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“I'm not going in,” she said, grasping his collar as if it were the only thing between her and death.
“Are you scared of it? It's just a little water. It's warm.”
“I'm not scared of anything,” she replied boldly.
His eyes twinkled. “I think you are scared,” he said. “I think you're worried that once we wash all that dirt away you're going to be too pretty to be wild.”
“Stupid,” she said bluntly, hiding the little flash of pleasure she got from hearing him say that she was pretty. He was handsome, of course. He must have known that. Sarah wasn't sure if she was attractive or not. She had not seen many other women her age. She could have been the plainest thing he had ever set eyes on. His honeyed words could have been nothing more than a manipulation, and yet she still felt happiness at hearing the compliment that was probably not a compliment at all.
Thoroughly unsure of how to handle herself, Sarah allowed William to slowly unwrap her fingers from his attire and to lower her into the waiting water.
Once she accepted its inevitability, the bath was nice. Sarah had faint vestigial memories of the last bath she'd had, decades earlier. The scent of the soap brought back memories of being tended to by her mother, washed and wrapped in a warm towel.
“I can wash myself,” she said as he picked up a bar of soap with clear intent.
“All the same,” he said patiently. “I'm going to stay with you.” Kneeling next to the tub, he lathered the washcloth and ran it over her shoulders. Thick streaks of dirt went cascading down her back and into the water as he worked the cloth over her skin in a slow massage which felt so wonderful she quite forgot to hate him.
“We're going to have to change the water out once or twice, I think. You're filthy.”
It felt so nice to be washed that for a few minutes she set aside her animosity and let the hunter do his work. His touch was tender and careful and he spared no part of her from the attentions of his cloth. From under her arms to beneath her breasts he touched every part of her. She sensed no lechery in his attentions, but there was an undeniable intimacy to the whole affair. The soft sensation of the cloth moving against her body, rubbing away aches and pains she hadn't known were there left her almost as soft and smushy as the cloth itself.
The spell was somewhat broken when William pushed a button to let the water drain away, but it was nice when fresh water flowed down the tub walls and covered her all over again. Sarah watched with no small measure of wonder; somewhere in the back of her mind she had always remembered how things were in the city, but it had been so long since she'd seen most of them that she'd thought them figments of her imagination. This was real though, crystal clear fresh water clear of any animal droppings or earthy silt and warm to the touch cascading down around her toes and filling the tub up around her.
William rubbed soap into a fresh washcloth and handed it to her with a simple instruction. “Clean the parts of yourself you'd rather I not touch.”
She smirked. He was scared of what her mother had called her 'privates'. But there were no such things as privates in the wild. Privates were public and she would not have minded had he washed her there. Suddenly, the temptation of holding a sodden, wet, soapy cloth in her hand was too much. She did not push it down between her thighs, but instead launched it toward his face. The sound it made as it delivered its watery load was very satisfying, as was the way rivulets of soapy liquid trickled down over his neck and body armor, which he had not taken off.
“Brat,” he said as water ran down over his stubble and dripped onto the floor. He wiped his face off with one hand. The other caught the cloth before it too could fall, and returned it to the water. She watched him, waiting for retaliation. But there didn't seem to be any. After washing it out again, he pushed the wet soapy cloth between her legs and proceeded to clean her vulva with a firm but gentle touch.
The sensation was very pleasant. Instinct made her hips grind forward against the cloth, and when that slipped away, against his fingers.
“This bath is not for your pleasure,” he chided her gently. His words meant little, however, for he did not move his hand away. He kept it there between her thighs and rubbed as she wriggled her hips forward. There was no way to obtain real satisfaction there in that slippery surface, but a little reward went a long way toward alleviating the stress she'd been under since her capture.
