Muse [18+] • REVISING

32 | Retrograde

Grabbing a couple of essential oils from one of the many bamboo shelves, I unscrewed the top of one and the recognizable coconut vanilla scent quickly fills the surrounding air. Pouring a few drops into the tub as the water fills halfway, I decided that it's enough and leave the rose oil to use as a perfume later. After sticking my hand into the water to check if it's warm enough, I turn the faucet off and step into the spacious tub, one leg after the other, before lowering myself down.

Cupping the water into my hands and covering my body with it, I get acquainted with the warm water that meets my skin. It's not scorching but it's enough to cast a gentle layer of sweat over my face and I feel myself start to heat, the sauna-like bath ridding my body of weeks' worth of toxins.

I think about Damien.

I am reminded of a time where I'd look in the mirror with red-flushed cheeks and contentment would be staring back at me. A time when every inch of skin had been set ablaze and then remedied soon after as his body met mine. There are x-rated memories that I have tried to suppress, ones that make themselves known every time I am with my bare self. Visions of him undressing me with his eyes and then his hands and then his mouth. I giggle to myself and come up with another factor as to why this heartbreak rippled as deeply as it did.

That is, that no man could fuck you like Damien could. No one.

My hands grasp at my skin, kneading the same way he used to. I sink lower into the water, resting my head back and closing my eyes as I allow myself to submit under my touch. Soft little moans escape in response to the way my fingers meet the lower half of my body and I almost outwardly gasp at the sensitivity that has built up in between my legs.

The water moves as my hips do and it mimics the messy noise of sex. Something I haven't had the privilege of indulging in and will take me some time before I decide to do so. I imagine that even if I were to find another late-night suitor, even if my wrists were bound by a different flame, they would never come close to the kind of debauchery that Damien offered. With him, sex was everything loud, vulgar, animalistic, with a pungent hint of sentiment. Everything heaven and twice as much delectable hell.

As the visions flood, the intensity that meets every needy part of me builds and I am only seconds away from crossing that line. When the recollection of being bent over a balcony daybed doesn't feel so imaginative, instead, it's as if I am out there right now with a belt cinched around my throat and being praised for the way my body contorts so willingly with each command. My mouth opens in the form of an o, my legs are spread apart, touching each side of the tub, and I buckle as shocks surge from my head to the tips of my toes. It's intoxicating and invigorating at once. I submerge under the water to recollect myself.

Meeting air again, my surroundings almost immediately bring me back. With immense pleasure, however, there is always a comedown. The seductive feeling grazes my body like a knife tracing my skin. The physicality feels right and extremely needed after weeks of being unable to touch myself the way he has touched me, but then I open my eyes and breathe in the reality that there is no hand gripping my throat, no one whispering erotic sweet nothings into my ear. Instead, I am sitting in a porcelain tub with no one across from me, in a house that isn't my own, wholly deprived of his touch. The voids have made themselves at home.

I spend the next hour dawdling in the bathroom, spending any extra time pampering myself. Sitting on a teak-wood chair next to the sink, I switch back and forth between legs to finish painting my toenails a simple ivory color, the light brown pigment bringing out the undertones of my skin. I do the same with my fingers. Careful not to ruin the polish, I prance lightly around the bathroom, making my way back into the main bedroom where I bend down next to one of the many surround speakers throughout the house and connect my phone to play some music.