Chapter 20 #2
A few forms waited on a tablet. Preferences, skin sensitivities, acknowledgment of services.
I signed where indicated with a composure that felt increasingly theatrical.
Then another woman appeared, introduced herself as Lena, and led me back through a hushed hallway into a treatment room that smelled faintly of antiseptic.
It was not erotic. That somehow made it dismayingly erotic for me. I felt myself warming down there, and I tried to focus on the clinical character of the equipment rather than the reason my sponsor had sent me here.
The room was warmly lit, with a padded table draped in white paper, cabinets of supplies, neatly arranged jars, a stool on wheels. Nothing lurid. Nothing designed to underline the humiliation.
Lena spoke in a calm, efficient tone. “Go ahead and undress from the waist down to start. You can hang your dress there. I’ll step out for a moment.”
When she left, I stood in the room alone and looked at the table.
This is ridiculous, I told myself.
Then I took off my dress.
Standing there in nothing but my own skin under that warm neutral light, I felt more innocent than I liked to feel. More exposed, too. A stranger was about to inspect and alter one of the most private parts of my body because a man wanted me smooth for him.
I got onto the table and draped the provided towel over myself though it covered very little.
When Lena came back in, she did not blink. If she registered my tension, she met it only with professional kindness.
“First time?”
I hesitated, then nodded.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll talk you through everything.”
That nearly made me laugh, though there was no humor in it really. Porter talked me through my humiliations too. Apparently this was simply my life now.
She began conventionally enough. Within moments I understood why women complained about waxing. The first pull took my breath. “Ow,” I said before I could stop myself.
Lena smiled slightly. “That was a small one.”
“I was afraid you might say that.”
She worked, and I clung to the table paper and tried not to think in words.
Each strip stung sharply, then left behind an oddly vulnerable smoothness that I could feel even without touching.
My body reacted in contradictory ways. Part of me wanted to squirm away from the pain and exposure; another part seemed unable not to understand the process in relation to Porter.
He wanted to find me smooth and innocent.
Prepared. More bare for him than I had been for any man.
The thought brought heat into my face and, hideously, elsewhere.
When Lena asked me to let my knees fall apart a little more, I obeyed with a blush so fierce I was grateful she did not comment. The towel had long since ceased to provide any meaningful concealment. I stared at the ceiling and concentrated on its recessed lights.
“You’re doing well,” she said.
The praise, innocent from her, still made something in me jump because I had spent so much of the last day being evaluated, corrected, approved.
Then Lena said, in the same composed voice, “All right. Turn over for me, please. Knees up a little. And use your hands to part your cheeks.”
For one second I thought I had misheard her.
Then I felt the blood rush to my face so fast it seemed to make my ears ring. But of course: Porter had said so. He had discussed it in that quiet tone of his, as if grooming my anus for his inspection and use were no stranger than selecting wine with dinner.
I turned over, the paper crackling beneath me.
My heart beat far too hard. I drew my knees up awkwardly, feeling absurdly exposed even before I obeyed the rest. Then, because there was no graceful way to resist and because resistance would only make this more theatrical, I reached back and spread myself for her.
The position felt appalling. Humiliatingly intimate.
Clinical, yes, but no less exposing for that.
More, perhaps. There was no seduction in it, no heat in the room except the one I brought with me.
A woman I had met ten minutes earlier could now see the place Porter had plugged, disciplined, and promised himself further rights over. I wanted to disappear into the table.
And to my utter horror, as Lena moved closer, I felt that treacherous little response low between my legs.
I shut my eyes.
The first touch there made me jump. “Sorry,” I blurted.
“You’re all right,” Lena said.
Another application of warm wax. Another pause. Then the strip.
I gasped.
It hurt differently there, sharper and stranger, and the pain seemed to flash through the whole area between my hips.
My thighs tightened reflexively. Worst of all, the hot pulse between my legs answered it.
I could feel myself growing slick again, lying there with my own hands holding myself open for an aesthetician because my sponsor preferred me bare.
Lena was quiet for a few moments, working efficiently. Then she said, not unkindly, “You don’t need to be embarrassed.”
That was so obviously false that I almost laughed.
I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling. “I think I probably do.”
Her gloved hand settled lightly against my thigh, steadying rather than restraining. “No,” she said. “I mean it. I can tell what’s going on.”
I went still.
Heat spread over me in one great wave. “What exactly do you think is going on?”
She smoothed another strip into place. “I think you’re being trained.” Her tone remained matter-of-fact. “And I think your body likes what your mind is still struggling with.”
The strip came away. I made a tiny, helpless sound.
I couldn’t answer.
She disposed of it, then added, “That’s not unusual.”
Not unusual.
Somehow those two words mortified me more than if she had sounded shocked.
Not because I wanted her shock, exactly, but because her calm acceptance suggested a category.
A type. Girls like me. Girls sent down from expensive apartments to be made smooth for men who knew what they wanted and expected obedience.
“I’m not—” I began, then stopped because I had no idea what denial could possibly survive the state of my body.
Lena glanced at me briefly, professionally, and I knew at once she had seen enough to confirm whatever she meant. “You are, a little,” she said. “That’s okay.”
I felt my forehead crease hard. “This is incredibly humiliating.”
“Yes,” she said simply. “But you’re lucky.”
I turned my head toward her despite myself. “Lucky.”
She nodded as she worked. “Some girls fight it so hard that every part feels like punishment. For you, the training is exciting too. That makes it easier on everyone, especially you.”
The words went through me with hideous accuracy. I hated hearing them said aloud by someone outside the arrangement, someone who had no reason to flatter or manipulate me. She was just naming what she saw. My body had already named it much more vulgarly. My voice, too.
I’m the kind of girl who needs it in the ass.
I looked away again. “That doesn’t make it feel better.”
“It might, later,” she said.
A few more efficient motions, one last strip, then a soothing pressure of cool product that made me shiver all over.
“There,” she said. “You can relax.”
I let go of myself at once and drew my hands away as if I had been caught committing some revolting act. My face burned so hot I felt almost lightheaded.
Lena stepped back to inspect her work. “Turn back over.”
I obeyed, moving carefully, suddenly and painfully aware of every bare inch of myself.
The smoothness felt unreal. Air touched places that had never felt air quite that way before.
I had not understood how much the removal itself would change my sense of my own body.
I felt more innocent, more naked, more deliberately arranged.
More owned.
Lena cleaned up with calm thoroughness, then handed me a small mirror.
I stared at her. “Do I have to?”
“You should see,” she said.
That seemed horribly reasonable. I took the mirror.
I looked.
And immediately wished I hadn’t, because the sight brought another flood of shame and something dangerously close to awe.
She had not merely tidied anything. She had transformed me.
My sex looked startlingly exposed, pink lips in their tender cleft…
soft… even a little hint of my rosy clit visible and available in a way that made lace and Porter’s hands and his dark, assessing eyes rush into my mind all at once.
Even more humiliatingly, when I shifted my legs, I knew how the back must look too: neat, bare, prepared.
Prepared for him.
I lowered the mirror.
“Well?” Lena asked.
I couldn’t seem to find a neutral word. “It’s… a lot.”
The faintest smile touched her mouth. “Your sponsor will be very happy.”
I nearly dropped the mirror.
She took it from me before I could embarrass myself further. “You look beautiful,” she said, in the detached way a professional describes the success of a procedure. “Very sweet. He’ll be pleased with how pretty you are down there.”