In Summertime Saga

My ribs were still sore from Somrak when I turned the shower on.

Everything was sore. My forearms, my hip flexor, the muscle along my left side where his elbow had landed clean. The hot water hit my back and I put my hands on the tile and leaned into it and let the spray work on the knots. The bathroom was small and the steam built fast. The mirror fogged. The air went thick and wet. I closed my eyes.

Jenny was out. She'd left early for a shoot with Jane, something about new angles for the channel. Debbie was downstairs. Cabinets opening in the kitchen, the coffee maker clicking on.

The bathroom door opened.

I opened my eyes. Through the fogged shower glass: a shape in the doorway. A bathrobe. Brown hair. She stood there for a second. Maybe two. Long enough that the steam curled around her and the fogged glass between us was the thinnest possible excuse for a wall.

The bathrobe dropped.

It hit the tile with a sound that was louder than fabric should be. She stepped out of it. Through the glass, blurred but unmistakable: her body. Full hips, the curve of her waist, her breasts heavy and rounded and visible even through the fog. She was standing in the doorway of the bathroom with nothing on and neither of us was breathing.

"Room for two?"

Her voice was trying for casual. The tremor underneath destroyed it.

She opened the shower door and stepped in.

The shower was small with one person. With two it was nothing. She stepped under the spray and we were chest to chest and there was nowhere to go. The water hit her shoulders and ran down between her breasts and her skin was hot from the spray and her nipples were hard and pressed against my ribs and her stomach was soft and warm and flat against mine and she was looking up at me and trying to smile and the smile was shaking.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi."

I put my hand on her jaw. Tilted her face up. Water ran over my fingers and down her cheek.

"You sure?"

She didn't answer with words. She stood on her toes and kissed me.

First real kiss. Her mouth was soft and wet and tasted like toothpaste and coffee and she kissed me hard. Harder than I expected. Her hands went to my shoulders and her nails dug into the muscle that Somrak had bruised. She opened against me and a sound came out of her, small, desperate, from somewhere behind her ribs. She was pressing herself against me and the water ran between us.

She felt my cock. She had to. I'd been hard since the bathrobe hit the floor and I was pressed between us, against her lower stomach, and her breath caught against my mouth. She pulled back half an inch. Looked down. Looked at what was pressed against her. Her cheeks were red and it wasn't the hot water.

She looked back up at me. Her eyes were grey and wet and wide.

"Arthur." Quiet. My name. Not sweetie. Not honey. "We shouldn't-"

"Do you want to stop?"

Her mouth opened. Closed. Her hips shifted against me and the shift pressed my cock harder against her stomach and her breath came out shaking.

I kissed her neck. Below her ear. Her pulse was fast under my lips and her skin tasted like soap and warm water and she tilted her head to give me more of her throat and a sound came out of her, low and caught in her throat, and it vibrated against my mouth.

My hand moved. Down her side. Slow. Across her ribs, the skin slippery under the water, and she twitched when I hit a ticklish spot and neither of us laughed because we were past laughing. My palm slid over her hip. Curved around to her lower back. Down, over the swell of her ass, and her whole body pressed forward against me and her breath caught and my fingers traced around her hip to the front.

Her stomach muscles jumped when I touched them. A series of small contractions under the skin as my hand moved lower. Past her navel. Through the wet hair below it. Lower.

She was wet. The shower was everywhere, running between us, down her thighs, but the wetness between her legs was different. Thicker. Warmer. Slicker than water. The difference hit the instant my fingers slid between her lips and she gasped and her head dropped forward against my shoulder.

"Ah-"

I circled her clit with the pad of my finger. Light. Testing. Her hips jerked forward.

"Nn- oh-"

Lighter. Slower. Learning the shape of her by touch, the water running over my hand, her body telling me where to press by how it reacted. She liked the left side more than the right. She liked circles more than straight pressure. When I changed the speed she grabbed my bicep and squeezed.

"Don't- don't stop doing that-"

I didn't stop. I kept the rhythm she'd asked for and with my other hand I held her hip against the cold tile behind her and she flinched at the tile's temperature and then forgot about it because my finger was still moving. Her breathing was loud in the small space, louder than the shower, through her mouth because the steam made nose-breathing hard. Each exhale came out shaking.

I slid a finger inside her.

She clenched around it immediately. Tight. Her body gripping me like it had been waiting. She hadn't been touched here in a long time. Since Frank. Maybe longer.

"Oh- oh god-"

I curled up. Found the rough patch of tissue on the front wall. Pressed.

Her back hit the tile and she didn't care about the cold anymore. Her mouth fell open and her eyes went shut and her hips rocked forward against my hand and the sound she made was louder than she wanted it to be. She slapped her hand over her mouth. Then lowered it because Jenny was gone and there was nobody to hear.

"Don't hold back," I said. Low. Against her wet hair.

She let go. The next sound was raw. An open-mouthed moan against the crook of my neck, wet and broken, and her hips were moving in tight circles against my hand and my thumb found her clit and worked it while my finger curled inside her and the sounds of the shower and the sounds of my hand between her legs were two different kinds of wet.

I added a second finger. The stretch made her gasp and her thighs trembled and her pulse was fast around my fingers and her breathing was ragged and her hands were gripping my shoulders hard enough to leave marks on Somrak's bruises.

"There- right there- don't- ah- don't stop- ah-"

Her words were falling apart. She started sentences and they broke in the middle and came out as sounds instead. Her hips grinding harder. My thumb circling faster. Her face pressed against my neck and her open mouth was hot on my skin, breath fast, her teeth grazing my shoulder when a thrust of my fingers hit right.

She was close. Her breathing had gone shallow and rapid and her thighs were shaking against my wrist and her whole body was tightening in waves and then her free hand went to the shower glass. Palm flat. Pressing hard. Fingers spread.

I curled my fingers. Pressed up. Kept my thumb moving.

"Arthur- Arthur- ah-"

My name. She said my actual name, broken in half by a sound that was half moan and half sob, and her body clamped around my fingers and her hips bucked and her legs gave out. I caught her with my arm around her waist and held her against the tile while she shook. Her mouth was open against my shoulder and no sound was coming out anymore, just her breath, ragged and held and then released in a long exhale that landed warm on my wet skin. Her pussy was clenching and releasing around my fingers in slow pulses, aftershocks, and her thighs were twitching and her hand was still pressed flat on the glass.

I eased my fingers out. Slow. She shivered when I pulled free and a thin thread of wetness connected us for a second before the water broke it.

She breathed. Leaned against the tile. Her eyes opened and they were glassy and unfocused and her hair was plastered to her face and her chest was heaving and her nipples were dark and hard and the blush went from her cheeks to her collarbones.

Her hand found me.

She reached between us without looking and wrapped her fingers around my cock. I'd been hard the entire time and the ache was a low pulse that had been running underneath everything I was doing to her. Her hand was wet and warm and her grip was sure. She'd done this before. Not with me. But her hand knew the motion and the pressure and she stroked me and my forehead dropped against the top of her head.

She started slow. Her thumb ran over the head on each upstroke and the sensation went through me like current. I put my hand on the tile above her shoulder and my other hand on her hip and she looked up at me while she worked me and her face was still flushed and her eyes were still wet and she was watching my face the same way I'd been watching hers.

"Debbie," I said. Her name. Rough. The way she'd said mine.

Her grip tightened. Her pace picked up. She twisted on the upstroke and my hips pushed forward into her fist and I was close, faster than I wanted to be, because I was eighteen and she'd been in my head for weeks and her hand was warm and skilled and she was naked and wet against me and I didn't have a chance.

"I'm-"

"I know," she said. Soft. And she kept going, faster, tighter, her thumb catching the ridge on every stroke, and I came against her stomach. My hips jerked forward and my hand on the tile curled into a fist and the release hit hard enough that my vision went white at the edges and I breathed her name into her wet hair and the shower washed it away almost immediately, the warm spray running between us, carrying everything down the drain.

We stood there. Breathing. The water was still running and the steam was thick and her hand was still wrapped around me, holding, not moving. My fingers were still resting on her hip. Her forehead was against my chest.

She lifted her head. Her face was flushed dark red. Her eyes were wet and I couldn't tell if it was the shower or tears. Her lips were swollen from the kiss. She was looking at me and the guilt was arriving but it hadn't fully landed yet.

She reached behind her and turned off the water. The shower went quiet. The dripping was loud.

She stepped out. Picked up the towel from the rack. Wrapped it around herself, tucking the corner at her chest. Stood in the bathroom with wet hair and a towel and bare feet and I watched her face change: the composure rebuilding, the jaw setting, the eyes going steady. The mask going back on.

"Breakfast in ten," she said.

She left. The door closed. Her footsteps went down the hall and down the stairs.

I stood in the shower. The water was off and the air was cooling and the steam was thinning and her handprint was on the glass. Five fingers, the heel of her palm. Already starting to fade as the condensation dried.

I got dressed. Went downstairs.

She was at the stove in the bathrobe, which she'd picked up and put back on, making eggs. Her back was to me. Her hair was still wet.

"Eggs in a minute, sweetie."

Sweetie.

The woman who'd said Arthur while she came on my hand was making eggs and calling me sweetie and her voice was steady and warm and she didn't turn around.

I sat at the kitchen table and waited for breakfast. My fingers smelled like her underneath the soap and the handprint on the glass upstairs was probably gone by now.