17. Seventeen
Seventeen
Ihave never masturbated.
Until thirty-seven minutes ago, I assumed it was something people only did if they were single.
Which, I guess, by some criteria, Camp is. Even though we’re married. Real but fake. Or fake but real.
Even though Camp and I have our issues, even though I know as sure as the sky is blue this marriage isn’t working, watching him—hearing him—was one of the hottest things I’ve ever experienced.
I’ve read some of the smutty books Scotty reads. I know hot—but this was hot.
More shocking was when he strolled into the kitchen after—leaning in and getting all low-voiced and close—making heat pool like I’d dumped the entire pot of coffee in my underwear. Confusing me. And my vagina.
Either way, Camp jerking off in the shower revealed some kind of secret on what it means to be human. Like maybe the entire world knew it was okay to make yourself feel good, but nobody told me. Honestly, I’m kind of pissed that Scotty never told me about the regularity of people having sex with themselves. She’s ground zero for all things taboo; if anyone knows this, it’s her.
I’ve never considered myself a prude, at the same time, I became aware of my sexuality in my teenage years and Camp was there. We learned together. He taught me about my body, and I taught him about his.
On top of the visual I can’t turn off, the need to know what he was thinking of has my imagination going wild. Was he thinking of someone he knows? Is it traditional sex that he imagines? Or a mouth? Or . . . ?
When my own legs squeeze together, I physically shake my head to pull myself out of the spiral.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. There is no together. At least, not for much longer—only fifty more days. Who or what drives Camp to grab himself in the shower has nothing to do with me.
But my body doesn’t care about any of these things. After last night and then this morning—logic is gone. As of this moment, I have one thought: If Camp gets to feel good, so do I.
And I won’t feel bad about that. If I want a retaliatory orgasm, I’ll have one. That I create.
I reach into the shower, spin the knob, and wait for the water to heat. I peel off my clothes, nervous when I step into the hot stream. My body trembles like I’m on a first date.
With myself.
I tilt my head toward the water, slicking my hair back.
I can do this.
I will.
Forcing my hand to move, I grab my chest with a squeeze. My breasts, nowhere near as perky as they once were, fill my palms. I fondle my fingers around my nipples.
I feel nothing close to pleasure.
Moving with a bit more aggression, my own skin feels completely awkward and the antithesis of good in my hands.
My frustrated groan echoes off the tile. It already takes an act of Congress for me to have an orgasm, why I think I can do this by myself is beyond me.
No.
Independent women act like independent women— I heard that on a podcast once.
I can do this.
Back to the tile, water bouncing around the walls and pinging against my skin, I bring my hand to my breast again—just the fingertips—tracing a line across my chest, down the curve of my waist, to the outer line of my hip. I hesitate, then move it inward. Across the firmness of my hip to the softness of my low belly.
Between my thighs.
Fumbling, I rake my teeth over my lower lip, water blasting my chest.
My body is foreign in my own hands, so I close my eyes and pretend they aren’t mine.
Camp would make circles, use knuckles— no.
This is not about Camp.
My head drops back; I start moving my hand. Pressure and strokes. Faster then slower. Better not great. Closer but—
“June!” a voice shouts. “I forgot my ba—”
My eyes fly open—one hand on a breast, the other between my legs—and there’s Camp, on the other side of the foggy glass, eyes dragging from my face to my hands.
“June.” He repeats my name, a throaty sound like he’s tasting all the letters. His eyes study my body like they’ve never seen it before as he moves toward the shower, stopping at the other side of the glass. And here we are: Him staring at me, stupefied, while I stand like a middle-aged, masturbating statue, humiliated.
I pinch my knees together.
“Uh . . . This isn’t what it looks like,” I lie, water spitting out of my mouth as I talk.
He nods, serious, brown eyes turning to black coals as a swallow drags down the column of his throat.
“Do you want me to leave?” he asks, eyes hooked with mine.
Yes; I say nothing, only moving to bring one arm to hide my chest while spreading the fingers of the hand between my legs to hide the space I was failing to please.
He wraps his fingers around the handle and opens the door.
Don’t you dare; I say nothing.
Fully clothed, he steps in the shower, positioning himself in front of me, not flinching as the water pelts him.
Leave; I say nothing.
My mouth betrays me and will not tell him to get the hell out of here. Fully clothed and soaking wet, Camp stands so close to me his chest touches the forearm covering my chest as we breathe.
Water drips down his face and clings to his mustache before slipping to his lips.
Tension seizes me and my breathing becomes a ragged, wet kind of sound, similar to a fish out of water.
Arms hanging by his sides, he clenches and unclenches his fists, like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Welcome to the club.
“Have you ever done this?” he asks, voice raspy and a new level of deep as water turns his blond hair brown before dripping down his face and clinging to his jaw.
“Y-yes,” I lie.
His jaw pops, chin drops. He studies my naked body again before he lifts his head, eyes searching mine. “And?”
“And?” My toes curl against the tile floor as my fingernails dig into my own chest. I refuse to look away from him.
“And what do you do?”
Water from the tile bounces onto my skin; I open my mouth, but once again it betrays me because it says nothing.
At my silence, his eyes flare in a kind of understanding before a smirk tugs at his lips. The bastard knows I’m lying.
“Has it been so long you forgot?”
Son. Of. A. Bitch.
My eyes narrow. “No,” I say, water clinging to my eyelashes. “I do this all the time. Alone.” I pause, water pelting around us, then add, “Which was why I was surprised earlier when I-I-I saw you doing the same. Because I was glad for you. Because I always do this.” And, for good measure: “Alone.”
He doesn’t bother hiding the smirk that’s now permanently slanted across his face. “What. Do. You. Do?” he asks, punctuating each word, cool, calm, and smug as shit as water soaks him completely.
He doesn’t think I can do it; I see it all over him. He’s calling my bluff.
This idea alone—that Camp doesn’t believe I can get my freak on with myself—pushes me forward.
I watched a movie once where a woman found herself in a particularly lonely situation in a bathroom. She used the: “Showerhead,” I blurt through the spraying water, my own eyes widening as his eyebrows raise. “I use the showerhead.”
He licks his lips, droplets covering the entirety of his mustache. “The showerhead?” he asks, skeptical.
I wipe water from my face then re-cover my chest, lifting my chin slightly. “The showerhead.”
“Really?” he asks. “How?”
“How?”
“You heard me, J—how?”
Oh no.
I swallow.
His eyebrows raise, challenging me.
I have to do this.
I eye the showerhead for three pounding beats of my heart then reach a shaking arm overhead, my copper hair webbing across the fair skin of my chest and shoulders. He stands upright, watching me as I wrap my fingers around it and remove it from the holder.
Shaky in my hand, water stops raining from overhead and now ricochets around the stall, deflecting from the tile to us. I stare at the nozzle like it’s a stick of dynamite and awkwardly try to re-hide myself with my arm and showerhead that’s now spraying water directly at Camp’s chest.
“Show me.”
“I-I—” can’t do this . I don’t even know what to do. I look away from him, more humiliated than I was when he walked in and found me. I don’t know what to do and he knows it.
Our silence seems eternal, and I’m so embarrassed I might cry. Or vomit down the drain. Or both.
“I bet I know,” he says, making my head—slowly—turn toward him.
He wipes a hand down his face, clearing the water, and takes the showerhead from my hand.
I say nothing.
He points the stream of water against the forearm covering my chest, sliding it up and down the outside of my arm, from wrist to shoulder. “I bet you start somethin’ like this.” He smirks, but it’s not smug. Not anymore. He’s being gentle. “I bet you start like this to get relaxed.”
As the warm stream pulsates against me and massages my skin, I look from him to my arm back to him.
I swallow; maybe nod, maybe not.
He drags the water across my arm and onto my chest. When I try to cover myself, he stops me. “No,” he says, voice low as he shakes his head and moves my hands to my side. “I don’t think you hide from yourself.”
Water streams across my chest, fear and anticipation becoming a noose tight around my neck. He directs the water across every slope and curve of my breasts, my nipples tightening so severely I look to see if they’re bleeding. “I bet you go here next.” He moves from the peak of one breast to the other. “Like this?”
I swallow, force myself to nod.
My rapid-fire thoughts: What is he doing? Should this be happening? Dear Camp, please fuck me.
He moves down, pressure builds.
As he massages my belly, the room quiets with all the water pressing into my skin, and a small whimper escapes my lips.
I might orgasm before he touches me where I need it, and I do not want that to happen.
“And here?”
At my belly button, he yo-yos the showerhead down then up, down then up, going lower with every dip.
I watch him, and there’s a tenderness in the way he looks and touches me. He’s helping me. I see it in the way he moves, the way he watches me—he sees I can’t do something and is showing me how.
“Yes,” I manage. “And there.”
He presses a palm against the tile, chest not touching mine, as we both look down to where he wedges the showerhead between my thighs and spreads my legs open. I fight it, but just barely.
“How’m I doin’, J?” he asks, rubbing his nose against my jaw in a way that feels so sweet I almost cry. “This where you go?”
I nod—weak—before dropping my head back as the showerhead glides between my legs. Water shoots on me, in me, and makes an ache throb deep in my belly.
“Yes,” I grunt, my back arching off the wall. “And there.”
I hate that he’s doing this, hate that I like it, hate that I never want it to stop.
“What are you thinkin’?” he asks as my body moves with less control between the tiled wall and him.
Our eyes lock; I cannot find the courage to tell him the truth. Cannot confess that he’s giving me something I desperately need and can’t give myself.
It’s seconds like that—me silent, water shooting, pressure building, my body responding, him staring—until he finally leans in and brings his mouth to my ear.
“I was thinkin’ of you, J,” he rasps, every syllable sounding like sex and honey. “When you saw me—it was you. I was imaginin’ me makin’ you scream my name as I bent you over in this shower and slid inside of you.”
Three.
Two.
One.
Blastoff!
That visual is all it takes.
Between the pulse of the water and the way Camp’s words sing through me like a siren’s call in this shower, pleasure wrecks every cell of my body, and I scream, loud.
My body convulses between the wet tile and his hard body. He doesn’t move—not his body or the showerhead—as I whimper and writhe and wonder if I’m about to black out.
He leans in, pinning my hips to the wall as he keeps the showerhead wedged between my legs and relentlessly sprays me stupid. Just when I think I can’t feel any better, Camp says, “Let it go, baby,” and my bones melt. His baby turns me into a wet noodle against the wall, and sensitive pleasure begins to toe the line of pain across my whole body.
The showerhead drops and bangs against the wall with a loud clack! as it swings from its cord. Water once again sprays around the stall.
Fully clothed, fully hard, for the first time in years, I want my husband in a very dirty way.
His hips rock against mine; we stare. Panting, horny, and soaking wet.
“How did you know—how did you know . . . ?” I ask, mouth so close to his I feel his mustache on my lips when I talk. “I didn’t know what to do.”
“I know,” he says, lifting his chin just enough I feel his mustache tickle my nose. “I know you.”
I swallow, hating that he does.
Water drips down his smooth jaw, hangs from his hair, his eyebrows, and trickles down the line of his nose.
He brings a hand to my jaw and rubs a thumb over my lips, the forbidden fruit of our arrangement. Don’t you dare kiss me internally clashes with Shove your damn tongue down my throat as deep as it will go.
“J, I need you to know that—”
A phone rings.
Twice.
Camp’s.
From his bag I now notice in the middle of the bathroom floor. Which explains why he’s here.
It rings again, a loud reminder of real life.
“You should get that,” I say, breath shaky.
When it rings again then beeps from a voicemail, he nods as he takes a step back. He looks at me like he’s seeing all the way into my soul before dragging a hand down his face. “Yeah,” he says.
He opens the shower door, moves to the middle of the bathroom floor where water puddles as he checks his phone. Without saying a word, he peels off his wet clothes and quickly redresses without a hint of what he just did. What we just did. What we almost just did.
Without breathing, I watch every move he makes.
On his way out of the bathroom, he looks over his shoulder, to where I’m still standing in the middle of the shower, water bouncing off the glass around me as my heart bangs in my chest.
He opens his mouth, but seems to think better of it, because instead of saying anything, he picks his wet clothes up from the floor and he’s gone.