(Rated Rg2: For Mature Readers)

Nature’s Bathfall, Calif.–8:26 p.m., Pamper-Her-Friday:

“Turn off the phone.
“You heard me; turn the phone off–now.”

(The Android icon signs off and her screen goes black.)

“Log off and shut down the tablet.
“Yes, shut it down. Now.”

(The tiles on her Surface disappear and the touchscreen fades to black.)

The antique tub sits provocatively silent save the cloudlike whirls of steam defying gravity as they hover just above the H2O’s surface, ascending into the private room’s atmosphere before evaporating into the warm, organic candle-scented air that oxygenates the bath enclosure.
He approaches her standing, stilled, calm-before-the-quiet-storm body, clothed only by a thickly luxurious terry cloth robe–her back to his front.

Stealth-like, harmlessly predator-like, he bridges the last ray-of-light distance between their bodies, like a door now only slightly ajar, and breathes on the delicate curvatures of her shoulders,
the surface skin area of each clavicle seemingly inviting his warm exhalations as they travel methodically toward her neck, deftly climbing the vertebrae at a snail’s pace until she feels the pulsating warmth near the anterior of her ear.

“Mmmm,” she helplessly sighs.

His hands–those hands–part repairman, part sportsman, part landscapeman, part chiropractor, part masseur . . . all gentle yet confident lover describe the composition of his palms and fingers that envelop her hands, her wrists, her forearms, gliding meticulously along her biceps, the robe sleeves giving way at
each half-inch while the terry’s neckline now rests at her mid-back.

Off comes the cloth, meeting the floor with a barely audible thud while draping her hindfeet. He nudges her forward, his body on hers, his breaths faintly perceptible upon the smooth mass of her upper back.

He kneels, cradles her interior knees and torso with his toned arms, and positions her entire body from vertical to horizontal against his chest, like a hard-bodied crane lifting a tender tree
from effortless ground clearance to weightlessness.

He positions her parallel to the awaiting tub’s flower petal-sprinkled, hot spring water-filled mouth and begins a slow-motion, instant replay-like descending of her tingling-from-head-to-toe body, gently breaking the surface of the hot pond.

The sponge he takes, as if a months-long-trained womanwasher, and begins a symphony violin lathering upon her shoulder, her arm the instrument, his hand the bow.

She closes her eyes, takes in a series of deep breaths and lets each go as if exhaling away all cares, concerns, worries, and burdens at each release.

Every part of her is his–the pamperer’s.

And the only words her mind can conjure in the moment are, “Heaven is upon me.”

It is.

Because it’s Friday.

Pamper-Her-Friday.

***

Romance lives. -Rg2