S.E.C.R.E.T.: An Erotic Novel (9 page)

“Drop the towel. Let me look at you,” he gently commanded.

I hesitated. How could I show myself to a man this attractive?

“I want to see you.”

Good God, Cassie, what have you gotten yourself into?
What choice did I have? There really was no turning back now. I barely met his eyes
as I let the towel drop around my feet.

“My hands have a beautiful woman to work with,” he said. “Please lie down. I’m here
to give you a massage.”

I eased onto the table and lay back. The ceiling loomed above me. I covered my face
with my hands.

“I can’t believe this is happening.”

“It is. This is all for you.”

He placed his large warm hands on my naked body and lightly pressed down on my shoulders,
then urged my hands away from my face and down to my sides.

“It’s okay,” he said, his brown eyes smiling at me. “Nothing bad is going to happen.
Quite the opposite, Cassie.”

The contact felt amazing. His hands on my thirsty skin. How long had it been since
I’d been touched, let alone like this? I couldn’t even remember.

“Turn over onto your stomach, please.”

I hesitated again. Then I rolled over, shoving my shaking arms beneath me to calm
them down, turning my head to one side. He gently placed a sheet over my body.

“Thank you.”

He bent over to bring his mouth close to my ear. “Don’t thank me yet, Cassie.”

Through the sheet, I felt his hands on my back, pressing me flat to the table.

“It’s going to be okay. Close your eyes.”

“I … it’s just nerves, I guess. I didn’t think it was going to happen so fast, like
right now. I mean—”

“Just lie still. I’m here to make you feel good.”

I felt his hands traveling down my thighs under the sheet,
then covering the backs of my knees. Then, standing at the base of the table, he split
the bottom half of the table in two, like a Y, and stood between my legs.

Oh my God!
I thought.
This is happening
.

“I don’t know if I can do this right now,” I said, trying to turn around.

“If I touch you in any way you don’t like, you tell me. And I will stop. That’s how
this works. That’s how it will always work. But, Cassie, it’s just a massage.”

I could hear him take something out from under the table and then I smelled the delicious
perfume of coconut lotion. I heard him rubbing it on his hands. Then he clasped the
backs of my ankles.

“Does this feel okay? Tell me honestly.” Okay? It felt way more than okay.

“Yes,” I said.

“This?” he asked, slowly moving his warm, oiled hands up the backs of my calves.

Sweet Jesus, his hands were amazing. “Yes.”

“How about this? Do you like this? Tell me,” he said, reaching my thighs and stopping
just below my buttocks. Then he began to knead my inner thighs. I felt my legs opening
up to him.

“Cassie. Do you want this?”

“Yes.”
Oh God I said it
.

“Good,” he said, moving his hands to the crests of my cheeks. There he began to massage
in widening circles, touching me almost between my legs. Almost, but not
quite. My body was in panic mode and yet highly aroused. I had never existed in this
place between fear and nirvana before and it was strange, intoxicating, and wonderful.

“Do you like it firm or soft?”

“Um—”

“I mean massage, Cassie.”

“Oh. Firm, I guess. No, soft,” I said, my words still muffled by the table. “I don’t
know what I like. Is that normal?”

He laughed. “How about we try both, then?”

He squirted more lotion on his hands and rubbed them together. This time he moved
up my back in a large circle, pulling the sheet off me entirely. I watched it drop
to the ground beside me. I was naked.

“Take your arms out from under you and rest them over the top of the table, Cassie,”
he said.

I did so and began to relax into the most intense back massage I had ever had. His
thumbs traced the outline of my spine from my tailbone up to my neck, then down around
my rib cage, brushing by the sides of my breasts. He circled like that for several
minutes, and then dipped down to circle my butt cheeks up and out. I could feel his
hard-on through his jeans against the inside of my thigh. I couldn’t believe it. He
was feeling something for me too? I instinctively pressed back into him.

I let my legs, on the split table, fall apart even wider. It was the sweetest, oddest
thing to be open to a man like that.

“Turn around, Cassie, I want you on your back.”

“Okay,” I said. The room was warm from the candles, or perhaps from my overheated
body. Just his hands, that rub-down, had removed so much tension and anxiety. I felt
completely boneless.

I did as he asked. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing. I guess this is what
Matilda meant by surrendering. Before I left the coach house that day, she left me
with one simple instruction for my first Step.

“Above all else, sex requires surrender, the ability to simply melt with each arriving
moment,” she said.

As I adjusted myself, I was so oiled I nearly slid off the table. Positioned where
he was, between my legs, he grabbed me by the thighs to hold me firm. He took my entire
body in with hungry eyes. Was he faking this? He seemed, dare I say, into me, which
made the whole thing that much more enjoyable.

“You have the sweetest-looking pussy I have ever seen,” he said.

“Oh, well, thank you, I guess,” I replied, embarrassed, lifting one hand to cover
my eyes. I was curious about what would happen next, and at the same time still incredibly
shy.

“Do you want me to kiss it?”

What! This was insane. This was also marvelous, this feeling, this weird and perfect
thing that was charging like a current through my body. He wasn’t even touching me
there
and yet I was losing a part of my consciousness. Two weeks ago I had no idea a world
like this existed, a world where sexy men knock on your door on a Wednesday night
and
bring you to the brink of ecstasy without even touching you. But it was real and this
was happening—to me. This achingly beautiful man wanted to do this. To me!

I could have laughed and cried.

“Tell me what you want, Cassie. I have the power to give it to you. And I
want
to give it to you. Do you want me to kiss it?”

“I want you to,” I said. And then I felt his hot breath on me, as his lips brushed
my stomach. Oh my God, he trailed a finger down my stomach and then slid it inside
me.

“You’re wet, Cassie,” he whispered.

I reflexively placed one hand on his head and gently grabbed a fistful of his hair.

“You do want me to kiss your sweet pussy.”

That word again. Why was I so shy of it?

“Yes … I … want you to—”

“You can say it, Cassie. There’s nothing wrong with saying it.”

He flicked and probed with a single finger around the inside and outside of me.

Next, he placed his mouth on my stomach, and explored my belly button with his tongue.
He trailed along the same path as his finger, and found me there and licked and nibbled,
the whole time keeping his fingers circling around and just outside of me. I couldn’t
believe the sensation, like I was slowly going uphill in a roller-coaster, higher
and higher. I heard him moan, just slightly. Oh God, it was like a thousand nerve
endings were finally awakening.

“Cassie, I love how you taste.”

Really? Was that possible?

His hands began to move up the length of my legs, spreading them farther open on the
table. I had never felt so helpless, so vulnerable, before. I was exposed, all need
and want. I was powerless, and happy to be so. I was on the rim of a thousand explosions,
a million different sensations, and if he just kept going I would—And then he stopped.

“Why did you stop?” I cried out.

“You don’t want me to stop?”

“No!”

“Then tell me what you want.”

“I want to … come. Like this. Just like this.”

His tawny skin, that face … I lay back down and covered my face with my hands again.
I couldn’t watch. Then I couldn’t
not
watch. Suddenly I could feel something hot and wet circling my left nipple. His hand
cupped the other breast firmly. His mouth was warm. He sucked and pulled on me, while
his free hand left my breast and traveled back down over my quivering stomach, past
my pubic bone and beyond. This time he slid two fingers inside me, gently at first,
then urgently. Oh God, this felt so good! I tried lifting my knees to arch my back.

“Lie still,” he whispered. “You like that?”

“I do, I like it so much,” I said, throwing my arm up over my head, grabbing the top
of the table. He stopped moving his fingers. Then he stood over me for a second, and
took me in.

“You are beautiful,” he said.

Then he leaned over and placed his tongue on me again. He kept still for a hot, quivering
second, while his breath blew life into me. Involuntarily, I pushed into his face.
He could sense my need and started to lap at me, slowly at first. Then he used his
fingers again. With the weight of his mouth and tongue on me, he licked me again,
releasing his juices and mine. I could feel all the blood in my body shoot straight
down there. Oh sweetness, this was so crazy! An incredible surge ran through me, a
storm of something I couldn’t stop. He released his hands up to my breasts, while
his tongue circled me at a perfect rhythm.

“Don’t stop!” I heard myself say.

It was all too much. I squeezed my eyes shut. The beautiful feeling just built and
built, and I was coming hard against his face and tongue. When I was done, he pulled
away and placed his warm hand over my stomach.

“Breathe,” he whispered.

My legs relaxed over the edge of the table. No man had ever touched me like that,
ever.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded. I had no words. I tried to catch my breath.

“You must be a little thirsty.”

I nodded again as a bottle of water appeared. I sat up to drink. He looked me over,
seeming quite proud of himself.

“Shower off, beautiful,” he said.

I peeled myself off the table.

“Who has the power?” he asked.

“I do,” I said, smiling over my shoulder.

I stumbled towards the bathroom and took a hot shower, and afterwards, while towel-drying
my hair, I had a realization. I ran out to the living room.

“Hey, I don’t even know your name!” I said, still rubbing my wet hair dry on a towel.

But he was gone. So was the massage table and my fantasy list that he was sent to
fetch. The place was exactly as it had been before he arrived, except for one difference:
resting on my side table was my first gold charm. I crossed the room to get it, and
caught a glimpse of my face in the mantel mirror. It looked flushed, my damp hair
snaking around my neck and shoulders. I picked up the charm and dangled it in the
candlelight. It was embossed with the word
Surrender
on one side, a Roman numeral I on the other.

I secured it to the chain around my wrist, feeling a boldness rise in me, making me
giddy.
I did the strangest thing! The strangest thing was done to me!
I wanted to scream,
Something happened to me. Something is happening to me. And I will never be the same
again
.

T
hey always say that the first step is the hardest. That first surrender, the first
time you say:
Yes, I accept that I need help. I can’t do this alone
. Scott struggled with that when he gave up drinking. He hated the idea that he had
to accept help from anything or anyone. So he fought it, whatever it was. Yet, here
I was in full surrender. I had stopped fighting. I had accepted help from a strange
group of women.

Then I walked into a room bathed in candlelight, wearing only a towel. I let that
towel drop around my ankles, and I bared myself. I trusted this process, this man,
this S.E.C.R.E.T. group. But everything that had happened occurred in my home, in
my living room, and though it was my body, I gave it over only temporarily to a complete
stranger. As I recounted this a week later to a rapt Matilda, I couldn’t help but
feel I was talking about my experience as if it had happened to another person, someone
I knew very well but who had aspects I was only just beginning to understand.

I told Matilda I had felt safe, that what we did was erotic, and I was beyond compelled
to complete the fantasy. And for a one-time thing, I had to admit I had felt wanted,
desired, which of course makes any woman feel ecstatic.

“So, yes. I was … transformed, I guess,” I said, burying my burning red face in my
hands, suppressing a giggle. A few weeks ago, I had had no one to talk to, unless
you counted Will. Now, here I was sharing intimate secrets with a woman I could no
longer call a stranger. In fact, I had to admit she was becoming my friend.