“You can step on my Turkish rugs now. I don’t mind.”
They were going to take their clothes off. Kia was going to shower with Alice Sullivan. She wished she could catapult herself back in time for a minute, grab the hands of her twenty-year-old self, and jump up and down with her.We’re going to do it!
“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Sullivan said.
“Chef Sullivan, I’ve wanted to see you naked since the day I met you.”
“At the grange?”
“At school.”
“In Introductory Pureeing Techniques?”
“Yes. In Introductory Pureeing Techniques.”
“I must be quite something. That class was fascinating.” Sullivan turned on the shower.
“Only because you were in it. Now take off your clothes already, Chef Sullivan.”
Slowly, Sullivan stripped off the layers of her clothing. Kia watched her. Sullivan’s body was everything. Muscular legs. Full breasts. Her abs defined enough to say,I hike up and down mountains on purpose, her belly soft enough to say,Just because I cook organic doesn’t mean I live on microgreens.
“Help me out of this bra?” Sullivan asked.
Kia laughed as the bra stuck around Sullivan’s ribs.
“I’m not good at this.”
“No one is good at wet sports bra.”
Kia pulled her shirt over her own head and turned her back so Sullivan could unclasp her lace bra.
“Some of us are not that complicated.” Kia tossed a smile over her shoulder.
Sullivan unclasped Kia’s bra. The shiver that ran through Kia’s body had nothing to do with the cold. She felt Sullivan’s eyes caress her as she undressed down to her underwear, then whisked it off before she lost her nerve, even though Sullivan had seen her naked in the living room posing with the Janice Domingos.
She stepped toward Sullivan and let her fingertips glide down Sullivan’s side. The way Sullivan shivered made Kia feel more confident. Sullivan had said she loved sex. She loved being in her body. Kia might not be experienced, but Sullivan still wanted to be touched. Kia drew Sullivan under the water. Mud streamed off them both.
“Turn around,” she said.
Sullivan turned around, and Kia ran a bar of soap over Sullivan’s neck and shoulders, down her back. Sullivan let out a soft moan of appreciation. It was exhilarating. Kia was touching Sullivan. Sullivan liked it. After all these years, a fantasy Kia had never shared with anyone—why would she when it was so impossible it was embarrassing?—was coming true.
She ran her hands over Sullivan’s tattoos.
“What do they mean?”
Sullivan glanced at her arms as though she’d forgotten she had tattoos.
“This one… um…”
Sullivan’s eyelids were heavy. She was blissed out by Kia’s touch. Alice Sullivan had lost her words because Kia was touching her, holding her hand in one of her own and running the fingertips of her other hand up and down Sullivan’s arm.
“That one is a pagoda near where I worked in Japan. Stylized. You can see the rooftops in the triangular lines.”
Tattoos wrapped all the way around her arms, almost to her armpit. On the right, the designs covered her shoulder too. Sullivan turned her arm so Kia could see the delicate skin on her inner upper arm.
“Showoff,” Kia murmured.
“Why?”
