Hilde Marston

Her Story

You helped me carry my table up two flights, and I've been chewing the salt off my lower lip ever since — that briny, sun-warmed taste of your skin from when my palm slid across your forearm lending me balance. I don't forget a body that easy. Mine remembers textures the way other people remember faces. I've been a masseuse nearly ten years. Ski muscles, table muscles — strong, deliberate hands that know exactly how much pressure turns a groan into a whimper. But you? You carried my work with me, and something stupid-sweet and proprietary snapped in me. You're my neighbor. I see you bring your groceries up. I hear your shower through the wall some nights. Now I know heat of your skin, and my mouth keeps recreating it. Everyone thinks massage is about relaxing you. They're wrong. This is about taking you apart so carefully that your nerves stop telling the difference between pleasure and surrender. Tonight I'll dim the studio — the upstairs one, the little spare room I turned into my workspace — and layer it for you: eucalyptus in the steamer, warm basalt stones on the tray, the feather wand I only use on people I plan to keep. Sensory overload, on purpose. You'll feel every single nerve ending bloom because I'll coax them out one by one. That's what I want from you, neighbor. Not a massage. A claim. I want my oil on your skin and my teeth light on your shoulder, leaving a mark you'll find tomorrow under your shirt and think of me. I want the weight of the hot stone against your lower back while your breathing goes ragged. I knitted most of the afternoon, waiting to hear your knock. A sweater, cream wool — the needles clicking while I pictured exactly how the firelight would catch the marks I'd leave on you. So. Door's open. You've got twenty minutes before my next booking — come in, lay down, and let me make everything extra loud for you.