her, like a ripple
on the surface of a deep lake.
Go deeper
, she wanted to tell him.
Deeper,
harder.
But she could never say such a thing. He’d be too shocked.
She’d
be too shocked.

Her body strained against his. How could such a strong man
be so gentle? Where was the ferocity he used to show on the ice? But that was
why she loved him, wasn’t it? The fact that he could restrain his own powerful
nature in deference to her fragility? She touched her tongue to his. She felt
his body tighten and his erection rise against her stomach.

She broke away, gasping. “You’d better go. Meredith’s right
outside.”

“Right.” Something flared in his eyes. “Wouldn’t want to
embarrass you on the job.”

“I’ll see you tonight.”

He nodded, turning away. She watched him take a deep breath.
He was probably trying to get his erection to subside. His control over his
body always amazed her.

“I took some pork chops out of the freezer,” she told him.
“I hope you’re in the mood for meat.”

He shot her an ironic look as he picked up his skates from
the floor. “I’m a man. I’m always in the mood for meat.”

“Right.” She flushed. Was that some kind of dirty double
entendre? The Renegades were constantly making naughty jokes and she rarely got
them the first time. They always gleefully explained them to her as she turned
redder and redder.

“Love you,” Gavin said, already out the door.

“Love you too.”

When he was safely gone, she turned back to the photograph.

Funny—it wasn’t hidden under cardstock the way she had
thought. It was right out in the open. The erotic scene assaulted her senses,
sent shock waves through her system. She felt stripped naked. Mercilessly
exposed. And wickedly aroused.

* * * * *

Gavin stole a look at the mystery known as his wife. He bit
into his pork chop while she chewed her salad greens with her usual air of
distracted serenity, as if she were a nun contemplating eternity. Beth had an
untouched look about her, an innocence that even two and a half years of
marriage to a beast like him hadn’t changed. Her light-brown hair framed her
delicate face, which had the kind of subtle beauty that took a more mature man
to appreciate.

In high school, she’d peeped up at him one day in line at
the cafeteria, her light-filled green eyes dropping shyly back to her tray in
the next moment. He’d remembered those eyes, but the constant parade of more
confident girls had commanded his attention. He’d vaguely thought of her as the
artsy type, and knew she was the daughter of the fearsome Judy Vale, the
strictest school principal in North Pole.

It wasn’t until he was a grown man and Beth had come back to
North Pole with a new air of poise that he’d felt unrelentingly, unstoppably
drawn to her.

He still felt that magnetic pull, that fascination bordering
on obsession, but he wasn’t sure he knew her any better than in high school.
What went on behind those dreamy, light-green eyes? What did she think about
all day? What got her excited, riled up, undone? Sometimes, for a flash, he
glimpsed a different look—stormy, smoky, hot—but it always disappeared so
quickly. The desire to know her, deep inside, ate at him.

But today he’d gotten a tiny window into her mind. That
bondage photo she’d tried to hide from him. He’d seen how she stared at it.
He’d seen the dazed look in her eyes when he’d surprised her. He’d seen her
efforts to block it from his sight.

“Sweetie?”

She startled, as she often did when he spoke, as if he’d
interrupted some complicated internal conversation. “Yes, Gavin?”

“We got a special invitation today. The Renegades did, I
mean.”

“Oh? How exciting.”

“You haven’t even heard what it is,” he said drily.

“You said it was special.”

“Right.” He shouldn’t make fun of her distraction. He kept
forgetting she was still mourning her mother, whose illness had shadowed their
courtship and…still did, really. “I got a call from the coach of the team down
in Wild. The Nasties.”

“The Wild Nasties?” She made a face. “Where do you guys get
these names?”

“From drunken brainstorming sessions in bars, where do you
think? Besides, the NHL took all the normal names.”

She snorted. “A normal name would never work for you guys.”

“Yep, the Renegades definitely suits us. Anyway, Wild has a
showcase game during their winter festival, and the team they were supposed to
play had to cancel. They all have the flu, apparently.”

Secretly, Gavin wondered if the flu wasn’t code for the
coach not trusting his players at Wild Nights, but he wasn’t about to share
that suspicion with Beth.

“They want us to come down to Wild this weekend and play the
Nasties.”

Beth giggled, her lovely eyes lighting with amusement. “Play
the Nasties, that sounds just…wrong.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve done worse. Remember when we played the
Damn Fools in Juneau?”

“I liked their outfits.”

Gavin winced. “Uniforms.”

“That’s what I mean.” Beth gazed at him innocently and
speared a tomato. “So are you going to play the Nasties?”

“I think so. They’re supposed to be a good team, from
everything I’ve heard. The guys need a challenge.”

“Great! See, I was right, it’s exciting.”

“I want you to come with me to Wild.”

“Me?” Beth laid down her fork, looking troubled. “You know I
don’t understand hockey. I never even know when to cheer.”

“The game is only one afternoon. We’ll make a weekend of it.
Drive down in our own car, leave the hooligans to their own devices, and spend
some time in a new place. Have you ever been to Wild?”

He watched her closely. The more important question was, did
she know about Wild Nights? Would she make the connection to his casual mention
of a winter festival?

“I’ve never been there. I feel like I’ve heard something about
it, but I can’t remember right now. Maybe my mother visited there.”

Gavin nearly choked on his forkful of pork at the thought of
rigid Judy Vale going to Wild Nights. Then again, for some people, Wild meant
glaciers and a spectacular bay. Their loss, in his opinion.