Magic Mansion by Jordan Price (best fiction books to read .txt) 📕

More specifically, Ricardo’s body.

John had suspected Ricardo would look good, but even his fantasies couldn’t compare with the reality of those long legs, that sculpted chest. Don’t gape, John managed to think (though just barely) and he turned away and looked to Marlene, who pantomimed undressing. He pulled his belt, and allowed the aesthetician to take his robe and guide him onto the table.

“It doesn’t smell like raw seaweed,” said the man who was painting a pale green gel on Ricardo’s back. “It’s mixed with a proprietary blend of essential oils.”

Ricardo and John stared—it seemed impossible not to—and finally Ricardo said, “Nice tan.”

“Actually, no. I’m Chamorro.” Which most people had never heard of—and it was a relief to have something, anything, to chat about. “From Guam. Some Pacific Islander blood, some Spanish.”

“Oh. Really? Because your aunt was so famous, and I don’t remember ever reading about….” Ricardo finished with a sheepish shrug, and John wondered if it was possible the camera was picking up the thick vibe in the room.

He watched his technician mixing a bowl of green gel as an excuse to tear his eyes away from Ricardo’s bare shoulders. “You wouldn’t have. Rose was always supposed to be coy about where she was originally from so she didn’t seem too foreign. It was a…different time.”

“We’ll apply the treatment to your back,” the spa worker told John, “then you can lie down.”

Ricardo’s technician had already covered his back in gel. The man guided Ricardo into a supine position—and John quickly found a picture on the far wall to stare at. It was something innocuous, something banal. A watercolor. Gestural, green. Perhaps a tea leaf. He focused on it, and saw it wasn’t really a watercolor, just a mass-produced print. Not from the image itself, which was blandly pleasant enough, but from the vibration of the cellulose and the thin varnish coat of the printing process.

As hard as he stared at that damn leaf print, all he could think of was the sight of Ricardo’s perfect abs bunching as he eased back onto the table. And imagining how they would feel sliding against his palms as the two of them rolled together. Skin on skin.

And then the seaweed touched him. Warm. Wet. Not unpleasant. It smelled herbal, like lavender, mostly. The technician applied it with a brush like he was painting the side of a house, with long, sure strokes. Then he asked John to lie down on the trough-like table, upon which was a layer of thick towels, and over that, a sheet of crinkly silver mylar.

The technician began painting John’s front. Marlene said quietly, “Chat.”

John turned his head. Ricardo was watching him. Smiling. Not the showman’s smile, but a private one. His front was now being painted, too. The gleam of the seaweed gel only enhanced his sleek muscles. “They say the seaweed draws out impurities,” John said…and then he wondered if that included impure thoughts.

“I hear your skin feels amazing afterward,” Ricardo added.

No doubt.

Ricardo’s technician finished coating him and began wrapping him in the mylar. “How long is it supposed to stay on?” Marlene asked him.

“Twenty minutes, half an hour. Enough time to work up a good sweat.”

Honestly, John thought. Must everything be a euphemism?

“I suppose we have time to go all the way,” Marlene said.

Yes. Apparently, everything must.

“Once they’re wrapped up,” she told the cameramen, “head over to the reflexology and get some close-ups of those feet. We’ll make sure to come back before they unwrap and get a few shots of these two looking sweaty.”

John’s technician spread the last of the gel over his stomach, then folded the silver sheet over him and tucked it in snugly. He brought up the other side and tucked that in too, then wrapped the sides of the thick towel around him as well. The cameramen trooped out, the technicians, and finally, Marlene.

John and Ricardo were alone. Swaddled in a pair of lavender-scented mylar cocoons, but alone.

John turned his head to face Ricardo. “How are you?” he whispered. He didn’t think there was a secret camera left behind, but according to the sheafs of documents he’d signed, there could be.

“Good. Really good. You?”

“Good.”

They stared awkwardly for a long pause, and then Ricardo said, “I really wish I could move.”

“It does seem to be your forte.”

Ricardo smiled. “What does?”

“Moving.” John wondered why he was admitting the thing that was keen on spilling out of his mouth. “I saw the videos on your website.”

“You did?” Ricardo’s cheeks flushed.

“They were…very good.”

Ricardo launched into a story about the venue where the videos had been taped, how he’d had a great audience there, a steady gig. How it had closed its doors during the latest recession and left him performing at parties. And John traded a story or two about some of the more unusual venues he’d headlined. A dot-com launch. A funeral, once. Twenty uninterrupted minutes felt like a decadent amount of time in which to talk—and perhaps it was fortunate that neither of them could move, because there could very well have been a hidden camera trained on them. And even so, if John had been capable of putting his arms around Ricardo, of drawing him into a kiss…he wouldn’t have been able to resist.

Chapter 13

TWO MAGICIANS LEAVE

UNEDITED VIDEO JOURNAL - KEN BARRON

“So I survived the first punishment, cleaning the bathrooms, making the beds. I don’t think the housework was the actual punishment. We’ve only been here one night, so it wasn’t particularly hard. It wasn’t as if anything was dirty. I think not being allowed to go to the spa, not getting to bond with our teammates…that was the real punishment.

“As much as it would kill me to do it because I’m so damn ashamed, I’m itching to call my sponsor. But I can’t. No phone calls, that’s part of the deal here.

“Last night…was out of control. Completely out of control. Totally…unbelievable. The way it feels, having cameras following you around, the idea that every move you make, every look