Ashley Ch 05 1

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.

"Oh hi, Miss Ashley," Jerry Corwin said, shoving two boxes in her direction while he fiddled with the scanner in his other hand. "I have a couple of things you need to..." He trailed off as he finally looked up at her. Jerry went to her church, along with his wife and six kids. Ash thought he always looked on the verge of a meltdown, and it seemed there was little love lost between him and Karen. Some of his troubles melted, though, as he ogled her in the doorway.

The way his eyes ran up her legs gave Ashley a thrill she hadn't expected, and when he got to her barely-restrained bosom, a pleasant heat spread across her skin. Jerry quickly looked away and up into her face, chagrined and expecting an angry response. Instead, he found her smiling at him as she took the boxes.

"Huh," she said, a puzzled furrow creasing her forehead. The boxes were completely non-descript, and neither contained a return address or a company name on the label. "Can you wait a sec, Mr. Corwin? I have no idea what this is."

He shifted and looked at his watch. "Uh, sure. Since I need your signature," he added hastily.

Ashley set the boxes on the foyer floor and knelt down to rip one open. She had a vague awareness of Jerry looking down the front of her shirt, but she didn't mind. Her curiosity over the boxes was greater than any indignation she might feel, and besides—he was a man. That's just what they did, right?

She dug around the open box and found body wash, facial cream, body lotion and perfume. The brand name on the label—Alabaster Spire—wasn't familiar at all, and Ashley was good about keeping up with new products, even when she couldn't afford them. But the quality looked good. When she ripped open the other box, she found the same brand but of summer products—sunscreen, body oil, a self-tanner.

Before she could hand the boxes back to the driver, a funny thought occurred to her. In one of her dreams last night, she remembered someone telling her to expect a package today, and that she should sign for it even though she'd forgotten ordering it. What are the odds? she wondered. Who'd been the one to tell her that? His voice sounded familiar but she couldn't quite place who it belonged to.

With a shrug, she took out the perfume and gave it a squeeze. The spritz hit her right in the face, and she coughed her way through the heavy honeysuckle scent. With a laugh, she rose and told Jerry, "Well, I guess since I've used it, I can't send it back, right?"

His nose twitched as the smell began to affect him, too. With a tight smile, he replied, "I guess not." He seemed uncomfortable and confused, the signature scanner remaining by his side. Ashley noted the way his eyes couldn't meet hers, and that he was more openly eyeing her breasts. When she looked down, she noticed her nipples were stiff and poking very obviously through the nearly sheer tank top.

An alarm bell went off in her mind that screamed she should find something to cover herself up. That men—and most especially married men—should not see her body. But that bell was distant. Over it, she heard that man's voice—the voice from her dream—telling her that she should share the gifts God had given her. That doing so was natural and right.

Well, it's not like she was going to have sex with him or anything, Ashley rationalized. And he seemed clearly unhappy in his marriage judging by the way he looked in the pew with his manic household. So she pressed her breasts against his arm and reached low across his body for the scanner. Her hand skimmed across the front of his brown shorts, where she brushed across something hard and stiff inside them. All the while she stared up at him, her blue eyes wide and innocent and she worked the scanner from his hand.

When he let her have the device, she kept her eyes on his as she turned around and leaned over. She pressed her ass back against his growing erection as she scanned the two boxes for him. He just stood there, dumbfounded, as she stayed in that position while she signed the little space for her name. Then she slowly worked her way back up and handed it back to him.

Jerry took it from her, dazed. Ashley turned and slipped her arms around his next. Out of reflex, he hugged her tightly to him. She rubbed along his front for a moment before kissing his cheek. "Thanks, Mr. Corwin," she whispered in his ear before letting him go. He stumbled back away from her, his erect penis standing out as clear as a gun in his pants, and he awkwardly shuffled back to his truck in the pouring rain. She stood there and watched as he sat behind the wheel of his truck, eyes closed as he pressed down on his crotch. She guessed his hard-on finally faded, at least enough that he could drive away. Then she closed the door and immediately fell to the floor, hands shaking as she wondered what in the hell she had just done.

The perfume had dissipated with the door open, and she scrambled for the bottle. Another puff and soon that calming floral scent enveloped her mind in a soft haze. While a piece of her remained mortified at what she had just done, another part felt turned on. In fact, she was hornier now than she had been from the cat commercials. And the more she inhaled the honeysuckle aroma, the harder it became to ignore her body's signals. Her hands moved with a mind of their own, playing with her nipples before slipping oh so slowly inside her shorts.

She didn't remember shaving her bikini area, but in that moment she was happy that her skin there was so smooth. It made the humiliation of finding the right places to touch a little more bearable. As it was, her face burned with embarrassment as her fingers found everything there drenched and ready for her. She didn't want this—she never had—but the burning desire in her grew with each breath.

That rational little piece of her mind was disgusted by the slickness of her pussy, how it covered her fingers and the way it smelled. But good God, it felt good! Her other hand continued to play with her tits as she found the right way to rub her clit that both heightened and eased her ache. She replayed the way Jerry's cock had felt pressed up against her ass, against her clit when she hugged him, and her fingers moved faster. It felt like it took her forever, but it was only five minutes before she climaxed there in the foyer, the same place where she had found the goo that she no longer remembered. And as she came, a large chunk of that alarm disappeared forever.

Nothing that felt this good could be bad, could it?