Page 56 of Serpentine Valentine
I must have drifted off a little because when I opened my eyes, Lex was leaning against the sink holding a huge mug of steaming tea. The steam from my bath curled around her, dampening her skin so her silk blouse stuck to her breasts and pebbled her nipples beneath it. Little curls popped up around her hairline, black commas and question marks I wanted to trace with my fingertips.
“You’re so beautiful,” I told her, because I couldn’t stop myself and I was too tired to try. “Everything about you seems to call to me.”
“Alarm bells?” she snarked, all her shields firmly in place after her act of rage and honest feeling at Flora’s house.
“No, like a siren’s song,” I corrected, and maybe the lingering alcohol in my system made me brave or maybe it was just my proximity to her, the most courageous girl I knew that prompted me to say, “Will you join me?”
She seemed startled by my question, tensing like an animal about to flee a predator.
“Please?” I asked, holding out my sudsy hand to her.
She stared at it with the same fear and mild curiosity I’d felt looking at the rattlesnake. But she didn’t shy away from me. She procured a pitcher from beneath the sink and placed it along with my tea in my reach then stepped back again. I watched as she straightened her shoulders and slowly toed off one leather boot and then the other. Her hair slithered over her shoulders, obscuring her face as she bent to peel off her socks and then her black trousers. I watched, throat dry, breath suspended in my lungs, as she slowly unbuttoned her silk blouse and let it fall from her shoulders to float gently to the floor.
Finally, she stood before me in a black mesh bra that strained to contain her beautiful breasts and matching high-cut panties that accentuated the long, strong line of her legs. There was still blood on her face and hands, in the v exposed by the blouse she’d worn to beat up the man who’d tried to take advantage of me, but it only heightened her beauty in my eyes.
Here was a woman and a warrior.
Here was a woman who had trusted me enough to shed her armor and bare herself to me after everything she’d been through, even after a panic attack that had taken her to her knees the last time we’d been intimate together.
“So brave,” I murmured. “So achingly beautiful.”
My words seemed to spur her into action. She walked lightly on her toes across the cold tiles and stepped into the tub between my spread legs, sinking beneath the bubbles still wearing her underwear.
I understood why she kept them on. It was a vulnerable thing to be naked like this with her. Not sexual, but intimate in a deeper way.
“Come here,” she ordered, reaching for the clay pitcher and dippingit beneath the water.
I didn’t hesitate, twisting to face away from her and moving until my bottom hit the apex of her thighs. A shiver worked through me, but Lex ignored it as she teased the ribbon from my hair, letting it fall across my shoulders, ends dangling in the suds. She pressed gently against my forehead to get me to tip my hair back and then used her other hand to pour the warm water over my hair.
I hummed with pleasure and a little awe.
She was washing my hair for me.
It felt achingly wonderful to be so taken care of. The shampoo she plucked from the windowsill smelled like cinnamon as she worked it into a lather between her hands. When her fingers sank into my hair, massaging my skull, I melted into her touch, moaning without shame at the sensation. Her legs cradled my body, her hands my head, and when I leaned farther back, the tips of her breasts in her sheer bra abraded my back.
Arousal built in me like water filling a well, a soft surge of languid heat building inside me until I felt full to the brim.
“Lex,” I panted, softly as she rinsed my hair with clean water from the bronze tap.
She didn’t respond with words. Instead she squeezed conditioner into her palms and lathered the ends of my hair, coiling the strands together until they formed a rope. She used it to cant my head farther back and to one side until my panting mouth was accessible to her own.
“I’m going to kiss you,” she told me, but there was a question there.
Her need for consent saddened me for a moment. Of course, it was important. The last sexual encounter she seemed to have had lacked any consent at all.
I vowed to try my hardest to ease the pain of that memory with this new one.
“Please,” I asked her, flicking my tongue along the swell of her lower lip.
Her moan vibrated from her mouth to mine as she sealed them closed and slid her sweet tongue against my own. I ate the sound out of her mouth and gave her my own groan as I swallowed it down.
The taste of her affected me more than the liquor I’d consumed that night. It made my skin too tight, too hot over my racing blood and aching bones. I wanted her to take me apart piece by piece with her teeth and knit me back together with that talented tongue. My body arched farther into her as she tugged hard at my hair. Our breasts rubbed together, my naked flesh sensitive against the buff of sheer fabric over her chest. I rolled over farther so her leg was nestled between my thighs.
“That’s it, my sweet girl,” she murmured against my mouth before nipping at my damp bottom lip. “Rub your pussy against me. Use me to get off.”
A groan quaked through me as I pressed harder to her thigh, undulating into her so my clit was stimulated again and again.
Lex ate the sounds off my tongue between murmuring praise for me.
