Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 80699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Oh, God. I bit my lip, looking straight at the camera. I heard a little whimper come from my mouth. The story took over, the story of my first punishment from my wealthy sponsor. I felt my thumbs pulling my panties down, and the air moving suddenly in places it shouldn’t. I wondered, suddenly, with a rush of heat in my face, whether the corresponding warmth down below my belly had left shameful evidence in the gusset of my bikini brief.
“Push that rear end out a little further, Leah,” Mary instructed. She seemed to have lowered her voice, as if she intended to sound like my imaginary sponsor. “There we go. Hmm. You’re not waxed, are you? You’ll want to make an appointment as soon as you can—there’s an aesthetician in the building, and you can schedule it in the app.”
I had thought my face was on fire a moment before, but the blazing blood that flowed into my cheeks at this matter-of-fact advice seemed to pose a risk of literally setting my skin alight.
“What?” I whispered, as if I hadn’t understood words whose meaning left no room for doubt.
“Don’t worry,” Mary told me, as she moved a little to the side, to take shots from a different angle. “Sponsors understand that these profile pics are from your first days in SA. You can schedule another shoot after you get yourself waxed, if you’re worried. No, keep your hands down there, sweetie. You look very hot like that. And some sponsors like a little bush—but generally the advice is to bare yourself completely down there, since that’s what most sponsors prefer.”
I had opened my lips a half-inch so that I could breathe a bit more easily as I followed the photographer with my eyes. I had my panties around my knees now in a tangle of cotton, and I felt terribly exposed. Mary made the feeling grow to nearly unbearable proportions as she squatted to get a lower angle, from right behind me.
“You were very naughty, weren’t you, Leah?” she asked in the deeper voice. I didn’t have any idea why it worked. The logical part of my brain begged the rest of me to reject it. The story and the spell took hold nonetheless. “What did you do? Did you touch yourself, you naughty girl?”
“No!” I said, as if the photographer had actually transformed herself into a wealthy man, a prospective boyfriend, who had made the accusation. I straightened up and put my hands in front of my privates. “I don’t! I never…”
Mary had stood up herself, but she never stopped taking pictures.
“Never?” she asked. “Turn around, now, sweetie. Just like that. So pretty. Take your hands away. He wants to see all of you.”
I shook my head. “Never… it’s…” My hands stayed where they were, fingers trembling.
The photographer’s voice switched into the pretend-sponsor voice again.
“I told you to take your hands away, Leah. Put them behind you, on your bottom.”
I felt my forehead crease hard. I swallowed. I obeyed. The story told me I had to defend my rear end from the punishment—the just punishment—my sponsor meant to bestow. I lowered my eyes as the shutter clicked.
“Gorgeous,” Mary said in her own voice. “Look at me. You’re hoping he won’t go through with it—that he believes you about not touching yourself. Beg him with your eyes.”
I found that I’d started chewing on the inside of my left cheek. I raised my gaze to look straight into the dark, staring lens of Mary’s camera. To my dismay, I found that the pleading expression came very easily, as if the story-spell had simply reached into my heart and drawn out something already present… something eager to come out and show itself on my face.
Without intending to, I started to beg with words, too.
“I don’t,” I repeated. “I don’t do that. It’s… it’s just embarrassing.”
Naked except for the panties tangled around my knees, with my hands gripping the little apples of my bottom, I had my picture taken.
So that I can attract a man who will… who will do in reality what this photographer is making me imagine? Have I lost my mind?
To my surprise, Mary lowered the camera.
“I believe you,” she said very gently. “So the next part of the session is going to be a challenge for you, sweetie.”
I chewed harder on my cheek. The tears at the corners of my eyes started to emerge, and I blinked them back.
“What?” I breathed. I tried to focus on her calm, professional, pleasant face, because I didn’t want to pay attention to the voice at the back, at the bottom, of my consciousness. The voice that said I knew very well what Mary must mean, or at least I knew the general idea.
And that general idea, which should have made me tell her to get out of my apartment while I canceled my associate membership in Selecta Arrangements, had instead stirred a raging conflict in my heart and mind.