It was the last Friday of the month—her regular massage appointment. She always looked forward to those two hours. She needed to be kneaded. She’d been keeping this appointment for two years. Mike had been her therapist for the last 12 months. He knew her body. He freed her from her tensions. She’d asked him to dispense with the “privacy towel” long ago. She wasn’t modest generally and it seemed silly to be awkwardly covered when his hands worked magic over her entire body. He was never tentative, never afraid of touching her anywhere. But he also was never expressly sexual. He worked the tension out of her forearms and neck with as much care and attention to detail as when he worked on her glutes and groin aductors and hip flexors. Sometimes his kneading made her wet. Sometimes she openly moaned as he pushed demonic tension out of her being. Sometimes the combination of the oil on her skin and the work he did made her sweat the way she did in the sauna, leaving the sheet on the padded table damp when she finally got up at the end. Mike stayed with her as a guide to the next level of peace and let it all happen underneath his hands without ever intruding into her world with his own agenda, even though he was tall, strong, well-built and handsome. After a year, she simply regarded this time as her sanctuary and she felt beautiful and well-tended as she left every time.

This month had been too hard. She was leaving her long-term lover and he coped with it by watching TV in silence as she packed her things. She was careers jobs after 10 years and starting her own business. Her father was dying, but refusing help. Her mother was healthy as could be but was convinced she was dying. Her mother and father were still fighting, 17 years after their divorce. And then there were the dreams. Her psychiatrist wondered whether they were recovered memories from an abusive childhood. The dreams were always dark, always erotic and always terrifying. She found herself editing them when she told her psychiatrist about them in a soft whisper. She just couldn’t speak of them in full voice or in full truth.

So when the last Friday of this month rolled onto her calendar, she looked forward to it more than any other thing in her life. She walked into the room in her spa-provided robe and flip-flops. Mike greeted her with a warm smile, then frowned. “You’re carrying a lot today,” he said. “Do I look that bad?” she asked. “You always look beautiful,” he said with a slight scold in his voice, “but your shoulders are carrying too high, your neck is taut as a violin string, and you’re stance is wide enough to play linebacker.” She blushed in her face and chest. She prided herself on handling everything with aplomb and she periodically forgot about Mike’s intuitive capabilities. “Let’s start with you on your stomach, your face in the ring.” he said as he turned away to prepare his hands. As she dropped her robe she noticed he was wearing a royal blue t-shirt with no sleeves and matching royal blue satin athletic shorts that hung nicely on him down to his knees. He was barefoot as well. She lay down on the table and nestled her face into the padded ring covered in comfortable linens. He carefully put a small roll under her ankles which let her feet rest completely.

“Start your breathing,” he said softly. There was no music in the room. They’d decided long ago that she needed silence to rest completely. But she heard her breath and the blood rushing in her head. In the silence she couldn’t drown out the roar. His hands started to rock her whole body back and forth, one hand pushing on her hip, the other pulling on her shoulder, then reversing the motion. She felt her spine working back and forth, infinitesimally small adjustments clicking into place. “Breathe,” he said. “Let me do the work. Take your body out of your head and give it to my hands.” She felt it happening as she heard his words. The rocking back and forth was a comfort by itself.

Then there was a pause and she felt the warm oil dribbling down her spine. The indentation of her backbone provided a small reservoir for the oil to gather. His hands spread it gently over her entire back. Then she felt the warm line of oil being applied down each hamstring and each calf. And she felt another series of gentle spreading motions with his hands until she was quite slick from shoulders to feet.

Then he started on the muscles supporting each side of her spine. So slowly he worked, each pass of his impossibly strong thumbs reaching deeper, demanding more relaxation from her musculature. He worked in strong, long strokes down the middle of her back, then down one leg to her foot, then back up through her glutes to her back, some work on her neck, then back down her spine, the other glute and hamstring, then calf, then foot. None of it rushed, all of it exquisitely deep in her muscles, his strength demanding that those tissues give up their tension and give peace to her.

He moved to the foot of the table and worked her feet over, first both hands on each foot, then one hand simultaneously on both. He climbed onto the table between her feet and worked her legs simultaneously too: strong motions up the insides of her thighs, up over her glutes, then deep pressure down the outside of her thighs breaking through to give the suppleness back to the connection between her hamstrings and quads that runs down the side of the leg. Then strong, hard pressure on the outsides of her thighs that carried through to her lats on the sides of her back, first forcing her shoulder blades together, then pulling them down and out and working the soft tissues underneath them, as well as the places they connected to her arms.

“Breathe” he said again. Her breath came easier now, a bit more rapidly, but quieter. His strokes stayed deep and long, neck to feet and back, and stayed slow and attentively focused on the tight spots that needed coaxing to let go. She felt herself going to that transcendent place that Mike seemed to have the key to. She wasn’t asleep. She wasn’t awake either. She was moaning. She felt tears in her eyes and momentarily was grateful her face was in the soft ring. But Mike’s hands were relentless, sensing where she hid her tensions, working her small muscles on top of her shoulder blades and the small of her back and the connections of her hamstrings to her glutes, especially toward the inside of her thigh. Her pussy was wet but it didn’t occur to her that Mike’s hands were so close to her sex. She felt instead his tireless pursuit of freeing her from the grip of her musculature. Slowly and painstakingly, each of the secret places of her tension were made to relinquish their grip. Some held on, but were no match for Mike. The battle for peace in her being was making her breathing ragged and her darkness mixed with tears as the energies flowed again through her.

His hands became more gentle, his pressure less deep. “Time to turn over,” he said in his low, comforting baritone. “Take your time. Move slowly, easily. Breathe.” She raised slowly, groggily out of the ring and rolled onto her back in a series of small movements. Mike replaced the small roll that had supported her ankles with a larger one under her knees. He spread her knees apart slightly and placed her legs exactly in the place she needed them in order to not use any muscle effort to keep them where they’d been placed. Her pussy was open and glistening but she’d been in this same position before with Mike and she enjoyed the chance to simply be as she was.

Mike placed a gentle hand over her heart. His hands were covered in oil, but he’d not added any oil to her torso. He felt her quickened pulse. “You’re working on a lot.” he said. “Breathe.” He placed his other hand on her lower belly, right above her pubic bone. “Keep your back neutral,” he said, “no arching, no forcing it into the table.” His hands applied pressure and started to move. One hand made very slow circles over her abdomen, working the individual separations of her “six-pack”. The other worked the upper regions of her chest. He didn’t touch her nipples, but it didn’t seem like he was avoiding them either. They simply weren’t relevant to his task, even though they were full and firm and on their way to being hard. The hand on her belly pressed against her diaphragm and she expelled her breath in another moan with a ragged edge. The tears began again and flowed down the sides of her temples. She closed her eyes and welcomed the darkness it brought. Mike started new motions, the both hands beginning high on her belly and pressing down in and ark to her hips, working her hip flexors deeply and then continuing on down her quads. She didn’t know how he could possibly reach all of her with such strength but his hands took possession of her quads and worked them in alternative motions that flowed to the inside of her thighs and then to the outside, always returning to the place high on her belly and pressing air from her diaphragm. Her pussy was wet and her tears were flowing freely and her moans were close to sobs.

“You have so much to let go of,” Mike said with a soft kindness, “you can let it all flow out of you here.” He pushed her diaphragm again and kneaded his way down her quads. “I can’t let go,” she said, hearing her own desperation “’cause I don’t know if I could pull it all back together again.” Mike place a hand on her heart and kneaded her upper chest, using only one hand on her belly and quads. “You’ll need to let it go, just to be whole again,” he said knowingly but without a hit of judgment. His strokes were so detailed and deep, her breathing was heavy now as her muscles relented bit by bit. “I can’t,” she said trembling tearfully, “my lover hasn’t touched me in 3 months, my mother treats me like I’m an ungrateful 13-year old, my dad is dying, I risked everything in my career to start a business and I have no idea whether I’m really good enough to pull it off and I’m having nightmares about being abused as a little girl and I …I……” Her voice stopped because her breathing became open sobbing and anguished cries. Mike’s hands didn’t stop. His motions were deep, reassuring. His hand stayed on her heart and she brought her hands up to clutch it. She hung on through her crying. His other hand continued to expel her breath by pressuring her diaphragm exactly when she needed it. He worked her lower belly muscles to give her a solid base for her tumult.

Gradually she cried herself out. Her breathing was no longer ragged, but became deep and peaceful. She found rhythm in his hands, a kind of connection to the physical world. She opened her eyes and looked at Mike. He was smiling softly. “See, you’re still here, you still have it all together,” he said. “And you’re so much closer to finding that peaceful, joyful place.” She felt his hands undulating over her body and realized how much she loved it. “I don’t remember the last time I felt joy,” she said. “You bring me peace once a month.” He smiled and shook his head. “You give yourself that peace by admitting you want it, but freeing yourself to go there.” He paused. “You have so much joy inside you that you don’t allow either.” She nodded. “I know it’s there too. I feel it. But it’s locked away.”

“No, it isn’t,” he said firmly but warmly. “It’s right here with your tears and your peace.” She looked at him quizzically. “How do you know?” she asked. “I just know,” he said with a shrug, “it’s part of how I am in the world.” She stared at him, feeling his hands working her, realizing those strong hands had never paused their ministrations. “Then tell me how I can have that joy, now, in the middle of all of this.” she said. He looked directly into her eyes. “I can tell you nothing that you don’t already know.” he said, “but I can give you a safe place for it.” She looked at him and felt his hands. She waited. She felt. “I need to cum,” she said in a whisper. “Yes, you do,” he said, “and you need me to take you there.” She heard it as a statement, not a question, but she nodded nonetheless.

His hands did not change their basic rhythm, continuing to work her belly and her thighs and her chest. But in the natural flow of his motions her nipples passed under his palms. She felt their electric connection to her pussy. His other hand went through pressure motions on her inner thighs, then his hand cupped her wet vulva and he slipped two fingers inside her. The two fingers found her g-spot instantly, and he pumped it. Her eyes flew wide open and she started to cum. She had been used to a quick climax to try to entertain herself in the last few weeks. She was disoriented by the feeling of being put into orgasm and held there. Mike worked her pussy with his hand faster and harder and looked straight into her eyes and said “Breathe.”

Her contractions intensified and she rode them. Her vision went white. Her breathing was open and raw. She stayed in that orgasmic state and thrashed and convulsed and made noises she had not heard before. He let her come down out of it slowly. The pulses becoming smaller tremors. And then she was still. Mike was still too. One hand still in possession of her pussy; the other was over her heart. “You see,” he said, “the joy is right here within you. You will always have a safe place for it.”

Then his hands were gone. He placed a cool sheet over her and ran his hands gently over her body to remove some of the excess oil. Then he replaced the sheet with a soft blanket.

“You did a lot of difficult work here today,” he said, softly brushing her forehead, “be kind and gentle to yourself for the rest of the day. Take your time getting up from the table. Move slowly. Drink lots of cool water. Wear flat shoes. When the rest of the world starts to take hold of you again, BREATHE. I have you down for the last Friday of next month, but if you need me before then, just call.”

He kissed her forehead tenderly. And left.