Princess Alice: My Anal Massage!

Alice needs a rubdown to unwind, but the spa’s masseur is all booked up. Soon Alice discovers why, and the reason gives a whole new meaning to “deep tissue.”

The stress had been building for months.

Alice’s job as a corporate lawyer meant sixty-hour weeks, clients who expected miracles, and a never-ending stream of emails that demanded responses at all hours. Her boyfriend of three years had recently become her ex-boyfriend, citing “emotional unavailability” as if he hadn’t been the one who forgot her birthday. Her mother called twice daily with updates on the various ailments of everyone in their extended family. And somewhere in the chaos, Alice had forgotten how to breathe.

So when her best friend gifted her a weekend at Willowbrook Spa—a secluded retreat nestled in the redwoods, famous for its holistic treatments and complete digital detox policy—Alice almost cried with gratitude. Three days of silence, solitude, and therapeutic touch. Three days to remember what her own body felt like when it wasn’t strung tight with tension.

She arrived on a Friday afternoon, the winding drive through ancient trees already working its magic. The spa itself was a masterpiece of rustic elegance—stone and wood and glass, designed to blend seamlessly with its surroundings. A woman at the reception desk smiled warmly and handed her a glass of cucumber-infused water.

“Welcome, Alice. We’ve got you scheduled for a deep tissue massage tomorrow at 10 AM with Marcus. He’s our most requested therapist.”

“Most requested?” Alice raised an eyebrow. “Should I be jealous before we’ve even met?”

The receptionist’s smile widened into something almost secret. “You’ll understand tomorrow.”

That evening, Alice explored the grounds. She walked barefoot through a meditation garden, soaked in a mineral pool that overlooked the forest canopy, and ate a dinner so fresh she could taste the soil it had grown in. For the first time in longer than she could remember, her shoulders dropped from their permanent position near her ears. She slept like the dead, dreamless and deep.

Morning came golden through her floor-to-ceiling windows. Alice dressed in the robe provided, slipped on the spa sandals, and made her way to the treatment wing with anticipation building in her chest. She’d had massages before—the kind where well-meaning women in bland rooms worked out the knots with clinical efficiency. But something about this place felt different. Special.

The treatment room door was open when she arrived. Inside, a man stood with his back to her, arranging something on a shelf. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with dark hair that curled slightly at the nape of his neck. When he turned at the sound of her approach, Alice forgot to breathe for an entirely different reason.

Marcus was beautiful.

Not conventionally so—his nose was slightly crooked, as if it had been broken once, and there was a small scar through his left eyebrow. But his eyes were the color of aged whiskey, warm and intelligent, and his smile when he saw her was genuine, unguarded. He wore simple dark clothes that did nothing to hide the fact that his body was a work of art—lean and strong, the kind of physique that came from physical labor rather than gym vanity.

“Alice?” His voice matched the rest of him—low, calm, with a warmth that seemed to wrap around her. “I’m Marcus. Welcome.”

“I…” She realized she’d been staring. “Hi. Yes. Alice. That’s me.”

His smile widened slightly, as if he found her flustered response endearing. “First time at Willowbrook?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Because if you’d been here before, you’d have requested me already.” He gestured to the massage table. “Go ahead and get comfortable, face-down under the sheet. I’ll give you a minute and then come back.”

He slipped out, and Alice stood frozen for a long moment. Get comfortable. Right. She could do that. She was a professional woman who’d faced down hostile witnesses and cutthroat opposing counsel. She could undress and lie on a table like a normal person.

She could. She did. But when Marcus knocked softly and re-entered, her heart was pounding in a way that had nothing to do with anxiety.

His hands, when they first touched her shoulders, were electric.

Not in a cheesy, romantic-novel way—literally electric, as if some current passed from his skin to hers. Alice gasped slightly, and Marcus paused.

“Cold hands?” he asked. “I can warm them first.”

“No, it’s… they’re perfect. Just surprising.”

He hummed softly and continued, his palms gliding over her shoulder blades with practiced ease. And then he found the first knot.

Alice had known she was tense. She hadn’t known that tension could calcify into something almost solid, a mass of tightened muscle that had become so familiar she’d stopped noticing it. Marcus’s thumbs pressed into it with surgical precision, and she actually groaned—a sound so involuntary, so embarrassingly primal, that she felt her face flush against the table’s face cradle.

“That’s a bad one,” Marcus murmured. “How long have you been carrying this?”

“Years?” The word came out muffled. “Maybe always.”

“Let’s see what we can do about always.”

He worked in silence for a while, his hands moving with an intuition that felt almost supernatural. He found knots Alice didn’t know existed, released tension she’d been holding since law school, coaxed her muscles into surrendering defenses they’d built over a lifetime. And with every passing minute, the quality of his touch changed—became something more than therapeutic, something that bordered on intimate.

“Is this…” Alice started, then stopped.

“Is this what?”

“Normal? For a massage?”

Marcus’s hands stilled on her lower back. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’ve had massages before. They didn’t feel like this.” She turned her head to the side, peeking at him from under her arm. “They didn’t make me feel like…”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m being seen.” The words came out before she could stop them. “Not just my body. Me.”

For a long moment, Marcus didn’t move. Then he shifted, coming around to where she could see his face. His expression was complicated—surprise, recognition, something almost like vulnerability.

“That’s not a normal massage question,” he said quietly.

“I’m not having a normal massage experience.”

He looked at her for a beat longer, then nodded slowly. “No. You’re not.” He pulled a stool close to the table and sat, bringing himself to eye level with her. “The reason I’m always booked, Alice—the reason clients wait months for an appointment—is that I don’t just work on muscles. I work on energy. On connection. On the places where people have learned to disconnect from themselves.”

Alice’s heart was pounding again. “And how do you do that?”

“By being present. Completely present, with whoever’s on my table. By seeing them—really seeing them—and giving them permission to be seen.” He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, a gesture so tender it made her chest ache. “Most people aren’t ready for that. They want the knots gone, but they don’t want anyone looking at the reasons the knots formed. You, though…”

“Me what?”

“You’re ready.” His hand cupped her jaw, thumb brushing her cheek. “I could feel it the moment you walked in. You’ve been hiding for so long you forgot what it felt like to be found.”

Alice’s eyes filled with tears—not sad ones, exactly, but the kind that came when something true finally broke through. She turned her head and pressed her lips to his palm, a gesture that surprised her as much as it surprised him.

“I don’t even know you,” she whispered.

“You know me better than you know most people. Because I haven’t hidden from you.”

She sat up then, the sheet pooling in her lap, and looked at him properly for the first time. He was still beautiful, still warm, still emanating that quality of presence that had undone her from the moment she walked in. But now she saw something else—loneliness, maybe, or longing. The mirror of her own.

“What happens now?” she asked. “Is this… is this something you do with all your clients?”

“No.” His voice was firm. “Never. This is just you. Just us. And what happens now is whatever you want to happen.”

Alice considered. She considered the life she was returning to—the emails, the demands, the ex-boyfriend who’d never really seen her. She considered the years of tension stored in muscles she was only now learning to release. She considered the fact that she’d come here to unwind and had ended up undone in ways she never anticipated.

Then she leaned forward and kissed him.

His mouth was warm, soft, patient—as if he had all the time in the world, as if nothing mattered more than this exact moment. His hands came up to frame her face, and the kiss deepened into something that felt like conversation, like recognition, like coming home to a place you didn’t know you’d left.

When they finally broke apart, Marcus’s forehead rested against hers, both of them breathing hard.

“I should warn you,” he murmured, “that I’m not good at casual. If this is just a spa weekend thing, tell me now, and I’ll go back to being your masseur and nothing more.”

Alice pulled back to look at him. “And if it’s not?”

“Then we have a problem. Because I’m booked solid for months, and I don’t know when I’d have time to see you again.”

She laughed—a real laugh, surprised out of her. “So your success as a masseur is going to be the obstacle to our romance?”

“Apparently.” But he was smiling, and his hands were still on her face, and neither of them made any move to create distance. “Unless you’re willing to wait.”

“I’ve been waiting my whole life,” Alice said softly. “What’s a few more months?”

Outside, the redwoods stood silent witness. Inside the treatment room, two people who’d spent their lives giving to others finally allowed themselves to receive. And when Alice finally left Willowbrook three days later, she carried something with her that no amount of massage could have provided: the knowledge that somewhere in the world, there was someone who saw her completely—and wanted her anyway.

The drive back to the city was long, but Alice didn’t mind. She had a lot to think about, a lot to plan. And in six months, when Marcus’s schedule finally opened up, she’d be waiting.

Some things were worth the wait. She was finally learning to recognize them.
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