Chapter 3
Emma commented on my smile as I left, handing me a small box that she said was given to all private members of the Centre. Holding the lotus-marked gift in my hands, I felt strange – happy, pampered even, but strange.
‘Thank you,’ I said as I beamed back at her. Aminata’s face drifted through my slowly clearing mind, the entire experience since being taken to the massage chamber manifesting as only pleasant feelings and sensations where memories should have been.
Cathy was still not there when I got home, the house as silent as when I had left it, and now growing darker as the evening wore on.
With no one to tell me not to, I went straight to the kitchen and grabbed a beer.
Thinking better of it, I took the whole eight-pack, moving to the living room and throwing myself down in front of the TV.
I looked at the ceiling in between long gulps of cheap booze, the photo of Cathy and me on the wall just laughing at me.
On rainy nights like this I would have felt the need to blow my load at least once, maybe twice, as I sat and threw back beers. My cock barely budged when I thought of those wet, naked bodies.
Six bottles deep and I stumbled to the table where I’d left the pinkish and gold accented box, my eyes unfocused and my legs making me weave along a straight line. I laughed to myself at the thought of Cathy paying for a “home programme” that would wind up being such a waste of money.
Cardboard, a lotus outline on the top – otherwise the box seemed little different to any other – but Emma had told me it was personalised.
‘Made from premium botanicals, and comes with an audio guide and instructions for continuing your inner blossoming. Until you visit us again in four weeks.’ She said, her eyes looking past me as she spoke.
Inside the box was a small Walkman and over-the-ear headphones – the contrast of such outdated things to the Centre’s obvious wealth making me laugh even more, until I stopped myself enough to go through the accompanying CDs.
Each was marked in pink highlighter with their number, and my eyes lit up when I put them aside and lifted the generously sized pump-bottle of Lotus Awakening Oil from where it lay right in the middle of a lotus-shaped cushion.
Some of the smell seeped from a minute opening in the bottle, and immediately I felt a stirring that grew into my cock straining against the front of my jeans, forming a tent that I drunkenly snorted at.
My body felt warm, as if I were back in the Bloom Chamber, a smooth pair of fingers running themselves over my aroused chest and lower… lower… lower…
After a moment my eyes became heavier, and heavier. The alcohol in my bloodstream and the brief smell of the oils were so comforting that my entire body tingled, and my dreams were just as I would have liked them.
Ten to fifteen minutes of a gentle self-massage using their signature oil, that’s what the instruction leaflet said.
It was one half of a morning-evening cycle, the morning to promote circulation and hormonal balance and the evening for guided meditation for deep rest and renewal.
With the hangover I woke up with, and the hard-on that still wouldn’t go down, I didn’t see any reason not to give it a try; more than that, I wanted to, whether out of a feeling of arrogance and superiority over Cathy and her recent decisions or because I was that horny when I woke up!
The only “self-massage” I knew of being jerking away until my troubles dissolved…
and then feeling disgusting after. I think that’s something my fiancée never realised, never asked about, the whys or wherefores of my addiction.
I could feel my rage building up inside the more I thought about her, about how she would be talking to her mother, telling both her parents that I was some sort of sexual degenerate and their smug grins of satisfaction. They had never liked me. Never.
‘Fuck ‘em,’ I said with a grunt, testing the pump-bottle with small tosses into the air, my eyes glancing around the living room to make sure the windows were clear.
‘Alright Batts, you can do this. Just a massage to get the blood flowing is all.’ A vision of that Thai bar-girl forced its way into my mind, the way she had danced for me, reached down to her waistband and started pulling down the shortest pair of denim shorts I had ever seen, slipping them over her smooth skin to reveal the top of her lace panties, lower, until an obvious bulge appeared and…
‘yup,’ I said, swallowing hard, ‘no problem.’
Following the instructions as best I could, all this soft feminine shit beyond me, I squeezed out a sizeable amount of the oil into one cupped hand – the scent let off by it making my head swim, my mouth go dry with an anticipation for something I didn’t remember, and my cock throb.
With my other hand I unbuttoned my jeans, then the zip, and then, while trying to keep the slick oil in my other hand, shuffled about until both my boxers and jeans fell to my ankles.
‘Massage into the-’
Perhaps I should have read right through first. Out of breath by the time I lifted my t-shirt up and manoeuvred it around my empty hand, doing my best to avoid dunking it in the oil on the other, I finally threw it onto the couch beside me.
Still groggy from the empty eight-pack, having drunk the last two while I was apparently asleep, nothing out of the ordinary stood out to me when I began massaging the palm-warmed oil into my chest area. Slowly it said, leisurely, no rushing.
It felt incredible, I can’t lie. The oil sank quickly into my skin and forced me to use more.
Very soon my chest and hands were sliding against one another, my eyes fluttering, and the leaflet explaining that I now needed to focus on my nipples.
I felt my heart skip at the words, following them nonetheless, my breath catching in my throat as I moved my hands around and over them in slow circles.
Fuck, my cock was so hard it hurt, the thing jutting up between my thighs and begging to be stroked.
No, a voice in my head told me, that is not part of the programme.
‘Not part of the programme,’ I muttered, letting out a short but surprisingly high moan as my fingertips slipped over a nipple again and again.
Both stiffened under my touch, becoming plumper with each pass.
God, I wanted to keep doing this all day, sure that if I just kept going the climax would be amazing. The leaflet said otherwise.
More oil, and massaging it into what they called the “essential areas” – the hips, inner thigh and lower belly – the tingling I felt the night before growing into full-on static, every pass over my skin feeling more silky and marking me with a faint scent of lotus and jasmine.
For almost half an hour I did nothing else but douse myself in this miracle elixir, my thoughts sizzling away like evaporating water on a hot surface. A middle-aged man sitting on his couch and mindlessly rubbing warm oil over himself while his cock bobbed angrily into the air.
And yet I felt no shame, no guilt, not a hint of embarrassment. Just the warm touch of my own oiled hands, and the delicious little sparks that jolted through me as I circled my hand over my lower belly, or stroked my fingers up and down my inner thighs while my breath became ragged.
First in my mind, and then out loud, I whispered the daily affirmation printed in large font.
I am opening… I am softening… I am blooming.
At any other time this would have seemed utterly insane, but the words brought a surreal sort of comfort to me.
Maybe I could get Cathy to come back, and kick the habit that made her leave.
I needed her, I realised while applying a small dollop of oil to my taint, shuddering as I massaged it in. I needed to make her my wife.
That sense of happiness I had been feeling now grew even more intense, those sensations matching the ones racing through my body when I finally lubricated my cock and massaged it until it was slick in the morning light.
I am opening… I am softening… I am blooming.
Was it my imagination, or did my cock seem smaller than I remembered it?
For a moment I focused on my manhood, trying with difficulty to recall the size it had always been – not overly large, but not that small either – my balls feeling…
lighter… than before. No, it was just my imagination, it had to be.
This wasn’t some magical land, it was reality and your junk didn’t just get smaller overnight.
‘No,’ I said to the air, still unconsciously moving my hand up and down my shaft, ‘don’t be so stupid.’
My eyelids flickered and I began to ceaselessly leak, my thin precum running over my fingers and lower until the fabric between my thighs was stained. The urge to speed up until I exploded was only held in check by the even larger font beneath the affirmation.
Under no condition are you to climax during this programme.
With a sharp, long intake of breath I kept my pace as I was told, rolling my head from side to side as my entire body grew hotter.
By now I was playing with my nipples so much that they should hurt but did not, the plumpness of the flesh around them making me giggle and groan each time I tweaked one of the hyper-aroused bumps.
I am opening… I am softening… I am blooming.
The warm water of a late morning shower had rinsed the oil from me, although the smell still lingered all over, each drop that hit and ran over my skin making me exhale small puffs of air.
Apparently the massage had also taken my libido away, my cock demurely dormant now, but I couldn’t help sliding my fingers over the nearly smooth skin between cock and arse, the small amount of hair there silky and diminished.
I spied hair from all over me slipping off in the water and down the drain, making a mental note to ask Thaleia if this was some sort of side-effect of the oil, honestly more scared of having suddenly contracted a sickness than having been given the wrong bottle.
‘Oh,’ I gasped as I stepped out and patted myself down, the fibres of the towel rougher than I remembered, my skin certainly smoother and—
‘Oh God.’
Whatever hormonal balance they spoke about must still be happening, the sparks returning when towel met chest, my legs going weak and trembling in the steamy wet-room. My hand reached out to steady myself against the wall and meet my own gaze in the moisture-dappled mirror.
Something was certainly off, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Was it the way I was standing? There, turn sideways.
Oh, my thighs and lower stomach looked so…
nice… I thought with a flush in my cheeks.
Smooth and soft. Hairless. The snail-trail that had connected to the hair around my bellybutton, all gone.
All… clean. And my chest, there was more definition, almost like a pair of pecs rising away from my chest.
That must be it, the hormonal balance. Images of myself as some muscular bodybuilder ran through my mind’s eye, the feminine ritual I had put myself through earlier seeming to matter even less if I ended up as an attractive beefcake.
‘Okay, good looking,’ I said with a snap of wet digits and finger guns, ready to face the monotony of the day-to-day grind with better circulation and a blooming of the new me.
Work in an office is never fun, but on that day it was even worse.
Several of my female colleagues commented on the great-smelling cologne I’d chosen.
The male coworkers glanced at me with expressions between confusion, judgement, and a couple that made me feel uncomfortable but I still received with a smile back at them.
Things were made worse every time my shirt rubbed against my chest, forcing me to hide as best I could the way I squeezed my thighs together or let out a high-pitched whimper between gritted teeth.
Sometimes clients on the phone would ask if I was alright, that I had made a sound I didn’t know I was making. I struggled to even recall some of their names, the office feeling as if I were back in the Bloom Chamber it was so hot.
No matter how, I made it out alive. Barely.
On the way out I was cornered by the office manager, the Swedish expat Mats Hult looming over me at six-foot-five, his perfectly white teeth even whiter in the lighting of the office.
Under his shirt even I knew was the body of a man who kept himself in good shape, the pale material doing little to contain his arms, and I suspected he bought his shirts one size smaller than he should.
‘Adrian,’ he said with a gentle laugh, ‘how are you? You alright?’
My face must have done something because he gave another laugh and wrapped a powerful, warm arm around my shoulders.
‘Yea, it’s just that some of the others said they heard weird sounds coming from your cubicle. And Mr Sanders said you called him something else. Anything up, man?’
What cologne was he wearing? I could smell it, and it smelt expensive, but it also smelt…
‘Eer, yeah. No. I’m good, thanks. Just um, Cathy and I are having troubles.’
To his credit his expression seemed to be one of genuine sympathy. ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said in words that sounded just as genuine. Then again he wasn’t office manager for nothing. ‘But you got to leave that at home, yeah? Got to be a team player.’
Oh no, I thought inwardly, how did this feel so right?
Why did having Mats pressed against me, his arm around my shoulder, the warmth of his body so close to my own make me feel almost excited inside? Then there was the look in his eye, his pupils wider than they had been a moment ago against the glacial blue iris, and the focus he had on me.
Shit, I could feel his leg touching my thigh. This is getting weird.
‘Hmm,’ he said with a soft sniff. My eyes lowered as his face came within inches of my own. ‘I like your aftershave, man. Smells nice.’
The praise made me self-consciously bite my lip, surprise running through me when I saw the shape pressing against one leg of his trousers. Christ, he was huge! My gaze travelled over the outline of his cock for ages before I finally looked back at his face.
‘T-thanks Mats, I’ll see you tomorrow.’
I could not get out of there quickly enough, nearly shoving him away as I half-walked and half-sprinted down the stairs and into the safety of my car.
Sweat had gathered on my forehead and in my armpits, and no matter how much I tried I couldn’t get the outline of his flaccid shaft out of my head. When my cock jumped at the thought it was the last straw. I had to see what was on the back of that bottle.