Page 42 of The Legend Next Door
My mouth pools with saliva.
My dick drools in my pants.
I massage him.
And massage him.
I don’t know when or how to stop.
I’m an experienced masseuse, so usually, if I forget the timer, my hands will tell me when the treatment is nearly done. Not this time. This time my hands don’t know a damn thing except that they don’t want this to end.
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Ben Stirling
Jeremiah’shandsskateringsaround my shoulder blades. The sensation is intense, deep to the point of pain, and then it’s not. It’s like he has a sense that tells him where my discomfort lies and how close he can get to it and still stay closer to pleasure than pain. It’s like a dance. A slow dance that leaves stressed muscles lax once he’s worked them over.
I’ve lost track of time. I can’t tell how long I’ve been here.
Long.
I think I’ve been here for a long time because his pace finally slows and the pressure lessens.
The massage is winding down. His touch is less firm, more comforting. Lighter and soothing now. His fingers roam through my hair, tugging just enough to make my scalp tingle. He holds my head in his hands, making a cage with his fingers that hits various pressure points and makes me feel contained. Nimble fingertips work to find the fine blades that are buried in bone, blinding me. He removes them one at a time, and as he does, the noxious vines that wrapped themselves around the base of my skull and my face evaporate.
His hands glide up and down my back, coming to rest over my rib cage. He pauses for a second.
I’ve had enough massages to know this signals the end.
“Breathe in,” he says, and I do. I take a breath that feels big but only fills the top quadrant of my lungs. I hold it until he says, “And out.”
As I exhale, he uses both hands and the weight of his body to force the breath from my lungs. It leaves me empty.
The second time he tells me to inhale, it’s painful, like a sob in reverse. Oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, argon, and water vapor swell and expand rapidly, swirling into a hard globe that feels trapped behind my sternum. When Jeremiah excises it, it leaves my body with a long, mournful sound. I’d stop it if I could, but it takes flight before I have time to try to hold it in.
“Last one,” he whispers. His lips are close to my ear, words quiet and warm as they bathe the side of my face.
I breathe in. This time, the breath comes easily, filling my lungs completely. Filling them to bursting. Extending spongy tissue and stretching elastic fibers to their limit, flooding my arteries so hard and fast, I’m left reeling.
Jeremiah presses down as I exhale.
I’m weightless, light, floating for three, maybe four seconds. Then I’m back in my body, hyperaware of the barely there drag of Jeremiah’s touch being rescinded.
Something inside me rebels.
Something else rises, rumbling as it raises its head, alerting me to the fact that I’m hungry.
Famished.
Starved.
Touch starved.
It’s been so long since I’ve been touched that I go cold at the thought of it ending.
Jeremiah places a towel over me. It’s warm in the wrong way. Not fleshy or dense and the weight is all wrong. It’s too light. I keep my head buried in the hole in the table, hiding, even though my face has developed a pulse of its own and my lips feel puffy from the pressure of being in this position for so long.
Jeremiah’s footsteps retreat. In the kitchen, a cupboard door opens. Glass tinkles. Ice cracks. A faucet runs for several seconds. Then he comes back to where I am.
