Chapter 1: Giving a massage
The antiseptic smell of the clinic hit me the second the glass door swung shut behind me, sealing out the muffled sounds of the small-town street. It was cold, too. A different kind of cold from the Oregon air outside; this was a sterile, white-walled chill that went right through my thin maternity sweater. I signed my name on the clipboard at the front desk, my hand trembling so badly the ‘S’ looked like a seismograph reading.
“Sarah Johnson,” I whispered to the empty waiting area.
A door to the side opened and a woman in light blue scrubs appeared. She had a kind, round face and efficient eyes that scanned me quickly, taking in my clenched fists, my rounded belly, the way I stood like I might bolt. “Mrs.Johnson? I’m Agnes, Dr. Taylor’s assistant. Right this way.”
The hallway was shorter than I’d imagined. It felt like three steps and then we were in the exam room. It was exactly as terrifying as I’d feared. The table in the center, that cruel-looking paper sheet, the stainless steel stirrups at the end. Charts on the wall with diagrams of uteri that looked nothing like the sacred, life-filled place inside me. A sink with a mirror above it, one long crack splitting my reflection in two.
“Everything off from the waist down, gown open in the front. The doctor will be in shortly,” Agnes said, her voice soft but leaving no room for question. She closed the door.
The silence was total. It was the silence of a tomb. My breath started coming in short, sharp little gasps. I’d never done this. Back home, my gynecologist was a gentle, grandmotherly woman who smelled of jasmine and spoke in a hushed, reverent tone about the miracle of life. This was… clinical. Exposed. I was about to spread my legs for a strange old man in a country where I knew no one.
My fingers fumbled with the button of my maternity jeans. The elastic panel felt like a betrayal, giving way too easily. I folded everything neatly on the cheap plastic chair in the corner—my panties, my jeans, my socks—as if being tidy could somehow make this less obscene. The paper gown was crinkly and thin, doing nothing to stop the chill from the table when I sat on it. The paper rustled like dead leaves.
A soft knock, then the door opened. Dr. Taylor was older than I’d pictured from his online bio. His head was a pale, freckled dome, his eyebrows a fierce silver-white. He moved with a slow, deliberate steadiness, his eyes, behind thin-framed glasses, taking me in immediately. Not just my belly. Me.
“Sarah,” he said, his voice a low, calming rumble. It wasn’t a question. He set a tablet down on the counter and washed his hands at the sink, the sound of the water impossibly loud. “First prenatal visit with us. How are you settling into Mapleton?”
“It’s… quiet,” I managed to say, my voice thin.
“It is that.” He dried his hands meticulously, turning to face me. His smile was warm, reaching his eyes, crinkling the weathered skin around them. “Now, let’s get you comfortable. Lie back for me, head on the pillow.”
I obeyed, the paper crunching grotesquely beneath me. The ceiling tiles had little speckles in them. I counted them as I felt the table shift, the end with the stirrups descending. The mechanics of it were so loud.
“Feet up here, dear,” he said, his tone leaving no room for panic.
I placed my heels in the cold metal cups, mortification heating my cheeks. I was spread open before him, the paper gown a pathetic curtain over the top half of my body. I closed my eyes.
I heard the snap of latex, the squirt of lubricant. His hands were warm, shockingly so, as they settled on my knees. “Just going to feel your uterus first, check the size. You’re about eighteen weeks, yes?”
I nodded, unable to speak. His fingers pressed deep into my lower abdomen, probing, measuring. It was impersonal, exactly what I’d expected. He murmured numbers to himself, his head tilted. Then his hands moved lower.
His touch changed.
It was no longer just clinical pressure. His fingertips, slick with gel, grazed the very top of my pubic mound, then drifted down along the outer lips of my sex. A slow, deliberate pass. My eyes flew open. I stared at the cracked ceiling.
“You’re holding a tremendous amount of tension in your pelvis, Sarah,” he said, his voice conversational, as if discussing the weather. “That’s not good for you, or for the baby. Your muscles are like ropes.”
His thumb found the sensitive crease where my thigh met my body. He pressed a slow, circular motion there, a point of aching pressure that sent an unwelcome, traitorous jolt straight to my core. I sucked in a breath.
“See?” he said softly. “Just trying to help you relax.”
His fingers traced back, this time parting me. The cool air of the room hit my wetness. I was wet. God, no. Shame burned through me, hot and sharp. He saw it. He had to. The slick sound as his gloved finger circled my opening was obscene.
“Very tight,” he murmured, more to himself. His eyes were on my face, watching my reactions. “A lot of women experience heightened sensitivity during pregnancy. It’s perfectly natural. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
He wasn’t looking away. His gaze held mine as one finger, just the tip, breached me. It wasn’t an examination. It was a slow, penetrating intrusion. My hips gave a tiny, involuntary jerk.
“There we go,” he coaxed, his voice a low hum. “Let it happen. Your body knows what it needs.”
He added a second finger, stretching me. The stretch was delicious, a deep, filling ache that was utterly different from Jason’s frantic, stressed couplings. This was slow. Purposeful. His thumb shifted, finding my clit with an unerring accuracy that stole the breath from my lungs. He began tpo rub it in tiny, precise circles.
“Oh,” the sound escaped me, a choked whimper.
“That’s it,” he said, his other hand coming to rest on my trembling belly. “Just let go. It’s therapy. Think of it as… prescribed relaxation.”
It was wrong. It was so profoundly, sinfully wrong. The wedding band on my left hand glinted under the cruel fluorescent lights, a beacon of my betrayal. But my body was arching off the table, pushing against his hand, seeking more of that devastating, expert friction. The emotions of the last chaotic months—the isolation, Jason’s distance, the fear—they all coalesced into a tight, screaming knot right where his fingers worked me.
He curled his fingers inside me, pressing up, and his thumb never let up its relentless, circling pace. My prayers, my Hail Marys, they evaporated, replaced by a raw, gathering heat. I was muttering, “No, no, no,” but my legs were falling wider open, the stirrups creaking in protest.p
“It’s okay,” he soothed, his own breathing a little heavier now. I heard the rustle of his clothes, the subtle shift of his weight. “Give in to it, Sarah. For the baby’s health.”
The orgasm detonated with a force that shattered me. It wasn’t the faint, disappointing ripple I sometimes got with Jason. This was a convulsing, white-out explosion that ripped a ragged scream from my throat. My back bowed off the table, my vision spotting. He held his fingers deep inside me, milking the pulses until I collapsed, spent and shaking, a slick of sweat on my brow.
Before the aftershocks had even finished, I felt the nudge of something much larger, blunter, at my entrance. My eyes, glazed, rolled down. He had freed his erection from his trousers. It was thick, veined, ruddy. He wasn't looking at my face anymore; his gaze was fixed on where he was pressing himself into my slick, stretched opening.
“Prescribed therapy,” he grunted again, as if that explained everything.
He pushed in. It was a seamless, smooth invasion, my body still so pliant from the climax. He filled me utterly, a deep, spreading fullness that made my spent muscles clench around him. There was no tenderness, no kissing. Just the clinical, rhythmic drive of his hips, the smack of skin against skin in the quiet room, the rattling of the exam table on its floor bolts with every thrust.
He fucked me with a measured, powerful intensity. One hand braced on the table by my hip, the other still on my belly, feeling his own length moving inside me. I was a vessel. For his release, for his expertise. The obscenity of it, the sheer taboo, coiled inside me and began to build another shocking wave of heat. He saw it on my face.
“You can come again,” he stated, his voice tight with his own control. “I can feel you tightening. Do it.”
He pistoned into me, angling his hips, hitting a place that made stars flash behind my eyelids. My second orgasm was a silent, devastating quake, a deep internal rupture that had me digging my nails into the paper sheet. It triggered his. With a harsh groan, he slammed deep, his body shuddering. I felt the hot, sudden gush of his release flooding my core, so much of it, a claiming spill inside a pregnant woman on a gynecological table.
For a long minute, there was only the sound of our ragged breathing. He slowly pulled out, the soft, wet sound final. He disposed of the glove, tidied himself, and turned back to the sink to wash his hands again, as calmly as if he’d just checked my blood pressure.
I lay there, ruined, my legs still splayed in the stirrups, his semen already beginning a slow, warm trickle out of me.
“You can get dressed now,” he said, drying his hands. He picked up his tablet, making a note. “Everything looks excellent, Sarah. You’re in perfect health.”
I moved like an automaton. I swung my legs down, the metal clanging. The paper gown was stuck to my back with sweat. I peeled it off. I didn’t look at him as I shuffled to my pile of clothes. My underwear first. As I pulled them up, I felt the warm, wet smear of him soaking into the fabric immediately.
“Thank you,” I heard myself say, my voice foreign to my own ears. “The… therapy. That was… I’ve never…”
I couldn’t finish. I’d never had a real orgasm during sex before. Not with Jason. Not with Jason! Just once, but not Jason. I had only two men before. Jason and my cousin who raped me. With Jason I never had an orgasm but my cousin while he forced and deflored me. This was the only time until now.
This old man, Dr. Taylor, my gynecologist in a white coat had given me two in ten minutes on a plastic chair.
He nodded, a professional, satisfied smile on his face. “It’s an important part of holistic maternal care. I’m glad it was beneficial. Agnes will have some follow-up instructions for you on your way out.”
I dressed completely, my movements slow, my body feeling heavy and strange. I opened the exam room door.
Agnes was there, right outside, holding a clipboard. Her kind eyes met mine, and there was no surprise in them, only a placid knowing. Did she hear? I was a bit shocked and even more afraid. I needed to pretend that there was nothing. I cheated my hubby and Agnes is a friend of her. Oh my. I need to keep smiling but without a hint that I just was satisfied a minute ago.
“Here you are, Agnes” she said, handing me a printed sheet. “The doctor has prescribed a course of prenatal massage. Specialized, for pelvic tension. And he said, wecan start it right now.” She emphasized the words slightly. “I have thecskills and the profession. We still have a about an hour before Jason is back to pick you up.”
She smiled. It was the same warm, efficient smile from before. But now I saw the secret in it. I took at my phone, my fingers numb. I saw Jason's message confirming, that Agnes sent him message the appointment will last longer. He will pick me up later.
“Thank you,” I whispered again. I felt the slow, persistent leak of Dr. Taylor inside me. I had never come with Jason. Not once.
My voice sounded hollow, like it was coming from someone else. Agnes took my arm gently, her fingers warm and sure. “Come with me, Sarah. We’ll get you settled in the massage room. It’s just down the hall.”
The hallway was narrower than the exam room corridor, the walls lined with framed certificates and calming watercolor prints of sunsets. The air smelled faintly of lavender and something deeper, muskier—like the scent of a man’s skin after exertion. Agnes stopped in front of a door with a brass plaque that read **Prenatal Wellness Suite**. She turned the handle and pushed it open.
The room was dimly lit, the overhead lights softened by warm amber bulbs. A massage table sat in the center, draped in crisp white linens, the edges slightly rumpled as if it had just been freshly made. A small fountain burbled in the corner, the sound of water trickling over smooth stones.