Chapter 10: Morning Ritual
The sound of the shower running was a white curtain between them and the rest of the world. Steam, thick and fragrant with the scent of her cheap, floral body wash, fogged the cracked mirror and bled out under the bathroom door. Harry stood under the spray, eyes closed, trying to scrub the scent of her from his skin with a loofah, as if he could somehow rinse the morning’s seismic shift down the drain.
He couldn’t. His mind was a riot of sensation: the taste of her on his fingers, the feel of her clenching around them, the shattered look on her face after she came. It was a loop he couldn’t escape, even as the hot water needled his shoulders.
The shower curtain rasped back.
He turned, water stinging his eyes.
Anne stood there, naked. The steam swirled around her, softening her edges, but she was starkly, breathtakingly real. The water from the showerhead immediately began to bead on her shoulders, her collarbones, the perfect, impossible curves of her small breasts. Her nipples were already hard from the cooler air of the bathroom.
She didn’t speak. She simply stepped into the tub, the space suddenly impossibly small. The shower curtain fell closed with a slap, sealing them in a wet, humming cocoon.
Her eyes were dark, watchful. The vulnerability from the bed was gone, burned away by a new, scorching confidence. She reached past him, her arm brushing his chest, and took the bar of soap from the caddy. The touch was electric.
“My turn to wash you,” she said, her voice low and rough against the drumming water.
He couldn’t move. He could only stare as she worked the soap into a lather in her hands. She started with his chest, her slick palms sliding over his pectorals, down the tense ridges of his abdomen. It was clinical and intimate all at once. Her thumbs hooked into the waistband of his boxers, the only barrier left.
“These are in the way,” she murmured, not looking up at him.
She pushed them down. They slumped around his ankles. He kicked them off, his cock, already half-hard from her presence, springing free. The hot water pounded directly onto it, a sensation that made him gasp.
Anne didn’t pause. Her soapy hand closed around him. A sharp, punched-out sound escaped his lips. Her grip was firm, knowing. She began to stroke him, the soap creating a smooth, feverish glide.
“All those years,” she said, her voice almost lost in the shower’s roar. She was looking at his face now, studying his reaction. “All those times you thought about these.” With her other hand, she cupped her own breast, lifting it slightly, offering it. Water sluiced between her fingers. “These tiny, fucking tits.”
He couldn’t breathe. It was the most explicit thing she’d ever said, and it was aimed directly at the core of his secret shame. His hips jerked involuntarily into her hand.
“Yeah,” she breathed, a ghost of a smile on her lips. She quickened her pace, her thumb swiping over the sensitive head of his cock with every upstroke. “You like that? You like hearing me say it? You like watching the water run over them while I jerk you off?”
“God, Anne…”
“They’re all yours now, right?” she pressed, her voice gaining strength. She stepped closer, pressing her body against his side so he could feel the heat of her, the slick slide of her skin. Her soapy hand worked him relentlessly. “No more imagining. No more sneaky looks. You get to see them whenever you want. Touch them.” She guided his free hand to her breast, pressing his palm against her. Her nipple was a hard pebble against his skin. “They’re fucking yours to worship.”
The words, the possession in them, the sheer filthy reality of it, pushed him to the edge. He was clutching her breast, his fingers digging into the soft flesh, his other hand braced against the cold tile wall. His entire world had narrowed to the circle of her fist and the fierce blaze in her eyes.
“I’m gonna come,” he gritted out, the warning torn from him.
“Do it,” she commanded, her stroke becoming frantic, messy with soap and water. “Come all over your hand. Show me how much you love them.”
It wasn’t a request. It was a demand. The climax ripped through him with a violence that bowed his back. He shouted, a raw, wordless sound swallowed by the steam and water. His release shot over her moving fist, white streaks quickly diluted and washed away by the relentless spray. His knees buckled; only the wall and her body held him up.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of the water and their ragged breathing. He slumped against the tiles, spent. Anne slowly released him, her hand falling away. She looked down at her own soapy fingers, then back up at him, a strange, unreadable expression on her face.
Without a word, she turned, presenting her back to him. “Wash me off,” she said, her tone flat.
He was adrift, subsumed by her. He took the soap, his hands trembling slightly, and lathered it. He began at the nape of her neck, working the suds over her shoulders, down the delicate ladder of her spine. She stood perfectly still, her head bowed, letting him tend to her. It was a ritual, a quiet counterpoint to the frenzy of moments before.
When he reached the small of her back, his fingers trailed lower, over the swell of her buttocks. She didn’t protest. He washed her there too, slowly, thoroughly, his touch now reverent. He rinsed her clean, his hands following the paths of the water.
She turned then, under the spray, facing him. Water plastered her dark hair to her skull, streamed over her closed eyelids, her parted lips. She looked like some river nymph, utterly exposed and ethereal. He gently pushed her hair back from her face.
Her eyes opened. The defiance was gone. In its place was a deep, aching fatigue, and something else—a profound, unsettling sadness.
“It doesn’t fix anything, does it?” she said, her voice so quiet he almost didn’t hear it over the water.
He knew what she meant. The sex, the power, the possession. It didn’t erase her ex’s indifference. It didn’t undo Harry’s years of hidden wanting. It was just a fever dream in a steamy box.
“No,” he admitted, the truth hollowing him out. “It doesn’t.”
She nodded, once, as if confirming a terrible theory. Then she leaned forward, resting her forehead against his collarbone. They stood like that for a long time, two naked bodies under a cascade of water that could never wash them clean, clinging to each other as the world outside the curtain waited, solid and complicated and real.