Charlie's Angels: Your Angel or Your Devil (Patreon)

“Guys, I need a favor.”

After a fit of laughter cleared the air, Alex was the first to speak. They’d just gotten back from a mission in the Ukraine, but Bosley was running late with the debriefing—a bright idea to upgrade communications with Charlie onto Zoom. So, now that they were rested up and healed up, they had some time to joke around, gossip, and if Bosley took much longer, go in for a sugar rush.

“Sure. Anything, Alex,” Natalie said sunnily, reaching across the couch they were sprawled on to squeeze Alex’s shoulder.

“Almost anything,” Dylan said, slightly more wary.

“It’s not a big deal,” Alex said defensively, wiggling more comfortable in the couch’s plush cushions. “You know Quentin? New boyfriend?”

“Vaguely,” Dylan said.

“Yeah. Very new boyfriend,” Natalie put in. “I don’t think we’ve ever officially met him.

“But I’m sure he’s fine,” Dylan added quickly. “You have really great taste in men.”

“I’m not sure that means so much coming from you,” Alex replied.

Dylan sighed. “Truth hurts.”

“It’s just that we’re all so busy. I mean, our last commute was to the Baltics,” Alex pointed out. “But that could come in handy here, because my cover with him is that I’m a masseuse.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Natalie nodded.

“Does he not believe that?” Dylan asked. “Did you rub him the wrong way?”

Alex steepled her hands together beneath her nose. “Listen, Quentin’s really great and I might wanna tell him about us, and introduce you guys to him and all that. But I’m not ready yet. I don’t want to rush into things…”

Natalie nodded agreeably. “So you have to be really sure. We’ve all been there.”

Alex nodded in simpatico with her. “I don’t want to lie to him, but I need to buy myself some time to feel him out some more.”

“Good thing you have that cover as a masseuse,” Dylan quipped.

Alex whirled on her. “That’s where you guys come in. He wants to pick me up from work, do a lunch date thing with some food truck that closes after the sunset, so I need to be working. And there need to be people I’m working on. So one of you gets a massage from me, the other one is in the waiting room and I tell you to come back tomorrow because my boyfriend wants lunch.”

“Sounds simple enough,” Natalie reasoned. “We have that office space on the other floor—we’ve gussied it up as everything else under the sun, why not a massage parlor?”

“And I could get a rubdown,” Dylan volunteered. “If your hands are as soft when you’re giving a massage as they are when we’re sparring…”

Natalie handed Alex a cushion to throw at her, but Bosley came in from the office before it could turn into all-out war.

***

The office space at the Townsend Agency had been ‘sublet’ numerous times, for numerous cases, so converting it into a passable massage parlor was as easy as Natalie had made it sound. At two o’clock the next day, Dylan’s supple body laid on the massage table, getting the spa treatment from Alex, while Natalie waited in the lobby, enjoying herself with the stack of trashy magazines she had picked up to sell the illusion of the waiting room.

At two five, Quentin came in. Natalie studied him over the top of her magazine and found him to her liking—he and Alex had to make one cute couple. He wasn’t some muscleman like Natalie might pick out for a stud, but he had a lean, wiry look to him—rawhide and steel cord. Tough and a tad bit cruel. His nose hooked slightly like the beak of a hawk and piercing blue eyes seemed to bore into Natalie’s soul when they swept over her.

“Excuse me,” he called to her. “Am I in the right place? Jade Heavenly Comfort?”

“If you’re not, then I’m not,” Natalie replied. “If you’re looking for Alex, she’s with another customer. I’m waiting my turn.”

“There’s no receptionist?”

“This is a pretty small place. Off the beaten path.”

“Yeah, I barely found anything when I Googled it. I guess it’s got a pretty exclusive clientele.”

“Very,” Natalie chuckled.

“And you certainly look like a woman who doesn’t settle for anything less than the best.”

Natalie smiled off-handedly at him until she could lift her magazine as a blockade, then she frowned. Was he making a pass at her? Alex’s boyfriend? All her investigatory instincts were ordering her to check that out; if he was willing to cheat on Alex with her, a complete stranger, he was probably already cheating with someone else. But before she could formulate a plan, the door to the back office swept open and Alex floated in, wiping lotion off her hands with a towel.

“Quentin, hi, I’m so glad you could make it!” They traded kisses, making Natalie simmer a bit at the thought that those lips might not belong to Alex alone. “I’ve got my client doing breathing exercises right now, but give me a few more minutes and I’ll be done with her.” Alex turned to Natalie. “Nat, I’m afraid I’ll have to take a rain check on your appointment. Between you and Quentin here, I’m double-booked. But I promise I’ll make it up to you the next time you come in.”

“Well, wait a minute,” Quentin interrupted before Natalie could graciously accept. “I don’t think we need to lose any business here. I’ve been picking up a few tricks of the trade and Alex, if you’re finishing up a massage, you can show me what to do. We can give Natalie here her massage half-off, if she doesn’t mind being my guinea pig…”

Alex tilted her head from side to side, thinking it over in shimmering swishes of her glossy black hair. “Well… it might be the enlightened self-interest talking, but I would like it if you got better at giving massages.” Her eyes flicked to Natalie. “How about it? I promise Quentin is a quick study and a perfect gentleman. You won’t even know that it’s not me.”

Normally, Natalie would give in immediately, eager to please as always. Now she was a bit more suspicious, but she hid it under a wide grin. She could be sneakier than people gave her credit for, and if Quentin was the type to stray, she would ferret it out before he even came close to hurting her bestie. “Sure thing! I’ll try anything once!”

Quentin grinned at her. “My Alex is the same way. Let’s see if I’ve picked up anything from all the times I’ve let her practice on me…”

***

Behind closed doors, Natalie stripped and rinsed off in a shower, taking only a bare moment to appreciate her body. Where Dylan was compact, almost tomboyish, and Alex was petite, she was long and lean, tall and Nordic. Strong, angular bones gave symmetry to the slender, supple flesh that she’d exercised to be taut with muscle, so that every inch of her statuesque height made her that much more attractive. Natalie was almost tempted to entertain herself in the shower—as weird and even wrong as this whole situation was, something about it was kinda hot. Maybe Dylan’s freakiness was rubbing off on her.

The three of them had shared a room plenty of times on their adventures, and like a sibling in some gargantuan family, Natalie had gotten used to short showers that made the most of the hot water without hogging it from the others. Soon she shut off the water, toweled off, and wrapped herself in that towel, which covered her as she went to the room they’d converted into Alex’s playpen.

It was a wide, spacious room, with floor-to-ceiling windows letting in a wonderful amount of sun, and the massage tables set a discreet distance back from the outside view. Alex looked up to greet her with a smile, her fingers deep in Dylan’s flesh as she kneaded the tired muscles of her shoulder. After their last battle, even with the cuts and bruises healed, the tension of all the adrenaline remained. Natalie could see how Dylan appreciated having that dealt with so directly.

“Are you sure about this, Nat?” Alex asked her.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Natalie retorted. “He’s your boyfriend.”

“And you barely know him,” Alex replied. “A massage can get pretty intimate. Do you really want to have that connection with a virtual stranger?”

Dylan shrugged from the massage table. “Maybe if it’s late on a Friday night…”

Alex twisted her head to the side, snapping a kink out of the redhead’s neck.

“I’m fine with it if you are,” Natalie said. “I mean, it’s not like you have anything to worry about. You wouldn’t go out with a guy if he was some kind of sleazeball—not perfect little Alex.”

“I’m not perfect,” Alex insisted, before Dylan groaned from the massage table.

“Keep rubbing that spot and I’ll argue the point.”

Alex reached down to slap Dylan’s ass. Like Natalie, Dylan was naked except for a towel, this one running over her hips and juicy little ass to leave a tempting bump in the fabric.

Natalie went to her own massage table, a fair distance from Dylan’s. She untied the towel from her body and laid down on her stomach, easing herself into the foam rubber of the cushioning, then swathing the towel over her private parts. Her breasts were still exposed, but under her prostrate body and pressed against the table, Quentin would see no more than a fraction of them. The neckline of most of Natalie’s cuter outfits would give him a better look.

“Quent,” Alex called, circling extended middle and ring fingers on Dylan’s temples. “Come on in, we’re ready for you!”

Quentin let himself in, drinking in the two half-naked women and Alex’s own attractive outfit as Natalie supposed any man would. Then he ran his eyes particularly over Natalie, like a caress in all but contact.

“I can see why you got into this line of work,” he said to Alex, still looking at Natalie. “It must be satisfying as hell, relieving the tension in a beautiful body like this.”

Natalie nearly gaped. She couldn’t believe this. He was practically making an obscene phone call to her right in front of Alex, who didn’t seem to mind.

“Play nice,” Alex cautioned him, though there was an air of amusement in her voice. “Start in on her. Let’s see what your instincts are without any input from me.”

Quentin moved to Natalie, picking up a bottle of cocoa butter and squeezing out a splotch onto his left hand. He scrubbed it into his palms, then began rubbing it into Natalie’s back, her neck, the sides of her face, before moving down to coat her long legs as well.

“Close your eyes,” he told Natalie. “Relax. I want you to bring up the most peaceful and contented you’ve ever felt. Try to stay in that moment, hang onto it, while I get rid of everything trying to distract you from that feeling.”

Alex put on a CD playing the sound of summer rain. With it as an aural backdrop, Natalie couldn’t hear Alex’s own whispered words to Dylan, only a faint echo that seemed much less important than Quentin’s deep, masculine voice.

“I can see you,” Quentin said, gathering up her hair in a single lock and then moving it off to the side. “You’re right here, thinking about everything going on around you. Let go of that. It’s all taken care of. Go inside. You’re safe. You can focus on your own comfort now. Find a place to feel secure in.”

Natalie hid her grin against the mat and wondered if Dylan’d had to put up with this cheesy stage hypnosis routine from Alex. That would’ve definitely gone over well. But she tried to do as Quentin said, figuring it would gratify Alex if nothing else.

She remembered a mission to Macao, a closed airport, so instead of going home, they spent a few days seeking out a deserted island and the peaceful cove that the animals there used as a watering hole. She’d just floated in the crystal blue waters, watching as various herbivores strolled up to the shoals, drank their fill, and moved along. Natalie had felt so connected to the natural world in that moment—she didn’t know how she’d gone so long without thinking about it.