“That’s generally how bathing works.”
As warm water laps at my thighs, slips over my stomach, I feel the borrowed indulgence of the glimmering baths and the expensive soaps that line the pool’s edge. To be naked in the same pool as a nude Kassandra is exhilarating—nothing akin to the sick cot that has become her bed.
She turns away. A reaction that causes a sinking feeling. She is questioning it; she is ashamed.The law says nothing about looking,I told her once. But even that may be too much for her.
I stop, the water circling my waist. The entire pool stretches between us. It was too much, too soon. So I reach for a soap bottle resting on the ledge.
“Wait,” Kassandra barks. “Not that one.”
I watch her, untwisting the cap and inhaling. “Lavender.”
“It was a gift.”
“I see.” Then I dump the contents on my chest and lather.
“Avery!”
“Yes?”
“Wipe that stupid smile off your face.”
“Shall I frown instead?”
“The soap was a gift from my mother!”
“You hated your mother.”
“Why do you have to be so—”
I laugh, and Kassandra huffs. A phantom touch caresses my forearm.
“I have a solution,” she says. “If someone comes in, they won’t see anything.”
That ghostly finger trails along my upper arm, goosebumps budding across my skin.
“Are you cold?” she asks from the other side of the pool.
“No.”
“Oh?” The unseen hand trails over my shoulder, sliding down my chest, between my breasts. It slips below the surface, the water rippling, as it circles my belly button. I don’t move. I stand half in the water, upper body exposed, my nipples hardening.
Her unseen hand brushes against my inner thigh, and I feel myself clench.
“Is this what you desire?” she asks.
I cannot deny the deep ache anymore, the feeling that if she does not touch me, I will not recover from this moment, I will not move on. I will remain in this pool, repeating this feeling over and over, wondering what I have done wrong or right in my life to end up here, in the hands of my mistress, desperately waiting for her to mold me anew.
“Yes,” I breathe.
“Is that the truth?” The water swishes with her walk, those hips I have slipped fabric over day in and day out for two years, gliding closer now.
“Yes.”
The ghost of fingers, threading through my hair. A phantom feel clutching my hip.
“After all,” I gasp as her magic tugs me closer, “you aren’t truly touching me.”
She stands only a few feet away, head cocked like a cat, eyes narrowing. Only her chest betrays her, flushed and heaving. One hand grips the edge of the pool, the other twitching by her thigh. We are bared to each other like throats to knives. We are a feast of silver and blue and brown and tan, of her curves and my muscles, of rough hands and sharp nails and a pink mouth I want to grab and swallow whole. Her voice comes low.
