upstairs. You need to undress down to your jocks, lie on the table and cover yourself with a towel. I’ll come down when you’re decent. Sandalwood, Dr Rochester?’
‘Sandalwood?’
‘For relaxation. Or something else. Check out the list on the wall before you lie down. Headaches, tension, constipation…you name it I can rub you with something that just might make you feel better.’
‘Constipation?’
She grinned. ‘I won’t take a case history,’ she told him. ‘And if you just happen to choose marigold for premenstrual tension, then I won’t ask any questions at all.’
Darcy undressed. Slowly.
He was feeling really, really weird. This was a bad idea. Stupid.
He lay on her sun-warmed couch and covered himself with her pre-warmed towel. Sunbeams were filtering through the blinds. This was a lovely place for a massage, he thought. She’d known what she was about when she’d chosen her premises.
But then the reasons why she’d chosen her rooms faded, as did any other logical thought. He couldn’t think of anything other than the fact that any minute Ally would walk down those stairs and begin her massage.
He tried again. This was crazy. He should be next door. If he’d known he had cancellations he could have gone out to dress old Martin Pegg’s leg ulcers.
He’d let her give him a quick rub just to keep the locals happy, he decided with the frayed remnants of the senses left to him. Maybe he could go out the back way so no one would see him leaving early. OK, he couldn’t take his car away, but he could catch up on some medico-legal paperwork.
Maybe…
Maybe he couldn’t do this. He’d draped the towel from his waist down but the sun was streaming in over his bare back. He felt… He felt…
‘Ready?’ Ally’s soft voice floated down the stairs.
‘Yes,’ he said, and it came out as a croak. He coughed. ‘Um…yes.’
He was lying face down, his face pillowed by a soft, circular rim that left him clear to breathe. He heard her walk down the stairs and it was all he could do not to get up and run.
‘I don’t think-’
‘Did you choose an oil?’ A soft murmur started behind him-harps with a stream rippling in the background. Oh, for heaven’s sake, how corny was this?
‘Sandalwood,’ he said, and his voice was desperate. He couldn’t see, but he heard her smile in her response.
‘How original is that? And expensive.’ He could hear her smile. ‘I’ll have to charge you an extra dollar if you choose sandalwood.’
‘Can we just get on with it?’
‘Sure.’ She was draping another warm towel over him, adjusting him so he was covered from neck to toe.
‘Just relax,’ she told him. ‘Think of nothing. Sink into the music.’
Her hands came to rest on the broad stretch of his back, and through the warmth of the towel he felt a wide, soft pressure as she gently pressed down. She stayed where she was for a long, long minute, her hands simply resting. Being in contact with him.
Then, ever so gently, she lifted the towel away-the towel that covered his back from the waist up. The other- the one that covered his legs-she left in place.
‘Think of nothing but the water you’re hearing,’ she murmured. He heard her rubbing her hands, warming the oil, he thought. Then, very lightly, her hands returned to his back. Her hands floated downward, barely touching him but sweeping down in long, curving strokes that followed the curves of his body as she spread the warmed oil over his skin.
Over and over.
Her feather touch became firmer, a broad, definite sweep that was doing more than spread the sweet-smelling oil. It warmed him to the core. It made him feel…
He didn’t know how he felt.
Forget asking. Think of nothing.
The strokes became firmer still, rolling up in wide arcs from his thighs to his shoulders. Her hands circled out from the small of his back, under his arms, back to his shoulder blades, sweeping down over his shoulders, warming his neck.
‘It’s effleurage,’ she murmured. ‘Just used to warm and relax.’
It certainly did. He was feeling hazy already.
Then the long strokes stopped. Her hands rested for a moment on his back, as though considering.
Then her magic hands started work again.
‘Petrissage,’ she murmured, and he realised she was explaining to try and stop the tension he was feeling at the touch of her. Turning it into technical terms he could relate to.
She was working on one side, using the whole of her hands, kneading, pulling, working the mass of muscles in his broad back. Her hands weren’t leaving his body between strokes-there was total contact-but she was working him as if he was warm dough.
Then the pulling… Using her entire hand from fingertip to wrist, she pulled up from his sides with alternate hands, carefully overlapping her hands at each pull, so each hand came to rest at the place where the other hand had been.
She kept explaining as she went and her voice was a soft murmur in the background, merging into the sound of the water and the music and the sensation of her hands and the sunlight on his back.
Deep tissue strokes…frictions…thumb rolling…percussion, pummelling, cupping, half-locust leg lifts…
He was close to sleep at one level, but at another he was deeply aware of every move. She rolled him over and he was hardly aware that he’d helped-that he’d moved. She was massaging his neck, and then her genius fingers were rolling in tiny circles from forehead down along his cheekbones to his jaw.
He could feel her breast against his head. He could smell her. She wasn’t wearing perfume but she still smelt clean. Pure.
The sandalwood, he thought weakly. It’d be the sandalwood he was smelling.
Yeah, and it’s the oil you’re feeling, and not Ally, he told himself wryly but then went back to just experiencing. Just being.
Her fingers were slowing now. She left his face and he was aware of a stab of sheer regret.
Warm towels were being laid back over his body and her hands were moving lightly over him. Lightly. Lightly. Feathering. Barely brushing.
Then her hands came to rest on his chest, ever so lightly. They pressed down as if in one long gesture of farewell-and then they were gone.
The face mask she’d laid over his eyes as she’d rolled him to his back was lifted away.
He kept his eyes closed. He didn’t want to break this moment.
This might be a massage-well, of course it was a massage, that was all it was-but at another level…
He’d released something he hadn’t known he’d been holding, he thought, dazed. In these last few minutes his head felt as if it had been lifted from his shoulders. The tension was gone.
And what a tension. It was a tension he’d held since Rachel had died, he thought, dazed beyond belief. He felt…free.
Was that massage? Just massage?
‘I’m going upstairs,’ Ally whispered, and he fought to bring himself back to reality. ‘Lie still for a few more minutes while you fully wake up, and then get dressed. I’ll come back down a few minutes after I hear you moving round.’
He thought about that and didn’t like it.
‘Stay.’
‘I have other clients,’ she told him, and he could hear the smile back in her voice. ‘And maybe so have you.’
‘Didn’t they book you for an hour and a half?’
