He reaches slowly behind me, holding me tight against him as he does so, and reaches around behind me to the clasp of my bra. With quick fingers he unhooks it and lets it hang loose against my body, moving back again so that he can slowly draw the straps downwards over my arms. When the fabric has moved far enough, the cups fall away from my breasts, uncovering them for his eyes to admire. Even if he’s seen me before, this is so different – without anything to hide behind, I feel vulnerable and open. But Finn makes me feel safe, even as he drops my bra to the floor and then reaches for the sides of my panties.
He kneels before me as he hooks the fabric and drags it down, slowly again, over my legs and knees, down to my feet. He lifts my feet for me one at a time until I’m free of every scrap of clothing, and then wordlessly stands and offers me his hand.
It’s like I’m under a spell. Gentle, low mood music is playing from somewhere, I guess something that Finn set up earlier, and the smell of rose petals wafts from the bathtub. Finn leads me the few steps over toward it and supports me as I climb in, sitting down and then laying against the comfortable curve of the tub, feeling it cradle my body.
Finn kisses my hand and then lets it go, and reaches for something beside the tub. “Maybe we should get something for later,” he suggests. “A bit of supper. What do you think?”
I almost want to protest – what about the amazing meal we just had – but come to think of it, I could eat again. The food there was high-quality and delicious, but the portions weren’t huge. I could go for something small, just to round off the night.
“What are the options?” I ask.
Finn takes a seat on a conveniently placed step by the bath and begins to read the menu to me, and when we agree on something, he gets up to go through to the other room. I hear him placing the call to room service and close my eyes, slipping a little further under the bubbles, letting myself relax. I can breathe. Finn isn’t here to take advantage of me, and this isn’t just a weekend thing. This is real. The two of us – it’s for keeps. I know that now. I want to be here – there’s nowhere in the world that I could think of where I’d want to go right now.
I wonder vaguely if I should start to wash. I’m in a bath, after all. But this bath was only for the purpose of helping me relax, nothing else – so maybe I should just get out and go to him.
Finn appears in the doorway again, startling me and making me blink. “The order’s booked,” he says, coming to kneel in front of the bathtub again. I look at him owlishly, wondering why he’s down there. “Just relax. Here, let me help.”
He picks up a soft bath mitt hanging from the side of the bath – complimentary, I guess – and tears off the tissue paper keeping it clean. Before I can even say a word he slips it onto his right hand and then reaches into the water to take hold of my hand. I’m too much under a spell right now to even say a thing about him getting wet, and I can only watch as he lifts my hand into the air and dips the mitt into the water before rubbing it in soft circles across the back of my hand.
He turns my arm to wash my palm, making me shiver as it tickles me. Heat floods me, and not just my face. How can something so normal feel so sensual? The feeling only increases as he moves those slow circles up over my forearm, then my upper arm, all the way to my shoulder.
The motion is a part gentle massage, a part tickling of my nerves, and all wonderful. Slowly and surely, with a pattern and rhythm all his own, Finn moves across and takes my other arm, and starts the whole process again. When he reaches my left shoulder, I’m almost disappointed. It felt so nice, I didn’t want it to end.
When Finn lets go of my arm I sink back against the tub, expecting him to move away. Instead, he moves only a little distance down the tub, where he reaches into the water again and lifts my foot, pulling my leg up above the water. I give a little gasp of surprise and then close my eyes as he begins to rub the top of my foot with the mitt, making me feel like I’m drifting away on a cloud. I could do this all day. I really could.