Chapter 1

Beth Rawlinson hurried into the kitchen, worried that Carly wouldn't be ready. It was 'Take Your Daughter to Work' day and she didn't want to set a bad example for her daughter by being late.

Carly was ready to go, though, dressed and almost finished with her morning cereal.

"Good!" said Beth. "You ready?"

"Stop worrying, Mom," said her daughter. "This is no big deal. We've done this before, you know."

That was true. Carly had gone to work with her mother on this day every year for as long as she could remember. It had been in different places, but they all seemed the same when all was said and done. Carly knew the workings of a massage parlor inside and out, though all she'd been allowed to actually do in the past was help check clients in, and straighten magazines in the waiting room, and take coffee to the massage rooms.

"Well, today I might actually let you help with a massage."

That was pushing things a bit, Beth knew. Carly was a great masseuse. Over the years, her mother had trained her quite well at home. But she wasn't licensed. Still, if all she did was feet or hands, or something like that, nobody would complain. And the clients would love being pampered with extra attention.

"Calm down, Mom," said Carly. "I won't embarrass you."

"I know that," said Beth. "You could never embarrass me."

The girl grinned and then stood.

"You're wearing that?" her mother asked, in a typical unimpressed mother's voice.

"It's in style, and this isn't school," said Carly.

Her mother looked at her askance.

Carly was wearing a crop top shirt with a rainbow on it that went from the tip of one breast to the other. She hoped this shirt would still fit her when her parents allowed her to start dating, because she thought of her breasts as pots of gold at the end of that rainbow. Of course the only experience she had with them being played with was when she did it herself, but that felt great, and everybody said it felt even better when a boy did it.

Below the shirt was a skirt that was short enough that if Carly bent over, an observer would know what color her panties were. Knee socks and white sneakers completed her outfit. Her long, brown hair was arranged in dog ears. In short, she looked like a hentai girl come to life.

Basically, she looked delicious, something her mother wasn't happy with.

"Well, you just got yourself restricted to female patrons. If any male clients see you like that, it could cause problems."

"What kind of problems, Mom?" asked the teenager, innocently. She knew what kind of problems. She'd heard her mother complain to her father one time about men who got erections during a massage.

"Never you mind about that," said her mother, wishing she could tell her daughter to put on jeans and a sweatshirt.

But there was no time to change now. They had to get moving to be on time.

"Don't forget to take something to read," said Beth. "Just in case."

Once at the Oriental Palace Massage Parlor, which was one of about a half dozen on the main drag right outside the Summerall Gate at Fort Henderson, Beth took Carly to the break room. She asked her daughter to get her a cup of coffee while she changed into her uniform. She went to the shelves on one wall and pulled out pants and a top that, once on her body, looked suspiciously like hospital scrubs. That was intentional. After the last of many "raids" by the sheriff's office, Todd Franklin, who owned the Oriental Palace, had gotten new uniforms that couldn't be called "sexy" by any standards. Over the years, he'd had to pay a lot of bribes to stay in business. Now he was trying to arrange things so that he could survive a trip to court if he had to. The uniforms were only part of that. He insisted that his girls provide only massages, and nothing more. At least nothing more here, in the building. Who they dated was their business.

It was an uphill struggle, though. Pretty much everybody who lived in the Army town outside the gates assumed that if the sign said "Massage Parlor" on it, what that meant was "brothel." In the past that had been true, for the most part. He was trying to change that stereotype, but change came slowly. Sometimes it was a pain in the ass for him.

It had also been a pain in the ass for Beth Rawlinson, who was married to a soldier, and who had become a masseuse because there was a massage parlor outside every military base on the planet. That meant she'd have a job whenever they moved ... and they moved a lot.

So she put on the shapeless, baggy uniform, which was a dull gray in color. She could not, however, have her daughter put one on, because that would make her look official, and Carly couldn't be official. She was only there to observe, and see what her mother really did for a living.

The Oriental Palace had been through half a dozen owners in its thirty year history as a massage parlor. At some point, one of those enterprising owners had remodeled, moving walls and creating a line of four rooms on each side of a secret passage. Then he installed two way mirrors into the walls of the rooms, and charged people to stand in the passage and watch the "massages" that took place.

In those days, "Massage Parlor" really did mean "Brothel."

Of course Todd didn't use them for that any more. That was much too risky. And massage these days really was therapeutic, which is why he hired only trained and licensed personnel. But the mentality that you could proposition a masseuse still lingered. Now, if there was a problem client, the masseuse could press a button, and a camera on the other side of that mirror would begin documenting what happened in the room. It had gotten several girls out of trouble when a customer who had been denied what he wanted, tried to get revenge by complaining he'd been solicited.

Because Todd ran a clean operation, Beth intended to make sure just what her daughter would and would not be allowed to do on this particular day. This was the first year Todd had actually embraced the concept of bringing your offspring to work, and she wanted everything to go smoothly.

As it turned out, though, Todd was at a dentist appointment that day, having a tooth removed. And one of the other girls hadn't shown up for work. To make things even worse, it was their new receptionist's first day on the job without Molly, who had been training her, but whose water had broken the night before, and was still in labor.

Which meant things weren't nearly as organized as Beth had planned them to be.

Since Beth needed to hit the ground running, she told her daughter to sit in the break room and read until things settled down.

Half an hour later Beth stopped in the doorway of the break room and motioned Carly to come with her.

Mrs. Jorgenson was her first client of the day. Maxine Jorgenson had, at one time, visited a chiropractor every week, so she could receive an adjustment. Her late husband had been convinced that adjustments were responsible for a long and happy life, and he hadn't minded paying for them. But then he had died of a heart attack at fifty-two. Four years later, when his insurance ran out, and she had to go on Social Security, Maxine decided that anything that had to be "adjusted" over and over was either so broken it needed to come out ... or a scam.

So she tried a massage one week, instead of an adjustment.

And she felt wonderful.

In fact, she found that if she only got a massage once a month, she felt as good as she ever had leaving the chiropractor's office. And a massage cost about a quarter of what an adjustment ran.

Beth had been Mrs. Jorgenson's masseuse for two years. So when the woman came in, Beth introduced her daughter and explained why she was there. Mrs. Jorgenson smiled and said it was fine for the girl to stay. As Carly sat in the corner and watched her mother work on the old woman, she listened to them chatting like old friends. Mrs. Jorgenson did a lot of "ooofing" and grunting as her body was pressed and moved. Carly understood that, because she did that too, when her mother gave her a massage.

Normally, Beth would have had half an hour to rest after giving an hour massage. Because of the missing girl, though, she checked with Jennifer, the new receptionist, who said "There are two men waiting. One of them asked for you. I told him to go to room six, but that he might have to wait. Is that okay?"

Beth looked at the sign-in list and said "That stinker! He didn't tell me he was coming in today!"

She turned to her daughter.

"Your father is in room six. I'm going to take care of this other guy. Go tell your daddy that he can wait until he gets home for a massage."

"Okay," chirped Carly.

She hurried down the hall to the door marked with a big numeral 6 and slipped inside.

Her father was already naked, lying face down on the massage table. His face was deep in the hole designed for that purpose, and his arms were lying along his sides.

"Hi Baby," came the disembodied voice of her father, as Carly stood, looking at his naked form. Her eyes ranged up and down his body curiously. She'd never had the opportunity to just look at a naked man before. Her expectation of smooth, flat skin evaporated like smoke in a breeze, as she looked at the lumps and bumps created by the muscles under his skin. She was surprised how buff her father looked, all in all.

"The rest of the company is down at the motor pool doing a TO&E inspection, but I don't have an assigned vehicle, so the Lieutenant said I could go do whatever I wanted. I thought of you, of course, and ... well ... you know what I want. You always have. I need this bad, Baby, and it's all your fault."

Carly didn't really analyze the possible different interpretations of what he said. All she thought about was that she had practiced massage on her father many times. Not naked ... but many times.

And he said he needed it bad...

She stepped forward and reached for a group of muscles she'd worked on before, but never been able to see under the shirt he'd been wearing.

His groan made her smile. She knew it was the result of a mixture of delight and what her mother called "luscious pain." And it meant she was doing it exactly right.

Beth worked on her next client for half an hour, and then changed the table sheet and washed her hands. She checked with Jennifer, who had another client waiting, but said that the missing girl had called in, saying that she'd had a flat tire on the way to work, and would be late.

Beth stopped by the break room to ask Carly to keep being patient, but found the room empty.

She didn't have time to search for her daughter, and went to start the next massage.

When Carly got to the buttocks that astonished her by being amazingly sculpted, she couldn't resist seeing what they felt like. It was hard to believe this was her own father! Who knew that all that running and working out he was so fanatical about would actually make a man his age look this good?

She dug her fingers into the muscles she found there and got another of those happy groans.

"Oh baby," came his voice. "I am so glad I married you."

Carly was pretty sure her daddy wouldn't be real happy if he found out who was actually groping his ass, so she remained silent. Tom Rawlinson, expecting some kind of response, thought the reason he didn't get one was because his wife had misunderstood him. It would be just like her to think all he was talking about was her expertise as a masseuse. As a man, he just naturally assumed that a woman wanted to be validated as being sexy and attractive.

Chapter 2 »