Hearth VII

“You’re humming.”

Laura smiled at her lover’s observation. She was, indeed, humming a random tune as he lay back in her arms in the tub, his head on her shoulder, his broad body nestled between her legs, as she ran a soapy bath sponge over his chest. His arms were draped around her raised knees, hands sliding up and down her shins from time to time. After making love, she was immeasurably content and very much in love with her soldier, hence the humming.

“Am I off key?” she asked, touching her mouth to his cheek in a kiss.

She felt the muscles in his face bunch beneath her lips. A smile. “No,” he rasped softly, his fingers stroking her lower calves. “Just never heard you do it like that before.”

The candles beside the tub flickered, casting dancing shadows on the walls, across their skin.

“I’m just happy,” she told him, dipping the sponge into the water then bringing it up to his neck and smoothing it slowly, gently down to his pectorals.

He made a rumbling sound in response to her touch, stated in a rich, deep tone, “You deserve to be.”

Laura’s insides fluttered. She kissed his cheek again. “So do you,” she whispered. Lingering close, she swapped hands with the sponge and washed over his belly. It wasn’t rounded and protruding out the way some men’s bellies did, but was a thickening over his abdomen, still firm, but muscles no longer defined as she imagined they had been during his youth.

“I love your belly,” she confessed with a smile. “It’s comfortable.”

He chuckled, swept his fingertips over the top of her feet, drew his hands up along her shins. “I’m glad you think so.”

“I do,” she whispered with a kiss to the damp skin of his shoulder. She issued a command then. “Sit up.”

He obeyed and she washed him from neck to shoulders to behind, moving the sponge over him slowly, savoring the task. She washed his sides, too, his under arms and then his arms as far as she could reach. It was a perfunctory washing really since they’d both showered before climbing into the tub. But she had wanted to pamper him, an impulse she didn’t think she’d ever had with a man, and he was indulging her.

Setting the sponge on the side of the tub, Laura looped her arms under his and slid her hands over his chest, one coming to rest on his collarbone, the other on the rise of his belly. She pressed her cheek to his shoulder and sighed contentedly.

“Thank you.”

He shifted, his hands covering hers. “For what?”

She hugged him a little, replying, “For letting me do this.”

He turned his head toward her and she propped her chin on his shoulder, her nose touching his cheek. “You can do anything to me you want,” he rumbled.

It was a bold statement, but said so softly. “You trust me that much,” she realized.

“Yes.”

The word hung on the damp air around them, so simple, a single syllable, and yet it was so definitive, had been said so easily. Hearing it, the truth in it, made her hands ache to touch him all the more, made her ache to know every inch of him, to touch him in places he probably hadn’t been touched in years, at least not with tenderness or loving desire.

She knew how that felt, knew how dreadful the longing for a caring touch could become when you went without it for months or years. Hard, quick fraks didn’t count. The occasional hug of greeting didn’t count, and shaking hands sure didn’t. Human beings needed contact beyond those things. They needed to be caressed and held. Without it, a feeling of disconnection set in, which gave birth to a craving for those things. Some people would satisfy that craving anyway they could. Others refrained, not wanting it from just any source. Some just feared the vulnerability within themselves and denied the need all together.

Laura didn’t know about Bill, but she had been each of those people at one time or another in her life, but she had rarely been where she was now, with someone she trusted, who fulfilled that need without having to be asked, and met the flip-side of that need without question — the need to touch in return, to caress and hold, to be the person who fulfills those needs for another. It was a beautiful gift, a treasure she never wanted to be without again.

Kissing his shoulder, Laura whispered, “Will you stand?”

“Yeah,” he rumbled and moved his arms from around her knees. He placed his hands on either side of the tub and pushed himself up.

Soon as he was standing, Laura reached up and ran her hands over his ass, down to his legs. She picked up the sponge then and washed each limb, scrubbed at his cheeks. When he turned around, she washed his flanks and thighs, his knees and shins. She switched to a soft cloth, wetting it then bringing it up to gently wash his balls and then his cock. She gently kissed the head when she finished and looked up at him, saw him watching her curiously, yet tenderly.

“I want to do more,” she whispered up to him, her hands unsatisfied even as they lay on his thighs. They wanted to roam.

“Here?” he asked.

She shook her head, knowing that the water in the tub would be cooling soon and skin would begin to prune, ruining the web of intimacy that currently bound them. “Bed,” she breathed.

He reached for her hands in response and helped her to her feet. They exited the tub and dried off. Laura grabbed a couple dry towels and sent him toward the bedroom with them, asking him if he would put on some music, something soothing, while she searched her cabinet for a suitable lotion, one that didn’t smell like a woman’s scent. She didn’t want her soldier smelling like roses or fruit or some such thing.

Laura smiled when, at the back, she found an unopened package of massage oils, one she’d won in a blind gift exchange a couple years ago during solstice celebrations. At the time, with the odds of enjoying them with Richard non-existent, she’d put them away eventually forgetting about them. She was now glad she hadn’t thrown them out.

Taking them out of the package, she brought them to the bedroom where she found Bill loading a disc from her small collection into the music player. It was one of her favorites for when she couldn’t sleep. It featured atmospheric pieces by a musician who was part of the Caprica City Symphony, and it fit the mood of the evening well, calm and quietly sensual.

Sitting the oils on the bedside table, she took the folded towels, which he’d left on the bed, and spread them out. She glanced over to see Bill inspecting the bottles when he joined her.

“Pick one you like,” she told him as she retrieved the candles from the side of the tub and set them in a couple locations around the room. When she finished, she found him holding one of the bottles. It was the one she’d suspected he’d pick when she’d read the labels. “Urban spice,” she breathed, uncapping it and taking a sniff. She met his gaze. “Mmmm … this will be good on you.”

“You’re going to completely spoil me,” he rumbled, his blue eyes darkening with obvious desire.

“My prerogative,” she said softly. “Now lay on your belly. Every fighter needs a good rubdown.”

He chuckled with a soft “Yes, ma’am,” and got onto the bed as she directed.

He pillowed his head on his arms and she took a moment to just look at him, laying in her bed, bare ass up, his skin a dark gold in the light from the candles and the bedside lamps. He look so relaxed, a display of the utter trust he’d confessed just a bit ago. She couldn’t wait to touch him, to slick his skin with the oil, to acquaint her hands with every part of his body, something she had not really done before.

In considering that, she decided she had been woefully remiss. His body deserved the same loving care as he gave hers.

Climbing onto the bed, Laura knelt beside him. She started to open the bottle but then stopped, sealing it tight, before bending and pressing a soft kiss to his shoulder. He trembled and she watched gooseflesh rise across his body, telling her he hadn’t expected that to be her opening move. She repeated the action, kissing between his shoulder blades, then the dip in his spine, her drying hair dragging along his skin as she went.

Unable to resist, she kissed each of his cheeks, too, smiling and murmuring to him, “Now you can say I’ve kissed your ass.” He moaned at the kisses but chuckled at her words.

As she sat up, she glanced to see him grinning, his eyes closed. Reopening the bottle, she poured a few drops in her palm, knowing that a little goes a long way when it came to oils. She rubbed her hands together warming it then placed her hands on his back, starting at his shoulders and smoothing down the length in a single, tandem stroke. She felt him relax further under her hands, as if some hidden tension dissipated in an instant.

She continued, swapping directions, hands swapping sides and ascending to his shoulders again. On the next pass, she drew them down his sides firmly, swept over his hips to his behind again, rounding the toned globes slowly, lifting them slightly.

“Laura,” he breathed, arousal thickening his voice.

Laura smiled, thinking she’d found a place that might drive him wild. She cataloged that information for later and put a few more drops of oil in her hands before sliding them down the back of his thighs. They were thick and muscled, dusted with a smattering of dark, curling hairs. They gleamed with the oil when she drew her hands away, just like everywhere else she’d touched.

Reaching for his shoulders again, she gripped them and swung herself astride him, coming to rest on his backside. She let her eyes move over the expanse of his back, the sheen of oil and ambient light highlighting the contours of muscles normally unseen but that she’d felt many times.

Laura stroked them, lightly, firmly, leisurely then eased down to do the same with his ass, stroking and kneading, lifting to hear him moan once more. He definitely liked that. She smiled.

Moving downward still, she dismounted from the bed and leaned over to run her hands down the length of his legs to his feet, rubbing his thighs then working her thumbs tenderly into his calves and then massaging the soles of his feet, making him grunt and sigh. When he grew quiet, she asked him if he was falling asleep. He replied with a “no” that indicated sleep wasn’t an issue. Something else was, though, and she had her suspicions as to what confirmed when she asked him to turn over.

She smiled to see that he was half-hard. Her eyes met his hooded gaze as she took one of his feet in her hands and continued to rub it, his toes, the arch, the side and top. He continued to express his pleasure when she moved to the other foot, then, with fresh oil in her hands, inched her way up his legs, over his shins to his knees to his thighs.

Catching his gaze again, she smoothed her hands across his hips and around his sex, which had grown harder. She was tempted to take him in hand, but she wanted to wait, wanted to save that for the last, so she moved up his body, sitting on his thighs and gliding her hands over his belly and chest, slicking him with the oil.

As she leaned over him, his hands framed her face, brushed her hair back. He didn’t say a word, just touched her, caressed her as she caressed him, fingers skimming down her neck as she grazed hers over his.

Looking into his eyes, she caught one of his hands and worked her fingers against his, massaging the oil into this thick fingers, around his nails, his knuckles and palms. She then placed his hand on her breast and stroked his wrist and forearm, fingers tracing the prominent veins, enjoying the gentle undulations of the muscles beneath his skin as he kneaded her soft flesh.

When she reached his biceps, he slid his hand down to her waist, then to her hip and around to rub her behind. His other hand did the same and he guided her sex against his, sighing when his hardness slid against her gathering wetness. She would not need oil for that part of him, she realized as he rubbed himself against her.

Laura massaged his other arm as he continued to hold her and she fell into his rhythm, moving with him. She bowed over him then, her hands sliding around to the back of his neck stroking the corded muscles that ran from there to his shoulders.

Those dark blue eyes of his watched her face, never looked away even when she eased a hand down to cup his cock against her pussy, massaging him from both sides, slicking with her need, spreading it over him, mixing it with the warm pearls his own body supplied.

She slid down his body then and he let her go, let her settle again on his thighs and massage his heavy sac, and beneath, while she stroked his length, twisting her wrist as she ascended and descended, again and again, swirling her thumb over the tip, spreading his precum in a glistening sheen so different than the oil. It was sexy and erotic and it made her mouth water and her pussy clench deep inside.

Should she suck him or take him into her pussy and frak him? She didn’t know which she should do because she wanted them both. So she leaned forward and kissed him soft and heated, and gave him the choice, whispering, “Tell me what you want.”

“Suck me, Laura,” his voice thick with want, his eyes searching hers. “Suck me.”

Laura’s desire skyrocketed hearing him request that, using that word, so emphatic, his gaze communicating a need beyond even what he’d voiced. “You want to cum in my mouth,” she murmured.

“Yeah,” he rumbled low, confirming what she saw, then asked, “Okay?”

Laura nodded, kissed his mouth, then slid down his legs, murmuring, “I want that, too.”

< Hearth VI | Hearth VIII >