Sarah stood in the steaming shower stream allowing, the pulsing massage head pound against her back. She tipped her head back under the water and soaked her hair, savoring the needle-like taps against her wet scalp. Her entire body was still tingling from the love making she and Paul had just shared over the last few hours. Old habits die long, hard deaths though, and she found herself falling back into the old pattern of trying to analyze what had just happened between her and someone she'd only known through conversations over the Internet. Guilt at feeling so good about what she had just finished doing with that man, started to crowd out the lessons he'd been trying to teach her over the last few months. Why was it whenever she felt good about herself, something inside told her brain to belay that feeling and get back to the real world?
The steam of the shower enveloped her features and fogged the door, creating a erotic silhouette of her shape as Paul walked into the bathroom. Not wanting to disturb her yet, he watched as she lowered her head to her hands and shook it gently as if she were struggling with something inside. He knew what was going on. He knew her well enough from talking to her for so long. She was going through guilt pains about what had happened between them and he wasn't about to allow that guilt to destroy what he'd worked so hard to open up for her. She deserved to know that she was beautiful to him and to all the people whose lives she touched. There was no reason for her to feel guilty because she felt good.
He opened the shower door as she was turning around to face the water. A small gasp of surprise and a slumping of her shoulders told him she had resigned herself to the misconception that she was now a fallen woman. Paul reached for the shampoo and started to lather her hair. He never said a word as he lifted her hair up from her neck and worked the shampoo into this long strands. Once his fingers were on her scalp, he worked them into a head rub running from her forehead, across the top of her skull and down the back toward her spine. Making small little circles, applying strong pressure along the points where he knew the tension lay, Paul took his time letting his hands roam over her head. He squeezed the soap out of her hair and let if fall to her wet body. Turning her around, facing him, so she could tip her head back under the water, he started to rub his thumbs across her eyelids and under her eyes, being careful to not get any soap in them. With his fingers, he combed her hair, rinsing all the soap off and down her back and legs, before he returned to the bones of her cheeks and chin. He slowly, methodically, worked the muscles from the center of her face to the outsides where he took each ear lobe in a hand and rubbed the margins of them. Following the natural curves of her small ears, his hands ventured to caress the folds and creases from the outer edges into the inner openings. When he was finished, Paul took her head in his hands, turning it first to the right and then to the left, under the shower head, to rinse any soap he'd missed.