Chapter 2 Octavius #4
That was a line I didn’t cross with clients, no matter how hard some had propositioned me.
I had no interest in blurring that boundary, no matter how tempting the situation might be, and I had to hope she wasn’t the type to test it.
The last thing I needed was a scandal tied to my name, not in a town like this, where word traveled faster than the tide.
Even if she was... distracting, I knew I needed to get it together and force my focus back where it belonged.
I moved to the end of the table and let my tentacles hover for a moment over the base of her neck without touching, centering myself the way I always did before making contact.
It was a habit that benefited both the client and me, since I never truly knew how strong the emotions were until that first point of contact, and sometimes it could be overwhelming if I didn’t prepare properly.
When I was ready, I set my tentacles on her shoulders, and the effect was immediate.
Most stress came in recognizable forms—tightness, friction, and tension gathered into predictable patterns.
With Kara, what hit me first was not tension but force.
A rush of tightly leashed alarm shot through me so suddenly that my own jaw locked in response.
It wasn’t stress that sat deepest in her—it was fear.
Not dulled fear softened by time, lingering beneath the surface, but active fear.
Beneath that, there was exhaustion, layered so deeply it felt structural.
And beneath that, there was still another layer.
It wasn’t pain, exactly, but rather the anticipation of it, like her body was in a constant fight-or-flight mode with each drag of my tentacles, as if she were waiting for the moment the relaxing massage turned into something darker.
No wonder she always looked at the doors first. No wonder her smiles came so quickly, so carefully placed that they felt almost rehearsed, just a touch too polished to be real. And now, I understood why Mina had felt guilty turning her away.
She wasn’t just carrying the stress of a simple home refurbishment or a bad investment.
No, this was something deeper than splintered wood and uneven floors.
This was the kind of emotional weight that settled into a person’s bones and refused to leave—the kind I wasn’t entirely sure I was prepared to take on tonight.
I couldn’t stop now, though, not when I was already in the thick of it. So instead, I worked in silence, pressing into the knots gathered at the base of her neck while my tentacles drew out the strain piece by piece. I focused on keeping myself steady as it slowly began to feel like too much.
Usually, clients softened within minutes, their bodies yielding once the first layers were undone.
With Kara, it was working, but slowly. It resisted at first, like it had lived inside her for years and had no intention of letting go without a fight.
I moved lower, working into the tension gathered around her shoulder blades, and the deeper I went, the more the emotional residue revealed itself.
There was worry, shame, and loneliness—a lot of loneliness—and it hurt in a way I hadn’t expected.
Not just physically, though there was that too.
I felt her stiffen beneath my tentacles, and for a moment I worried I was letting on just how much her emotions were affecting me. Her nerves only made it worse.
“You can breathe,” I said evenly, hoping that if she calmed herself, it would ease the strain on me.
“I am breathing,” she said, letting out an exaggerated breath for show.
“Not very well,” I scolded, and somehow, breaking that tension, I felt her emotions shift beneath me, softening into something more relaxed.
“Hey, that felt like a personal attack, Mr. Masseuse.”
“It wasn’t an attack, it was simply an observation. I need my clients loose and relaxed if they want to benefit from my service, and they’re usually more compliant when they focus on breathing and not chatting.”
“Wow. Do you always insult clients while they’re face down and vulnerable?”
“Yes.”
She let out a hum. “Interesting business model.”
“Shhh,” I said. “Less talking, more breathing.”
As the session continued, details began to surface in the emotional texture beneath my touch. Not images—my gift didn’t grant visions—but patterns, subtle shifts that told their own story. And through it all, there was something else. Or rather... something missing.
I had already assumed her sea sprite lineage was minimal, but the longer I worked, the more that absence stood out.
Most beings in Crescent Cove carried some trace of magic woven into them, even if faint.
It changed the way stress settled and the way emotion moved through the body.
Humans, on the other hand, held onto things differently, without the natural ebb that magic allowed.
And Kara... she felt almost entirely human. It could have been that her bloodline was so diluted her body responded like one, but she was still here, in a town only accessible to those with sea-born magic in their veins, so she couldn’t be human.
But then why did she feel so different?
I knew I was letting suspicion get the best of me. A stranger in a new town, carrying too many emotions I was now siphoning, ones that were clearly starting to affect my own thoughts. I pushed it down before it could take hold, and I turned into some conspiracy-driven lunatic.
I was just being an ass, and while I could press her for answers, it wasn’t my place to question her lineage.
That responsibility belonged to the council, should they ever decide to look closely enough.
Humans were allowed to visit from time to time—festivals, trade, the occasional surf competitions, thanks to some limited-time enchanted objects that always came with a strict limit—but living here?
Owning property? That wasn’t something a temporary guest could do, but more importantly, that wasn’t my problem to deal with.
No, my job was simple: absorb what she carried and ease what I could, then send her on her way. Nothing more. Just a normal client I provided a service for. And while I could definitely feel there was more to her, it wasn’t my place, nor should I care, as long as I got paid in the end.
“Can I ask something?” Kara said after a while, her voice edged with that drowsy honesty people slipped into when they started to let go.
“You just did.”
She made a small sound, somewhere between annoyance and amusement. “Do people flirt with you a lot?”
I stilled for half a beat, remembering that when I took too much, it could lower people’s guards, like they were getting drunk off the feeling of having all their stress stripped away. I should have expected it, but it still caught me off guard before I resumed my work.
“Why?”
“Because,” she said, dragging the word out like it should be obvious, “you’re a tall, broody man with magical hands in a town full of lonely people and sea fog. It feels statistically inevitable.”
“Some do,” I said after a moment, not quite sure how to shut the conversation down and not entirely sure I wanted to.
She let out a soft laugh. “That was such a pained answer.”
“It was a sufficient answer, was it not?”
“Mm,” she hummed, sounding entirely unconvinced. “So you like to be mysterious too. Just so you know, that doesn’t exactly help. In fact, it just intrigues people more, because...”
I pressed into a knot near her spine with just enough pressure to make her hiss, and whatever she had been about to say dissolved into a sharp intake of breath instead.
I think she got the message, because after that she didn’t ask another question, though a part of me wanted to see just how far her curiosity would go. I knew in this state it would only make me a bigger asshole than I already was if I let her.
By the time I finished, her entire body had gone loose, and I knew I had taken most, if not all, of her burdens.
I stepped back, flexing my tentacles, because what I absorbed from her alone felt like a week’s worth of strain, and I could already feel it beginning to settle too deeply beneath my skin.
“That’s enough for tonight,” I said.
Kara made a small, distinctly unhappy noise into the face cradle. “Already? But I was having such a wonderful experience,” she said, still sounding like someone who had a bit too much to drink.
“Well, you’re done having it.”
She lifted her head, her hair now even more unruly than before, one cheek faintly creased from the fabric. Her eyes were hazy, but she looked relaxed and at peace, so different from the ball of nerves who had walked in less than an hour ago.
“You say comforting things in the least comforting way possible,” she murmured.
“I don’t get paid for comfort.”
“Actually, you do. Isn’t that the whole point of your business?”
Well, she had me there, but I wasn’t about to start a full-on banter battle. “Just hush, please, and sit up slowly,” I said, trying to get her moving, because I needed to drain this sooner rather than later.
She swung her legs over the side of the table and sat there for a moment, both hands braced beside her as she breathed, that usual haziness settling in that I knew would wear off soon enough.
“I haven’t felt this relaxed in years,” she said, almost in awe.
Something in my chest tightened at the sincerity in her tone, and somehow that twisted into anger, not at her, but at whoever, or whatever, had made that sentence true.
I turned away first, reaching for the oil bottle and recapping it with forced focus, giving myself something to do before everything I was holding pushed me into saying something I shouldn’t.
“Drink water when you get home,” I said, keeping my tone even. “Your body will feel the release more tomorrow.”