Touch

“My client, did you see her come in?” you ask.

“No, why? Is she famous or something?”

“Well, that would explain the secrecy, and it would also explain a woman barely twenty having cash to burn at a place like this,” you whisper to the colleague who is far too jealous of how you just got requested by name because that usually means big tips for a good service.

“Did you get her name?”

“Supposed to be a secret.” Your answer dissatisfies her, and she throws you a side-eye. “Okay. Okay. Danielle something… Marsh?”

“Shut up!” She hits you on the shoulder. “No fucking way. Let me take this one and you can have my next ten VIP bookings.”

“Sorry, but she asked for me by name,” you tell her. She mutters an obscenity under her breath. “Want to tell me what I’m getting into here?”

And then the girl spews out a jumble of ramblings about K-pop this and K-pop that—the kind of reaction that only the truly obsessed can have. Millions of views on this, charting on that, really fucking popular is the gist of it. So basically the whole planet Earth knows who this Danielle is. Well, shit. No pressure or anything. “Get in there already, do your best work and maybe get me an autograph.”

A few forceful pushes out of the staff room and you find Danielle where you left her, her cleansing mask still on her face, sitting in that long white robe. You step barefoot over the soft wood, heat rising from underneath it.

As you draw near, you ask, “Miss Marsh, are we ready to begin?”

“Dani, please,” her voice says from beneath the mask. It’s hard not to be intimated after being hit with the fact that the woman before you is world-renowned. Though from here, she looks like any other delicate young woman. Her feet are small. Bare, tiny and arched, they hang just a few inches from the floor, and they are as perfectly still as the rest of her. “No need to be formal, I’m here to relax.”

“Then let me start by offering you a drink.” The bottle pops as you twist it. The label is adorned in cursive. “Bottled at source, premium mineral water.” Your arm raises the bottle so she can see the brand clearly.

“Is it magical water?” There is a playful lilt in her voice, “Maybe it has some healing powers?”

“Guaranteed to nourish the soul and unclog those emotional pores,” you deadpan.

The facemask stretches with Dani’s wide smile, and she lightly chuckles. “That’s good, laughter is good for the soul.”

“Right.” You pour from a height and a theatrical stream flows. When the flute is halfway, you stop the flow and pass it to her hands, which take it gently.

“What? You don’t even hold the glass for me? Put it to my lips and tilt?” It’s another tease, the joke stretching on her grin, but now it is her hands holding the flute, her fingers long and smooth around the stem.

“I serve, not control.”

“Those don’t have to always be exclusive.” She laughs, and the sound makes you feel something. “But I appreciate the intention. I hear you’re the best in the business.”

“I’ll let you be the judge, Miss Marsh. Now, allow me to remove that mask. I have raised the temperature in here to help open the pores, and I would like to begin with a facial.”

“I do love a facial.” Danielle smiles to herself. “And again, please, just Dani is fine.”

You step over behind her, where her head tilts back against the chair, her long hair cascading below, shimmering in the moist air. Lightly, you place the tips of your fingers along her jawline, finding the edge of the mask and gently lifting it upwards. She doesn’t flinch at all, and you watch the wet mask give way to her face. Even upside down, Danielle is indeed beautiful.

With her sun-kissed hair, radiant skin, and effortless, elegant beauty. She is, in summation of all her parts: perfect. The image the word calls up has always been fuzzy around the edges, an abstract idea more than a specific concrete thing, because real people aren’t like this. That’s what you believed until you laid eyes on her.

“You take good care of your skin, Miss—Sorry—Dani.”

“Thank you,” she says simply, no joke this time. Your fingers ghost over her chin and then trace to her cheekbones, moving lightly to test her texture, all so smooth.

“First, I shall cleanse away any impurities,” you say and lean down to examine her face. Even when you are so close, there is nothing for your scrutiny—no visible crevice, no blemishes, despite there being not a trace of make-up. It’s all-natural.

There’s a light whisper on her lips, one that you barely make out, “Good luck with that.”

You tilt your head as you reach over for a fresh sponge, run it under hot water until it is filled, squeeze out the excess, and slowly drag a path of heat across her forehead. As your other hand holds the sheet over her neck to catch stray water, your first-hand works in large strokes from above, rinsing her skin with each successive pass.

As you focus, she leans back into the chair, and a soft hum escapes her lips. “Feels nice already,” she murmurs.

You say nothing, working her in silence. Her eyelids are closed, her lips slightly parted, and she remains so still that, if not for the sound of her breaths, she could be easily mistaken as unconscious. This silence has a tranquillity and familiarity to it, one that feels like home, and without thinking, you are smiling.

She stays just the same as you begin to exfoliate her, brushing across her face in ever-widening circles. It’s with such tenderness that her cheeks take a pink tint as she grows hotter and she smiles as you rub in gentle swirls, one spot, then the next.

Time passes in silence as you finish the exfoliation and apply all manner of natural, topical lotions, toners, and peels to Dani. When her skin is primed, you press your fingers against her skin and, starting at her forehead, you massage her face to a rhythm of long, soothing strokes. You enjoy touching her, you admit, which isn’t exactly right for a professional, but since you have no outward reaction from her, you assume it isn’t the end of the world.

Throughout it all, she keeps her eyes shut. Over time you move around her face, applying more pressure in some spots than others. She shifts and sighs, soft exhalations of her warm breath tickling your arm, yet otherwise doesn’t move an inch. Her shoulders relax against the leather of the seat. “You really know what you’re doing,” she says, with a smirk. You pull her skin with your fingertips, moving them in large circles as it comes to an end. Finally, you tap your fingers gently over her skin to soothe.

“Now, your body, Dani.”

Her eyes crack open, but slowly. “Are we moving?”

“I’ll wash your skin over there, but the massage will be in the next room. Now, I’ll need you to—”

Dani doesn’t let you finish your sentence before she rocks forward in her seat and pushes herself to a stand. She’s facing away from you and puts her hands in front of her, then she throws the robe back off her shoulders and lets it slide off her arms to the floor in one quick motion.

“Good,” she says. “I was far too hot in that thing anyway.”

Of course, as a professional, you would never gasp in surprise, yet, at the sight of her ass, the muscles tight, small, and round, the curves of her waist so thin, hair over her shoulders threatening to hide her slender back and those long slim legs, you manage to just barely gulp.

Too hot, she certainly is, you want to tell her and not just in the sense that perspiration coats her skin. Tiny beads of sweat that, as your eyes crawl over her, are in the process of running downwards. This glistening on her flesh is hypnotic. The curve of her ass, the slight tilt of her hips forward, the way the base of her spine leads downward, right down to a crack between her—

Focus. You remind yourself you have a job to do.

“In the far corner. The stone pool. Please, stand by the edge.” It takes a second before Dani’s head bobs, and then she slinks forward, slow and catlike. Her stride, and every motion of her muscles beneath her flesh that accompanies it, are mesmerising. And with every sway of her hips, you love her tight body more.

She pauses, a foot by the edge, and looks down into the water. Steam rises and envelops her form in a pale white that hugs her curves.

“Please, step in,” you say as you walk over to her side and take her hand. Now, you catch a glimpse of her profile, and her chest, small, round and perky, and as you avert your eyes to guide her down the step, you tell her, “Watch your step now, go from stone to stone until you stand in the middle just there.”

“Got it,” Dani says. She steps with confidence and the hot water reaches quickly above her ankles and then halfway up her calves. With each careful move down the next step she gasps, soft and light. The water splashes with her movement and then swallows her up to the upper thigh.

“Please, take a seat there, on the wide stone.” You reach to help steady her as she sinks down, her knees bending as she perches down so the water is at her hips as she sits.

“I just sit?”

“Yes, Dani, and I will bathe you.” You step into the pool until the hot flowing water covers your knees, and then you stand behind her. You reach for a sponge, submerge it, and watch it fill, then draw it out and over her lower back and drag a large circle across her soft skin. “How’s the water? Feel okay?”

“Great. Wow.” She goes quiet as you work up and down her back, long, relaxing, soothing strokes until all the tension has left her shoulders. “That’s wonderful,” she says.

You clean her shoulders and then down her arms, the sponge dipping under the surface, and caressing her in a movement that feels like worship. With a slow rhythm, you run the sponge over her shoulders and around her neck, and finally, reaching over her, down to her chest. She shifts back as you do, resting herself against your legs. You run it over her chest a few times before coming up again to her shoulders.