9
The pit of anxiousnessin my stomach urges me to say ‘You first’ in regards to the pool, and then bolt out of the room the moment he’s not looking directly at me, and yell something about getting more of that herbal oil stuff over my shoulder.
It would be a smart decision, to remove myself from temptations now that I know what I should be doing.
I look at Khent and the sheen of sweat on his skin and it melts away.
I have not been making smart decisions.
Approaching the pool, I dip a toe in. The water is warm, like everything in here. Only I’m not so much worried about the temperature, but what might happen in it.
I take a step into the pool, aiming for the little stone stairs that draw you in. My foot plunges into the water much further down than I anticipated.
Khent’s hand catches mine and balances me as I wobble and nearly slip. The water nearly comes up to my knee, my other hand is bunching up the luxuriously huge towel to keep it from getting wet.
I stand there uncertainly a moment, clutching Khent and the towel.
Clearly everything here is tailored to a differently sized clientele. I feel like a goddamn gnome. The towels I was daydreaming about somehow masterfully folding into a shape that would fit into my purse so I could bring one home, have suddenly become a death trap. If I try to take a soak in this hot spring with a big fluffy towel the size of a bedsheet, it’s going to absorb all the water instantly and be impossible to move in. It’ll pull me down into the bottom.
I glance back at Khent, whose head is turned away just enough to give me some semblance of privacy.
Does it really matter if I’m naked in front of him if he’s already eaten me out?
I wrestle with the towel a moment, one handedly tugging it off and trying to toss it aside without it getting too wet.
The humidity hits my skin and makes me all too aware of how alone I am with Khent. I take another step in and let go of his hand. I sit down on the first step, and the water comes up to my collarbone.
I take a moment trying to figure out how to sit in a way that hides my bits, like some kind of tasteful sculpture and not a NSFW bonding activity. I settle for propping my elbow on my knee to censor my nipples. Good enough.
“Relaxing. Like this?”
“In whatever way you feel best,” he says, his voice a soft rumble.
Another ounce of tension seeps into my jaw in at the vagueness of his words. I need clearer instructions, dammit.
I barely relax on my days off. I mean, how does anyone relax in late-stage evil empiricism? You work all week, then maybe get a couple of chores and enough laundry done on the weekends to survive another few days. I’m always trying to out-work the system, like if I can just get up early enough I’ll somehow find a secret stash of hours to use, instead of just stealing sleep from my body. There’s the sound of another towel falling to the ground and it takes everything in me not to whip around and watch. No, I’m going to try to afford Khent the same professional courtesy he just showed me. Because we’re professionals. And coworkers.
The one thing I think this place has going for it is that there’s so many sensations from the heat and humidity and the water, that I can almost tune out the feeling of my cunt aching to be touched.