Mistakes Were Made(41)

“I didn’t mean to make you feel—” She swallowed. Cleared her throat. “I did, actually. This morning, and before, too, when you called about Thanksgiving. The point was to make you feel bad. To push you away. But I didn’t want to.”

“That’s still not an apology.”

Erin took a breath and walked to the shower door. She looked at Cassie, who was still just a blob behind the frosted glass. She couldn’t tell if Cassie was looking back, but she must’ve been, right?

“I am sorry,” Erin said. “I brought up your mom, and you’re right. I know nothing about her or your relationship with her, and that crossed a line. It was cruelty for the sake of cruelty. You didn’t deserve that.”

It was quiet for a moment, no sound but the water hitting the wall, the floor, Cassie’s body.

“I’m sorry I called you a cunt,” Cassie said.

Erin normally wasn’t a huge fan of that word, but God, she liked hearing Cassie say it.

“I’m sorry I was being a cunt.”

“Is there a reason you couldn’t wait until after I showered to tell me this?” Cassie suddenly sounded like she had that first night at the bar. Erin didn’t know what had changed, but the smirk was back in Cassie’s voice. “You talked a big game on the phone about how I wasn’t that irresistible and you’d be able to control yourself, but you don’t seem to be.”

“Cassie,” Erin said, a warning or a concession or maybe both.

Cassie opened the shower door.

Erin looked only at her face, at first. Cassie didn’t break eye contact. When Erin finally dropped her gaze to Cassie’s body, she said her name like a curse word.

In the car, Erin had gotten a good look at her chest—as good as she could get in a dark parking lot, anyway—but Cassie’s pants had stayed on. Here, she was fully, gloriously naked. Here, the lighting was just fine. Here, Erin watched water run down Cassie’s body and her own mouth went dry. It was the body of a twenty-one-year-old. Erin thought of her crow’s-feet, of the soft pouch of her stomach she’d never gotten rid of after giving birth. Cassie had no such flaws.

“Cassie,” Erin said again. She had forgotten every other word.

Cassie said, “Please,” want dripping from the word, and Erin pulled her shirt over her head.

She didn’t have a bra on, nor underwear, as she stepped out of her yoga pants, and Cassie stared like her body was perfect. Erin didn’t let her look. The shower was not made for two people, but they fit like puzzle pieces, their edges lining up just right. With the shower door closed behind her, steam billowed around them. Cassie’s nipples were hard like it was cold.

Erin’s hands found Cassie’s hips and pushed until her back was against a wall. Cassie put her hands on Erin’s shoulders.

“This is a terrible idea,” Erin said. She kissed Cassie anyway.

This. This was why Erin couldn’t get Cassie out of her head. The way she bit at Erin’s mouth with no regret. The way she clung to her. Cassie didn’t cede an inch. She kissed Erin just as hard as Erin was kissing her.

Erin couldn’t stop, even though there were other things she wanted to do with her mouth. When she finally moved to nip at Cassie’s neck, the other woman let out a moan that made Erin pin her entire body to the wall with just her hips.

“Christ, Erin.”

Erin sucked hard at the junction where Cassie’s neck met her shoulder. Then she moved lower.

Cassie’s breasts were perfect. Soft but firm. Pert. Not dragged down by decades spent fighting gravity. Erin closed her lips around a nipple. Everything was wet and warm from the shower. Erin bit down harder than she meant to, but Cassie arched into her like she didn’t mind at all.

Erin was going to regret this. For so many reasons, but the one she thought of as she moved lower was that she was much too old to be kneeling in a bathtub. She’d have to pop a couple ibuprofen later, because now that she was down there, she planned to stay awhile.

She tapped Cassie’s left thigh, then got impatient, lifting the leg herself and draping it over her shoulder. Warm water cascaded down Erin’s back, but the heat from Cassie was warmer. Erin leaned into it.

Fuck.

Erin hadn’t given cunnilingus to anyone since college. Early college, even, before she and Adam started dating. Almost two decades. She’d forgotten how good it was. She must’ve. Because it had to be the act itself, rather than Cassie, that made her feel like this. She no longer noticed the bite of the floor into her knees.

Cassie gasped, and Erin opened her eyes. She wouldn’t be closing them again, not when she could watch Cassie, one hand in her own hair and the other arm stretched out, flat against the shower wall. Erin’s tongue slipped through Cassie’s hot wet flesh. She chased the taste deeper. Cassie slapped her other palm against the wall. Her fingers scrambled for purpose and one hand caught the cubbyhole where the body wash and hair products sat. Erin watched her grip tighten right before Cassie’s hips rolled harder into her mouth.

Cassie’s blue eyes were not on Erin’s, but aimed lower, where Erin’s tongue dragged through her folds. Cassie’s hips rolled again and Erin took advantage of it, sliding her hands around to squeeze the firm roundness of Cassie’s ass. Cassie bit her bottom lip and groaned, and Erin came right there, on her knees in the shower, face pressed into Cassie.