“Make yourself at home. I'm going to find some clean clothes for you.”

She eyed her body critically, holding Yasna‘s surgical scrubs away from her body. She nodded. "We're about the same size, though you're a bit taller. And if you stopped hunching your shoulders, it would make your tits look bigger. But that's not my business. For now.

“So," she said as she stepped out of the room. The door stayed open, an invitation to gossip. "What's your story? Althea can read a lot about a person just by touching them. So we got a bit out of you when we met earlier today. You're originally from Iran?"

She shook her head as she disrobed. She cast a longing look at the sunken tub, but then opened the door to the walk-in shower. A quick turn of the handle had blessedly hot water pouring out of the nozzle overhead. She left the door open so they could talk, reminded of long weekends with her girlfriends, years ago. When they would stay up all night, exchanging stories and dreams of their futures.

And sometimes, more than that.

“My family is, not me," she said.

“My father was a doctor. When the

Ayatollah took power, back in the seventies, he took my mother and fled the country. America was welcoming, at least for a while." She tried not to let bitterness cloud her voice. She stepped into the shower, sighing as the warm water caressed her skin, washing away the stink of fear. "I was born after they settled here."

“Husband? Children?" Rachel's voice was carefully neutral.

"None," she replied shortly. She Lathered her body with scented soap, trying not to imagine it was Althea's hands spreading it across her eager flesh.

“Please, understand. My father was a good man, and no reactionary. But the move to America broke something inside him. He held onto the old ways, because he could not adapt. Back home-" she cut herself off and laughed. "Listen to me! I still speak as he did! Back home, he was a learned man. An educated man. But here...he could not speak the language. He was mocked as an immigrant. He! Who held a degree from the Tehran University of Medical Sciences! He was forced to find work as a janitor. Then as a cab driver.

“So when I graduated from medical school, following in his footsteps, he was very proud. But he also tried to make a marriage for me. A young

Iranian man of good family, who had fled just as we did." Why not tell the truth, you coward? You opened your soul to him. Told him in what direction your desires Led. And he ignored you.

“I...agreed. It was a mistake. We did not suit each other. Or rather, I did not suit him. He wanted a...a traditional wife. Like his mother. And I, who had been raised in Chicago, not Tehran or Isfahan or Meshhad, was not traditional. At all. We divorced three years ago." She rinsed off the soap and stepped out of the shower, only to meet a smiling Rachel, holding a towel between her spread arms. She wrapped it around her and led her to her bedroom, where she presented her with a choice of clean clothing, mostly loose t-shirts and cut-off jogging shorts.

“I have to warn you," she said, as Yasna slipped into a pair of sheer white panties, “our efforts to heal Althea might be a little...disturbing. She is a being who gets her power through sex, after all."

Yasna smiled as she shrugged her way into a cotton t-shirt, the soft fabric of the clean cloth wonderfully cool on her skin. She tried to ignore the way Rachel's eyes lingered on her, the look frankly appreciative. She glanced away, embarrassed at the attention.

“Well, I doubt that you have some sort of virgin sacrifice planned. Do you?"

Rachel laughed.

“No. We don't. There being a complete Lack of virgins in this household. A circumstance I do not find at all distressing.

Despite some people's insistence to the contrary, I have never thought that virginity is a desirable trait. At least after I deflowered my husband," she grinned. "One benefit of being a man's first lover," she continued, as Yasna bound her hair back with a scrunchie, “is that you have the opportunity to shape him as you like.”

She stripped down to bare skin, oblivious to Yasna's widening eyes, and took her place in the shower.

“Come on in so I don't have to shout," she called. Yasna followed her, sitting on the lip of the bathtub.

"So I have to ask, because someone is bound to eventually. What is your..." her voice trailed off, oddly hesitant.

“My religious affiliation? I am a Muslim, of course, as were my parents before me."

“And your sect? Or am I being rude?" She closed her eyes as she lathered her face. Yasna eyed her hungrily, taking in the proud swells of her white breasts, the coral-pink nipples that jutted out perkily from their centers. When Rachel rinsed her face and looked at her, she dropped her eyes, flushing with shame.