Ashley awoke late the next day and instantly felt something was wrong. Her skin hurt. She kicked off the covers and felt some measure of relief. But laying there, it seemed she could feel every thread of her sheets as her back pressed against them. Okay, she thought, maybe hurt isn't the right word. Maybe "sensitive" is more accurate. If so, it was getting worse than it was last night when she got home.
Her stomach growled and, with a sigh, she rolled out of bed to the bathroom. She peed for what felt like forever, and when finished flipped on the shower. As it warmed up—it always took it a couple of minutes to be hot in this old place—she brushed her teeth. Her eyes widened as she caught her reflection in the mirror. Not only were all her blemishes gone, but now so were the chronic circles under her eyes. And while she still didn't have a tan yet, her cheeks were so rosy she looked like she was wearing makeup.
She stared at her reflection until the mirror began to fog, snapping her out of her reverie. "Right, shower," she reminded herself as she got in with a preemptive wince. If the sheets had hurt, maybe she should've opted for a bath instead. But to her surprise, the hot water soothed her irritated nerves, and she sighed in relief. If she had the hot water for it, she might just stay in here all day. The way the water beaded on her skin, slowly growing and swelling until it was so fat it rolled down her body...She felt each and every drop that clung to her.
Despite herself, Ashley's hands began to roam across her flesh. A little gasp of pleasure escaped her mouth as she brushed over her nipples, and her fingers lingered there. It built an ache in her groin that still scared her a little, but not as badly as it had yesterday. It's not like anyone could see her, and there wasn't anything wrong with exploring her body alone. It's not like she was masturbating, she rationalized despite the growing heat in her pussy.
In the end, the hot water ran out quickly, and cold water felt more like the sheets. Disappointed, Ashley finished up and dried off as best she could. Really she only managed to dab away most of the moisture before the fluffy towel grew too uncomfortable. She toweled as much of the dampness out of her hair as she could manage before letting the curls air dry. An occasional rivulet of water leaked from the ends (none of which were split anymore), making her shiver.
She tried to put some clothes on before finding herself some food, she really did, but the experience was awful. Even the softest cotton she owned chafed like wool. "What is going on?" Ashley cried as she ripped off her old nightgown. Surely this wasn't a side effect of the food poisoning, but nothing else had happened that should be affecting her like this!
Annoyed and more than a little scared, she realized there was nothing for it but to stay naked, at least for today. At least it was raining. No one would think it too strange that she kept all her curtains closed today. But if little miss "loves the sun" wasn't feeling better by the time the weather cleared up, someone would call her Mama, and Lord knew she didn't want her mother over here while she was dealing with this issue. Whatever the issue was.
In the kitchen, Ash dug around in her cupboards, trying to find something a little more substantial than cereal to eat. She still had some bacon in the fridge, but the thought of frying that up without any protection was a hard pass. Finally, she found some cream cheese that was still good that she could slather on some toasted bagels. In the end, she ate three of them while standing at the counter, trying not to lean on anything, and guzzling some o.j. straight from the carton.
Then she padded around the house for an hour or two, bored and restless and annoyed. She couldn't even watch anything because she couldn't sit in front of the t.v.! Now and again, she would test out sitting, and thank God the sensitivity seemed to be lessening the longer she was awake. By lunchtime, she was able to flip on her favorite stories while she perched on the edge of the couch.
Things seemed fine until one of the commercial breaks. At first, the litter commercial made her sad as she thought about Chester out in this weather. Her poor fatboy hated rain, and she could picture him hiding under someone's porch and mewling angrily at his fate. But then the voiceover kept saying the words "cat" and "kitty". Each time she heard the man's voice say it, she gasped as her clit throbbed. The 30-second spot had her on edge, and then rolled into a Friskies add. More talk of cats, and Ashley was crying. Not from worry over her own cat but in anxiety because her body aches intensified and rolled down into her crotch.
By the time the show came back, her mind was on fire from her arousal. She tried every trick she'd ever had to push it away—thinking of church, of cockroaches, of needles—and nothing helped. It was an agony quite unlike anything she'd felt before. And, in that moment, she realized she was going to have to break her covenant and actually touch herself. If she didn't, she was going to spontaneously combust from the unslaked lust.
But she couldn't quite bring herself to let her fingers touch her hard, swollen clit. "Argh!" she cried in painful frustration. She looked around and eyed the couch's armrest. "Oh no," she whined as her mind latched onto the notion of it. Ashley stood, and she could feel the wetness roll down her thighs. If she did that, she would smear her shame all over the couch, where anyone could see or—oh God—smell it, and she would always see the place where she sinned.
Desperation rose in her, and she got an idea. She ran to the bathroom and found the softest towel she could. Then she ran back, folded it over the armrest, and straddled it. Putting direct pressure on her clit both eased and heightened her body's distress. Slowly, her face burning in embarrassment, she began to rub back and forth against the towel. Yes, yes, that was helping! She leaned forward to grip the end of the rest so she had better leverage. Faster, harder, yes and then...
It was like her body exploded. She almost screamed at the release she finally found. Her whole body twitched in pleasure, and the walls of her pussy spasmed wildly. The sensitivity of her skin let her feel every fiber of towel, every grain of wood under her left foot pressed against the floor, every stitch in the couch up against her right knee. The air conditioner blew a faint breeze against her exposed skin, and suddenly she was overwhelmed with the smell of something floral. It heightened her climax while calming the part of her brain that was weeping over what she had done.
How long she sat across the couch like that, Ashley didn't know. What she did know is that the ache of her skin was almost non-existent now, and that she was absolutely starving. She pried herself up, the towel so smeared with her juices that it came off the armrest with her until she pulled it off, went to the bathroom to clean herself up.
This time, when she stared at herself in the mirror, she could still read the shame that sat around her eyes. But she also saw the glow she exhibited, her curls bouncing around her face like a sunlit halo. She let herself feel the shame, but she didn't wallow in it. That honeysuckle smell had followed her, and the stronger it was, the more her shame burned away like fog in the morning light. "I did what I had to do," she told her reflection, and it nodded reluctantly. That sense of arousal had been too overwhelming. Her reflection whispered, "We just won't do it again, and we'll be fine. God will understand."
She managed to put some clothes on finally—a pair of short shorts and a filmy tank top—and just in time as the doorbell rang. Surprised, she bounded towards the front door to see who it could be.
