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Soma

By: Wonderstorm



Her skin was on fire. 

Lauren Laframboise was aware of her surroundings. She was aware of being partially led, partially carried through the swinging doors of the emergency room. She was aware that her two companions, Dan Baldwin and Ginger Gold, were both panicking perhaps even more than she was, herself. Ginger's shouts for help registered somewhere in Lauren's mind, as did Danny's white-faced look of fear and confusion. She was with them, in the emergency room, after a torturous cab ride through Midtown, mid-day traffic, but her physical presence below the fluorescent lights in the hospital had little to do with the location of her mind -- which, at the moment, was somewhere in the seventh level of hell. 

Lauren wasn't even quite sure what had happened. One minute, she'd been sitting in the conference room, poring over contracts and briefs for the Cortland acquisition, and the next she was in some sort of allergic shock. It had come on suddenly and unexpectedly, but even the initial burning and itchiness had nothing on the state of discomfort that Lauren was now suffering through. Beneath her clothes, her skin was melting off the bone, hot lava flowing through her veins and arteries. The waistband of her pants and panties felt as if they had dug so deeply into her midsection that she was sure they had to have been drawing blood. The same for her bra straps, which stung her shoulders terribly. The bra itself, wrapped around her torso, seemed to be ratcheted just a bit tighter with every passing breath, to the point where Lauren's breathing had become labored. 

Through the burning and itching, Lauren still managed to ask herself, "Was the language in Section 14, Paragraph 4 clear enough in describing trademark governance?" 

"She needs help!" Ginger yelled in the direction of the check-in desk. "She needs to see a doctor right now!"

The nurse at the desk nodded, pressing the "call" button for a doctor. "What's wrong?" she asked, stepping from behind her station and meeting the threesome halfway. 

"We don't know," Ginger replied. "She's having some sort of panic attack or allergic reaction to something!" 

Danny shook himself from his own panic-stricken silence to pull the sleeve of Lauren's blazer gently up her forearm. Beneath, her white skin was covered in an evil-looking pink rash. 

The nurse did her best to prevent herself from recoiling, but it was clear from her reaction that she wasn't expecting anything as bad as she had just witnessed. "This way," she said, leading them out of the waiting room and into a room beyond. 

There were patients here and there throughout this next room. The room was large, and open, with approximately five beds on either side. Some curtains were pulled, some were not. As Ginger, Danny, Lauren, and the nurse entered, they were watched by a teenage girl in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform sitting with her parents in a bay across the room, a construction working clutching a bloody rag to his forearm by the door, and an elderly woman struggling to breathe in the corner. There were nurses and orderlies everywhere, but unfortunately, there didn't seem to be a doctor within visual range. 

"I'm going to grab Dr. Cherry," the nurse explained, gesturing towards an empty bed on the opposite side of the room, a close-curtained bay further than the schoolgirl. "Just try to stay calm."

"Hurry!" Ginger yelped after the hustling nurse. 

Lauren's chest was heaving in and out as Ginger and Danny set her down on the bed. Like the old woman in the corner of the room, each breath was becoming more and more of a struggle, Lauren's lung capacity seemingly stifled by the constricting effect her bra was having on her entire upper body. She was sure, given the pain she felt beneath the undergarment, that it had to have been drawing blood. But so far, her white blouse showed no sign of red. 

The sleeve of the girl's blazer was still bunched at her elbow, her forearm still exposed. Curiously, though the rash was still visible, it did not appear to as deep a pink as it had been only moments before. Lauren chalked it up to her imagination. But then, why did Danny seem to be staring at her arm in confusion, as well? 

"The copyright provision," Lauren wheezed, her mind still stalling out on the contract language she'd been working on for the past month. She had to talk to Bramley about copyright ownership when she got back to the office, had to double and triple check the language to make sure the company was covered, had to make sure there was no wiggle-room in the contracts. She tried to alert Ginger, but all that came out was a gasp for air. 

The bra had to come off. 

Lauren was still wearing the gray-white Evelyn Lane blazer she'd been wearing since that morning, the top half of her pants and jacket ensemble. She struggled in shrugging it off, but as she did so, she felt her body temperature dip dramatically. The jacket was deposited on the floor, Lauren focused on nothing more than the bra that was constricting her lungs. She didn't care if the bloody construction worker was watching her or not -- she untucked the back of her white blouse, and found the bra hooks behind her back. Along the way, she exposed her bare back to Danny, who blanched at the surface area Lauren's pink rash now covered. 

She was panicking, unable to breath, and thus was unable to unfasten the clip. "Please," she gasped. "Help! Get it off!"

Danny stood frozen, still taken aback by the breakout covering Lauren's skin. Ginger, though, jumped into action, swinging around the other girl's trembling body and fingering the hooks. But like a drowning swimmer desperately trying to survive, Lauren was still clawing at the bra herself, her body convulsing from a lack of air. Four hands then fought against one another as they tried to rip the nylon/spandex piece of lingerie from the girl's back. And rip they did, the hooks tearing from the fabric itself as Lauren literally tore the bra from her back. 

But the girl wasn't satisfied with just unclasping it -- she wanted the bra off. Lauren reached both hands up the front of her blouse, exposing the bottom of the ivory cups to Danny beside her, and tugged violently at the fabric between them. The thin straps that had gone over her shoulders snapped with ease, but the force against her inflamed skin nearly caused her to collapse to the floor. 

Lauren inhaled deeply, finally able to breathe again. With one affliction remedied, she had more time to focus on the others, worry over her lack of air giving way to the excruciating burning sensation she was suffering from head to toe. 

What remained of Lauren's ivory lace bra -- and it was clear that she'd never be able to wear it again -- was discarded on the floor, beside her jacket. Neither Danny nor Ginger made an effort to pick it up, each worried more about the health of their coworker than the state of her wardrobe. Ginger eased her back against the bed, where Lauren half-sat, half-leaned against the mattress. 

"What's happening?" a voice said from behind Ginger, and all three looked to find a twenty-something black woman in a white coat. The nurse was standing with her, holding a clip-board and carrying a medical kit under one arm. 

Lauren lifted her blouse, exposing her stomach. Like her back and her forearm, it was covered in the mysterious pink rash. 

The doctor had a good poker face, but Lauren was fairly sure that she had no idea what she was looking at. Lauren herself was twenty-nine (actually, only a few short days removed from turning the corner to thirty), but she guessed that the doctor was a good two to three years younger than her, fresh out of medical school and interning in the Emergency Room. Still, while the lifted blouse did little in the way of gaining any sort of expert opinion on the situation, Lauren found a measure of relief from the burning as the cool hospital air kissed her bare skin. 

"I'm Doctor Cherry," the African-American girl introduced herself. "Could I get your name, and would you mind sending one of your friends with Nurse Pomelo here so that we can pull a medical history?"

"Lauren Laframboise," Ginger answered for her boss. "She's Lauren Laframboise. I'm Ginger Gold. This is Daniel Baldwin. We work a few blocks over, in the legal department at Evelyn Apparel. This just started, about a half hour ago -- she just started breaking out in that rash." 

"Okay, okay," Cherry replied, trying to calm the situation down. "It looks like she's having a reaction to something, something she ate, maybe some sort of sting or bite, maybe something else?"

Ginger shook her head. "She had the same lunch she has every day -- a turkey wrap from the sandwich shop downstairs. I don't know what could have happened..."

"Alright," the doctor said, taking a deep breath and gesturing to the nurse for the medical kit. "We're going to give her a shot of diphenhydramine, to see if that slows the rash. Why don't you go with Nurse Pomelo, and we'll see what we can find in Lauren's medical records." 

Ginger nodded, and joined the nurse. The pair walked together from the bay, leaving Lauren with the dark-skinned doctor and the increasingly pale Danny Baldwin, who looked like he might faint at any moment. 

Lauren was struggling to pay attention to what Cherry was asking her, but the waistband of her panties had now moved to the forefront of her mind. Like her bra, it seemed to be digging into her flesh, and seemed to be becoming tighter and tighter by the minute. Hoping that maybe just loosening her pants might stop the chafing sensation, Lauren reached for the button atop her fly and slipped it through its corresponding buttonhole. 

Meanwhile, Dr. Cherry was readying her needle, despite being unable to get a clear response from Lauren about any known allergens. A sideways glance at the girl writhing in agony at the foot of the bed, though, slowed her momentum. 

With her left hand, Lauren had continued the process of loosening her pants. With her right, she was still holding her blouse in place just below her breasts, the bare skin of her midsection exposed to the air. But the skin that only a few moments before been almost a deep fuchsia appeared to be more of a coral-pink, the rash diminishing a bit more with each tick of the second hand. 

Cherry had never seen anything quite like it before, a rash that disappeared so quickly. Nor could she recall reading anything about it med school, or hearing about it from any of her peers. But there seemed to be a measure of cause and effect taking place, and Cherry acted upon instinct. She stood, grabbed the curtain that surrounded the bed, and rushed it along the u-track until she, Danny, and Lauren were cordoned off from the rest of the room. 

"Lauren, I'm going to need you to take your clothes off," Cherry announced. "I think you're having an allergic reaction to the fabric." 

Lauren already had the fly of her pants halfway unzipped, her ivory lace panties exposed as it descended bit by bit. She should have been mortified by the instructions, but the idea of her inflamed skin getting access to the cool hospital air sounded heavenly. She nodded, and slipped the last button loose. 

Cherry turned her attention to Danny, trying to decide if he belonging inside the bay or out. She jutted her chin in his direction, but addressed Lauren, "Do you want your friend here? Or should I ask him to leave?" 

Lauren glanced at Danny, who at the moment seemed frozen in place, too dumbstruck to talk or react in anyway. "He's fine," she croaked, not quite processing the fact that her coworker was about to see her in the nude. She had more pressing concerns than her shame, and honestly, she was far too frightened about what was happening to her body to be alone. 

"Sit," Cherry instructed the man, pointing to a chair at the head of the bed. "And breathe." 

Both Danny and Lauren did as they were told. Danny practically collapsed in the bedside chair, and Lauren reached for the hem of her blouse. Though it was a button-down shirt, Lauren decided, for alacrity's sake, that she'd simply pull the whole thing up and over her head. But her body was still quivering, her mind in overdrive, and as she lifted the material past her naked breasts and towards her head, she panicked. Like the bra before it, the blouse became a victim of struggle, most of the buttons popping off in one quick tug. One remained, but Lauren gave a second effort, tearing it from the fabric and throwing the entire shirt to the floor. 

The girl now stood topless before her coworker and the doctor. But Lauren gave her nudity little thought. Her waistline was still burning, the elastic of her panties wringing her internal organs. She was wearing only one of her heels, the other falling off on the trip from the lobby of her building to the cab, and now residing peacefully in Ginger's purse. But she kicked the shoe off, and in one motion, grabbed both her pants and panties by the waist. Down they slipped, past her hips, past her buttocks, down her thighs, below her knees, and puddled at her ankles. Lauren stepped out of the material, naked from head to toe, and braced herself against the foot of the bed. 

Lauren Laframboise was, in a word, a knockout. She had long, straight blonde hair that descended past her shoulders, and alluring azure eyes that shimmered in the right light. Her lips were full, her teeth perfect, her smile entrancing. She wasn't terribly cautious about what she ate, but Lauren had been an exercise freak since high school, her workouts a form of decompression. Given that she often spent a good hour and a half in the gym each day, her slender figure remained slender. She had been gifted with a naturally good waistline, and an above-average bust, her C-cup breasts appearing almost disproportionate to her thin body. 

Lauren had the prototypical body of a star cheerleader, which was especially fortunate, given that she'd been the star cheerleader at Cherryfield High School in Vermont some years back. She'd been on the dance team at Vermont State University through her sophomore year, but dance and cheering had given way to academics. An undergraduate degree in history from VSU had been complemented by a law degree from Penn, and the law degree put to good use in the corporate world by Evelyn Apparel, Inc., in New York. Intellect and scholastic achievement, however, had not eclipsed physical beauty, and even in three-piece suits and androgynous business wear it was clear that Lauren was gorgeous. 

Alone in the dark, when men closed their eyes and stroked themselves, it was Lauren's form that populated their fantasies. Certainly, in any other circumstance, Danny Baldwin might have been living out the fantasy of dozens of lawyers and auditors that worked with Lauren on the twenty-sixth floor of the Lane-Russet Building on Madison Avenue. But Danny himself was still spooked by his friend's physical breakdown that afternoon, and Lauren's beauty was certainly not aided by the fact that she was covered from neck to ankle in the mysterious pink rash. 

Of course, the latter drawback seemed to be taking care of itself, the rash lightening and disappearing before their very eyes. 

Dr. Cherry still held the needle in her hand, but it was becoming increasingly apparent that she was not going to have to use it. The dark pink splotches on Lauren's body began turning to a lighter shade of pink, and then lighter still, and then so light that Cherry had to strain to see them. The rash lingered a bit longer in some places than it did in other, fading slower at the girl's waist and where her panty-lines might have been, had she been wearing pants -- or, for that matter, panties. 

Lauren herself was silent as she watched the rash recede. Since she'd stepped from the last of her clothing, the burning sensation in her skin had cooled, the pain she'd felt disappearing. As her breathing returned to normal, she was able to gain control of her psyche, and for the first time since a half hour earlier, in the conference room, she was able to take stock in what had just happened. 

She stood naked in the presence of Dr. Cherry and Danny Baldwin. As two minutes became three, and three became five, no one had said a thing. But the rash that had enveloped Lauren's entire body had completed dissipated, her body returning to the same milky-white it had been that morning. Her skin was perfect, unblemished, without exception.

"Lauren!" a voice shouted from across the room. "Lauren Laframboise? Lauren, are you in there?" 

Without further warning, the curtain around the bed was pulled back, and Rachel Wilks stormed into the bay, unprepared for the scene before her. 

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she yelped, nearly tripping over her own heels as she stepped backwards, the curtain falling back into place. 

"No, Rachel," Lauren croaked, her throat dry and her voice absent. "It's okay. You can come in." 

There was hesitation on the part of the red-haired girl on the far side of the curtain. "Are you sure?" 

"No, it's fine," she assured her friend. Like Lauren, Rachel was an Assistant General Counsel in the corporate offices Evelyn Apparel, each of them a rung below the Associate General Counsel seated in the corner. Danny was still pale-faced, but his color seemed to be returning as Lauren's own color returned to normal. 

More cautiously this time, Rachel slipped into the bay, unsure of what was taking place inside. 

"Dr. Cherry thinks I'm allergic to something in those clothes," Lauren explained her nudity as best she could. She didn't fully understand it herself, but Cherry's theory seemed to make sense. 

"Well," Cherry said, nodding, "it's a start. I'm going to need to run some tests, if you don't mind. And I'm curious as to why your rash would disappear so quickly." 

"Rash?" Rachel asked. Given her late entrance, and Lauren's flawless skin, she had no idea what Cherry was talking about. 

Ignoring the redheaded girl, Cherry stooped to lift Lauren's clothes from the tiled floor, and spread them out on the bed beside the naked blonde. After glancing at the tags, she held Lauren's panties in one hand, and her blouse in the other. "But I'm curious as to how you'd be allergic to the nylon and spandex in the underwear, at the same time you're allergic to one hundred percent cotton in your shirt."

Lauren nodded.

"And you said it came on suddenly?" Cherry asked. "Nothing triggered it?" 

Lauren shook her head, and glanced in the direction of Rachel first, and then Danny, to see if either of them could think of anything. She had been seated in the conference room with Ginger and Jen Ellison, one of the paralegals, going over the encyclopedic acquisition contract they'd put together as Evelyn Apparel took over Cortland Menswear. She had been drinking water. She didn't remember being stung by anything. And she certainly hadn't been allergic to her clothes when she'd put them on that morning, or even later in the day at lunch. 

Her right eye did twitch a bit as she thought of the contract. For the past three weeks, she and her colleagues had done nothing but work on the Cortland acquisition. Hand in hand with Corporate Development, nearly a third of Evelyn Apparel's legal staff had been tied up with the deal -- everyone under Dick Bramley, the company's Deputy General Counsel. And they weren't finished yet; they had until the end of the Third Quarter, that Friday evening at five, to put everything in writing. Technically, it was the company's General Counsel, Jim Grieve, who was running the legal side of the acquisition. It was, in theory, handed to Dick Bramley. But, in practice, it was the young up-and-comer, Lauren Laframboise, who was running the day-to-day tasks of the project. Unfortunately, given that she was standing stark naked in the hospital and that both Rachel Wilks and Danny Baldwin were here with her, they were falling more behind their schedule by the minute. 


Soma Ch. 02



Lauren Laframboise slammed her office door shut, and then leaned against it. Her bare skin pressed against the wood, her left hand remained on the handle for stability. Her legs felt weak, as if they'd give out beneath her. She took a deep breath, and then whimpered out an exhalation. She shut her eyes, doing her best to will herself into forgetting what had just happened. 

Lauren was naked from head to toe, save for a few pieces of jewelry and her pumps. In the aftermath of a sudden, psychosomatic reaction to clothing of any kind, the twenty-nine-year-old lawyer had opted to go back into the office completely naked. Evelyn Apparel had an acquisition on the line, and the successful purchase of Cortland Menswear before the end of the Third Quarter would mean millions for the company. For Lauren, the reward was more personal, as she'd been appointed lead by her boss, and knew she had a promotion and a seventeen thousand dollar raise on the line. She'd been willing to humiliate herself for the good of her employer, willing to sell her shame and her dignity for a new title and a bump in pay grade. Her body, though, apparently believed she hadn't sacrificed quite enough, as she was still shaking the lingering effects of a spontaneous orgasm she'd achieved in the middle of a meeting in her boss's office. 

The blonde had bolted from the room the moment Paul McIntosh's end of the line went dead, the Corporate Development officer satisfied with sweat, tears, and man hours Evelyn Apparel's Commercial Transactions group had dedicated to the contract that day. She'd shared a smile of accomplishment with her boss, Dick Bramley, and a head nod with her colleague Danny Baldwin, but she'd entirely ignored Rachel Wilks, her closest friend in the office. In fact, only Amy Melrose had left before her, and Lauren passed even her as she charged down the hall back to her office. 

Her chest still heaving, Lauren lunged for the phone on her desk. "Two-one-two," she spoke aloud as she dialed the numbers from Dave Adams's business card. "Six-nine-six..."

It took a few moments for Lauren to get past the past the psychiatrist's assistant, but the panic in the girl's voice told the assistant all she needed to know -- she patched Lauren right through. 

"What the hell just happened to me?!!"

"Hello?" Adams asked. 

"It's Lauren Laframboise," the girl explained. "I need to know what the hell is going on!"

"Lauren," Adams repeated her name. There was no doubt he knew exactly who she was, but he needed a moment to collect himself. "I think we established what we thought --"

"I just had an orgasm. In the middle of a conference call. In a room full of people."

"Wait...what? An orgasm? Really?" 

"Yes, really!" Lauren ran her shaking hands through her blonde hair. Aside from the rash that enveloped her body the previous afternoon, Lauren had, up to that point, demonstrated no outward signs of stress. Suddenly, she felt herself perspiring heavily, breathing shallowly, and trembling in her chair. Nudity was one thing, and sure, it was humiliating. But with her high heels and jewelry, and a feigned sense of confidence, Lauren was able to convince herself she was in control. Cumming in the middle of a crowded room was not "in control." 

"This is exactly what I saying earlier today," Adams offered. "Your body is trying to tell you that it needs a break. It simply can't handle the stress that you're under at work. You need to go home and relax." 

"'I told you so'? Is that your advice?" the blonde shrieked. 

"You're not listening," Adams explained.

"I am listening," Lauren replied. "I'm listening, I'm listening!" 

"Not to me," the psychiatrist continued. "You need to listen to your body. The rash was a first attempt at communication. But it's twenty-four and some odd hours later, and you haven't heeded that call. You're still at work, still putting yourself through all that stress. And, ultimately, I don't think that being nude in front of all your coworkers is exactly helping to diminish that anxiety. So, my guess is -- and I've never encountered anything exactly like this before -- but my guess is that your body upped the volume a bit, brought things to the next level." 

Lauren rubbed her eyes. Outside her office, a gentle rapping on the glass alerted her to Rachel's presence. The redhead was standing at the door with a concerned look on her face. The blonde gestured to the phone; she didn't want to deal with her friend just then. She just wanted the psychiatrist to solve her problem. 

"So now I'm going to break out in a rash if I don't keep climaxing?" 

There was an uncomfortable silence on the far end of the phone. Lauren was frightened that Adams even seemed to be thinking the question over, frightened that the answer might be in the positive. 

Instead, he asked, "How long since your last orgasm?" 

"About five minutes ago," she answered. 

"No, before this one."

"What? Why?"

"How long, Lauren?" 

The girl massaged her temples. "I don't know. A few weeks, I guess?" 

"Were you alone?"

"Was I alone? What? Where are you going with this?"

Adams sighed. "Did you reach orgasm through self-stimulation or with a partner?" 

The girl hesitated, but eventually squeaked out, "The first one." 

"Masturbation," the psychiatrist said aloud, more to himself than to his patient. "And how long since your last partner?" 

"I don't know," Lauren answered, honestly. It had been a while. "A few months, maybe?" 

"How many is a few?" 

Scott Tydeman. A guy she'd met at the gym. They'd gone to dinner, and had ended up back at Lauren's apartment. She never put out on a first date, but that night had been different. It had been a few months since Lauren had broken up with her previous boyfriend, and she'd been horny. Scott didn't call after that. But Lauren hadn't called him, either. 

"Seven," she answered. "Maybe eight." 

God, had it really been that long? And Scott had been a one-night-stand, a brief oasis in a desert of self-imposed celibacy. She was nearing the one-year anniversary of her split from Jon Derby -- November of the previous year. 

Getting no immediate response from the psychiatrist, Lauren sarcastically offered, "So that's your prescription, I'm assuming?" 

"No, no," Adams half-chuckled. 

I'm glad he's finding this amusing, Lauren thought to herself. 

"So I'm rethinking what I said earlier," Adams offered. "Maybe the orgasm wasn't another warning. Maybe you've been getting warnings all along -- tense shoulders, blurry eyes, so on and so forth. Maybe the rash was the last warning. Maybe it was your body's last ditch effort in trying to get your attention." 

"And so the orgasm is...?"

"Your body taking the matter into its own hands, in a way."

Lauren was puzzled. 

"Let's try something," the psychiatrist suggested. "The gray pair of underwear from this afternoon."

The blonde eyed the duffel bag in the corner of her office. 

"Let's try again." 

Lauren had calmed a bit since walking into her office. Maybe it was Adams's voice. Maybe it was talking about it. Maybe it was just that a few more minutes had passed, that she'd put a bit more time between herself and the incident itself. Whatever the case, the blonde reached for her bag, and extracted the cotton panties from within. Knowing full well the itchiness and burning that awaited, she took a deep breath, bent at the waist, and slipped her ankles through the holes in the fabric. 

The sting was instantaneous, the sensation like running barbed wire along her naked thigh. Yet - and perhaps it was just her imagination -- the pain didn't seem quite as intense as it had that afternoon. Wishful thinking, she told herself. She was probably just learning to bear it better. A few seconds longer of gritting her teeth, Lauren slipped back out of the panties and placed them on the desk. She related the perceived amelioration to the psychiatrist. 

"You were warned," Adams explained. "Your body tried to tell you to relax, to ease off the pace you've been keeping over the past few weeks. And since you blissfully ignored its pleas, it opted to seek release in the only way it knew how."

"So, I'm just going to keep orgasming until I'm cured? Until the rash goes away?"

"I don't know," he answered. "Maybe." 

Lauren groaned. "I can't keep doing it in public."

"Then go home!" 

The girl shook her head, mostly for her own benefit. "No," she said, for Adams's. The equation had changed a bit, to be sure, but the solution had remained the same. The underlying stress was being caused by the acquisition of Cortland Menswear. If she were to go home, the stress wouldn't just magically dissipate. She'd be just as anxious, but without the outlet of work. Moreover, the burden that she'd failed at her task might crush that lingering fraction of her consciousness that wasn't apparently bat-shit insane. 

There was a knock at Lauren's door. She looked up and saw Ginger, the dark-haired girl gently tapping the glass window with her knuckles. 

"I need to go," Lauren announced. 

"You need to go home," Adams corrected her. Sensing it was a lost cause, though, the psychiatrist concluded, "I'll be by tomorrow afternoon."

"No need," the blonde replied. 

"It's no bother," Adams insisted. "I'll see you tomorrow." With a click, he was gone. 

Lauren took a deep breath, and gestured Ginger into her office. 

"How was the status call?" 

"Fine," the blonde answered. "Nothing of note." 

Ginger knew her boss well enough that she correctly surmised this wasn't entirely true. And Lauren knew her assistant well enough that she knew the dark-haired girl saw right through her. But it wasn't important just now, as Ginger had something else to offer. 

"Alright, so I know that we're trying to keep your situation under wraps..."

Uh-oh. Lauren didn't like where this was headed. 

"...but I was talking to Brian this afternoon..."

Brian Pinova worked in IT. He was a bit of an odd duck, though, not at all as geekish or socially inept at the usual computer support staff. Tattoos peeked from beneath his shirt collar, and he tended to wear more jewelry on average than even Lauren was wearing at that very moment -- earrings, nose ring, eyebrow piercing. He looked more like Hollywood's ideal punk-turned-computer hacker than the usual overweight, bespectacled nerd that populated the real world. Lauren wouldn't have been surprised if Brian had picked up his computer skills in rehab or through some sort of prison correspondence course. All of which, of course, explained why Ginger was constantly flirting with him. 

"...and I told him how you'd spent last night here, and were probably going to spend tonight here, as well. And he said he did the same thing, a few months ago, during that SAP implementation." 

Lauren raised an eyebrow. 

"Well, he did the 'sleeping here' part, anyways. And he figured out a way to take a shower." 

Lauren did perk up a bit at this, but the reality of the situation quickly reared its head. "I'm not going to go traipsing through the building like this for a shower." No, she could continue to bathe in the sink in the women's bathroom. It was annoying, and nowhere near a real shower, but it didn't require her to take the elevator down to the IT floors to bathe. 

"No, you don't need to. He...well, he's right here." Ginger gestured with her head down the hall. "I can have him explain."

The blonde rubbed her eyes. On top of everything else, she didn't want to deal with someone else from outside their suite at that moment. But she'd put up with Charlie Peasgood; how bad could Brian Pinova be?

"Fine," Lauren agreed. 

Brian was clearly taken aback as he answered Ginger's summons. He swallowed hard, though, and after regaining his composure and making an unfunny joke about the dress code, got down to business. He did his best to avoid looking at Lauren in any way, instead glancing from the computer screen to Ginger and back to the computer screen, trying to pick up social cues from either the administrative assistant or the desktop hardware. 

As it turned out, Brian and a few of his friends had hacked into the building's fire control system, and after putting together a relatively simple interface program that Brian installed onto Lauren's computer, they'd used the used the sprinklers to take showers down on the fourth floor. There had been a few kinks in the beginning, like when Brian had activated the wrong spigot and soaked a conference room three floors up from where he'd intended. Or the time that the fire alarms had gone off when they'd activated their makeshift shower, and the entire building had to be evacuated. But, as Brian clicked through the few commands that Lauren would need to operate the system, he explained that there wasn't anything to worry about anymore, aside from the water itself. 

Lauren looked up at Ginger, who nodded. 

If Lauren were to hack into the building's sprinkler system, illegally turn the spigots on, and shower beneath what she assumed would be ice-cold water, it only made sense that she'd do so in the girlish pink women's bathroom. On the other hand, the men's bathroom was already flooded. Taking advantage of a fortunate, pre-existing problem that had already compromised the men's room, Lauren's bathwater would simply sit among the rest of the water that already covered the floor. It wasn't as if she were going to shower when anyone was on the floor anyways, so what difference did it really make if she were in the women's room versus the men's? 

Lauren allowed Brian to show her the commands that identified the sprinklers in the men's room on the twenty-sixth floor. She jotted on a post-it the prompts she'd need to follow in order to turn the water on and off again. And, while the idea of taking a cold shower in the men's room might have appalled her twenty-four hours earlier, a lot of things had changed in that time. The prospect of an actual shower excited her, and given what had just gone down in Bramley's office, perhaps a cold shower was best. 

Only after Brian and Ginger had gone did Lauren notice her gray cotton panties still sitting on the surface of her desk. She blushed, at first kicking herself for leaving her underthings out where anyone could see them. But taking stock of how she was currently dressed, the blonde couldn't help but laugh to herself. Brian Pinova seeing her unoccupied panties was the least of her humiliations. 

Ginger, Brian, and the system hack still open on Lauren's desktop had allowed Lauren a few moments respite from the shock and horror of her climax in Dick Bramley's office. Alone in her office once more, the girl tried to shake the memory, busying herself by jotting down a few notes she recalled Paul McIntosh launching into that might have an effect on her work. She was unsuccessful, however, and after just a few minutes of hand-scratched notes in her legal pad, Lauren was swept back up into fretting over and recalling her orgasm. 

It was the best she'd had recently, that much was for sure. Lauren had been working herself to the bone the past few weeks, and she mostly just collapsed onto her bed each night after work. She was up and on her way back to Midtown each morning, leaving little time for anything else. Lauren couldn't honestly say that she hadn't thought about masturbating every now and then, but so consumed by the Cortland acquisition she was that such thoughts never had any time to ferment at the forefront of her consciousness. 

To be honest, the orgasm she'd just had was better than just about any she could remember. Certainly better than her night with fumbling Scott Tydeman, and perhaps more intense than she'd ever felt in her short relationship with Jon Derby prior to that. She hated to admit it, but Lauren's climaxes were usually better when she was alone, and even those lacked the residual inner warmth and satisfaction that Lauren felt now, more than a half hour since she'd stormed out of Bramley's office. 

Her legs had gone weak, her spine had tingled, the very hairs on her head had stood on edge. Deep inside her, further than any finger or penis had ever penetrated, Lauren's pussy had exploded in carnal bliss. Wave after wave of delight had washed over her, even as she clenched her teeth, stifled a moan, and did her best to pretend that nothing was happening.

The blonde glanced at the glass across from her desk, and satisfied that no one was watching, just at that moment, touched the top of her slit. It wasn't sexual in nature, exactly, even if Lauren felt a few vaginal tremors that served as aftershocks to the orgasm that had rocked the Richter scale earlier. She was still wet - and not just damp, but sopping, soaking wet. Her whole pussy was drenched, lubricated all the way through. Maybe she should get herself off again. Maybe Adams was right, that she needed a release. 

Horrified at herself, Lauren pulled her hand from her lap. Fingers still moist, the girl flipped back through her notes from the call two days earlier, eager to get her mind back on her work. 

Rachel stopped by a bit later to check on the blonde, and though she, like Ginger, knew that Lauren was holding something back, she accepted her friend's explanation of a sudden sensation of embarrassment without pressing further. Danny stopped in to announce he had to meet his wife for a parent-teacher conference downtown, but that he'd comb back through Sections 11, 12, and 13 afterwards, at home, to make sure that everything looked copasetic. Dick Bramley wished the girl a good night on his way home, making sure that she knew to call him if she needed anything. Kevin Tolman, Stephanie Kidd, Yvonne, and others all trickled by, saying their goodnights and using the opportunity to stare at Lauren one last time for the day. 

For the most part, though, Lauren kept her head down and her nose buried in the contract before her. Five thirty became six, and six became seven, and before the blonde realized just how much time had passed, Ginger was standing at her door with a menu for the Indian place around the corner. Lauren stood, placed an order for chicken tikka masala, stretched, and excused herself to the bathroom. 

About half of Suite 2600 had already emptied out, judging from the orders Ginger had collected from up and down the hall. While Lauren was certainly annoyed, given how much work was still to be accomplished between now and five o'clock on Friday, she was also greatly relieved. She'd made it through the day, as naked as she was, with only a few minor hiccups. Okay, maybe one major hiccup. But the day was done. Tomorrow, her humiliation would be old news, no longer quite the novelty it had been today.  

Lauren stepped out the rear door of her suite and into the long, darkened hallway that ran to the elevators. As she passed the men's room, a sudden curiosity struck the blonde, and she stopped. She'd never been inside, and could honestly say that, before that week, she'd never once thought about going inside. Earlier in the week, sure, she'd been tempted to poke a head in, to catch a glimpse of the flood driving her male colleagues to the twenty-fifth and twenty-seventh floors. But that evening, owing to the plan devised by Lauren, Ginger, and Brian Pinova, she had a sudden interest about what lay beyond the door. 

She knocked first, pushed the door open a crack when no one answered, and hollered, "Hello?" Hesitating a moment longer, Lauren added, "This is the janitor!" 

When no response came a second time, the girl decided the coast was clear. She glanced towards the front door of Suite 2600, and then the rear, and stepped into the darkened bathroom. 

Lauren had to flick the light switch as she entered, the safety of which she wondered about, given that her heels splashed in a shallow puddle the moment she stepped into the bathroom. The tiles and paint were blue, complementing the pink of the women's room. Even as adults, Lauren observed to herself, girls were pink and boys were blue. 




Soma Ch. 02



The girl's heels splished and splashed a bit as she stepped into the men's room. The water wasn't deep, little more than a thin sheen on the floor. It wasn't enough to keep Danny and Dmitri and a few of the others from using the urinals, but it was enough that they left moist footprints on the blue carpeting in the hall as they exited. The source of the leak came from the far corner, where two toilets, one in a handicapped stall and the other in a more regular-sized stall, continued to bubble over. The pool, such as it was, flowed into three drains placed across the floor -- one in the large, handicapped stall, one by the sink on the far side of the room, and one in the dead center. The water on the floor was clean, all right, but it was still emanating from the two bowls. Lauren didn't know much about plumbing, but she knew this was probably unusual, especially given that the urinals were still functioning properly. But, she wasn't a plumber, and the inconvenience suited her purposes. 

Lauren felt naughty sneaking into the men's room. It was a no-no, a forbidden place for women. She couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed, but also couldn't put her finger on why, exactly, she felt that disappointment. What had she been expecting? A condom dispenser by the door? Dirty words and pictures scrawled in marker along the walls? Pornography stacked neatly in the corner? Aside from the two urinals, and the blue tiles, the room was no different from the women's on the other side of the elevators. 

The blonde shook her head. At least she had a place to shower. She took a step back towards the hallway, but stopped herself. 

Yes, she needed to go to the bathroom. But wasn't she already in a bathroom? Did it really make sense to risk getting caught by the elevators? To walk all the way up the hall, around the corner, and down the far hall alongside Suite 2650? 

No, she told herself, glancing back in the direction of the two overflowing toilets. There was a reason the men of her office were trudging up and down stairs during the day. And Lauren wasn't exactly equipped to use the urinals to her right. 

But still...

"What am I doing?" Lauren asked herself as she crossed the room again, away from the door. She stepped into the handicapped stall, pulled the stall door shut behind her, and glanced down at the drain at her feet. She asked herself again, "What am I doing?"

But she was committed at that point. She squatted over the drain, closing her eyes as she did so and willing the bladders of any remaining male colleagues to hold out for a few seconds longer. She pissed into the drain, her stream joining that of the toilet-turned-water fountain beside her. 

How, exactly, had she become so depraved? She was cumming in her boss's office and pissing on the men's room floor. She was sleeping at work and strutting around in nothing but heels. If this really were a poorly written online sex story, the next thing Lauren knew, she'd be bent over in the stairwell while one of her coworkers fucked her from behind. The blonde shook the thought from her head as she stood, hoping to nip the thought in the bud before that coworker got assigned a name and face. 

But using the men's room had been easier, she admitted. It was closer, for one. And while there was the fear of someone walking in, she'd dreaded each pass by the elevator bank and Audit department that she'd made on the way to the women's room that day. Late at night or early the morning, Lauren would certainly be using the men's room from that point on. During the day tomorrow, and Friday -- well, that would have to wait. 

Lauren washed her hands at the sink, dried them beneath the blower, and left a set of high-heeled, wet footprints in the blue rug on her way back to Suite 2600 rear door. 

Dinner arrived a short time later, and while most of the remaining staff ate together in the conference room, Rachel joined Lauren in Lauren's office. They talked a little about the day, with the blonde putting the best face on her current predicament, but most of their time was spent laying out their plans for the acquisition contract over the next two days. Given all that had happened, and despite the complete and total nudity of the blonde chomping away on her chicken tikka masala, their conversation was surprisingly mundane.

Dmitri and Mitch Oldenburg took off a bit after nine, leaving just Lauren and a handful of women left in the office. Ginger and Jessica both said goodnight soon after, the secretary and the intern heading home for a quick round of sleep before having to return in the morning. Rachel stopped in just after that to suggest that if Lauren wanted to spread out the conference room, Suite 2600 had pretty much emptied out. 

The blonde lugged a few file folders down the hall, surprised to see that both Amy Melrose and Julie Lambourne were still around, and had also set up camp amid empty cartons of Indian food. Amy looked more nervous than Lauren as the girl pushed her way into the room, but Julie just smiled and made a comment about Lauren getting a change of scenery. Rachel followed behind, all four girls settling into their respective places around the conference table for another stretch of work. 

Julie Lambourne, a paralegal who'd moved into the city from rural Pennsylvania, was every bit the looker that Rachel and Amy were. She was a blonde, like Lauren, and had a fairly similar build, even if it was hidden away beneath a pair of boot-cut, heather-gray pants and a periwinkle blue blouse. In fact, most of the women who made up the Commercial Transactions group were roughly the same body type -- grown-up cheerleader types who looked like they might have been better fits for sales and marketing than compliance and governance. Lorraine Dorsett, who served as Bramley's assistant, was an exception, but there was a preponderance of attractive women who worked in Suite 2600. Even their intern, Jessica, looked fit enough to be modeling for Eve Intimates instead of filing legal documents. Furthermore, the cumulative attractiveness of the twenty-sixth floor was not an outlier; Evelyn Apparel, as a whole, had been sued on more than one occasion for discrimination in its hiring policy, as many assumed the company based personnel decisions on looks. 

"No, they've still got them," Lauren answered Julie's question about whether or not the hospital had returned her clothes. "Even though the psychiatrist has assured Dermatology that he's put his finger on the root cause, they're still running tests on everything just to make sure." She sighed. "It's probably a moot point anyways -- Adams thinks they've probably cut most of my stuff to shreds for the tests themselves." 

"So you've got nothing?" Julie asked. 

"No, I've got my work-out gear," Lauren explained. "I guess I can wear that home on Friday."

"You realize that Friday's your birthday, right?" Rachel asked. "And that, even if we weren't celebrating that, we'd be celebrating getting this contract off our backs?"

"And even if we weren't celebrating that, we'd be celebrating the end of your nervous breakdown," Amy added. If everything went according to plan, and Adams was right about the underlying anxiety that had caused Lauren's initial breakout, she'd be able to put on a dress once the acquisition contract was finalized, and join her friends for a drink. 

"Oh, god," Lauren sighed. "I'd just settle for going home at that point." 

"No can do," Rachel shook her head. "I'll stop by your place tomorrow night and grab you something to wear." 

"Wait, better!" Julie squealed. "I've got a guy friend down in marketing, on the third floor. He's always telling me that he's got leftover or display stuff from promotions. I'll call him tonight, and get him to send stuff up in the morning."

Julie was demonstrably more excited about the prospect than Lauren was, but the naked blonde agreed. Given that she'd just lost her Evelyn Lane pantsuit and Eve Intimates bra and panties, it might be nice to pick up a few new high-end items to replace them. Only, she hoped that by the time that five o'clock rolled around on Friday, she'd be able to wear them without breaking out into hives. 

As the clock ticked past eleven, Julie and Amy left together. Rachel wasn't far behind, leaving the blonde girl naked and alone for her second night in a row. Lauren, though, stayed put in the conference room, her head in her work. She yawned, exhausted both physically and psychologically, but stayed at it, figuring she could get a jump on tomorrow. 

***

Lauren blinked once, then twice, taking in her surroundings. Unfortunately, the wicked kink she'd suffered from sleeping on her duffel bag the night before had nothing on aches she was no doubt going to battle that Thursday, owing the position she found herself in. She awoke with a shiver, lifting her head and finding a sheet of printer paper stuck to one cheek. Her files and folders were spread out around her, and she herself was still sitting, slumped over, in the leather office chair. 

Apparently, Lauren hadn't made it out of the conference room. She rubbed her eyes, and glanced down at her watch. Five thirty. Luckily, she hadn't overslept, and been woken up by one of the early arrivals. She remembered taking a bathroom break -- to the women's room, that time - at about half past twelve, but must have drifted off some time after that. 

She gathered her things, and tossed a few empty cartons from someone else's dinner the night before into the trash. The sun hadn't yet come up, the room lit by the fluorescent motion-sensor lights that blinked on once Lauren had begun to stir. The lights followed the naked blonde down the hallway, illuminating her path past the reception desk, Fuji's office, and then Steve Ellison's beyond that. Her own office brightened as she stepped through the door, and the girl almost tripped over the blanket and pillow Ginger had so considerately brought in for her the previous morning. 

Oh well, Lauren told herself. Tonight. 

The thought was both comforting and unnerving at the same time. On the one hand, Lauren was looking forward to actually laying her head down on a real pillow, a luxury that had managed to elude her the previous two nights. On the other, she was stuck here at work for one more evening before she'd finally be free. 

She missed her apartment in Chelsea. She missed her bed. And she missed her pajamas. She'd been naked since Tuesday afternoon, but there was light around the corner -- she had only thirty-six hours to go before she had to hand in the Cortland Menswear acquisition contract. And, hopefully, that meant that she'd be able to put her clothes back on, the psychosomatic affliction dissipating with her stress. Still, it wasn't the nudity that had Lauren dreading the day -- it was looming deadline. 

The blonde woke her computer as she pulled together her shower things from inside her duffel bag. Shampoo, soap, conditioner, lotion, and her towel. She picked up her hair dryer, but thought twice about it. The sprinklers in the men's room would remain on until she shut them off from her office, after all, so drying her hair would have to wait for a follow-up trip. She plopped herself down behind her desk, pulled up Brian Pinova's interface, and was getting ready to execute when a conversation from the day prior popped into her head.

"Jurgita Valts," Charlie Peasgood had insisted. "You look like Jurgita Valts. She's a model. For Playboy." 

Despite the situation, and the utter humiliation resulting from it, any girl would have wanted to be wanted. Lauren had trimmed a good portion of her pubic hair, painted her nails, and shaved her legs for yesterday. She'd adorned herself with jewelry, and slipped into a pair of high heels to accentuate her ass better. If she were going to suffer through the various indignities she'd put up with, she wanted her colleagues to at least find her attractive, sexy, and desirable. And, as creepy as it may have come out, and as creepy as the compliment giver himself had been, Charlie Peasgood had, in his own way, been paying the girl a compliment. 

Lauren typed the woman's name, or her own best guess at the spelling, into Google and pressed return. She clicked on "images," and was immediately treated to a good dozen photos of a thin, blonde model wearing clothes (a pink slip and a bra with the cups pulled down) in just one of the hits. No warning, no slow striptease, no swimsuits -- nothing but flesh. It appeared that Lauren and Jurgita had that in common, at least. 

That wasn't all, however. Lauren clicked on a few images, opening them up. Even upon closer inspection, the lawyer had to concede the point to Charlie Peasgood. Lauren's breasts and areolas were a bit bigger. Jurgita was marginally thinner. Lauren had at least a thin strip of blonde pubic hair above her pussy. And the eyes and lips were off. But there was certainly more than a passing inspection. 

Thankfully, as the girl clicked through one photo after another, there didn't appear to be any hardcore photos -- no insertions, no blowjobs, no lesbian stuff. It was all straightforward, old-fashioned glamour shots. Her doppelganger appeared to be above such things, which meant that Lauren herself could breathe easier -- no one was going to download anything too raunchy and claim it was her. 

Lauren took one last glance at the image on her desktop. Jurgita stood stark naked, aside from an open, see-through pink shirt that she hadn't quite managed to shed, hanging from her wrists and forearms. Her tits were hanging out, and her legs were slightly parted. But it was her eyes that Lauren couldn't get over, the confidence and lust that they seemed to embody. It was as if the model was daring the viewer to stare even longer, to come closer for a better look. 

Lauren shifted her attention to her own reflection in the dark glass of her office window. Similar, she thought to herself, but the eyes separated her from the nude model. 

Then again, Jurgita had probably posed in the closed-off studio with a photographer, a make-up artist, and an agent, at most. Lauren, on the other hand, was in a midtown New York office building, surrounded by a good two dozen, mostly well-educated colleagues. She didn't have a make-up artist. She didn't have a photographer to pose her in the most flattering positions, or discard the less glamorous poses, or even airbrush away some of the blemishes. 

She sighed, and gathered her things. She may not have been able to airbrush, but she could at least shower. 

The command entered into Pinova's interface, Lauren stepped from her office with her soaps and lotions in hand. She crossed the hall, slipping between empty cubicles, and let herself out the rear entrance of the suite, into the darkened halls of the Lane-Russet Building. Unlike Suite 2600, the fluorescents in the hall weren't on motion sensor, and so the hall remained pitch black as Lauren padded towards the men's room. Her sense of hearing led towards the door, the pitter-patter of falling water against bathroom tiles assuring her that she was headed in the right direction. 

Lauren had been expecting torrential streams of ice-cold water issuing forth from the sprinklers, but was treated instead to a gentle, room-temperature spray from above. No corner of the room was left dry, so she was forced to abandon her yellow towel in the hall. Water fell on the sink counter, against the urinals to one side, down the partitions that sectioned off the malfunctioning toilets. Despite the sheen of water that had already covered the tiled floors before, someone was bound to notice the impossible places that the toilets had leaked. 

The blonde placed her shampoo, conditioner, lotion, and body wash on the counter, capable of finding a suitable stream of water wherever she stood in the room. She had thought, earlier, that she would be showering in the partitioned-off handicap stall, behind a closed and latched door. But despite getting sidetracked in pursuit of her Internet counterpart, it was still before six in the morning, and Lauren was fairly certain she'd be the only one on the floor for a little while longer. 

She ran her hands through her hair, and pulled the blonde locks back behind her. In the center of the room, after a nervous glance back towards the door, she crouched over the drain and relieved herself. She shook her head once more at just how lewd she'd become, but didn't stop.

Lauren stood, and rinsed her body. The water wasn't warm, exactly, but it was nowhere near as frigid as she'd expected. She was comfortable, and though it was certainly going to be a bigger mess, the experience was appreciably better than the bath she'd taken over the sink in the women's room the night before. 

Beads of water trickled down her exposed skin, rivulets of sprinkler water running down her bare back and naked torso. The last shower she'd taken had only been forty-eight hours earlier, but it felt as if she'd been trapped here at work for weeks, unable to get clean. Drops splashed onto her breasts, her nipples noticeably hard from some combination of exposure, tepid water, and residual memory of the pornography she'd just seen. 

She reached for the soap, thinking back to the images she'd seen splayed across the computer monitor. Whereas before, there'd been noticeable, albeit minor, differences between the two women, Lauren was having difficulty now distinguishing herself from the model. It was Lauren, not Jurgita, slowly stripping out of polka-dotted lingerie. It was Lauren, not Jurgita, who was bent over a couch on some nondescript rooftop. It was Lauren, not Jurgita, who sat with her legs apart, her snatch readily accessible. 

Lauren shut her eyes as she lathered herself with her body wash, thinking about what it had to have been like to be the focus of those shoots. She imagined the flashes of cameras against her naked skin. She imagined a photographer, behind his Canon, ordering her to spread her legs just a bit farther. She imagined a handful of lookers-on standing behind him, bearing witness to nude goddess making love to the lens. 

"Touch yourself," the photographer encouraged her. 

"No," Lauren replied, though not very convincingly. "I don't do that."

"Everyone does it," came his response. 

"Not for the camera," the blonde answered. "I don't do that in my pictures." What she was thinking, and what she was saying, however, had very little effect on what she was doing. Her make-up girl, her agent, the photographer's assistant, and a few others Lauren wasn't able to identify watched as her hand dipped lower and lower, closer to her moistened pussy. 

Lauren's soapy fingers, back in the men's room on the twenty-sixth floor of the Lane-Russet Building, lingered just a little too long on her breasts. The sensation as she squeezed her nipples set off a chain reaction, a cascade that she'd be incapable of stopping. 

The studio disappeared, as did the characters that had stocked it. Lauren was in the men's bathroom, showering beneath fire prevention devices in the pre-dawn. But the moistness in her pussy was very much real, as was the warm sensation enveloping her lower body. Her breath went heavy, her chest heaving as she gasped for air. Her knees went weak, her hands grappling at the top of the nearby urinal for balance. And her eyes nearly rolled back in her head, her body lost to orgasmic convulsions. 

She came quickly and suddenly, with little warning or build up. Her body, it seemed, was through with foreplay. But while a lover might have been satiated with just one climax -- or, given Lauren's track record, with feigned proximity to one climax -- her subconscious was not. Even as the first wave of her orgasm subsided, another was just beginning to crest. Covered in soap suds and drenched inside and out, the blonde lost her balance and collapsed to her hands and knees over the drain on the floor. Her vision was blurry, her field of sight consumed by pinks, purples, and deep reds. Just as she'd been aware only of her pain that Tuesday afternoon, she was lost to pleasure that Thursday morning. 




Soma Ch. 02



She gasped for air, yelping and squealing out of bodily rapture in utter disregard for her current location. Had she been conscious of anything but the ecstasy emanating from her loins at that moment, she might have worried about someone finding her here, an hour from now, still howling and cumming in the embrace of some phantom paramour. But Lauren wasn't capable of forming such thoughts. She wasn't worried about how she looked or how she looked, unlike most of her admittedly infrequent sexual encounters. She was lost, entirely, to carnal pleasure. 

The second orgasm came fast, and the third came just behind it. Lauren was still propping herself up on her hands and knees on the bathroom floor, but she'd placed her forehead against the cool, wet tile as an added leg of support. Her whole body had become one, all-encompassing erogenous zone. Her nipples were on fire. Her skin crackled with venereal electricity. Her lips and tongue and teeth begged something to kiss, to lick, to bite. Even her ass, to this point in Lauren's life virgin territory, seemed to be alive. 

Somewhere between her third and fourth orgasm, Lauren's vision went black. She'd shut her eyes, squeezing them closed tight through yips and screams. But what little consciousness she'd been able to muster in order to ride out the furor gripping her body was soon lost, and Lauren was out. 

How much time had she lost? 

Lauren awoke for the second time that morning in a rather unnerving position. She was still on her knees, her ass pointed up in the air. Her hands and arms, however, had completely given out beneath her, and it was only her face against the tile -- her right cheek, to be exact -- that had kept her propped up in her hunched-over position. Her left nipple was poking through the grating of the drain under her, her whole left breast blocking the drain itself and causing a pool to build up around it. She rolled over to one side, not yet capable of doing pulling herself to her feet. Never had she experienced anything remotely like what she'd just been through. Had she cum four times or five? 

Her whole body was nothing but pins and needles, and her pussy ached as if she'd just been on the receiving end of ten men. She was physically exhausted right down to the core of her being, and it took everything she had left in her to keep from going back to sleep on the tile floor. Her breathing was still irregular, and she couldn't help but emit a squeaky, girlish sigh as she exhaled. 

Given her prunish-looking pink fingertips and the size of the puddle initiated by her breast-turned-drain plug, Lauren estimated that she'd been out a good fifteen to twenty minutes. She'd been lucky she hadn't drowned, considering the posture she'd found herself in. She rubbed the side of her face, and could feel the tile-shaped ridges in her cheek. 

At least there'd been no one around, Lauren told herself. Had she cum like that in the middle of Bramley's office the day before, there would have been no hiding it. But, she told herself, she had best be on her way that morning, because she wasn't going to be alone for too much longer. 

Lauren didn't let herself reflect on what had just transpired. Weakly, she brought herself to her knees, and then upright on wobbly legs. She ran a handful of shampoo through her hair, rinsed, a handful of conditioner, rinsed, and was on her way. Sopping wet, she stepped into the hallway, her shower items tucked under one forearm. In the darkened corridor, she found her yellow towel, and quickly patted herself dry. The first night's lesson fresh in her memory, Lauren resisted the urge to wrap the towel around herself as she left the pitter-patter of the men's bathroom behind her. 

Back in the relative safety of her own office, Lauren groaned at herself when she was greeted by the naked imagine of a supine Jurgita Valts on her desktop. She clicked out of Explorer, and then ran the termination command for the sprinklers. She dried her hair. She applied make-up. She slipped back into her jewelry. She booted up her digitally annotated copy of the acquisition contract. And, only then, as she stopped, took a breath, and began to think about her day, did the incident in the men's bathroom catch up with her. 

Panicked, Lauren reached for her phone, and for the business card tucked safely in her first drawer. Adams wouldn't be in, of course -- it was still only a half past six in the morning. But Lauren needed to talk to someone, even if that someone was a recorded greeting from the psychiatrist and a familiar "beep." 

"What the fuck?!!" Lauren squealed. "What the fuck is happening to me? I just passed out." 

Pause. 

"I just passed out because of the single most intense orgasm I've ever had."

Another pause. 

"Well, okay, no, it was a couple of them, rapid-fire. Four. Five, maybe? One after another. Oh, God, Dave....this can't keep happening! I know, I know, I know...I should be going home. I know that's what you're going to say, that I shouldn't be here. But I've got to conquer this thing, right? I've got to face it? But, Jesus...

"I can't cum like that again. Especially if it's during the day. I can't. I just can't. The nudity, well, the nudity's humiliating. It really is. Anyone who ever had any respect for me, well...well, no longer. But, oh god, I can't cum like that in front of anyone. I just can't. That's my career. Forget about Associate General Counsel. I'd be lucky to stay where I am now."

She whimpered, her voice breaking. 

"I can't walk away now, Dave. I'm so, so close. And, I mean, look at what I've gone through already. Even if I still have two more days... Well, I guess it's really only one more night. But you've got to help me, you've got to help me get this under control. I don't know why this is happening to me. I don't know why my body's reacting this way to the stress. I don't know what's wrong with me, deep-seated or otherwise. I don't know if, deep down, I'm some sort of exhibitionist slut, some sort of masochist, or something. I promise, I promise, I swear, I promise, I'll work it out with you after Friday. I'll come right to your office on Saturday morning. You just have to help me get through this..."

***

In many ways, the beginning of the day was less excruciating than the previous. While still exciting and titillating, Lauren's situation was old news -- everyone in the office had seen her the previous day. They knew about her condition, they weren't shocked by her state of dress, they didn't need to check in on her or whisper about what was going on. But in the back of Lauren's mind, as she greeted Ginger, Dmitri, Rachel, and Bramley, as well, there was the ever-present concern that she'd launch into a series of gasps and moans, cumming as she wished someone a "good morning." 

And so, when Julie Lambourne appeared in Lauren's doorway with a large, brown cardboard box, Lauren was less than enthused. But the paralegal's tone attracted Rachel from next door, Ginger from around the corner, and even Jessica Braeburn, who was on her way to grab another cup of coffee from the kitchen. If Lauren were to launch into orgasm once more, it would be in front of a growing audience. 

"Unsexy thoughts," Lauren told herself. "Get your mind off of this morning, get it off orgasms, get it off nudity, get it off anything sexual." 

"What the hell....?" Julie asked aloud, pulled a mesh, see-through, raspberry-pink thong from the cardboard box. 

Lauren just groaned. 

"What is this?" Jessica asked. She peaked over Julie's shoulder, and reaching into the box, pulled a white satin slip from inside. 

"Oh my god," Julie stammered. 

"This is the box?" Ginger asked. "The stuff your guy friend was sending you?"

"No!" the paralegal yelped. "I mean, yes, but no. Not what I had asked for. Not what I wanted." 

"Did you look in the box? Before you brought it in?" Rachel asked. 

"No," the blonde girl shook her head. "No, not until I brought it in here." 

Lauren stood, and began to poke through the box herself. Bras, panties, slips, chemises, garter belts, a corset. All Eve Intimates, all from the previous spring's collection. Digging deeper, Lauren found a handful of tank-tops, a few miniskirts and summer dresses, and five or six flirty little cocktail dresses. But the few items of legitimate clothing near the bottom didn't change the fact that three quarters of the box was full of lingerie. 

"Guy friend?" Ginger asked the paralegal, stressing the second word. 

"Well, that's what I thought," Julie replied. Her face was a deep shade of red, and Lauren could tell that Julie now wished she'd taken a peek in the box before opening it in front of the other women. 

"Oh, cute," Jessica mewed, pulling a pistachio green lace camisole and a matching set of boy short panties from the box. 

"I mean, maybe not," Julie continued. "Maybe this is his way, weird as it might be, of wanting something more..." 

"Well, there ARE a few dresses in here," Rachel offered. "That's what we were looking for, right? For Lauren, for Friday night?" 

"Right," Lauren nodded, pulling a low-cut, red strapless party dress, which she'd initially mistaken as lingerie, from inside, and holding it up over her naked body. She wanted to try it on, but she knew just where that particular exercise would lead. "Right. This other stuff is...just...just extra." 

"It looks like it's leftover stuff from the Spring catalog," Rachel offered. "Just extra stuff he had lying around...?"

Ginger pulled a purple split-crotch teddy from inside the box. "So, you going to try it on for him?"

"No, no, no," Julie stammered nervously. "No. No, this is Lauren's box, not mine." 

Lauren shook her head. "No, I certainly don't need this much underwear. Especially in my current state..."

"I'll take this," Jessica offered, holding up the green cami and panties set. 

"Fine," Lauren nodded. "Take as much as you want." 

"Leave it here for now," Ginger instructed the intern. "We don't need to go parading underwear around the halls this morning, not with, ahem, everything else going on." 

"Should I give it back?" Julie was asking Rachel. "It's kind of disgusting, right? Kind of an inappropriate gift?"

The redhead shrugged. "It's what he's got access to down there. And even if it is a bit, well, lewd, it's still good stuff. This," she said, picking up a black and red garter belt, "this goes for like twenty-five bucks in the catalog." 

"Well, it's Lauren's box," Julie repeated. "I asked for it for her. It's really hers to decide what to do with..." 

Lauren reached for the box top, and once each of the items had been replaced, she closed it up and pushed it under her desk. "Fine, then. You all can go through it later this afternoon -- take what you want. But we really need to get going today." 

"You forgot something," Rachel offered as the rest of the girls slipped from Lauren's office. She twirled a white lace and black satin garter on her index finger, something that looked like it belonged to a French maid's costume. 

"Thanks," Lauren huffed, snatching it from her friend. She tossed it carelessly towards her desk, pushed the redhead out the door, and sighed with relief. She'd managed to make it through those five minutes, at least, without spontaneously bursting into orgasm. 

Adams called in as soon as he'd gotten Lauren's message, and insisted he'd be over as soon as he could. He had one patient that morning, and an errand to run for Lauren that he thought might help, but he'd be in soon enough. 

For most of the morning, though, Lauren lost herself in her work. She shared a few, quick emails with Dick Bramley and Paul McIntosh, and gave marching orders to a handful of her team members, but the blonde was primarily focused on the contract itself. She read and re-read each line of each paragraph, initialing the pages as she progressed. There was a note, here or there, in reference to punctuation or more careful wording, but for the most part, much of the contract looked to be in fairly decent shape. Gone were thoughts of posing naked, of orgasming the men's room, of Lauren's continued lack of clothing, replaced in totality by legal clauses and sub-clauses. 

Lauren heard none of the men on the floor complain about the unusual amount of water splashed across the men's bathroom. But then, she'd spent most of the morning with her door closed and her head down. Still, Ginger confirmed that no one she'd heard had said a thing, especially given that more and more of the male members of the staff were going to the twenty-fifth floor even just to pee. Apparently, no one liked standing sole-deep in puddles in the rest room. 

And so, when Lauren took a break from her work that morning to relieve herself, it was with a certain amount of confidence that she did so in the men's room, relatively comfortable with the fact that her chances of being caught were slim. She splish-splashed across the tile floor, into the handicapped stall, and shut the partition door behind her. She squatted over the drain and pissed, telling herself that no matter how vulgar this might be, it beat having to walk all the way to the other side of the elevator bank, past the Auditing office, and down the long hall to use the women's room. Lauren was in and out before anyone could catch her, though she did leave -- unbeknownst to her - a fairly distinctive high-heeled, wet footprint in the blue carpeting behind her. 

"Hello?" 

Lauren looked up from her work to see Dave Adams at her office door, letting himself in without too much fanfare. Lauren grimaced. A part of her was relieved to have him there, as over the phone he had sounded like he had another idea. But another part of her had found a relative peace in her work, blocking out anything and everything to do with her nudity and the incident that morning. 

"Hi," the blonde replied. "Come in. Sit down." 

Adams had his leather messenger bag with him, as he had had the day before. He also had a nondescript brown paper bag tucked under one arm, and he bore a rather uncomfortable smile on his face. 

"Thanks," he replied, sitting himself across from her. They'd talked about that morning over the phone, as they'd spoken about the incident in Bramley's office the afternoon before. There wasn't any need to go over it again, and so Adams launched right into it. "Okay, so, I have an idea." 

"Okay...?"

"Wait," he said, placing the paper bag on the floor and reaching for a pen out of his briefcase. "Do you have a sheet of paper?" 

Lauren ripped a page from her legal pad and slid it across the desk. 

"I...will...not...sue," Adams spoke aloud, as he wrote. 

"No, that's fine," Lauren interrupted him. "The one from yesterday, it's fine." 

"This is for you," the psychiatrist explained, rotating the sheet and indicating that Lauren should sign by the X that Adams had drawn. 

A bit unnerved, but ultimately undeterred, Lauren did as she was instructed. Was Adams going to get naked, too? Gay or not, the blonde had to admit that he had an incredible body, and she wouldn't mind taking a peek beneath the shirt and tie. 

She swallowed hard, nipping the thought in the bud as soon as it entered her head. Even if Adams was there to try to help her get to the root of the problem, the girl was uneager to burst into throes of ecstasy in his presence. 

"Do one thing for me first," he instructed. "Just do me a favor, and try the panties again." Lauren had repeatedly slipped in and out of her gray, cotton underwear during the previous day's session, and again after cumming in Bramley's office. It was a test, to see if her rash returned. 

Lauren reached for her duffel bag, beneath her desk, but found Julie Lambourne's cardboard box first. Without really thinking about it, and with a hint of mischief somewhere inside her, Lauren slid the box from its position and slipped off the cover. Rustling around until she'd laid her hands on a pair of deep red nylon/spandex hiphuggers, Lauren extracted the underwear and placed it on the desk. 

"Leftovers," Lauren smirked. "A gift." 

"I'm sure," Adams smirked back. "Came with the garter over there, I'm assuming?" 

The black and white garter dangled precariously on one of Lauren's computer speakers. 

Lauren nodded.

"Try that first," the psychiatrist ordered, jutting his chin in the direction of the garter. 

Lauren nodded again, and reached for the garter. She crossed her legs, her right over her left, and slipped the black ribbon and white lace over her ankle, up her calf, and past her knee. She adjusted it around her thigh, stood, and took a step towards the far wall, testing to make sure it stayed up. Like Adams's belt or her own shoes and jewelry, though, the garter seemed to have no effect -- it hadn't set off whatever alarms Lauren's body had put into place. 

Of course, it was at that very moment that Dmitri stopped in front of Lauren's office. He looked ready to knock, in order to ask some question, but after peering in at the naked blonde (or naked, save the black and white French maid's garter), he thought better of it, backed away, and disappeared down the hall. 

Lauren blushed all over, but turned her attention back to the psychiatrist. 

"Nothing?" 

"Nothing," Lauren affirmed. 

"And the panties?" 

The blonde picked up the lace-trimmed panties, and still standing, bent at the waist to slip them on. As they had the evening before, and the afternoon before that, they stung as they went up Lauren's calves and thighs, as if they were sewn entirely out of thistles and thorns. But, snapping them into place around her waist, Lauren recalled the events of the hospital on Tuesday night, remembering how she'd wanted to cut the waistband in order to get them off more quickly, how they'd seared her flesh. Today, more than a day and a half later, wearing them still caused quite a bit of discomfort and pain, but the hurt was nowhere near as agonizing. Whereas she had felt like she would die if she didn't get them off back in the hospital, her present state of suffering was more comparable to scratching a bad sunburn. As she slid the panties off, Lauren noticed that the rash had returned. By her estimation, though, it didn't look as vicious or as pink. 

She relayed the sensations and observations to Adams, who seemed to share her general diagnosis. 

"Which brings me to this," Adams announced, placing the brown paper bag on the desk in front of Lauren. "Whatever the disease, I think we may have inadvertently stumbled upon a treatment." 

Lauren looked at the psychiatrist, and then reached into the bag. Packaged in firm, see-through plastic, the blonde found a seven-inch phallus. It was long, slim, and shaped more like an elongated bullet to some fantastical gun than it was like an actual penis. There was a small knob at the bottom; speed-control, Lauren guessed. The entire shaft, which looked like it was made from some sort of high-grade plastic, had been done up in a tiger-stripe motif. And, deep in the paper bag, there was a pair of Duracell AA batteries. 

"What is this?" Lauren asked in disbelief. 

Adams glanced at the girl, smiled, and offered, "You're more repressed than I thought." 

"No, no, no," the girl replied, shaking her head. "No, you're supposed to help me stop with the orgasms."

"I can't, Lauren. Your body's doing everything in its power to relax you. We could try acupuncture, or a mud bath, or a day at the spa, but my guess was that you wouldn't be amenable to any of those things if you had to leave work. And, though less desirable on your part, your body found away to relieve some tension without you." 

"So...this...is...?"

"We can't stop what's happening to you. But we - well, you - can control it. Exert a little more structure over what's happening." 




Soma Ch. 02



Lauren just shook her head, and put the sex toy back in the bag. 

"And as I think the panties exercise illustrated, with each progressive climax, you seem to be getting a bit closer to shaking the psychosomatic reaction to your clothes." 

Lauren paused. The previous night, she'd thought it might have been her imagination. But just now, slipping in and out of the red hip huggers, Lauren had to admit that the sting, the pain, and the itching had all waned in their potency. 

"Female hysteria," Adams said. "It was a fairly common medical diagnosis back in the day. Nerves, shortness of breath, irritability, and any number of other vague symptoms, they used to diagnosis female hysteria. The doctor would administer some type of 'pelvic massage,' to the point of 'hysterical paroxysm.' Orgasm, that is. It's why they invented the vibrator in the first place."

"Female hysteria?" Lauren asked, incredulity evident in her voice. "I have 'female hysteria'?" 

"No, no. Of course not," the psychiatrist answered. "No one diagnoses female hysteria anymore. But the root causes here are still nerves and anxiety, and it seems that your body beat me to a treatment method." 

"Look, I still have tons and tons of work," Lauren announced. She pushed the paper bag back in the psychiatrist's direction. "I still have to go line by line through this contract. I don't have time for dildos and nipple clamps." 

Adams chuckled a bit, but pushed the paper bag back towards the blonde. In a more serious tone, he warned, "Keep it. If you get time tonight, when you're alone, you might reconsider -- you might even be able to wear clothes tomorrow, if you can bring down the anxiety levels. You don't even have to use it -- you can try doing it manually."

"Thanks, but --"

"If the choice is this or another rogue orgasm?"

This stopped the blonde in her tracks. Maybe Adams had a point. If she got herself off, on her own, in someplace private, wouldn't that dramatically reduce the worry of blacking out again, as she had that morning? Wouldn't that dramatically calm her fears about cumming again in a room full of her colleagues?

"Fine," the girl agreed. She took the bag, opened one of her file drawers, and crammed the whole package in way in the back. 

They talked for a bit longer, and Adams took a quick blood sample, but the purpose of his visit had been served. Lauren had a tool for recovery, even if she was a bit wary of it. It had been a few weeks since she'd even masturbated, and Lauren had never been a disciple of regular self-pleasure - even before the Cortland Menswear acquisition had consumed her life. She certainly had never used a vibrator. But Adams had a point. If the multiple orgasms she'd suffered from that morning were to strike while she was in the middle of a meeting, she had no way of stopping them. At least, this way, she might be able to pre-empt her body in the privacy of the women's bathroom. 

Ginger poked her head in the office a few minutes before Adams left, and announced she and a few others would be ordering lunch from the deli downstairs. She offered to pick something up for the psychiatrist, but the naked blonde insisted that doctor wouldn't be staying. So, though Lauren had hoped to spend her lunch perusing the contract further, Adams's departure was coupled with a visit from Rachel Wilks. The redhead set out her own lunch across from Lauren's at Lauren's desk, looking to provide her friend with some level of social companionship. 

"Are you wearing...?" Rachel asked as she entered the office, pointing at the black and white garter still occupying real estate on Lauren's thigh. 

"Oh, god," the blonde gasped, sliding it down her leg. Make-up, heels, and jewelry were enough; she didn't need to be slipping on garters and fishnet stockings to call even more attention to her immodest state. 

"What'd the doctor say?" the redhead asked as she opened up her salad. 

Lauren hesitated, and offered, "Not much. He thinks if I can bring my anxiety down, I might be able to put some clothes back on tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? Really?"

"Maybe."

"Did he have any suggestions on how?"

Hesitation again. "Yeah, but....come on. I think he and I both know what's going to have to happen for my nerves to calm down. I've got to be able to get this contract up to McIntosh and be done with it." 

Rachel nodded. "You thought at all about next week? You going to take a little time off?"

"I haven't really thought that far ahead," Lauren answered. On the one hand, she could certainly use a break from the office. She hadn't been home since Tuesday morning. "But I think I should come in, even if it's slow. Show up in a pantsuit or just standard business attire, just to drive home the fact that I don't always work in the nude. You know, put this out of people's memories."

"Right." 

Lauren took a bite of her turkey wrap, an errant dab of mayonnaise collecting on her lip, and then dropping onto her left tit. She wiped it off with her napkin, as Rachel watched. "No stains, at least," the blonde offered. 

They chewed in silence for a few minutes after that, neither sure of what to say. Eventually, though, Lauren started to talk shop, asking Rachel about the crosschecking she'd been doing that morning on the stock purchase agreement. The other girl was happy to oblige, even if her eyes did linger a bit too long on the blonde's left breast. 

Lauren's mind began to drift. She knew what Rachel was doing. She'd been over the wording herself, two or three times. Rachel was providing more a final proof than anything else, and Lauren would be surprised if she turned up anything of any substance. But, she wanted to talk about anything besides her session with Adams, anything besides her nakedness. 

Could there actually be any truth to what Adams had said? If she were to vibrate herself towards orgasm a couple of times that evening, after everyone had cleared out, could it be possible that she could actually get dressed tomorrow morning? Sure, she'd be stuck wearing whatever tank top or miniskirt she could find in the big box of lingerie under her desk, but at this point, wouldn't even just a bra and a pair of panties be a step up? 

Lauren pictured herself in the red hip-huggers, and in a matching demi-cup bra that may or may not have even been in the box. She could even picture where the set had appeared that spring in the catalog, adorning the slender body of a brunette supermodel who had positioned herself alluring against the side of a pool table in a crowded bar. If the Victoria's Secret catalog was borderline pornography, the Eve Intimates catalog tended to bring the border itself into question. While Tyra Banks, Heidi Klum, and Gisele Bundchen always appeared to be modeling the latest Victoria's Secret had to offer in some non-descript beach house, Eve Intimates models found themselves standing in their bras and panties in pubs and restaurants, riding around in the back of a limousine in nothing more than a tight-fitting teddy, or showing off their corsets and garter belts in an airport terminal, a hay-filled barn, or empty beach. More than once had the FCC pulled one of their advertising campaigns from TV for being "way over line," and the catalog featured enough half-naked women in suggestive enough poses that, like Abercrombie & Fitch's catalog, it came with a "mature content" warning. 

Lauren wasn't at the pool table in the bra and panties. She was, instead, leaning up against the copy machine directly across from her office. Hair done up. Dangerous, stiletto heels. Large, ostentatious jewelry. Her bra was just a bit too small, her exaggerated breasts a risk to pop out at any given moment. The hip-huggers were just a bit low, showing off the distinct line of her pelvis. And could that be...? No! Could it? Just a hint, a wisp, or pubic hair peeking over the waistband in the front? 

Even if she'd been naked in the office on Wednesday and Thursday, there was something undeniably just as sexy, if not more so, about the sight of Lauren in red lingerie. There was an element of teasing, an implied seduction, in the sexy lace panties and bra. Her sexuality was on display, not just the lewd presentation of her naked nipples and cunt. Maybe, given the fantasy, Lauren might be better off going bare again on Friday even if a bra and panties were a possibility -- the image she had of herself was just too, too sexually charged. 

Fantasy Lauren risked a quick glance up and down the hallway. No one was coming. She lifted the photocopier's lid, and with a quick reach around her back, undid her bra straps. Nipples peeking through her fingers, Lauren cupped her breasts. The bra itself was discarded, tossed casually into the recycling bin. The blonde, topless once more, placed her breasts face-down on the clear glass, pressed the large green button to her right, and emitted a soft moan as the copier sprung to life. Her tits were illuminated by a single strip of warm, white light, Lauren turned on just that much more by the machine's warmth and its gentle hum. One after another, black-and-white versions of her tits, mashed against the copier, slid from the machine. 

In Lauren's fantasy, she risked another glance up and down the hall. Still no one. Smiling wickedly, she backed up to the copier, and used her arms to pull herself seated up onto the glass. She tugged the crotch of her panties to the right, sighing to herself as her pussy lips, already moist and in danger of smearing against the clear glass, rested against the warm, smooth surface. She reached for the copy button, and the machine whizzed to life. The Xeroxes themselves were what she'd been going for, but Lauren was treated to the warm, penetrating light of the copier, and the steady, gentle vibrations that the machine gave off. She moaned, sexual electricity shooting through her body. 

"Oh, no!" she squealed, her legs spread and her lips exposed. She was going to cum. 

"Oh, no," Lauren whined, back in her office. She had a mouthful of turkey and not even the security of a pair of red, lace panties. She was going to cum. 

Rachel had landed on a tangent, talking about how her fist job in high school had actually been as a store clerk for Eden, Evelyn Apparel's version of the GAP or Old Navy. As Lauren's breathing became a bit more labored, though, Rachel lost interest in her own story. 

"Are you alright?" she asked. 

"You've..." Lauren's chest heaved. "You've got to go." 

"Lauren!" the redhead stood, getting panicked. "Lauren! Lauren! Is it happening again? Are you okay?"

The blonde crossed her legs, hoping that might help. Instead, the pressure from her inner thighs against her pulsating pussy only seemed to make things worse. She clapped a hand over her own mouth, terrified that she was going to emit some sort of ululation that would give herself away.

"I've got to go get somebody!" Rachel reached for the door. 

"NOOO!!!" Lauren yelped. She whispered loudly, uneager to alert attention from Ken Fuji in the next office over. He might have been down in the conference room, or at lunch, but he might not be. "No, no, no! Just go! Just go!" 

"Lauren, I'm not going to leave you like this! Are you having some sort of reaction again? Is it the heels? Do you need me to take your jewelry off?" 

"No, I --" she began, but a wave of sexual pleasure washed over her. "I...I...I...I'm fine." Another pause, for another wave. "I...I...I...don't need to take them off. It's not a reaction." 

She puckered her lips, doing her very best to control her breathing. She sounded, though, as if she were practicing Lamaze, each breath huffed and puffed as Lauren tried to rein in the bliss emanating from her pussy. Her heart was beating faster, her body was beginning to quake, and Lauren felt a bead of sweat trickle down her back. She uncrossed her legs, bracing them on the floor for stability, and clutched the side of her desk with her hands for the same. 

"Lauren? Lauren?!!" 

"Oooooh," Lauren cooed in response, her eyelashes fluttering. 

"What? What's happening?"

"Ungh," the girl grunted, biting her lip as she did so. Fuck it. If Rachel wasn't going to leave, there was nothing Lauren could do. Her entire body convulsed, and the girl arched her spine. "I'm...I'm...I'm....cummmmming...."

The last was a low whisper, but of such intensity that the redhead took a step back. 

"Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh," Lauren mewed, shutting her eyes as she did so. "Just...just stand watch. Oh, god! Oh my god! Oh my god! Just stand watch. Make sure no one sees..."

Rachel could do no more than offer a simple nod, but Lauren had passed the point where she even cared any more. Her first orgasm hit, and it was all she could do to keep from screaming out in ecstasy. Her legs were spread beneath her desk, her knuckles going white from squeezing the edge and holding on for dear life. She shut her eyes, reeling under the explosions taking place deep inside of her. 

"Nnnggghhh!" the blonde croaked, wave after wave of sexual energy overtaking her. She kept whispering to herself, everything coming out soft, but intense, before degenerating into nothing more than a string of curses. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" 

There was a pause, just long enough for the naked girl to catch her breath. Misreading the situation, Rachel asked, "Lauren? Lauren?" 

"Not done yet," Lauren panted. No, she'd only just begun. She pressed her forehead up against the edge of her desk, her breasts dangling beneath her as she did so. Her body had taken her higher and higher still, only to drop her back down to begin again. She could feel the moistness in her pussy, could feel her skin sweating all over. She stuck to the leather chair beneath her bare ass. 

"Oh! Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!" 

The redhead stood frozen on the far side of the office. She leaned towards the window every now and then to check to see if anyone was coming. But, at the same time, Rachel was never able to completely look away, fixated on the naked blonde writhing in sexual gratification, gripped by some unknown force. It was out of place, completely unexpected of Lauren Laframboise, and Rachel had a difficult time telling herself that yes, this was happening, in the middle of the day at work. 

The blonde slipped from her shoes, finding more traction in the rug with her bare feet. She continued to lean forward, her head against the desk, and both hands still held tight. She bit down on her forearm, muffling the squeals and yips, silencing the exclamations to whatever deity was responsible for such religious fervor. 

Lauren's pussy lips went numb after the second climax. Not that it mattered much -- by then, the depths of Lauren's cunt had become the epicenter from which her whole body shook. By the third, her clit began to ache, untouched but throbbing so much from the very beginning that the girl was no longer sure if it was pulsating in time with her heart, or if it had been the other way around. And, by the time the fourth struck, Lauren had gone far past the point of physical exhaustion. She fought the urge to just collapse, to fall into a deep, deep slumber, instead focusing her attention on the rhythm of her heaving chest. In, then out. In, then out. In, then out. 

Tears were streaming down from Lauren's cheeks when she lifted her head to see her friend. Given what had just transpired, Rachel mistook the tears and smeared make-up for humiliation and degradation. But while there was no denying Lauren had enough of those emotions to go around, she'd begun crying out of simultaneous sheer physical joy and sheer physical exhaustion. 

"Bathroom," was all that Lauren could mutter. She avoided eye contact with her friend as she tentatively took to her feet, steadying herself with an arm on the desk. Lauren was in no condition to be walking -- or even standing, for that matter. But she needed to get up, or else she risked blacking out again. She needed to put distance between herself and her office. 

Ginger noticed the tears as Lauren hobbled by, but Rachel put her hand up and insisted that she would deal with it. No need to get more people involved, no need to embarrass Lauren more than she already had. 

The blonde had no interest in trekking around to the other side of the building for the women's room, so she just stumbled into the men's. 

"Lauren! That's the men's room!" Rachel gasped, a few steps behind. 

"There's no one in here," Lauren mumbled. 

Rachel followed behind, nervous that there would be someone inside, or someone that would come barging in a few seconds after them. Lauren, though, felt no such fear, and didn't seem the least bit unnerved by the fact that she was splashing bare foot through the puddles that formed in the men's room. 

Lauren turned and stared intensely at the redhead, as if she were trying to see something inside of her. She seemed to shrug, before squatting in the middle of the men's room floor, and relieving herself into the drain. 

"I'm fucked anyways," Lauren said aloud. "Might as well revel in just how disgusting I've become." 

Rachel wasn't sure what to say. "Lauren? What? What's going on?"

The blonde, having finished pissing, stood and shuffled towards the sink. She rinsed her hands, splashing cold water on her face, and then ran a handful of cool water over her steamy slit. 

"My body," Lauren answered finally. She sat her bare ass down against the edge of the counter. "My body has decided I need to relax." 

"You don't seem all that relaxed to me."

The blonde shot her friend a half-smile. "Every muscle in my body is jelly right now. There's no tenseness, there's no stress, there are no knots. Granted, I can barely stand, but..."

"It just...happened?"

Lauren nodded. "It's been happening."

"This wasn't the first..." There was a momentary pause, before Rachel put two and two together. "Yesterday? Yesterday?!! Oh, God! In Bramley's office?"

Lauren nodded again. 

"What about the psychiatrist? What did he say?"

The blonde swallowed hard. "I've got his prescription filed away. It's about seven inches long. Made of plastic. Vibrates." 

"Oh my god!" 

Rachel stared intently at her friend, trying to fathom exactly what Lauren was going through. She asked, "How many times?"

"How many times has it happened, or how many times have I orgasmed?" 

"Um...both, I guess." 

"Three," Lauren answered. Her body was still covered in perspiration, catching the fluorescent light from above. Her legs were parted, the blonde doing her best to release some of the heat issuing forth from between them. "As for how many times I've orgasmed...well, I don't know. Nine, maybe? I kind of passed out this morning, before anyone got here." 

"Jesus Christ," Rachel replied. "And the psychiatrist, his answer is what? More?" 

The blonde nodded again. "He thinks I can exert a little more control over when and where. And he thinks that if it lowers my stress enough, I can put on clothes again." 

"Wait, what? So do you think you could go get dressed right now?" 

"No, no. I tried this morning. It's not blinding, searing pain anymore, but it's not comfortable. I don't think I'm going to be able to lick it until the contract's in, though. That's the root cause of all this stress, right?" 

"But, even after what just happened...?"

"Best case scenario? I might be able to put on a pair of underwear or something," - careful, she told herself, that's what had set her off in the first place -- "but they're still going to sting like hell." 

Rachel ran her hand through her hair. Despite being approximately the same age and the same build, the pair couldn't have looked much more different than they did at that moment. Lauren stood barefoot in the shallow pool of water by the sink, naked save for a few odd pieces of jewelry -- choker, bracelet, watch, and a few rings, as well as a silver bracelet-turned anklet around her left ankle. Her breasts, completely out in the open, were still rising and falling with each labored breath, and her makeup, to be gentle, had seen better times. 




Soma Ch. 02



Rachel, on the other hand, was still well put together from that morning. She was wearing a cocoa brown tailored blazer and a matching set of sophisticated-looking straight-leg pants that clung to and accentuated her hips and ass. There was a goldenrod-print blouse beneath the blazer, contrasting nicely against Rachel's pale skin and the brown of the suit. Her red hair was down, and her ears adorned with a pair of simple, but elegant earrings. She was wearing a pair of tall, ankle strap sandals, though she'd worn a more casual pair of shoes in for the walk to work. 

It was a reversal for the pair. Alone, either girl would have been the center of attention. But Lauren had always had something extra, and Rachel couldn't help but feel as if she tended to disappear in the company her gorgeous friend. Lauren was always well made-up, well-dressed, and well put together. Given the sweaty, panting mess with streaked mascara seated naked in a men's bathroom before her, Rachel wasn't sure exactly how things had gotten so upside down. 

"So, even this? You're going to stay here and ride this out?" 

Lauren shot a grim look at her friend. 

"You got us like ninety-nine percent of the way there, Lauren. All that's left is just proofing and re-proofing. Go home. Relax." 

"No," the naked girl replied. "No, absolutely not. Leaving aside for one minute that polishing this contract off is what will cure me, as well as the fact that I've already been naked at work for a day and a half, this is still my baby. I got handed this project, and I ran with it. Now I've got an opportunity to help the company and possibly get a promotion out of this."

"Even if you're orgasming as you climb the pay grades?" 

"I just have to get control over myself."

"That's working well so far."

Lauren frowned. "I can get myself off. That'll stop these random outbursts, at least." 

"Where?" Rachel asked. "Here? In your office?" 

"The women's room," the blonde blurted out. Rachel had a point -- there wasn't much privacy in the suite. "The supply closet. Or, the stairwell. No one ever uses the stairs." 

The redhead rolled her eyes. "When?" 

"When? I don't know." 

"We've got the status call with McIntosh at four again today. Probably right before that, right?" 

Lauren nodded. 

"I'll stand guard again, if you want me to." 

Lauren swallowed. "Not in my office. I can't do that in my office."

"Fine then. The supply closet. 3:30, then." 

"Rachel, I can't..."

"You can and you will," the girl answered. "I'm already in on it, right? You're not going to embarrass yourself any more in front of me than you already have. And, by the way, the drain thing?"

The blonde blushed all over. "It's a long way around to the women's room, I've got to go past the Audit office, the toilets aren't working in here, and it's been empty every time I've come in. I think they're all going downstairs now." 

"Fine. 3:30." She hesitated. "Should you being doing it more? I mean, if you can put your clothes back on after enough times..."

"It's fine," Lauren replied. "If it happens again in my office, when I'm alone, whatever. I just don't want to launch into convulsions in front of everyone else." 

It was agreed. Rachel would stand guard at the copier while Lauren snuck into the supply closet and closed the door. The blonde hadn't made up her mind as to whether she'd use Adams's gift, or if she'd just do it the old fashioned way, but she doubted that she'd need any foreplay, that she wouldn't be in the mood. Her whole body had become one, large erogenous zone in the past twenty-four hours, and the nudity only seemed to accentuate that fact. 

If it had to have happened in front of anyone, Lauren was glad to have cum in front of Rachel. The redhead was her closest friend in the office, and if anyone were going to try to understand what she was going through, it would be Rachel. Already, the girl seemed on board with Lauren's current treatment options, and was willing to subject herself to Lauren's disgusting throes of disgrace in order to help her friend. 

Lauren cleaned herself up, rinsing the entirety of her body with cold water from the sink as Rachel stood alongside her, watching and talking. She ran the cool water down her back and between her legs, the heat in her cunt just now starting to abate. 

"And you're sure that no one's been coming in here?" Rachel was asking, glancing at the door. 

"We've been in here for twenty minutes," Lauren answered. "No one."

Rachel nodded. She looked nervous, but had a determination on her face. The redhead pattered to the center of the room, took another worried look towards the door, and began unsnapping the front of her pants. She wriggled out of the hips, and pulled the pants, along with a pair of canary yellow panties, down her thighs, and squatted over the drain. 

"Jesus," Lauren exclaimed, before looking away.

"When in Rome...," the other girl observed. 

The afternoon passed without incident. Lauren did get a visit from Ben Davis, however, that nearly sent her cascading towards orgasm again. The office's other intern, a 6'2" beefcake of a law student, stood out even at a company of ridiculously attractive people. If Jessica Braeburn looked as if she'd wandered away from the other models downstairs, Ben looked like he'd sprung to life from some advertiser's dream. Perfectly proportioned, muscular, well-spoken, dark hair, and a dark tan, Ben was to the female members of Suite 2600 what Lauren was to the males, even fully clothed. 

"I just wanted to say I'm sorry, and to let you know that I'll do anything you need," Ben offered. Apparently, he'd been chastised by Jessica that morning for avoiding Lauren. He could be an adult, she had insisted, and interact with Lauren like an adult.

Lauren could think of a few things she needed that Ben could help with, very adult things at that. Perfect smile, perfect eyes, perfect laugh -- but certainly not a perfect gentleman. He could come across that way, the way he listened and joked and displayed the hint of sensitive side, but Ben was apparently a bit of a lothario outside the office. Lauren could see why -- even as she sat naked before him, she was undressing him in her mind. 

But the blonde shook the thoughts from her head, terrified that even the tamest of daydreams might well put her over the edge. Of course, would having an Adonis like Ben watch her cum be so, so bad? 

When quarter past three rolled around, Lauren's calendar began to chime, reminding her of an impending appointment. Rachel, apparently, had scheduled a "Brainstorming Session," in the copy room, for half past. Lauren began to worry that she wasn't going to be able to make it to three thirty, her pussy already growing increasingly moist and her nipples at attention. 

"Are you bringing the thing?" Rachel asked as she popped her head through the door. 

"I wasn't planning on it," Lauren answered. She didn't need a toy to get herself off. "Why? Do you think I should?"

Their relationship had certainly grown a lot more intimate since lunch. Rachel shrugged. "It'd be quicker, wouldn't it?" 

"Louder, though, too." 

"I can make some copies..."

Lauren hesitated. She'd never used a vibrator before, but maybe Rachel had a point. After all, Adams had given it to her for a reason. And it wasn't as if she wanted to spend an eternity in the supply closet. "I'm not sure I know how to use it."

"I don't think there's much to it," Rachel laughed. 

The blonde reached deep into her top drawer, pulling the toy from the back. She gestured for Rachel to close the office door before pulling it out. 

"Wow," Rachel cooed, getting a little more turned on herself. "Tiger print." 

Lauren grabbed a pair of scissors, and in a few quick cuts had freed the toy from its packaging. The shaft had some sort of plastic lacquer over it, something that Lauren hadn't anticipated, but which she was pleasantly surprised by. She turned her back to Rachel and the door, shielding the vibrator should anyone pass by her office. She spun the cap at the end, plugged in the pair of batteries, and screwed the cap back on. 

With Rachel taking a step closer and peering over the blonde's shoulder, Lauren rotated the knob to Level One. There was a gentle hum, like an aquarium filter. Level Two, more like an electric toothbrush. Level Three, while still not loud per se, immediately caused the two girls to cringe. Ken Fuji hadn't been in his office at lunch, luckily, but he was back now. 

"Oh, god," Lauren moaned. "What if I get caught with this?" 

"Just pretend it's a really large pen," Rachel joked. 

Lauren wrapped a discarded page of the Cortland contract around the shaft, and followed Rachel across the hall to the copier. The redhead had two large manila folders, filled with nothing in particular, which she'd be duplicating for no reason other than a plausible cover story. Still embarrassed by what she was about to do, as well as by the fact that Rachel knew very well what she was about to do, Lauren grimaced at the redhead and slipped into the walk-in supply closet that was off to one side of the copier room. Rachel closed the door behind her, wishing her luck, and returned to the fake task at hand. 

"A chair," Lauren said to herself as she took stock of the room around her. A chair would have been nice, for her to sit on. Heck, a king-sized bed with satin sheets and pillows would have been nice, as well, but Lauren was forced to make do. 

She turned the knob at the bottom, and the vibrator came to life. Having never used a sex toy before, Lauren was a bit befuddled at first. Did she immediately put it into her pussy? She was certainly already wet enough. Or did she play a bit first? 

The blonde shook her head. No need for foreplay. 

With her naked back against the cool, wooden door of the supply closet, Lauren pressed the gently humming device against the top of her slit. She gasped, and pulled it away quickly, surprised by just how intense the sensation was. 

Memories of her fantasy from earlier in the afternoon, as Rachel stood in her office, flooded back with the sound of the whirring photocopier in the next room. Lauren again pressed the plastic toy to her pussy, and again gasped, but did not pull away. Instead, she let the vibrator do its job, surrendering to it completely. 

She was still in her heels -- or rather, back in her heels, after her previous orgasm that afternoon. As she closed her eyes and pressed back against the door, Lauren decided that this wasn't the most comfortable of positions to stay in, even if her cunt seemed to be more than content at the moment. Because of this, it took another minute or two before she was able to slump closer to the floor, never once loosening her grip on her toy. 

The linoleum tile was cold against her bare buttocks, and colder still against her bare back as she pivoted onto the floor. There wasn't exactly enough room to lie down -- her neck was bent at an awkward angle, her head was butting up against a cabinet full of printer paper, and her left leg was forced to bend at the knee against another -- but Lauren was already too far on her way to focus on anything but the ecstasy in her pussy. 

She rubbed the toy slowly against her clit, up and down, back and forth. She traced circles around the small, pink mound with the tip of the vibrator, whinnying quietly to herself. And, no sooner had she started than she felt the first crest of an orgasm approaching. She jerked against her surroundings, longing to yelp and moan with all her might. But instead she just bit her lip and continued to exhale with as much control as she could muster. 

Even as she came down from the first climax, though, Lauren decided she couldn't stop without going after a second. The first had been quick, and over before she'd even had a chance to enjoy it. The second, though, with the vibrator turned up to the next setting, was more rewarding. The third, with the girl on her elbows and knees and the vibrator stuffed deep inside the recesses of her pink folds, should have been enough to satisfy even the most wanton of nymphomaniacs, but Lauren's body urged her onward, encouraged her to go for just one more; she wasn't yet completely satiated. 

Unfortunately, though, the blonde's fourth would be the most stubborn of the bunch. In Lauren's limited sex life before her current predicament, she'd always had to work for her orgasms. More than once her partner had cum before Lauren herself had had the opportunity to reach her own crescendo. She'd certainly been cumming a lot easier than she ever had before, allowing her cunt and her body to do all the work. Three orgasms would have been a good month for Lauren, even if she had been in a serious relationship. But she wanted the fourth. She craved the fourth. She needed the fourth. 

It didn't come easy, though. Lauren cranked the setting up all the way, the tiger's heavy purr muffled by the lips of her own vagina. She drew the artificial phallus in and out, doing her best to simulate a good fucking, even as she used her other hand to violently rub her clit. She was on her elbows and knees. She was on her back. She was on her side, with her legs open. Each wave of pleasure seemed like it could be the one, but each dissipated before the blonde could reach orgasm. The tension ratcheted up with each successive rise and fall, and she knew that when she finally hit her peak, it would put the others to shame. But it continued to be just over the horizon, just out of reach. 

A gentle rapping came at the supply closet's door. 

"Lauren!" Rachel whispered through the wood. The doorknob twisted slightly, and a crack of fluorescent light appeared from the copier room. 

"Don't come in!" Lauren huffed. "Just a few...just a few...more minutes. I'm...I'm almost...Oh, god...I'm almost there..."

"It's already ten of," her friend whispered through the slightly opened door. 

Had it really been that long? Had it been twenty minutes? Lauren guessed she must have cum three times within the first five minutes, and had been hunting her last orgasm for the past fifteen. 

"Just...just a few more..."

The door didn't shut, but Rachel drew quiet. Beyond, Lauren could hear the steady rhythm of the photocopier, the distant cacophony of office phones and telephone conversations. Out in the suite, her coworkers were going about their day, reading over contracts and thumbing through important documents, completely unaware of the girl masturbating in the closet just around the corner. 

This, for reasons that Lauren refused to weigh, sent her over the top. She yipped to herself, fireworks exploding deep in her body, deep in her very soul. Her eyes rolled back into her head, her chest heaved, her back arched, and her hips ground out at the imaginary lover fucking her so deeply. She swallowed a scream, never losing track of where she was. 

"Lauren?" Rachel again. 

The blonde was too dazed to respond, though, momentarily lost in a post-orgasmic daze. 

"Lauren?" Pause. "Lauren?" 

Still nothing. 

"Lauren, I'm coming in. We've got to go. We've got McIntosh. Lauren? Did you hear me? I'm coming in." 

The blonde, later, would grow beet red in remembering how Rachel found her. She was lying with back on the floor and her cunt to the door, one shoeless foot propped up on a shelf, and the other -- high heel still on -- firmly planted on the ground. The blonde had somehow summoned the strength to turn off the vibrator, but hadn't mustered the energy to extract it from her glistening slit. She was covered in sweat, her hair mussed, and eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. Had she passed out? Lauren wasn't sure, but she'd at the very least glazed over for a moment or two. 

"We've only got two or three minutes, Lauren!" Rachel barked quietly, grabbing at one of the blonde's arms. "We've got to go."

"What? What time is it?"

"It's almost four," the redhead replied. Without making a production of it, or showing any sign or repulsion, Rachel grasped the end of the Lauren's tiger print toy and pulled it from her sopping pussy. The redhead crammed into her left pants pocket and pulled her friend to her feet. Catching a whiff of the air, though, Rachel coughed out, "Jesus..."

Lauren was slowly coming to her senses, and realized in complete mortification that her friend had just remarked upon the smell of her smoldering vagina. She grasped a hold of one of the shelves to her right and, with Rachel's help, steadied herself on the closet's floor. 

"Lauren, you're a mess," Rachel pointed out. "I think maybe you should sit this one out. Or maybe come a few minutes late. Just clean yourself up a little, maybe?" 

Perhaps still drunk on sexual energy, the blonde shook her head. Weak-kneed and poorly balanced, she exited the supply closet, passed the still-whirring photocopier, and crossed the hall into her office. Glancing at her reflection in the darkened screen of her slumbering computer, Lauren straightened her hair and wiped the worst excesses of perspiration from her brow. She reached for her gym back, grabbing not the towel that sat inside, but the gray cotton panties that had been in and out over the past few days -- they were on top, after all. She dabbed the fabric against her armpits, against her lower back, against the moist outer lips of her pussy. 

Rachel had followed the girl to her office, though found herself standing halfway in and halfway out of the open door, glancing down the hall nervously at Dick Bramley's office. Everyone was gathered inside, and they were waiting only for Rachel and Lauren to initiate the call. 

The coup-de-grace, though, was the drawer from which Lauren pulled a small bottle of "Light Blue" perfume. Spritzing each underarm, her chest, and what was left of her pubic hair lightly with the fragrance, the girl collected herself enough to take a deep breath and gather her thoughts. 

Lauren kicked off her remaining heel, reminding herself she'd left the other in the supply closet. She tucked her legal pad and notes under one arm, and followed her friend down the hall, a blissful smile still plastered across her face. 

***

Lauren came once more before dinner. 

The office had mostly cleared by about eight, save for a few stragglers. Only Lauren herself was still worried about getting the entire Cortland contract reviewed on time, and her own focus on the issue had been a bit less than complete. The tasks Lauren had assigned to Fuji and Oldenburg had been completed even before the call with McIntosh, and both Dmitri and Yvonne had agreed what little they had left could be completed from home that evening. 

Lauren wouldn't be going anywhere that evening, and Rachel would be staying for a while, as both moral support and the occasional lookout. Amy opted to join her friends for dinner, and once Ginger announced she'd be ordering sushi, the office intern Jessica had hung behind, as well. Danny was still in his office, checking over his own portion of the contract, but Lauren decided that Danny alone did not present a big enough hindrance to keep her from eating naked in the conference room with her friends.  

He did, however, present a bit of a complication in terms of the blonde's desire to get herself off before dinner. Lauren had no interest in cumming in front of Amy, Ginger, and Jessica in between bites of spicy tuna, and so she slipped off to the flooded men's room with her toy while Rachel kept Danny occupied in his office with questions about grammar and punctuation in her particular pages. 

The toy. Lauren groaned just thinking about it. Rachel had sat through the entire conference call in Bramley's office with the damp and sticky piece of plastic creating a suggestive outline in her pants pocket. Lauren was probably the only one who had noticed it, and certainly the only one in the room who could have accurately identified what it was, but just the mere suggestion of its presence had nearly sent the blonde cascading out of control once more. 




Soma Ch. 03



What had started as an evening of skimpy lingerie and five women in various states of undress, an evening that had seemed destined to be the stuff of wet dreams, quickly settled into a rather dull, uneventful affair. Sure, Jessica Braeburn, Ginger Gold, and Amy Melrose were all sitting in intimate apparel, and the breasts of both Rachel Wilks and Lauren Laframboise were on display for any of the other girls to see. But collating, proofreading, and initialing weren't anyone's idea of a sexy sleepover.

Lauren, who at that moment was poring over Evelyn Apparel's complex acquisition contract for the Cortland Menswear takeover, had been naked since Tuesday afternoon two days earlier. At twenty-nine years old – though, with her thirtieth birthday waiting for her on the far side of midnight – Lauren was one of the fastest-rising attorneys within the company. She'd graduated from Vermont State at twenty-one, from Penn Law at twenty-four, and been promoted from Senior Legal Counsel to Assistant General Counsel in the Commercial Transactions office in record time. The role of Associate General Counsel and the accompanying $17,000 raise would follow, so long as Lauren could successfully submit the contract before the end of the quarter, the following day by five o'clock.

For the first time in weeks, that deadline looked feasible. If the girls continued to work through the night, they'd probably be able to put the contract to bed before the sun came up. But it had been a struggle to get to this position, and Lauren's ordeal over the past few days had driven home the fact that her promotion wouldn't come cheap. The pressure and anxiety she'd experienced had triggered a psychosomatic reaction, and Lauren – an employee of a clothing conglomerate in the process of acquiring another clothing company – had developed an unprecedented allergy to her clothes. To any clothes, for that matter. And, to heap indignity upon indignity, Lauren's body had decided the most effective form of stress relief was to launch itself into a series of spontaneous orgasms. 

Throughout it all, Lauren had remained at work, her nose to the grindstone. If the stress of the contract was what was causing her affliction, she needed to face her demons, not run away. And so, for the past two days at work, she'd stalked the hall in nothing more than heels and jewelry. If she needed to a weather a few unexpected orgasms along the way, so be it; she'd managed to take matters into her own hands, quite literally, by masturbating and toying herself to climax in private in an effort to prevent herself from cumming in front of her coworkers once more. She had put a price on her dignity – two hundred and thirty five dollars an hour, stretched over the seventy-two hours from when the affliction first hit and the end of the Third Quarter.

Long, straight blonde hair spilling past her shoulders and framing her gorgeous face, Lauren certainly had the looks to keep any of her male colleagues from complaining. She had been a cheerleader in high school and a member of the dance team at Vermont State, and seven years later remained every bit the goddess she had been then. She was a bit of an exercise freak - or at least had been, before her entire life had been consumed by Cortland Menswear - and her slender, toned body attested to the fact that she spent a good portion of her time outside of work in the gym. Her breasts looked disproportionate to the rest of her body – full, ripe, and perky, the stuff of male fantasies. Her pussy, on display since Tuesday, was adorned with a thin, vertical strip of blonde pubic hair; Lauren had trimmed and sculpted that first night, concerned that if her coworkers were going to see her in the nude, she would want to leave a good impression.

There were approximately twenty-five other people who worked with Lauren in Suite 2600, twenty-five other people who'd gotten to know see a side of her she had successfully to that point been able to hide beneath a layer of clothes. Most had gone home for the evening, as the clock was ticking closer and closer to midnight. But, despite the fact that Lauren had hoped for a little time to herself before bed, she'd been joined by four of her female colleagues for a grown-up sleepover in the office. 

Not all of them were grown-ups, exactly. Jessica Braeburn was just twenty years old. The dirty blonde had taken summer classes that year, freeing her up for a full-time internship with Evelyn Apparel that fall. Somehow, Lauren doubted that this was what Columbia had in mind when Jessica had told them about the internship. She had shed the clothes she'd been wearing earlier in the day, and was now dressed in a pistachio green lace camisole and a matching pair of boyshort panties. Both items had been designed and manufactured by Evelyn Apparel's lingerie unit, Eve Intimates, and delivered in a box with similar items to Lauren's office that morning. 

Lauren's secretary, Ginger Gold, had found an outfit for herself in the box, as well. The dark-haired girl, only a few months younger than Lauren herself, had donned a purple, floral lace flyaway babydoll and a pair of purple bikini-cut panties. Both were made from a semitransparent mesh, material that allowed full view of the girl's dark nipples to anyone who lingered on her body for more a quick, casual glance. Slipping into lingerie hadn't been Ginger's idea, but the tough, Jewish Brooklynite was more adventurous and more of a party girl than anyone Lauren knew.

Amy Melrose, on the other hand, had to be cajoled and threatened out of her work clothes. The brunette, whose own thirtieth birthday had been the week before, had been one of Lauren's closest friends in the Commercial Transactions group since day one. They'd been hired at approximately the same time, Lauren out of Penn and Amy out of Duke, but even though Amy was every bit as smart as the blonde, she lacked self-confidence and a certain amount of boldness that had allowed Lauren to progress more quickly up the corporate ladder. Tantalizingly attractive in her own right, Amy was wearing a white satin slip, trimmed with black lace. Though hidden from view, Lauren knew she was also wearing a pair of white satin and black lace panties, also fished from the box of lingerie beneath Lauren's desk. 

Amy wasn't the first of the group to wear that outfit that evening, however. Rachel Wilks, thirty-two years old and perhaps Lauren's best friend in Suite 2600, had shown up in the conference room wearing the slip earlier that night. The redhead taken off her brown pantsuit and donned the lingerie in an effort to empathize and demonstrate solidarity with her naked, blonde friend. Lauren knew there was more to it, though, as Rachel had confessed she'd been getting turned on by the public displays of undress and various embarrassments Lauren had suffered since Tuesday. Not that Lauren could really fault her – she'd have been lying if she said her pussy wasn't the least bit moist at the idea of stalking the halls of her workplace. 

Rachel, though, was now seated across the table from Lauren, and appeared every bit as naked as the blonde. Her breasts hung down over the paperwork Rachel was initialing, the table shielding her from the waist down. Lauren knew the girl had on a zebra-print pair of thong panties, black and white stripes recalling the orange and black stripes on the vibrator Lauren's psychiatrist had prescribed for her "condition." Rachel knew about the toy – in fact, she'd fished it out of the pussy of a post-orgasmic Lauren Laframboise earlier that afternoon. Lauren had cum in front of her unexpectedly at lunch, intentionally in the supply closet while Rachel stood guard and listened in, again in the partially-flooded men's bathroom while Rachel distracted Danny Baldwin, and once more on the floor of the kitchen while Rachel watched and talked dirty to Lauren as she did so. It was fair to say that their relationship had evolved over the last twelve hours – Lauren wasn't quite sure how to describe it or even begin to contemplate where it might be heading. But she trusted Rachel, and that led to an intimacy between the two, without every having to actually "be intimate." 

As midnight approached, the girls could see light at the end of the tunnel, in terms of the contract itself. Ginger, though, announced that it was time to call it a night. She was met with protests, as Lauren knew she only had a few more hours to go. 

"You'll have tomorrow morning," the dark-haired girl assured her boss. "Everyone's already seen you naked, anyways. A few more hours aren't going to hurt." She stood, and took a few steps towards the door. "How many times are you going to turn thirty?" 

Lauren groaned. 

"I think a celebratory drink is called for," the secretary continued. "I assume my tequila is still in your office?" 

Lauren wanted to be done with Cortland Menswear and the acquisition contract as soon as possible, but it no longer consumed her as much as it had earlier in the week. She thought back to the afternoon in the emergency room, when even as she was choking for air, she had been thinking about the contract. Even as her skin burned and she should have been worried for her life, she was still running through liability clauses in her head. Not so, any more. Her mind drifted now and then, thinking about the last time she'd cum, or worried about when she might cum next. Perhaps her body had gotten what it had been looking for in the first place – psychic relief from her work. 

"Fine," the blonde conceded. "One drink." 

Ginger squealed, and slipped out of the conference room. 

"It's too bad we can't sneak out for a drink somewhere else," Jessica said absent-mindedly, staring out the window. "Lauren's been stuck in the office since Tuesday."

"There aren't too many places that we can go in the city dressed like this," Rachel observed.

"Well, we could always get dressed," Jessica answered, and then immediately apologized to Lauren. "We could get a private room or something..."

"We're going out tomorrow night," the blonde replied, "to celebrate the contract being over and done with, my birthday, and my recovery." 

"Yeah," the intern agreed. "I just felt bad, you being cooped up here in this suite for the past couple of days." 

"Wait!" Rachel yelped. "There is somewhere we could go!"

Lauren didn't care to hear Rachel's suggestion. She had established a certain level of comfort in the cozy confines of Suite 2600, and she didn't want to subject herself to the humiliation of going anywhere else. "No, no, no. We're fine here. Let's just have a drink, and get back to work, or go to bed, or whatever." 

"The 39th floor," the redhead announced. "Investor Relations. It's got a view of the park, and I think you can even see the Hudson out the other side."  

Amy sprung to Lauren's defense. "Rachel, it's still only midnight. People could still be here." 

Rachel smiled wickedly. "Nope. Ginger says the entire floor is being renovated right now. Nobody up there. The construction guys go home at five." 

"And how exactly do you know that?" Amy asked. 

Rachel shrugged, her breasts rising and falling with her shoulders. "They're construction guys. They don't work late." 

"No, Rachel, no," Lauren said, shaking her head. "I'm perfectly fine here." 

"Oh, come on!" the redhead whined as Ginger returned with the unopened bottle of tequila. Hoping to find an ally in the fun-loving secretary, Rachel pled her case, and to Lauren's horror, Ginger agreed. 

"It'll be empty," the secretary assured her boss. Referring to the tattooed IT guy, she offered, "Brian and I were up there last week. Empty." 

"And what exactly were you doing up there with Brian Pinova?" Lauren asked. 

Ginger made the motion of zipping her lips, but suggested, "It'll be fun."

"No! No! Guys, please!" the blonde begged. "I don't want to go up there." 

Rachel had mischief in her eyes. "What if I get naked, too?" 

"How, exactly, does that make it more appealing?" 

Lauren's fellow Assistant General Counsel shrugged again. "That way, you're not the only one who's naked." 

All the color disappeared from Amy's face. "We're not going up there like this, are we?" 

"We're not going up there at all, Amy," Lauren insisted. To Rachel, she said, "We're not. And I signed a waiver, anyways. I mean, God forbid we were to get caught, at least there's some sort of explanation, something on file about why I'm naked. Bramley'd flip out if you all are naked or half-naked or whatever, and not least of all because of any sort of liability that Evelyn Apparel might have." 

Rachel was determined, however. Drawing from Lauren's own experiences on Wednesday morning, the redhead pulled a discarded piece of paper from the recycling bin, scrawled "I promise not to sue" across the sheet, and signed her name below. Having proven her point, she found the waistband of her zebra-print thong with her thumbs, and wriggled out of the panties while still seated. Bunching them into a ball that only seemed to emphasize how little material they were comprised of in the first place, she set them down on the conference table. 

"It's your thirtieth birthday," she explained. "Live a little." 

Lauren had no desire to leave the suite, but she supposed she could see the point Rachel was making. She had only a few more minutes left of her twenties, which made this a fairly important milestone in her life. And as sad as her life had been over the past few days, it seemed sadder to sit around the same conference table she'd been slaving over on the Cortland contract. It might actually be nice to celebrate her birthday somewhere different, as Suite 2600 had served as her prison – even before her psychosomatic breakdown on Tuesday afternoon. 

But Rachel certainly didn't need to be completely naked, and Lauren was about to make this point when Ginger reached for the makeshift waiver that the redhead had drawn up. With Rachel pushing the boundaries as much as she had been that evening, it was easy to forget that Ginger was probably the most naughty and impish girl in the room. The Jewish girl signed her name, and quickly shed both the purple bikini panties and the babydoll itself. Her lingerie was pushed to center of the table next to Rachel's discarded thong. 

A beat passed, and then another, none of the girls saying anything to each other. But Jessica reached for the hand-scrawled contract and signed her own name under Ginger's, remarking, "This is just like the naked quad run my freshman year." Soon enough, the twenty-year-old's boyshorts and camisole had been placed on the conference table. 

All eyes turned to Amy next, but Amy was already shaking her head and signaling "no" with her hands. "I'll go like this," she allowed, gesturing to the slip, "but I'm not getting on that elevator naked." 

This seemed concession enough to Rachel, who had intimidated Amy repeatedly earlier in the evening. The redhead pushed away from the table and stood, Lauren unable to help noticing her friend's pubic hair once more, trimmed in the same thin strip that Lauren herself had styled above her own slit. The older woman pointed in the direction of both Ginger and Rachel, asking, "Stockings?" 

The secretary and the intern both nodded, and Rachel disappeared down the hall to pull new treasures from Julie Lambourne's box of unmentionables. Amy muttered that she couldn't believe they were actually going to do this, and Lauren sighed, "This might be easier if I had a drink BEFORE we went upstairs." 

"That can be arranged," Ginger answered, twisting the cap from the Cuervo and pouring a shot-and-a-half's worth of alcohol into the blonde's empty water glass. 

Amy took a deep breath, and said, "Maybe we could have one all the way around." 

Ginger nodded, and B-lined for the kitchen. "I'll get some cups." 

And so, five girls – four of them stark naked, save for Eve Intimates hosiery – stood waiting for the elevator at the elevator banks between Suites 2600 and 2650. They each had a shot or two's worth of liquid courage in their bellies, and nervous giggles went all the way around. Lauren and Ginger each wore thigh-high black fishnets, Lauren's longer legs looking a bit more alluring, but the secretary's unquestionably sexy nonetheless. Rachel's pair was white, and while they weren't fishnets, they did have a thick, floral lace design around the top of each. Jessica, meanwhile, was wearing black, but had raspberry-colored ruffle-tops around either thigh. None wore garter belts, entrusting the combination of nylon and spandex at the top to keep the stockings in place. 

The elevator pinged upon arrival, and Lauren was faced with their reflection in the doors after they'd all boarded and begun ascending to the 39th Floor. Stockings, heels, and jewelry, she looked every bit the part of an adult movie star, and the fact that she was surrounded by three similarly attired girls only seemed to drive that point home. 

Lauren risked another glance at her secretary. She'd forgotten the dark-haired girl had a lower back tattoo, a flirty little blossoming flower with vines that extended into a V. It was sexy. It was feminine. Lauren wondered what she'd look like with a similar tattoo – what she'd get, where she'd put it on her body – even as her eyes continued to follow the curves of Ginger's body. Her pubic mound was shaving completely bald, nothing but bare skin above her pussy. She'd been spilling out of the babydoll she'd had on earlier, and for good reason – Lauren estimated the shorter girl had D-cups, at least. Her areolas were dark, darker than Lauren's own, but her nipples were standing straight out and at attention. 

A quick visual survey around the elevator, though, showed that only Jessica's nipples were still at peace, though Amy's slip prevented Lauren from confirming any sort of stimulation on the part of the brunette. The intern looked the least nervous or affected of them all. Even though she'd only been with the Commercial Transactions group for the last six or seven weeks, and was ten years younger than anyone else in the elevator, she sounded like she had more experience doing this sort of thing than any of the others. After mentioned the naked quad run her freshman year, she starting joking about a "naked party" she'd attended off-campus the following Fall semester, and the evening of Strip Jenga and Strip Twister in the dorms, and the nude beach she and suitemates had ventured onto during Spring Break. Though Lauren had been the one in the nude for the past few days, it seemed Jessica might be the exhibitionist of the group. Despite the fact that Lauren had gone to college in Vermont with its lax nudity laws, she couldn't string together the clothing optional stories that the dirty blonde was now recounting. 

Jessica, apparently, wasn't the least bit ashamed of her body. In looking at the intern, Lauren could perhaps understand why. She had a similar build to Lauren herself, right down to the similar size of their chests. She was thin, maybe even a bit too thin for Lauren's tastes, and had a belly button piercing that recalled Lauren's own a few years back. Like Ginger, she was shaved bald around her pussy, and Lauren began to wonder whether she should have taken all her hair off the other morning, whether she were the last few women in the office without a Brazilian. 

As Lauren pondered the intricacies of pubic styling, the elevator doors slid open on the 39th floor. The girls were greeted by unfinished concrete floors, exposed metal studs and beams, and a dark, open space lit only by the Manhattan skyline out the windows. Lauren felt comfortable that there wouldn't be anyone still on the floor, not in the darkness, but not so confident in that theory that she didn't let Rachel and Ginger exit the elevator first. 




Soma Ch. 03



Whatever they were doing to the Investor Relations offices, they were apparently still in the initial stages. From Lauren's vantage point a few steps out of the elevator, she could see the skyline through the windows on either side of the building. Studs stood here or there, demarcating where drywall (stacked neatly in piles to Lauren's left) would eventually be hung. But, for now, the 39th floor was mostly open space, divided into offices and conference rooms in the blueprints only. 

"Ladies," Rachel said, stepping into the darkness towards the western side of the building, Central Park just barely visible beyond. Stockings hadn't been the only thing that the redhead had retrieved from the far end of the office, and so she carried five pink party hats with her as she scouted out locations to celebrate Lauren's birthday. Sure, the hats been leftovers from the Antonovkas' office baby shower a few weeks ago, and Rachel had purposely left the blue hats back in her office, but they served the purpose at hand. 

Lauren's eyes began to adjust to the dim light, motion sensor fluorescents not blinking on overhead as they did on the 26th floor. She followed her friend to the far windows, momentarily concerned about someone spotting them from a neighboring building. But she remembered that the windows this high in the Lane-Russet Building were no less reflective than those back in her own office, so she decided she'd enjoy the view while she was here. 

The redhead found a makeshift table by the window, a single plank stretched across two sawhorses. Ginger decided that this would serve as their bar, and put the bottle of tequila and three empty coffee mugs down on top, Jessica adding the two additional cups that she had carried. Rachel handed around the cheap, conical birthday hats, Lauren snapping hers into place as the other girls did the same. 

She felt ridiculous, of course, standing in a construction area in nothing but stockings, heels, and a pink birthday hat. But then, Rachel, Jessica, and Ginger were all dressed in the exact same way, and apparently the pressure of not conforming finally got to Amy. 

Though no one had said anything to her about her decision to stay in her white slip, Amy snapped. "Okay, okay!" she yelled. Without any further explanation, she found the hem of the slip, yanked it up over her head, and deposited it on the plank, beside where Ginger was filling the glasses with tequila. Amy then wriggled out of the matching panties that Rachel had given her, exposing a triangular, but closely trimmed, brown bush. She huffed as she slammed the panties down on top of the slip, as if the four other girls had done nothing but torment her since they'd been on the 26th floor. 

"Feel better?" Rachel asked wryly. 

Amy fidgeted a bit, unsure of exactly where to put her hands. But she heaved a sigh of relief, did a playful half-curtsy to Rachel, and said, "Alright, let's do this before I lose my nerve." 

Their shot glasses were an odd mish-mash of coffee mugs and water glasses, but the girls clinked them together as Rachel toasted, "To Lauren, who's willing to flash her cooter around the office for a title change and a raise." 

It was good-natured, and Lauren laughed as she gulped down the alcohol. She smiled at her friends, standing naked around her, and knew her thirtieth birthday would be one to remember. 

With the Manhattan skyline off in the distance, the five girls laughed and chatted and drank for the better part of an hour. There were no mixers, no limes, no salt, so the girls took sip after sip of the throat-burning tequila, and Lauren could feel the warmth in her chest. They told stories and offered office gossip. They told Lauren what some of the other Commercials Transactions suitemates were saying about her, almost all of which involved expressions of attraction from the men in the office and a blend of respect, empathy, and jealousy from the women. Jessica found it hysterical that Lauren had been a cheerleader in high school, and with a few more shots of tequila in her, Lauren was even cajoled into performing a quick routine – in the nude, of course. 

Tongues got looser and things got more risqué as time passed and alcohol consumption increased. Lauren pointed out Ginger's lack of pubic hair, and joked about whether or not she, Lauren, should take all hers off tomorrow morning. They talked about how much they'd have liked to have one of their male colleagues join them for drinks that evening, most everyone agreeing that Dmitri and Ben Davis were the men in the office they'd most like to see naked. At one point, Ginger pressed her tits up against the glass windows and screamed out to the city of New York. And, just when the level of sexual tension could not possibly get any higher, Lauren was playfully spanked by Amy, of all people, for saying something naughty about Amy's last boyfriend. 

But as midnight gave way to one, and one gave way to two, all five girls were feeling the effects of an empty bottle of tequila. They were going to have to get up early in the morning so that they could shower in the men's room, a prospect that Amy seemed especially excited about. And they were dragging, the intern almost unable to keep her eyes open any longer. Gathering their things, the girls wished the city goodnight, waited for their elevator, and descended back down to the 26th floor. 

"Shit, shit, shit," Rachel slurred as the elevator doors pinged open in front of Suite 2600. 

"What?" Amy asked, looking worried. She was still completely naked, carrying the slip and panties in her right hand. 

"I left the empty bottle upstairs," the redhead explained. 

"Whatever," Ginger replied. "It's empty. It's not a big deal."

"No, no," Rachel insisted. She locked eyes with Lauren, and said, "I'm going to go get it." 

Oh, the blonde realized, she's giving me a cover. Her pussy was sopping wet, and there had been a moment or two upstairs when she thought she was going to lose control, most notably after the slap she'd received from Amy. She wished she could have just gone to her office, shut the door, and used the vibrator. Hell, she wished she could have just slipped back to her office and retrieved the vibrator for a trip back upstairs. But they'd made sleeping arrangements as they drank – Lauren, Rachel, and Amy in Lauren's office, while Ginger and Jessica crashed on the floor of Rachel's office next door – and Lauren doubted she'd have more than a few seconds to herself to do either. 

"I'll come with you," Lauren offered slyly. 

"Do you want me to come with you?" Amy asked. She was very clearly the most drunk among them, her inhibitions having dissipated over the course of the night. 

Lauren winced. "No," she said emphatically. "I wanted a few minutes for girl talk with Rachel." 

Amy looked a bit wounded at the idea that she wasn't going to be included in whatever Lauren planned on sharing with Rachel, but Lauren cared less about the brunette's feelings at that moment as she cared about the opportunity to get herself off. If she didn't take care of herself soon, she'd be orgasming on the floor of her office while Amy watched, and Lauren wasn't quite sure that Amy would ever be able to get over the awkwardness and embarrassment that might cause. 

"Thank you," Lauren said as the doors slid shut once more, the blonde and the redhead alone once more. 

"The 'girl talk' piece was good," Rachel replied. "That buys us a few more minutes." 

"Not that I really think I need much time," Lauren giggled. "I'm so God damned wet." She leaned back against the rear of the elevator, spreading her legs slightly as she did so. Her fingertips found her clit, and she closed her eyes as the pleasure began. Only then, though, did she realize the elevator was going down instead of up. 

"Rachel! Rachel?!! Where are we going?!!" 

"Third floor," the redhead offered defiantly. "The studio, for the photo shoots."

For one, the thought of descending so close to street level sent shivers up Lauren's spine. But she was also worried about being caught. "What if there's someone in there, Rachel? We know the 39th floor is empty!" 

"No one's here," Rachel insisted, sounding fairly confident about it. "And there are beds."

Beds?

"I, for one," the redhead proclaimed, "don't want to get myself off on concrete, with sawdust and drywall powder all over me." 

So this wasn't for Lauren alone, after all. The idea that she was about to go masturbate with Rachel only made Lauren that much more horny. She'd gotten herself off in the kitchen, in the men's room, and the supply closet – a bed didn't seem all that necessary, even if the idea of one did seem kind of nice. It wasn't a desire for comfort that caused her to give into Rachel's little detour, though. No, she was being led by her pussy, and as drunk and sexually charged as she was, the titillation of getting herself off while Rachel did the same was too much to resist. 

The elevator doors slid open on the third floor. Lauren's fears of someone else being there were diminished by the fact that the motion sensor lights were off, and only clicked on as the pair of naked girls stepped into the elevator lobby. There was a reception desk to Lauren's right, but the thing she noticed first about the third floor was that the ceilings were higher than anywhere else in the building, presumably for lighting issues in the studios themselves. 

"I'm sooo fucking horny," Rachel announced as the slipped past the reception desk and down the hall. Lauren wasn't sure if the redhead's honesty was flowing from the bonding they'd done earlier in the evening, or simply from the tequila, but she didn't doubt the truth of her friend's exclamation. 

They peered through the window of the first studio they passed. There was camera equipment and lighting scattered throughout the studio, but it appeared that the set was a bland living room scene – couches, a coffee table, house lamps, and so on. While the couch looked inviting enough to Lauren, it apparently wasn't what Rachel was looking for, and so the pair walked on. 

Evelyn Apparel shot their ads and catalogs at any number of sites. In flipping through the pages of the latest Eden catalog, Lauren recognized the same, seaside villa that had served as a set for pictures in a previous Eve Intimates photo shoot. Eve Intimates, in particular, always seemed to be pushing the envelope in its catalogs, and they'd raised eyebrows shooting lingerie ads on beaches, in the middle of crowded streets, and even once on the hardwood floors at Madison Square Garden. But, for the most part, the photo shoots tended to be conducted on site, here on the third floor, with mock-ups of living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms. 

Of course, Eve Intimates had a well-deserved reputation for producing lingerie catalogs that bordered on pornography. For instance, as they peered through the window of the next studio, Lauren wondered what a doctor's office had to do with selling bras and panties. More confounding, though, was Rachel's decision to bypass the welcoming doctor's table that sat inside, and Lauren contemplated just stopping and fucking herself there in the hall. 

"God, I wish I were still with Jon," the blonde sighed. "And not because I miss Jon, but because I'd have someone to call and come fuck me." She pictured his cock, remembered how it felt sliding in and out of her pussy, and knew she wasn't going to be able to keep peeking in studio windows for much longer. 

"Sex with somebody else," Rachel moaned, peeking in but passing a studio set up with a catwalk to look like a fashion runway, or maybe the inside of a strip club, "would be a welcome change." 

"Even just to be eaten out," the blonde continued, her eyes practically rolling back in her head. She imagined Jon Derby's head between her legs, his tongue going rapid-fire against her clit. 

"Here," Rachel finally announced, opening the door into the next studio. "I was looking for a real bedroom, but this'll have to do."

There were no automatic lights that clicked on as the girls entered the room. But the studio was cast in an eerie red light that emanated from the fire exit sign, and Rachel was able to find an on-switch for one of the big, industrial lamps that were pointed in the direction of the set. 

Lauren had imagined a dark bedroom, with a king-sized bed and expensive wooden furniture. From the sound of it, Rachel had been picturing something similar. Instead, they found themselves looking at cinder block walls, painted white and covered in teeny-bop posters. There were two computer desks with cute looking Apples sitting in the midst of open textbooks and scattered notebook pages. And, to one side, there was a set of bunk-beds, standard issue college long. This wasn't a bedroom. It was a dorm room. 

Which one of them would take the top bunk?

Lauren didn't much care, and didn't much want to wait. She just wanted to lie flat, spread her legs, and diddle herself while her friends did the same a few feet away. 

"Wait, no," Rachel said, grabbing Lauren by the arm. 

Lauren groaned. 

"I'll do you if you do me." 

Lauren wasn't sure if she'd heard Rachel correctly, but it was enough to stop her in her tracks. 

"I mean, say no," the redhead stammered, her breath reeking of tequila. "I've just been thinking about since upstairs, and it doesn't have to be weird." 

"What?" Lauren asked. She still hadn't quite processed what Rachel was proposing. 

"We don't have to kiss, or anything like that," Rachel pressed her case. "It's not like a gay thing. And for you, it's like, 'clinical,' right?"

Lauren swallowed hard. She found herself agreeing with her friend, if hypothetically. "No, no, right."

"It's just, it's been a while since I've...had...that," she stammered, "and we both know it's been a while since you've...been with someone else, you know?"

Lauren nodded dumbly. 

"We could just do it quick, take turns, it doesn't have to be weird." Rachel shrugged as nonchalantly as she could for emphasis. "I mean, it's just oral sex, right? It's a means to an end."

"Okay," Lauren said meekly. 

"It's fine if you think it's too weird," Rachel carried on, not hearing the blonde. "I mean, it is, technically, lesbian sex, but it doesn't make us lesbians. Right? No, of course not." 

"Okay," the blonde repeated, a little bit louder this time. 

Rachel still didn't hear. "It's not like...it's not like we're attracted to each other, you know? Which isn't to say I don't find you attractive, because you're gorgeous. I'd much rather be eaten out by a man, and I think you would, too. But, we're both here, and we both want it, right? Right?"

Lauren gave up trying to tell her friend that she was okay with this. Instead, she took Rachel by the hand, and led her to the edge of the lower bunk. 

Was she okay with this, though? Lauren wasn't quite sure. She seemed to be crossing a fairly well-defined line between heterosexual and homosexual behavior here. Inherent in being a heterosexual woman was the fact that you didn't have sex with other women, and yet Lauren found herself ready and willing to open her legs and let this particular woman eat her out. But a tongue was a tongue, wasn't it? There weren't male tongues and female tongues, just gender neutral tongues that happened to be attached to male or female bodies. There was absolutely no denying that Lauren could use a little cunnilingus, but the question was whether it mattered who supplied it. 

The idea had been broached, and there was no turning back at that point. Lauren couldn't very well finger herself now, not after the thought of being eaten out had been brought up. She'd been drinking, of course, but she felt more drunk on her own lust than she did on the tequila. She didn't exactly want to stick her tongue in another woman's pussy, even if it was Rachel's. But if that was the price to pay in exchange for getting eaten out herself? Maybe she could stomach it. 

They'd pushed so many boundaries that day. Lauren had cum in her office while Rachel watched. Rachel had admitted that Lauren was turning her on. Lauren had fucked herself on the kitchen floor while Rachel whispered about how slutty Lauren was. Rachel had been topless for the last six hours, and naked for the past two and change. What was one more boundary? Didn't they owe it to themselves to see their relationship through?

But it was just how wrong this was that made it seem so right. Just a few moments ago, the blonde had admitted to herself that she'd be turned on masturbating with one of her best friends. The more desperate and depraved this got, the hotter Lauren felt. 

"Who goes first?" Lauren asked breathily. 

Rachel, who seemed like she still wanted to justify this to Lauren, shook her head, and said, "I can do you first, if you want?"

"Good," the blonde replied. "I don't think I'd last if we did it the other way."

Lauren set herself down on the edge of the lower bed, and Rachel got to her knees in front of her. The blonde leaned back on the pink-and-white comforter, propped herself up on her elbows, and slowly opened her legs. The smell of pussy was overwhelming, but Lauren imagined it'd be much stronger once her nose was buried in Rachel's vagina. Rachel leaned forward, and seemed ready to start, but her hair fell into her face, and got in the way. She backed away to pull the red locks from her eyes, and Lauren exhaled in frustration. 

Glancing around the room, Rachel asked, "This is a girl's dorm right, right?"

Lauren's right hand found her pussy. She couldn't wait any longer. "I guess. What are you looking for?"

"Perfect," Rachel said, spotting what she wanted on one of the desks. Hanging on one of the desk lamps was a candy pink scrunchy, imprinted with little red and white hearts. As she slipped her hair into a ponytail with the elastic holding it in place, Rachel laughed, "Sexy, I know." 

It seemed to break the tension. Rachel got back to her knees in front of Lauren's open legs, winking at her and blowing a kiss. Lauren removed her hand from her clit, giggled once, and let her fingers instead begin to tease and play with her right nipple. 

There was no foreplay, no teasing. There was a moment of hesitation as Rachel leaned in to Lauren's pussy, perhaps having last minute second thoughts about what she was on the verge of doing. But any doubts disappeared by the wayside the moment the redhead's tongue touched pink, and both girls knew there was no turning back at that point. 

Lauren's hips bucked as Rachel's lips pressed against her open pussy. This was, presumably, Rachel's fist time eating out another woman. But she'd undoubtedly been on the receiving end of such a treatment on more than one occasion, and as a woman, seemed to know exactly what Lauren might want. From back to front, Rachel's tongue penetrated deep into the blonde's cunt, lingering only for a moment before the tip found the base of Lauren's clitoris. The redhead squeezed her friend's most intimate body part between her lips, even as her tongue traced circles around it. 

They made eye contact only once, Rachel glancing up to make sure that Lauren was enjoying what she was doing. Lauren leaned back fully onto the bed, letting her left hand now find her left breast, letting her left hand's fingers squeeze her left nipple. Lauren wanted to grab the back of Rachel's head with her right hand, pull her closer and deeper into her pussy, but resisted the urge. Instead, she grabbed the edge of the bed behind her, clinging to it white-knuckled and allowing her whole body to focus on what was happening between her legs. 

"Oh, fuck, Rachel," Lauren sighed. 

Rachel, for her part, positioned herself like an old pro, using her right hand to spread apart Lauren's pussy lips for better access. Her left squeezed the blonde's right buttock, the flesh giving beneath her grip. But she squirmed from the waist down, obviously wanting to have her turn. 




Soma Ch. 03



Lauren's hips continued to gyrate as Rachel's tongue moved back and forth across her clit. She yipped. She moaned. She sighed. She called out her friend's name, saying, "Rachel! Fuck, Rachel! Rachel! Rachel! Rachel!" 

And, just when Lauren thought she wasn't going to be able to take it any more, just when the pressure was beginning to build somewhere deep inside her, just when she was about start her climax, Rachel pulled away. 

"No! No! No!" Lauren screamed. Friendship be damned, she reached out with her right hand, grabbed the back of Rachel's head, and pulled her face back into her pussy. 

Rachel resisted, though, and began to stand up. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she smirked. "I just can't take it anymore – we can both go." 

Lauren's fingertips found her own pussy, desperately trying to maintain a hold on the orgasm she could feel slipping away. It wasn't much use, however, and Lauren knew that climax would have been built to once more. 

The redhead dashed across the room again, returning with another scrunchy. Same basic color scheme as the one in Rachel's hair – red, pink, and white – though this one was perhaps more red than pink, and instead of little hearts, it was covered in little kisses. She laughed as she handed it to the blonde, but Lauren's demeanor was anything but amused. Still, Lauren slipped her hand from her cunt just long enough to pull her hair back into a ponytail.

Rachel pushed her friend more fully onto the bed, lengthwise now instead of laying across it. It took a second for Lauren to realize what the redhead was doing, but any confusion disappeared when Rachel turned around and began to mount the blonde's face. Lauren spread her legs once more, and Rachel's tongue found her clit again without much difficulty. Lauren, in turn, stuck her own tongue deep into the folds of the redhead's pussy, the pair locked in sixty-nine on the lower bunk. 

Lauren had never tasted pussy before. Well, perhaps that was a lie. She'd tasted her own, on the breath of various boyfriends. This was different, though, her own tongue lapping away at another woman's clit. She wasn't quite sure how to describe the taste, but it was strong and powerful, and unquestioningly female. 

All sense of time disappeared. Seconds passed, minutes even. Lauren moaned, and Rachel did the same, but any vocalizations were drowned out by other girl's cunt. All the blonde could concentrate on was the bliss overwhelming her lower body, and it was all that she could do to keep licking the pussy of the girl on top of her. 

The pleasure continued to build – rising, rising, rising. Flesh on flesh, skin against skin, tongues on clits. 

Eventually, Lauren couldn't take it any longer. She squealed, and pulled away from Rachel just long enough to announce, "I'm going to...I'm going to finish!" 

Rachel, it seemed, knew exactly what she was going through. She, too, pulled away for just one second to agree. "I know! I know! I'm going to, too!" Lauren had had a head start, but Rachel was apparently an easy lay. Both girls reached climax at exactly the same point, writhing and squirming against one another. Neither relented in their appointed duties, however, continuing to dart their tongues over one another even as waves of sexual bliss overtook them. 

As the last aftershocks of their respective orgasms died away, Rachel rolled panting off of her friend. She summoned just enough energy to turn around so that the two girls were facing the same way, their hot and sweaty bodies pressing up against one another on the narrow bed. 

"I know what I said before," Rachel panted, turning to face Lauren, "But I can't not kiss you right now..."

The blonde didn't resist. The blonde didn't want to resist. She embraced her friend, their lips meeting and their tongues wrapping around one another. Lauren could still taste Rachel's pussy in her mouth, but now could taste her own on Rachel's breath. The kiss was strong, passionate, and wet, the two girls having gone from being friends to being lovers. 

***

Lauren awoke the next morning atop a pink-and-white comforter adorned with flirty little hearts, Rachel stark naked alongside her. For one brief, horrifying moment, Lauren panicked, fearing that she'd fallen asleep in the mock dorm room on the third floor. But a deep breath and a look around at her surroundings confirmed that she was back in her office, lying atop the comforter that she and Rachel had liberated from downstairs. 

The alarm on her cell phone continued to chime until the blonde reached up and silenced it. It was brighter in her office now than when she and Rachel had gone to bed a little less than four hours earlier, but the sun hadn't yet risen above the horizon, and the office was cast in the dull, pre-dawn light. 

Rachel and Amy both rolled over, yawning and demanding to know if they had to get up. Both girls were stark naked, like Lauren herself. Amy had been wearing the slip she'd had on earlier in the evening when Lauren and Rachel had returned to the 26th floor, as Jessica and Ginger had decided against sleeping in the nude. Amy had allowed herself to be talked out of sleeping naked, the secretary and the intern wondering aloud what might happen if they overslept, or if some industrious soul arrived at work early the following morning. Lauren was physically incapable of putting clothes on, though, and Rachel seemed unconcerned by her own nudity. Amy, more than a little tipsy and emboldened by the presence of her two naked friends, had shed the slip once more, and sprawled out naked on the far side of Lauren's desk. 

Rachel and Lauren had arrived on the twenty-sixth floor bearing gifts, physically exhausted but giggling and seemingly in on some secret the other girls couldn't fathom. They'd yanked the comforters from the two bunk beds, grabbed the two pillows, and even lifted an additional pair of pillows from the more traditional bedroom set that just happened to be in the next studio down the hall. Rachel had forgotten about the tequila bottle altogether – presumably, it was still sitting on the wooden plank on the 39th floor. Instead, she explained that she and Lauren had gone on a bit of a scavenger hunt to bring back bedding for the other girls. 

Ginger and Jessica had, as planned, sacked out on the floor of Rachel's office. Jessica had put back on the pistachio green camisole and matching boyshorts, while Ginger had slipped back into the flyaway babydoll and pink bikini panties. They'd taken Ginger's sleeping bag and spread it out, sleeping head to toe on top of it. 

In Lauren's office, Amy had wrapped herself in one of the girly comforters in front of the desk, while Lauren and Rachel slept atop the other on the far side. Unlike the secretary and the intern, however, the two Assistant General Counsels had slept face to face, and had even managed to sneak in one final kiss goodnight without Amy noticing. 

They had to get up, shower, and dress before people started trickling into the office. Lauren apologized as she woke everyone up, but it wasn't as if they'd be able to hack into the sprinkler system and shower in the men's room once their colleagues had arrived. They were more than welcome to go back to sleep afterwards. 

Lauren booted up her computer, and looked back down at the naked redhead rubbing sleep from her eyes. After their little lesbian tryst, they'd rushed themselves out of bed, fearing the other girls would get suspicious if they were gone too long. One of Lauren's stockings had been at her ankles, but she had managed to keep on her heels throughout the girls' sixty-nine in true porn star fashion. She took the fishnets off afterwards, however, and put her heels back on. Rachel did the same with the white stockings she'd been wearing, though she, at least, had left her sandals by the door. The redhead used one of the balled up white stockings to clean herself of the saliva and pussy juice around her crotch, and offered the other to Lauren for the blonde to do the same. Both sets of stockings were deposited into the trashcan in the corner of the dorm room set, even though the girls weren't entirely sure it was really trash or just a prop. 

Lauren wasn't quite sure what to say to Rachel this morning. Things had changed between them. Fueled by alcohol and lust, they'd destroyed any boundaries they'd had before, moving beyond friendship to some weird, confused place. And it wasn't even as if it was a simple case of a one night stand between colleagues, as Rachel's naked breasts and exposed pussy drove home the fact that Lauren had gone gay, if just for the night. There was no need to spend too much time thinking about it, however, the blonde told herself as she pulled up Brian Pinova's interface and executed the commands. 

All five girls, in various states of undress, slipped out the side door of the suite. They had with them Lauren's shampoo, conditioner, and other toiletries, Lauren's faded gym towel, and a handful of dish towels that the ever resourceful Ginger Gold had stolen from the kitchen. Amy and Jessica both wanted to use the ladies' room before showering, and though Lauren felt the need to join them, Ginger and Rachel were both already in on the secret use of the men's room's drains. The secretary undressed quickly in the hall as the intern and Senior Legal Counsel disappeared around the corner. Ginger followed Lauren and Rachel into the gentlemen's bathroom. 

The water, as it had been the previous morning, was warmer than expected. Which wasn't to say that it was warm, exactly, but rather that it wasn't ice cold. Room temperature, one might say. 

"This water's like room temperature," Ginger observed. 

Lauren squatted over the drain in the center of the room while her secretary did the same at the far drain. Rachel took the blonde's place when she was done, finishing up just a moment before the three girls were joined by Amy and Jessica. With Jessica shedding her panties and camisole in the hall, all five were naked once more.

The mood wasn't quite as bubbly and playful as it had been the night before, on the 39th floor. But nor was it terribly awkward, as they had all seen each other naked just a few hours earlier. They soaped up, they rinsed, they washed their hair, all while making small talk and complaining about the lingering effects of the tequila. Jessica put the question to the room as to whether the others thought she was hung over, or whether she might still be drunk. 

Had it been the liquor? Lauren asked herself that question as she watched her redheaded friend lather her soft skin with Lauren's body wash. Had the tequila made her gay? Or had it been a brand new symptom of her psychosomatic stress disorder? She laughed and joked along with her fellow lawyer, but avoided eye contact as much as she could. 

God, Lauren wanted this contract over with. She just wanted to put her clothes back out, slip out the door, and go home. Maybe she'd spend the weekend dressed in five or six layers, lounging around her apartment, and yes, maybe diddling herself with her doctor-prescribed toy. Lauren gritted her teeth and forced herself to think about the contract again, terrified that she'd collapse in a writhing, orgasming mess like she had the previous morning. 

She escaped the shower unscathed, but knew that it was in her own best interest to sneak off to somewhere private in the near future. Would she ask Rachel to play her lookout again? Or would that be too awkward? 

The five girls dried themselves off in the hall outside the men's room, making the best of the small, linen dish towels. Ginger and Jessica grabbed their lingerie from the ground, and after confirming with Lauren that they could keep it, slipped off to their cubicles down the hall to get dressed. Amy grabbed her slip and panties from Lauren's office before excusing herself to do the same, leaving just Lauren and Rachel alone once more. 

"I'm going to go take care of..." Lauren began, her eyes darting back and forth, landing on everything in room but Rachel's, "...my thing." 

Rachel seemed annoyed, but offered, "Do you want me to do it for you?"

The blonde shook her head. "No, no, I think I'll be okay. I haven't used the vibrator since before dinner last night, anyways..."

"Do you want me to come play lookout, then?"

Lauren shook her head again. "It's pretty empty here. I think I can find a quiet corner."

The redhead looked more annoyed than hurt, but managed to shrug, and left Lauren alone in her office. 

Lauren didn't have time to worry about Rachel's feelings, however. She needed to cum, and then get right down to work – she could have the contract licked by noon if she applied herself. More than that, proofing and initialing would serve as a distraction, allowing Lauren a few hours to avoid thinking about everything that had happened the night before. 

Jessica and Ginger were presumably in their cubicles, and Rachel and Amy in their offices, but the blonde knew that she wasn't going to be able to get herself off in her own office – the damned glass window to the hall prevented any sort of privacy. The men's room was soaking wet, which wasn't in and of itself a problem so much as the fact that it was now no longer off-limits to the other girls. She could use the women's room, but what happened if Jessica or Amy or Ginger came to do their make-up and heard a steady buzz and guttural moans emanating from one of the stalls? There was the storage closet again, she supposed, or the stairwell. But, as Lauren extracted the tiger-print vibrator from her pen and pencil drawer, a wicked thought flashed into her brain, and she knew that her better judgment would be no match for her libido. 

Her hair still dripping wet, and the vibrator concealed inside an empty, white binder, Lauren tiptoed down the hall of Suite 2600 to Dick Bramley's office. She knew what she was about to do was morally reprehensible, that it was so beyond naughty and dirty, that it was near criminal. What if Danny or Dmitri or Bramley himself had dared to masturbate in Lauren's office? How disgusting would that be? Well, maybe not disgusting if it were Dmitri. The thought of her Russian-American colleague, naked and jerking off at Lauren's desk was surprisingly titillating, and Lauren knew what she'd be fantasizing about as the toy slid in and out of her pussy. 

Bramley's corner office was the only office in the suite that wasn't exposed to the hall through an interior window. Of course, as Lauren closed the door behind her, she took note of the fact that it was exposed on two sides to the city of New York. It was reflective glass, she told herself, without admitting that the idea of getting off in such a public-feeling place was a bit of a turn on, as well. 

She settled into the leather office chair behind her boss's desk, her bare buttocks, still not entirely dry, sticking to the material beneath her. She slouched, positioning her pussy at the very edge of the seat, and spread her legs. Not entirely satisfied, she propped her legs up on the desk in front of her, still spaced far, far apart, and leaned back in the chair. With the slight turn of the toy's knob, a buzz began, and Lauren's whole body quaked with anticipation. 

With her left hand, Lauren reached down to her pussy, slipped a finger into her slit to see how wet she was – very wet – and began using her fingers to gently massage her clit. With her right, she held the toy at the entrance to her pussy, the gentle vibrations touching upon her lips. Wasting no time, the vibrator was inside her, and Lauren flicked her wrist back and forth, drawing it in and out as she did so. Her left index and middle fingers were circling and teasing her clitoris, and Lauren began to moan. 

She imagined herself coming in some morning, and finding Dmitri naked in her office. Instead of stopping him, however, Lauren slipped her panties down her legs, hiked up the business skirt she was wearing, and spread herself across her desk, welcoming him inside of her. Somehow, though, the fantasy got jumbled and mixed up, and in the blink of an eye, it was Lauren who was stark naked, and Dmitri fully dressed. Fully dressed, that is, aside from the enormous cock protruding from his open fly. 

As Fantasy Dmitri pounded Fantasy Lauren's saturated cunt, the real-life Lauren moved the vibrator faster and faster in and out of her own soaking cunt. The tiger print was a blur, and Lauren yipped out loud less than a minute into the exercise, an orgasm already beginning to build inside of her. 

Just as quickly as the image of a naked Dmitri had been replaced by a mostly clothed Dmitri, Lauren looked up to see Dmitri Antonovka replaced by Natalia Antonovka. Though surprised, Lauren didn't slow down in the least, Dmitri's wife continuing to jack-hammer away at Lauren's pussy with a tiger-print, strap-on dildo. She was dressed as her husband had been from the waist up, complete with a suit-jacket and tie, but was naked save for the strap-on from the waist down. 

Natalia Antonovka was no mortal woman, either – she was a deity. Lauren was certainly attractive in her own right – long blonde hair, a slim body, and a gorgeous face that screamed All-American Girl-Next-Door Captain-of-the-Cheerleading-Team. Natalia was at another level, however, a fashion model turned photographer, with high cheekbones, perfect teeth, and eyes that seemed to beckon with primal, sexual energy. In real life, she was pregnant, but in the fantasy that Lauren's subconscious was running away with, the only lumps from beneath Dmitri's shirt were Natalia's enormous breasts. 

Natalia pulled the strap-on out, leaving Lauren with a momentary sense of absolute emptiness. But she replaced it with her long, slender fingers, fingers that probed the furthest recesses of Lauren's pussy. And, just as Natalia leaned in to plant a kiss on Lauren's lips, the Assistant Legal Counsel began to cum. 

The vibrator still deep inside her, and her fingers still kneading away at her clit, Lauren yelped in pleasure behind Bramley's desk, the orgasm overtaking her. 

"What was that about?" Lauren asked herself as she caught her breath. Why, exactly, had she stopped fantasizing about Dmitri and started fantasizing about his wife? She was an attractive woman, no doubt, but...she was a woman. 

Rachel. Rachel had fucked her, and had somehow fucked with her head. Maybe she had her wires crossed somehow? Maybe she needed to have some straight, heterosexual penetration? Maybe her condition really had affected her sexual preference after all? Whatever the underlying cause, the last person that Lauren wanted to see when she got back to her office was Rachel. And yet, there the redhead was, half-dressed and waiting for her. 

Rachel had on the same pants she'd worn yesterday, and a canary yellow bra that matched the panties Lauren had seen the previous night. The redhead wore nothing else, however, and was squatting over Lauren's gym bag as she rifled through Lauren's things. 

"Hairdryer," Rachel explained, pulling it from the blonde's duffel to show she'd found what she'd been looking for. 

"Okay," Lauren nodded. She was unsure of herself in the redhead's presence, and the lesbian fantasy she'd just experienced hadn't made her any less awkward. She slipped past her friend, pulled a moist and sticky vibrator from the empty white binder, and put it back in her desk. 

"Alright, enough of this," Rachel said sternly, slamming the hairdryer on the desk and shutting the door to the hall. "This does not have to be weird." 

"It's not weird," Lauren lied. 

"Come on," the redhead shook her head. "You've been acting weird since we woke up this morning – on the floor, in the shower, before..." 

"It's not weird," Lauren tried to insist, but was unconvincing in her delivery. 

"I don't regret what happened last night. I don't. I'm sorry. I was horny. You were horny. We got each other off. Fuck! I'm not looking for flowers or anything here." 




Soma Ch. 03



"What do you want me to say?" Lauren asked. "I can say it's not weird, but..."

"But what?"

"But I'm not gay. That makes it a little weird."

"I'm not gay, either, Lauren," Rachel replied. "But you've got to admit that last night was better than masturbating."

"I'm not saying it wasn't..."

"So then, fine. You wanted to get off. I wanted to get off. We both got off."

Lauren paused. "I guess you're right." 

"Lauren, seriously," Rachel begged. "I'm your friend. We've been intimate before, you know, emotionally speaking. I've told you things that I've never told any guy. I think we know each other pretty well, especially given my confession about this whole situation turning me on, and you wanting me to talk dirty to you..."

Lauren blushed. 

"So I think we can be intimate with each other, that once, without confusing things too much." 

The blonde nodded. She hadn't been fair to Rachel that morning. And Rachel was right, wasn't she? They were friends, friends that helped each other out, friends that were there for one another. They'd seen each other naked, they'd confessed secret things to one another, and Rachel had seen or heard Lauren cum how many times over the past twenty-four hours? She wasn't a lesbian, she wasn't gay – she just wanted to get off. 

Lauren smiled at her friend. "I'm sorry." 

Rachel seemed relieved. "Okay." 

They looked at each other, their eyes meeting, and everything seemed to be right again with the world. They were closer now, especially given the intimacy of the previous night on the third floor, than they ever had been, and Lauren knew she'd have a friend for a long, long time. 

"Now," the redhead said, "we can move onto more pressing items. Like, have you seen my yellow panties?" 

The blonde laughed. "What? What do you mean?" 

"My panties," Rachel explained. "I took them off in here last night..."

"I remember."

"...but I don't know where they went." 

Lauren looked at her friend, and jutted her chin towards Rachel's brown pants. "So, what are you...?"

Rachel shrugged, unsnapped the fastener at her waist, and unzipped her fly. Instead of the first pair of panties that Lauren had watched her shed last night, Rachel was wearing the second – the zebra-print thong she'd wore for a few hours in the conference room. The blonde giggled again, and Rachel laughed along with her. 

"They're not in my office, with the rest of my clothes. And they don't seem to be on your file cabinet, where I could have sworn I left them."

"Have you checked the big box? Maybe you put them in there when you got those ones?"

Rachel zipped her fly back up, and plugged in her friend's hairdryer. "I looked. Granted, not very hard. No, but you're probably right." 

"You want me to check?" 

Rachel shrugged again. "Eh. You're right, they're probably in the box. I'll get them later."

Lauren wasn't sure that sorting through Julie Lambourne's box of lingerie was going to take all that much time, but Rachel was fairly nonchalant about her missing underwear. 

"Wait, what's this?" Lauren asked, just noticing a pile of black lace on her chair. 

"Try it on," Rachel suggested. 

Lauren looked quizzically at her friend. "Are you forgetting something?"

"No, are you?" the redhead shot back. She flipped the hairdryer on, and over the whir, continued, "You've been doing nothing but 'relieving tension' since last night, right?"

"Yeah...I guess..."

"Before dinner yesterday. In the kitchen after dinner. This morning. With me downstairs last night."

"Yeah..."

"Have you tried putting something on?" 

Lauren looked at the black lace underwear, a little bit scared about the possibilities they embodied. But again, Rachel was right. Given that she'd actually had sex last night, even if it was with a woman, maybe her body's tension had been diminished enough to do away with her affliction. 

Slowly, and with great caution, the blonde, reached for the black floral-lace panties, noticing that Rachel had fished her out a matching bra, as well. As she had with Adams the day before with the red hip-huggers, Lauren slipped into the panties, sliding them up her legs, and snapping them into place at her hips. She remembered the burning, the aching, the excruciating pain from Tuesday night, but none of it haunted her at that moment. In fact, sneaking a peak below the fabric, Lauren saw that the rash hadn't even returned. 

Her heart was in her throat. There was hope. 

She grabbed at the black lace bra, slid her arms beneath the straps, and reached around behind her back to snap it on.

Nothing. No burning. No itching. No aches. No pains. No constricted breath. 

Just a blonde girl, standing in her office in her bra and panties. 

Exuberant, Lauren grabbed at one of the cocktail dresses hanging on the back of her office door. Certainly she wasn't going to wear one of the revealing party dresses around work that day, was she? But Lauren was off the mind that if she were capable of wearing a slutty Halloween costume, she might just do it – anything was better than another day in the nude. And so, the blonde stepped into one of the little black dresses and began sliding it up her body. 

Only to discover that the fabric burned against her skin as she did so. 

"No such luck," Lauren whined as she slipped out of the dress. The mysterious pink rash had returned, but faded quickly. 

Rachel pouted. She had hoped to be Lauren's cure. "You can still wear the underwear, though, right?"

"Yeah," Lauren replied, looking at her reflection in the window. "I guess." 

"You guess?"

"Well, it's kind of weird to be in my underwear, isn't it?

"As opposed to being naked?" 

Lauren frowned. "No, you're right. You're right." She hesitated. "But if I'm wearing this, doesn't that just open me up to a new barrage of questions? Like, why I'm in my underwear, and not everything else?" 

Rachel didn't quite follow. "So you'd rather be naked...?"

"I don't WANT to be naked," the blonde answered. "I don't WANT to sit around in slutty Eve Intimates lingerie, though either." 

"So then what?"

"It's only a couple of more hours," Lauren decided, and unsnapped her bra. "Me in underwear is big news. Me naked is old news. I'll just keep my head down, get the contract done, and be done with this whole fucking thing." 

She shed the bra, and then the panties, and stuffed both into the top drawer of her desk. Was she insane? She'd rather go naked than have the cover of at least her underwear? She was buoyed by hope, however. She could wear some clothes, at least. And, in a few more hours, once the Cortland contract was on Dick Bramley's desk, she'd be able to put everything back on.

In the mean time, she put her jewelry back on – the large, ostentatious silver hoop earrings, the faux pearl bracelet, the two silver and one platinum rings, the thin silver bracelet she was wearing as an anklet, and her watch. She slipped her feet back into the same pumps she'd been wearing since Tuesday. And she did her hair, once Rachel was done with the hairdryer. 

Ginger had curled up into a ball under her own desk. Rachel was doing the same thing in her office, while Amy and Jessica had decided to go grab bagels and muffins and bring them back to the office for breakfast. Lauren, meanwhile, had the peace and quiet of an early Friday morning to concentrate on the task at hand – proofing the final version of the Cortland Menswear acquisition contract. 

As usual, she said hello to her colleagues as they arrived. To sexually ambiguous Kevin Tolman. To the scornful Lorraine Dorsett. To heavyset Mitch Oldenburg. To diminutive Ken Fuji. To Dana Newton, to Julie Lambourne, to Stephanie Kidd. To Jenny Smith. Lauren could hardly claim the morning greetings, in her present state, had become routine. But it was nowhere near as nerve-wracking as it had been on Wednesday morning, when her lack of clothes had shocked one individual after another. It helped, she supposed, that she could see the light at the end of the tunnel. No chit-chat. No long conversations. Just a morning "hello," and returning to the task at hand. 

She was shaken from her concentration briefly by the arrival of Ben Davis, of course. He greeted her with a nervous hello, his perfect smile not at all diminished by his awkwardness with Lauren. As relationship-building as the previous night had been, Lauren in no small way wished that she'd shared the mock dorm with the law student instead of Rachel. 

Terms and conditions. Options and management buy-out offers. Paragraphs and clauses. Lauren's eyes traced one item after another. Yvonne, Danny, Dmitri, and Rachel had already been over most of the material, but this was Lauren's project, and it necessitated one final set of eyes. Everything seemed to be checking out that morning – not a single correction, not a single misspelling. 

Dmitri had popped in earlier that morning, said hello, and gone back to his office. But he returned around mid-morning, hunting for Lauren's notes on a title they'd filed a few months earlier, unrelated to Cortland altogether. Lauren, apparently, was the last person in the office still working on the acquisition. 

"It's in my file cabinet," the naked blonde answered, waving across her office. She didn't even bother to look up from her work. 

"Er, Lauren?" Dmitri asked. 

What now? Annoyed, Lauren initialed the page in front of her, and turned to the other Assistant Legal Counsel. In his hands was a pair of canary yellow panties, fished from the interior of the file cabinet. 

"Jesus," Lauren swallowed. She shook her head. "Those aren't mine."

This caused Dmitri's right eyebrow to arch. 

Lauren cursed herself. Wasn't it worse if the woman's panties in her office weren't her own? Did that make things even more complicated?

"They're Rachel's," the blonde offered. She kicked herself again. How was that better?

"Rachel's?"

"No, no, no. I mean, Julie's. They're Julie's."

Eyebrow arch again. 

Shit, Lauren thought to herself. Still not better. Just because she'd engaged in lesbian sex last night with Rachel, and had fantasized about being fucked by Dmitri's wife Natalia that morning, didn't mean that she had to give Dmitri the impression she was undressing with other women in her office. She groaned, and directed Dmitri's attention to the large cardboard box under her desk. 

After doing her best to explain the box full of lingerie, why Julie had had it in the first place, and what it was now doing in Lauren's possession, the blonde sighed, desperate for this conversation to end. 

"So it's all Eve Intimates? And she just gave it to you?" 

Lauren nodded. 

Dmitri cleared his throat, working up the courage to ask, "Would you mind if I just take a peak inside?" 

Now it was Lauren's turn to jump to conclusions, and Dmitri's to back pedal and explain himself. What exactly did Dmitri want to rifle through a box of women's underwear for? Underwear that now, technically, belonged to Lauren? 

"Natalia," Dmitri offered in defense. "Natalia, Natalia. She's always nagging me about getting free samples or whatever. And I've told her, about a million times, that we don't really have access to that sort of thing." He cleared his throat again nervously. "If you don't mind, and you have something in there that I could steal for her..." 

Gross, Lauren thought to herself. She didn't want to sit here as Dmitri picked out sex clothes for his wife. Then again, she'd utilized both Dmitri and Natalia in her own sexual fantasies that morning – she supposed she owed him some sort of royalty payment. Moreover, the image of Natalia Antonovka, naked save for the red hiphuggers Lauren herself had tried on yesterday, wasn't an unappealing one. From a completely aesthetic standpoint, of course. 

"Sure," Lauren offered, kicking the box in Dmitri's direction. 

The blonde tried to refocus on her work, but couldn't help but watch as the Russian-American sifted through mesh and lace, trying to find the exact right thing for his wife. He seemed alternately excited and confused, and at one point looked up at Lauren's chest, and stared at it for just a moment too long. 

"Can I help you?" Lauren asked. 

"Oh! Oh, god!" Dmitri exclaimed. "I just...I was looking at this..." He held up a purple demi-cup bra. "...I was just trying to figure out what size she...I was just..."

Lauren had never seen him so nervous and embarrassed. He had been looking at Lauren's breasts to figure out what size his wife was. And he'd been caught. 

Despite her better judgment, she leaned over to help him, only to have him back away. "You know what?" he asked, flustered. Holding up the pair of yellow panties he'd found in Lauren's file cabinet, he said, "If it's okay, maybe I'll just take these."

The naked blonde strategized exactly how she was going to talk Dmitri out of taking Rachel's panties how to his wife. Even leaving aside the fact that they already belonged to the redhead, Lauren was a bit worried by the fact that Rachel had worn them all day on Thursday. In the end, however, mischief got the best of her, and she granted her colleague permission to take them. It served Rachel right, for leaving her panties in Lauren's file cabinet. It served Dmitri right, for skulking around and asking for freebies. And, more than anything, it cleared him out of Lauren's office, allowing her to get back to her work. 

The morning began to slip away, and Lauren hardly moved from her desk. There was a single trip to the men's room – extra cautious this time, given that she'd been caught by Danny the night before – but otherwise the blonde's full attention was given to the pile of legal papers in front of her. Noon came, and though Lauren knew that she should probably get herself off at some point soon to stave off the potential of a spontaneous orgasm, she could bring herself to pull away from her work. She'd been mostly left alone all morning, so if an orgasm came, she'd just have to roll with it. Rachel bought her lunch, but left her alone to eat it, as the blonde was in the final stretch at that point. 

At two o'clock, with the contract checked, double-checked, and checked again, Lauren dropped eight binders worth of legal papers onto Dick Bramley's desk. "The final revisions are all in the electronic version on the share drive," she announced, beaming. 

Bramley smiled from ear to ear, congratulated the girl, and picked up the phone to Paul McIntosh's office. Though he offered the girl a seat on the far side of his desk, so that she'd be able to listen in, Lauren politely declined. She'd conquered her demon, but her reward was back in her office, hanging on the back of her door.

Rachel was already in Lauren's office when she got back, the blonde practically skipping down the hall. They were joined moments later by Amy and Dmitri, the latter having apparently shaken himself of his earlier embarrassment. All three congratulated the girl heartily. 

Success would mean a promotion to the level of Associate General Counsel, and a $17,000 raise along with it - $265 per hour that Lauren was naked, she'd calculated a few days earlier. But title and compensation were, for the moment, less of a reward than finally being able to get dressed once again.

"Should I go?" Dmitri asked as Lauren rifled through her top drawer, careful to use her body to shield everyone from the vibrator inside. 

She pulled the bra and panties that Rachel had laid out for her earlier that morning. She shrugged at Dmitri, offering, "Whatever. It's not like you haven't seen me naked almost every day this week."

The man was obviously conflicted. He clearly wanted to stay and support Lauren, a colleague and a friend. But he was also clearly uncomfortable with the idea of staying here, with three other women, as one of them slipped on lacy underwear and a party dress. Lauren's permission to stay only muddled matters more, as Dmitri was now confused as to whether the naked blonde really wanted him to go or not. And so, he stayed, frozen in place. 

Lauren bent over and stepped into the black panties. She slid them over her calves, past her knees, and up her bare, milky white thighs. Snapping them in place, she could hardly hide her smile. Next came the bra, her arms through the straps and her breasts in the cups, snapping it in the back. She gestured to Amy for the black dress on top of the others behind her door.

This was the moment of truth. Lauren had, after all, gotten this far this morning, her nerves having been soothed through a combination of her own fingers, her new toy, and her friend's tongue. But masturbation and cunnilingus had taken her only so far, and Lauren was banking on the completed contract's ability to take her the rest of the way. The dress was still unzipped from the morning's experiment, and so the blonde stepped into without much hassle. 

It burned.

But maybe that was Lauren's imagination? Maybe it was the memory of the attempt that morning? 

The fabric was like red-hot barbed wire against her skin, but Lauren refused to give into the sensation. She winced as she pulled the dress on, willing herself to get past the pain. And for a moment, as she blinked back tears of pain, the blonde was able to stand before her colleagues, clothed once more. 

Lauren's agony, though, was readily apparent to everyone in the room. She stood proud for a few heartbeats, but even in that brief moment, Rachel was already rushing to her side. 

As if the aching and burning wasn't enough, Lauren began to lose her breath. The material seemed to squeeze her chest, preventing her from inhaling. She panicked, and began to choke for air. She lost her balance, and it took a combination of Dmitri and Rachel to keep her from collapsing to the floor. Lauren began to cry. 

The redhead fumbled at the zipper on the back of the dress, the zipper Lauren had somehow managed to operate through the blinding pain a few seconds earlier. Rachel, panicking herself, couldn't get a steady grip. Her own nerves were shot, and the blonde's jerking and thrashing didn't make the task any easier. She found the thin piece of metal once, dropped it, and found it again. But she was thwarted an inch into the zipper's descent, the teeth catching on piece of fabric. Her friend unable to breath, Rachel opted to sacrifice the cocktail dress. She grabbed the top and simply yanked the dress apart. 

The black material fell to the floor, but its divestiture didn't bring with it any release. Lauren continued to wheeze, and Dmitri recoiled from the sight of the blonde's perfect, half-naked body covered in the ugly pink rash. She gasped for air, clutching at her bra as if it were slowly squeezing her lungs like some sort of boa constrictor. The fabric, a combination of nylon and spandex, was torturous, red hot and grating against her skin. 

"Oh god!" Lauren managed to cough. There was more. She couldn't breath. Her skin was on fire. Her whole body ached. And, on top of everything else, her clitoris had begun to throb – she was going to cum again. 

She grabbed at the left cup of her bra with her right hand and tugged. She might have reasoned that she had a box full of bras and lingerie beneath her desk, so this one was replaceable. She might have reasoned that the bra was barely hers anyways, a gift to Julie from some creepy guy on the third floor. But Lauren simply wanted the bra off, and didn't want to waste any time in reached around her back for the hooks. For the second time that week, the blonde just ripped her bra off, destroying the piece of lingerie in the process. 

"Oh god! Oh god!" Lauren gasped, both out of need for air and because of the pressure building in her pussy. As she grappled with the waistband of her panties, her eyes met Rachel's, and the redhead knew instantly what was happening. 




Soma Ch. 03



"You need to go!" Rachel screamed at Amy and Dmitri. "You need to go right now!"

"No!" Amy yelled back. "I'm not going anywhere until she's okay! Is she okay!" 

Lauren slithered out of the panties. The elastic at the waist had been squeezing her, and she half-expected to look down and see bleeding lacerations at her hips, given how much it hurt. But the black lace was caught on one ankle, and Lauren kicked it across the office. She continued to huff and puff, the hyperventilation of panic and pain giving way to considerably more evocative heavy breathing. 

"She can't breathe!" Amy shrieked. "She can't breathe!"

"Damn it!" Rachel swore, running her hands through her hair. "Go! Go!" 

Amy refused to leave. She hadn't gone with her friend to the hospital. She hadn't been terribly supportive of Lauren all week. She'd been called out by Rachel. Sure, she'd had naked drinks with the blonde the previous night, but she chose that moment to demonstrate that she wouldn't leave, that she's stand by her friend. 

Dmitri, for his part, looked like he wanted to go. He was worried about Lauren, but he was willing to be ordered around by Rachel, wiling to be told what to do in an obviously stressful situation. Unfortunately for Dmitri, however, Amy was standing in his way, and refused to back away. 

"What's going on?" the brunette cried. She didn't understand; Lauren was naked, head to toe. Why was she still squirming and panting? 

Rachel hesitated, trying to figure out what to say. Lauren, unable to concentrate on anything but the relief she'd begun to feel on her skin or the rapture that was overtaking her groin, grunted, "I'm going to cum! I'm going to cum!" 

Both Amy and Dmitri were aghast. Dmitri looked longingly at the door, while Amy went bright red. Rachel just gripped Lauren's right wrist, steadying her as she leaned against the desk. 

Her clit throbbed. Wave after wave of sexual pleasure rippled through her pussy. And just when she thought she couldn't take any more, she whined out loud as the orgasm took hold of her. The pink rash had disappeared, the burning and ache had both dissipated. She continued to gasp for air, but for entirely different reasons. Lauren was able to concentrate entirely on the bliss overtaking her, the sensations in her cunt. 

"I'm cumming," she announced to room through tears, detached from the fact that Dmitri, Amy, and Rachel were all watching. "I'm cumming! I'm cum...I'm cum...I'm cumming..."

"Ooohh...," she exhaled, her whole body quivering. "Ahh...." 

Rachel shot stern looks at Amy and Dmitri both. The message? None of this was to leave the room. And since they hadn't left when she'd told them to, they were now going to be forced to stay. To Lauren, she announced, "I'm calling Dr. Adams." 

Lauren was able to nod, but little more. Relief was temporary. The allergic reaction she'd had to her clothes was gone, but the climax she'd just achieved was only the first of many, apparently. On weak knees, she managed to collapse into her leather chair, and slumped backwards. With no concern for Rachel, Amy, or Dmitri, she turned her back to the hallway, spread her legs, and found her pussy with her right hand. Drunk on sexual stimulation, she wanted to ride out her body's spontaneous climaxing as quickly as possible, and figured she'd speed things along. 

Rachel found Dave Adams's business card, dialed his phone number, and relayed to him everything that was happening. Lauren's body had rejected the clothes she'd put on. And, if anything, she'd taken a step back, unable to wear even her bra and panties. Even as they spoke, the blonde was suffering from uncontrollable orgasms. He told her he'd be right over, and that Rachel should do anything in her power to ease Lauren's suffering. 

Rachel grimaced at the instruction. She supposed she could drop to her knees and tongue fuck her friend to climax, but she didn't really want to do so while Amy and Dmitri watched. And even they weren't standing two to three feet away, Rachel had no desire to stick her tongue in Lauren's pussy here, at mid-day, with all of her colleagues stalking the halls. 

Instead, the redhead pulled open Lauren's desk drawer, removed the tiger print vibrator, twisted the knob, and handed it to the blonde. The blonde accepted the toy greedily, pressing it immediately against her clit. She was seemingly unaware of her surroundings, unaware of anything but the sensations of her pulsating pussy. 

Ken Fuji, attracted by the shrieks and screams of the past few minutes, rapped his knuckles against the glass window of Lauren's office. Luckily, there were enough people in the way to prevent the little Japanese lawyer from getting a clear view of what, exactly, Lauren was doing to herself, and Rachel wanted to keep it that way. 

"You, stay!" she ordered Amy, but directed her to stay standing in front of the glass window, shielding the writhing blonde from any passers-by. To Dmitri, she pointed to the door, and instructed him to stand guard outside. Get rid of Fuji, and keep anybody else from stopping in front of Lauren's window. 

Dmitri's eyes were as wide as saucers, and he was unable to offer any response more expansive than a simple grunt. He had been transfixed by the scene unfolding before him, but he accepted his marching orders with a nod. Carefully making sure that Fuji wouldn't see anything going on inside the office, Dmitri opened the door just slightly and slipped through the crack. He took up his post outside, barking at Fuji to leave the girl alone.

It wasn't long before the vibrator was back inside Lauren's pussy, and she was flicking it back and forth with her wrist as her left hand ground against her clit. The first orgasm with everyone in the room gave way to a second in front of just Amy and Rachel, and the second gave way to a third a few minutes later. Tears streamed down the blonde's cheeks as she summoned the energy to push for a fourth, knowing full well that her body was not going to stop just yet. 

Adams arrived faster than any of them had expected, just minutes after Lauren had cum a fourth time. The fourth had taken more time and effort than the previous three, but Lauren had been unable to stop. When the psychiatrist joined the brunette, the redhead, and the blonde in the office, Lauren was still trying to catch her breath, the sweat on her skin shimmering in the industrial fluorescent light from above. 

Dmitri had maintained his post outside of Lauren's door throughout the entire episode, but was dismissed by Rachel once Adams arrived. Amy and Rachel fully intended to leave their friend alone with the psychiatrist, but a tired and hoarse Lauren asked them to stay. It didn't seem like she had any secrets from either of them any more, and she needed the emotional support. 

"I don't understand," she cried to Adams, once the doctor had settled into the chair on the far side of Lauren's desk. Amy sat in one next to him, while Rachel shimmied up on the table behind the blonde. Lauren's eyes directed the psychiatrist to the discarded cocktail dress and lingerie scattered through the office. "The contract's done. It's off my desk. I should be able to get dressed!" 

Adams looked mystified. "I'm not really sure what to say." 

"But you said...you said it was because of contract."

He shook his head. "Lauren, I just don't know. Look, this is all new territory. There have been vaguely similar cases, I guess, but nothing exactly like this is on record. I've been calling it Laframboise's Disorder, for lack of a better term..."

"Please don't."

"Okay," he agreed. "So, this psychosomatic allergic reaction with accompanying spontaneous sexual release...this affliction...you're the first case, so far as I've been able to tell. I don't exactly have much to draw from on the subject." 

"But, you said...?"

Adams held up a hand. "Your friend here – Rachel? – she said something over the phone, about you not even being able to wear underwear? Were you able to put clothes on this morning?"

This came as a surprise to Amy, but Lauren ignored her puzzled look. "This morning," she croaked. "Just underwear, though. Bra and panties." 

"And the orgasms...they've continued? Spontaneous or self-initiated, they've continued?" 

Lauren nodded. Not all of them were achieved alone, of course. The blonde shot a nervous glance in Rachel's direction. 

"Hmm," Adams thought to himself, scratching his chin. He thought it over for a moment or two, but eventually broke the pregnant silence of the room. "So, this is pure speculation, I want you to understand that." He hesitated again, looking Lauren in the eye to make sure she did. "But maybe you've eliminated the root cause of your affliction without entirely treating the symptoms." 

"I don't understand." This was Rachel. "If she finished the contract, if that stressor is off her desk, if that weight has been lifted from her chest, why would she still even have symptoms? It's over." 

"Think of Lauren's body like...like...like a rope," Adams went on, searching for the proper metaphor. "This contract, this job, this promotion on the line – all of it has added knot after knot after knot, until she's just become this big, tangled mess..."

"Thanks," the naked blonde smiled sarcastically. 

"Sorry," the psychiatrist frowned. "But her body decided enough was enough. It tried to warn her first, let her know things were getting too tangled and too tight, by breaking out in the rash. Trying to say, 'Hellooo?!! Lauren? Getting a little knotted up here.' When she didn't stop, or go home, her body took matters into its own hands, so to speak, and released a little pressure the only way it knew how." 

"By orgasming?" Amy asked, befuddled. 

"Late to the party," Lauren explained to Adams. Rachel knew about the secret, spontaneous and not-so-spontaneous orgasms, but this was all new to Amy. 

Adams looked to the blonde, and then to the brunette. "We haven't run blood or chemical tests since this started, but what I think is happening is that Lauren's body is flooding her system with dopamine. Dopamine is responsible for ratcheting up sexual stimulation in you, me, Rachel, Lauren, everyone – but my guess is that Lauren's levels are way out of whack, which explains why she's been having multiple orgasms instead of just one."

Lauren blushed. Another piece of information that Amy hadn't had previously. 

"After an orgasm, prolactin is released into the bloodstream. In Lauren's case, it might not be enough to initiate a refractory period right away – again, what's causing the multiple orgasms – but it does, eventually take hold. Prolactin, along with a nice little cocktail of other post-orgasmic brain chemicals, lowers blood pressure, relaxes muscles, and serves as a nifty combatant against stress."

"...like a pressure valve," Amy muttered. 

"Yes, like a pressure valve," Adams agreed, but added, "Though, you're mixing metaphors."

"Sorry," the brunette shrugged. 

Turning his attention back to Lauren, Adams continued. "Over the past couple of days, every time you've reached orgasm, you've managed to release a little pressure, or loosen some of those knots. It doesn't really matter too much as to whether your body brought one about itself, or if you took matters into your own hand," – at this, his jutted his chin towards the tiger print toy still sitting on Lauren's desk – "it sounds like you were able to loosen yourself up enough to make a few steps in the right direction." 

"Fine, fine," Lauren replied, getting a bit exasperated. It was all well and good to get Amy up to speed, but none of this was new to Lauren herself. "But the contract's in. It's done. It's over with. And I still can't get dressed!" 

"Well, you've found a way to loosen the knots," the psychiatrist explained. "But just because you don't have the root cause to tie any new knots doesn't mean you don't have to deal with the old ones. The source is gone, but you're still coping with the symptoms." 

The naked blonde rubbed her temples. 

Rachel stepped in, though, saying, "No, no, no! I mean, she took a step back just now! She can't even put on the same bra and panty set she had on this morning!" 

Adams met the redhead's gaze, but once again shifted his attention back to the blonde. "You've had a few more climaxes since then, though, right?" 

Lauren nodded sullenly. 

"I imagine that you probably won't have too much trouble with your underwear, if you want to try again. You probably just freaked yourself out a little when your body rejected the rest of your outfit, and ratcheted things back up again." 

Lauren shook her head, frustrated. "I don't want to put my goddamned panties on. I don't want to wear a goddamned bra. I don't want to have to come in here on Monday in a goddamned thong." She was crying now. "I don't want to have to sneak off to the men's bathroom or the supply closet or anywhere else to finger fuck myself so I don't cum during the middle of another meeting. I don't want to keep fucking humiliating myself..."

She trailed off, and sobbed heavily, even as Rachel wrapped her arms around her naked friend. The hug helped some, but Rachel's clothed arms against Lauren's bare skin just reminded the blonde of her nudity. 

"You need to go home," Adams counseled her. "With the acquisition out of the way, maybe now you'll listen to my advice." He leaned forward in his chair, closer to Lauren. "You've got all weekend to keep applying your, er, 'therapy' with the vibrator. Take some extra time if you need to – I'm sure a workaholic like yourself has some vacation time tucked away. You've already made progress since Wednesday. A few more orgasms, in the comfort of your own home, might do you a lot of good." 

Lauren sniffled, choking her tears back a little. Adams was probably right. Cortland was over and done with – she could go home without the contract hanging over her head anymore. She certainly didn't have anything to do this weekend, even if it was her birthday; she didn't have much of a life outside of Evelyn Apparel and the gym. And if she needed a day or two to collect herself next week, well, Adams was right – she had the time. There were worse ways to spend a weekend, she supposed, than stringing together orgasm after orgasm. 

She looked to Amy, and then to Rachel. Her friends had wanted to take her out to drinks that evening, to celebrate the conquest of Cortland Menswear, Lauren's affliction, and her thirtieth birthday. And, though Lauren hadn't been high on the idea initially, it had begun to grow on her. After all, if she had been capable of putting on a cocktail dress and going out for a few drinks, it would have been a waste of a birthday to go home and go to bed. 

Oh, well, she thought to herself. It was a moot point now. 

Adams thought she'd be able to wear a bra and panties, at least. That was something, she supposed. Not that she was any rush to put them on – as she had explained earlier that morning, it might be weirder to don intimate lace at this point than just swallow her pride and finish off the day in the nude. Once the building had cleared out a little, she could have Ginger call her one of the coaches, she could slip through the lobby in her underwear, and go home. But it being midday, Lauren didn't want to risk strutting through the lobby naked, in underwear, or even writhing in agony under an overcoat or something of the like. 

"There's nothing else we can do?" Rachel asked the psychiatrist. 

"Well..." Adams began, hesitating a bit as all three girls listened breathlessly. "The thing is, masturbation only releases a fraction of the amount of prolactin that sexual intercourse might." 

"What?" Lauren asked, not quite believing what she was hearing. Was that going to be his next prescription?

"Look, again, this is all just conjecture," the psychiatrist apologized. "And I'm not doing anything here but laying the facts on the table. But, yes, they've found that intercourse releases maybe four times the amount of post-coital brain chemicals than masturbation does in men. And women – well, there's a little bit more fluctuation from woman to woman – but it can exponentially higher than that." He looked at the naked blonde. "If your dopamine levels are anywhere in the neighborhood that I think they might be, well..." He whistled. 

Lauren wasn't quite sure what to say. 

"I can't tell you that it'd work," Adams went on. "I'm not even sure it's ethical that I suggest it might. But...well...if you have any good, close friends or old boyfriends..."

Lauren imagined herself calling Jon. Asking him to come over for a fuck. No, begging him. But, no, things hadn't ended all that well, and the last time she'd spoken to a mutual friend about him, she'd heard he was seeing someone now. And really, who else did she know? There were a couple of Penn Law alums floating around in New York, but no one she knew well enough to proposition for sexual favors. Her life had been Evelyn Apparel for the past few years, and there were few men she knew outside of the office. 

"What about you?" Amy asked, looking at Dave Adams. 

"For what?" 

"For, well," Amy blushed. "To help Lauren."

"I don't really think that that's an option..."

"It's clinical, right? It's a treatment..." 

Adams laughed uncomfortably. "Even leaving aside the ethical no-no's of a doctor-patient relationship, I'm not sure it'd really be an option. I'm gay." 

This, of course, both Lauren and Rachel already knew. But even though it was news to Amy, the brunette pressed on, "But, still, you have all the right...parts. And it'd be...I don't know...therapeutic." 

"Amy, come on," Lauren chided her. 

"Right parts or not," Adams responded, "Lauren's not really my type. I don't know that I could give her the sort of experience that would elicit any real gratification. You can't just go against the way you're wired for a good lay."

At this, Lauren and Rachel exchanged another nervous glance. 

Amy caught them, and looked puzzled. Still, her mind was going a mile a minute, and after another few seconds of intense contemplation, she asked, "What if you could?" 

"Amy, I'm not going to have sex with my psychiatrist!" Lauren barked. 

"No, not him," Amy said, swallowing hard. "What if it was...me?" 

This caught everyone in the room off-guard. After all, Amy had barely been able to make eye contact with Lauren as late as the previous afternoon. She'd been more uncomfortable about Lauren's situation than anyone in the office, save maybe Dick Bramley or Lauren herself. And now, for whatever reason, she was offering herself to Lauren, sacrificing her sexual orientation to help a friend in need. 

"I don't think –" Lauren began, but Amy cut her off. 

"Again, I know I've been such a shitty friend to you over the past couple of days. But I just want you to know that I'm here for you, that I'm worried about you, that I want you to get better, that I'll do anything in my power to help...even...even that." 

Another tear trickled down Lauren's cheek, this one caused by Amy's compassion. 

"It's not going to work," Rachel offered after a few seconds of moving silence. 

"But..." Amy stuttered. 

"It's not," Lauren assured the brunette. 

"But you don't know," Amy answered, nervously. "It could. It's sex, right?"

Oh, god, Lauren thought to herself. Amy was going to take the rejection personally. She'd extended herself, put herself out there, and Lauren was going to shoot her down. Lauren took another look in Rachel's direction, only to see that the same thoughts were going on behind the redhead's eyes. Without a word spoken between them, and only a momentary nervous glance in the psychiatrist's direction, Rachel nodded and granted Lauren permission to proceed. 

"Amy, sweetie, it's not going to work," Lauren said gently. "It's not that I don't appreciate what you're willing to do for me, and I love you so much for the thought. But, it's not going to work...because, well, it didn't work."




Soma Slave's Journey: First Time CD



I never thought my first encounter involving a CD would be with me as the CD, but strange are the ways of sensual exploration. I had answered an ad looking for a man who wanted to play in stockings and panties. After establishing my submissive nature (and torturing me with wonderful photographs of CDs in bondage), the man at the other end of the ad had persuaded me to go for a full CD experience. He specified what clothes I was to purchase and where I would meet him.

I went to the hotel where he was staying with my clothes in an attache. I was to enter his room on the pretense of inspecting the bathroom. Once there, I was to change into my female clothes and put on the wig he would leave on the sink. When I was dressed, I would signal him by flushing the toilet, at which point he would enter and discover me dressed, which would lead to our role play.

I managed to keep my erection under control (barely) as I shopped for the items on his list: tan pantyhose, tan thigh highs, some frilly panties, a camisole and a half length robe. He wanted me looking feminine and vulnerable. I selected a pastel yellow pair of panties, a pastel brown camisole and a red sleeping robe. The red clashed with the other colors, but it was the silkiest feeling robe I could find and would provide a contrast to the earth tones I was wearing.

When I arrived at the hotel, I took the elevator to his room and went to the bathroom to prepare. On the sink was a brown wig with blonde highlights. I removed my male clothes and folded them up. Next, I slid the panties on, loving the sensations as they moved up my legs. It didn't take long for a wet spot to appear on them. Next up were the thigh highs, followed by the panty hose. By now, I was already deep into sub mode and was having trouble keeping my erection down, as he wanted.

The next item on was the camisole, which, it turned out, was a couple of sizes to small. I struggled with it, resolving next time to go with something much larger. Finally, I put on the robe. The 3/4 length sleeves brushed against my arms, creating the most delightful sensations, matched by the feel of the bottom of the robe against my thighs. Finally, I put on the wig, and my transformation was complete: for the first time in my life, I was a CD. I gave the signal and automatically lowered my eyes to the floor.

He came into the bathroom and feigned indignation that I was dressed. My blush was quite real, as was my stammered and soft reply to his anger. I could not look at him; I was deep into my submissive role as the crossdressing slut who was caught and getting ready to be dealt with.

He took me into the bedroom and tied me to a chair. After tying my arms and chest to the chair, he tied my feet together and began to molest me, running his hands along my panty clad legs.

"You're nothing but a slut, are you? You like me to rub your pantyhose covered legs, don't you, slut?"

I could only whisper my reply, "Yes, Sir," but the gasps and moans his strokes were eliciting were genuine. I was truly responding to his hands on the nylon. My cock (no longer my cock, but my clit) was engorging and my breath grew shorter as he rubbed my feet and moved his hands up my legs toward my clit. Seeing the effect he was having, he moved in for the kill.

He untied me from the chair (but kept my feet tied) and pushed me toward the bed. Once there, he tied my hands behind my back and blindfolded me. By now, my clit was totally engorged and I was horny in a way I had never experienced. I was no longer role playing. I was a submissive little slut waiting for those magic hands to caress me again. My mouth was starting to desire what I knew would be coming soon. I could hear him taking off his clothes and knew I would soon be tasting his cock.

Soon, I felt his weight on the bed and his hands, his wonderful hands, caressing my legs again. I was moaning with pleasure at each touch, and when he turned me onto my back and pulled down my pantyhose to expose my clit to his touch, I arched my back in pleasure. But I wanted more...I wanted, I needed his cock in my mouth...

...and finally, finally, I felt it on my cheek and opened my mouth to take it in. Even flaccid, it was bigger than I had expected, and I knew I would never be able to take it all in my mouth. I sucked in the head and licked it with an urgency I didn't know was in me. As I moved my mouth down the shaft, I could hear him groan with pleasure and encourage me, his slut, to keep on sucking it. I was focused on the hardening cock in my mouth, doing my best to pleasure it with only my mouth. I twisted as best I could with my hands tied behind me to move my mouth in position to satisfy my master. My clit touched his leg and I rubbed it as best I could.

After several minutes of sucking and licking, he got up to untie my hands, which immediately took hold of his shaft and balls. My tongue focused on swirling around the underside of his cock head as my left hand stroked the shaft up and down and my right hand gently massaged his balls.

"Lick my balls, slut," he ordered in a ragged tone and I eagerly complied. Still blindfolded, I could only tell where they were by touch and tongue. As my tongue begain licking them, I was surprised at how small they were compared to his cock. But I didn't care: I could the pleasure in his voice as he encouraged his slut to keep licking his cock and balls.

As my mouth continued to bob up and down his shaft, my hands wandered to his thighs, which I began to stroke softly. Another sensation was coming over me: I WAS his slut, his woman, and I wanted him as his woman. I trembled slightly as I ran my hands over his thighs, feeling the place where the hair of his legs ended and the smooth flesh of his crotch began. I removed my mouth from his cock, gave it a gentle kiss and laid my head on his stomach while my hand moved up his thigh and to his cock. I rubbed it with one hand while the other ran from stomach to thigh, marvelling at the feeling of his skin. I could feel the hair and, rather than being repelled by it, I luxuriated in it. As I rubbed my clit on his leg, the sensations of the stockings, the camisole, the robe all conspired to turn me even more into a woman obsessed with the body of this man who had overwhelmed me and made me his willing and eager slut.

Finally, he could take no more and, putting his cock in my mouth, jerked it while I sucked the head. And then, I tasted warmth in my mouth...one spurt, then another, then another. I kept it in my mouth, on my tongue, shocked that it filled me with contentment. The taste was not what I expected...almost sweet and oh so warm. I laid back, feeling a strange glow coming on me. I was ready to rest....

...but he had one last treat in store for me. Working on my clit in earnest, he stroked it furiously, leaving me crying out in pleasure as he brought me closer and closer to the edge. With a final convulsion, I came, and he kept working my clit, forcing more pleasure out of me, making me grab the pillow to control my movements, my legs twitching with the intensity of the orgasm. I felt the joy of my first orgasm as a CD and knew it would not be the last.



Soma Slave's Journey: In the Garage



"if you like the idea of giving a man oral pleasure and would like a safe, discreet place to do it, I'm the guy for you." After several weeks of no shows and no action, that sentence caught my eye. I read the rest of the ad, saw he lived close to me and was hooked. Apparently, he was as horny as I was: within minutes of my email reply, he IMed me. After determining our compatibility (he wanted to receive oral service, I wanted to practice my oral service skills and we both enjoyed bondage games), we agreed to meet for a quickie.

I arrived at his house around dusk. We exchanged pleasantries and he led me to his back porch and, from there, to his garage. It was unfinished, basically a concrete floor with some shelves and a storage area. It was also rather warm from the summer heat. He took a bag from one of the shelves.

"Take off your clothes and put them in here," he commanded.

The tone of command awakened the submissive in me and I knew I had chosen well. I stripped and put each item of clothing in the bag: my shoes, my shirt, my pants, my underpants and, finally, my socks. He took the bag and returned to the house with it, leaving me naked and alone in the garage. My senses began to go on high alert, as they do when I move to sub mode. I knew I was in his power now and wondered what he had in store for me. The trapped heat in the room felt good on my skin. I could feel the rough concrete on my feet and wondered if it would scrape my knees, for I was convinced I'd be spending time on them soon.

He returned and examined me, running his hands over my body and taking a special interest in squeezing and twisting my nipples. The increase in my breathing and the purring noises I made when he worked on my nipples told him I was ready. He positioned me against the storage area. My head was touching a wood beam. He raised my arms to head level and tied them to the beam. He was ready to take me.

He started stroking me and, even though, I wasn't fully erect yet, I was already oozing precum. I knew because he took it on his finger and fed it to me. I licked it off eagerly and noticed he held his finger in my mouth even after the precum was gone. I continued to lick his finger until he withdrew it. He kept feeding me, while I was literally dripping with desire. It had clearly been too long since I had played.

I wasn't surprised when he nuzzled my ear and kissed my neck, but, then, he kissed me on the lips. I don't like being kissed by a man, but I realized I hadn't mentioned that when we were talking, so I had no right to complain about it. I kept my lips sealed as he pressed his lips to them and flicked his tongue over them. All the time, his hand was stroking my cock.

"You don't like kissing a man, do you?" he asked me.

"No, Sir," I whispered, looking down with embarrassment and shame.

"You will," he promised, and assaulted my mouth in full. He pressed hard against my mouth and forced it open. I could feel his tongue ravishing my mouth, exploring its secrets and trying to play with my tongue. I closed my eyes, determined to endure this, not wanting to respond and prove him right. He kept stroking my cock, which was growing harder and harder. I was being overwhelmed by sensations from his hand, his lips, his tongue, the stubble from his chin rubbing against my face.

Then one sensation leaped out: I felt something warm running down my leg. I realized it had to be my precum. I was oozing precum, to the point that it was rolling down my leg. I was totally confused at that: he was stroking me, but my cock didn't normally respond to what he was doing in so emphatic a manner. My lips relaxed and, while I didn't respond to his assault on my mouth, I was acknowledging my submission to his tongue. He noticed, too.

"The cock doesn't lie," he said, with a bit of a laugh, and my surrender to him was complete. He was right: my body was enjoying this. My mind would have to sort it out later, but, for now, I was his and ready to serve him.

He was ready for me to serve him, for he stopped long enough to strip down to his underwear. I could see the bulge there and what looked like a wet spot. I was ready to see it, to lick it, to taste it. He untied me and used the cord to create a slip knot, which he slipped over my cock and balls to create a leash. I gasped once when the knot pinched the skin at the base of my cock, but it was a gasp of pleasure/pain. Having a rope around my balls and being led by them was a familiar sensation and a comfortable one. It settled me down and took me to the next level of submission.

"Get on your hands and knees," he ordered. I complied, somewhat gingerly, as I was right about the concrete: my knees were already protested the roughness. I knew, however, the discomfort would soon be forgotten. I was even more sure when he ran the rope leash between my legs, pressing into my crack and winding up over my shoulder. I murmured with pleasure. THIS was what I needed to feel. My submission deepened.

He brought an empty storage box over and, positioning it in front of me, sat on it. I needed no prompting to begin licking the bulge in his underpants. I soaked the cotton as I used my tongue to trace the outline of his cock. It looked thick and I wondered how I would fit it in my mouth, even as I was getting turned on by licking it through his underwear. His groans of appreciation inspired me to nuzzle it even more.

After a couple of minutes of that, he stood and lowered his underpants. I was right: it was very thick. At least, I thought, I could get the nice looking spear head into my mouth and give it some good licks. I gave a quick lick around the head and down the shaft. To my surprise, the cock itself was sweet. I was used to precum being sweet, but this was the first time the skin itself was so tasty. I took as much of it as I could in my mouth to savor the flavor, and felt it growing even larger. He gave me words of encouragement as I ran my tongue down the shaft and was rewarded with some even sweeter and tastier precum.

I pulled back until just the tip was in my mouth and sucked on it until the precum was gone. I could see now that his cock was very thick indeed. The head had that perfect spear shape and I had to lick the base of the head again. As I swirled my tongue around it, he moaned appreciatively. I ran my tongue down the shaft from the tip of the head to the base and was rewarded with another drop of precum, which I eagerly lapped up. I took as much of his cock in my mouth as I could and started to bob my head to milk that sweet precum. I noticed that I could induce a stream of it by rubbing his shaft with my tongue while holding him in my mouth, so I did that repeatedly. As I moved up and down, I was also pushing back against the rope in my ass crack, enjoying those sensations as well. I was settling into a rhythm and moving deeper into that special submissive space...

...when he suddenly withdrew and stood up. He walked over to the garage door, turned off the lights and opened the door onto his patio. It was evening now, and almost dark outside. I shivered with delight as the cool breeze came in and delighted my body with fresh sensations. I noticed, for the first time since I was kneeling, that my leg was wet with my own warm precum, which was streaming out of my cock. I was surprised, because, since I had been forced to my hands and knees, no one had touched it.

He returned and, taking my head in his hands, began to take me in earnest. He pushed me down on his cock and I struggled to take it all. He didn't shove it all in at once, but worked on me slowly, giving me a little more with every thrust. My tongue was working overtime licking that wonderful shaft and tasting the precum, which was increasing in volume. My world was focusing in on the cock in my mouth and the way it rubbed against my cheeks as he explored my mouth with it just as he had earlier with his tongue. I was moaning now, unable and unwilling to resist this gentle assault on my mouth. Nothing existed but my mouth and the cock that was possessing it and filling me...

...and, suddenly, I felt something on my chin that shocked me: his balls. They were swinging and hitting me on the chin and I realized that he had his entire cock in my mouth. I gave a moan of satisfaction and pleasure and my tongue went wild licking the cock as best it could. He grabbed my head with extra pleasure and started to cry out softly. I could feel his cock start to contract and knew he was about to come. Then he was filling my mouth, not in spurts but in what felt like a continuous stream. And, feeling that, I did what I had never done before: I swallowed what was in my mouth.

He withdrew from my mouth and the realization of what I had done hit me: for the first time, I had swallowed a man's cum. My reaction startled me even more. Without thinking, I took him back in my mouth, seeking to draw out whatever was left. Alas, I had already taken all he had. I held him in my mouth, savoring the warmth and texture of his cock as it relaxed.

He closed the door, turned on the light and told me to get dressed. I hadn't come, but my leg was slick with precum and the floor in front of me was wet with drops that had fallen off my cock. As I cleaned up and dressed, I reflected on what had happened. By all rights, I shouldn't have felt good about it: I don't kiss and I don't swallow. And yet, I was glowing. As I got in my car and started to drive off, his statement haunted me...

"The cock doesn't lie."



Soma



"No, I completely understand." Lauren gritted her teeth. She knew what she had to do, unpleasant though it may have seemed. If it really was the Cortland contract that was causing her body to react the way it had, she needed to be done with it. 

"Lauren?" It was Ginger. The girl slipped through the curtains, and as her boss had done just a few minutes earlier, the secretary ran her eyes up and down Dr. Adams's divine body. 

"A coach," Lauren explained. "Can you call me one of the executive coaches?" 

"Sure," Ginger shrugged. "Where are we going?"

"Home," Adams answered. "She needs to get away from work for a while."

"Absolutely not," Lauren snapped. Facing Ginger, she ordered, "Back to the office."

The administrative assistant was confused, and looked to the psychiatrist first for an explanation. But it was Lauren who paid Ginger's bills, and she wasn't about to question her boss, not with the resolve evident in the blonde's voice. "No problem," she answered, and slipped back through the curtain. 

"You can't go back to work," Adams insisted. "Look at you. You're a bundle of nerves. That's why your body's reacting this way."

"I've got three days to go," the blonde reasoned. "Five o'clock on Friday. It's the last day of the Third Quarter. It's not even seventy-two hours."

"Miss Laframboise, your body is trying to tell you it can't take any more. Rather, your mind is trying to tell you it can't take more, and it's using your body to deliver that message. You need to go home. You need to take a warm bath. Have a stiff drink. Watch a movie. Unwind. You need to let someone else pick up the slack." 

"No, no, no!" Lauren exclaimed. "It's like you said -- I need to remove the source of my stress. I'm going to stress about that contract if I go home. I'm going to stress about the entire acquisition for months to come if it doesn't go through before the Fourth Quarter begins on Monday. And my career? I've staked my future with the company on this acquisition. If I get this done? Big promotion. Bigger office. Bigger salary. Bigger opportunities. If I don't? Well, I don't know. But, it would seem to me, the past way to get past this newfound hang-up is to simply take it by the horns. I complete the Cortland acquisition, I've beaten the allergy."

"There's a chance it could get worse," the psychiatrist pleaded. "The pressure's only going to build as you get closer to the deadline, isn't it?"

Lauren rolled her eyes. "Really? How is it going to get worse? In addition to being allergic to all my clothes, am I going to develop allergies for my shoes and your belt? Because, Dr. Adams, I'm not sure that's really that much worse." 

"You have no idea how your body is going to react if you push it further. This is a bizarre enough form of subconscious expression, but there's no telling what could be next."

"I'll take that risk." 

They stood, arguing, for a few minutes longer, until Ginger returned to tell Lauren that the coach was around the corner, and would be arriving in just a few minutes. Lauren thanked the girl, asked her to fetch her when it had arrived, and turned back to Adams. Adams, for one, was thankful for the brief respite in the argument, and seemed much more collected when he spoke again. 

"Forgetting, for a moment, the psychological and physical health risks that you hazard by going back to work," Adams began calmly, "You're still allergic to clothes, of any sort. You can't honestly expect that your boss and your coworkers are going to be okay with you walking up and down the halls in the nude." 

Lauren took a deep breath, and steeled herself for the days ahead. Certainly, she wasn't looking forward to the prospect of sitting around on the 26th Floor stark naked, and she definitely wasn't looking forward to having to explain herself to Dick Bramley. But, she had reasoned with herself, putting into concrete terms what lay ahead. "Seventeen thousand dollars. That's the difference between the salary of an Associate General Counsel and an Assistant General Counsel. So I'm naked? Over three days, that's about two hundred thirty-five dollars an hour."

Adams looked stunned, shocked that the girl had converted her health and dignity into dollars. 

"But we're really only talking, like, thirty-five hours in which there will be other people around. I've been the first one in and the last one out that past few weeks, so that's fourteen hours a day, over Wednesday and Thursday. Plus Friday, but there's a natural cut-off at five, which means it'd really only be ten hours. So, if I'm calling it "naked in front of other people" money, it works out to be about four hundred fifty dollars an hour." 

"Before taxes," Adams cracked.

"Right, but that doesn't include the bonus, the profit sharing, or the extra days of vacation." 

"You can't be serious."

"Five o'clock, Friday," Lauren assured the psychiatrist. "It'll all be over. I'll be able to put on my clothes and go home." 

"So your solution to having too much stress at work is --"

"To stay at work until I get it done," the blonde finished. She had a mischievous sparkle in her eye. "You don't expect me to commute, dressed like this?" 

As if on cue, Ginger returned to announce the arrival of Lauren's car. Taking a deep breath, and straightening her back, Lauren stepped through the curtain of her hospital bay to the world beyond. 

***

A statue of Eve stood in the lobby of the Lane-Russet Building, as naked as God had first intended. Carved of marble, and standing seven or eight times larger than life, the colossal nude had been the guardian of Evelyn Apparel since the company had relocated to their current corporate headquarters. She held an apple in one hand, a single bite extracted from the fruit. She hadn't yet shared the apple with her partner in Eden, but the alluring curves of her body and the seductive gaze of the woman's eyes suggested that Adam stood little chance of resisting. The Serpent was wrapped about her right leg, slithering further and further up her naked thigh. 

It had been suggested by many that there was more than a passing resemblance between Evelyn Lane-Russet and the statue that stood at the entrance of her office building. It may have been the overactive imaginations of her employees, or a subtle allusion entirely of the artist's own doing, but the rumor that the company's founder and chief executive officer had posed for the sculpture hadn't died. Though she may have been close to sixty in real life, the naked form of the statue lived on, and was entirely complimentary to how Evelyn had once looked. If it was, in fact, Evelyn. 

It was not a classical depiction of Eve, full and plump as a Renaissance artist may have created her. No, this Eve had an entirely modern figure, a nude form worthy of adult entertainment, with its curvaceous hips, thin waist, and ample bust. It captured perfectly the sex appeal seized upon by Eve Intimates in their current commercial campaign. 

Still, Lauren thought it odd that a business built upon women's clothes would choose as its mascot a woman entirely devoid of them. 

Tonight, though, Eve did not stand stark naked alone. Lauren had entered the lobby of the office building dressed herself for a sojourn into Eden. She was naked from head to toe, save for a few pieces of jewelry. Her shoes were tucked away, in Ginger's purse, as the dark-haired secretary stepped a few feet ahead of Lauren, serving as vanguard to the nude girl. 

Leaving the hospital had been grueling. She'd spent the previous seven hours naked in the emergency room, but she'd been shielded behind the closed curtains, available for inspection only to a handful of doctors and her friends from the office. As she walked through the open room, she felt dozens of eyes on her body, patients and staff staring wide-eyed at the tantalizingly gorgeous naked woman in their midst. She couldn't be sure of it, but Lauren was fairly positive she'd heard a wolf whistle as she left the bruised and bloodied behind. 

The walk through the waiting area was no picnic, either. Nor was the prospect of stepping out into the cool September evening. The driver was waiting for her, as promised, and only Ginger's angry finger-snap kept the pudgy chauffeur from staring at his passenger. 

The car was black, inside and out, an elegant Lincoln Town Car. Lauren slid naked into the back seat, the fine leather caressing her soft, unclothed skin. Normally, the coaches were reserved for Senior Vice Presidents and high-ranking corporate officers, but Lauren felt as if this were a special situation, and she'd be able to justify the use of one of the corporate cars to Bramley. Ginger followed behind the exposed blonde, and Lauren couldn't help but feel grateful for her assistant's presence. 

Nothing much seemed to phase Ginger Gold, not even a Midtown drive with her bare-skinned boss. She was a tough, good-looking Brooklyn Jew, a city girl who possessed an innate confidence lacking in those born outside the five boroughs. She was a party-girl, and kept Lauren, on any number of occasions, entertained by recounting her adventures with men and alcohol. Lauren and her assistant, whom she shared with Rachel Wilks, were approximately the same age, Lauren a few months older. But their lives were on different tracks, their interests in different things. Still, Ginger had become a good friend and an ally within Evelyn Apparel, and the fact that she had stayed by Lauren's side throughout this harrowing afternoon had made the day that much more manageable. Ginger repeatedly caught the driving sneaking peaks at Lauren's body in his rearview mirror, and each time, Ginger scolded him and warned him to keep his eyes on the road. 

After disembarking in the basement garage and bidding their driver adieu, the two girls ascended to the lobby in the elevator. As Lauren's own attention drifted to feelings of empathy for the eternally naked statue before her, Ginger's eyes were straight ahead, ready to meet the next hurdle standing in their way. 

"Um...I'm sorry!" the security guard called out, his voice echoing across the empty room. "You can't come in here like that!" 

"And why is that?" Ginger shouted back. "Are there kids around?" 

The security guard swallowed hard. He was an older man, dressed in the same faux police officer uniform that academy dropouts and underachievers wore the whole city over. "It's indecent exposure. She can't just walk into this place without any clothes on."

"It's nine o'clock," Ginger replied, checking her watch. "Who's here?"

Lauren's eyes met those of the security guard, but it was Ginger who did all the talking. 

"She's got her clothes upstairs," the secretary lied. "Twenty-sixth floor. Suite 2600. Just let us by, she'll put them on, and this whole crisis will be averted." 

The guard was clearly bewildered, the low brain capacity required for his job put to the ultimate test. Finally, he decided he could look the other way on the blonde's nudity -- at least, metaphorically speaking. "Can I see your ID badges?"

"Honest to God," Ginger cursed, rummaging through her purse. In order to get to her wallet, and the identification card within, she was forced to extract Lauren's high-heeled shoes. Turning to hand them to her boss, she noticed the blanched look on Lauren's face, and realized what the girl was panicking about next.

"Shit!" the dark-haired girl cursed again. Addressing the security guard once more, Ginger said, "I'm going to have to sign her in. Her ID badge is upstairs."

"With her clothes?"

"Yes, with her clothes," she answered, growing increasingly more frustrated. "Her purse is sitting up in her office. We left in a hurry this afternoon."

"Without her clothes?"

Lauren stood silent behind Ginger, uncomfortable about the attention she was receiving. The security guard seemed significantly more concerned about the integrity of his post than about scoping out the naked blonde, but even the occasional look seemed to be more an assessment of Lauren's physical attributes from the neck down than any sort of understanding about the person from the neck up. 

The evening was dark outside, and the lobby well lit. Strangely, but fortunately, there seemed to be few pedestrians on sidewalks beyond the large, floor-to-ceiling glass windows that walled the lobby. Cars rushed by, but Lauren guessed that the drivers and passengers weren't going to be treated to much more than a high-speed peep. It was cold inside the lobby, the marble frigid beneath Lauren's naked feet. As she took her shoes from Ginger, she decided she'd slip them on, rather than pad barefoot to the elevator banks -- if the security guard would allow them to get that far. 

"Jesus Christ," Ginger exclaimed. "I've got my ID card. I'm willing to sign her in. We've had a really difficult day, if that's not exactly self-evident by our current situation. Could you cut us some slack?" 

"I'm just doing my job," he answered. 

Ginger leaned across the desk and snatched the Visitor's Book from the guard. "Do you know who this is?" she asked. "This is Lauren Laframboise. She's a vice president and assistant general counsel within legal. She's one of the company's top lawyers. And if she says one word about this tomorrow to your supervisor, you'll be looking for a job by noon." 

The threat seemed to do the trick, the guard finally capable of seeing Lauren as something more than a piece of tits and ass. Ginger was allowed to vouch for the girl's presence in office building by signing her in, and the two were allowed to pass by the front desk to the elevator banks beyond. 

"Thank you," Lauren said politely as the elevator doors shut. 

"Fucking moron," Ginger huffed. 

Lauren nodded, but added, "Probably might have been better off not telling him my real name, though."

"Oh," Ginger gasped. "I'm sorry." 

The elevator bell pinged their arrival on 26, and the two girls stepped into the elevator lobby for the floor. To the left was Suite 2650, home to a substantial portion of the company's Audit Department. To the right was Suite 2600, home to a small collection of the Legal Department - twelve lawyers in total, as well as their administrative support staff. Danny, Rachel, Lauren, and their colleagues represented a portion of the Corporate & Finance Legal division, including Compliance, Governance, Litigation, and, the role that Lauren had represented since her promotion from Senior Legal Counsel, Transactions. 

The elevator lobby was carpeted in an uninspiring blue and gray, a motif that stopped at the glass doors of either suite, but which did continue back around the corner to either suite's back doors. The ladies' room for the floor was down one hallway, the men's down the other. Unfortunately for Lauren, her gender's bathroom was down the far hall, across the elevator lobby, past the glass doors of the Audit Department, and around the corner. 

There were four elevators, in total, serving the First through the Twenty-First floors, and as Lauren stepped from her car, she caught her reflection in the silver doors of the car across from her. She was startled by just how naked she was, especially relative to the dark-haired secretary beside her. Her hair was a mess, her make-up not exactly what it had been that morning, and her eyes betraying just how tired she really was. Perhaps more unnerving, given her current situation, was the fact that her nipples will embarrassingly erect, her pubic hair a bit bushier than she cared for people to see, and her skin a pale shade of white, the last traces of her summer tan disappearing just a few weeks into September. 

While Lauren was fairly sure that a few members of the Legal staff were still around, she was also sure that the auditors and accountants from across the hall had disappeared hours earlier. In her five years at Evelyn Apparel, she had never seen a single person from Suite 2650 stay after 5:30, at the absolute latest. So, as she excused herself from Ginger and slipped off to the ladies' room around the corner, Lauren was confident than no one from that office was going to catch her in the nude. 

The bright pink walls and garish overhead lighting in the ladies' room only served to drive Lauren's earlier assessment about her body home. Regardless of the medical emergency she'd suffered that afternoon, Lauren hardly wanted people in her office to see her like this; if she was going to be naked, she wished that she could have at least looked her best. She peed, washed her hands, and checked herself out in the mirror, shaking her head at her current predicament. 

"Confidence," she told herself. She had a job to do. She was going to do that job. If this was the hand she had been dealt, she was going to make do. The option to go home was not a real one -- she had to tackle her current affliction head-on, even if it meant sacrificing her dignity to do so. 

Ginger was waiting for the girl when she stepped through the doors of Suite 2600, saying, "Almost everyone is gone. Rachel's still here. So is Dmitri." 

Lauren nodded, and thanked the girl. "You should probably get home yourself."

They had all been working long days, and tomorrow was going to be no different. 

"Is there anything else you need?" Ginger asked. 

"No, I should be fine. Or, fine enough." 

"Okay. Do you need me to bring you anything from home tomorrow?" 

Lauren wracked her brain, but couldn't think of anything at the moment. "I'll give you a call if I think of something." 

"Good night," the dark-haired girl said. 

"Good night."

Suite 2600 was divided into uneven halves, the bulk of the office to the right of the reception desk. Lauren's own office, as well as those of Bramley, Yvonne Egremont, her fellow assistant general counsels, and two of the senior legal counsels, were in that direction. Up the hall from Lauren's office, in the direction of the reception desk, were four cubicles where Ginger, fellow assistant Lisa Cripps, and the office's two Fall interns sat. Further down the hall were six more cubicles, housing four paralegals, Bramley's assistant Lorraine Dorsett, and Yvonne's assistant Jenny Smith. 

To the left, past the conference room and the kitchen, there were offices for the two remaining senior legal counsels, as well as for the two remaining associate general counsels, Danny first and then George Neal in the corner. Three assistants sat in cubicles there: Danny's Erin Carroll, George's Kim Gravenstein, and Beth Ashmead, who was shared by the four senior legal counsels. 

If Ginger's scouting report was correct, and both Dmitri Antonovka and Rachel remained, Lauren would have to walk past both of their offices to get to her own. She was less concerned about Rachel, who besides being a woman and her friend, had already seen her naked that afternoon. Dmitri, though, was an issue. His parents were Russian immigrants, but Dmitri had been born and raised in New Jersey, educated at Princeton and Columbia, and was every bit the American male. Unlike Danny, who could be awkward around attractive women, Dmitri was as smooth as they came, and might still have been frequenting bars and clubs for one night stands had he not fallen for drop-dead gorgeous photographer named Natalia. They'd been married for a few years, and Natalia was expecting the couple's first child within the month. Still, if their office were high school, Dmitri surely would have been the "cool" kid in class, and Lauren was a bit wary about facing him in the nude. 

The blonde girl advanced down the hall, observing that the light was indeed still on in Dmitri's office. In addition to the solid oak doors, each office had been fitted with a floor-to-ceiling length glass panel beside the door. It allowed little privacy, and Lauren, for one, hated the feeling of being an animal on display for everyone who walked up and down the hall. She had long ago surmised, however, that the glass windows had less to do with an overbearing boss making sure that all of his employees were hard at work and more to do with allowing the cubicle-dwellers who sat in the building's interior some access to natural light. 




Soma



Dmitri's door was closed, but the glass window allowed the light of his office to be cast into the hall. Lauren stepped quickly past the glass, Dmitri far too engrossed in his work to even glance up. She heaved a sigh of relief, no matter how temporary her lack of exposure was. If she could just make it to her office, she could gather her wits and compose herself, maybe settle into the ordeal that awaited her over the next few days. 

"Lauren?!" Rachel squealed as the blonde girl tried to race past her friend's office. "What the hell are you doing?!"

Lauren wanted to hush the girl, but she refrained. Instead, she turned, and stopped in Rachel's doorway, her naked body basked in the overhead lighting. 

Rachel looked terrified for her friend, and it was apparent that she thought Lauren had entirely lost her mind. Given her dress, and her presence back in the office in said dress, Lauren couldn't blame the redhead for her reaction. 

Lauren briefly recounted her back-and-forth with the psychiatrist, explaining that the only way she was going to overcome this psychosomatic disorder was by completing the acquisition, thereby ridding herself of her stress and the consequent clothing allergy. While she didn't specifically say that Dr. Adams had supported her on her decision, most of the explanation led Rachel to believe just that, Lauren repeatedly using phrases like, "we thought" or "we decided." While she owned up to her humiliation at returning to the office in the nude, she stressed the curative properties of confronting her anxiety and, at the same time, aiding the company in its acquisition of Cortland Menswear. 

"So you're just going to stay here?" Rachel asked. "Until Friday?"

Lauren nodded. "We've been here every day for the past few weeks from seven to nine, at a bare minimum. And while I could take one of the corporate coaches or a taxi back and forth to Chelsea, I'd still have to walk up to my apartment like this, and back through the lobby downstairs like this, and from the car to either building like this." She grimaced. "No, if I'm here, it's just the same two dozen people that see me. And it helps, I think, that there are more women in this office than men." 

That was a fair point. In an office of twenty-five people, the women outnumbered the men three to two. Of the twelve lawyers who worked in Suite 2600, only four were women, but between the administrative staff and the paralegals, the gender balance was tipped towards the female sex. But it wasn't as if this were a women's only locker room, a point well illustrated by the appearance, and subsequent disappearance, of Dmitri's head from around the corner. 

"Whoa!" Dmitri yawped. He took a single step out of his office, but upon seeing Lauren and her lack of clothing, he ducked backed into his office and issued a loud apology. 

"What are you doing back here?" Dmitri asked loudly, standing around the corner and out of view. "I thought you were still at the hospital?"

"I just checked out," Lauren answered, blushing from head to toe. Danny had seen her in the nude, but she'd been in the midst of collapsing in allergic shock. Adams, as well as Dr. Manzano and Dr. Suiki had seen her nude, but they were all doctors. Dmitri was the first of her colleagues to see her naked in this setting, and Lauren knew that she was going to have to get used to it. 

"Rachel said that you had some sort of allergy to your clothes?" he asked. He paused, though not long enough for the blonde girl to issue a response, and added, "I take it they didn't get that figured out?"

"Stress," she replied. "It's more psychological than physical. I'm here because the psychiatrist and I believed that it might help to work through it." 

"Like putting a claustrophobic in small space? Or forcing someone afraid of heights to climb a ladder? That sort of thing?"

"Sort of." 

"Or, in this case," Rachel interjected, "forcing a gymnophobic back to work in the nude." 

Lauren shot her friend a sarcastic smile. "I'm not a gymnophobic."

"An agora-gymnophobic?" Dmitri asked. "Someone afraid of nudity in public?"

"We're all agora-gymnophobic," Lauren huffed. Well, most of us, she thought. The receptionist, Melissa Cox, didn't seem terribly fearful of wearing revealing clothing to work. And it wasn't as if Lauren would have been surprised if creepy Charlie Peasgood, upstairs on the nineteenth floor, turned out to be a flasher. "But I'm here, in the office, in the nude. I think it's painfully obvious that the fear of nudity is not the issue here."

"Okay," the man replied from around the corner. 

"It's just, apparently, between Evelyn Apparel and Cortland Menswear, I've just been focused on nothing but clothes, and my body decided to abuse me for the stress it's been under by coming up with this ironic punishment." 

"So why you?" Dmitri asked, a question that was met with thoughtful silence. 

"Dmitri, you can come out," Lauren sighed, exasperated by the way they were conversing. She didn't relish the idea of him seeing her as she was just now, but she was going to have to get used her public exposure at some point. And Dmitri was going to see her eventually. 

Tentatively, he stepped from his office. But rather than rake his eyes up and down on Lauren's nude form, he awkwardly made and kept eye contact with the girl, demonstrating total concentration on her blue eyes. He asked again, "So why you?"

"I don't know, Dmitri," the girl answered. All three of them were working on the acquisition, even though Lauren, the youngest of the three, had been named the principal. She supposed that had some to do with it, shouldering the primary responsibility for the contract's completion. The added pressure of her potential promotion hanging in the balance couldn't have helped, either.

The conversation dragged on for a few minutes longer, the man's awkward rigidity not subsiding. Eventually, though, Dmitri excused himself, announcing that he had actually been planning on going home to Natalia before Lauren had arrived. Natalia was expecting him, after all. And he didn't want to let Natalia down. Given how much he was working, he hardly saw Natalia at all any more. Natalia, Natalia, Natalia. It was if Dmitri was trying to purge the image of Lauren's naked body from his mind by reminding himself of his fidelity to his wife. 

Lauren let herself into her office as Dmitri disappeared down the hall and out of the suite. Someone had collected her things from the conference room -- the intern, Jessica, she assumed -- and placed them on her desk. There were print-outs of the various acquisition contracts, books on corporate legal loopholes, and information about Cortland's legal structure. The basic structure of the deal had been hammered out weeks ago, by Paul McIntosh's team up in Corporate Development, and Lauren felt that she could recite the bullet points from memory by this point. It was up to her, however, to fill in the blanks, hammer out the details, and prevent any wiggle-room on the part of Cortland's management and shareholders. 

Lauren glanced out her window at the Midtown Manhattan skyline. Luckily, the Lane-Russet Building had reflective windows, preventing her neighbors on Madison Avenue from seeing the girl's naked form. There would be plenty of gawkers inside the office tomorrow, she told herself, but was thankful that she didn't have to worry about someone next door with a pair of binoculars. 

The girl couldn't say that she'd ever been curious about what it might be like to work in the nude, but she was experiencing it in real life, nonetheless. She slipped off her heels and settled down in her chair, her ass once again exposed to the sensation of bare skin against leather. At least, from behind her desk, only her breasts would be exposed. Lauren spread out the papers she'd been working on at the hospital and began to incorporate her afternoon's work into her larger opus. 

Rachel stayed for a bit longer, but the two girls were focused on the tasks at hand. By ten o'clock, Lauren was alone in the suite, her office's overhead flourescents the lone source of light in a dark hallway. Three hours passed quickly, and before Lauren was even aware of it, the clock had struck one. 

She was tired, the day's stress and events taking their toll. She yawned. Spotting a small duffel bag in the corner, Lauren decided she'd go take a shower, of sorts, in the ladies' room. Though the duffel hadn't been touched in weeks, it held everything that Lauren usually brought with her to the gym -- a sleeveless mesh tank top, one of her sports bras, a pair of tight-fitting black stretch pants, a pair of simple gray cotton panties, a small yellow bath towel, and various shampoos, soaps, and lotions for the shower. Only then, as she was inventorying the contents of her exercise bag, did Lauren realize that she'd been in such a hurry to leave the hospital that she'd left behind all the clothes she'd worn that day.

"Oh, shit," she exclaimed aloud. Dr. Cherry had taken them all -- the blazer, the blouse, the pants, the bra, and her underwear -- to run tests, but it was only just now registering to Lauren that she'd never given them back. She'd call about them tomorrow, she told herself. It wasn't that they were overly expensive or irreplaceable, as each and every item had been purchased from Evelyn Lane or Eve Intimates with her employee discount. But she would eventually want to return home dressed in something other than her workout clothes. She was getting ahead of herself, and she knew as much; it would be Friday afternoon before she'd need to worry about getting dressed again. For now, she just wanted to clean up and go to sleep. 

Carrying the whole back over her shoulder, Lauren tip-toed down the hall. At every corner, she was afraid that someone else was going to jump out her, catch her in the nude. The motion sensors turned the lights on as she made her way back to the reception desk, but instead of exiting the suite, Lauren kept going. She walked past the kitchen, the conference room, and the first two offices, finally coming to a stop outside of Danny's.

For late afternoon meetings, it wasn't unheard of for Danny Baldwin to shave in the men's room, preventing a five o'clock shadow. Lauren let herself into her colleague's office, flipping the light switch and finding what she was looking for -- his Mach 3 razor, a spare set of disposable blades, and a can of shaving cream stored on the top shelf of his closet. She helped herself to all three, carrying them in her fingers back past the reception desk, across the elevator lobby, and down the long hall beside the Audit department to the ladies' room. 

Given that the girl was going to be naked in front of all of her coworkers in the morning, Lauren wanted to at least make sure that she looked her best. Maybe it shouldn't have mattered what Dick Bramley or Dmitri Antonovka or Mike Haralson or any of the women in the office thought of her body, but the girl found herself worrying about being judged. She wanted to make sure her legs were shaved, that her hair was done right, that her make-up was perfect. The only thing worse, in her mind, than being naked in front of everyone she worked with was being naked in front of everyone she worked with and leaving a bad impression.

She slipped her rings from her fingers, took her bracelet and watch from her wrists, unfastened her necklace from her around her neck, and extracted her earrings. She was, after hours of being most of the way there, completely naked from head to toe. All of her jewelry was placed to the left of the two sinks as the water warmed up. 

Lauren stood in front of the sink, washing herself with soap and water. She would have much preferred a nice, warm, relaxing shower after her day. Heck, she would have settled for a cold shower instead of hovering over the sink. But she was working with what she'd been given, water falling to the floor all around her, and trickling into one of the drains in the center of the room. The cleaning staff was in and out of the men's and women's restroom at approximately 5:45PM each day, like clockwork. So, as Lauren stood barefoot on the cold tiles, she knew that the floor had been washed down, at least, that afternoon. More importantly, it met that no one in maintenance was going to come interrupt her makeshift bath. 

She lathered her legs with shaving cream, Danny's particular choice having a sexy, masculine smell. But Lauren didn't stop when she reached the tops of her thighs, instead making sure that spread the white foam all around her pussy. Again, if this week was the only day that her coworkers were going to see naked, Lauren wanted to make sure they at least found her attractive. On a normal day, a normal woman got dressed in a suit or skirt that made her look good, did her hair just right, and applied make-up to her face. But Lauren was going to be significantly more exposed, and like it or not, she need to groom even her most intimate of areas. Instead of just cleaning up her bush, however, Lauren took most of it off, and was a bit unnerved by the amount of pubic hair that she was sending down the sink drain. She didn't take it all, though, leaving a thin vertical strip of dirty-blonde hair above her slit. 

Lauren leaned over the sink to wash her hair. Though she knew that she'd probably be forced to do her hair again in the morning, Lauren wanted to make sure that tomorrow was perhaps the best hair day she would ever have, bar none. If she had to be naked, then she had to be naked; but seeing as how she wouldn't be able to wear any of her outfits, all she really had to play with, in terms of how she looked, was her hair. She had her jewelry, sure, but she limited to the same pieces she'd taken from her jewelry box that morning. 

No, she caught herself, that wasn't entirely true -- she had a pair of big, silver hoop earrings she'd brought in about a month earlier, when Ginger had set her up on a blind date that she'd had ultimately chickened out on. And, come to think of it, there was a costume bracelet of big, fake white pearls tucked away in her desk drawer, as well, that she'd entirely forgotten about until just then. So, her hair aside, she wasn't entirely devoid of accessories for the next day. 

The heels she'd worn that day were a sexy black pair of pumps, probably not the most sensible footwear for the office, but Lauren liked the way they defined her calves and accentuated her backside. They'd be a must for the morning, as they'd make her legs look longer and muscle tone look better. She wondered if ambling around the office in the heels would make her look like a stripper or a whore, but she decided the back that she was ambling around the office in the nude would be the real cause she'd look like a stripper or a whore, the heels neither aiding or abating that particular concern. 

She reached for her towel, and began to dry her body off. Curious, and tantalized by the soft fabric, Lauren pulled the top around her chest, just above her breasts. She had intended to tuck it in on itself, as she did each morning when she got out of the shower. But the gentle material that had only seconds earlier felt soft against her skin now made it seem as if Lauren were trying to clothe herself in barbed wire. She dropped the towel to the ground, recoiling in pain, and watching a resurgent rash dissipate in her reflection.

"Okay," she said aloud, "no wearing the towel."

After she'd dried off, Lauren set the towel aside. She blow-dried her hair first, and then slathered her body with moisturizer. The floor itself was a bit wet, but Lauren was confident it would dry by morning, so she gathered her things and left the ladies' room behind. She put Danny's shaving cream and razor back, but stole a bottle of baby pink nail polish from the desk of Stephanie Kidd, one of the paralegals. She was going to look good tomorrow morning, from the tips of her fingers to the tips of her toes.

***

Lauren Laframboise awoke Wednesday morning with a kink in her neck. If the kink had been the only challenge awaiting her that day, she would have been thankful. But yesterday's ordeal at the hospital was nothing when compared to the day that lay ahead of her. She was stark naked, in her place of business, and suffering through a psychosomatic allergy to her clothes. 

She had slept on the floor of her office, behind her desk, and had used her duffel bag as a pillow. The bag was mostly empty, containing nothing more than a few pieces of work-out clothes to stuff it, meaning that Lauren had to fluff it and re-fluff it throughout the night to better support her head and neck. Obviously, without much success. 

That said, it wasn't her neck, or even her nudity, that had Lauren angst-ridden just minutes after opening her eyes. Instead, it was the thought of the Cortland Menswear acquisition papers that had Lauren's muscles tense, her future with Evelyn Apparel hinging upon their successful completion by the end of the Third Quarter on Friday. The fact that she was incapable of putting on clothes was certainly a difficult challenge to overcome, but the bigger challenge was making sure the contract was flawless and complete. 

As told by the digital clock on Lauren's desk, it was six thirty in the morning when she opened her eyes. She'd only gone to sleep four and half hours earlier, but Lauren knew she needed to get up and prepare for her day, as people had been trickling in as early as seven the past few weeks. She stood, and in her darkened monitor, caught sight of the image that others would be treated to all day -- her naked body.

Lauren was jaw-droppingly gorgeous, to be sure. Five-foot-four, a hundred and five pounds, measurements of 34-23-34 and C-cup breasts, the girl was pin-up material from every angle. She had long, flowing blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes, and milky white skin. She was fit, slender and well-toned, hardly ever missing a day at the gym before she'd been inundated by legal jargon pertaining to the Cortland acquisition. 

She slipped from her office, the motion sensor lights flickering on as she headed up the hallways toward the reception desk. The sun was up, if barely, the dawn light trickling into the Midtown office building. Lauren's office, like most of those in the Legal Department's twenty-third floor suite, faced westwards towards Madison Avenue, Fifth Avenue, and New Jersey beyond, but there was enough sunshine coming through the windows to light Lauren's path even without the overhead fluorescent bulbs. Completely naked from head toe, with even her shoes and jewelry still in her office, Lauren pattered past the bank of elevators, around the corner from the Audit Department's reception desk, and down the hall to the ladies' room. 

A bit clearer an image than that in her darkened computer screen, Lauren's reflection smiled back at her as she entered the pink-tiled bathroom. Thankfully, her hair didn't look at that bad, the long, flowing locks maintaining the full body and subtle curls she'd introduced the night before. Further south, Lauren did a double take when she remembered just how much hair she'd removed from her crotch, only the thin strip of dirty blonde pubic hair remaining above her pussy. 

After relieving herself and freshening up in the bathroom, Lauren got herself a cup of coffee and returned to her office, and to her desk, and began to get about her day. She had a long morning ahead of her, a long afternoon after that, and a long Thursday and Friday awaiting her when the day was through. The first thing she did that morning was to compose an email to her boss, Dick Bramley, one of the company's three Deputy General Counsels. Carbon copying his assistant Lorraine, Lauren requested a meeting with him as soon as he arrived, to discuss the repercussions of the previous day's trip to the emergency room and Lauren's subsequent decision as to how best to handle the diagnosis. 




Soma



The first person in that morning, aside from Lauren herself, was Kevin Tolman. Kevin may or may not have been gay -- no one had ever been able to pin that down. He didn't have a girlfriend, never expressed an interest in having a girlfriend, and hardly ever talked about his person life. He was a forty-five year old paralegal who sat with the others down the hall from Lauren's office, keeping mostly to himself but working hard on every assignment that crossed his desk. Lauren sometimes felt a bit uncomfortable ordering him around, given the fifteen years that he had on her. But then, despite the title she held, Lauren was younger than most everyone else on the twenty-sixth floor, aside from a few members of the administrative staff, two of the legal counsels, and the student interns. 

Tolman first loped past her office that morning without much reaction. Apparently catching himself a few steps beyond, he doubled back to check out what he thought he'd seen. Sitting at her desk, every visible body out in the open, was Lauren Laframboise. Her door was closed, but Tolman was able to see her through the glass, and she was able to see him. Awkwardly, he raised a hand and waved, and got an uncomfortable wave in response. But, the acknowledgement of Tolman's presence seemed enough to satisfy him, and the paralegal moved on immediately afterwards. 

Yvonne Egremont was next, another forty-something, but one who had climbed a rung higher at Evelyn Apparel than Lauren currently stood. They both reported to Dick Bramley, was Yvonne was a pay grade more senior, a gap that would be closed by Monday, if Lauren was successful in getting everything involving Cortland completely wrapped up. As she passed Lauren's office, the blonde girl held her breath. But Yvonne didn't even so much as glance in Lauren's direction, walking by without noticing the naked body. 

Dana Newton, another paralegal from down the hall, arrived a few minutes later. A total space cadet, Dana smiled when she saw Lauren already sitting at her desk. She opened the blonde girl's office door without knocking, wished her good morning, complimented her hair, and then moved on. Dana made no mention of Lauren's nudity, leaving the blonde girl whether the paralegal had just been polite, or if she'd even noticed something was different about the way she'd dressed for work that morning. 

Lorraine Dorsett, upon her arrival, certainly noticed Lauren's shameful display, her disapproval apparent in the scowl she shot the girl as she walked by. To be fair, Lorraine always seemed to be in a bad mood, a perpetual malcontent who disapproved of most anything that anyone did. But she returned a few minutes later, scowl still firmly entrenched, to fetch the naked blonde girl. 

"I got your email," Lorraine explained. "So did Dick. He's in the parking garage now, and should be up in a few minutes, if you want to come down and wait for him." 

Lauren nodded, and followed the older woman down the hall. She'd put her heels back on, and decked herself out in the jewelry available to her. Instead of the small, conservative earrings she'd worn the day before, Lauren had fished the large, ostentatious silver hoops from her desk. Her silver bracelet from yesterday had become an anklet at the base of her right ankle, and the large, faux pearl bracelet she'd forgotten had existed was now adorning her right wrist. In addition, she was wearing her watch and silver choker, and upon her fingers three different silver and platinum rings. During her years at Vermont State, she'd had a belly-button piercing, and as she had looked herself up and down that morning, Lauren wished she hadn't removed it -- it would have added to her sex appeal. 

Lauren didn't mind waiting for Bramley in his office, if only because his office was at the end of the hall, and she could avoid the awkward morning hello's as people noticed her naked body. She brought with her a few pages of the contract she'd been working on since first thing that morning, and fully intending on using every second of her time to her advantage. 

"Would you like something to sit on?" Lorraine asked.

"Excuse me?" 

Obviously, Bramley's secretary was concerned about Lauren's naked ass on her boss's furniture. Instead of prosecuting the issue further, however, Lorraine mumbled a "never mind," and left the blonde alone in Dick Bramley's office. Lauren sat down on one of the two business chairs placed in front of his desk, and lost herself in the contract as she waited. 

Bramley was, as promised, only a few minutes behind. Stepping into his office, he did a double take when he saw the naked blonde waiting for him. And though he'd been in the process of shutting the door to talk to Lauren in private, her state of dress unnerved him enough that he opened it all the way back up again. 

"Well, make yourself comfortable," Bramley joked. The girl half rose to greet him, but Bramley b-lined for the far side of his desk, eager to put the large piece of furniture between himself and his naked employee. 

As it turned out, Bramley was fairly well-informed about Lauren's affliction, at least up to a point. He had been checking in with Ginger periodically throughout the afternoon and evening the day before, trying to make sure that Lauren was okay. She was a good girl, an ambitious employee, and a trusted lieutenant within Commercial Transactions. Bramley had planned on joining Lauren, Ginger, Danny, and Rachel in the hospital, but Ginger had insisted that he stay away, explaining to him the nature of Lauren's problem and the predicament it presented in terms of her state of dress. But while he understood that she'd been allergic to her clothes, he hadn't been aware of the underlying cause of the reaction, the psychosomatic effect of her overwhelming stress about work. 

"You need to go home," the deputy counsel growled. Gesturing to her naked body, he continued, "You can't stay here like this."

"No, I'm okay with this," the girl replied. Catching herself, she amended her statement, "Or, at least, I can deal with this."

Bramley shook his head. "Lauren, it's nothing against you, personally, but I can't have a naked woman in my offices." 

"But, Dick, listen," she begged. "I need this work. I know it's the work that's doing this to me, but unless I'm able to put the work to bed, I might no be able to get over this. I'm going to stress about the acquisition whether I'm here working on it, or at home worrying about it."

"You can work from home," he offered.

"I can't," she whined. "I spent seven hours in the hospital yesterday, and accomplished maybe two hours worth of what I might have accomplished, had I been here in the office. I need access to the Share drive, access to the hard copies of the contracts and proposals Corporate Development put together, access to the people here who are pulling all the different pieces together, and access to law library we have here in the building. There's just no way I can telecommute and get this done." 

Bramley shook his head again, but Lauren knew his resistance was wearing down. 

"I'll stay in my office, with the door closed, ninety-nine percent of the time. There are more women in the suite than men, anyways. And even if it were the other way around, we're all adults here. This isn't going to devolve into some Internet erotica author's sexual fantasy -- we're all grown-ups. You're married, Danny's married, Dmitri's married, Steve Ellison's married, Mike Haralson's engaged, and George has been married enough times over the course of his life to account for everyone else, so nothing's going to happen." 

She pleaded, "I need this. I need to get better. I need this so I can be normal again. I need this so I can put on a t-shirt without breaking into hives." She took a deep breath, and pulled out the trump card. "But more importantly, you need me."

Their eyes met. Bramley was well aware of this last fact, and seemed resigned to giving Lauren what she wanted in order to make sure the acquisition went smoothly. Her failure would reflect upon him, and his failure was sure to damage the reputation of his own boss, Jim Grieve. And all of that was nothing compared to the monetary amounts that might be lost if the deadline were shifted from the end of the Third Quarter to a few weeks into the Fourth -- Evelyn Apparel could potentially lose millions. 

"You're going to need to sign a hell of a lot of waivers," Bramley conceded. 

Lauren had butterflies in her stomach. She had gotten what she'd wanted, but when what she wanted included three solid days of nudity, it was difficult to consider it much of a victory. 

The man picked up his pen, and on the back of unimportant sheet of paper, he wrote, "I promise not to sue." Rotating the makeshift contract around, he extended the pen to the blonde girl. "I'll have Charlie Peasgood come up with something a bit more concrete by later this morning, but for now, you're going to have to sign this for me to let you go back to your office." 

Lauren accepted the pen, and then accepted the terms. The last person she wanted to deal with that morning was Charlie Peasgood. For whatever reason, he was the lawyer Bramley most trusted in the Employment Law division on the eighteenth floor, but he gave Lauren -- and most other women, for that matter -- the creeps. Peasgood had the habit of addressing her chest when they spoke, and she had caught him plainly staring at his female colleagues on more than one occasion. Lauren hated the idea that he'd be aware of her present state, and she doubted it would be long before he'd come up with an excuse to invite himself down to Suite 2600 to see for himself. At least he wouldn't have to undress her with his eyes today, she thought. 

"Okay, one other thing," Bramley said, taking the makeshift contract back from the blonde. "This whole thing has 'corporate scandal' written all over it. So, from here on, you're not allowed alone with any of the men behind closed doors. Not without another woman with you." 

"What exactly do you think is going to happen?"

"Probably nothing. Hopefully nothing. But I'm not taking the risk. If you want to pull Ginger into a meeting, or you want to use the intern, what's her name..."

"...Jessica..."

"Jessica, right. If you want to use the intern, by all means. But, door closed, you need another woman present. Door open, no problem." 

"Fine," Lauren agreed. 

"Alright," Bramley huffed. "I'm going to send out an email to the staff of this suite, letting them all know what's going on, and warning them all to be on their best behavior. And then I'm going to call upstairs to see I we can work out some sort of documentation."

"Understood." 

"In the mean time, why don't you go back to your office, and let's see if we can this thing done sooner rather that later. The more quickly you can pull the pieces together, the more quickly things can go back to normal around here."

Lauren needed no convincing on that end. Even without her current clothes-less predicament, she wanted the acquisition over with. She wanted to be rid of thinking about Cortland for some time. 

On her way back to her office, Lauren passed first Yvonne, who seemed completely unnerved by the blonde's state of dress, and then Mike Haralson, who tried to croak out a "hi," but the sound was lost somewhere in his throat. Haralson, though, followed the girl to her office next door, knocked tentatively, and asked if she was okay. Lauren said, "yes," and though she did uncomfortably invite the lawyer into her office to detail her day the previous afternoon, she first warned, "But we need to leave the door open." 

All morning, things seemed to flow the same way. He friends and colleagues stopped in to check up on her, and even those too nervous to come speak with made excuses to walk up and down the hall, hoping to sneak a peak without making it look as if they were sneaking a peak. It didn't help any that the copier room was directly across from Lauren's office, and any number of peeping toms could find a legitimate excuse for standing around outside her door. The warning that Bramley sent out, urging everyone in the office to behave like adults, only seemed to make things worse, as it served to advertise Lauren's state rather than discourage her audience. 

But Lauren had given her suitemates a scare the day before, and there was a strong undercurrent of concern for her well-being among all the voyeurism. Ginger, for one, stopped in first thing that morning with a blanket and a pillow from home. While Lauren had gone the night before on the bare carpet of her office floor, she still had two nights ahead of her in the office. 

"Weren't you cold?" the secretary asked.

"I cranked the heat up in my office to eighty-five," Lauren giggled. She didn't maintain a temperature of eighty-five degrees throughout the day, but Lauren's office was a good five or six degrees warmer than the temperature in the hall. 

"I also brought you this," Ginger said, handing the naked girl a nondescript paper bag. 

"Tequila?" Lauren asked. "Are you trying to get me drunk?"

"Hey, I know a good drink makes me feel more relaxed. And, you know, it's liquid courage."

"Thanks, but this may have to wait until Friday afternoon. I'm not sure Bramley would approve of me checking the wording of the contract while drunk."

The dark haired girl shrugged. She hadn't intended for her boss to have more than a few shots, but reasoned that, if stress were the underlying cause of Lauren's predicament, then maybe a drink would take some of the edge off. 

Lauren was uneager to leave her office. Behind her desk, she was essentially shielded from the waist down. And with the door shut, no one in the office got more than a quick glimpse through the glass window as they strolled up and down the hall. But, she had to admit that after working in the conference room with Ginger, Jessica, and Rachel for the bulk of the previous week and half, she felt cramped in the small office, unable to spread her various documents out very far. Even more worrisome, though, was having to go to the bathroom. 

It hadn't been an issue late in the evening when she'd returned from the hospital, or even later in the evening, when she'd "showered" over the sink. That morning, she'd used the ladies' room before anyone had arrived, but it was now mid-day, and both her suite and the suite across the hall were filled with Evelyn Apparel employees. Hours had past since she'd last used the facilities, and Lauren cursed herself for having had Ginger fetch her that second cup of coffee. She crossed and uncrossed and crossed her legs repeatedly, willing herself to ignore that fact that she had to pee.

If only the restrooms were on the opposite sides. The men's room was just outside Suite 2600's back door, as the ladies' was just outside Suite 2650's. If it had been reversed, Lauren could have avoided a long walk up the hall of Legal, past the reception desk, out past the elevator bank, around the corner past Audit's reception desk, and down the long back hall to the rest room. Instead, she could have slipped out past just Ginger, Lisa Cripps, and the interns, and right into the lavatory. 

Lauren found herself toying with the idea of ignoring the gender barrier and just using the men's room. Really, would any of the men have minded? It would have spared her the long trek around the twenty-sixth floor. But it wasn't even an option, given the problems Dmitri, Danny, and the others had been putting up with since Monday morning. 

That weekend, both toilets in the men's room had begun overflowing, and when Kevin Tolman had arrived on Monday, he found the men's room nearly flooded. It was all clean water, thankfully, coming from the pipes that fed the two toilets instead of those that drained them. Maintenance had been up, but while they'd been able to slow the leak to a slow trickle, they'd been unable to end it completely. The plumbers were scheduled to come on Saturday, and in the meantime, the men of the twenty-sixth floor were required to ascend or descend to the twenty-seventh or twenty-fifth floors, respectively, if they needed to take a shit. The urinals were still functioning properly, and the men all used them, but every venture into the men's room meant stepping across a thin veneer of water on the floor. 

"I'm just going to run to the rest room," Lauren whispered to Ginger over the secretary's cubicle wall. She had dared to leave her office for the first time since her meeting with Bramley that morning, and Lauren nervously scanned up and down the hallway to see if anyone was coming. 

"Do you want me to go talk to the receptionist over in Audit?" Ginger asked. Like their own reception desk, where Melissa Cox sat, Audit's looked out onto the elevator banks, and the chubby, middle-aged woman across the lobby would undoubtedly see Lauren coming. "Explain to her what's going on?"

"No," Lauren decided. She didn't want the entire building to know about her nudity. And even if the Audit receptionist was going to see her, she didn't want to have to explain herself, or give her any clue as to the naked woman's identity -- she didn't want her to put a name to a face. Or, rather, a name to set of exposed tits. 

In her heels, Lauren stepped quickly up the hall, past Rachel's office, past Dmitri's office, past the offices of Steve Ellison and Ken Fuji. At the reception desk, she saw Melissa for the first time that morning, and noticed that, once again, the girl was wearing a low-cut red top that seemed like it belonged more in a nightclub than it did in an office environment. She was twenty-one, Lauren had told herself on numerous occasions -- she just doesn't know any better. And, given Lauren's display that morning, it could have been argued that Melissa was significantly overdressed. 

The blonde rounded the corner, set her jaw, and exited Suite 2600. Unfortunately, the receptionist in Audit was not alone. Standing beside her was a short, bespectacled man who looked to be about Lauren's age. From the way he was dressed, in tight pants and an ugly striped shirt, the girl was sure he was one of accountants that staffed Suite 2650. And, given the dorkiness that seemed inherent in this man, the blonde walking directly towards him that morning might have been the first time he'd seen a naked woman in real life. Both the receptionist and the accountant stared wide-eyed at the girl, neither believing what was transpiring in the elevator lobby. 

Lauren rounded the corner, nearly jogging by that point, and hurried to the relative safety of the ladies' room. 

The return trip was no less excruciating, though Lauren did have the option of keeping her back to Audit. Still, whether it was curiosity or concern, she glanced back over her shoulder in their direction. To her horror, the accountant had rounded up two other gentlemen while Lauren had been in the bathroom, and all three were staring at her naked ass as she hustled toward Melissa and Suite 2600. 

"Yeah," she panted to Ginger when she'd returned back down the hall, "I think you need to go explain my situation to the receptionist. Just to make sure that she keeps men from congregating by her desk."

As Lauren sat back down at her own desk, she noticed that her nipples were hard. Her headlights were on. She remembered reading somewhere that fright could be considered a sexual stimulus in both men and women, something to do with the basic reaction of fight, flight, or fuck. Men sometimes could become erect in such cases, and women could experience lubrication, an engorged clit, or erect nipples. It had to have been fear that had Lauren's nipples at attention, and, she noticed as she crossed her legs beneath her desk, her pussy a bit moist. 

As expected, Charlie Peasgood slithered his way into Suite 2600 just before lunch with a stack of papers. He could have emailed them to Lauren and Bramley. He could have sent his assistant down with them. But, no, Peasgood being the same odious creep he'd always been, he came down himself.