The place didn’t look like anything special. Just another ‘wellness spa’ tucked between a nail shop and some tacky boutique, the glass front plastered with decals of lotus flowers and fake bamboo. I’d signed up for the gig because the money was decent and because I figured—how hard could it be to rub lotion on someone’s back for an hour? I wasn’t expecting anything else. Not really.
The woman at the desk barely glanced at me when I came in, just pointed me toward a room down the hall and said the client was waiting. My palms were sweating already, which was stupid—this was supposed to be easy. But the second I pushed open that door, I knew it wasn’t going to be.
She was already lying face-down on the table, towel loose around her hips, long dark hair spilling over one shoulder. Skin smoo
