And the longer it went on, the more she needed it to be true. She wanted him there. She wanted his eyes on her so badly that it stopped being a game and turned into something close to desperate. Her hands quit pretending to wash. She cupped her breasts and pulled at her nipples and the sound she made was real. One hand slid down between her legs and she started to touch herself properly, hips pushing into it, and the thought she kept circling back to, the one lighting her up from the inside, was that he might be watching this right now. That he might be standing in the dark with his eyes all over her.
That was when the last thing holding her steady let go.
She turned around. Put her back to the mirror, so that if he was there the glass would hand him everything, and she bent forward and set one foot up on the edge of the bath and opened herself completely. She did it for him. For the man she couldn't prove existed. She showed him all of it, every part of her she was never meant to show anyone, the parts a good girl kept to herself for a husband she didn't even have. Her ass. The tight knot of it. The whole length of her pussy from behind, flushed and slick, wide open under the water. If he was there, he was getting all of her now, and the idea made her head swim.
She worked herself without mercy. Nothing left of the softness from before. Two fingers buried deep, fast, the heel of her hand grinding her clit, and she stopped caring how she looked or what it made her. She brought her other hand back and played with the rim of her asshole while she fucked herself, both at once, and a small part of her clocked how far over the line she'd gone, how filthy it was, and that part got drowned out completely by how much she loved it. She wanted to show him everything. The more private it was, the more she wanted his eyes on it. The wanting just kept climbing.
It built and built. Her thighs shook. The water came down hard on her back and sheeted off her and she chased the feeling with both hands, fingers driving into her pussy, a fingertip pressed tight to her asshole, hips slamming down, until it broke over her. It was enormous. It went off at the base of her spine and whited everything out, and she cried out loud, past caring who heard, her whole body locking and then shaking through it, wave after wave. Her legs went. She slid down the wet tiles and ended up sitting on the floor of the bath, then sprawled flat, gasping, wrecked, the water still raining down on her.
On his side of the door, Fadi was barely holding together.
He'd watched her turn and bend and offer everything to the dark, to him, and something in him had just gone. His cock was so hard it hurt, jammed against the front of his trousers, throbbing in time with his pulse. He had it out before he'd decided anything, freed and in his hand, and by the time she put her foot up on the edge of the bath he was working himself in long hard pulls, matched to her, the two of them moving together through a door she would never officially know he'd stood behind. He'd wanted this for half his life and never once believed he'd get it. And here it was, more than he'd had the nerve to imagine, the exact body he'd confessed to and the exact things he'd never have dared ask for. When she came, when she cried out and folded down onto the floor of the bath, he went with her, hips jerking, and spilled hard against the door, forehead pressed to the wood, swallowing every sound.
For a while neither of them moved. He stayed slumped against the door, breathing like he'd sprinted up a flight of stairs, and watched her through the mirror. She was on her back on the floor of the bath now, completely naked, legs still loose and open, the water coming down and running over her, over her breasts and her belly and the spent, glistening centre of her. She looked unreal. Soaked through and wrung out and, God, beautiful, not performing now, not posing, just lying there and letting the water have her, her pussy open to the spray and her chest still heaving. He could have stayed there the rest of his life.
Some last working part of his brain told him to move, now, before the water shut off. He pushed himself off the door, breathless, legs not quite his own, half unable to believe what she had just shown him, and went back down the dark corridor to the lounge.
He had maybe two minutes to fix his face.
He sat back down at the table. His hands wouldn't quite settle and the words on the paperwork had turned into shapes. His pulse was still up. He was still aching with what he'd seen. And under the arousal, surfacing now, was the sheer size of the thing. A line had been crossed and also, by the rules they'd built together, not crossed at all. Everything had changed. Officially, nothing had.
She came back in dressed, hair towelled and finger-combed, colour high in a way you could put down to a hot shower if you wanted to. She picked up her wine and took a sip.
"Well," she said lightly. "That was refreshing."
"Good," he managed. "Glad to hear it."
And then they did the strangest bit of acting of the whole night, which was the part where nothing had happened.
They went back to the paperwork. She said something about the project. He agreed with it, or thought he did. But the ordinariness was a costume, and they were both wearing it badly, and they both knew the other one knew. The air between them had turned into a physical thing. Every harmless sentence had a second one sitting under it that neither of them would say. He knew what he'd seen. So did she. And they both knew she'd wanted him to see it, which was the part that filled the room.
He couldn't quite hold her eyes. When he did it was worse, because there was a brightness in them that had nothing to do with the wine, and her composure had a fine shake under it she couldn't quite hide. She kept finding small things to do with her hands. He kept finding reasons to clear his throat. Two people who'd say anything to each other, sitting there nearly silent. Not out of shame. Just the sheer voltage of the thing neither of them would name. The wanting that had waited so politely in the corner for years was done waiting. It was sitting right there between them now, wide awake.
After a while he got his things together, because staying had become the kind of unbearable that sitting too long in a hot bath is. She walked him out. They passed the bathroom on the way. The door still stood open a crack, the light off now, and as they went by she let her eyes rest on it for a second. Just a second. He caught her doing it. There on the wood, catching what little light there was, was the proof of exactly where he'd stood and what he'd done, sliding slowly down toward the floor. She didn't say a word. She didn't even break stride. But he saw her see it, and the back of his neck went hot.
They stopped at the front door. They stood there a moment longer than two friends saying goodnight need to.
"Thanks for tonight," he said. It came out lower and rougher than he meant.
"Thank you," she said, "for being good company. For once."
He laughed despite himself.
She leaned against the doorframe, in no hurry to let him go. "You know," she said, like it had only just occurred to her, when it had clearly been the whole shape of the evening, "that plausible deniability thing of yours." She turned it over, enjoying it. "It really is a very clever system."
His heart kicked. "It has its uses."
"It does." Her eyes met his, full of mischief and something close to a promise. "I'd imagine a person could come up with all kinds of variations on it. If a person wanted to test the theory properly."
"A person could," he said, not quite level. "Purely as an intellectual exercise."
"Purely that." The smile she gave him was slow and certain. Then, as if it had only just floated into her head, she added, "God, this place is a state. I really must get someone in to give it a proper clean." A small pause. The corner of her mouth moved. "That bathroom door especially." She held his eyes one more beat. "Goodnight, Fadi."
"Goodnight, Katrina."
He walked out into the cool dark with his blood still going, and behind him heard the door click shut. Neither of them had crossed the line. Neither of them ever quite would. But they'd started something tonight that had no intention of stopping. One unbreakable rule, and, he was beginning to see, any number of ways to play right up to the edge of it.
He already wanted to know what she'd come up with next.