Partner Games
Page 42

I read the clue a second time. “So there’s different treatments for the guys and the girls?”
The woman nodded and gestured at a door to her left. “Women please go this way.”
“How long does this take?” I asked, holding Georgie’s hand so she wouldn’t charge ahead. Time was crucial because we had so much to make up. “The full treatment and the mehndi?”
“Full treatment begins with a fifteen minute steam. Then you will rinse off, soap up, and then rinse again. You will receive a massage,” the woman continued, and Georgie began to sing-song again. “Then we will exfoliate with black olive soap, and rinse. When you are clean, the mehndi can be applied.”
This sounded like a lot of scrubbing and rinsing. “And it takes how long?” I prompted again.
“Expect to spend two hours,” she said in her gentle voice and gestured at the door again. “Please enter.”
“What if I was a guy? How long would that take?”
Her brows drew together and she gave a small shrug of her shoulders. “Ninety minutes?”
Shit. “Georgie, we’re one of the two-girl teams. Those Green Machine dickfaces are going to get ahead of us just because they’re dudes.”
“Then we have to move fast,” she said, snatching the clue from my hand and dragging me forward. “Come on.”
When we entered the room, I frowned. There were four people waiting for us – two held cameras, and two were attendants. All were women.
“Come,” said the first woman. “You will each have your own steam room.”
I looked over at Georgie. She shrugged, and then went with the first woman. I went with the second, and a quick glance over my shoulder showed that the blurry form behind me was the new camera-woman, no doubt filming every moment of the massage. I hoped this wasn’t one of those brutal massages where they tried to twist your body into a pretzel.
My attendant took me down a hall filled with many doors. The entire place was steamy as heck, and I began to perspire and pluck at my long-sleeved clothes. Ugh. I’d need extra deodorant while we were in Morocco, it’d seem.
“Your room,” she said, gesturing at a small closet of a room. She turned over a plaque that had a word in Arabic on the door. Probably ‘In Use’. “You may change and then enter the steam room. Pour a ladle of water on the heat source and it will create the steam. You will have fifteen minutes.”
I nodded.
“I will return for you shortly,” she said with a small smile and then headed down the hall.
I went into the cubby. To my chagrin, the camera-woman followed me in. I tried to ignore her, slipping my shoes off and putting them in the designated spot. There was a small, blue wrapped bundle left on one end of the bench, along with a pair of sandals. That was probably a robe, I thought with relief.
I looked over at the camera-woman. “Do you have to be in here?”
“You signed an agreement,” she said in a bored voice, no doubt expecting this argument. “If it makes you feel any better, we’re network TV. No one’s gonna see your tits.”
I was more worried they’d see my lack of tits. I held the bundle of clothes to change into and hesitated for a bit longer. There was no time to waste, but I didn’t like the thought of changing in front of someone.
But…we had time to make up, too. I had to do this. Mind made up, I removed the white ribbon around my bundle of clothing–
–and stared in shock. There was a tiny white panty barely big enough to cover my privates, and the blue was a scarf that would probably cover my hips…if I got creative.
Where was my top?
 
 
Chapter Twenty-Seven
 

“Yo, where is everybody?” – Plate, Team One Percent, The World Races  
 
I debated modesty for about two minutes before anxiety won out, and I stripped for the massage. I knew Georgie wouldn’t care – being a model, she’d been naked a lot – and I didn’t want to be the one to cost us the race. So, cringing, I held the scarf in front of my boobs and went into the next room, trying to pretend that there wasn’t a camera following me.
The massage actually started out pretty awesome. They dripped hot water on me, then cold, and then sponged me down with a soapy pillow of some kind until I was loose and relaxed. Then, they scrubbed every inch of my skin and exfoliated me. Then, more rubbing.
I was so relaxed that I was completely unprepared for the moment that they decided to take things up a level. The masseuse grabbed my arms and legs and stretched me to the point of pain, leaving me whimpering under her ministrations. Every muscle was worked, kneaded, stretched, and pounded. By the time she was done, I felt boneless and broken.
She handed me my cloth sarong back and babbled something, then gestured at the door, indicating I should dress once more. I slid (so bonelessly) off the table and moaned at how achy I was.
It was gonna be a bitch to try and race like this.
The moment I put my clothes on, a note slid under the door. I picked it up and read it aloud for the camera’s benefit. “Find your partner and seek out the mehndi artist. Once your henna tattoo is completed, you will receive your next clue.”
Okay, no sweat. I emerged from the room and nearly ran into my twin and her camera-woman. “Hey,” Georgie said, giving me the dopiest look. “Was that not the best massage?”
“It was,” I said, grabbing her by the arm and hurrying her along. “Until they started to turn me into a pretzel.”
She chuckled. “It was a bit like a Swedish deep-tissue massage on crack, wasn’t it?”
Seeing as I’d never had a Swedish massage, I had no idea. “Let’s go get our henna. We have to make it snappy or we’re going to fall even further behind.”
Following a few well-placed arrows, we found the henna artist. She showed us a series of designs for us to pick, and we chose the simplest ones. Georgie went first, and I paced as the woman carefully and quietly painted an intricate design on the back of Georgie’s hand.
“I’m not seeing any others,” I told Georgie. “We’re in last. We have to be.”
“Then we’re in last,” she said. “There’s nothing we can do about it except to try and make up those four hours that the Green Team is getting penalized.”
“It should have been more than four hours!”
She shrugged. “Whining about it isn’t going to get us anywhere. I think you’re up now.” She stood, admiring the swirling mud on her hand. “This is going to look so cool.”
The woman indicated Georgie should take another seat, and, with gestures and a lot of hand-waving, explained that the tattoo needed to stay covered with the mud for one hour.
I tried not to panic at that. An hour? We didn’t have an hour to sit around and wait for our mud to dry. I held my hand out, and tried not to twitch as the woman began to carefully paint.
I might have even been blowing gently on the mud to dry it – or at least I was until she gave me a cross look. It felt like it took forever, but she eventually finished the last swirl on my tattoo. I leapt out of my seat and held my other hand out. “Clue? Please?”
Georgie got to her feet as well.