“That feel good?” I teased, moving my sudsy fingers down to the base of her skull.
“Mmm,” she murmured, melting deeper against me. “You have no idea.”
Chuckling again, I closed my arms around her, my fingers continuing to caress her.
“So good,” she sighed. And then I felt her arms slip from my shoulders. “Here. Let me show you.”
Elise grabbed the shampoo bottle, clicked open the top, and poured some into her palm. Rubbing her hands together, she looked up at me with a sleepy, satisfied smile. My heart turned over in my chest.
I wanted her to look at me like this every day. Every night. For the rest of my life.
She brought her hands to my head. The moment I felt her fingers move against my scalp, her nails gently scratching through my hair, I unraveled. My muscles. My bones. My defenses.
I leaned us against the shower wall, and she giggled at my obvious enjoyment.
“See?” she asked, scrubbing.
I could only answer with a helpless moan as goosebumps rained down my back, my arms. I’d never felt this. I couldn’t remember anyone washing my hair like this. Barbers and stylists didn’t count. I paid them.
Elise was doing it because she wanted to. She wanted to show me how good it felt.
And it felt incredible. The way she was touching me — with tenderness, with love — it twisted something deep inside me. Like some kind of screw or vice. But instead of tightening it. Elise’s touch threatened to strip it, wrest it wide open.
I caught the feeling in my throat, suddenly holding back a sob. I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead to hers, catching my control by the barest thread as steam fogged the air and water fell over us.
My hands had ceased moving through her hair, and I just held her against me.
A full minute passed before I dared test my voice, but I wanted her to know what it was like to be with her. What it was like to finally have this. “I’ve never felt this way.”
At first, I wasn’t sure she heard me over the rushing water, but then her hands left my hair, and she tucked her arms under mine, squeezing me tight. Elise tilted her head so that her lips brushed my right ear.
“I’ve never felt this way either,” she whispered.
I don’t know if she understood exactly what I meant, that I’d never had what she was giving me. And that having it now threatened to undo me. But I didn’t think I could explain without embarrassing us both. So, I just held her as tight as she held me. Tighter.
I wasn’t sure how long we stood there clasped together like that. Maybe one minute. Maybe ten. But when Elise lifted her head from my chest and scanned my expression, I had mastered myself again. The watchfulness in her gaze told me she hadn’t missed anything about the moment we’d just shared, including its passing.
She arched a brow at me. “I don’t suppose you have any conditioner.”
I grinned and nodded toward the bottle on the porcelain shelf. “It’s two-in-one.”
“Bah,” Elise scoffed, rolling her eyes. “There’s no such thing.”
I wrinkled my forehead at her. “It says so on the label.”
“They lie.”
I couldn’t help my laugh. “What are you talking about?”
She gave me a pitying glance. “That may work on boy hair — or maybe even short, girl hair if the girl in question has perfectly manageable, cooperative locks, but for the rest of us? No.”
I loved that she could make me laugh at just about anything. Anytime. “Okay, I get it. Tomorrow, we’ll go to the store, and I’ll get you some conditioner.”
Elise leaned back into the spray and rinsed the remaining suds from her hair. “How about we go by my apartment instead, and I can pick up my conditioner and some clothes.”
A thrill shot through me. This meant she intended to stay the whole weekend for real. “Sure,” I agreed.
“And a bikini.”
