Thirteen took a deep breath, found the hem of her shirt, and pulled it up over her head.
She'd undressed in Will Barrow's office yesterday, in front of both Gillian Schang and Barrow himself. She hadn't yet had to do this in the locker room, with dozens of early bird employees watching through the locker room's big, mirror-glass windows.
No, she caught herself. That wasn't quite right. She'd gotten dressed the previous evening to go home, only to then be told to undress and shower. She'd stunk too much -- of exertion, of arousal -- for Mistress Zero to permit her to leave in the state she'd been in. Her skirt, which had been bunched up around her waist so that her mistress could give her bare ass a good paddling, had had to come off. Her tank top. The jacket she'd borrowed from her roommate back in New Haven, so that she could look "professional" when arriving at USF Plaza yesterday morning. Her pearl-white lace bra. She hadn't been wearing panties, of course, because Barrow had stolen those away from her before the clock had even struck eight in the morning, to be hung like a museum piece in the corridor outside his office.
In retrospect, being forced to shower turned out to be a blessing in disguise. All she'd wanted to do was go home, go back to the apartment she'd rented for the summer, and pretend like yesterday hadn't happened. Or, had happened to someone else entirely. But, on her way out the door, she'd been intercepted by her academic advisor, Dr. Gillian Schang, who'd hung around that day so that she could be there when Thirteen was finally set free. Had Mistress Zero not instructed her to undress again and shower, Thirteen would have been forced to sit through a meal with Gillian, surrounded by her own stink.
Thirteen folded her top neatly, and placed on her locker's lower shelf. When her pants came off, she'd have to slide those under. USF had rules and regulations on how clothing items were to be arranged in a mailgirl's locker. Pants, shirt, panties, bra. Outwerwear to innerwear, no exceptions. Demerits to be awarded for failure to comply.
Dinner with Gillian was the last thing Thirteen had wanted after the day she'd had. It had been a surprise. As Thirteen's day had worn on yesterday, she'd been looking forward to returning to the Upper West Side, putting on a pair of sweats, and maybe having a good cry. The tears had come, but they'd come in the middle of the Imperial Hotel's dining room, as Thirteen recounted the events of the day to her professor.
Gillian had thought she was doing a nice thing. Comforting. Motherly. Wrapping her arm around Thirteen in the elevator lobby and being there for her -- physically, emotionally. Maybe it had been guilt, for pushing Thirteen as hard as she had to get her to volunteer. Maybe it had been a simple kindness. Or maybe it had been for the purposes of collecting research, and she'd wanted to pump Thirteen for information while it was still fresh. Given that this was a joint study, that Gillian and Thirteen would be co-authors, Thirteen recognized that she should be grateful to Gillian even if this was, in fact, her motivation.
And so Thirteen ran her through her day, from being left alone with Mrs. Lowrie to the indoctrination in the locker room to the round of deliveries she'd made with Mailgirl Number Seven late in the afternoon.
She censored the worst of it. Most of all, the intense sexual arousal she'd battled with for the bulk of the day. That, she wasn't ready to confess. That, she was still wrestling with herself.
She'd broken down at one point, torn up by the rawness of it all, and had sobbed for a good three or four minutes before collecting herself and going on. It had the felt good -- the release -- but she'd also been embarrassed to lose her composure in front of her professor.
Thumbs in the waistbands of both her pants and her underwear, Thirteen tugged them down over her still-tender backside. Seven had been right. The welts Mistress Zero had bequeathed upon her yesterday with her riding crop were gone, as was the more generalized red glow she'd received from a combination of her mistress's paddle and her mistress's bare hand. Thirteen had checked that morning in the mirror. She was still a little sore, but not as sore as she'd been last night at the restaurant. She'd been thankful for the Imperial's cushioned benches in their booths.
She was sore all over, though. It wasn't only due to her multiple trips to the spanking bench, and it wasn't localized only to her ass. So much had been said about the psychological toll of delivering the mail in the nude. The physical exertion of running the stairs, though, would be its own challenge. Her thighs smarted from the ascents. Her knees, from the descents. To say nothing of the aches and pains in those very same knees from kneeling all day.
The burning sensation around her asshole had dissipated, though, and that was a relief. She'd tried to inspect Miss Henriksen's handiwork last night, after yet another shower -- this one in the privacy of her own bathroom. But Thirteen hadn't been able to get the right angle in the vanity, and the sublet wasn't stocked with a hand mirror. She had to take it on faith that the bleach had done its job.
She stood bottomless in front of her locker, and pulled her underwear out from the black yoga pants. Nothing special today. Thirteen had worn a pair of cotton briefs, cotton candy pink, with full coverage in the back. Cheap. Functional. Disposable, in the sense that they wouldn't be missed if she were forced to go home commando again tonight. But also, perhaps, less tempting to Will Barrow and his Human Capital goons. The skirt she'd worn yesterday had been long enough to keep her from flashing anyone at the Imperial, but it had felt odd, all the same, to be out without underwear.
As Thirteen folded her pants and slid them beneath her shirt, she took stock of her lower body. Though Seven and Nine had warned her of the futility of doing so, Thirteen hadn't gotten out of the shower last night until the black ink on her hip was completely scrubbed off. It was pointless, sure. Thirteen conceded that fact. Mistress Zero would be coming around with her marker shortly. But she'd obsessed over it, and had wanted it off -- even just for the night.
She grimaced, though, as she saw the lines around her hips that her panties' waistband had left, and, with a quick glance back-and-forth to see if anyone was looking, she massaged her skin in an attempt to remove the impressions. Panty-lines -- in this case, in her actual skin -- were a no-no. USF's official mailgirl handbook was clear on that fact. She had time before Mistress Zero made her rounds, however, for them to fade. Maybe she'd need to get to the Plaza even earlier tomorrow, to make sure this wasn't going to be issue going forward. Or maybe some new underwear was in her future, after all?
She'd already charged yesterday's bra-and-panty set to the grant. She'd had misgivings about doing so, when she'd used her department-issued credit card to pay for them back in Connecticut. But Gillian had made clear that the research grant she'd been given access to was for any and all expenses related to her summer in New York, no questions asked. Her rent. Her grocery bills. Her commuting costs. Her meals and any entertainment. The waxing she'd gotten as a run-up to yesterday went on the account, in what Thirteen imagined was the first time the Department of Anthropology had footed the bill for a Brazilian. Thirteen wasn't pulling down the handsome sums of money the rest of the mailgirls were for their sacrifices, but Gillian had assured her that the grant was hers to do with as she pleased, especially if it was to keep up with the other girls and better fit in.
A few new pairs of seamless briefs weren't going to hurt anyone.
Thirteen wasn't the first girl in the locker room that morning. That honor belonged to Mailgirls Four and Ten, who'd been assigned Morning Shift duties and had been here since before five o'clock. Mailgirls Two and Three were here, as well, and were whispering secrets back and forth between them in their underwear on the far end of the locker room. Mailgirl Eighteen had beaten Thirteen to the Plaza that morning, and was already in the showers. But Thirteen was on the earlier side, all the same. It was in her nature, even if she was in no rush for today to get started in earnest.
Being among the early birds, Thirteen got to watch the others arrive. Five? Eight? Fifteen? They all seemed to subscribe to the same belief that Thirteen had when she'd picked out her clothes that morning, that it didn't matter what she wore if she were going to be taking it off as soon as she got the Plaza. Sixteen was wearing jeans.
But as more of the veterans began showing up, Thirteen was struck by how put-together and professional they all looked. Nine was in a suit. Six was wearing a tight-fitting plaid pencil skirt, a low-cut blouse, and a blazer. Eleven, as she began to undress, revealed a garter belt even, to hold up her stockings. Heels, the whole lot of them. They dressed as if they were arriving for their old jobs, and not their new ones.
Mailgirl Number Seven arrived in a short-sleeved floral flare dress, one that showed off a little leg above the knee. She looked ready for a date, and Thirteen now worried she'd underdressed for what Seven had described only as a "quick drink" after work.
"Good morning, beautiful!" Seven smiled as the two made eye contact. She didn't stop to chat, however. Not yet, at least. Instead, she placed her purse on the edge of Mistress Zero's desk, and -- still fully dressed, still looking like the consummate professional -- got down onto her hands and knees and took a drink of water from the silver dog bowl there on the floor. When she got back up, she was now carrying her light tan pumps in one hand, and pulling her purse back over her shoulder.
