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)
“Take off the shirt, sweetie,” the photographer said. “Let’s see how pretty you’ll be for the men who like to teach New Modesty dropouts what they’ve been missing.”
I felt my nose wrinkle one last time with the modesty my upbringing had instilled. Then, my hands still shaking, I lifted the t-shirt over my head. Mary’s camera kept clicking, the flash going off over and over as I pulled the shirt clear over my head and the loose ponytail I had slept in.
“That’s it,” Mary said soothingly. “I’m sure you know how many men have a thing for redheads. Those tiny pink nipples are just perfect, too. Drop the shirt and turn around for me?”
I obeyed her instructions, grateful not to have to look at her or her camera, though of course the shutter kept clicking and the flash kept going off.
“Yes,” she said, not stopping for a moment, clearly in the flow of her work, “I could tell you, but nobody likes spoilers, right? Go ahead and bend over for me, now. Hands on your knees, and arch your back. No, sweetie. I know you understand. Push your bottom out toward me.”
I bit my lip, but I couldn’t keep the tiny sob from rising out of my chest. I found myself suddenly relying on Mary’s spell, on the idea of it: if this professional photographer had wrapped me into some mortifying realm where I had to do what she said, no matter how embarrassing… if I wouldn’t be able to live in this gorgeous apartment, or have the chance at getting a rich sponsor… if I would never discover what strange, dark need Selecta had identified in me… surely I had to do as Mary said, didn’t I?
I did it. With my hands on my knees I arched my back and pushed my backside out. I had never done anything like it, and yet the mortifying movement and the lewd posture the older woman had made me adopt felt oddly, terribly familiar. I managed to keep my next sob down, but I felt it nonetheless: the dark, confusing realization that I did have something inside me that the ‘intimate’ photoshoot, and Mary’s embarrassing commands, had called out.
“Go ahead and turn your face over your left shoulder, now, Leah,” she told me. “Look at me. Your sponsor just told you to take your panties down. First look at me, then start to pull them down, just to your knees. You know you’re in trouble. You can hear it in his voice. You’re not getting out of it this time.”
“Oh, no,” I whispered. Frozen in place, I swallowed hard.
Just turn your head, I told my body. You don’t have a choice.
I turned my head, pushing out of my conscious mind the photographer’s terrifying words. I looked at Mary, and she took my picture that way, blushing distress all over my face.
“Thumbs in the waistband,” she said coaxingly. “Pull them down just a little at first. You don’t want to show him, do you? But you know you have to, or the punishment will just be worse, won’t it?”
CHAPTER 5
Leah
I realized suddenly that Mary had actually started to tell me the story. The spell I had felt before, and the story she said we—she and I—had to tell the men who saw my profile, had everything to do with one another. The spell came from the story, and the story had started inside me… when?
When Mary had told me to go to the living room and take my clothes off? No, I told myself, earlier than that.
When I had let her into the apartment? When I had scheduled the intimate photoshoot?
Earlier.
When I had opened the Selecta Arrangements app on my phone, in the Harristown New Modesty office?
Before that… before…
Maybe even before I had signed up for the New Modesty? Had Selecta somehow known… this… about me, even then?
My breathing had started to speed up. I felt the stretch of the elastic waistband of my gray cotton bikini panties against my thumbs.
You don’t want to show him, do you?
No—I didn’t want to show the man… the man who paid me a nice allowance, and took me to expensive restaurants. I didn’t want to show him the private places he had a right to see, for keeping me in such luxury.
But… something had happened. I had done something naughty. I tried to stop my mind from traveling that path, but the story just kept unfolding with the tiny nudge Mary had given it.
I did something naughty… I… I…
“That’s it,” Mary said, her voice encouraging, professional. Safe. Some rational part of me knew that this space wasn’t really safe, at least for me. Selecta might keep all my secrets, give me full control of the mortifying pictures they made me have taken, but that wouldn’t keep me from thinking about them, and what they meant. “Nice and slow. Just down to your knees, so your sponsor can see the butt he’s going to spank.”