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  “You did want a massage, right?” His tone says either answer is fine.

  “Yes?”

  “Well.”

  We stare at each other for a long time.

  “Are you going to get it fully clothed?”

  “I figured I’d change when the masseuse came up.”

  Arms still crossed. “I am the masseuse.”

  “But … I asked for a woman.”

  “I was the only one available.”

  I’m torn. I know it’s perfectly reasonable to insist on a woman. Even if it was unreasonable, I’d be well within my rights to raise a fuss. This is a posh spa, and they must be used to rich assholes throwing their weight around and demanding stupid things like peeled grapes. But for some reason, I can’t form words.

  Marco still has his arms crossed, his foot practically tapping, stare on me. And I get this feeling like I’m facing a challenge with no way to win. Either I let him massage me, which he clearly doesn’t even want to do, or I tell him to go away and somehow fail my equality test as a human.

  But that’s not fair. I asked for a woman. It’s not like I demanded a white masseuse and they sent me a black one. This is about gender. This is about a perfectly legitimate preference about the sex of the person who will be laying their hands all over my body for the next hour.

  “Um, okay.”

  “So?”

  It’s hard to think with him staring right at me. So my fingers go to the top button of my blouse and I begin to unbutton it. I feel the cool kiss of air on my bare upper chest. I see his eyes on me as I begin to undress.

  “Most people change in the bathroom.” Marco gestures down at the robe I’ve just set on the couch arm.

  My fingers fall from my blouse as if the buttons are burning. Now I feel embarrassed on top of everything else. Was I really just going to strip down in front of him, as if I were giving him some sort of a peep show? The thought causes my body to betray me. My breasts feel tight and covered in gooseflesh. My sensitive nipples have hardened.

  I pick up the robe, and walk toward the bathroom without a word. Before closing the door, I glance back at Marco. He’s still standing there, broad as a billboard, arms crossed over his thick chest, tan skin dark against the white tee. My suitcase is beside him, still open. I’m suddenly sure that while I’m in the bathroom, he’s going to rifle through all my unmentionables.

  I shut the door, my heart hammering as if I’ve just escaped a murder.

  There’s a house phone by the tub. I pick it up and, without thinking, I dial the front desk.

  “Front desk,” says Kendall’s voice.

  I open my mouth to complain. I requested a woman, so why did they send me a man? I can’t tell him to leave now that he’s here, so why did they put me in the position where I have to let him stay or submit to letting him touch me all over?

  “Hello?” Kendall repeats. Then, because she must be able to see which room is calling, she says, “Miss White?”

  I hang up the phone.

  I look in the mirror.

  And, with my hands shaking, I take off my clothes for the man waiting outside.

  CHAPTER NINE

  LUCY

  I COME OUT IN THE robe. I’m not sure how this is all supposed to work, because I haven’t had a massage in forever, and certainly not since I’ve been making enough money to have one this fancy. I’ve never had a massage this private. It’s always been me and the masseuse, of course, but we’ve never been in the place where I sleep and take baths. Never behind a locked door, all alone. And never with a man.

  He saves me the indignity of having to ask. When I’m close enough to the table, he turns around and instructs me to get under the sheets. I think he’s supposed to actually leave the room (and come to think of it, that would have made sense instead of having me don a robe anyway), but he doesn’t offer and I don’t ask. So I quickly slip off the robe and dart between the table’s two sheets.

  “Face up or face down?” I ask.

  “Face up.”

  My back seems to want the massage more, but I don’t argue. I’ve already given up on relaxing. Now I just want this to be over.

  “Are you ready?” he asks.

  “I’m ready.”

  Marco turns around. He looks down at me. And then something strange happens.

  He laughs.

  “What?”

  “Have you ever had a massage before?”

  All of a sudden I’m not intimidated; I’m defensive. “Of course I have.”

  “You could’ve fooled me.”

  “Why? What the hell is so funny?”

  I hear him rubbing oil onto his hands.“Nothing.”

  He’s behind me. I can’t see him unless I look back. I can only see the ceiling, but then there’s a deep warmth sliding across my shoulders, lubricating me. His hands are large and strong.

  “Relax.”

  I’m annoyed by his laughing at me for reasons unknown, so I merely shuffle a bit.

  The hands move to the top of my shoulders and push down. “I said, ‘Relax.’”

  “I am relaxed.”

  “These don’t say so.” Meaning my shoulders.

  “I’m fine.”

  His hands move, but seem encumbered. Like it’s a half massage. “I can work around it,” he says.

  “What?”

  A finger hooks under the right strap of my bra. He lifts it a little and it snaps against my skin. “I’ve never had someone get a massage with a bra on before.”

  “I didn’t know.” Then, because he’s hardly helping me feel at ease, I sharpen my tone. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “Hey. To each her own.”

  I say nothing.

  “If you’re that nervous …”

  “It’s not that I’m nervous. Maybe I just didn’t want to take it off.”

  “You didn’t let me finish.”

  I feel his hands on me. I wait for him to finish.

  “I was going to say, if you’re that nervous and pent up, your problems are larger than a week in a spa can fix.”

  I look back. Did he really just say pent up? But his face is looking away, unreadable.

  “Are you wearing shorts?” he asks a minute later.

  “What?”

  “Some people who are … unusually uncomfortable … sometimes wear shorts. It’s fine. I just need to know so I can plan my time accordingly.”

  “No. I’m not wearing shorts.”

  “But you’re wearing panties. You’re not bare down there.”

  Bare down there? Did he really just say that?

  “What business is that of yours?”

  “I’m your masseur. It matters for the massage.”

  “Well, then I guess you’ll find out.”

  I’m still looking up. He’s still looking away from my face — possibly at the concealed region where I may or may not be bare down there. I wonder where his mind is — it’s a double entendre at least.

  “I’m sure you are. I mean, if you left your bra on.”

  “Is it a problem?”

  “No, no. You are who you are.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “If you think I should have it off, I’ll have it off.”

  “I just want you to be comfortable.”

  “Bullshit.” I’m not sure why I say it. He might not even be saying what my gut says he is. This man is my masseur, and he does need to do his job. Maybe this isn’t a set of personal judgments, the way it feels. Maybe he’s not presuming I’m some sort of an ice queen, the way he seems to be.

  Hearing the word exit my lips, I wonder how I feel. It was an angry word, but I don’t think I’m mad. Agitated, yes. Uneasy and uncomfortable. Defensive, maybe. It’s hard to relax.

  Marco has slipped his hands beneath my shoulders and down my back, using my body weight to provide the pressure. His hands are slick with oil. Hot to the touch. I can feel his movements shift my
bra on my chest, making my stiff nipples stiffer.

  “I’ll take it off.”

  “Don’t take it off,” Marco says.

  “I just didn’t know. You didn’t tell me how much to take off.”

  “That’s because it depends by client.”

  “How do most people here get their massages?”

  “Most of them? Nude.”

  I asked the question and Marco gave a factual response. Still, hearing him say “nude” conjures all sorts of images in my mind, stirring new emotion. I picture myself naked, concealed only by a thin sheet. I imagine a stranger’s hands everywhere in that state, and wonder where anyone draws the line.

  “You wouldn’t want to be nude,” he says.

  “I just didn’t know.”

  “But you wouldn’t do it. That’s why I don’t specify. I tell my clients to get comfortable, and they decide what that means for them. I don’t want to dictate it, because if I do, they’ll adjust to what I say rather than choosing their own comfort level.”

  “Doesn’t it defeat the point if you laugh at someone for their choice?”

  “I didn’t mean to laugh. It just caught me off guard. Nobody leaves on a bra. I thought those things were really uncomfortable.”

  “They are.”

  “Well, that says a lot, Miss White.”

  I wonder what that means. Probably that he’s decided I’m some sort of stuck-up rich bitch. The kind of girl who’d choose discomfort over practicality, if it meant keeping a big bad man away from her private bits. He probably thinks I shower in a bathing suit. He probably thinks I make my gynecologist work through a sheet, conducting her business solely by feel.

  “You do a lot of massages?” I ask.

  “A lot. Yes.”

  “Hmm.”

  He takes the bait. “Hmm, what?” His voice is curious. He’s still working from behind, oiled hands beneath me, possibly sitting on an ottoman.

  “You just seem like you might be new.”

  “I’m not.”

  “What with the unprofessionalism and all.”

  His hands stop moving. Then they resume, higher up, still bumping my bra around and making me even edgier. They come out. He makes fists and then rolls them in the twin hollows where my neck and shoulders meet, sending shivers everywhere through my body.

  “You’re different from the other women who come here.”

  “So now you know me?”

  “I know enough.”

  “Then tell me. Who am I if you know so much.”

  “You’re a businesswoman, for one.”

  “That’s genius. That’s good.”

  “Many of our guests don’t work. Their husbands earn the income.”

  “And I suppose you think that’s the way it should be?”

  Again, Marco’s hands pause. Then they vanish. Our silence is thunder.

  I hear a sound behind my head. It makes me jump a little.

  Marco comes around to my side and reaches across my body. I get a strange sense that he’s going to lay across me, chest to chest, but he merely reaches for the far side of the sheet and picks it up. From the far side, away from Marco, I’m exposed to the air.

  “Turn over,” he says.

  “But you’ve just started.”

  Marco says nothing. His face isn’t friendly, despite our lighter banter. He’s still holding the sheet for me to turn unencumbered. So I move to obey, getting up on one elbow. I glance back and see that he’s raised the donut for me to put my face in once I’m on my chest.

  I turn, look through the circle of the donut, and see Marco’s feet as he moves above my head, his hands all over my back.

  “I’ll tell you more about you.” Marco’s voice is now a disembodied thing above me. “You’re the kind of person who presumes things about other people as a defense mechanism.”

  “What do you—”

  “You’re so knee-jerk defensive that you must have always been attacked. You don’t think. You try to gain the upper hand. Like just now, when you said that I obviously think women should stay home, not work, and be barefoot and pregnant.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  His hands are flat on my back. He’s moved the sheet down toward my hips, so I feel the room’s cool air from neck to waist. Only the spots where Marco touches me are warm. His hands move down, kneading me as he speaks.

  “My boss keeps telling me that my job isn’t to give massages. It’s to help people relax. To help them feel good. And that takes more than an LMT certification and some anatomy lessons. It means finding the source of a person’s stress and helping to eliminate it.”

  “What does that have to do with—”

  “I usually play music. And normally, I’m working down by the pool. Tell you a secret?”

  I’m not sure how to respond. I still can’t see his face.

  Marco goes on anyway. “Usually, Mr. Booth insists the men here work shirtless. Do you know why?”

  I don’t know, and I can’t think to answer. Even though I don’t want to, I’m now wondering what Marco looks like without a shirt on.

  “It’s because the best way to relieve stress, for most of the clients who come here, is to drool over a man with his shirt off. Pathetic, isn’t it?”

  I say nothing.

  “You’re not like that. You want to fight.”

  “I don’t know that I—”

  “I’m no expert, but I think it’s because you don’t want to let your guard down, like I said earlier. I’ll bet you’re dumped on a lot. Never got the respect you felt you deserved. I don’t want to be presumptuous, but I’m thinking a bad home life, too. Bet you had a dominating father. Should I continue?”

  “No.”

  “I’m just trying to answer your question. You wanted me to tell you how you’re different from the other guests. The ones who just want me to touch them.”

  “Well, keep it to yourself.”

  “It’s not your fault, Miss White.”

  “Lucy.”

  “It’s not your fault, Lucy. If you want to relax, you have to step out of your past. To take risks and explore new things.”

  “That’s enough,” I snap.

  He rubs me for a few minutes in silence. But he’s right; I definitely can’t relax now. I’m glad I’m face down, and that he can’t see my expression. It surely betrays me.

  I just want this to be over. Can I ask him to leave? Of course I can. I can demand he go. Hell, I can call down and report him. Maybe even get him fired.

  But I don’t. I can’t. And for some maddening reason, I’m sure Marco knows it.

  “I take plenty of risks.”

  Marco says nothing. His hands are along the small of my back, bracketing my spine, moving up to work my upper back as best he can around that troublesome bra.

  “I do all sorts of new things.”

  I don’t know why I feel the need to convince him.

  His hands on my back. Working around the straps.

  Then they’re at the clasp. At first I think he’s just trying to hit a difficult spot, but then I realize he’s undoing it.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Shh,” Marco says.

  The clasp parts. I feel better already, without the elastic gripping me. Two halves move to my sides, but Marco doesn’t simply lay them there. He tugs the left side down as if I’m supposed to pull my arm through. So, without thinking, I do. Then the other side. I lift up a little when he tugs again and then the bra is totally gone, tossed onto the floor.

  I close my eyes. This feels wrong, but clearly it isn’t. Who gets a massage with a bra on, anyway? This is how we should have begun.

  With my face down, I feel rather than see the sheet lift. Only, because he’s moved it down to my waist, it’s not covering all that it did when he lifted it earlier. My back is bare. The raised sheet covers only my bottom half.

  I shiver.

  “Turn over,” he says.

  CHAPTER TEN

 
MARCO

  I SHOULDN’T BE DOING THIS.

  It’s one thing to play along with women like Colleen, who beg for my advances. I’ll do what they want, both of us pretending that what’s happening isn’t really. But that’s different.

  Lucy isn’t begging. Her defenses are on high alert, and I didn’t help by coming in here with a chip on my shoulder. It’s still there, of course, but now Lucy is more like a challenge.

  And maybe that, right there, is the final proof that Booth has ruined me. This rich bitch presumes to know me, making some snippy little remark intended to expose me as a sexist, and my response isn’t to do what would make Mimi proud. No. My response is to prove that Lucy has ice up her works. To thaw her a little, because we both know she needs it.

  But what exactly am I planning to do?

  I think this as I watch Lucy’s nude back, small red marks still criss-crossing her skin where the bra straps no longer are. I think it as I wonder if she’ll follow my order. Will she roll over with the sheet only on her bottom half, exposing herself to me? And if she does, what next?

  I don’t know why I did what I did, or why I might be planning to do what I definitely hope I’m not planning to do. Most women throw themselves at me. They book a massage and act like they’re booking the man behind it. Like I’m a toy, a present for their amusement. But that’s not what Lucy did. She didn’t want me here, and clearly doesn’t even like me.

  So what’s the plan? To twist her against her will? Punish her for all I’ve come to resent?

  My always firm hands are now shaking. Holding the sheet up for her to turn only makes it worse; the blue expanse vibrates like a ship’s sail in the wind. I force them to steady, and my attention draws inward, to my hammering heart and shortened breath. I look down at her, waiting. Anticipating. I’m that nerdy, weak little kid I used to be all over again. Like I’ve never seen boobs, instead of handling dozens daily.

  I want her to turn. The longer she takes, the more the feeling grips me. I realize I’m hard. This work never gets me hard. Not since my first month, when the sights and sensations overwhelmed me. These days I’m used to it all enough to bore me. But right now my cock is stiff as a board, and if she turns onto her back and then keeps on turning her head toward me, she’ll see it.