Looking between us, she sighed. “Okay, but I don’t want him getting hurt.”
“Look at the size of his teeth,” I snorted, wincing slightly at the cracking noise as they crunched through the treat. “I doubt he’ll get hurt.”
Satisfied with that, Zuri did something that took me by surprise. Leaning over, she pressed a soft kiss to the corner of my mouth. “Thank you so much for getting me Clyde. I was already blown away by the intricate beauty of my jellyfish, but I’ve always wanted a dog of my own and couldn’t have one. I can’t believe he’s mine.”
Wait until I told Mrs. O’Jones about this. She said it was maybe too much, but I’d totally scored.
Taking the opportunity to kiss her back but stopping when I remembered where his mouth had been, I kissed the top of her head instead. “You’re welcome, pretty girl. And he’s definitely yours. You’ve even got a certificate in amongst the shit in my car that proves it.”
Squealing, she clapped her hands together and bounced on her knees. “I’m so freaking excited. I need to find the perfect place to put all of his stuff. Do the bowls go wherever he is in the house? How would we move them to wherever he is when I go back to work? What about the bed? Shouldn’t he have one in every room? There’s tinned food, but wouldn’t fresh be better for him? Does he have enough toys? What about—”
Unable to hold back, I decided I didn’t care that she’d be licked all over by a dog, I could wash my mouth later, and shut her up by kissing her. Immediately she melted into me, and I’d just flicked her top lip with the tip of my tongue when a cold, wet nose pressed against our cheeks, and hot, mostly unpleasant, breaths were panted right against our faces.
Wiping frantically at my face, I pulled away from her and pointed with my other hand at him. “No cock blocking, or you’re getting your nuts cut off.”
And, just to prove he was a little skeeze, he whined at Zuri like he was looking for protection, earning me a glare from her.
Game on.
Later that night, it was time to wash Zuri’s hair again. I was pretty sure I should hate doing it, but that was far from how I actually felt as I ran my fingers through the soft, long, black strands.
The first time I’d done it, I’d ended up drenched because I kept angling the showerhead wrong and getting myself with it, so now I wore a pair of cut off old grey sweats and no t-shirt.
And tonight I was changing where I stood while I did it and standing pressed up against her back, but not because I didn’t want to get wet. No, because I was changing shit up between us, even washing her hair.
With my crotch pressed lightly against her ass, I leaned over her back and massaged the shampoo into her scalp, smiling when she groaned.
“Feels that good, huh?”
“You have no idea,” she sighed, her voice audible over the sound of the water.
Slowly, I dragged my fingers through the length of the strands, something that made goosebumps pop up over my arms. Was I really getting turned on by her hair? Fuck yes, I was.
I could have asked her to lift the showerhead she was holding for me, but instead, I leaned over her, being careful of her stitches, and took it out of her hand, loving how she shuddered. The good news was, there was still conditioner to go, and I wanted to see how far I could go with her like this.
It might sound like a dirty trick, but I wanted her badly. I hadn’t been in the right place mentally or physically when I’d first met her to do anything other than being friends, but once I was settled here and I had my future in place, I’d made a plan to gauge to see if she felt any interest in me other than friendship.
Every time I ‘accidentally’ brushed my hand over hers, she’d take a gasping breath in. When I brushed my body against hers when I leaned in for something, she’d shudder. Then there were the times I’d catch her staring at my mouth.
Somehow, even with all of the touching, heck, even with the pecks on the lips and hints I’d dropped, it’d never clicked for her that we could be more than friends. Now, she knew, especially after that kiss, and I wasn’t going to back away unless she said no.
Passing the showerhead down to her, I leaned over again, only just holding back the groan when my dick slotted perfectly in the crevice between her two butt cheeks and picked up the conditioner.
This time, when I stood up again, I didn’t move my hips away. Instead, I kept the position and placement of my dick, poured conditioner into my hands, and then repeated what I’d done with the shampoo.
I preferred doing the conditioner to shampoo on her. With shampoo, when I rubbed it into the length of her hair, it went slightly tangled and knotty, and I always worried about hurting her when my fingers accidentally tugged on it. As soon as conditioner touched her hair, though, the knots seemed to slide out of it, and my fingers breezed through it.
I was doing just that when she started chuckling, the slight movement of her ass almost making me go cross-eyed.
“You always make this sighing noise when you put conditioner on,” she snickered. “It’s kind of cute.”
Gliding my fingers through the next section of hair, I admitted, “That’s because I’m always afraid I’m going to pull your hair out or hurt you when I put shampoo in it. Your conditioner has magical powers and unknots whatever’s tangled, so my fingers go through it like butter.” Well, at least butter that’d been out of the fridge for a while.
“I don’t know why shampoo makes my hair do that, I’ve tried loads, but my hair just seems to rebel. God forbid I don’t put conditioner in it either.”
“I just use body wash.”
“Men, you don’t know how lucky you are,” she sighed dramatically. “And don’t even get me started on waxing, threading, plucking, exfoliating, and all of the other fun things we get to do.”
The solution to it seemed so simple, so I said simply, “So don’t do it.”
It was a good thing she was bent over the edge of the bath with water being sprayed down on her, otherwise, I’m reasonably sure I’d have gotten a kick to the shin at least.
“Why are men so stupid? If you picked up a woman in a club and she had hair that was long enough to be braided under her arms and on her legs, with pubes that could be styled they were that long, and eyebrows that were half an inch thick, would you run or stay? What about if she had a mustache? You’d run, wouldn’t you?”
Would I sound shallow if I said that I’d—for curiosity’s sake—take at least thirty seconds to check out the braiding and styling of the aforementioned body hair before I ran?
I mean, come on. It wasn’t something you saw every day, and if she’d taken the time to style it, then the least I could do before I bailed was compliment her on it.
My response to Zuri was very different from my thoughts, though. “Um…”
Wincing when I realized all the conditioner was out of her hair, I edged around her and turned the water off before putting the showerhead in the bath—a mistake you only made once. Fine, fuck, twice.
Now it was time for the turban towel, another phenomenon I hadn’t known about. Zuri had a towel that you put over the back of her head, the length of it was twisted with her hair inside it, and then I pulled it up and over her head, popping the button on one end through the elastic loop thing on the back of the material on her head. It was hard to explain, especially when you had no clue what the fuck it even did, but I guess if you had long hair, it was pretty cool.