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Thea’s Four O’Clock

Thea had intended to cancel Gabriel Sewell. She wanted to finish early; she’d had a dreadful headache since Peter’s session and it could be a valid excuse not to see Saul for yet another night, to cancel Pilates and just go home, go home and curl up and not do any packing. But her afternoon had been back to back with other people’s backache and, at five to four, she went downstairs and found Mr Sewell already there, expressionless as usual.

‘Come on, Mr Sewell,’ she said, with negligible charm or enthusiasm. He followed her up. ‘How have you been?’ she asked him cursorily, while helping herself to a long drink of mineral water.

‘Not too bad, actually,’ Gabriel Sewell replied, thinking he’d like a glass of water too, ‘still blocked to the right. But the pain is substantially better.’

For the first time in her career, Thea wasn’t remotely interested in her client despite his physical improvement being a direct credit to her. ‘Look to the left,’ she told him, ‘and to the right. And to the left again, please. And to the right once more.’

‘It’s no longer what I’d term pain,’ Gabriel defined, ‘it’s more discomfort.’

Well, if it’s only discomfort, Mr Sewell, I wish you’d cancelled your appointment and waited another week.

‘Down to your underwear and onto your stomach, please,’ Thea said with scant interest. Perhaps she’d just give him thirty minutes and charge him half the fee.

Thea commenced a pretty perfunctory massage, like a musician practising scales or a showjumper taking his top horse for a hack around the block. Something to keep it all ticking over. Her mind drifted and she found herself wondering whether any of the girls in massage parlours were actually qualified masseuses. And if so, which skill did they consider their forte? Did they look in the vacancies section of the Job Centre or local paper under ‘masseuse’ or ‘sex worker’? She wondered whether they started off with a cursory shoulder rub to somehow legitimize what came next. Saul always claimed he didn’t really rate massage. Is that because he’d never had a good one? Or did he just tell the girls to forget the neck rub and go straight to his dick?

Thea looks down at Mr Sewell. He has a nice back, smooth and slightly freckled over the shoulders. It tapers becomingly to his waist and his legs are muscular and with just the right spread of hairs to be attractively masculine rather than unappetizingly hirsute. Turning deaf ears to the small voice warning her that she’s mad, that this isn’t going to help, that this is a very bad idea and fundamentally the wrong thing to do, Thea trails her fingertips down Gabriel’s spine, just as she had on Peter. And then her hands start to caress his legs, interspersing strong strokes to the hamstrings with a feathered caress of the inner thighs. But at the point where Peter had objected and bolted away and left Thea feeling wretched, Gabriel spreads his legs slightly and Thea finds the signal a horrible but undeniable thrill.

Where else, Mr Sewell, she says silently to herself, what else can I do for you today? She is fingering the seam of his jockey pants blatantly. ‘Turn over,’ she murmurs. God, this is easy.

Mr Sewell’s erection is impressive. In fact, it is so impressive that the very sight of it simultaneously excites but appals Thea. The shape of it leers up behind his pants. As bemused as Peter had been, Gabriel is now lying there, proudly tumescent. He is obviously, and quite literally, up for it. He is rock hard and eager and Thea can see his cock twitching expectantly, skewed slightly by the constraint of his underwear. She doesn’t know whether to be shocked or titillated that this man, right here, would fuck her right now. He’d be quite happy to pay, there’s no doubt about it.

‘But I don’t even particularly like you,’ Thea thinks to herself as she looks down on his expectant body, ‘you’re not my type at all. You’re surly and non-communicative and cold.’

‘Miss Luckmore?’

Thea is horrified to see that while she’s been deep in thought gazing at his penis, he’s been staring at her intently.

‘Miss Luckmore,’ he repeats, ‘is it à la carte – or can I order off menu? What, may I ask, are the specials today?’

Thea is catapulted from her safety zone into dangerous territory. She doesn’t like it. Quick. Think of something. Feign innocence. Ignorance. ‘I could do you an Indian head massage?’ she suggests.

Gabriel smirks, his hand now lolling arrogantly over the mound of his cock. ‘I assume that involves giving me head, then?’

‘Pardon?’ Thea flusters.

Gabriel snaps back to his more usual curt self. ‘Look, are you up for it or what?’

Thea wants to cry. She feels mucky. ‘I don’t date clients,’ she mutters. ‘The ethics of my job discourage it. Sorry.’

‘I wasn’t talking about a date,’ Gabriel says, ‘just a blow-job or something. Whatever. Never mind. I’ll try the head massage. Come on.’

I’m going mad. I’m not thinking straight. I’m losing my grip. I need to think but I can’t. It’s like I won’t let myself. I have to decide what to do but I’m incapable of making decisions because I can’t think about them. I have less than two weeks before I move out. But how can I think of packing when I don’t know where home is any more? I’ve suddenly acquired so much baggage. I can’t move under the weight of it all. Maybe I’ll just shove the lot into storage and run away.