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The puddle formerly known as Melanie melted like chocolate in the palms of his hands, and she found herself close to sobbing. Her skin was by now hypersensitive, and she became painfully aware that it had been years since anyone had laid hands on her body, not even in circumstances as innocent as these.
Her skin was starved for touch, and the human contact affected her so deeply that she almost broke inside. She squeezed her eyes shut, praying that tears didn’t betray her. The man administering those powerful yet gentle strokes faded away until all she could feel was sensation.
In her mind, that dark, dimpled face was replaced by a suntanned one, with smiling eyes and a mouth that crinkled at the corners. Corbin’s hands, she figured, were just as large, just as capable. Would they be as firm? As warm?
She drank in the touch; her soul grasped it greedily. It had been so, so long since she had been held, caressed, cherished.
“Ça va, madame?”her masseur enquired in a worried tone, and it was only then that she realized that she had groaned out loud, in longing, loneliness and despair. “The pressing, it is too much? I go softer for you, yes?”
“It’s fine,” she tried to convince him, but to her chagrin, there was a discussion between him and her assistants, and it appeared that her massage was prematurely over. As he excused himself, bowing and walking backwards, she was re-dressed in her fluffy robe and marched back to her private suite, where she was coaxed onto a lounger and food and drink appeared out of nowhere.
“You eat and drink,” she was instructed. “Thirty minutes and we return.”
The late lunch consisted of wafer-thin cucumber sandwiches, fresh slices of fruit and a light soup. To her utter delight there was another tiny bottle of the champagne she had enjoyed in the car, and she couldn’t help but wonder whether Olivier had reported back to his handlers that she’d finished the last one.
Nothing to be ashamed of.
By now she was starving. She polished off the meal, liberally washing it down with the bubbly, so that by the time the two women returned to reclaim her she was exceedingly cheerful.
After determining that she’d been adequately scrubbed and sluiced, the women set about working on her feet, hands, face, and hair. She was mani-ed and pedi-ed, buffed and dermabraded. Her pores were minimized and her skin polished with a substance that she was assured contained genuine gold flakes. All the while, the flattery continued: her skin, her hair, oh, the glow! It never crossed her mind to protest.
Her hair was washed, deep conditioned, tinted, trimmed, curled, feathered, and teased, then swept into an updo held in place by diamante-tipped pins. The women stepped back and eyed her, looking pleased with their handiwork. “When you are dressed, we do your makeup and then, voilà, you are ready.”
“Dressed?” she echoed, puzzled. Was she really expected to put back on the ratty old jeans she had come in?
“But of course,” said Andrea, beaming, and reached over and rang a tiny bell.
The door swung open, and a severe looking but extremely tiny woman stepped into the room, followed by two others whose arms were loaded with shopping bags. The woman glared at Melanie and announced, “Your clothing, those jeans, that shirt, that… underwear!” she shuddered, making Melanie immediately feel the urge to defend her decision to buy her panties in packs of ten. “They have been discarded.”
“What?” she gasped. “You threw away my clothes?”
“Yes! Yes, I do it!” The woman waved her hand, dismissing Melanie’s outrage as unworthy. “Terrible. Absoluement horrible! Jamais plus! Never again, you will dress like that.” She looked about to be overtaken by a fit of the vapors, and then composed herself enough to point at the women who were weighed down with bags. “This, you take with you. This, you wear from now on.”
She indicated one of the smaller bags. “There, you find panties. Real panties. Underclothing that will make you feel your womanhood, not those factory-made atrocities that make you look like a little boy. Put them on.” Then she wagged a warning finger. “No brassiere! Pas du tout! Not with this dress! Not tonight!”
Melanie was already scurrying to step into a proffered pair of panties, feeling as though she would be sent to the principal’s office if she was too slow. “What dress?” she dared to ask.
“This.” The little sour-faced woman apparated a gown of pure white, and for the second time today, Melanie’s jaw hit her chest. It was sparkly and Marilyn Monroe-y and looked fine enough to fold and slip into her back pocket. Much too fancy for her. There was no way in heaven or earth that she could put this—
“Well, I wait!” the woman snapped. “You dress!” She tapped the fine gold watch on her wrist. “You have soirée! You think it is fancy to be late? You Americans! You think being late is… as you say… cool? No! You dress now!”
Melanie glanced at the clock overhead and discovered to her shock that she had been at the spa for more than five hours. And the odd little woman was right. It was getting dangerously late. Timidly, she accepted the dress and slipped it on, helped by her two assistants who made sure she didn’t muss her hair. The fabric clung to her body, and swung gently around her knees, so lightly that the soft rustle of silk was like the sound of snow falling in the night.
The woman circled her critically, nodding, seeming pleased with her choice. “Oui. Bien.”
Her approval made Melanie ridiculously relieved to have passed muster.
Then the woman snapped her fingers at Andrea and Amélie. “Her face. Her makeup. Eyes and lips, just a little only. Such skin, such perfect skin, you do not ruin with your pancake. Vous entendez?”
The two women nodded vigorously, as afraid of her as Melanie herself was, making her wonder if this woman owned the place. She was bullied back into a chair, and as one woman fussed with her makeup, the other slipped strappy sandals onto her feet.
Moments later, she was allowed to rise, and was guided to a full-length mirror.
Melanie gasped. The woman staring back at her was sparkling, literally and figuratively. Sweetly curved and glowing, her spine straight and back tall, and every detail was perfect.
Who is this woman,she wondered, and then immediately upon the heels of that thought was another: What would Corbin think when he saw her?
To her amazement, the little woman, who had been circling her like a miniature shark, looking her up and down as if calculating, adding and subtracting points in her head, actually cracked a smile. “Bien, Princesse,” she pronounced. She brought her fingertips to her lips and kissed them like a chef admiring her own sauce. “You are superbe.”
