Page 59 of The Maverick
She looked at me.
"There," she said.
I had to take a breath before I could speak.
"My turn."
I took the soap from her.
I'd had her, by then, in the dark, numerous times. I had not had her in the light.
She was small in a way I hadn't fully clocked—the curves of her were the careful, sturdy curves of a woman built to last, not the showy ones of a woman built to be looked at, and what struckme as I started to wash her was that I'd already been in love with thebuilt to lastof her without knowing what I was looking at. Strong shoulders from years of carrying trays. A long line of back that came down into a waist a man's hands could span. Hips that flared just enough to remind you what hips were for, on her body, which was for hauling babies and groceries and her own life, in that order or any other.
I started at her shoulders.
I worked the soap into a slow lather under my palms and ran them down the line of her arms, slow, careful, the way I'd watched her be careful with me. I thumbed over her collarbones. The sweet hollow at the base of her throat. The fine bones at her wrists.
I washed her chest. Her breasts. Without rushing. Without making it the point. I wanted her to feel cared for, not seduced, and the difference between those two intentions was entirely in the speed of a man's hands.
Her breath had gone uneven.
I took my time, anyway.
Her belly was soft and her skin was warm and slick under the water and a small mole sat just to the right of her navel, an asymmetry I was going to think about for a long time. I knelt down in the tub the way she had. I washed her hips. The flare of them. The dimples at the small of her back when I turned her gently to do the line of her spine.
I washed her thighs—the inside of them, slow, which was not the point and was somehow exactly the point.
I washed her calves and her ankles.
I picked up one foot and washed it, and then the other, and she made a small sound when I did that I was going to put away and play back to myself for a long time.
I stood back up.
I rinsed the soap from her with my hands. The water came down warm between us. Her hair was wet and dark down her back. Her lashes were spiked together. Her skin was pink everywhere it had been touched.
She lifted her face up to mine.
She looked at me with her eyes wet and her mouth a little open and the most uncomplicated honesty I'd ever seen in a face.
She didn't say anything.
She reached down and took my cock in her hand.
"Now," she said.
It was the only word I needed.
I lifted her like I'd lifted her last night, easy, one hand under her thighs and the other flat on her back. Her legs came around my waist. She slid down onto me, slick and warm and ready, and we both went still.
I leaned my forehead against hers. The water ran down the both of us.
"Tommy."
"Yeah."
"Hi."
"Hi."
