Office Subjugation

Chapter 8 - The Shaving

Five forty-one in the morning. The fourteenth-floor hallway was as silent as yesterday, and the day before. She had been standing in it already undressed, the dress folded on top of her handbag at her feet, the stockings pulled up tight to her garter clips. The cup-less bra offered her breasts up into the cool recycled air with her nipples exposed - the left one still nested in the patchy yellow-green border of its two-day bruise, smaller than yesterday, throbbing only when something grazed it, the right one hard from the cold. The mesh thong clung to skin it had not clung to before.

She looked down at herself.

Through the transparent fabric she could see what had been done. Where yesterday the sparse shadow of her pubic hair had pressed a darker colour through the mesh, today the fabric sat against the pale outline of the mound alone, the shape of her visible in a way the hair had always softened: the seam of her outer lips printed through the mesh as a single vertical line, the fold where her slit began barely defined, the rise of her mound itself a clean curve, unbroken, unshaded. She looked younger. More exposed than yesterday. The absence of the cover she had spent so long wanting made her feel it more, not less.

She had shaved last night. She had shaved again that morning before she left the apartment. Her fingertips had gone over the mound, the outer lips, the inner thighs, between the cheeks, checking anywhere she might have missed, and she had not missed anything. Her skin was smooth below her eyelashes. He had told her bare and she was bare.

He'll check. He said he'd check every morning.

She clasped her hands at her waist and she waited. She did not think about his fingers on her yesterday. She did not think about the fistful of hair, the plucking, the three a.m. hour she had spent on the couch in the dark with her thighs pressed together. She thought about today. She had followed the rule. He would find the rule followed. The day would start.

---

7:18. The elevator chimed.

He came through in navy. Different suit, same briefcase, same phone in the same hand, the screen holding most of his attention down the length of the corridor. He did not look at her until he reached the door, and then only long enough for a single top-to-bottom sweep, nothing more than a check that something had arrived. His gaze paused at her hips for what might have been a fraction of a second, and she thought, but was not certain, that the pause was at the smooth outline visible through the mesh.

"Inside."

She gathered the folded things off the carpet and followed him in.

---

She set her bag and the dress on the chair just inside the office door. She walked to the centre of the room and turned to face his desk and she stood there, hands clasped at her waist, eyes on the green book on the third shelf of the bookcase behind him the way she had held them yesterday when everything had gone wrong.

He took his time. The briefcase went on the desk. The jacket went on the stand behind the door. He poured himself a glass of water from the credenza. Sipped. Sipped again. Set the glass down. Came across the carpet to stand in front of her.

"Arms at your sides."

She dropped them.

His fingers started at her right shoulder. Traced the bra strap down to where the lace met the underwire. Slipped across the front along the curved metal, lifted the right breast briefly in the cup, let it settle. Then the left side, the same path, and when his finger reached the bruised nipple it did not stop there and it did not press. It went around the discoloration in a wide slow half-circle that kept him on undamaged skin, avoided the swollen centre entirely, and came out the other side without having touched her where yesterday he had crushed her.

Her lungs let go of something she had not known they had been holding. Her shoulders lowered a quarter-inch.

He crouched. The garter clips. Yesterday he had pulled each one and let it snap back, four times, the fourth one hard enough to leave a welt she had felt all day. Today he hooked a finger beneath each clasp, tested the bite of the metal against the top of the stocking, released it gently, moved on. Four clips. Four gentle tests. Nothing snapped. The clips sat where they had been sitting before he had touched them.

She was still breathing carefully. She did not question the difference. Questioning would have been its own kind of speaking and the rule was no speaking.

---

He stayed crouched.

She knew the next part was coming. Yesterday the next part had been the fistful of hair.

His hand came up between her thighs and he placed his palm flat against her bare mound.

-

The contact was warm. His hand was warmer than her own skin, the heat sinking into the freshly shaved mound as weight rather than touch - the full deliberate weight of a hand resting on something it owned and reminding itself it owned. She felt every line of his palm, the base of his fingers, the slight callus at the edge of his thumb, the softness of his skin against hers. She did not breathe. Breathing would move her body against his hand.

He did not move either. His palm sat there. He was letting himself feel the difference: the silk-smooth surface where the hair had been, the total absence of any texture, the skin he had made her produce for him. Then his fingers opened slowly, index and middle parting to follow the outer edge where her right thigh began, ring and pinky mirroring the spread on her left, the tips of all four fingers reaching inward along the line where leg became something else, and the contact sent goosebumps up her stomach in a travelling line from where his fingertips touched her.

"Good girl."

Her shoulders dropped. The breath she had been holding came back out. A flush rose up the front of her throat, warmed her ears, stung the inside of her eyes. She hated the flush. She hated the sting. Most of all she hated that after the hallway, after yesterday's hour and a half of waiting, after the fistful, the plucking, last night with a cheap razor in a bathroom she had been afraid to use, two small words from this man could make all of it feel like it had been the right thing to have gone through.

I got it right. I finally got something right.

---

His palm lifted off her mound. The relief started to form. She was in the middle of feeling it when his hand came back, lower, and his fingers closed against the mesh over her outer lips.

He pressed the thin fabric into her. The mesh moulded to the shape of her sex, contours printed through the transparent material, and he traced the seam between her lips from top to bottom with his index finger. Then he hooked the mesh to one side and pulled the thong clear of her.

The office air found the bare skin of her. She was open to the room. He was crouched in front of her and the thong was pulled aside and everything she was below the waist was in the light.

He put his hand around her.

Both outer lips. His thumb on one side and his forefinger and middle finger on the other, and he gathered the soft bare folds of her into his hand. The flesh was warmer there than anywhere else on her body, the blood close to the surface, the tissue giving as he took it, and he held her there in his grip. Not squeezing. Holding. He had all morning and nowhere to be.

She could not think. It was not pain. It was not the clinical cold of yesterday's plucking. His warm hand had closed around the softest part of her and was holding her there. The grip was possessive. The grip was warm. It was nearly comforting. A hold foreign to her body, but not unwelcome.

He squeezed. Gently, the first time, a slow compression that pressed her lips together in his grip, the yielding of the flesh sending pressure down and inward, a dull warm sensation that reached into her lower belly and made her breath catch. A small tight sound came up out of her throat before she could catch it.

He released. The lips fell apart again, heavy.

He squeezed a second time, the same pace, the same depth, and she felt her own pulse in the flesh he was holding.

Then he tugged. Outward, gently, stretching the lips away from her body, not far, not enough to hurt, but enough that she felt the pull at the base of each fold where the skin joined the rest of her, enough that the inner lips shifted inside the outer ones, enough that the tugging reached places she had no words for - a deep connective pull that linked her sex into her lower stomach, her inner thighs, the small of her back, as though the parts of her body were all held together by strings and he had pulled one.

He held the stretch. Three seconds. Released.

Squeeze. Tug. Release. Squeeze. Tug. Release. Rhythm.

He's checking the shave. He's being thorough. The tugging is testing for stubble, for missed hairs, that's all it is.

This isn't punishment. He's not angry. He's pleased. He's taking his time because I did it right. A man like him, in an office like his, taking his time to check properly. I should be grateful he's taking this much care.

-

The thought came with a warmth the first one had not, a warmth that spread up through her chest while he worked, because if he was not angry and this was not punishment then this was approval, this was him appreciating the work she had done, and his fingers kept up the unhurried pace and between each squeeze his thumb traced a slow line along the crease where her right lip met her thigh, his thumbnail dragging faintly across bare skin, and her body, without being given permission, had started to do things, a heaviness gathering in her lower belly, a tingling spreading from his fingers inward into her and through her, her thighs trembling, her calves burning from the effort of standing perfectly still in heels while her body did things she had not asked it to do and could not stop it doing, and he squeezed again, and she did not move, and she did not speak, and she did not breathe.

He squeezed one last time, firmer than before, compressing both lips in a full grip, and held for five seconds while she counted them against her own pulse in his hand.

Then he let go. He dragged his fingers along the inside of her thigh, top to knee, leaving a faint warmth on the skin where they had been, and he stood.

---

She let the breath out. It came out shaky and too loud in the silent office.

He walked to the desk. Sat. Opened the drawer at his right hand.

"Come here."

She walked to the desk. Her legs were not steady. The mesh thong had fallen back into place and was pressing against flesh still warm from his grip, and every step moved the fabric against her and her body reported the shift.

"Sit."

He had cleared a space on the near edge of the desk.

She sat on the edge. The oak was cold against the backs of her thighs. She pressed her knees together. Hands in her lap.

"Hold your legs up."

She did not understand. She stared at the knot of his tie and waited for the instruction to turn into something she could do.

He stood. Came around behind her. Placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed her backwards. She leaned, caught her weight on her palms, her arms braced behind her on the wood. His hand was on her right ankle a moment later. He lifted the leg, her knee rising, the stocking whispering against his sleeve, and he guided her foot up until her thigh was folded flat against her stomach. He hooked her own hand behind the bend of her knee, curled her fingers around her own calf.

"Hold."

Right leg held up, knee near her shoulder, stocking-clad calf angled toward the ceiling. The position opened her. The hip rotated. The inner thigh stretched. Cool office air arrived at the crease where leg met sex.

He moved around to her other side. Same motion. Left ankle, lifted, knee to her stomach, her hand hooked behind. "Hold."

Both legs folded up now. Both knees near her shoulders. She was sitting on the edge of his desk with her legs held open by her own hands, her weight on the base of her spine and the edge of the oak, her arms beginning to strain.

His fingers went to the mesh thong between her legs. He hooked two fingers under the strip and pulled upward, the fabric dragging across her bare skin and bunching above her pubic bone in a thin twisted line.

Everything below her waist was open.

---

She felt it before she let herself look. The bare mound. The soft lips laid open by the spread of her thighs. The pink centre of her visible between them. And below, where the angle of her held position tilted her hips forward, the full round paleness of her cheeks parted by the pose, and between them the small tight ring of her in the open light of his office, clenching at the exposure, relaxing, clenching again without her permission.

She turned her head to the side. Pressed her cheek against her own raised knee.

Don't look. Don't think about what he sees.

The sound came before she recognised it. A small electronic click. Artificial. Familiar.

A camera shutter.

Her eyes opened. He was standing three feet from the end of the desk with his phone raised in his hand, the screen turned away from her.

Her mouth opened.

No speaking unless asked a direct question.

She closed it. Pressed her lips together until they went white.

"This is the standard." His voice was even. Professional. He did not lower the phone. "Every morning, this is how I expect you to look. Clean. Bare. Maintained."

A reference photo. So I know what to maintain. It makes sense. He needs a record so he can check.

He slid the phone into the inside pocket of his jacket.

"You can let go."

She released her legs. They dropped, heavy, the thigh muscles cramping from the held position. She sat on the edge of the desk with her knees back together, her hands back in her lap. In his jacket pocket was a photograph of her, devoid of modesty.

He took a photo. He has a photo of me. Of - everything. And I don't even know what it looks like.

"Coffee."

---

She bought the coffee. Came back. Set it on his desk. Went to her own chair.

The photograph loomed over the rest of the day. It was in the cups of coffee, in the voices on the phone, in the folders she opened and closed without reading. She crossed her legs at her desk. The swollen sensitive flesh shifted between her thighs. She could still feel the grip on her. Not the pain of it. The pressure of it. The ghost of being held in a place nobody had ever held her before.

Squeeze. Tug. Release.

At noon she ate a cheese sandwich from the vending machine in the break room, standing, looking at the blank tiled wall. At six he told her she could go. She said goodnight, Sir. He did not answer.

---

The bus. The back row. She had the phone out and was scrolling past things she was not absorbing when the phone buzzed once against her palm.

One new message. An unknown contact.

She tapped it.

A flash of skin. Spread legs. Her own body.

She slammed the phone face-down against the top of her thigh. Her heart came up into her throat and stayed there. The woman in the next seat glanced over, eyes meeting hers for a single burning moment, and Chloe gave her a small tight smile that did not move past her teeth. The woman looked away. Chloe shoved the phone into her bag. Zipped the bag. Put both her hands on top of it and did not move them for the rest of the ride.

He sent it. He sent the photo to my phone while I'm on the bus.

She did not touch the phone again on the bus, or on the walk home, or on the three flights of stairs up to her apartment, or while she was unlocking the door, or while she was closing and chaining it behind her, or while she was putting her shoes by the door, and not until she had put her bag on the arm of the couch and lowered herself into the cushions in the dark living room. The table lamp had not worked since the bulb blew the week before. Light bulbs cost money and she was counting every dollar.

-

She took the phone out. Unlocked it. Opened the message.

-

The photograph filled the screen, brighter, sharper than anything she had taken herself, his phone camera resolving every line of her in the overhead office light.

A girl on a desk.

Her own legs held up and apart at the knees by her own hands, the stocking-clad calves angled toward the ceiling, the stocking-tops pulled up tight by the garter clips on the inside of each spread thigh. Above them the cup-less bra lifting her breasts in the frame, both nipples visible, the left one in its yellow-green border and the right one still hard from the cold office air, both on display. And between the spread of her legs, in the exact center of the image, the rest of her: the bare pale mound smooth under the overhead light without a shadow or a mark on it, the outer lips full, folded together into a neat vertical seam, a small glimpse of inner pink just visible at the bottom of the seam where the angle allowed, and below that the smooth line of skin leading down to the parting of her round white cheeks and the small tight pink ring of her centered perfectly between them. Everything clean. Everything exposed.

She looked indecent. She looked like something from a website she would never have visited.

She stared at the photograph for a long time.

Her thumb hovered over the delete icon at the bottom of the screen. One tap. Two. Gone.

Her thumb moved away.

It's the standard. I need the reference. He said every morning this is how I should look. How else am I supposed to know if I'm getting it right?

She locked the phone. Set it face-down on the cushion beside her. Sat in the dark apartment with her hands in her lap, the image of her own body behind her closed eyes.

He was happy with me. He said good girl. He didn't hurt me. He was happy.

-

She picked the phone up again. Opened the message thread. Her fingers were small in the light of the screen and shaking slightly, and she typed with both thumbs.

Thankyou Sir

She stared at the two words. She had missed the space between thank and you because her hands were shaking. She sent the message before she could think about it. Set the phone face-down on her thigh. Pressed her palms flat against her bare knees. Sat in the dark for a long time.

She did not delete the photo.