Page 14 of Shade

I didn’t answer him and he didn’t push. He didn’t need to. He just clapped me once on the shoulder and walked away.

That night her stitches were wrapped in plastic, and she still couldn’t lift her arm high enough to wash her own hair.

“I’m getting desperate,” she said, standing in my tiny bathroom with her hair in a knot. “I’ve got grit in places grit shouldn’t be. I crashed a plane in this hair, Shade.”

So I offered to wash it for her.

She stood in my shower with her back to me and her bad arm held out of the water. I’d stripped and gotten in behind her, because there was no other way to do it in a shower that size. I poured shampoo into my palm and worked it into her hair.

She let out a long, low, satisfied moan.

My hands stopped.

“Don’t stop,” she said. “Oh my God. Don’t you dare stop.”

I worked my fingers into her scalp, slow and firm, from her temples all the way back to the nape of her neck. Her head tipped back into my hands. She made another sound, softer this time, deep in her throat, and her whole body went loose against the water.

“You’ve got hairdresser hands,” she said. “Big, scary biker with hairdresser hands who knows how to massage a scalp. Who knew.”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t have if I’d tried.

Every sound she made went straight through me. Every little groan when I found a sore spot, every sigh when I dug my thumbs in at the base of her skull. She had no idea what it was doing to me. She was standing there naked and soaking wet, inches in front of me, making noises like I was already inside her, and I was harder than I’d ever been in my life.

I kept my hips back from her and my hands in her hair. It took everything I had.

It took a long time, too. She had a lot of hair, and it was full of dust from the airstrip, and I got every bit of it out. I tipped her head back and rinsed it slow, with my hand across her forehead to keep the water out of her eyes, and I watched the suds run down her back and over her ass.

It was the most patient I’ve ever been with anything. It was also the hardest.

I rinsed the last of the soap out. Then I took hold of her waist.

I pulled her back against me, and she felt exactly how much I wanted her. I pushed her wet hair to one side and put my mouth on her neck, and she let out a breath and leaned her whole weight back against me.

“I’m going to take my time with you tonight,” I said into her ear.

I filled my hands with her breasts, and her nipples went hard against my palms. Then I slid one hand down her stomach and between her legs.

She braced her good hand flat on the tile. I kept her bad arm out of the water for her, held it there by the wrist, and with my other hand I touched her slow. Real slow. I learned what she liked, what made her breath stutter and what made her push back against me and swear.

I kept her right on the edge until her legs were trembling. Then I gave her what she needed, and she came against my hand with her head thrown back on my shoulder and my name coming out of her in pieces.

I turned off the water.

I got a towel and dried her off myself. I took my time over that too.

I squeezed the water out of her hair first, a section at a time. Then I started at her shoulders and worked down. The back of her neck. Her good arm, all the way to her fingertips. Around the plastic on her bad one, careful not to catch it. Down her back, slow, and over the curve of her ass.

Then I went down on my knees on that bathroom floor and dried her legs, one and then the other, from her ankles all the way up the insides of her thighs.

She held on to my shoulder, and she shivered every time the towel moved higher.

When I stood up, she was looking at me like she’d never seen me before. She reached down for me and I caught her hand and held it.

“Not yet.”

Then I picked her up and carried her to my bed.

I laid her down on her right side, so her bad arm was up and out of the way, and I lay down facing her. For a minute I just looked at her. Her wet hair was all over my pillow. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were half closed and fixed on me.