Chapter Four

PIPER

“Finally…”

Piper slid slowly into the tub, luxuriating in the almost scalding warmth of the water as it enveloped her tired, aching body in a rich lavender haze. The sensation was so new, so exotic, she shivered with the delight of it all, wriggling deeper and deeper until the soft, whitecapped suds reached nearly to her chin.

The involuntary sigh that escaped her body had to have come from somewhere deep within, possibly even her toes, cleansing her of the last few months of inner turmoil and outer behavior, rippling the foamy layer that covered the gently lapping bathwater on its way out of her body and into the atmosphere.

“Good riddance,” she harumphed as she took one last drag off her roach, inhaling the musky smoke and holding it gently until it fluttered from her lungs. She tamped the joint out in the little ashtray on the stool she’d slid close to the tub. Piper reached for the cold import she’d just cracked open and swallowed the beer greedily, the one-two punch of relaxation a welcome respite after the dustup she’d had with her mother earlier that day.

She set the beer down and used her cold fingers to gently trace the flushed skin on the cheek her mother had slapped before storming from the room, only to return moments later to tearfully apologize for. It was the same old pattern as high school, and Piper was disappointed that she was reacting the same way now as she did back then: smothering her feelings and wallowing in self-pity at the same time.

The only upside was that her mom hadn’t just left in a huff of self-righteousness and self-regret but would be gone for the entire weekend as well: off to give the keynote presentation at the work-from-home, vaguely pyramid scheme sounding door-to-door perfume sale company she worked for as Head of New Recruits.

It was the latest in a long line of do-it-yourself, unconventional, vaguely shady jobs her mother had held ever since divorcing Piper’s father midway through her final year of junior high. That was the year Piper and her mother had moved to the house on Sycamore Street, five doors down from Riley and a world away from their home back in Florida, where her banker father had taken up with his secretary, ten years his junior.

The scandal hadn’t just rocked their family foundation but had set Piper’s mother on a collision course with revenge. Determined to outwit her ex-husband, to say nothing of outearn him, Piper’s mom had grabbed at every half-baked, off-the-cusp, quasi-legal opportunity known to man: online medical supply sales, freelance graphic design, remote customer service for an air mattress company, any and all ways to earn her dream income of six figures a year.

By hook or by crook she’d met her goals, and then some, especially with this latest perfume company gig. But financial success and nonstop hustling had left little to no time for parenting, giving Piper all the freedom she needed to live a mostly independent life during the four years she spent at Jasper High School.

Piper had wasted little time taking full advantage of her dysfunctional family background and latchkey kid circumstances, quickly earning a reputation as a wild party girl up for anything, anytime, on a moment’s notice. That is, until she’d come home from a late-night party one predawn morning only to find her comely and irresistible neighbor, Riley, heading out for a morning jog.

They’d seen each other on the street in the brief time Piper had lived in Jasper, and in and out of the halls at school, but that morning had been the first time Piper had been still just buzzed enough to speak to her.

“Are you out of your mind?” Piper had blurted, stumbling off the ratty ten speed that had been her central mode of transportation until she got her driver’s license a year or two later.

“Are you still drunk?” Riley had chuckled as she sped past, a blinding flash of lusty thighs and pumping arms and perky breasts and long, chestnut-brown hair swept into an irresistibly swishing ponytail.

Piper had set her alarm for early the next morning and, despite wearing ill-fitting shoes and a pair of denim shorts, had managed to join Riley on the first of what was to be four long years of before-school runs. Rain or shine, summer, winter, spring or fall, they’d unilaterally met on the quiet cul-de-sac at the end of their street and dutifully set about forming a lifelong friendship that had only ended when Piper went off to Northern Carolina State, on a full track scholarship no less. All thanks to little miss goody two-shoes and her jog past Piper’s house that random, boozy, sultry morning.

Piper owed a lot to Riley, she surmised, sinking lower into the tub as the warm water, skunk weed, and cold Belgian beer worked its magic and lulled her into a welcomingly blissful state. Sweet, pretty, comely Riley, with those sumptuous curves and that flawless olive complexion and the same chestnut-brown hair, straight and long and aching to be tousled as they lay, blissful and dewy and sweaty in a cloud of sex-stained sheets and sticky limbs.

Piper smiled at the thought, just one of a million sexy daydreams she’d been indulging in since their first run together, the sound of Riley’s pants and grunts as they sprinted through the last quarter mile seared in her brain and, if Piper cared to admit it, never far from her fantasies.

She heard them now, luxuriating in her bathtub, remodeled and twice the size since she’d last used it years ago on a holiday visit home during winter break. Now her long legs barely reached the opposite end where, before, they used to stick out.

She sighed and took another sip of beer, reveling in the lavender bath salts and luxuriating bliss of soaking, naked and alone, so completely and utterly alone.

She could hardly believe the disconnect between her current state and the chaotic reality of her apartment-dwelling, roommate-having, privacy-deprived state back in her off-campus place. Her two apparently agoraphobic roommates who never left the house except to attend the rare Tuesday and Thursday class, leaving Piper little alone time and even less privacy to indulge in such luxurious, lavender-scented, foamy-surfaced, naked pleasures.

Naked. Utterly, completely, wetly naked in the middle of the day, just a few houses down from her first female crush, the whole house to herself for the rest of the week as her bipolar mother put on her best pink suit, strode up to the podium in her tallest pink heels, and gave the keynote address to a roomful of cult-like perfume company employees in some hotel ballroom in downtown Albuquerque, no less.

The contrast from her old life back in some Carolina college town, her pizza-smelling apartment and passive-aggressive roomies, the long, winding, late-night drive back home, the sudden appearance of Riley, curvy and bubbly and looking every bit as she had that freshman morning, comely and alluring and sweaty, had Piper in an almost surreal state of suspended animation.

As the sting of her mother’s homecoming slap faded not just in tingle but in memory, only to be replaced by Riley’s smiling face and those ripe, firm breasts, Piper gave in to age-old temptations and gently slid her hands beneath the water’s surface.

The heat, the desire, the temptation, the anticipation was too much to resist. Piper smiled, left hand drifting to enrobe her breasts in a firm, teasing embrace even as her right hand slithered across her smooth, shaven mound to caress and slither between her pink, slick lips.

The sensation was as immediate as it was naughty, the water gently rippling as Piper spread her thighs and her fingers found purchase on her clit. It begged for attention, even as it shuddered in mounting ecstasy. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d climaxed, alone or with another human, and her tense bud was there to remind her that, indeed, it had been far too long either way!

All the same, Piper took her time as the hot water and silky lavender suds covered her gently probing fingers, almost like a lover’s hand. Her nipples were taut, pink peaks, tender to the touch and responsive to her bidding, bending and aching beneath her wet fingers, slithering around them, thumbing and pressing them, pinching them until she felt she could come from that alone.

And all the while, her thighs spread wider, her fingertips probed tighter, pressed firmer, slid faster, then slower, her bare ass squeaking on the smooth polished surface at the bottom of the tub as her languid lust thickened to a tidal frenzy.

The first orgasm caught her by surprise, a gushing blitz of nerve endings and fiery sensations pulsing and prodding at her pressing fingertips, making her entire body shudder as she bit down on her lower lip to squelch the scream that threatened to loose itself and shatter the high, stylish bathroom windows.

The water splashed, a smooth, sudsy wave that reverberated against the far end of the tub and back again, slithering across her trembling pussy and unleashing yet another orgasm in its wake, slower this time but just as powerful, a quaking shudder that forced her eyelids closed and her mouth back open.

In due time she recovered, blinking away the sweat that stung her eyes even as the aftershocks of a second powerful wave receded, leaving room for a third, then a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth until, in the feverish blur of slick, sticky flesh and slithering, pressing fingertips, she blissfully lost count of the final tally.

Instead, she merely nodded, gulping down beer to slake her thirst, if not her desire. If anything, the solo session had only managed to leave her more determined that it be her last one for a good, long while.

It was at that moment, the suds retreating, the water calming, her shuddering pussy struggling to regain its composure, nipples softening in time with her ragged breathing, that Piper made a simple but stern promise to herself: the next time she came, at least within the city limits of Jasper, it would be by Riley’s hand, or tongue, or with her sweet, bronzed, curvy body pressed tight against her own.

She didn’t know how it might happen, or even if it could happen, or quite frankly if it ever should happen, but so help her, Piper vowed to make it a reality, one way or another. Sadly, she knew that the only way to start was the same way she had all those years ago, by setting her alarm at some ungodly hour and lacing up her running shoes for one last sprint toward romance—or heartache!