She alternated using my shoulders for support as she stepped out of them, first the pale right foot, then the left. The hairs of her pubis were silky and fine, very black against a triangle of bleached skin. One thin wisp ascended up, ending well before the tan line. I brushed the surface lightly with the length of my thumb. “You’re getting to be a big girl,” I said. She watched me with wide innocent eyes.
I stood up, holding her left hand with my right. I tapped her white ass with my free hand. “Okay, step in.”
She tried her right foot, arching up at the first touch of water. “It’s hot,” she complained.
“You’re cold from the air-conditioning. You’ll get used to it.” She leaned all her weight on my hand. I nearly staggered, but managed to keep my balance. She immersed all of one foot, saying, “Ow, ow, ow,” while bringing the other in. She stood in the water for a moment. “I’ll make it cooler,” I said, bending forward to adjust the water. “Thanks, Daddy,” she said, coming close to watch me. Her thigh and silky hairs brushed against my cheek.
“It’s cooler now,” I said looking up at her.
She was peering down at her dark left nipple, holding it between her thumb and finger. “It’s hard,” she said.
Lightly, I slapped the back of her hand. “Don’t play with yourself.” She smiled mischievously. “The other isn’t,” she said, gesturing at the soft right nipple.
I cupped water in my palms and bathed a leg. “Mmmmm,” she said. I gathered more and massaged the other with liquid. The bubbles lingered on her thighs. I brushed up toward her black hill, finally cupping it with all the fingers of my left hand, holding her as if it were a handle. “I’m wet inside too,” she said, which was obvious. “Lie down,” I said and eased her backwards into the water, supporting the neck until her head rested against the sloping porcelain. She shut her eyes. I got up.
“You’re going?” she called out in a panic.
“Hush,” I said. I turned off the harsh fluorescent light over the medicine cabinet and the recessed white lamp in the ceiling. From the bedroom window, a square of amber from New York’s street lamps lit her upper half.
I sat on the edge of the tub, gathering bubbles with my fingers and meticulously cleaned her feet, her calves, her thighs, her stomach, her flanks, her underarms, her neck, leaving the best for last. I discovered what was ticklish, what was eager, what liked me to be rough, what liked me to be gentle.
As her excitement mounted, she raised a soapy hand, fingers probing for the lip of my shorts. I lifted them off disdainfully. “Keep your hands to yourself,” I said.
“Please,” she said in a whisper. “I’ll go if you don’t behave yourself,” I answered. “Have a bath with me, Daddy,” she moaned. I cupped her neck in my right palm and invaded her with the left hand. She planted her feet on either side of the faucet and arched her middle. “I can’t,” she pleaded. “I want you inside.”
I leaned over, pressing my cheek against hers, my mouth to her ear. “Let yourself go,” I whispered, my thumb on the quickening pulse in her throat to check on the work of my other hand. “I can’t like this,” she said desperately.
I watched shadows move across the amber light on the tile, learning the rhythm of this woman. Around once slow, quickly across. Side to side. Up and down. Pause. Hard on the nub … “Let me touch you,” she begged.
“No,” I said. Around and around. Pause. Depart. Let her think you’ve quit until her belly asks for more. Then fast and rougher.
Her warm dripping hand came up to grab my thigh. I stopped pleasing her, pulling her fingers from my skin, and pushed her hand into the water. “Lift your behind,” I said harshly. She obeyed. I pinned her hand beneath her. “You’re not clean yet,” I said.
“Let me kiss you,” she said, her lips blindly touching my face, searching for my mouth.
“Let go,” I said. I tightened my grip on her neck to keep her head still and searched with my middle finger for the pressure point at its base, applying a light but persistent touch. She relaxed, passive again. I resumed playing the instrument, stroking her thighs, stomach, and around her breasts before I returned to her sex.
My eyes adjusted to the amber light until even that seemed bright. I listened to the bubbles subside while she whispered, “I can’t … Please … I can’t. Please … Let me touch you.”
I took her earlobe between my teeth and bit lightly. I whispered, “But this isn’t for you, my little baby. This is what I want.”
“You want me like this?” she asked plaintively. I changed rhythm. She moaned in a deeper tone. “This is for me.”
She trembled, breathing rapidly as if she were having a fast and shallow orgasm. I didn’t believe in it. She was eager to be rid of the attention. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she said and then exhaled loudly to signal it was over. She whispered, “Thank you.”
“You’re a bad little girl,” I said. “Don’t try to fool Daddy.” I slid the tip of my pinky into her other, dry hole. She was startled, then curious. With the rest of my hand I continued to play the central chord, as if I were at work on the crescendo of a Beethoven sonata.
She looked surprised as she felt a true orgasm begin. Her reactions were quite different than during her mock ecstasy. She arched against both ends of the tub, body rigid, no breathing, then a sudden release, sagging down into the water and up again taut, an irregular undulation. She cycled that way more than a dozen times — fighting and losing, fighting and losing to herself.
As she surrendered to the climax, pushing against both rims, she levitated out of the water. When I believed the momentum was too strong for her to stop it, I whispered, “Gene loved you. He loved you so much he preferred to die than live without you.”
She turned her face to me, eyes glazed, listening hungrily while she grunted with pleasure. At the peak, as her body shuddered, her breaths deep, slow and long, I said, “He died for you.”
She bucked so violently I was drenched. I left the bathroom immediately.
I paused briefly in her living room to take another look at the eight-year-old copy of my book. I found what I was looking for on the inside of the back cover. I ignored her puzzled calls asking for me and left for my sublet. My clothes dried quickly on the hot streets.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Last Chance
I DIDN‘T RETURN THE MESSAGES HALLEY LEFT DURING THE FOLLOWING two days. She appeared in the lab — much to the surprise of my fellow geeks — on Wednesday morning and asked to see me in my office. “I want your opinion on the ad copy,” she said in public, namely in front of Andy Chen and two others standing nearby. “See if we’re brainwashing the consumer right,” she added with a smile. “I could use your expertise.”
Tim Gallent, the overweight debugger with a habit of screaming at Andy, said, “Whoa. No kidding, Doc. You brainwash people?”
“Every day,” I said. “I don’t have an office,” I told Halley.
“Come to mine.” She turned halfway, not sure if I would obey.
I didn’t seem to have a choice — how could I explain a rude refusal to Andy and the others? I tried a compromise. “Andy, may we use your office?” I asked.
“Mi casa es su casa,” Andy said. He didn’t look happy. I’m sure he felt he had a right to see the ad copy for the machine he was building.