She leaned forward — heavy breasts grazing the surface, nipples tightening into stiff, aching peaks at the sudden bite of cooler air against wet skin — and reached behind him to slide her lathered hands up the length of his spine.
From the small of his back, up between the thick ridges of his shoulder blades, across the hard-capped muscle at his nape and into the wet fall of his hair, fingers pressing deep, working the tension from every knot and corded line as though she could erase the memory of cosmic violence with nothing but soap and devotion.
Phei sighed long and unhurried, a sound that let his entire nervous system receive the news that it could, if it wished, stop keeping score and he could finally surrender to the simple mammalian pleasure of being washed by hands that would sooner stop beating than stop touching him.
His head tilted back into her fingers.
