Author's note: This is a short, simple story about two people finding each other. It does not contain any of the science fiction, fantasy, mind control, mind break or BDSM in most of my other stories. It does feature a couple of orgasms, or one sort or another.
*
I wasn't in a drinking mood and the musical taste of the women who had occupied the lounge only occasionally overlapped with mine. Eventually, I managed to occupy a lounger in the backyard on the lawn. Claire's dog Bonus included me on his regular circuit looking for pats, and the few people I knew reasonably well — beginning with Claire's two-month girlfriend Anya, with whom I had hit it off immediately, to my considerable surprise and relief — spent most of their time in a rough circle on blankets or just the grass, chatting.
Claire's circle of friends was mostly women and overwhelmingly queer. Which was fantastic: I wasn't surrounded by hetero blokeness, and queer women are absolutely my favourite people to hang out with — particularly when they know that I'm bisexual, genderqueer and, well, not a bloke.
So I was enjoying one of the few moments when I was feeling comfortably included despite being in a group of people I haven't known for years.
Most of them I had seen before and vaguely remembered. One, I even recognised from a goth club two weeks before. Which meant that I finally got to find out that the tattoo across her girlfriend's upper back in a gothic script read, "Don't even try it".
We were a few hours in and most of the others were happily drunk when a woman I didn't recognise grimaced and sat up from where she had been lounging on a blanket. She held her neck and did the twisting, rolling movements of someone trying to work out a kink.
I can't say I hadn't noticed her. I had very much noticed her. She was a shade taller than average, slimmer than most, with a narrow, waspish face that could have looked cold and robotic but was really cute — helped immensely by winged eyeliner — and she was wearing tight leather pants with a holster bag strapped to one thigh and a halter vest top with collar and lapels that wasn't just cute itself, but also revealed a well-toned belly and a pleasant amount of braless breasts.
She was undeniably the most attractive woman there by my tastes.
But because I'm a functioning adult -- not to mention the fact there was no way I could make any assumptions about whether she would ever be interested in me — I admired her appearance and enjoyed it without staring or making an ass of myself. This meant, since I'm socially awkward and easily distracted, trying not to look in her direction too much.
It was a warm night and I had been feeling like being overtly not straight, so I had worn a pinstripe vest over my bare chest along with eyeliner and mascara, and we had shared a brief grin of mutual acknowledgement. But that had been the extent of our interaction.
"You OK, Zilpha?" one of the women asked.
I tried to remember "Zilpha". I didn't hold out much hope, my memory for names is sub-par at best.
"My neck set," Zilpha grumbled. "I always cramp when I drink cider, I forget to move. Who offered me cider?"
"You've barely drunk any!" One of the other women objected. "You hardly ever drink any!"
"Blaming you anyway," Zilpha said, continuing to rub her neck.
I rolled my neck and managed to get a sizeable crack out of it.
Zilpha glared at me. "Show-off."
"Surely you know someone who can massage it," I said, without moving from my relaxed recline.
She raised her eyebrows at me. "You mean you're not offering?" Her voice held the sharp tone of a woman who had no time for any man's shit.
"I don't know you well enough."
Her eyebrows rose higher. "Really?"
Anya laughed. "He's being serious. Thorne's good people, he's known Claire for ages."
"Alright, then," Zilpha said, giving me a challenging look. "Are you offering?"
I raised my eyebrows at her, and she probably got the better of that deal because mine are definitely thicker than hers.
But, when her challenging look just continued, I made a show of shaking myself before pushing up to sit cross-legged on the edge of the lounger. "Alright," I said, gesturing at the ground in front of me.
Zilpha shifted around the circle to sit cross-legged in front of me as I rubbed my hands together to warm them.
Her top exposed most of her back. There was a tall band of fabric around her waist, well below her shoulder blades, and the halter around the back of her neck. That made me hesitate for a second before I put my fingers lightly on her bare shoulders. Her skin was warm and soft. Not what I was used to feeling while massaging, which was usually through a shirt, or a towel, or with oil.
I firmly thought professional thoughts. I'm not a professional masseuse, but I strove for the same mindset.
"OK, right side of your neck?"
"Yes."
I probed gently with my right thumb along her shoulder, at the base of her neck and up a little way, leaving my left hand in place. I could feel good musculature, but also the knot. I felt the left side, to compare. "A little stiff," I said.
"Yeah, I know, I don't exercise enough."
I stopped myself saying she looked fit enough. It wouldn't have been ideal in the circumstances. Thankfully, one of the lesbians said it for me.
"You had your opportunity to touch this, I didn't hear you offering," Zilpha shot straight back.
"Well..." the woman said, sitting up.
"Too late!"
I waited until everyone had settled again. "OK, I can't massage how I normally would without cloth or oil, but how firm do you want me to be?"
There was the predictable response to that, which Zilpha and I both ignored, as I began kneading her back with my thumbs, pressing in firmly, moving in small circles then lifting and repositioning.
"A bit more than that."
She sat a little straighter as I moved down her spine. Unlike other lighter women I've massaged, she didn't sway with every firm press. I repositioned my hands, turning them down and using my fingers as I worked down, reaching fabric.
"I wonder if..." I said. One of her vertebrae cracked. "Ha!"
"OK, that was nice," she said, sounding surprised. "Do it again!"
I worked down towards her tail bone, then back up, but didn't get any more cracks. I shifted to her shoulders, using my fingers and thumbs, moving each joint in its socket as I worked on the muscles.
"Have you been trained in this?" she demanded.
"No, I just pay attention and I have sensitive fingers," I said. I said it absent-mindedly as I concentrated on her body, so I didn't think of any sexual connotations to that until there was ribald laughter from the crowd.
We ignored them.
I worked my way back in towards her neck, to where the knot started on the right and the left wasn't ideal either.
She gasped.
I stopped. "Too hard?"
"No!"
I resumed, pressing just as hard but a little more slowly.
"Ooh! Sore, but a bit harder."
I obliged.
"Ooh! That's good!"
I worked over that region on both sides, then in towards her neck. Her left felt pretty good, so after a short while, I shifted both hands to the right, working on the knot. She did sway sideways a little and gasped again, but didn't flinch or pull away.
She put her hand out to brace herself against the ground.
I put my left hand on her left shoulder, against her neck. "Can I brace you like this?"
"Sure."
I settled my hand, gripped her tightly, then ground into the knot on her right with my thumb.
"Ooooh, that hurts but it's good!"
I kept going for a short time, alternating between digging into the knot and kneading it between thumb and forefinger, and did manage to loosen it.
"I think that's the best I can do," I said, using both hands to lightly massage her shoulders and the top of her back, to even things up, as I finished off.
"It helped!" She twisted around to look at me as I took my hands off her. "What was your name?"
"Thorne." Somehow, I managed to avoid looking down her cleavage.
"That should be easy to remember." She held her hand out. "Pleased to meet you, I'm Zilpha."
"My pleasure. Don't go and undo all my hard work."
She laughed as she shifted back to where she had been, and sat cross-legged again instead of lounging.
"Aww, you two looked like such a sweet couple," one of the women said, but we both let it float past without reaction.
I stayed sitting up for a couple of minutes, rolling my back and twisting it a little to loosen it after leaning forward all through the massage, then leaned forward again as Bonus came past for a scratch.
When he left, I wandered inside to the bathroom.
When I came out, Zilpha confronted me in the corridor. "I'm bored, come for a walk?"
I blinked. Sure, women had turned up unexpectedly asking me to go for a walk with them when we weren't in a relationship, but it had been a while since university and the night-time wanders I had once been used to.
"Alright."
Claire's place was opposite a park that rambled along above the river and where she often walked Bonus. Zilpha lead me straight across the road and then angled upriver, where a patch of remnant bush hid the houses from view. We kept going until there were no lights visible either through the widening patch of trees or back the way we had come. We reached the very end of the park itself, where an incongruous but useful bench sat facing the water, looking out over a rocky cliff.
There was enough moonlight coming through for my night vision to be pretty good by that time.
We leaned on the fence at the edge of the cliff.
