Chapter 30
Ash
Ash crouches down, slumping onto the floor of her room.
Her chest rises and falls as she breathes deeply.
She closes her eyes. Notes the swirling doubt in the pit of her stomach.
She told herself she wouldn’t chase love any more.
She’s enough as she is, and so if CJ doesn’t want to stake her claim by planting her flag and saying how she actually fucking feels, Ash isn’t going to coach her through it just so she can feel like she has been chosen.
She talks herself through slowly, reluctantly, choosing herself, until she gets up, gingerly heads to the bathroom, peeling off her clothes and slipping off her shoes to turn on the scalding water of the shower, to let it all wash away: every thought of CJ, like being baptised anew.
She lathers her hair, lets the soapsuds run down her slick, naked body, down into the plughole, until she is clean, and calm, and ready for sleep.
As she turns off the water and grabs a towel, Ash becomes cognisant of voices. She wraps a smaller towel around her wet hair, straining to hear, and opens the bathroom door to get a better read of what’s happening. Then she realises, it isn’t voices, plural, it is just one voice.
‘And so there you have it, OK? I’m an idiot.’
‘CJ?’ Ash says, confused. She hears CJ take a sharp intake of breath.
‘Oh, thank God,’ CJ says. ‘I thought you were going to ignore me forever. Jesus.’
Ash pulls back the door to reveal CJ, so close she must have had her head resting against the wood.
‘I was in the shower,’ Ash says, like the towel and still-wet skin don’t give that away. ‘Sorry. Have you been here long?’
CJ issues a small guffaw that Ash takes to mean yah, fool.
‘I didn’t hear what you said,’ Ash says.
As soon as the words leave her mouth she understands. Ash doesn’t have to have heard what CJ said. She’s here. That fact speaks for itself.
‘Oh.’
And then CJ’s mouth is on hers, CJ’s hands cupping her face, pulling her in like a wave dragging Ash under, and she submits, willingly, happily, hungrily, melting underneath CJ’s purposefulness.
Ash stumbles back, CJ kicking the door closed behind them.
The towel from her head is already slipping off, so she pulls it, lets her tangled wet hair fall around her shoulders as CJ continues to probe at her mouth with her tongue.
Ash holds the waistband of CJ’s jeans, uses it to pull her close so their belly buttons are pressed against one another.
But it’s not enough. Ash doesn’t want to be smushed up alongside CJ, she wants to be CJ, she wants two bodies to become one, to do this thing they should have done days ago, weeks ago. CJ pulls away.
‘Can I?’ she says, quietly, a hand on the top of Ash’s towel, where one bit is tucked into another to hold it in place.
‘Let me,’ replies Ash. She peels the towel open, throws it to the ground. Standing before CJ naked is the most naked she has ever felt in her life.
CJ looks into her eyes, as if seeking permission to take in the spectacle of her, and she blushes, shyly, when she finally looks down at Ash’s chest. She lets out a small laugh of disbelief, and Ash receives the compliment by sitting down on the bed, shifting herself back, and sprawling out on her forearms so that CJ might see the whole of her.
She stretches like a cat, lengthening herself to her best angles, toes pointed, legs flexed, back arched.
She watches CJ drink it all in, a look Ash has never seen before floating across her features.
To see CJ desire her is to be turned on, and so she parts her legs, just a small amount, just enough so that there is truly no going back.
‘I want to touch you,’ CJ whispers.
Ash nods. ‘So touch me,’ she says.
‘I want to taste you,’ CJ adds.
‘So taste me.’
CJ pops the button of her jeans and shimmies out of them so that she’s in her vest top and a black thong.
Her legs are strong, rippled with muscle.
She pulls down her underwear, too, then her top.
Her tits are pendulous and ripe, nipples like dusky pink marshmallows.
She’s the same bronzed colour across her whole body, not a tan-line in sight.
Ash allows herself a smile. She is about to, in no uncertain terms, fuck CJ silly. She’s perfect.
‘Come here,’ Ash says, surprising herself with how sure she sounds, how bossy.
CJ crawls across the bed until she’s got a hand either side of Ash’s head, lowering herself for a slow, sensuous kiss.
They stay like that, CJ suspended over Ash, Ash reaching up for more, more, more.
She arches her back again, looking for CJ, yearning for her, heat building between her legs, in her veins, pulsating so that her entire body is more alive than it’s been in so very, very long.
‘I don’t really know what I’m doing,’ CJ says into Ash’s mouth, but of course it doesn’t matter because, if this is not knowing what she’s doing, the pair of them are going to be just fine.
‘I do,’ says Ash, and the night passes in an ecstatic, sweaty, fucking sensational blur.