Chapter 34: Wheels Afire
A few weeks into this second side gig, I was certain we were going to pursue it at least through getting our PTA degrees. We were learning so much! Besides which, we were backfilling that hole in our savings account faster than the college fees were digging it deeper this way.
I was finishing up the second massage I’d given to a wheelchair-bound man in one of the hospital’s PT rooms under Miki’s supervision. I knew from the medical record they’d passed to me as part of my therapy orders that he was younger than me, twenty-four.
I also knew the guy was here weekly on doctor’s orders, but as I was massaging one of his mangled legs he said, “Kaitlyn, ma’am, this has been wonderful. Better, if I may say so Doctor than the prior therapist you had me seeing, but this will be my last appointment.”
I knew he wasn’t all better, not just because the injury the combine harvester had given him was permanent in the extreme but also because I could tell he was still hurting, even without access to magic. Thus it was that I asked him with concern, “Why ever for?”
“Wal, ya see, the insurance is cutting me off, and my GP can’t get them to extend it. Doesn’t matter that it’s chronic pain, they say it’s all they’re gonna pay for.”
“I’m terribly sorry to hear that, Mr. Franklin,” I told him. “I can tell that you still need this.”
“I do, but flipping garage sale finds on eBay doesn’t give me a whole lot of spending money beyond what I get in disability. I can keep up with the insurance copays, but I’ve seen what the hospital charges the insurance company.”
“That’s negotiable,” began Miki, and I let her get the official spiel out. She is my boss and an official representative of the hospital, after all.
As she spoke, I could see that he wasn’t buying what she was selling, so once she finished, I added, “Mr. Franklin, my husband and I run a massage therapy business on the side, not associated with the hospital. While we are state-licensed therapists, we aren’t medical doctors. However, I want to give you a freebie, on us.”
He was silent for a time, then said, “I can’t rightly say I have any reason to turn you down. This all right with you, doc?”
Miki said, “You’re already leaving us, sir. I see no professional conflict, and I can attest to their skill.”
“Well, all right then,” he said. “When do you want to do this?”
“We have you on a weekly schedule now, right?” I asked, knowing the answer, so I just continued as soon as he began to nod. “Davie and I — that’s my husband, Mr. Franklin — were going out to Delicate Arch this weekend. When was the last time you were out there, sir?”
He grunted and waved a hand down at one shortened leg, “Back before…this. Maybe ten years, but what does that have to do with anything? I thought we were talking about massage, not tourist gawking. Anyway, I’m pretty sure I can’t haul this broken carcass up the hill any more.”
I wasn’t sure his self-critique was correct. While he doubtless wouldn’t be competing in the Summer Paralympics, it looked like he kept himself reasonably in shape for someone with such limited mobility. I decided that while he probably had the strength to push himself the whole way up, the rough terrain and its near constant up-slope would be difficult and a bit risky in a wheelchair besides.
Aloud, I said, “Sir, I’m a bike commuter and bike camper. I’ve hauled bigger loads than your ‘broken carcass’ over much longer distances than the Delicate Arch trail.” I gave him a wry smile when quoting his self-description, hoping he took it well, wishing to break through his self pity rather than irritate him. I added, “We’ll have my husband along as well. We can trade off, if necessary.”
“Have I seen him around here?” asked Mr. Franklin.
“He was the Indian guy on the cable machine when you came in,” supplied Miki.
The man looked impressed. “Yeah, I saw that dude; he was ripped! I daresay he could haul me up on his shoulders!”
I’d canceled my gym membership, but I’d been working even harder since taking on this side gig, simply because Miki assigned me enough shifts that I was here more days than I bothered to put in at the gym.
As a result, I thought I could carry this guy up to Delicate Arch, too. Certainly so if allowed to do it with Gaia’s help, but rather than brag on my own increasing strength, I just said, “Probably,” and gave him a smile before returning to his first question. “As for what a trip out to Arches has to do with massage, we specialize in doing it outdoors in our private practice. Mostly we do it in our back yard, or sometimes at the client’s house, but, well, I just thought you’d like to go out there and get two things done at once.”
“It’s mighty nice of y’all to take me on your trip, Miss Kaitlyn,” he said, holding out a hand for me to shake.
We arranged the details, and the man left much happier than he’d expected to.
The following Saturday, we picked Mr. Franklin — “call me Ron” — up at his house. Davie lifted him up into the FJ’s middle seat while I folded and hefted his wheelchair into the little beast’s short bed.
From my spot behind the truck, I heard Ron tell my Davie as he got our guest buckled in, “I’m a bit of a shut-in, me… I hope I don’t get fried out there.”
“No worries,” I interjected, rounding the corner, “we brought plenty of sunscreen.”
The trip up to the Delicate Arch parking lot went a lot faster this time than last month on bicycles with the Alexanders.
As Davie got Ron down into his chair, I kicked off my shoes there in the parking lot in sight of the two men to get their attention, then peeled off the loose slacks and unbuttoned the casual blouse I’d put on this morning. I artfully slid past Ron and tossed my things into the truck, throwing my socks in after the rest.
Ron’s jaw was dropping by this point, and Davie was grinning knowingly. I was now in my skimpy magewear outfit, barefoot and ready to do magic. To Ron, it must look like I’d peeled to my underwear in a public parking lot!
“Er…ah…you sure you want to go like that, ah, Miss Kaitlyn?”
“Gonna be hot today, and I’ll be exercising hard,” I said, purposely missing his point. “Don’t want to overheat, now do I?”
Davie quietly peeled down the same way, ending up in only a set of the magewear exercise shorts, also barefoot. I shivered despite the warm late spring air; the boy was getting cut since he’d been working out with me before our PT shifts.
“C’mon, Ron,” my Davie said, drawing his attention back from me, “let’s get going.” Ron’s eyes got even wider at this, and I almost busted out laughing.
We were getting looks from several others out there in the parking lot, but we paid them no mind, just let Ron push himself along the level parking lot.
Once he was out on the sandstone upslope that led to this attraction, Davie got behind and started pushing him in a strong trot.
I jogged alongside, telling Ron, “You let us know if you want to slow down and check out the scenery,” with only the impacts of my tough feet on the hot sandstone adding a quaver to my voice, no sign now of heavy breathing.
“The scenery’s better with you jogging,” he told me with a self-aware leer. “Maybe a bit farther out in front, though, if you would.”
I smiled and advanced my pace slightly, positioning myself off his chair’s front right quarter. I knew he was enjoying the sight of my running legs, my flexing butt, and the swaying of my nearly unrestrained breasts.
I jogged the whole way up, setting the pace, Davie never once asking for a break. When we got up to the edge of the sandstone bowl with Delicate Arch on its far side, neither of us were breathing hard, just deeply, this bit of exercise being roughly on par with what we normally did at least once a week, whether it’s a hard start to our morning commute, a bike climb up some steep bit of Southwestern rolling land, or a hard push with camping gear loading the bike down.
This was all just as well, because Davie later told me he’d have had a hard time pulling power from Gaia with the high-tech wheelchair in his hands like that. I could’ve arrived not breathing hard at all with Gaia’s help, but there was no sense in showing off too much to this guy. Besides, it was good to run under my own power.
We were both sweat-sheened, but that would dry quickly in the early summer desert air.
“That was awesome, you two! Definitely an E ticket ride!” said Ron.
Once I explained this obsolete cultural reference to Davie, he bowed formally to Ron and thanked him before unslinging the day pack he’d hung from the wheelchair’s handlebars. He handed out three insulated flasks of deliciously cold water, then asked, “Either of you ever been out in the valley past the Arch? Want to see it from the other side?”
I knew my Davie was angling to get us out away from the gawking tourists, so I said, “Love to! How about it, Ron?”
“Long’s y’all don’t spill me,” he said a bit nervously.
I took my turn at the handlebars, and we soon had him past the arch, out into the raw desert beyond.
When the soil started getting sandy, I spun Ron around and began towing him like a rickshaw, his front wheels in the air, letting him watch the Arch recede behind us.
We didn’t go far, just behind a rock outcropping for a bit of privacy.
I told our client, “We need to get you sun-screened. How would you like to combine that with your massage?”
“Sounds fine,” he said, “but I didn’t see you bring along a towel.”
We had a thin backpacker’s towel down at the bottom of the day pack, but rather than admit to its presence, I said, “We prefer warm sand below and nothing above. Now that we’re out from under the stuffy hospital draping rules, we can do without the sheets and towels. How about it, Ron?”
“What, you mean bare-naked? Out here?”
“If you like,” I offered. “Us, too, if you want.”
This offer must have whip-sawed his brain, because he just replied somewhat stupidly, “You’re offering to strip naked for me, Miss Kaitlyn?”
“You, me, Davie, yes. Any combination of the three, as you wish. What’s your pleasure?”
Ron’s shorts began to get a bit tighter, and his voice quavered almost to the point of stammering, “I’d love to see you bare, Miss Kaitlyn. And yeah, I’ll try this naked massage thing. As for you, Davie, I don’t much care either way; please yourself.”
Davie and I stripped ourselves, needing to toss aside only three pieces of clothing between us, and then we began work on Ron, undressing him carefully there upon the sand. When we removed his short-cropped pants, with their sewn-up cuffs, we saw that he was fully hard. I made a point of giving his stiffy a bit of a sproing as I pulled his tighty-whities off. Normal size and shape, I was glad to see; nothing crippled there.
“Now let’s see about that sunscreen,” I said in a businesslike voice, as if we hadn’t just bared ourselves and him outdoors in calling distance of one of the most famous tourist attractions in the world.
Davie and I began a four-handed massage, starting on his back. We gave him about half an hour of this, working the sunscreen well into his skin, keeping the work mostly mundane. I magically found and fixed several developing pressure ulcers on his butt, though.
We flipped him over and resumed work on his front. Partway through that, Ron asked, “Don’t you two need sunscreen?”
Since we were not prepared to explain why we didn’t need any, I instead asked, “Would you like to help me with it, Ron?”
“Oh my yes!” he breathed.
I took up a crab pose over his body so he could rub his sunscreen-slicked hands all up and down my shoulders, back, flanks, and buns. He did his best to work up my sides and around to the tops a bit, though I had to sink down into the pose to help him, my well-trained muscles making this easy for me.
While Ron worked the sunblock into my skin, Davie saw to his own token sunscreening job.
Ron got very hard through that sequence, his cock occasionally pulsing up to brush my buns, but Davie remained flaccid. I could sense through the Gaia bond that he was keeping tight control over himself, so I reached my magical power over into his body and gave him a few licks of mage-sex, implicitly telling him to stiffen up. He did, quickly.
Once I was adequately buttered up over my back, I folded one leg back along Ron’s body, then the other, and used my core to slowly rise up before him, then knee-walked myself into a 180 to face him, my hips over his own. I sank my nether lips down onto the center of his rock-hard shaft, trapping it there against his belly, then said, “Now do my front.”
I slid coyly forward and leaned down to give him access to my dangling breasts, my arms, my belly, my hips. I pulled back teasingly, frotting his cock, sliding slowly forward and then back again, closing his eyes for a time before he re-opened them to resume work on my sunscreen job.
“Oh, god, Kaitlyn, I’m about to pop!”
I slid back off him, leaned forward, and swallowed his whole hard cock down, then began working my tongue and throat muscles, almost immediately making him shoot multiple hot jets down my esophagus with a cry verging on anguish.
“Guuuuuuyyyyyeeeeeeeeeaaaaahhh!”
While I swallowed repeatedly, I used my Gaia senses to check out the positions of the nearby tourists. I sensed that some had turned our way, but none were walking toward us. Davie saw where my attention had gone, stood up, and walked out to a place where the rock formation would show him as shirtless only, hiding everything from his bellybutton down, and waved at the few tourists that had turned curiously to see what the distant cry out in the desert had been. Some of them waved back.
By the time Davie returned to us, I had my lips wrapped tightly around Ron’s deflating shaft, pulling it out slowly, both to avoid overstimulating his glans and also to fully clean him from root to tip.
Ron’s eyes darted to Davie’s nude returning form, saying nervously, “Your wife, she…”
Davie interrupted, saying, “…skillfully relieved you of tension, which is what a massage therapist is supposed to do. Better her than me, yeah?”
Ron started laughing, partly in relief, partly in sexual satiety, and partly at my Davie’s joke.
As he settled, he asked, “This is legal?”
“Today is a gift, Ron, no strings attached,” I told him with a smile. “We’d like you to become a Magic Hands client, but the law insists on certain limits if we’re charging for our services.”
Uncertainly, he replied, “So…you’re…”
When he stopped, hands waving vaguely, clearly struggling for a word, I guessed, “Bribing you to become a customer?” At his apologetic nod, I said, “No, it just looked like it’d been a long time for you, and I thought that wasn’t fair. I like to think I’ve redressed some of the imbalance in the universe.”
That spread a grin back over his face, and he gave me a bow of his head, eyes closing gratefully.
“No, Ron, our real inducement is proving to you that naked sand massage is better than PT even without today’s special extras.”
I said no more, just made my case skin-on-skin.
“Miss Kaitlyn,” he said perhaps half an hour later, “I am going to have to double down on my eBay hustle, because I will not be going without another one of these massages.”
“Glad to hear it,” I told him, smiling back.
Davie and I did a fair bit of healing on him. It was a delicate balance: we couldn’t let him go without doing anything, because that would’ve been a violation of our Oath before Carlo and Gaia, but if we did too good a job, we’d attract unwanted attention.
I therefore decided to spin a line of BS out to him. “Ron, what we’re doing should help a bit more with the pain than what we could do in PT. A good bit of it is indirectly from the vitamin D you’re generating now; a deficiency in that can cause several malaises to get worse than they otherwise would. Part of it’s also the clean outdoor air, Ron. A good bit of it is simply feeling good: happy people feel less pain, simple as that. Chalk it all up to the health benefits of nudism, if you like.”
“I like,” he joked, biting his lip, his eyes closed both in bliss and against the bright blue sky.
He was erecting again, so I said, “Looks like I didn’t quite finish the job there. Ron, can I ameliorate that stiffness for you down there?”
“Would you?” he asked almost plaintively, looking up into my eyes.
In response to my nod of assent, given while knee-walking over his hips, he added, “Probably doesn’t need to be said that I’m clean.”
I knew from his medical file that this accident occurred when he was 16, and though it wasn’t impossible that he’d had sex before or since, I didn’t need to ask to know that he was telling the truth. My magico-medical checkup told me that none of his health maladies came from an STI.
Solemnly I replied, “I swear by my medical ethics that I am also clean, Ron.” At his nod of decision, I magically tightened my passage up to a near-virginal state, and slowly slid his five-and-a-half inches inside myself.
“You are so frickin’ tight!” he breathed in wonder as he spread my vaginal walls.
I leaned down and kissed him on the forehead, his hands coming up to caress my breasts as I slowly increased my pumping speed, raising up and holding for a while to show myself to him as his hands dropped away from my body to begin clenching at the sand.
While I expertly worked Ron’s cock, Davie continued the massage, touching up the healing I’d done earlier, soothing Ron’s frayed leg nerves, taking care of some developing lower back pain that I’d missed, apparently caused by all of the sitting he had to do.
As I lifted Ron up to a second orgasm, I let control over my own go as well, wishing to try a new form of sex magic on him.
As my shuddering climax rippled my body and Ron tried his best to quiet his vocalizations, I sent all of the magic from the orgasmic release into his body, targeted on his atrophied muscles, trying to build them up rather than repair damage. I focused more on his core, his diaphragm, and his heart than on his skeletal muscles, these being more key to his overall health.
“Nnnnnnngggggaaah!” he breathed more quietly this time, not wishing this to end by way of a nosy tourist. I looked, and if anything, the tourists were all now farther away than the last time I’d checked, perhaps deciding that nothing interesting was happening over here.
«How wrong they are!» I laughed internally, Davie sharing the orgasm with me through the bond while Ron pulsed as deeply inside me as he could get, my weight almost fully upon his hips.
Ron went limp, and I had a momentary scare, thinking I’d done something wrong with the healing, but no, he’d just fallen instantly into a postcoital slumber, overwhelmed by the endorphins!
«Excellent work!» Davie appraised.
«Why is it that I never bone you bye-bye?» I asked with feigned peevishness.
«You’re welcome to try,» he said, then sent a thrill of mage-sex stimulation up my body.
Davie kept it up, slowly ramping the intensity toward the level we’d found as effective as a taser, causing complete loss of muscular control as I flopped to the ground in ecstasy. Bit by bit, he raised me toward that omega point, then held me there, dipping me into a nova explosion of white-hot bliss.
I woke naked and alone.
No, there was Ron, sitting up, back propped against the rock formation, watching me sleep, a small smile on his face.
Beyond Ron, I saw Davie’s flank, one knee up in a sitting pose on the far side of our screening rock formation, contemplating Delicate Arch’s backside. He had his shorts only half-on, the front up over his dangly bits for the benefit of las turistas, the back of the waistband below his gluteal creases, his bare buns on the sand. I supposed this was half self-dare and half a wish to offer me a strong contact link when I woke up.
Through Gaia, I opined, «Holy shitballs, batman.»
I could sense his broad smile through the bond. «Glad you liked it.»
«Understatement of the year,» I said. «I lost consciousness, I take it?»
«Yup; ya flopped right across Ron’s body; had to roll you off him. I was only trying to get you off, since Ron didn’t manage to do that for you, but did I go too far?» Davie asked concernedly. «The physical risks from flopping limply to the ground aside, could you become psychologically addicted to mage-sex that powerful?»
«Maybe,» I said. «I suppose the proof will be in how I ask for more: as a desperate demand or merely as a dearly wished-for request.» I thought for a time, then said, «I think I’m okay; I feel sated, Davie, not addicted.»
«Good,» he said.
I asked, «Did I make a lot of noise?»
«None at all. Well, a kind of relaxed sigh there at the end. I think the effect is more like a taser than our initial guess: you just tensed up solid, blissed out for several seconds, and then slumped into slumber.»
“Glorious!” I said, referring to the feeling.
I must have said it aloud, for Ron said with a gentle smile, “You certainly are! This has literally been the best day of my life.” His expression settled into self-deprecation, and he added “Kind of a low bar, but…” Then when we didn’t rise to his bait, he said, “Davie? Come over here.”
Davie pulled the back of his shorts up, stood, and did as Ron requested, receiving his repeated thanks. “I owe you big for allowing this.”
My Davie simply replied, “Do you feel healed, Ron?”
He looked taken aback, then said, “Fully, no. I’m still all kinds of fucked up, but if you’re asking if I feel a whole lot better, then absolutely.”
“That’s what we do, Ron: heal people,” my Davie said: “We don’t always go as far as we did today, but every now and then, it’s nice to do a good deed.”
Ron started laughing, but we didn’t need to ask why. From some leftover legacy of colonial times, Davie manages occasionally to tap into the British skill with understatement.