She stares at me. "What?"
"Arms up. So I can undress you."
Her cheeks flush and the color spreads down her throat, disappearing beneath her collar. I want to follow it with my tongue. I want to strip her bare and lick a line from her throat to her cunt and find out if she flushes there too.
"I can undress myself," she says. "I've been doing it my entire life."
"I'm sure you have."
"So you don't need to—"
"I want to."
She's still staring and I reach for the laces I just tied an hour ago.
"I don't—" She tries to step back and I follow. "This isn't necessary—"
"It isn't."
"Then why—"
"Because you're mine."
"And I want to undress you. Bathe you. Put my hands on every part of you until I know exactly what makes you shake."
"That's—"
"Arms up."
She raises her arms.
I unlace her slowly, my fingers brushing her skin every chance I get—the curve of her spine, the dip of her waist, the wings of her shoulder blades. She's trembling. Small, barely visible tremors that she probably thinks I can't feel.
I feel everything.
The dress falls. She's wearing a shift underneath, thin linen, and I can see the shape of her through it. The swell of her breasts. The curve of her luscious hips. The shadow between her thighs.
I take a breath. Then another.
"Arms," I say. My voice sounds wrong. Rougher than it should.
She raises them again and I pull the shift over her head.
She's—
I need to stop looking.
"Into the water," I say.
She goes.
I watch her descend the steps. Watch the water rise up her calves, her thighs—thick, soft, the kind that felt like heaven wrapped around my head. The water swallows her hips next and I have to stop breathing for a second because her hips are wideand round and I want to grip them hard enough claim. I want to pull her back against me and watch the way her ass would press into my—
She stops when the water reaches her chest, her arms folded across herself, her back to me.
I'm still staring. At the curve of her waist. At the flare of her hips disappearing into the water. At every soft, heavy inch of her that I want to put my mouth on.
I undress.
