Page 55 of A Murderous Crow
I chuckled, and she rolled her head back to smile up at me with those bright blue eyes of hers, and I shook my head.
“You’re adorable.” The compliment slipped out of my mouth before I even knew I was going to make it.
Her smile brightened, and she turned, rolling in the tub to cross her arms on the back of the tub and look at me, resting her chin on them. I was struck by a thought and so asked, “You like to swim?”
She looked curiously at me for a moment and said, “How did you know?”
“You’re a natural in that position. Looks like you’ve done a lot of chatting at the edge of a pool.”
She smiled then and said, “My brother and I spent a lot of summers in the pool at my grandparents. I did swim meet in high school and partway through college.”
“Did you now?” I asked.
“Mm-hm. Won State in the 200-meter butterfly my senior year. I just couldn’t keep up with the sport and academics in college, and for me, the grades were more important than the athletics, so I dropped it midway through my junior year. I miss it, but I don’t regret the decision. There were so many talented girls and even some Olympic hopefuls, and I just wasn’t in it to win it like they were.”
“I get that. I was on the swim team in the boarding school I talked about.”
“Oh?” She raised an eyebrow like she was surprised we had such a thing in common.
I nodded. “Freestyle and water polo.”
“Water polo?” She giggled. “I can’t imagine you in the stupid little helmets.” I laughed and nodded.
“Ah, yeah – might even have a photo or two downstairs of it.”
“Oh, this I’vegotto see,” she proclaimed, and I shook my head.
“Some things are better left buried.”
She giggled and turned around, leaning against the back of the tub with a lingering sigh.
“I love this tub,” she confessed. “And it was kind of a week – bad inspection on one place and just?—”
I drew her head back, a hand under her chin, and stood just long enough to smack a kiss on her lips and another on her forehead on my way back down into my seat as she giggled.
“You’re supposed to relax, that includesnottalking about work or getting yourself worked up over what stresses you out.”
She turned and leaned her chin back on her arms to look up at me.
“That doesn’t leave me much to talk about,” she said.
“Then don’t talk,” I said, raising a brow. “Sit right for me, please.”
She gave an adorable little pout but righted herself in the tub. I laced fingers and bent my hands back, thrusting them out from my chest to a satisfying crackle through my knuckles. I put my hands on her shoulders; her hair piled off them and her neck, and worked my fingertips and thumbs in deep. She gasped, then let out a groan.
“This is just the appetizer,” I said gently, and she breathed out a gentle breath and practically turned to putty in my hands.
I concentrated on my thumbs, pressing at the base of her skull where I knew tension was sure to hide, and started with a gentle pressure, increasing until she whimpered, then backing off just slowly enough until she relaxed under my hands. I kept it there for a count of thirteen – just an arbitrary number that I happened to like, considering the rest of the world didn’t.
At the mark of thirteen, I dragged my thumbs down alongside either side of her spine and, keeping the pressure on, glided against her damp skin over her shoulders, pressing into her traps as I went, letting my fingertips find the hollows above her collarbone and carefully hooking them there so I could keep applying steady pressure.
She turned her head this way, then that, and the bones gave a satisfying pop that I both felt and heard.
“Damn, that sounded like it felt good,” I said.
She laughed a little and said, “You havenoidea.”
“When was the last time you had a massage?” I asked her.
