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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  Full Release

  TOP SHELF

  An imprint of Torquere Press Publishers

  PO Box 2545

  Round Rock, TX 78680

  Copyright 2011 by Marshall Thornton

  Cover illustration by Alessia Brio

  Published with permission

  ISBN: 978-1-61040-197-5

  www.torquerepress.com

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address Torquere Press. Inc., PO Box 2545, Round Rock, TX 78680.

  First Torquere Press Printing: April 2011

  Printed in the USA

  Chapter One

  Just by making the call I surprised myself. It wasn’t the sort of thing I did. As my ex, Jeremy, told me during the worst of our break-up, I was “too vanilla.” And, though the remark stung, I had to admit there was some truth to it. Or, at least, there had been when he said it to me. It was the day before Halloween, exactly one year since Jeremy had moved out, and Eddie, the masseur I’d called to celebrate this dubious anniversary, was five minutes late.

  The anniversary was easy to remember; Jeremy and I were on our way to a costume party. I had dressed as Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind: slicked-down hair, penciled-in mustache, vaguely 19th century outfit I’d borrowed from a neighbor who’d once been a costumer. Jeremy was dressed as Cher circa 1967: straight black wig, hip-huggers, fringed leather vest, too much make-up.

  Things had been rocky for months. Jeremy was sullen and moody, and I’d lost all patience with him. In the car, somewhere along Franklin Boulevard, I insisted on some answers, the vanilla comment was made among others, and by the time we got to the party, Clark Gable was suggesting a trial separation while Cher was tearfully agreeing.

  Cher’s makeup ran all over the place, and Jeremy peeked through. A former boy scout, he dug through his purse for cosmetics and managed to pull himself together. We went inside to the party, and I don’t remember a thing about it.

  That afternoon, I peeked out my kitchen window for the tenth time, hoping I’d see Eddie pull up. Nothing. The street was quiet. To be honest, hiring a masseur had not been my idea. My best friend, Peter Warren, insisted I do it. We’d been friends for less than a year, having met on an Internet date gone wrong. Though the date didn’t work out, we found that we had enough in common to be friends. Not just because we’d both gotten divorced around the same time, but also because we were both mid-level studio executives, Peter in television marketing, me in features accounting.

  “For my divorce anniversary I hired the most amazing escort I could find. Tall, muscular, piercing blue eyes. It was a scandalously expensive, but delightful, two hours,” Peter had said about two weeks before, during our daily call.

  “I can’t afford an escort,” I replied, hoping that would be the end of it.

  “At least get a sensual massage, then. They’re cheaper, but the end result is the same. If you know what I mean,” he purred suggestively.

  After we hung up, he sent me a text with the link to massageformen.com. For the two weeks prior to the anniversary, I’d window-shopped obsessively telling myself I had no intention of actually hiring a masseur. And I probably wouldn’t have, except two days before Peter asked, “So are you doing anything for your anniversary? I mean other than sitting around your backyard with a bottle of wine moping over lost love.”

  Since those were pretty much my plans, I said, “No. I’m going to hire a masseur, like you suggested.” After that, there was no turning back.

  I fidgeted in my living room, trying to make myself comfortable on the sofa, jumping up and looking out the window again. I wondered if Eddie would look like his pictures and braced myself in the event he didn’t. His posting on massageformen.com had included two photos. One was a body shot, cropped at the neck and showing a husky, tan torso with black chest hair that spread across his pectorals then dove like an arrow down his tight belly to his naval. He wore a fancy pair of designer underwear that clearly showed his impressive, semi-erect cock stretching all the way out to his hipbone. The second photo was a shot of his face, and though the body shot appealed to me, it was his face that sold me. Though Hispanic, his eyes were an unexpected blue that was arresting next to his dark skin. He gave the camera a sexy, crooked smile.

  The ad had been simple, straightforward:

  EROTIC MASSAGE BY COLLEGE CUB -- 22

  Hi! I’m Eddie 5’ 9’’ 185 lb. Latino muscle cub. I offer a relaxing Swedish massage done on a table and in the nude. $120/140 in/out. Full release. Hit me up. You won’t be sorry.

  It included information about his “training” and a short statement about how good he was going to make me feel. There were several reviews below Eddie’s listing. He was well liked.

  After he emailed me his phone number, I called him. “Hi, my name is Matt and I’m calling about your ad on massageformen.” For some reason, I felt like a high school nerd calling the prettiest girl in the class.

  “Hey, Matt,” Eddie replied. His voice was sweet and had a slight cadence. “How’s it hanging?”

  I laughed nervously.

  “Why’s that funny?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, mostly because I didn’t. “It just is.”

  “You want to book a massage, Matt?”

  “Yes,” I replied, then we worked out the time and I gave him directions to my house. I spent the next three hours getting ready. I could have saved twenty bucks by going to him, but -- since this was my first time -- I thought I’d feel more comfortable if the massage took place on my turf.

  My house is on Mariposa Drive, a tiny slip of a street with just room enough for ten small houses. It sits at the bottom of a dip in the hills between the Hollywood Freeway and Cahuenga Boulevard. Fifties modern, the house has a large living room/dining room area, two reasonably-sized bedrooms, and a small kitchen. There are cathedral ceilings throughout and sliding glass doors in the living room and master bedroom that open out onto a cement patio and a small backyard.

  I cleaned up as best I could before Eddie arrived, but it was pointless. My house was a half-rehabbed disaster. The wall between the kitchen and living/dining area had been taken down to create a great room and the kitchen had been demolished. When Jeremy left, he took the money we’d borrowed for the rehab with him, something we continued to argue over. I was embarrassed that my house was a mess, but I didn’t think Eddie would turn down my money because I was a bad housekeeper.

  I switched my focus to cleaning myself up. Even though Jeremy had also taken the money for the new bathroom, it hadn’t yet been demoed. Last updated in the ‘80s, it had ugly yellow tile and a glass shower enclosure with mineral deposits so deep I sometimes expected to find fossils, but thankfully it worked.

  Slipping off the jeans and T-shirt I wore, I messed with hot and cold until I got the shower warm enough to step into. Through the glass enclosure, I could just barely see my reflection in the mirror over the sink. For being in my early thirties, I’m not doing too badly. My waist is still a tight thirty-three inches, only an inch or so thicker than it had been in my twenties. I have a thick head of sandy brown hair, but other than that I’m pretty hairless; a tiny sprouting of hair in the middle of my chest, a couple of tufts under my arms, and pubes that don’t
require much in the way of manscaping. I’m an inch or so under six feet.

  As I soaped my occasionally worked out muscles, I figured I might be a treat for Eddie. I imagined he had to deal with a steady diet of geriatric clients, so anyone under the age of forty had to be a relief. I could feel my adrenaline pumping, and just thinking about what would be happening in less than an hour made my prick perk up. Soaping it a few extra times didn’t hurt, either.

  Part of me wondered what the hell I was doing. I should be meeting available guys, joining clubs, going on dates. Those were the so-called healthy ways to meet guys. But lately, they hadn’t been working for me. After Jeremy and I broke up, I dated a little, hooked up here and there, but it was all too full of emotion and possibility and questions about who felt what. Especially me.

  It was too complicated. Eventually, I stopped dating, or whatever you want to call it, and instead focused on my job, working as much overtime as I could stand in order to impress my boss in hopes of a long-promised promotion. Life was easier when it was all about box office receipts and DVDs sold per market. Burying myself in work kept me from thinking about guys. And that would have worked out just fine if it weren’t for this annoying little thing called a libido. It had been a long while since I’d been laid, and I was getting damned horny.

  Hiring someone for a little sex was nothing more than a practical decision. It was a transaction, pure and simple -- the ultimate in no-strings-attached sex. I’d have a good time, and then I could forget about it. Messy feelings wouldn’t have anything to do with it. It would be completely uncomplicated.

  And if it was a disaster, I could blame it on Peter.

  After I put on my best underwear, a pair of low-rise trunks with the designer’s name emblazoned on the waistband, a pair of cargo shorts and a T-shirt chosen mostly for ease of removal, I went to wait at the front of the house. Eddie was five minutes late. Then ten. I paced nervously between my living room and the gutted kitchen.

  I was staring out the window over the sink -- well, where the sink used to be -- when a battered old Lincoln Town Car pulled up across the street. Its shocks were shot, leaving the chassis sitting close to the ground. The sun had burned a large scab onto the car’s hood. Once black, the car was now a kind of flat pinkish-gray. A guy got out and walked around to the trunk. I couldn’t help but think about how expensive the car was to run. Sure, he probably hadn’t paid much for it, but it had to be nearly a hundred bucks to fill the tank. No wonder he charged extra for outcalls.

  He pulled a portable massage table out of the trunk. It was a large, thick rectangle in a black nylon carrying case with a sturdy-looking handle on one side. He lifted it with ease and closed the trunk. Obviously, this was Eddie. He was shorter than I expected and not as tight as he’d been in his pictures. And I seriously doubted he was twenty-two. But I wasn’t disappointed. If anything, I liked that Eddie was less perfect than his photos had made him seem. I watched as he came up my slate walkway. I opened the door before he knocked. For a moment he was surprised, then he gave me the crooked, sexy smile from his photo. “Anxious?”

  I laughed nervously, “I guess, yeah.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “Are you going to invite me in?”

  Clumsily, I backed up so he could step into my house. “I’m Matt, Matt Latowski.” I immediately blushed. There was no reason in the world to give him my last name. This was not a job interview.

  “Where would you like me to set up?”

  I led him to the second bedroom, the room that had once been Jeremy’s office. A room in which he claimed to be writing screenplays -- though in seven years I never read a completed script and the plots he told me about changed often. Looking back, I guess it wasn’t surprising he never finished anything. Now the room was practically empty, with nothing in it but a broken dining chair and a few boxes containing the fixtures that would be installed in the kitchen as soon as there was plumbing. And drywall.

  Eddie began to set up. I stood uncomfortably in the doorway. “Have you been doing this long?” I asked.

  “A couple of years,” he said, as he slipped the blue vinyl-covered table out of the carrying case. Anticipating my next question, he added, “It’s fun. I meet interesting people.” He punctuated that with a smile that said I was one of the interesting people.

  “I guess it’s a great way to put yourself through college. What are you studying?”

  He looked at me shyly. “I hope this doesn’t ruin things, but I am not in college. I just say that. It gets attention.”

  I shrugged. It didn’t matter. Not really. But I did feel silly for believing something posted on massageformen.com. I knew enough about the Internet to have known better. From the carrying case, Eddie took out an MP3 player with travel speakers. He set them up and started some soothing, new-agey music.

  “Do you like candles?” he asked. I shrugged. They seemed a little romantic for the situation. As though he’d just read my mind, he said, “They’re peaceful.” After shutting the blinds, he pulled out a couple votives and lit them.

  “Would you like a soda or a beer?” I asked.

  “Water?”

  As I went out to the refrigerator to get a glass of filtered water, I wondered if he was going to ask me for the money up front. And if he did, should I tip? Or keep the tip until afterward? I didn’t want to tip him if it didn’t turn out to be very good. But I also didn’t want to seem rude. Crap, I should have asked Peter these things. He’d know. Would it be weird to call him now? Yes, I decided, it would be.

  When I got back to Jeremy’s office, he was finished setting up. The room was dim, candles flickering, music a melodic imitation of the ocean. The table was covered with a thin, cream-colored flannel sheet. Eddie smiled and said, “Can I use your restroom...”

  “It’s down the hall.”

  “Great. Why don’t you take off your clothes and climb onto the table. Face down.” He smiled again and left the room.

  I slipped off my shorts and my T-shirt. After folding them, I set them on the broken dining room chair. Taking off my fancy underwear, I had to laugh at myself. I’d chosen them so carefully, and Eddie wasn’t even in the room to watch me take them off. I placed them on top of my other clothes and climbed onto the table.

  Lying face down, I put my head into the donut-shaped headrest Eddie had attached to one end, and waited. I could feel my heart beating a little too fast. I was conscious of the air on my naked skin. An article I’d read on the Internet about something called skin hunger popped into my head. It’s surprising the things that jump out at you when you end a relationship. It seemed ridiculous, that your skin could be hungry for touch, but the article made a convincing case. And lying on that table, I could believe it. My skin seemed acutely aware I was about to be touched.

  I heard Eddie come back into the room; the brush of his footsteps on the carpet, the door clicking shut, the muted sound of his clothes dropping to the floor. He placed a hand on my back and kept it there as he walked around to the opposite side of the table. I heard the pop of a container being opened, followed by a wet, rubbing sound. Then both his hands were on me. My body seemed to sigh as he pressed his warm, slippery hands into my back. He ran them up over my shoulder blades to my neck. He used a lot of pressure, and it seemed as though my ribs might crack. I let out an involuntary groan.

  “Am I too rough?”

  “No,” I lied.

  He worked on my back. I relaxed as he dug into my muscles. Pulling my legs apart, he hooked my feet on the edge of the table. With my legs spread like that, opened up, my heart skipped. What would he do next? I wondered.

  Abruptly, he switched tactics. Beginning at my ankles, he gently ran his fingers up my legs, across my buttocks and up my spine. I shivered involuntarily, but wanted him to do it again. Noticing my shiver, he chuckled softly. He began working my left calf. Digging his fingers in deep until my tendon
s began to twitch. Then he worked on my thigh. Hand over hand, kneading the muscles just below my buttocks. After a pause, he moved around the table and repeated the process on my right leg.

  When he finished my legs, he climbed up onto the table with me. He put his full weight into massaging my back. He leaned forward, pushing his hands up my body next to my spine. I could feel his cock as it dragged up my leg. Dangling over my ass, the tip touching one cheek, then the other. I forgot to relax. I couldn’t focus on anything but his dick as it grazed my thigh, a buttock, the crack of my ass.

  Without warning, he laid down on me. Simply lay on me. His body was incredibly warm. He wasn’t heavy, and the pressure was pleasant, but still it was strangely intimate, not that being naked with someone in Jeremy’s office wasn’t intimate, but it seemed like real intimacy rather than purchased intimacy. He hooked his chin over my shoulder, breathing in my ear. He whispered, “This is nice, isn’t it?”

  Before I could think about it, he hopped up and was again standing next to the table. He began to knead my muscles again. Everything he did on one side of my body he repeated on the other. He paid special attention to my hands, picking them up and rubbing my palms, pulling on each finger, then setting them down and running his palms across them, even interlacing his fingers so that for a moment it made me think of lovers standing in the sunlight. I was drifting a bit; relaxing finally. And yet, I was incredibly turned on. I felt as though I was on a tightrope between the two states.

  Slipping his hand between my legs, he reached under me and pulled my cock down between my legs. Automatically, I lifted my hips to give him better access. With one hand, he stroked my dick, with the other he teasingly caressed and pinched my balls.

  Being completely passive is not natural to me. It was a struggle to give myself over to someone. I wanted to roll over and grab him, pull him close. But I wasn’t sure if that was acceptable behavior, so I forced myself to let him decide what would be pleasurable, how things would happen, when things would happen...as difficult as that was for me, it was an amazing feeling. My dick grew harder by the second.