Leslie Gray, CPA, had an excellent reason for living in his new house for six days before using the shower in the master bedroom's private three-quarter bath: taxes.

Les had spent his past ten years sitting in a chair and analyzing complex tax returns for the Internal Revenue Service in Philadelphia while waiting for a promotion. Stan Lowenstein, a field auditor, was the one who finally told him he was wasting his time. Stan said that Les was too introverted to do the butt-kissing necessary to advance, not that his boss would ever recommend him for a promotion. Stan said that Les was too competent to promote, that he was the only one who really made his boss look good. When the shock wore off, Les decided to move back home and establish his own private accounting practice. Stan said that his own private practice would be almost as big a mistake as staying unless he significantly improved his social skills. When he called his parents in Florida, they agreed with Stan, saying he had always been too incompetent to run his own business, or, for that matter, his own life. Les moved anyway.

Neither the occasional pick-up game of basketball or softball nor his morning jogs had prepared him for the lifting, bending, and straining associated with moving into a new home in suburban Indianapolis, across the city from where he spent many of his years growing up. Shifting boxes, unpacking them, and putting their contents where he wanted them was a lot more strenuous than it sounds to the uninitiated.

Unused muscle groups shrieked at the disturbance of their lassitude. Les spent the first five nights soaking in the hot water of the upper hall bathroom's tub. By the sixth night he felt he could replace the relaxing soak with a quick shower before bedtime, since the shower head included a massage feature. His muscles howled at being used for nothing more than removing his clothes.

He had been looking forward to using the shower. It was fully tiled, brightly lit with waterproof bulb enclosures in the ceiling, and a continuation of the ceramic tile floor, with a slight slope and the shower doors keeping the water confined within. The floor plus the high and low corner shelves of matching ceramic indicated that it had been built for a wheelchair patient. However, it was on the second floor of the house. He hadn't asked either the one neighbor he'd met or the Realtor if they knew why. He didn't want to appear nosy or presumptuous.

"Gym," he said to the empty bedroom as he hobbled toward the master bath. "I'll join a gym to keep in shape, in case this doesn't work out and I have to move again."

He grimaced at his face in the medicine cabinet mirror. He supposed that he shouldn't be surprised that he looked twenty years older. He certainly felt that way. He reached for the door, winced in pain, and closed it so that he could observe himself in the full-length mirror on the door's inner side. He sighed. Another good reason to join a gym. He needed to lose ten pounds and convert another ten to something more solid.

He sighed again and absently turned the hot water knob while lost in thought. Maybe if he'd joined one earlier, Jessica wouldn't have suddenly moved out fifteen months ago to shack up with someone who was all-muscle, especially between the ears. Les was still trying to recover from that one. Seven years together. He was within maybe a month or two of proposing marriage to her when he came home to find her closet empty and a magnet holding a note to the refrigerator. He couldn't imagine her hooking up with that Quinlan clown, one who didn't have the brains to hold a conversation for more than ten seconds.

Not that he was much better. Sure, he could keep a conversation going, sort of, more or less, with a little help from the other party, but he was incredibly inept at initiating one. Except with Jessica. He knew her well enough understand her thoughts, her moods, her interests, her needs. Any other female, though, he needed help with.

He refused to admit to himself that the loss of Jessica was the other reason he'd moved, despite his mother's insistence that he was running away from the fact that her leaving was proof that he was too much of a loser to keep a woman.

Steam rose from the spray of water. He added cold and adjusted the knob until it was as hot as he thought he could tolerate. Maybe if he looked like dating material, he might want to get back into the game, he decided as he stepped under the stream. As if he'd ever been into it in the first place. Jessica had made the first move. And the second. And most others. He let the heat penetrate for a minute and then set the shower head to deliver a pulsating massage stream. After it had beaten him for a couple of minutes he adjusted it to a normal spray. He'd soap and rinse and then enjoy another massage before collapsing into his bed.

He didn't want to expend the energy to wash himself, but, without Jessica to help, he had no choice. The stall covered the area of a tub, enough to hold two people comfortably, three cozily. There was a lot of space going to waste. He could use somebody to massage his sore back and shoulders. Somebody to enjoy showering with the way he'd enjoyed showering with her.

The bathroom door clicked and swung open, startling him. The translucent shower doors revealed someone entering. "Who's there?" He slid a door open and leaned to look out around the edge. For a moment he couldn't speak, couldn't move, couldn't even think. Was fatigue causing him to hallucinate? "Who the heck are you?"

A brunette teenager, wrapped in one of his towels, smiled brightly at him. "My name is April, but they call me Ay," she said in a soft, clear voice and then spelled it. "It's a nickname, a word, not my first initial." The way she said it implied that everyone made the same mistake he'd mentally made. "It's in the dictionary, you know."

Correction: that wasn't one of his towels. He didn't have any towels imprinted with cutesy cartoon dogs and cats.

"What are you doing in my bathroom?"

She smiled at him again. She was attractive until she smiled. Then she was beautiful. "I'm stinky. I need a shower," she said. She reached beneath her left armpit and pulled free the corner of the towel that tucked underneath the wrap, holding the cloth up. It dropped around her feet, giving him a momentary view of small, pink circles atop pale teacup mounds and a neatly-trimmed brown triangle.

The view vanished when she bent forward at the waist to pick up the towel. Her face vanished, too, when her shoulder length hair swung forward. Les had just enough time to realize that her body showed no tan lines, primarily because the pale skin showed no tan at all, before she straightened and he forgot about mundane tan lines.

"How did you get in here?"

She arched thin eyebrows, thin as in not dense rather than not wide, and pointed over her shoulder. "I came in that door. I thought you knew." She folded the towel in half three times and placed it atop the toilet lid.

"N ... no. I mean ... aren't the outside doors and windows closed and locked?"

The smile returned, and she shrugged. "I don't know."

"What do you mean..." He tightened his fingers on the edge of the door when her hand suddenly shot out to push it open. "What are you doing?"

She stopped pulling against the resistance of his grip on the inner door, grabbed the towel bar on the outer door, and pushed it open. He jerked his hands away from inner door to avoid having his fingers pinched. She used the distraction to slide into the back of the shower. "I told you. I need a shower."

His hands dropped to cover himself. Unfortunately that wasn't a difficult task for just one hand. Two was overkill. "Well, uh, why shower here?"

"There's no shower there. And you have hot water and need help."

He tried to concentrate on her face, or else he really would need both hands to cover himself despite the shock, though, again unfortunately, that wouldn't be difficult for two. "No shower? Well, don't you have a tub where you can take a bath?"

"No tubs! No baths. Showers only." Her voice flowed smoothly from harsh to conversational in six words.

Startled at her reaction, his mind raced and then stammered out the first thing that he thought of. "Uh, well, th ... the hall b ... bathroom, uh, has a ... a shower over that tub..."

Her face turned almost angry. "I told you, no tubs! Ever! Not even for a shower!" Her face relaxed and the smile hinted at a return.

She took a small step forward. He backed into the corner, allowing the water to spray over his shoulder.

The smile returned before she leaned her face into the flow and then lowered her head to wet her hair. "That feels so good," she sighed.

"But ... Well, what would your parents say if they knew you were in my shower with me?"

She hesitated a moment. "They'd be very happy." He tone was almost wistful.

That made no sense, but Jessica had often said things that were as senseless. He thought maybe that was why he had trouble talking with women, but, no. He had trouble holding conversations with men, too.

Her voice turned cheerful. "Would you squirt some of that shampoo in my hair, please, Les?"

He didn't know what else to do at this point, so he reached for the bottle with one hand and flipped open its top with his thumb. The full sentence finally penetrated. "What did you call me?"

She spoke with her face down and her wet hair still hanging around her face. "I can call you Mister Gray if you'd prefer," she said in an apologetic tone. "I just thought that since we're showering together I could use your first name. You get to call me Ay either way. Use a big squirt! I like my hair all sudsy when it's shampooed."

"You know my name? How?"

"Don't be silly! You live here! Come on, squirt the shampoo! We're using up the hot water."

Neither his parents nor the IRS nor life with Jessica had taught him how to handle this situation. All they had taught him was how to follow orders. He followed orders, then flipped the lid closed and returned the shampoo bottle to its home in the small ceramic corner recess.

Ay hadn't moved. "If you shampoo my hair for me, I'll scrub you. My fingers are pretty strong, and with the hot shower, they should help relax your shoulders and arms and back."

"Um..."

"Oh, come on! You can use your hands. You don't have to hide it. I know what those things look like. I already know what yours looks like, remember? I saw it when I got in. Come on! Who else is going to help you tonight, huh?"

After thirty seconds of useless protests and ignored questions, he surrendered. "Just promise me one thing," he said as he began working her hair into a lather. "Promise me that you won't tell anyone else about this."

"Of course, silly. Who could I tell?"

Obviously somebody. Thoughts of school friends, cousins, and parents who would be 'very happy' to know they were showering together came to mind, but he held his tongue. No need to give her any ideas.

Unless she was a runaway. Maybe she was looking for a place to spend the night. He forced that idea out of his mind when he felt the twitching and the onset of the initial swelling.

Washing Ay's hair wasn't difficult. Jessica's hair had been both longer and fuller.

Maybe a conversational approach would help. He'd try getting to know her first. "Ay, where do you live?"

"I don't."

He waited for more. Nothing was forthcoming. He'd blown that opportunity. Maybe he was going too fast? He should have learned more than the fact that she was homeless and verified that she was quite likely a runaway. Shouldn't he?

"Okay, let's rinse your hair," he said after a fruitless search of his memory for conversational topics.

He was sure he'd removed all the shampoo before the thought occurred to him. "Ay, I had the temperature set high for me. Is it too hot for you?"

"It's fine," she said. "Okay, your turn. The best place for you to sit is right here."

He sat and found the curly brown triangle at his eye level. He looked down, but she stepped around him and reached for the shower head control. "The best setting for you is this one," she said as the water began pulsing.

It did feel good, hitting directly between the shoulder blades with the right amount of heat and force. And with her behind him, he didn't have to worry about the sight of her naked...

She stepped over his shoulder, giving him a momentary view of pink with a moistness that wasn't shower water, and knelt in front of him. She was so close to the back wall of the shower that she couldn't put her lower legs flat. Instead, she balanced on her knees, with her toes pressed against the shower wall about a half-foot up from the floor.

"I can scoot back and give you more room," he said, starting to lift himself on his hands.

"No! Don't move," she commanded. The voice was as soft and sweet and innocent as a baby kitten, but it was unmistakably a command. "That's the best spot for you." She'd brought the bar of soap with her. She rolled it until she was satisfied with the lather, then placed it on a low corner shelf, leaned forward, and began massaging his shoulders with slippery hands.

His choices were to look at her breasts, her waist, or her crotch. He opted for the middle and tried to ignore his peripheral vision until he realized he had Option Four: Close the Eyes. He did, but he could still see the pale, straight body before him. Straight not because she wasn't developing adult curves but because she wasn't slender. Some of it was baby fat, but most of it was the other kind. She wasn't overweight yet, but she gave the distinct impression that she would be as an adult. Either she hadn't been a runaway for long, or she had a good food supply. He hoped the right reason was the latter.

He was so relaxed that he drifted into that netherworld region where the mind and body dissociate. He was suddenly brought back to consciousness by her hands patting his shoulders.

"Time to quit," she said, rinsing her hands behind his head and forcing him to try ignoring the soft, pink-capped white mounds inches from his face. His mind raced with indecision, arguing whether he should close his eyes again. "You'll run out of hot water in another four minutes. You need time to rinse and get out, or the cold water will tighten your muscles again. Dry off quickly and put on something to hold in the heat, then get to bed."

He looked up at her face when she pulled back, ending the vacillation of his thoughts. She lowered her head and gave him a quick, innocent kiss on his lips. "That's thanks for letting me use the shower. You can't imagine how desperately I needed that."

She stood. The brown triangle moved past his nose, giving him a musky hint that she'd been aroused. Before he could speak, she pushed the door open. "I won't need to shampoo if you take a shower tomorrow night," she said with a gentle smile. "That will give us time to wash more of each other." She closed the shower door behind her.

"Ay?" He stood. Through the translucent panel he watched her wrap the towel about her body and tuck the corner in place under her left arm. "Ay, wait a minute." He rinsed quickly.

A second towel, one he'd not been aware of, wrapped around her head. He pulled the shower door open in time to see the bathroom door close, cutting off her final sound, so that all he heard was, "See you tomorrow ni..."

He lurched for the bathroom door and threw it wide. Ay was gone.

He found no trace of her in the house, nor did he find an unlocked window or door. When he gave up, the cooler air was causing his shoulders to tense again.

Les sat on the end of the bed, reading a book while waiting for Ay to arrive. He'd made it easy for her, after a search of the house, basement, and attic had shown no trace of wherever she was sleeping. He'd left the patio door and three windows unlocked. He didn't want someone catching the girl breaking and entering if she was delayed picking locks. He should have been worried about a runaway who could break into his house so easily, but he knew that Ay wouldn't steal from him. He didn't know how he knew, but he did.

His parents always said that blind trust like that proved that he was gullible and incapable of living by himself, with nobody to do rational thinking for him.

He glanced at the clock and gave up, deciding she wasn't coming. He felt surprisingly disappointed as he stripped and moped into the bathroom. He brushed his teeth and then turned on the hot water in the shower. As he was adjusting the temperature a soft noise at his side caused him to look down. A folded towel with cartoon dogs and cats lay on the toilet lid. He turned in surprise.

"Hi, Mister Gray," she said in her soft voice, a sweet, demure smile teasing the corners of her mouth.

"Ay!" he said in pleased surprise. "Where did you come from?"

"Same as before," she said. And that ended that line of conversation. She gave him a pleasant smile. "Come on. You can wash me before I do your shoulders again. Congratulations on finishing your move-in today."

"Oh. Well, thank you, Ay." He searched for the right words to convey everything that he wanted to say. Anything that he wanted to say. He was tongue-tied as usual. He felt like a fool standing there and saying nothing.

"We'd better get in," she said with her usual bright smile. "Otherwise we're wasting time and hot water."

"Oh. Uh, yes. Yes, we are." He held an arm out for her to enter, followed her, and closed the door. He waited while she rinsed first, letting the water thoroughly wet her face and body. Then she stood back and let him have his turn before handing him the soap.

"Start with my back, please?" she asked as she turned to face the back wall. He stopped at the slight flare of her hips. "All the way down, please, Mister Gray?"

He spun the soap in his hands and then, holding the bar in his left, began moving both down the outside of her hips. He slowly brought his hands together, giving her every opportunity to tell him to stop as they lathered the smooth, firm globes that were nicer than Jessica's, and he'd always told Jessica she had the nicest butt he'd ever seen. When his hands met and he moved down to the backs of her thighs he felt a twitching, but, fortunately, he avoided erecting. As he reached the backs of her knees he said, "Ay, you can call me Les. If you'd like."

She made a soft little sound as his fingers flowed over her calves, gently massaging them. "I'd like that very much," she said in a near-whisper.

When he reached her ankles she raised one foot at a time for him to wash, asking him to thoroughly rinse away the slippery soap before she returned each to the shower floor. Then she turned to face him and stood with her feet apart the width of the shower stall. Clearly, it was an invitation. And it had been a long time. Fifteen months, in fact. He re-soaped his hands, started at the tops of her toes, and moved upward. The last of his reluctance evaporated.

When he reached the tops of her legs he hesitated momentarily, then placed the soap on a low corner shelf and slid his palms up the insides of her thighs until his little fingers were nestled between her legs and folds. As he scrubbed her thighs he arched the fingers, so that they applied pressure and stimulation.

Ay moaned softly. "I like that," she said as she closed her eyes and tilted her head backward. "I've wanted someone to do it for a long time."

Les rotated his hands so that the soft folds, with their light coating of curly dark hair, were sandwiched between his fingers. He pressed and then see-sawed his hands, causing Ay to tremble, then brace herself with her hands on his shoulders. She shook violently, then relaxed with a moan as her knees trembled.

While she caught her breath he soaped the dark triangle and moved up to the bottom of her rib cage. She sighed again and murmured, "I've really needed that!" His hands continued upward to cup her breasts. She smiled almost shyly at him while he washed them, giggling when he tweaked the nipples. Rather than stoop to get the bar of soap, he took lather from her bush and used it to wash her glowing face with gentle fingers.

He stood back while she rinsed.

"Your turn!" she said in her brightest voice. She started with his face and then had him rinse it immediately, so that he wouldn't risk getting soap in his eyes.

When she reached his erection she washed it with such gentleness that he almost released in the first few seconds. She quickly moved onward, finishing his front and asking him to turn. He wondered if he'd missed his chance. Maybe she knew what "those things" looked like, but she apparently didn't know what to do with them. She was a runaway, but she was also a virgin. Since he needed the release, he wondered if he should ask her to jack him off, but decided against it. If word got out, it would look better for him if she couldn't say that he'd asked her to touch her in a sexual manner.

The incongruity of that thought eluded him. It eluded him sixteen more times before she said he could rinse. When he was finished she smiled at him and took his erection in her hands again. Without a word she dropped to her knees and took him in her mouth.

The surprise delayed his release a good five or six seconds. Then, suddenly against his will, he began spraying the back of her throat. She coughed around his length once, but kept him in her mouth, moving forward as he softened until she was able to contain all of him. He reveled in feeling the sensation again, but it quickly became uncomfortable.

"That's good," he said, patting one of her shoulders.

She held it by the base as she pulled back, kissed the head, and rose. "Sure is," she agreed, her eyes sparkling. "Better than I thought it would be."

"Ay, that was wonderful. Would, uh, would you like to, uh, lie down for a few minutes?"

She gave him a look of honest heartfelt sadness. "I wish I could. Les, I have to leave."

"Go? But where..." he started to ask. She pushed the shower door open, grabbed her towel and wrapped it about her in one smooth movement, and disappeared out the door without another word. The cooling water reminded him to get out, too.

Les released the safety bar on the lawnmower's handle, allowing the engine to die. He pushed the mower up the driveway to the garage, pausing to wave at a neighbor when his garage door clattered up and the car backed out into the drive. They had spoken less than two minutes the day he'd first moved in, but he remembered the man's name. Artie Fenton, construction worker. Wife Alicia had been a documents specialist with the Marion County Clerk's office. Married five years, no kids when she died suddenly of an undiagnosed heart problem two years ago. He was considering starting his own roofing company next year. Taxes were simple at the moment, but he'd need an accountant when he established and began operating the business.

Good accountants had good memories for people. That's how they kept clients.

He pushed the lawnmower into its designated spot in the corner and received an olfactory reminder that he would need a shower when he was finished. What had Ay called it? Stinky. He had time to trim the front bushes before dark. His thoughts strayed to April as he reached for the hedge trimmer atop a stack of metal shelves. Would Ay join him tonight? He hoped so.

Not just for the sex, he told himself, though he knew he was looking forward to that as well. But he really liked the girl. She had a sweet innocence about her that he found charming. And seductive. For whatever reason, she was afraid to join him outside the shower. He supposed she was afraid of what he might do if they were alone in the bed. She probably didn't realize that the close confines of the shower stall put her in more danger than the open bedroom would, if he had been someone who intended her harm.