Corner Office Confessions

Luckily, Arlie seemed to pick up on this, keeping her eyes on his as she assessed the situation.

“I think the best option here would be for you to stand facing the mirror. That way your arm is away from the water,” she suggested.

“Sounds reasonable.” He stepped into the shower, assuming the assigned position as he glanced back at her. “You’re going to get soaked.”

“Please,” she scoffed. Removing her khakis, Arlie followed him into the shower in her panties, bra and tank top, doing her best to step around the water as she reached up and retrieved the shower hose. “I must have participated in a hundred car washes for Debutantes Against Drunk Drivers while we were at Lennox Finch.”

“I remember them fondly,” Samuel said.

The warm water felt like salvation on his sore screaming muscles as Arlie carefully aimed the nozzle away from his elaborate sling.

Retrieving one of the fluffy washcloths from the shower bench, Arlie held it under the spray. She added a dollop of shower gel and brought the cloth to his skin, working it over his back in long, careful strokes.

Samuel felt tension that had seemed to live within him for years melting beneath her capable hands. Running out of his body and down the drain with the swirling suds.

“That’s nice,” he said.

And it was.

To be cared for. Looked after. Seen to. Feelings he hadn’t experienced at any point in his adult life.

“I’m glad,” Arlie said. Reaching around from behind him, she ran the washcloth over his chest, his stomach, pausing when she approached his groin.

“You want to take it from here?” she asked, pressing the cloth into his hand.

“Why?”

Odd how one word could crumble the tenuous wall he’d attempted to build between them. Because he wanted this. He wanted her.

He felt her breath quicken behind him, tickling his spine.

The washcloth skimmed below his belly button and over his cock, her taut nipples pressing into his back through the sodden fabric of her tank top.

“Samuel?” Her voice was warm as melted butter and smoky as good scotch.

“Yes?”

“Can I touch you?”

“Please.”

Then the washcloth was gone and a moan he was powerless to contain rose up from the deepest part of him as he glanced down, watching himself slide through her delicate fingers. Leaning forward, he planted one hand on the cool marble wall.

“I need to be clear,” she said, a taunting edge to her voice as she brushed her thumb over his rapidly swelling head. “Are we giving in to a simple biological urge?”

He turned, relishing her surprise as he claimed her lips.

She moaned into his mouth, opening to him, allowing his greedy exploration, her tongue stroking over his.

Kissing her felt like falling into the deep end, like drowning, then the first lungful of oxygen after breaking the water’s surface.

He couldn’t get enough.

The tender curve of her earlobe. The delicate skin of her neck. Her sweet, pearly nipples. The flat, hard place over her wildly beating heart.

“I need to taste you.” He cupped her sex, her wet panties against his palm.

Her lush lips curved upward in a small, secret smile as she stripped off her tank top and bra before twisting the shower faucet. The water slowed to a trickle then stopped.

Their wet bodies left a trail over marble and carpet. With her help, he settled himself onto the mattress, his slung arm propped on pillows in the center of the bed.

“Take off your panties.”

Her breasts rose and fell with erratic breaths, her nipples tightened into buds above the elegant ladder of her rib cage. She bit her lower lip as she gathered the clammy fabric between her thumb and forefingers and, never breaking eye contact, slid it down the long expanse of her thighs.

“Good,” he said. “Now undo your hair.”

Arlie pulled her low bun loose, freeing it to spill over her naked breasts as he reached out to her with his good arm. She carefully climbed onto the bed, the whole, beautiful length of her body tense with awareness of him.

Of his pain.

Her eyes darted to his shoulder in its elaborate truss. “Are you sure?”

“Come here.” Hand on the small of her back, he guided her upward toward the head of the bed.

The guileless, startled uncertainty on her face when she understood what he wanted only dumped gasoline on the inferno of his desire. Those lovely, flushed, freckled cheeks. The awareness shifting from his body to hers. To what he would do to her.

“That’s it, baby,” he said.

With her knees on either side of his rib cage, he ran his fingers up one long, pale thigh and down the other.

He could have gone on that way forever.

Watching her stomach tighten every time his finger slid up the silky skin of her inner thigh. The way her teeth sank into her pillowy lower lip when he stopped just shy of her sex, skipping to trace down her opposite leg.

“You want my mouth on you?” he asked, skimming her sweet, smooth folds with his lips.

“Please,” she breathed, eyelids falling closed, dark lashes feathering her cheeks.

“Tell me,” he said.