Sisterhood - Temptation Ch. 32

Katharina became aware of the noise and urgency of her own breathing as she slowed down, nearing the halfway point of the chamber's long tunnel-like shape, where the rows of opposing beds were broken by the two archways that faced each other. She became aware, too, of her nakedness. Her clothes were lying in two heaps at the edge of the bed she had just exited.

She almost gathered the resolve to look back, but then shied away from the prospect. She turned to her left and swept aside the curtain of the archway that led into the showers.

Once through and with the curtain closing off the light of the testing chamber behind her, Katharina collected herself. She drew a deep breath and held it in, waiting for her body to calm. She looked down at her dick. It was still pulsing, lifting itself in faint twitches along with her heartbeat. But the strength of each successive throb was diminishing, and her shaft had begun to wilt, pulled down by its own engorged weight.

She reached out and with her thumb she carefully swiped away a bead of fluid that lingered at the end. The exposed skin of the tip was still hot, and sensitive, but the shiver she felt was only an echo. Her aborted climax had faded, and though a lingering frustration still burned, she could tell that she would slowly be able to return to rest if she took a moment to breathe and to gather her thoughts.

She stepped forward into the thin curtain of droplets that swirled around the center of the room, picking her way on the tips of her feet among the slicks of water on the floor. She experienced for a moment an uncanny sense of perfect recollection, having walked exactly this way before. And of course she had, only a short while ago, when she had left Vera in the testing chamber to search for Ivy and Lia. Now, as then, a shower was running, and the room was loud with the sharp spatter of water on tile.

But this time, when she looked around, she found she was not alone. At the same moment as she noticed the figure by the opposite wall, there came a quiet, metallic, creak. The sound of one of the shower streams being renewed with a firm press on the button. A girl, naked, with deep brown skin, was leaning her weight against the wall to press the button home with the heel of her hand.

Vanessa. Another Sisterhood novice. Katharina had seen her briefly a couple of times earlier that evening, in the Summer House. Katharina knew Vanessa for her exuberant, open-mouthed laughter. She was a girl who laughed at almost anything even slightly light-hearted that another girl said. Vanessa's mouth was open now, though noiselessly or almost so, taking gulps of air in between blowing away the trails of water running over her face as she held up her head to the shower.

Vanessa looked different, all wet. Katharina had most often seen Vanessa's dense black hair tied in a long braid. Now it was loose and clung in a heavy, soaked mat to her shoulders and her back. The fine hairs on her dark skin, across her forearms and in the small of her back, were more visible now, damp and channeled into clumps by the stream of water.

Vanessa's eyes were closed, facing straight up into the falling water. When Vanessa did not turn, Katharina looked away and walked quietly to the opposite wall, where she shoved hard on one of the buttons to start her own shower.

The water hit her first as a drip, without pressure, and cool. It dribbled onto her forehead and soaked a short way into her hair. She wrinkled her brow in a reflexive expression of mild discomfort, then with a jolt the warmer water sprayed out and quickly covered her.

The water was pleasantly hot at first, and Katharina let her shoulders slacken, feeling some of the tremor of tension in her body ease away. But then after she had stood for a moment and the water had trailed into the crevices between her thighs, there was a second jolt and the temperature of the water striking her body increased just a little. It was not painfully hot, nor even unpleasant, but the minor shock of it swept a little shiver of sensation across her skin.

She stepped back, and felt the hotter water strike the shaft of her dick, still sticking out half stiff in front of her. When the heat of the water enveloped it, she was reminded vividly of the heat of Leah's body, the girl's hole and her insides clasped tight around her. Katharina's dick leapt upward in a sudden heavy twitch, and then an ache that she had thought had subsided suddenly surged through her again and she felt herself rushing in hard, tingling throbs to a very quick, impulsive climax.

Katharina splayed her hands, almost reached for her dick to grasp it and tug herself more firmly and satisfyingly over the edge. But she was aware of Vanessa somewhere behind her on the opposite side of the wall, could even hear Vanessa's little grunts for breath as she rinsed her face. So Katharina stood still, let her dick pulse and flail inside the stream of water as she began spurting against the wall.

The first jet of cum was very long, and struck the tiles with an uncomfortably loud splash. It was accompanied too by a subtle yet powerful frustration, the pleasure of release but dampened and slowed by an almost complete lack of stimulation. Her orgasm was muted, felt naggingly incomplete. The remaining spurts were briefer, and came quickly. With her buttocks tensed, Katharina thrust slowly into the curtain of hot water in front of her, felt something tantalizingly akin to being inside a girl, but faint and feeble. She saw again in a momentary flash of reminiscence Leah's smooth, broad hips in front of her, the soft skin of the girl's hole pulsing, about to be entered. Katharina opened her mouth for a quiet groan as she wrung what remaining relief she could from her body, then shook her head and stepped back into the stream of the shower.

She kept her face to the wall as she swept her hands over her body to finish rinsing herself. With the rush of orgasm fading, she was aware again of the room around her, and could feel the imagined pressure of Vanessa's gaze on the back of her neck. Katharina examined the wall in front of her. There was a thick streak of cum quite high up, level with her shoulders. It was trailing down over the ridges of the tiling, slowly, and in irregular clumps. She contemplated scraping it off with her fingers, or gathering some of the water in her hands to throw it at the wall and try to rinse it clean. But she decided it would draw too much attention to what had just happened. She felt she had been reasonably discreet, and there was a chance that Vanessa had not noticed anything. It was better to be brazen and not acknowledge anything, give them both the chance to ignore it.

After a moment longer spent soaking her hair, Katharina turned around, casually. She realized then that because she had wanted to avoid touching herself, she had not rinsed her dick. She grabbed it near the end, then gave it a quick sweep with her fist, cleaning away a last drop of fluid at the tip.

Vanessa had turned also, to the side. Her shower had ceased running. She was looking over at Katharina, but not pointedly. Vanessa smiled at first, her lips spreading slowly. Then she bent a little at the waist and made the same peculiar loud, excitable laugh with which Katharina was familiar.

"Katja," Vanessa called as she reached up behind her head to twist her hair between her hands and wring a spatter of water out of it.

Katharina found Vanessa's laugh quite fetching. It sounded a little tipsy, tinged with hysteria, but cheerfully so. Even though Vanessa punctuated almost everything she said with laughter, Katharina found it still somehow gratifying to hear it directed at her.

"Hi Vanessa," Katharina croaked. She coughed to smooth out a dryness in her throat.

Vanessa laughed again, more quietly. She let go of her hair and swept the palms of her hands along her arms to cast off drops of water, "You alone? I saw your friends. Ivy."

"Oh?" Katharina wanted to press Vanessa to say something more about Ivy. When she had seen her, whether they had talked. But she didn't want to seem to be eager. Ivy had often mentioned that Vanessa was a gossip. Though Katharina had not spoken to Vanessa often enough to be able to judge it for herself, it felt as if it could be true. The girl liked to talk, at least.

"Yeah," Vanessa seemed to lose interest in the thought. She chuckled and turned her attention to her legs, slapping away a few more trails of water from her thighs, "Partying. Having a ball."

It was a little unclear to Katharina whether Vanessa's remark was intended as a description of Ivy's activities, or her own, or was even perhaps a question about how Katharina was enjoying herself. Katharina felt the shower behind her cut out, and the room became suddenly quieter.

Katharina felt her own hardness had subsided to the sore, residual thickness that often followed a quick climax. Her dick was no longer twitching. Looking across, Katharina found herself relieved to see that Vanessa was also not hard, or only partly.

Katharina eyed the archway back towards the testing chamber. She took a first step towards the bank of cupboards where towels were laid out. "Yeah, fun fun. You going back in?" she nodded to Vanessa.

"To the spa," Vanessa smiled and nodded in the other direction, "Going to enjoy some sauna time. You want to come?"

Katharina considered it, then answered quickly as she continued walking over the cupboards, "I'm going to try the chamber again first."

Katharina wasn't sure what had made her suddenly so resolute. Reflecting on it just a few seconds after having spoken, she found that she actually welcomed the thought of spending time with another Sisterhood girl. She imagined taking Ivy to the spa, even if only to sit and talk together, exchange simple gossip, about which other girls they found attractive, what they had seen of the Sisterhood that evening, or about Miss Vera's intrigue. That would be nice. But Vanessa, Katharina was less sure about that prospect. Vanessa was attractive, in a cheerful, self-confident way, but Katharina hardly knew her. However friendly she might turn out to be, talking to her would entail more effort because Katharina would feel she had somehow to be on her guard, as she always was with girls she did not yet know well.

"Well, okay," though Vanessa's smile broadened and she broke into a little titter that almost became her laughter again, there was the trace of a frown on her face. Just curiosity, perhaps. "You haven't had enough yet, huh?"

"I guess not," Katharina smiled back at her, laughing in turn, beneath her breath. She took a dry towel from the first pile at the edge of the cupboards, and lifted it in two hands to fret it vigorously at her hair.

"Fair enough. Well," Vanessa wrung out her hair a second time, over her shoulder. She doubled over and released a loud, giggling laugh that echoed across the now silent chamber, "I wish I had your energy Katja."

"I don't know about that," Katharina replied. She hid her awkward smile behind a corner of the towel as she dried her neck and shoulders, "I'm not sure how long I'll stay for. Probably I'll need a sauna break too, before long."

Vanessa stood straight and remained standing there for a moment, beneath the silent showerhead. She looked Katharina over, then flung her hair back over her shoulder and turned to skip towards the tunnel leading into the spa chamber. "Well," she called out, "Come join us if you like."

"Thanks," Katharina called out in reply as she watched Vanessa disappear into the small tunnel amid the first licks of steam from the spa.

Katharina finished drying herself, sweeping the towel up and down her limbs and between her legs. Then she too stood straight and waited for a moment, catching her breath. She contemplated entering the spa pool anyway despite having announced she would not. The thickness of the steam would mean that Vanessa would only see her following if they happened to pass very close to one another. And Vanessa had seemed to be intending to go directly to the sauna, which was at the opposite end of the pool.

But she decided against it, and pivoted on her heels to face the archway into the testing chamber. She was warming to the prospect of re-entering. Though her recent orgasm had been a somewhat frustrated one, she could feel now the physical benefits of release nonetheless. Her insides glowed warm, her muscles had relaxed, and she felt invigorated, cautiously confident. Too, she felt that perhaps she might be more likely to find Josephine in the testing chamber than in the spa.

Katharina realized she was still naked, and hadn't brought her clothes with her to the showers. She tested the towel against her figure. It was large enough to wrap around herself above the bust, and reached to her hips if she did so. But she felt that looked a little odd, baring her still slightly engorged dick while making it look very obviously as if she had attempted ineffectually to cover herself. Instead she bundled the towel into a long roll and draped it around her shoulders, holding onto each end with her hands.

Then she elbowed aside the curtain and stepped back through the archway. The sound of the chamber was as it had been. Sighs, calls, some distant laughter. There were perhaps fewer voices than there had been a little earlier, when she had stood there with Vera and been impressed anew by the atmosphere of the place. But some of the voices were louder.

Katharina wondered whether she would be able to hear Leah, with Ivy and Lia, if she walked a short distance back down the central aisle. She paused and listened, and thought she could hear them already. There was grunting, fairly high pitched. And there was the clear rhythmic slap of bodies colliding. A slim body against the back of a broader, softer one. Like Ivy's against Leah's. Or perhaps Katharina's imagination was enriching what she heard.

She wondered whether she could rejoin them. It might be simple enough to make some excuse about having needed to go to the bathroom, endure the brief and benign ridicule she would probably receive from Ivy and Lia, and then just begin again. But the thought of reaching the bed and finding that the other girls were already too absorbed in each other, having too much fun to even notice her, that held her back. She turned and walked slowly up the aisle in the opposite direction, towards the far off north archway.

After having passed only the first two beds, both of which were silent and had their curtains drawn closed, Katharina heard another voice. Very close by. Or rather, it wasn't quite a voice, only a cough. But a cough in which she was confident she recognized a voice. It was a sharp and somehow even melodious cough that gave a clear impression of the voice beneath it. Brusque, and womanly.

Passing the next bed, the impression of distinct familiarity was cemented when Katharina saw a pair of legs hanging from the far side of the bed, poised and stepping into a pair of black high-heeled shoes. Katharina did not recall ever having recognized a girl by her legs before, but these legs were not only familiar, Katharina knew immediately exactly where she had seen them before, in the bar space of the Great Hall. They were strikingly long, and very slim, but with the curve of soft muscle hanging firmly behind the ridge of the shin. And they had the sheen of perfect smoothness. The skin was a creamy pale. Not quite white, but the color of a very slight tan.

Katharina almost spoke the name beneath her breath, but then as she continued hesitantly past the bed, the voice spoke back and addressed her, "Katharina."

"Miss..." Katharina hesitated again, then stepped forward so that she could see along the side of the bed, "Anna. Miss Anna."

Where the two legs protruded from between them, the side curtains of the bed swept open, pulled by a pair of hands. Anna yanked them aside and sat forward. She was shrugging on a dressing gown, in thin purple silk, a little like the one Vera had been wearing, but much shorter. Anna's dick was soft and sat between her spread thighs, nestled in the rumpled bedsheet. Katharina's gaze was drawn to it by an odd smudge of dark gray, like paint or watery mascara, that sat on the smooth ridge of skin just at its base.

When she had settled the gown around her shoulders, Anna plucked a hair band from between her teeth and reached behind her head to tie her thick golden brown hair in a ponytail. She sat up and slid off the bed, twisting each foot into her high heels, "Right. Katharina. Lovely to see you. So, did you find them?"

"Find them? Vera, you mean?" Katharina faltered, confused, "Or my friends?"

Anna stepped forward. In her heels, she was a little taller. She smiled down at Katharina, "Those, um, older women you were looking for?"

"Oh," Katharina smiled. She almost laughed, recalling her earlier meeting with Anna in the Great Hall. It had been when she and Ivy had been searching for Lia and the three women whom they had at the time been hoping to bring to the North Wing.

"Yes," Anna's smile had the same curiously intense cheerfulness to it that Katharina had always found so unsettling, "I hope you found them. My sister was very worried for you. She wanted you very much to make it to the North Wing."

"Um, well, we didn't find them, or at least not right away. But we made it here," Katharina held up her hands and looked around her, "Obviously."

"Indeed. Well done," Anna rested one hand on the bedpost and stretched her arms up a little, gave a brief, wide-mouthed yawn, then smiled broadly, "A lot of fun, isn't it?"

Katharina nodded. As she began mumbling a vague but enthusiastic affirmation, she was interrupted by a low, keening moan from within the bed that Anna had just exited. Another naggingly familiar voice, but one that Katharina could not this time place. There was a ruffle of movement from within, the curtains rippled, as if someone were turning over. Then the moan came again, but fainter, drowsy, perhaps half in sleep.

"A lot of fun," Anna repeated, flashing her eyes knowingly at Katharina. She stepped forward and put her arm around Katharina's shoulders, laying it over the towel that Katharina still held there, "Come, would you like to browse with me for a moment?"

"Oh well, of course. I would be happy to. If you're not busy," Katharina felt the warmth and proximity of Anna's very slender body beside her as they took the first ambling steps in the same direction that Katharina had been heading, towards the far north end of the chamber.

"That is, if you're not on some sort of mission for Vera or something," Anna slowed her step for a moment.

"Well, not a specific mission or anything," Katharina struggled for a moment to recall what exactly she had been doing for Vera, distracted by the effort of focusing on not letting herself already become aroused again in Anna's presence, "I'm just generally watching out for a girl we brought here."

"Oh?" Anna's head was turned, scanning the bedposts as they walked on. Most of the curtains were closed.

Katharina lowered her voice, not wanting to announce the name to anyone they might be passing, "Josephine."

"Josephine," Anna repeated somewhat more loudly, "Hm, not sure I know her. Beautiful name."

"She was very beautiful," Katharina recalled, "A lot of fun, and kind."

"Oh," Anna exclaimed. She squeezed on Katharina's shoulders, "Katharina. Of course. I must thank you."

"Thank me?" Katharina asked.

Anna turned to her with a sly smile, "For looking after my goblin."

"Oh. Your goblin? Oh your... Miriam," Katharina spoke as she was still trying to decipher Anna's comment.

Anna laughed a quiet, musical peal of laughter. Her face brightened with amusement, "That is oddly kind of apt. But no, my sister's mischief is a more subtle kind."