Her fingernails are painted a deep, bright blue.
She stands in the kitchen, butt to the counter, giving the cat a look of suspicion.
She's housesitting. A gig she gets every third weekend. Two dogs, three cats, one bird, and an overweight goat.
She's waiting for water to boil and she suspects the cat has been into her grated cheese.
Her index finger and her middle finger are scratching a private part of her body. But since no one is home, she doesn't care. And because she's distracted with lunch and the cat, she's not conscience of it.
This housesitting gig began several years ago. The homeowner travels to the opposite coast for business reasons largely unknown. So for several years now she has her own private, well-paying, retreat.
It started as a reading retreat, then turned for several long months as a recovery retreat after she turned away from her felonious fiancΓ©. In the summer months it's a tanning retreat. In the winter months it's a chic-flick retreat. And also for many, many months now it's kind of turned into her alter-ego retreat.
One thing had led to the next.
The tanning led to fewer and fewer clothes in the summer months.
The chic-flicks led to romantic notions and feelings.
The reading led to ideas of writing things of her own.
And a single social media post led to things going over the hill and down the other side.
She saw a post from an old professor. A kind of dorky, cute, confident, quiet kind of professor. So with fewer clothes and certain notions and with eager fingers she created a false account to see if she could anonymously flirt with him.
She was successful. Quiet successful. He took the bait. And as she reeled him in, he didn't fight one bit. He all but jumped into her boat.
And that led to a few more flirtatious opportunities. And that soon led to posting a few photographs. And that led to posting a few more photographs of higher quality and more exposure.
So she stands in the kitchen eyeing the cat, waiting for the water to boil, scratching a private part of her body. She has no clothes on and again she is not aware of how or where she is touching herself.
She spends much of these weekends binging on her alter ego. She's kind of addicted to it. The attention is fun. The role playing is fun.
As soon as her food is cooked she'll return to the kitchen table, and return to several men awaiting responses, and return to comments on the pictures she's posted. She can't get enough of it. It's truly addicting.
With a dozen internet searches she's gotten pretty good with taking picture of herself. She's learned about camera settings, lighting, positioning, cropping, filters, and most of all, how to disguise her face.
Her nudity fuels her alter ego. She rarely nude back at her apartment. But in the house, she's undresses soon after she arrives.
The water comes to a boil, the cat has sauntered away, and the light scratching of her pubic hair has stopped. She stirs the noodles and wonders if the old boss she messaging with really is as perverted as he sounds.
When she returns to the table she scrolls through several messages and several dick-pick men have sent.
One of her hands rest on pubic hair and she plays with them, running them through her fingers. Her bright and beautiful fingernails inch closer to the fun zone. It's not the dick-picks that push her to stimulate herself. It's the attention. She feels pretty. She feels important. She feels desired.
She reads a message about a comment about her breasts. She took a picture of them hanging over a railing. It makes her mind race about taking more pictures. As she thinks about poses and places in the house an index finger slides down and finds what she knows is down there. Wetness.