That doesn’t sit well with me. Even though I’ve spent so much time trying to break her. Trying to eliminate that defiance and stubbornness and hardheadedness. To force her into submission to me.
And here she is. Right at the brink of all that. It wouldn’t take much to push her over the edge and break her beyond repair. Yet I don’t want it. I won’t have it.
I’ll deal with fucking Jason Travis at a later date.
Right now. Dele.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” I decide and reach my hand out to her.
She doesn’t want me to touch her. But I’m hoping she’ll allow this as a first step.
She considers my hand for a moment. Then sighs and places her hand in mine.
I take her to the extravagant bathroom and sit her on the bench next to the large sunken tub while I run a bath filled with a bunch of bubbles and bath bombs provided complimentary. I take Dele’s hand again and guide her to the bath. She steps inside, not discarding the Revnor’s jacket until she’s fully submerged up to her shoulders in the water.
I strip off my clothes and get in with her.
I take a washcloth off the side and sit on the ledge in the water on the opposite side to where she is.
“Come here,” I say.
It’s not request. But it’s also not a command. She just stares at me warily regardless.
“Let me wash you off,” I say.
This time, she makes her way over and sits next to me to allow me to wash her. I start in relatively safe places first. Her arms. Her shoulders. All the while, I ignore how tense she is. Slowly, I move down to her breast and stomach, and slowly she relaxes into my touch. I wait until she’s completely relaxed again before I put the cloth on her thigh under the water.
“Can I? Or do you want to do it?”
It takes a while, but she finally answers, “You can do it.”
I continue my cleaning of her. Carefully wiping and scrubbing her thighs, coaxing her legs apart to clean her inner thighs and pelvic area. If this were any other time, I might take the moment to stick a finger into her pussy. To make her come on my fingers before sitting her in my lap and fucking her without abandon.
But she wouldn’t be receptive to that right now. And it would undo what I’m trying to do here.
Once I’m done with her body, I grab another cloth, wet it in the water and ring it over the top of her head to make sure it’s completely wet before taking the complimentary shampoo and washing her hair.
I haven’t put my hands in her hair like this since before Pray. And back then she had a lot less of it. Now it’s even longer and thicker and wavier and takes more time that it took the last time I did this. After that night I rescued her. After a doctor looked over her to make sure she was relatively healthy despite her ordeal, and I took her to me and Phae’s house, put her in the shower and got in with her just like this to clean her when Dele couldn’t bring herself to do it. Not just that night, but for weeks after while she mentally recovered and wasn’t up to doing anything.
If there was a time that I ever got close to cheating on Phae, it was during that time. When I was the only one Dele would let touch her. When it was clear she was desperate to not feel the phantom touches of the men who harmed her.
It took everything in me to turn Dele down when she’d explicitly asked me to fuck her.
The most I would give her was in those showers and washing her with my own hands every day for weeks.
When her hair is cleaned and conditioned, we just sit there. And finally, after a while, Dele doesn’t shy away from me, leans into me, and falls asleep exhausted.