PART 2: Fiery Autumn
Chapter 8: Newbies
Three weeks later, Kaitlyn and I were relaxing in Jess’ living room after our first hard week of double classes.
This followed one last work week, then a hectic week of moving enough of our stuff up to Salt Lake to get by with in the months we’d be away. We’d left most of our things behind in Moab with our temporary renter in an informal ‘furnishings included’ arrangement. About all we’d taken were clothes, our bikes, one laptop each, and assorted personal items. Everything else we’d be borrowing from Jess or re-purchasing as necessary. We’d even left mi burro behind, packing everything into Kaitlyn’s Subaru. I’ll miss you, my reliable friend. Sniff.
“You two don’t seem sore,” Jess commented on our loosely-sprawled postures. “I thought you’d both be walking around here lock-kneed and taking half a minute to stand from a sit by now. And all that bike commuting on top of it!”
“We take care of each other,” Kaitlyn explained.
Jess had given us a bedroom on the ground floor, with her in the master bedroom upstairs, so what Kaitlyn meant by that comment is that we snuck out of the house naked and healed ourselves in the back yard every night. And sometimes we did other things out there, taking full advantage of the remaining warm nights this year.
Kaitlyn offered, “We could take care of you, too. How long has it been since your last massage?”
“The wedding,” replied Jess.
“Oh, wow, that’s over a month ago!” Kaitlyn exclaimed in dismay.
“That was my first massage ever, so I’ll be due for another in a few decades, right?” joked Jess.
I’d done most of the work on her massage then, so I put in, “You were in pretty bad shape, Jess. All that sitting has consequences, and you aren’t getting younger. I recommend regular maintenance to avoid sliding back into that state.”
“You just want to see me naked again!” Jess teased.
“Absolutely, but you know how we do these things: you get to see me naked, too.”
“And me, if that’s any incentive,” Kaitlyn added.
“You’re offering me a four-handed massage? Four-handed naked massage?”
“Sure,” we replied in unison.
“Well sign me up and strip me nekkid!” she said enthusiastically.
“Let’s go into the back yard,” proposed Kaitlyn. Jess didn’t know why we wanted to do it that way, but she gamely didn’t ask.
“Should I strip here or out there?”
“Your choice, but we find it’s more fun to do it in here and then walk out there like that, putting a solid door between you and cover. It completely changes the character of the thing vs dropping your clothes a foot away in a dark corner of the yard.”
“You find?” Jess asked, emphasizing the last. “You have done this before? Here?”
“Yes!” we admitted simultaneously, happy smiles on our faces.
Kaitlyn added, “That’s not a problem, is it?” her face falling a bit.
“No,” Jess replied thoughtfully, “I just thought I’d have caught you at it before now, that’s all.”
“We’ve been discreet,” I replied. “No complaints from the neighbors, I can safely assume.”
“This explains the bottle of mineral oil on the kitchen counter,” she observed eliptically, nodding to herself. “Well, let’s get to it, then,” Jess replied and led us in stripping off there in the living room. We then turned off all of the lights — especially the automatic back porch light — and crept out into Jess’ back yard, which had a six foot vinyl fence around it, the sort without any gaps molded into it. I’d grabbed the oil on the way; Jess had guessed that one exactly right.
“There on the grass, Jess,” Kaitlyn indicated, helping her down. “That’s right, face down to start with.”
“This is nice!” Jess exhaled. “I’ve never lain naked on my own lawn. I’m going to have to do this more often.”
“We’re willing,” I said. Then I got to the massage, oiling her back up, letting Kaitlyn join in from the other side once there was enough coverage. Jess let out a groan as we started to get into it.
I slipped into a trance and found Kaitlyn there already waiting. «Attend,» I bade her through the bond as I slid my magical senses into Jess’ body looking for new problems and for any I’d missed back at the wedding. The most acute issues were a build-up of the problems I’d originally found: joint, back, and thigh vein problems from all the sitting plus a flare-up of her developing RSI. I took care of all of those slowly, Kaitlyn watching me work, learning the technique. «You will be doing this next session,» I informed her.
She nodded silently at me as she worked the buttock and upper thigh on her side of Jess, me mirroring her movements on the other side.
Jess groaned in delight again.
“What’s this with the ankle, Jess?” I asked her.
“How’d you even find that, Davie? Was I limping visibly or something?” She waited for an answer, but I stayed silent, so she continued, “I twisted it taking the stairs a few days ago. I’ve been trying to avoid using the elevators after the wedding, seeing all those toned bodies on display. It embarrassed me into getting some exercise, and now you see the result!”
I knee-walked down there and massaged the ankle, putting my real efforts into magical healing, fixing the sprain. “There, all better. You’re back on for exercise again.”
She rotated it around several times. “Oh, jeez, Davie, how’d you do that?”
“Magic fingers,” I replied.
“I can’t wait to see what you can do when you’re fully trained up!”
While I’d been working down at Jess’ feet, Kaitlyn was up by her neck. “What’d you do here?”
“I… I don’t want to talk about it. And I repeat my question: how do you even know my neck’s sore?”
“I can feel it,” Kaitlyn said, implying touch, but actually referring to her internal mage senses of Jess’ body. Kaitlyn massaged the area with careful smooth strokes, straightening out the strained spine joints as she’d seen me do with her feet. I saw she was working carefully, so I didn’t caution her through the link.
Jess rolled her neck and shoulders after this, and said, “You two are miracle workers!”
“No, just skilled therapists aiming to become more skilled,” I demurred.
I just saw her shake her newly loosened head in negation.
We had her flip over, giving me my first clear look at Jess’ naked front since seeing her at the wedding. I thought I detected a bit of a change. “Have you trimmed your bush a bit tighter than last time?” I asked. It was still pretty wide in coverage but unlike a fully natural bush, it had a definite border; it was still quite full, just choked inward. I decided I’d call the style “1974 Playboy.”
“Yes,” was all she said, so we resumed our work in a purely mundane fashion, finding nothing else serious enough to go after. We could also have fixed things like moles, but that’d just raise more questions. As long as they didn’t develop into actual problems, we left such things alone.
“I like your breasts, Jess,” said Kaitlyn, clear admiration in her voice. “They’re so full and round. I’m jealous!”
“Oh piffle. You’re the blessed one. So perky!” The two shared a smile, and Jess went on, “And Davie over there doesn’t appreciate my breasts at all. I’ve yet to see him with a hard-on, even though he’s got his hands all over me. It makes a girl feel unappreciated, Davie!”
“He’s got exceptional self-control, Jess,” defended my wife. “Don’t judge him on what he’s showing externally. Go on, Davie, show her.”
I shrugged and then let go of my self control, pushing the power of Gaia into the erection to reverse the state of things. In a few seconds, I was stiff as a sundial’s gnomon. I turned a bit to show myself off in the moonlight, trying for a nice rim lighting effect, then let go of the power and reasserted my control over my body, letting my cock slowly return to a flaccid state.
“Remarkable!” breathed Jess.
“What, the girth or the length?” I joked.
“The control, silly!”
“It’s a skill. I could teach it to others, but it takes more time and effort than most people would find it to be worth.”
“Why’d you bother to learn that skill, then?”
“It’s just a side benefit that I earned after many years practicing meditation. It’s big in India, you know.”
“Your cock is big in Utah, too!” Jess joked, purposefully mistaking my referent. After we dutifully grinned, Jess went on more seriously, “Well, I can see how having that kind of control would come in handy in your new profession.”
“We expect it’ll ward off a lot of concerns over our practice being sexual, yes,” agreed Kaitlyn.
“Speaking of that, Jess,” I said, “we’ve already decided we can’t work nude like this. Not professionally, I mean, only for friends and family. We don’t want randy customers using our services as a sneaky sort of stripping for money scheme, and we don’t want the local authorities trying to apply laws meant for strip clubs to our business.”
“Sensible,” she agreed.
“So, Kaitlyn and I have been discussing what we would wear, and we have an idea that would require some natural homespun cloth. Do you have any contacts in the ren fair, LARP, or SCA communities? There must be someone still making it as a hobby for verisimilitude in costuming. It needs to be either un-dyed or naturally pigmented. An assortment of natural colors would be good.”
Jess thought a bit, then said, “I’ve only done that a bit with friends from the office, and nowhere near at the level you’re suggesting, but I’ve got friends who are deeply into it. I’ll ask them where they get their cloth from. Beware, it’ll probably be pretty costly compared to what you can find in a regular fabric store.”
“Tell them we’ll trade cloth for massages,” I replied, smiling down at her.
“At what rate?” she asked sharply.
“We trust you to negotiate it. But so you properly set the rates, let me concentrate on demonstrating our service’s value.” And so I stopped talking and put my effort into the massage, using my Gaia senses to find the areas of tension and guide the best therapy for them. Jess’ eyes were soon closed in slack-jawed delight.
“How about a bolt per massage?” she slurred at one point.
I shrugged at Kaitlyn, who answered, “Something like that sounds fair.”
As we were finishing up, Jess spoke again, smiling loosely but broadly. “New arrangement: I demand regular massages instead of rent. Once a week.”
I glanced at Kaitlyn, got the okay, so I said, “Deal!” and we shook on it.
“So,” Jess said, “you two are going for the all-natural eco hippie vibe, then?”
We were not ready to explain to her about nature magic, so we just agreed with her broad characterization.
“Okay, that’s cool, but I don’t get why you’re using mineral oil. That’s made from petroleum. Isn’t that major bad stuff for the eco hippie crowd?”
Kaitlyn just looked at me; she knew this ball had landed right in my court, so I nodded at her and slid into professor mode. “Well, you’re right insofar as we should probably start researching alternatives to cater to client tastes, but the fact is that mineral oil is actually quite natural. Think about it: petroleum occurs naturally, and mineral oil is extracted from it using fractional distillation, which is just a fancy form of heating and cooling. The result is an oil that almost no one has an allergy to, which doesn’t clog pores, and which doesn’t go rotten. It’s nearly odorless and tasteless, unlike most of the alternatives. It’s about as close to perfect as you could ask for the purpose.” I left it unsaid that it didn’t appear to hamper our magic, confirming my belief that it fell onto the ‘natural’ side of the scale still, despite the processing.
“There are many other types of oil used for massage,” I went on, “but there’s nothing in nature that doesn’t have some kind of extraction process. There are no massage oil trees, growing pods filled with pure oil. Still, people are irrational, so we probably should research alternatives that pass the feel-good test. Want to help us sort through the choices?”
“You mean be your lab animal?” Jess asked uncertainly.
“No no,” Kaitlyn answered for me, “we’d only be testing things that are already approved for the purpose. What we mean is help us decide what we like. Let’s make it part of the weekly massage: we’ll bring something different to each one until we narrow the field to a set of choices we’re all happy with.”
“I can think of worse ways to spend a Sunday evening,” Jess answered.
Shortly thereafter, we saw the lights come on in the house.
“Who’s that?” I whispered to Jess.
“Not sure. There aren’t many with keys to my front door.”
Before we could decide what to do, the patio light turned on and the back door opened, revealing a grinning Vin. “I thought I’d find you out here, what with all of the discarded clothes in the living room.”
Jess sat up into a fetal position, protecting her breasts and bush, half shouting to avoid alerting the neighbors, “Turn off that light!”
Kaitlyn and I just sat back on our haunches, less concerned with being seen this way.
With some asperity, Kaitlyn said, “Stop jawing and get out here, little bro!”
He grinned and did as the women demanded.
Kaitlyn stood and gave him a hug. He seemed to take a naked hug from his sister calmly enough to me. Hands did not go exploring inappropriately.
“Can I get one of these, too?” he asked, gesturing up the length of Jess’ bare body with one hand.
“Sure, sure,” agreed Kaitlyn. “Strip.”
Instead, he knelt down and kissed Jess on the lips. “Evening, babe.” Then he ran a hand down her flank, and she began to undress him!
Kaitlyn and I looked at each other meaningfully. Through the bond, she exulted, «Success!»
«Indeed,» I returned.
When Vin was face down on the grass, Kaitlyn asked, “So how many dates did it take?”
Jess answered, “Um, zero. I let the chance slip once, so when he came up early… Well, it’s none of your business really, but we didn’t waste any more time, all right?”
“Oh, we’re so happy for you two!” gushed Kaitlyn, leaning over to give Jess a sisterly hug.
“Thompson’s toenails, we almost had to throw you at each other!” I said with exasperation.
“Throw two things at each other hard enough, and you get fusion, Davie,” pointed out Jess with a wry smirk.
At that remark, I felt Vin’s erection twitch through Gaia, doubtless thinking of their ‘fusion’ process.
“This explains the sore neck, doesn’t it?” guessed Kaitlyn.
Jess just blushed, not saying a word.
«Perceptive as ever!» I complimented Kaitlyn through the bond. The same sense relayed another twitch from Vin’s groin, so I decided we’d better let him stay face down for a bit and leave this conversation thread behind.
Aloud, Kaitlyn asked solicitously, “Shall we leave you two, then?”
Vin shook his head and said, “No, finish me first. After that, yeah, scram. I need some alone time with my girl!”
“So demanding!” Kaitlyn huffed theatrically.
We flipped him over and got him nice and loose, then stood wordlessly, walked back inside, gathered our clothes, and went off to our newly rent-free room to get our own alone time.
“You know, our bedroom window looks out over the lawn. It’d be just desserts for him spying on us,” I said with an evil smirk.
“Tempting, but I don’t really need to see my brother necking with my landlady, especially when I can be necking with you instead.”
And then she jumped me.