Submission Specialist(Still a Bad Boy #2)(83)

“Help yourself. Normally, food isn’t allowed in this part of the spa, but you can come and go into any of the rooms with anything you like. Personally, I’d recommend just drinking water. Some of the saunas are pretty hot and you’ll be sweating. The last thing you want is a hangover when you’re trying to relax.”

“Thanks, good thinking.”

I approached the table and the man picked up a kind of long fork in his immaculately-white gloved hands, which he offered to me. “Good morning, young lady. Can I recommend a chocolate-dipped strawberry? The chocolate is very fresh this time of year.”

“Oh my gosh! Yes please!”

An unsuspecting strawberry near the top of the pile was mercilessly impaled and drowned in chocolate within a few seconds. I let the excess drip off for a second before bringing it to my mouth and biting down.

“Mmmmm.”

I closed my eyes and savored the taste. The chocolate was rich, the strawberry was the freshest and tastiest I’d ever had, it practically burst with flavor in my mouth. When I opened my eyes, the man was nodding knowingly and was already holding out a new fork.

A second strawberry fell to my onslaught before I thanked him, picked up an ice cold bottle of water and let Sonia take me on a quick tour around the room where she described what I would find behind each door. At her recommendation, I started off in the Balinese Multi-Steam room.

As I breathed in the humid air and smelled the various aromas, I did my best to concentrate on the direction I hoped to take the interview in later on. Despite my best efforts, every breath I took only made me unwind more.

This room, with its randomly glimmering and wavering lights, was like a little world unto itself, where nothing outside even existed, let alone mattered. Eventually, I stopped fighting it and let myself stop worrying for the first time in the few years since I’d first hatched my plan to get out of Woodville.

I wasn’t pretty, I wasn’t popular, I was going to fail and end up back with my parents, I’d never escape the small town again. Each one dropped away like a stone rolling off my shoulder and I let myself enjoy the silence in my mind, free from the self-doubt, the internal bickering.

By the time I ventured into the ‘hub’ again, I thought I might have looked halfway stoned, but the table of food didn’t entice me so much as sampling more of what AquaVell had to offer. I made my way to the Finnish Sauna and promptly drank the entire bottle of water, before exiting with sweat pouring off my face and a bright red flush.

Sonia laughed and led me to the ice fountain, where loose ice flakes that smelled faintly of lemons were piled up.

“Grab a handful and rub it all over yourself, there’s nothing like it after the Finn!” she said.

“Serious?”

She nodded sagely.

“OK.”

I scooped some up and took several deep breaths to pump myself up, before rubbing it on my neck and upper chest with a yelp. The contrast was insane, I could feel a bunch of ice flakes leaving cool trails between my breasts and heading lower.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I gasped.

“One more for the back!” said Sonia with another laugh.

I half screamed and half laughed with her when I dumped a load of ice flakes on the back of my neck and did a little holy-crap-now-I’m-freezing dance. My heart was racing when I took her next recommendation of the Turkish Hammam room.

“I’ll leave a fresh bathrobe and bottle of water outside the door if you want to just reach out and grab it,” said Sonia.

“Thank you so much!”

“My pleasure.”

Once I’d had my fill of that room, I reached out and pulled the fresh water and bathrobe in, changing before heading towards a door labelled “Meditation Room.” Sonia took my old bathrobe away before I entered.

Inside was a row of five contoured loungers, their surface made up of tiles less than an inch across. Soft music played over speakers as invisible as the ones in the hub, combined with birdsong. As I listened the track faded out and something that I assumed was whale song gradually faded in seamlessly.

Lights slowly changed colors, illuminating the mosaic art on every wall and breathing a new kind of life into it with every new shade. I couldn’t fathom how much painstaking effort it must have taken to create this room alone.

I had my doubts about how comfortable the loungers would be though, being made of hard tiles and all, but as I gingerly positioned myself, those doubts were dispelled. It was almost as if every contour was made for me, and the tiles were heated too. I was comfort personified.

My thoughts drifted randomly until I heard something in the music that wasn’t so relaxing. After a few moments I realized it was my own light snoring. My eyelids fluttered open and I glanced from side to side, relieved to find that I was still alone.