Chapter 22 Asher
Asher
Eva says I’m staring, and it’s probably true. I don’t want to look away from her as we sit in my kitchen nibbling dinosaur nuggets, holding hands. “You know,” she says around a bite of stegosaurus, “you’re starting to look like a caveman.”
I reach up to my beard. I haven’t felt up to grooming myself between the ankle and the loss of the only career I’ve ever known. “Yeah.”
Eva glances up at the clock in the kitchen. “We have a few hours before Gran is expecting us for family dinner.” She dabs at her mouth with a napkin. “What if I shave you?”
The suggestion lights up my circuit board completely. On the one hand, I look feral. On the other, there is no way I could contain myself while Eva stood in front of me holding a blade. “I’ll shave it.”
“But what if I want to?” She traces a socked-up toe along my calf. “I have a bar of goat milk soap from my sister… and I think it will be sexy.”
I swallow, unable to be chill a second longer after the word sex escapes her lips. I nod and stand abruptly, my chair skittering across the linoleum, and hobble toward the stairs and up to the bathroom.
I shed my shirt and sit on the toilet lid as Eva appears, holding a neatly wrapped cake of soap that smells of cedar and sage.
She grabs a towel, turns on the tap, and rummages around for my razor.
Somewhere along the way, she sheds her flannel until she’s in a white tank top, the cotton so thin I see the shadows of her areolas through the material.
She’s not wearing a bra, and I grip the edge of the counter to avoid mauling her while she’s holding something sharp.
Eva grins. She works a brush against the soap, building a lather that fills the small room with woodsy, herbal scent. I watch her hands—competent, precise, almost meditative in their circular motion. She is exquisite and, somehow, mine.
“Tilt your head back.”
I do, and she steps between my spread knees. The position puts her stomach at my eye level. Specifically, it puts the soft curve of her belly, visible through the thin cotton, approximately four inches from my mouth. I close my eyes.
“Keep still.” She starts applying the lather with the brush, working it into the grain of my beard with slow, deliberate strokes. The bristles are softer than I expected—almost ticklish on my throat. Her other hand cups the back of my head, steadying me, her fingers threaded into my hair.
This is going to be a problem.
“So,” Eva says, her voice casual in a way that means she’s about to say something important. “You want to talk about work?”
“There’s not much to say.” I keep my eyes closed as she works the brush along my jawline. “Clayton went to outer space. My skill set is apparently most valuable on the opposite coast from everything I care about.”
Eva’s brush pauses at my chin. “And your skill set is…”
“System architecture for low-bandwidth networks.” I exhale, trying to keep some of my blood in my brain when it all wants to pool in my cock. I open my eyes. She’s looking down at me with an expression that’s frustratingly hard to read. “It’s not exactly a booming market in Fork Lick.”
“Hmm.” She picks up the razor. “Hold still. I’m going to do your neck first.”
The first stroke of the blade makes me inhale sharply.
Not because it hurts—she’s careful, angling the razor just right, pulling the skin taut with her other hand.
It’s the intimacy of it. The vulnerability.
I’m sitting here with my throat exposed while a woman I love scrapes a blade along my pulse point.
Something about that trust feels as terrifying and exhilarating as saying those three words in the shower.
Wait. Do I love her?
Unquestionably yes.
Eva rinses the razor in the sink and returns for another stroke. “You know what I was thinking about?”
“Mm.” A sound, not a word. I don’t want to move my jaw while she’s working on it.
“That thing you told me about, how people in rural areas can’t get to specialists. How families in Fork Lick used to drive to a McDonald’s parking lot to do steal Wi-Fi before you fixed the internet out here.”
Another stroke. She tilts my chin to the left, her thumb pressing into the hinge of my jaw, and I feel the drag of the blade follow the contour of my throat. I grip the edge of the toilet seat; the alternative is gripping her hips.
“What about it?”
“You said something about telehealth. How the connectivity could be used to expand access to remote medical care. You got really worked up about it.” She smiles. “It was hot.”
I frown—or try to. “Don’t make me move my face.”
“Sorry.”
She dips the razor in the water again and starts on my right cheek with short, careful strokes that peel away the excess growth. Her wrist rests lightly against my collarbone as she works, and I long to lick her.
“But seriously. You said something about talking to the hospitals via Meow Mobile. What if you talked to them just as you?” She leans back to check her work, turning my face left and right with her fingertips.
A dollop of shaving lather transfers from my jaw to the heel of her palm, and she wipes it on the front of her shirt without thinking.
The soap leaves a wet, translucent streak across her left breast, and through the dampened cotton I can see the dark circle of her nipple, pebbled from the cooling air.
My cock twitches. Visibly. Eva glances down. Her lips part.
She does not mention it. Instead, she resumes shaving my cheek with a steadiness I find either admirable or diabolical.
I stare at the wet spot on her shirt, at the shape beneath it, and try to engage the part of my brain that processes career advice instead of the part that wants to pull her onto my lap and mouth the damp fabric until she moans.
“I don’t have a degree,” I manage.
“You built Meow Mobile from scratch. I think your resume speaks for itself. And I don’t have a degree either. I’m doing okay.” She shifts between my legs to get a better angle on my upper lip, and her thigh presses against my erection.
We both freeze.
“Sorry,” I say, my voice strained. “I can’t… it’s the… you’re…” I gesture vaguely at her entire situation: the thin shirt, the visible nipples, the soap, the razor, the fact that she is touching my face with more tenderness than I’ve experienced in my entire adult life.
Eva doesn’t move away. Her thigh stays exactly where it is, warm and firm against me. She tips my chin up with one finger and leans in close enough that I can feel her breath on my freshly shaved skin.
“I’m not sorry,” she says quietly. “I like that I do this to you.”
Then she goes back to shaving my upper lip.
The razor traces the curve above my mouth with aching precision.
She’s so close now that her breast—the one with the soap stain, the one I can see straight through the soiled shirt—is inches from my face.
I can smell the cedar of the shaving soap mixing with her skin, something floral underneath, something warm.
She finishes my upper lip and moves to my other cheek. I’m fully hard now, straining against my pants, and I’ve given up any pretense of hiding it. Eva works in silence for a moment, focused, the only sounds being the scrape of the blade and the soft splash of the razor in the sink.
“You could at least look into it,” she says softly. “The hospital thing. What’s the worst that happens?”
“They say no and I’m exactly where I am now.”
“Exactly. No downside.” She rinses the razor a final time and sets it on the counter. Then she picks up a towel, runs it under warm water, and presses it to my face. The heat blooms through my skin, and I groan at how good it feels.
“That’s not a terrible idea,” I admit, muffled through the towel. “The telehealth thing.”
“It’s a great idea. It was your idea.” She peels the towel away and studies my face. Her hand comes up to stroke my newly smooth jaw, her thumb tracing along the line of it with a softness that makes my knees weak. “There he is. I can see your whole face now.”
“And?”
“And you’re fucking hot.” Her thumb traces from my jaw to my lower lip, tugging it down slightly.
She’s still standing between my legs, her body bracketed by my knees, close enough I can feel the heat of her.
Her eyes drop to where I’m straining against the fabric of my pants and then back up to my face.
“Can I?” she asks.
I don’t trust my voice, so I nod.
Eva sinks to her knees between my legs on the bathroom tile. She runs her palms up my thighs, slow and deliberate, watching my face as she goes. When she reaches my waistband, she hooks her fingers in and tugs everything down. I lift my hips to help, and my cock springs free, hard and aching.
“Hi again,” she murmurs, and despite everything—the job loss, the fear, the uncertainty about the future—I laugh.
“You’re going to greet him every time?”
“It’s only polite.” She wraps her hand around me, and I hiss. Her grip is firm and sure, her thumb sweeping over the head where I’m already leaking. “Is this okay? I want you to feel good.”
“Eva.” Her name is a reflexive groan. “It’s so much more than okay.”
She strokes me slowly, her other hand on my thigh, fingers curling into the muscle. She watches my face with an intensity that makes me feel like the most important thing in the world.
She leans forward and takes me into her mouth, and my hands fly to her hair. I try to be gentle—threading my fingers through the dark strands instead of gripping—but when her tongue does something obscene against the underside of my cock, my fist clenches involuntarily.
“Sorry…”
She pulls back just enough to say, “Don’t be. I like it.” Then she takes me deeper, and I stop apologizing.
The sounds she makes—wet, eager, unhurried—echo off the bathroom tiles. Her hand works the base of me in time with her mouth, and the combination is so good it borders on cruel. I’m already close.