Page 23 of Satisfied By the Slime
“I know where it hurts,” I say.
And I raise my hand, open-palmed, and hold it an inch from the small of her back, close enough that she can feel the heat pooling between my surface and her skin.
Close enough that the fine hairs along her spine lift toward my palm like iron filings toward a magnet.
I hold it there, an inch away, and I wait for her to close the distance or tell me to step back.
Her breath shudders out.
Her fingers tremble on the table edge.
And she leans back into my palm.
Chapter 6
Trace
Maisie
Oz’s hands sink into melike warm water finding every crack in dry earth.
His palms flatten against the seized muscle on either side of my spine.
The boundaries of where he ends and I begin get confused immediately. The warmth moves through my skin, seeping into my knottedmuscles as he finds the shape of the spasm the way you’d trace the outline of something in the dark.
Learning it.
Mapping its edges, then filling it with heat so precise my locked muscles have no choice but to surrender.
The first knot releases.
I make a sound into my folded arms that I’ll be taking to my grave.
“There,” Oz says, low and steady behind me. “That one’s been there for at least six weeks.”
“Longer,” I manage, and my voice is somebody else’s.
His hands spread wider.
Excepthandsis already the wrong word.
He’s pouring himself across my shoulders in a slow, deliberate wave. Substance and warmth and weight distributing itself across the whole disaster zone of my upper back with an intelligence that makes every massage I’ve ever paid for look like someone guessing at a combination lock.
He already has the code.
The second knot goes.
The third.
Each one releases with a sick, sweet ache that blooms outward and dissolves into something disturbingly close to pleasure. My fingers curl against the table. I press my forehead harder into my arms. The breath comes out ragged.
I feel him adjust his pressure in real time to match the rhythm of my exhale.
Something about how attentive he is…
It sends a chill through my body.
I’m a grown woman with a production schedule and a spine that was trying to murder me thirty seconds ago. The appropriate response to therapeutic back relief is gratitude, maybe a Yelp review. Absolutely not the slow liquid heat pooling low between my legs and making my thighs tense against the stool.
