The first symptoms were easy to dismiss. After all, waking in the morning from an erotic dream to discover your pussy is wet, is perfectly natural. Embarrassing also, if you're in a shared dormitory with nine other young woman you've known for less than a day. With whom you share a bathroom too, without doors that lock, without cubicles for privacy. The lack of privacy is what is abnormal, not awaking in a state of arousal.
Being persistently wet through the day is also easy to dismiss, especially when you've nothing to do except kill time and for the first time in months you're not cycling between depression and panic about whether you can afford to eat. None of that matters now. Especially when you, and your nine companions, have nothing to wear except brown, knee-length, pleated skirts and tight, white T-shirts. And Japanese-style wooden sandals. No underwear.
They'd assured me - all of us - that the contract did not involve sex work, but when ten young women are rounded up and dressed in an undeniably sexy fashion, you have to question the truth of that assurance. I wasn't the only one whose swollen nipples betrayed arousal. I wasn't the only one blushing whenever I sat down, carefully arranging my skirt to ensure my stubbornly wet pussy stayed concealed.
I tried not to stare at the others. Especially their breasts, all larger than mine. Tiny Tits had been my nickname in school, and my self-consciousness about my small breasts had made me very shy around men in social settings. My occasional attraction to women was something I never understood, or at least never wanted to acknowledge, but it was certainly there.
I dismissed it, just as Rosie dismissed the way her fingers kept drifting towards her nipples, a persistent itch there in need of scratching. Just as Polly dismissed the way her hand kept finding itself between her thighs, nudging her skirt higher than was really safe.
On the second day, I dismissed the fantasy that I could smell my own arousal. That I could smell the arousal of the others too. That, indeed, I could distinguish them by their smell. Who, after all, would want that superpower? I dismissed too that my aroused nipples were longer and thicker, that indeed my breasts were at least a cup size up. I had often wished for larger breasts, but knew perfectly well they didn't grow like that overnight. Besides, they were still tiny compared to Rosie's and Polly's and all my companions' breasts. An absurd fantasy.
By the third day, we all knew better. We were all transparently aroused, our pussies dripping wet beneath our too short skirts, our thick, swollen, darkening nipples making lewd points in our tight T-shirts, our breasts enlarged and gaining weight.
"What the fuck are they doing to us?" Rosie growled.
"I need a hard cock in me," Polly said to no one in particular, clearly fingering herself beneath her duvet
*
We weren't prisoners - at least, not technically. Coming to the island had been a choice, a five-year contract signed with the understanding that there would be no holidays, that there would be no returning to the mainland at all. It had even been made clear and explicit that some temporary body modification was a possibility, although exactly what that entailed was never stated.
Only a desperate person would sign such a contract. I had been desperate.
We weren't prisoners. There were no iron bars, no armed guards, but there was no internet either, no telephones, no choice of clothing either. The ten of us clomped around noisily in our wooden sandals, slept and showered and ate together, lounged around reading books and watching television and playing cards together, and even went outside for walks together. The clinic had a magnificent view across the wind-swept sea, dark Scottish waters that no sane woman would dare to swim.
There was a beach even, a small one, but the water was cold and the weather warm but blustery. We often went for walks along the beach in the early afternoon, some of us even daring to paddle for a while, but most days there was a constant fight to stop our skirts being blown up around our waists. Though I wasn't looking - or trying not to look, anyway - I caught frequent glimpses of bare bums and wet pussies. No doubt my own bare bum and wet pussy were glimpsed by others too. As frustrating as it was to be dressed this way, there was a shameful eroticism to it too.
Being outside, getting the chance to clear our heads, meant that returning indoors again was an impact on the senses. The atmosphere inside was thick with the smell of arousal. A closed environment with ten women walking around with wet pussies, filling the air with our pheromones (or whatever), was enough to make you dizzy with lust.
And it was just the ten of us. The handful of staff who looked after us, grey-haired women old enough to be our mothers, seemed entirely unaffected, entirely indifferent. They did their jobs, cooking and cleaning, and that was that. I never smelled the faintest whiff of arousal from them. Even the matronly nurse who checked us physically every day, who examined and measured my expanding breasts with cold hands, displayed no sexual interest in them at all.
Despite the subtle horror of knowing that your body is being changed and manipulated by others, waking up each day to discover that the breasts you always hated for being too small are now bigger and bigger... well, I was thrilled. By Day 7, I had beautiful, bouncy breasts, double-D at least, and without the need for expensive surgery and silicone implants. The other women were larger still, but I was catching up.
But back on the third day, we were all in shock. That afternoon, when the nurse had completed her checkup and she handed me the usual assortment of pills to swallow, I demanded, "What are these doing to us? And why am I aroused all the damn time?" Bad enough that I had to sit there and let her feel me up every day, I was now so horny I had to bite my lips to stop myself begging her to continue.
The nurse chuckled. "As is probably obvious to you all now, the drugs are promoting breast growth. But don't worry, the growth is reversible - if that's what you wish at the end of your contract." Honestly, I didn't mind the breast growth at all, at least so far. "Unfortunately," she continued, "arousal is a side effect of the medicine, but it's one you should adapt to quickly."
She did have a point. The fact that it was an experience all ten of us were sharing, and that there was no hiding it from each other how aroused we all were, meant that our embarrassment soon diminished, and our shyness gave way to playfulness. By Day 7, we were openly masturbating in front of each other whenever the constant itch demanded scratching.
And that wasn't all.
The bus had collected me from outside the house that was no longer mine. It had been making its way slowly north, criss-crossing England and then Scotland. I was the fourth of us to board, and Rosie had been the last. By her red hair as much as her accent, Rosie was pure Scottish, and whenever she was excited she spoke so fast and with such a thick accent no one could understand her.
None of us spoke on the bus. My own head had still been full of the tensions of the previous few months and lingering depression. It was only really when we were forced together on the boat that we really started talking to each other. In my case, I was too busy being sick over the side of the boat to talk much at all, but Rosie kept me company and made sure I didn't fall into the water. She told me of how she had been married, how she had an affair with her brother-in-law, and how that had ended up eventually in disaster, divorce, and eventually debt.
The following morning, we had breakfast together. "So, what's your story, then?" she asked.
Even without saying anything, I could feel the heat of shame in my cheeks. It was not a story I wanted to tell, and indeed had I still been back in my hometown, my reaction to her polite curiosity would have been hostile. But I wasn't there. All that had happened hundreds of miles away and months before. "I, ah, got caught," I mumbled, not daring to meet her eyes, "with one of my students."
"Ohh," she said, chuckling. "Tell me more. Judging by the colour of your cheeks, you were doing more than holding hands."
