The Touch of Bliss — A Sensual Reckoning (Muse of Shadow) (2 page)

Part Two

I LET MY HAND run down her calf, our actions wholly
invisible beneath the turbulent water. I saw her smile as she slid a little
further down, a little closer to me. I felt a gentle current of pleasure rise from
between my legs, the heat and the water combining with a subtle hunger I
recognized. I kept my thighs tight together, though, my hands well clear of any
temptation to touch. Even as wild as I was suddenly feeling, that wouldn’t be
right.

The sensation of her rubbing my leg with her foot, my massaging
that leg in return with my fingers, was wholly neutral. Not even a hint of sex
in the contact, the two of us nowhere near to each other’s points of intimacy.
But at the same time, I felt the flush of raw sensuality flooding through me,
and knew I couldn’t blame it just on the wine and the heat. I tried to remember
the last time I’d felt contact like this. So conscious of the feeling of being
touched, and of the clandestine sensation of stealing an experience that was
wrong somehow. Not dirty. Naughty.

Naughty is better than dirty. Naughty is best of all. Always has
been. But it’s been so long since you felt this way.

I felt her foot pull away suddenly. She slipped down deeper into
the water for a moment, twisting her shoulders, but I didn’t know why. Then she
stood, and I figured out in a hurry that she had expertly slipped the one-piece
off to stand naked before me. The suit was bunched in one hand, her smile
spreading from her full lips to her dark eyes.

Driven by instinct, I stole a glance to the far side of the tub to
see what reaction her quick change had inspired in the couples behind us. But
if they even noticed her, they gave no sign of it. I supposed that made a kind
of sense, if these were people used to baring themselves of an evening. When
not seeing clothes was the norm, there was nothing to notice.

When I looked back, she was walking slowly toward the far edge of
the tub, moving up the steps. She was much fuller figured than I would have
guessed from seeing her in the one-piece, her chest and butt equally ample and
jiggling nicely as she moved. Water clung to her darkness, reflecting the low
light from the ceiling lamps like a faint metal sheen.

This is nothing you’ve ever fantasized about. So why does
watching feel so good?

As she exited the tub, she walked to the bench to grab her towel
and robe. As she bent over to dry off her legs, she exposed a full, dark shadow
in the space between her perfect legs and her even more perfect butt. I was
pretty sure she’d chosen the angle to make sure I could see.

I felt a faint tingling in the space between my own legs. My hand
was there, just cupping my sex. Not playing or anything, but I hadn’t
remembered moving it.

She ran the towel across her breasts, still watching me. She was
so dark that it was hard to decide where her nipples started, but I could see
their centers standing high and hard as she rubbed them down.

She smiled again. Then she motioned for me to follow her.

One finger, cocked and calling to you. Come on, come on.

I was on the stairs and climbing out of the tub before I even realized
I was moving.

Her smile is a shy girl’s smirk, all innocence on the surface
but hiding thoughts as dark and sweet as her chocolate skin.

I was shaking as I toweled off, my eyes never leaving her as she
slipped her robe over her shoulders and padded away from me. She passed by the
doors that I recognized as the steam rooms, a few other people drifting by her
that I couldn’t focus on for how intently I was watching her.

Naughty was best of all.

I followed a dozen steps behind, still wet as I slipped my robe
on. The tingling at my crotch was spreading now, working down my legs and into
my stomach, where it spawned a flock of butterflies that I couldn’t shake off. I
forgot my sandals under the bench but didn’t go back.

I saw her pause at a door marked
Spa Staff Only.
She took
a look around her as if to wonder whether she dared to trespass. I did the
same, totally by instinct, but as before, no one was paying either of us any
mind.

I stepped through only moments after she did. My heart was
beating fast. But how much was from the expectation that some outraged spa
staffer would appear at the door behind me, and how much was from realizing how
little I cared about that right now?

This was some kind of private steam room, I saw. The lights were
low, the air warm and heavy and thick with white mist. The benches were empty
except for her where she lay her folded towel down. She had the robe off again,
her petite frame making a most magnificent hourglass from the back. She turned
back to give me the smile again. She sat. She beckoned me to the bench
kitty-corner to her.

I moved to where she motioned me, then set my own towel down a
couple of steps further away, not too close. I was shaking as I slipped my robe
off, conscious of how hard my nipples were.

She was leaning back, still smiling. Letting her eyes run up and
down me, taking in every inch of me. It made me feel strange suddenly, even as
I realized I was doing the same to her. I felt awkward. I felt flattered. My
gaze traced out the curve of her breasts, the smoothness of her belly. I was
looking fervently at the point where her legs crossed, I realized. Wanting
without understanding why to see a glimpse of the darkness there again.

As if she understood, she slowly spread herself.

She spreads herself for you. She’s opening for you, exposing
herself to your gaze. Inviting you. Only you…

I saw the darkness there, a tangle of black left long and unruly
around her nether lips, but shaved or waxed smooth up the sides. Her straight
strip of hair was so dark and so thick that I couldn’t see those lips. At least
not until she reached down and parted them for me.

I was feeling light-headed suddenly, unable to tear my eyes away
from the beauty of her black bush and the delicate pink flower that nestled
within it. And like my body had disconnected from my brain suddenly, I felt my
own hand between my legs, working its way down slowly, spreading for her just as
she was spreading for me.

We were close enough to touch but never did. We just watched and
stroked and fingered ourselves, each of us wholly focused on observing the
other. Her fingers caressed the pink button of her clitty, her other hand working
her lips like she was plucking the petals of a sweet silk flower. I felt my
hands doing the same.

You’re afraid to do this. Oh so scared of being here, of
breaking all the rules laid bare by every part of this.

I was wetter than I could ever remember being on my own. Not that
I was on my own all that much. D___ and I had been so hungry for each other at
first, and the worst part about that changing was that I hadn’t noticed when it
started. Even in the bad times, there was never just me, though. I was never
hungry that way, always too content to wait for him.

So where is this hunger coming from?

She began to thrust against her fingers, my eyes wide as her hand
began to disappear inside her. I pushed a finger inside myself in reaction,
following an instinct I couldn’t name, but I could feel the perfect pleasure it
was leading me toward.

She had the body of a dancer, full and rounded but edged with
muscle, and seething with the sensual energy that flowed off her in waves now. As
she began to shift against the towel on the bench beneath her, her breasts
bounced in a way that underscored how oversized they seemed for her petite
frame. They were full and ripe, and tipped with wide, black nipples rising to a
rounded point as thick as my thumb.

I was impossibly hard myself, my nipples and clitty flushed with
desire. We were dripping in the steam, beads of water tracing lines down both
our bodies in the shadows.

This thing you need so desperately to find.

I rubbed my own breasts slowly. And as I did, I was touching her
in my mind.

So hard for me… so soft…

I was so wired, so beyond any place I’d ever been before that I
swear I could feel those nipples beneath my trembling fingers. She smiled as
she watched me, still shy in a way that was so completely out of touch with
what she was doing.

With what you were both doing.

Still with one hand working at her sex, she brought the other up
to rub her chest in long, slow strokes. I felt the hand working my own sex push
deeper, tracing its way through my bush and between the folds of my nether lips
like it was moving wholly on its own. I felt myself open up, hungry for the
hardness of more fingers, trembling as I pushed in.

Hungry for so much, and for so much more.

I sensed the start of her climax even before I saw and heard it.
That’s what it felt like, at least.

The shudder that twisted through her carried over to ripple through
me, her eyes suddenly half-closed, her full mouth pouting as she bit down
carefully on her lower lip. She was pumping herself as a man would pump her,
four fingers disappearing to the last knuckle inside that perfect pink flower.
She cried out almost silently, stifling a moan that hung heavy on the air.

I couldn’t follow her. When the stress came down on me, I
couldn’t finish sometimes, and even though I was oh so ready, I could feel it
holding off from me, just out of reach.

I self-consciously faked a small climax, just because I felt the
sudden need to stop as she groaned and moaned and wound down her pleasure. As
absurd as it felt given what was happening, given how exposed we both were, I
was suddenly panicked at the thought of continuing without her.

The thought of her being there with you. Joining in. Helping
to bring you to the place where she was.

I snatched up my towel as I shakily stood. She was lying back,
breathing heavily, her legs spread so that I could see her nether lips still
swollen and wet. The black tangle of her beautiful bush was sopping.

“Thank you,” she said.

I couldn’t say anything in return as I bolted, slipping my robe
on as I went. I couldn’t even mumble. I was so terribly self-conscious
suddenly. So scared, though I told myself I’d done nothing to be afraid of.

Afraid of not finishing. Afraid of not being able to finish.
Afraid of realizing that you can’t feel what she’s feeling, that you can’t
embrace the pleasure as she does.

I was in my room. I couldn’t remember the walk back from
BLISS.

I slipped into the bed. I lay there for a long while, just
listening to the wind outside the window and faint voices from the rooms to
either side of me. Signs of life, but muted. Muffled as if covered with a layer
of protective film.

You want to feel like it was before. You want to feel brand new…

I had my fingers inside me before I realized it. I was still wet
enough down there that they slid in with no effort, my nether lips slick and
thick and wide open. My clitty was so hard it almost hurt, but I massaged it
gently, working it oh so slowly.

With two fingers, I pumped myself as a man would pump me. Like D___
would pump me. But when I climaxed after only minutes with an intensity that
set a haze of darkness across my eyes, it was her black bush I was thinking of.

It was her full, round breasts and her upthrust nipples I was thinking
of when I climaxed again.

Part Three

IT WAS HER FULL LIPS I was thinking of, wet where her
tongue traced across them, when I woke the next morning with my hand between my
legs. The delicious guilt I felt at that was as refreshing as the ten hours of
sleep had been. Just as exciting was the wetness I felt there, but I told
myself that twice the previous night was enough for now. I wasn’t ready to go
crazy with self-gratification just yet.

I drew a bath instead, standing naked before the picture window
with its incredible view of trees and vineyards, disappearing as patches of
green and gold across distant hills. As I let myself slip into the water, I
could think of nothing but what had happened the previous night. All the fear
that had driven me back to my room had seemingly vanished by the light of day,
nothing left of it now but the warm afterglow of the memory.

In all your life, you’ve never even dreamed a night like last
night. So can something truly be a dream come true if you’ve never actually
known how much you wanted it?

I was already playing with myself before I left the tub, but I
had to make it to the bed to finish. I let the newly discovered dream take over
me, imagining myself licking those dark nipples, imagining the scent of that
dusky skin. I imagined myself touching that tangled bush as I ran my fingers
through my own hair. I imagined that my rock-hard clitty and wet lips were hers
as I pushed myself to the most delicious climax with a long, drawn-out groan.

I’d masturbated three times in two days now. I thought that might
be some kind of record.

As my climax faded, all the sensual energy filling me went with
it. And I was suddenly worried again. Not about D___ this time, thankfully, but
rather about what was going to happen if I ran into my mysterious masturbating
woman again. All of a sudden, my mind was filled with thoughts of stepping into
the elevator to see her there, or having the maître de seat me next to her at
the restaurant. What was I supposed to do, what was I supposed to say if she
and I were alone together?

Then an even greater worry settled into my heart —
what would happen if I met her and she wasn’t alone?

I tried to imagine that encounter, but there was no potential
scenario that didn’t end with me crushed under a new weight of guilt and
self-consciousness. I knew that some people screwed around outside their
marriages. I knew that some people were into swinging with people they knew.
Sometimes I’d watched D___’s porn with him, and that had always been a favorite
scenario of his. Some people were friends with benefits and all that, and I
wondered now what they did to make it okay to see each other outside their
illicit encounters? How could they so easily smile and pretend that nothing had
happened?

I remembered last night’s vow to stay in my room for the entire
length of the holiday, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Maybe she’d
already been at the resort a while and would be leaving soon? That was
something to hope for.

I ordered room service for breakfast all the same. Not quite
ready yet to see what might be waiting for me outside the door.

When I slipped my robe on and answered that door to the waiter’s knock
a half-hour later, I noticed an envelope on the floor that hadn’t been there
the night before.

I opened it as the breakfast tray was laid out. Inside was a card
with the familiar treatment of
BLISS
across the top. In smooth, neat
handwriting, it said:
Your complimentary massage has been booked for 10:15
a.m. Please call the spa desk to reschedule if this time doesn’t suit.

I thanked and tipped the waiter as he left. I dropped my robe
again as I ate in front of the picture window. The slope of the hill away from
the hotel, and the lack of any road or walking trail immediately beneath it, meant
that no one was in position to see in. However, I enjoyed the illicit thrill of
feeling naked and exposed all at once. This was a thing that I’d never felt
particularly into before. This was a feeling that came from the person I was
suddenly realizing I wanted to be.

The person you want to be would take a complimentary massage.
The person you want to be wouldn’t worry about running into a casual fling in
the elevator on the way down.

It was already 9:30 when I slipped into the shower after
breakfast. It was just past ten o’clock when I finished masturbating again in
the bed, this time thinking only about how wonderful it felt to be able to make
myself feel so good.

Four times in two days. The person I wanted to be was apparently
some kind of sex maniac. I smiled at that thought as I headed downstairs.

I didn’t run into last night’s mystery woman in the elevator, of
course. I also didn’t see her in the crowded spa as I passed through, though I
was doing my best to look only from the corner of my eye. I checked in at the
desk, where the smiling attendant directed me to suite three.

I slipped inside, shutting the door behind me. I locked it as the
sign above the handle indicated, another door opposite from which I guessed the
masseuse would emerge. The murmur of voices outside was cut to wonderful
silence, the air heavy with the smell of citrus and lavender. The walls were
white and set with shelves bedecked with hanging plants and bowls of rose-petal
potpourri. I felt more relaxed than I had in weeks just by standing there. How
much better a massage would make me, I was eager to find out.

I’d never really had a spa massage before. Just a couple of bouts
of therapeutic work for a pulled muscle in my back a few years ago. The only
thing that had in common with this was the long bench at the center of the room,
its padded leather covered with a tightly tucked soft flannel sheet.

A sign on the wall welcomed me and gave a list of the various services
on offering. A note at the bottom indicated that I should
Please undress to
whatever level you are comfortable with for your bodywork session.
I felt
the illicit thrill that I realized I was getting far too used to as I slipped
out of my robe and hung it up. Wearing only panties, I laid face down on the
table.

I heard the second door open and close just a minute later. Soft
footsteps approached me. “Good morning, Mrs. ___.”

I recognized that voice.

Just two words from the night before,
Thank you…
But I
knew her all the same.

I lifted my head as if it were the most difficult thing I’d ever
done. I met her gaze as she circled around me. She was in a plain white
jumpsuit, a two-piece looking vaguely like medical scrubs. It was loose and
free fitting, while still managing to pack her ample bosom in tight and high.
Her raven-black hair was pulled back into a tightly curling French braid, her
dusky lips made even fuller with just a hint of dark red.

I could only watch as she set a basket of towels and lotions,
oils and what looked like wooden rollers to one of the room’s many shelves. She
tapped a control there that I hadn’t noticed before, and unseen speakers were
suddenly playing a quiet recording of what must have been the world’s most beautifully
peaceful rainforest. Birdsong and faint breeze sounded out. The music of a
flute. The faint hiss of rain falling, water dripping from the leaves.

I probably would have found it relaxing if I weren’t suddenly
more scared than I’d ever been in my life.

She moved up behind me and I couldn’t twist to see her. I was too
shocked to say anything, not even
Hello.
I felt myself flushing with
self-consciousness, wondering how obvious that was now that I’d decided to
throw myself on all-but-naked display.

What were you thinking? What was going on inside you? How do you
get out of this without looking a fool?

“I have you scheduled for the full hour,” she said behind and
above me. I could hear bottles clinking. “So you just let me know exactly what
you want.”

Then her fingers touched my shoulders and I flinched. I felt her
pull down, tracing her way down my back. When she hit the topmost curve of my
butt, I gasped. I was pretty sure that’s not what most people did during a
massage, but she acted as if she didn’t hear.

Oil spread across my back, warm and tingling. Her hands were
small and strong where they worked me, starting with my shoulders and slowly
walking down. The pleasure of her touch was indescribable.

I lost track of time as she swept down across my thighs and back,
touching nerves I never knew I had. She worked me gently with her fingers,
worked me hard with the heel of her palm. She worked me with an ever-changing
selection of wooden rollers from the basket, following the lines of my muscles
and nerves as if I was a map that only she knew how to read. A tingling
sensation swept through me, from toes to fingertips and back again. Each time
it made the circuit of my body, it pooled deliciously in my sex, but it wasn’t
a sexual feeling. Or not just sexual, at any rate.

You’ve never felt like this before. As long as you’ve lived,
as many men as you’ve been with, as many things as you’ve done… why have you
never felt this way before?

Then she was in front of me, working my shoulders and my neck. I
couldn’t remember her circling around again. I was only conscious that less
than six inches from my face, the inseam of her white pants was hiding the
black bush and the pink flower that I had fantasized about as I masturbated
less than an hour before.

“You’re very tense, ma’am. I hope this is helping you feel
better.”

I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t even nod, overcome suddenly with
visions of that motion driving me forward so that I might bury myself between
her thighs.

“And if it’s not feeling good, you just tell me what you want, Mrs.
___.”

How can you tell her what you want when you don’t even know?
How is this possible, how can this feel so good and yet scare you so much?

She leaned closer. “You’re so beautiful,” she whispered, but the
words were lost as her hands worked their way down, stroking the side of my flattened
breasts. An electric shock twisted through me. I gasped out loud despite
myself.

I felt her tongue caress my ear. “Show me what you want, Mrs.
___.”

I spread my legs wide.

I felt my wetness against the flannel sheet as I spread my thighs
and bent my knees in one frantic motion. I was wide open in front of her,
splayed forward and all but helpless. My breath was rasping, loud in my ears.

Quicker than I would have thought possible, she was behind me and
onto the table, working her way into the V my widespread legs made. Her fingers
on my thighs set up a tremor that I couldn’t stop, my entire body shaking as
she worked her way up and up, higher and higher.

I climaxed as I felt her push my panties aside to enter me. That first
touch was all it took, the wetness of my sex mingling with the tingle of the
oil on her fingers to let her work them smoothly in. I had to stifle a scream,
the rainforest sounds covering it as I felt myself thrust against her, my butt rising
into the air suddenly. Her fingers were on my clitty now, working it feverishly
despite how incredibly hard it was. I climaxed a second time, or perhaps the
first was still ongoing. I couldn’t make sense of it, I couldn’t think about
anything anymore except her hands on me and inside me, and the hunger I felt as
my nether lips swallowed her again and again.

I felt her slip off the table. I felt her hands on me, gently
rolling me over. I was shaking, so weak that it was all I could do to help her
move me.

I did a better job tearing my panties off.

As I lay on my back, she stood before me and pulled her white top
off over her head. She wore a white lace bra that cupped her breasts to perfect
globes. Its fabric did nothing to diminish the upward thrust of her nipples, high
and hard as she ran her hands across her body. Then she was on the table again
and between my naked legs, and the sensation as her tongue caressed my nether
lips was a frantic wave of pleasure that coursed through me like a long pent-up
tide.

D___ had performed oral on me when I asked him. But for the last
few months, I hadn’t had the strength to ask.

Not that name. Not here, not now.

I pushed the memories and the darkness away. I had her head in my
hands as she licked me, as she sucked my clitty with a hunger I could feel. I lost
track of time, conscious only of the ebb and flow of my pleasure that pushed me
eventually to climax again, even more strongly than the first times. I had one
hand shoved in my mouth, biting down on it to keep from screaming.

She was up against me suddenly, sucking at my nipples like a
hungry child. My hands were at her back, pulling her into me. My legs were
wrapped around her, my hands at her butt, so soft and firm. This close, her
petite frame seemed dwarfed by me, and I wanted to just close against her, wrap
myself tight around her darkness like a rose blossom closing at the touch of
night.

I felt her kiss me. Her lipstick was cinnamon. Her lips sucked at
mine as if she was drinking from me. My sex, my breasts, my mouth, everything
inside me was poured out for her. I was shaking so badly that I couldn’t kiss
her back.

She pulled another flannel sheet from the basket and covered me
with it as I curled fetal. She held me tight for a long while before she
whispered in my ear.

“I have another client and I have to go, but there’s no one here
for another half hour. You can stay for as long as you need. Just relax and
rest. Get yourself off again if you like. No one will bother you.”

She kissed me again. I kissed her back this time.

Never a woman’s tongue in your mouth before. How soft. So
soft.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Thank you,” I whispered in response. It was the first thing I
had ever said to her, I realized.