Rising Shards

“Setting alarm for approximately fifty minutes,” I said as I tapped my phone.

“Maybe forty-five to be safe, you never know with our friends,” Oka said.

Kalei, Lillia, Marmalade, Roux, the Matora sisters, and a few others were going to some video game tournament. Oka and I saw this as an opportunity for some (hopefully) uninterrupted alone time. In the midst of all the chaos around us, moments to ourselves were even more vital.

“Alrighty, c’mon in!” Oka said as she invited me into her room. “Hey, what the…?”

I followed Oka’s gaze downward, to a trail of crimson petals on the ground.

“How did these get here I wonder?” Oka asked.

“Hm,” I said, finding this immediately very cute. “Maybe we should follow this trail?”

“I think that would perhaps help us solve this mystery right away,” Oka said.

Oka let me take the lead in following the petals, which only went a few steps, sending us directly to the bathroom.

“Oh gosh,” I said as Oka triple checked to make sure her room was locked behind me. The petals led all the way to the bathtub, which was filled with water and sudsy bubbles.

“It took a while to conjure these,” Oka said. “I wanted them to be just right.”

“They’re pretty!” I said. “Like every flower you make.”

“Heh. Have you ever, um,” Oka’s nervousness started to peek through in her voice, which she had admirably been covering up with her confident performance. “Taken a bath in the dorms before?”

“I somehow haven’t,” I said as Oka quadruple checked to make sure the bathroom door was locked as well.

“I never took one when it was our room either!” Oka said. “Any time I started running the tub Kalei would be all knock knock knock, ‘hurry up dude, what’s taking you so damn long,’ you know how she is. But I thought to myself a few days ago that I could really use it. So I got myself some fancy bubble bath from home and as I was sitting in the tub I thought, ‘there’s enough room for both of us.’ And I figured with everyone gone, we may actually have a shot at doing this without some stupid interference.”

“Wow,” I said, trying to sound like I kept my cool, but I was fully giggling and swooning already.

“I didn’t ask beforehand because I figured you’d be OK with it, so if you’re not OK with it, just say so, but…you wanna take a bath with me?” Oka asked.

This would be the second time we were naked together. Well, third with my mishap from when we just started dating, but let’s not count that. The first real time was a mix of panic and glee that felt so big for us, like we found a bunch of rooms in the house of our relationship that I didn’t think would be opened for a long while.

“I think that’d be fantastic, Oka,” I said. “Should we get the bathrobes again?”

“Oh my god,” Oka said.

“Did you not think of that while putting this together?” I said.

“I didn’t! We didn’t have them last time!” Oka said. “Frick! Did we ever find any?”

When Oka had her dream about me disrobing in front of her, I was in a bathrobe. We didn’t have any bathrobes on hand in the dorms, at least as far as I could tell.

“I haven’t found any in my room,” I said.

“Well, we can skip it this time,” Oka said.

“Can I still say the line, though?” I asked.

“If you wanna,” Oka said.

I wasn’t much of an actor, but I liked the idea of performing anything for Oka.

“Kay, pretend I have a bathrobe on then, and now I’m taking it o—“ I started miming that when Oka got very close behind me, hands at the hem of my shirt.

“Let me help you with that,” Oka said, practically purring in my ear.

I had an inkling we would be getting up to something like this, so I dressed casually in a t-shirt and pajamas. Oka was mostly the same with shorts instead of PJ pants. She helped me out of my shirt, sending a chill up my spine. While that went smoothly, undoing my bra proved trickier.

“You want me to get that?” I asked.

“No, I can do it,” Oka said. “This should absolutely be easier from this side, what the heck.”

I kept giggling as she tried.

“I do this every day, this shouldn’t be an issue!” Oka said. “I rehearsed and everything, too.”

“How’d you rehearse?” I asked.

“I ran the bath to see how long it’d stay hot, scooted around in the tub to see if we’d both fit, did a test run of the petals, did that ‘let me help you with that’ line hugging the air, mimed out taking your clothes off…”

“You’re very prepared,” I said.

Oka growled as she tried and failed to undo my bra again.

“Here, you get the PJs, I got it,” I said.

I felt warmth all over, mostly from excitement but a good chunk of the ‘just had a bowl of warm soup in the middle of winter’ feeling came from how casual it felt. I don’t think I spent as much time worrying as Oka that we’d be able to overcome our nerves and do any of this, but I couldn’t deny some worry occurred.

While I took care of my bra, Oka gently pulled my PJs down, and I helped her by stepping out of them, leaving me in just panties. We had a moment not knowing what to do next before Oka started taking her own clothes off. I maybe could have joined in on that, but my contribution for this portion was mainly staring at my girlfriend’s bare breasts, absentmindedly taking my panties off at some point in the process.

Once more, the two of us were in the nude together.

“So um…” I said. “Here we are again! Looking just as good as last time, Oka.”

I dunno if I was trying to be smooth, but Oka didn’t seem to notice either way.

“Before we get in the tub,” Oka said, approaching me with her mouth open. I realized her intention pretty quickly, as kisses turned into nibbles at my neck, bites at my shoulder. “I needed this so bad, Zeta,” Her bites got lower as her hands stayed on my hips. “I’m sorry if I’m too much right now.”

“No, this is really great,” I said, never really sure what to say when Oka was in this mode.

Just as she bit at my breast, I could barely hold back the noises I tried to keep bottled in. Oka pulled back.

“Ahh, sorry, sorry!” Oka said.

“For what?” I said. “This is…I like it a lot.”

“I brought you in here for a bath, and the water’s gonna get cold if we…keep this up.” Oka said.

“Oh yeah,” I said. I could’ve gone for more, but the sting of the bites was already starting to become noticeable. “I gotta do the line!” I dipped my toe in the tub. “Water’s just right! Wait, that isn’t the line.”

“Well, the toe dip is the important part,” Oka said. “Actually, I should probably get in first, with the height difference and all.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “How do you want to do this, exactly?”

Oka stepped into the tub, descending into the bubbles. She helped me in and gestured for me to sit in front of her between her legs, with my back to her. Water sloshed out onto the tile floor when we were both in.

“I’ll clean it up, don’t worry,” Oka said.

I tried to answer affirmatively, but words failed me. Once again I tried and failed to keep my cool. Sitting naked in a hot bath with my girlfriend’s legs at my sides, her arms reaching around my tummy, her soft breasts pressing against my back…it had an effect on my vocabulary.

“I don’t think I’ve taken a bath since I got my tail,” I said, idly playing with the suds. “Have I?”

“I’m not sure how I would know that, boo,” Oka said.

“Right, yeah,” I said. “Make sure your tail doesn’t go down the drain.”

Oka snorted.

“I’m serious!”

“I’ll be very careful,” Oka said.

Without needing to say it, Oka went back to nibbling, biting my shoulder for a bit, not as intense as moments ago, but still very nice, especially with her hands moving between my tummy and chest. Once she was satisfied there, rested her head against me and sighed, content.

“Am I going too far? I feel like I’m going too far.” Oka said.

“I think this is about where we left off last time,” I said. “But if you’re not comfortable, you don’t have to keep going.”

I grabbed her hands and moved them forward, trying to wash her off but ending up gently feeling around her arms, particularly her wrists. I stopped at the faint scar, usually hidden by a cloth she kept tied around it. The cloth was a memento of a moment in her past she didn’t want to forget, a time she lashed out and her powers ended up burning her from her anger.

“You don’t have it on,” I said. “I guess you can’t keep that on all the time.”

“Yeah, I take it off for baths, and to wash it so it doesn’t get stinky,” Oka said.

“The scar’s so faint now,” I said.

“Mhm…” Oka said.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to wreck the mood.” I said.

“You didn’t!” Oka said. “I’m glad you remember it.”

We mostly stayed like that for a while, gently feeling each other’s arms, a few squeezes, kisses, and bites here and there, but it was mostly a relaxing bath from there. In terms of intimacy, we still had plenty of room to grow in this department. I, for one, was still working up the nerve to text Oka my thoughts on these sorts of behaviors, because there were things that were easier for me to put into text than words. Even with that taking time for me to do, I still liked the pace we were taking a lot, and hoped we had many more uninterrupted bubble baths coming. I may or may not have received a ton of bite marks from this, some of which were really hard to cover up and I maybe got made fun of for it, but it was so worth it.