*Not a Sexual Service

Gary simply didn’t understand how any sane human being could not enjoy receiving an expertly administered massage. The feeling of having your muscles gently unlocked as your flesh and tissue were subtly and expertly manipulated by the warm, attentive hands of a skilled therapist…nothing could beat it.

Being almost naked, just a small towel hiding his modesty, while a pretty young creature pushed her warm fingers up his thighs, down the small of his back, even over his buttocks… How could any man deny the pleasure inherent?

He would sometimes fantasize on the massage table.

A new job and a new office had necessitated a new venue for the occasional massage Gary indulged in. Researching an appropriate place on the internet was a minefield, as the places that offered tantric or sensual massages seemed to outnumber the respectable establishments by about ten to one.

Gary had experienced one drunken session with this kind of service years ago, and it had turned out to be little more than a hurried rub-and-tug from a bored-looking hag who looked nothing like her photo.

No massage skill had been involved, and he almost regretted not spending his money on a fully-fledged prostitute—but then he couldn’t really conceive of doing something so tawdry.

No, what he wanted was a decent therapeutic massage from the kind of establishments keen to point out “This is not a sexual service” on their websites.

It meant the chances of his therapist behaving in an inappropriately familiar manner were reduced dramatically, but he could still enjoy the frisson of possibility during a relaxing session.

He found a suitable place fairly near his office with a website that profiled the available masseuses. They all seemed eastern European, and one caught his eye immediately: a Bulgarian girl called Teodora.

Teodora’s profile said she had worked as a physiotherapist in a hospital back in her homeland and that she was skilled and qualified in several massage styles. She had big, beautiful brown eyes and a sweet, innocent smile.

If her skill as a masseuse was equal to her beauty, he would be on to a winner.

Gary arrived at his appointment with Teodora to find it was a converted house rather than a studio or spa. He was a little apprehensive about this—it made him feel like he was visiting a more disreputable service—but he was pleasantly surprised when the door was opened.

Teodora—or Teddy, as she insisted on being called—wore a huge welcoming smile. The house was dim with low lights throughout, and as he took his shoes off as instructed, Gary heard the telltale sound of panpipes in the background and the faint whiff of incense.

Teddy was professionally dressed in a black crew-neck T-shirt and black jogging bottoms. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail, and she had only the faintest makeup accentuating her strikingly attractive face.

The photo hadn’t done Teddy justice—she was stunningly beautiful. As she led him to a space outside what he assumed was the massage room, Gary took the opportunity to assess her other physical attributes.

Her T-shirt wasn’t skin-tight but hugged her torso enough to suggest a slim body and a generous, perky bust. Her yoga pants were less form-fitting around her long legs, but tight enough just below her waist band to display a small and tight ass.

Her English was adorably broken, but she knew enough to communicate her instructions. “You can leave bag here. There are towels for you. Would you like to take shower first?”

Gary considered his strenuous morning and decided that would be best. Teddy pointed him toward a bathroom and told him to take his time—the hour wouldn’t start until he was on the table.

The bathroom contained a bath with a shower attachment, hardly the high spec of many of the professional spas he had visited, but it did the job. He returned to the waiting area with his clothes under his arm and a towel wrapped around his waist.

“There is clean towel inside,” Teddy said, motioning toward the massage room. “Lay with face down and towel over you. I come after.”

In the room, the sound of familiar music emanated from a phone dock. Gary mused that all masseuses seemingly played the same album, which combined ethereal ambiance, panpipes, and rainforest sound effects.

The lighting was even lower than outside. Dimmed lamps and tea candles offered just enough light to see.

A sturdy-looking massage table stood in the middle of the room, the traditional kind with a hole for his face. Sanitary paper lined the plastic upholstery, and a small towel was neatly folded on top.

Gary placed his folded clothes on a chair in the corner. He then removed the damp towel from around his waist and placed it over the back of the chair to help it dry. He liked these moments, standing naked before a massage, feeling free and unencumbered, the warm air circulating around his loins.

He wasn’t the most impressively endowed of men, but given that he was average in just about every other way, that didn’t bother him. He took a deep breath and clambered onto the table.

As instructed, he lay face down, his head positioned over the hole in the table, and he draped the towel over his buttocks. A light tap on the door followed shortly.

“Come in,” said Gary cheerfully.

Teddy quietly entered, adjusted the towel slightly so that it sat just below the small of Gary’s back, and got to work almost immediately. He heard the sound of the oil dispenser squirting, and then her warm hands began to spread the lubrication over his back.

“Are there any places you want me to…er…focus?” she asked. “Any injury or pain?”

“My lower back on the left side. It goes into spasm sometimes. Car accident.”

“Oh, sorry. Not recent, no?”

“No, a long time ago. A car hit me in the ass, basically, and I went flying. No serious damage, but another masseuse told me the muscles there had been damaged.”

Though this sounded like a ruse to get his butt massaged, the story was true. He had been hit as described, and the muscles remained tight as a result.

An exploratory check with Teddy’s fingertips over Gary’s lower back and left butt cheek confirmed the story.

“Oh yes. Very tight. Is always like this?”

“After a massage, it’s usually better, but I think it locks up again over time.”

“When there is damage to your body…um… How you say? Like, it can’t fix itself, so it does something else?”

“Compensates?”

“Yes, it compensate. And if you live like that for long time, it can be hard to get your body right way again. Body can’t remember. You have to teach it back.”

Gary tried to follow what she was saying, but he was distracted by the feeling of the small towel being pulled down past his bottom. The cotton gently rubbing against his buttocks as his derriere was revealed sent a frisson of excitement through his body.

Teddy ensured the towel rested at the tops of his thighs to keep his tackle under wraps, but the casual way that she exposed his behind was embarrassingly quite thrilling.

He wondered what she thought. He was hurtling toward his forties, and his butt was the one aspect of his body that Gary had always been quite proud of.

He was short, not particularly good-looking, and he had started to develop a bit of a paunch, but his bum remained as small and tight as it was when he was a teenager. He was rather proud of it, and he hoped it had impressed his new therapist. If it had, she kept her approval silent.

Gary braced himself for what, based on experience, would be a double-edged sword—the pleasure of a young lady’s hands squeezing his bottom combined with the pain and discomfort of his stiff muscles being manipulated.

But the discomfort never came. Despite a thorough and probing manipulation of Gary’s lower back and buttocks, the pain was absent. It was firm and sporadically uncomfortable but never painful.

And between the palpable improvements Teddy’s manipulations were making to Gary’s stiff lower back and the abundance of contact with his buttocks, this was fast turning into his favorite massage ever.

But then, an uncharacteristically forceful stroke caused him to sharply inhale.

“Sorry, is okay? Not too painful?”

“No, no, it’s fine,” reassured Gary. “In fact, this is one of the few times it’s not hurting much at all. Usually, this bit is agony.”

“Well, that’s what I thought. I mean, that’s what I was told. But this is great. I can really feel it’s helping, but it hardly hurts at all.”

“Good. Should be nice. Not painful.”

Gary murmured his approval and closed his eyes to enjoy the massage.

Over the next thirty minutes, he drifted off into his own private heaven. He was embarrassed to find himself letting out a few reactive sighs of pleasure as Teddy ran her lubricated fingers over parts of his anatomy as inconsequential as his biceps and calves.

This girl was a marvel!

As she massaged between his fingers, she noticed his wedding ring.

“You married?” she asked, with more than a hint of surprise.

“Er, no. Well, technically, yes, but…we’re separated. Two months now,” Gary stammered.

“Oh. So sorry.”

“No, no, it’s fine. Really… It was for the best.”

“But you said you get massage a lot? Even when you with her?”

“Well, sure. I mean, it’s just a therapeutic massage, isn’t it?” he continued. “Nothing naughty about it.”

“No. Exactly. It’s relaxing. Good for you. Everybody should have massage.”

Maybe Gary was overthinking things, but why would Teddy think his wife used to mind him getting massages unless she, like Gary, thought there was a certain intimacy between a masseuse and her male subject, regardless of the non-sexual nature of the service?

After all, the strokes over his buttocks…the sticky oil rubbing into his thighs…

Her final technique while Gary was still face down was particularly pleasing. Teddy took his arm in a lock of some kind and pulled it out toward her, stretching and flexing his upper limb.

She did it for both arms, and when Gary involuntarily flexed his fingers, he concluded by the softness of what he touched that he had inadvertently brushed his fingertips over the part of her T-shirt that contained her breasts.

It was the most fleeting of brushes but enough to engorge his already rubbery penis into a full erection.

The timing was unfortunate. “Okay, if you’d like to go on your back now,” Teddy murmured.

He tried to disguise his aroused state by pretending to scratch his thigh as he turned over, with the idea that he could rearrange the towel before he settled.

But alas, Teddy was holding the towel above his body so that he wouldn’t get tangled in it. It acted as a modesty shield, blocking her view of his lower half, but as she let the towel fall on his body, there wasn’t any way to disguise what had happened.

“Er…sorry,” Gary stammered. “I, er…sorry…”

Teddy looked unbothered. “Is fine. Is normal. Don’t worry.”

For the first time in this situation, Gary was genuinely embarrassed. He felt his face go red. Teddy noticed him blushing and giggled adorably.

“Is fine, really. There are norfs, you know…?”

“Norfs?”

“Yes, norfs. You know, your norf system…”

“Oh…nerves?”

Teddy did what any self-respecting masseuse would do in the same situation and double-folded the towel, weighing down the offending attention-seeker. And despite twitching for release, the towel did the job.

Gary felt reassured but apologized again anyway, and again Teddy waved him off.

He usually spent this half of a massage with his eyes closed, enjoying the sensations. But for this one, he spent an inordinately long time with his eyes open, staring at the beautiful creature tending to him.

Her focus was almost exclusively directed toward the muscle groups she was manipulating, so Gary felt he could observe her without freaking her out.

Teddy seemed to enjoy her work. She didn’t wear the dead-eyed zombie stare most masseuses adopted when working on someone but always had a half smile on her lovely pink lips.

Occasionally, her brow would furrow as she tried to establish how Gary’s muscles and tendons had knotted themselves beneath his skin.

At one point, though, she must have felt his eyes on her as she turned suddenly to catch him gazing adoringly at her.

He pulled one of his comedy reactions out of the bag and made a show of averting his gaze with a dopey, guilty look on his face. She laughed.

“Sorry, I wasn’t staring,” he lied. “I’m just really glad I’ve found you. This is the best massage I’ve ever had.”

Teddy beamed a gorgeous toothy smile in response to the compliment.

“How long have you been doing this?” he asked.

For the final part of the session, they chatted nonstop. The sound of panpipes was drowned by conversation dotted with laughs.

Teddy described her background, her experience as a physiotherapist in Bulgaria, and how she was struggling to learn English as quickly as possible.

In turn, Gary off-loaded about his stressful job and car crashes—both literal and, when discussing his recently-ended relationship, metaphorical. He littered his chat with compliments about her massage skills and her grasp of English.

When his time was up, he felt like a new man. As he washed away the oil from his body in the bathroom shower, he marveled at how supple he felt compared to previous massages, where he would often feel stiffer than when he arrived.

When he emerged from the bathroom after having dried and clothed himself, he had no hesitation in supplementing the massage fee with a generous tip. Teddy protested vigorously.

“Is too much,” she said, trying to hand half of it back. Gary took her hand with both of his and closed her fingers around it.

“No, I insist. It was a wonderful massage. You earned it, really.”

Teddy beamed that enormous smile again and thanked him. As she walked him out, Gary promised that he would be back soon.