With my arms raised above my head, I am almost helpless to let him soap me up with a shower sponge. The only word I can use to describe how he does this is “lovingly.” Everything about showering together is so profoundly intimate, but he’s kind enough to have me facing away, which shows how he wants me to be as comfortable as possible. It’s not even salacious the way he massages over my breasts, my tummy, or between my thighs. He’s doing a surprisingly thorough job, cleaning me everywhere and taking his time.
“Need to wash your hair?”
I say no, explaining that I usually wait to wash my hair until Sunday night and only once a week.
“I hope you don’t mind. Saturday is my shampoo day.”
Turning around, I reach past him and pick up the shampoo bottle.
“Want me to do it?”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I give good massages. Besides, you won’t let me cook, clean, or run errands for you. I feel like I gotta pull my weight somehow.”
Although I play this as a joke, Crosby does not take it as such.
“Nobody’s ever washed my hair before.”
“So. Let me do something nice.”
He seems to be considering the logistics of this, as he’s quite a bit taller than me. Then, Crosby smiles, backs up, and bends over, his hair falling forward in front of me.
I work the shampoo into the ends of his long, thick locks, first, working my way up to his scalp. The scalp massage elicits a low, audible sigh from the man. He spreads his arms out, bracing himself between the wall and the door.
“Am I taking too long? Are you getting tired, old man?”
Crosby laughs. “Well, I am hungry again. I might be a little lightheaded from dehydration. You sucked me dry, girl.”
A thrill flows over me at these words. I finish cleaning and rinsing his hair, then ask him to turn around so I can wash him like he washed me.
“Please?” I ask when he glares at the idea.
Reluctantly, he turns around. As I gently scrub the broad planes of his back, under his arms, reaching around to wash his belly, I ask him questions. Surprising me, he answers.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“You can ask. Don’t know if I’ll answer.”
“Why are you so hesitant to accept help?”
Crosby thinks about that for a minute, and just as I begin to think he didn’t hear the question or decided not to answer, he responds, “No one’s ever been this nice to me before. Even when you think you’re being mean to me, you’re really nice.”
This fact nearly takes my breath away. “Not when you get to know me well.”
“That’s not possible,” Crosby says. “You talked to me and didn’t shoo me away when I walked up to you out of nowhere at your house. At the party, you pretended I was with you instead of letting me twist in the wind. You let me win you—you could have called the whole thing off. You went home with me even after your friend told you not to. Again, you could have called it off, and I could have canceled the transaction. You could have started the auction all over again. You treated me like a human being. And the way you look at me. The way you touch me. No one has ever, not in my entire life, made me feel the way you do.”
Something comes over me then, and I stretch my arms around his middle and rest my cheek on his back. And squeeze.
“You have a way of making yourself highly irresistible,” I tell him.
“My plan is working,” he says. The sound of the smile on his face compels me to nip his shoulder blade with my teeth.
“Ow,” he says with a chuckle.
“Sorry.”
“It’s ok. I like it when you bite. Even your bites are sweet.”