Author's Note: Emily, a bright, overly confident, North American, white 18 year old, has decided to enlist the help of one of the contractors doing a remodel in her home. She's discovered a secret room, The Study, that has been walled up since forever. In exchange for his help, not only in opening the room, but in teaching her construction and training her in sex, she's agreed to be his fuck toy for the summer. But now, after only a few days, she's realized she's giving him more control than she'd bargained for, and she thinks it might have something to do with the original occupant of the room, a self-avowed occultist.
She woke up, remembering the dream, the towel crumpled in between her legs. 5:30. She groaned, remembering it was a bike day. It was the hardest event of the three for her. She rolled off the bed, her muscles tight, her buns a little bruised. Oh fuck. She wondered how it would affect her training. Her nose wrinkled at her smell. She needed a very hot shower.
"Upstairs," she said to the empty house, and sleepwalked up to her parents' bathroom.
She adjusted the sprays to massage and let them batter her, front, back and sides, as much to work her muscles as to shake the sleep from her system. The water running across her ass cheeks felt hotter than anywhere else. Afterward, staring at herself in the full-length mirror, she inspected her face, her eyes underlined with black, her hair a tousled mess. She turned to see what he'd done to her ass, her cheeks slightly bruised, the skin pinkish. "Fucckkk." She dried herself off and moved on to the rest of her morning.
It was a terrible practice. The only thing that could have gone worse was if she had crashed. Coach didn't seem fazed, dismissing it as a one-off. "Take it easy, Broston. You're doing fine. Build that muscle-mass, don't break it down."
But she'd been distracted: her anxiety about cumming, her cheeks brushing against the fabric of her shorts. Her constant need for sex.
What was going on?
What if it wasn't just a hormone change or normal coming of age phase? It had felt like a light switch. Steph's suggestions didn't stop the worry from growing. It only happened when she was in the house.
Except for Caroline. How do you explain that?
Except for that. Still, whenever she left, like during practice, or at the lake, her body returned to some kind of normal. And then Cos's look, his fantasy and how she had humiliated herself with him.
Her fantasy!? He took her fantasy!
The humiliation.
Is that what he wants from me?
She didn't know what to think about that. And back again to cumming in her dreams. The worry grew to a buzzsaw spinning in her chest.
She dashed upstairs, rinsed quickly and immediately felt her arousal growing, a sheen of sweat even after she'd dried off. It wasn't the weather; it had stayed cool. She had promised herself she was going to fight these feelings, but as soon as she saw her naked body in the mirror, well-toned muscle from the top of her thighs, her triangle underscoring her abs, her pecs filling out her chest, her resolve crumbled. She could work on the molding, but she didn't want to be in The Study. There was no reason to get dressed. Annoyed at her lack of self-control, it felt like the tendril had planted itself permanently in her brain. She left the bathroom and headed upstairs to look through Abby's stuff, detouring to grab Abby's recipe book from her room. Mostly she needed to clear her head, but the seed of an idea had emerged and she wanted to follow through on it.
Sitting in front of the boxes, the carpet fibers silky and prickly against her butt, she set down the recipe book and lifted out a few of the pamphlets.
Somewhere in all of that writing she must have mentioned something.
Emily was convinced there was a connection to the way she was feeling and The Study, and the only thing that could be was the fragrance. Steph's skepticism was drowned out by Emily's certainty. Abby had done this, maybe by accident, maybe on purpose, but either way she hoped she could find a clue in her writings.
As soon as she started reading, though, she saw how difficult it was going to be. She had hoped to find something about fragrances, or maybe something about a love potion, or something more mean-tempered, but she realized after the first few pages, Abby hadn't put any comments explaining what the recipes were for. At least, Emily couldn't tell from the writing if Abby had included instructions. Abby used the Latin names for her ingredients along with a set of abbreviations. And symbols. Symbols everywhere that were completely foreign to her.
Shit!
It was going to take more effort than she had imagined.
Just like the remodel, everything took so much more time!
Sitting cross-legged, her eyes kept brushing across her bush, her lips opening, her vagina glistening.
She had called it a pussy...a cunt!...with him last night!
The memory made her clench her abs, pressing her lips together. The memory only made her pulse harder. The dream came back to her and she gave into it, remembering how she had kneeled at Abby's instructions, her willingness to bury her nose between the women's legs. And Caroline! And then back to what she had done the day before yesterday, kneeling in front of Cos, sucking him off. And what he'd made her say, and how he'd expected her to not cum and how she'd already fucked it up. She exhaled, trying to snap out of the cycle of anxiety and arousal. She looked at the time. 11:12. Hours before she had to help Cos.
It felt like the last ½ mile of a marathon, her body demanding one thing, her mind forcing it to do another. She inhaled, meaning to focus on her breath, but the smell from her vagina tripped her up, her mind returning to what she'd done to Cos, in front of Cos, what Cos had made her say, what she imagined he might be demanding of her.
FUCCKKK!
She started her breathing again, counting, holding, exhaling, holding, again. The air gently moved against her naked breasts on each cycle; in spite of it, she calmed down. She could still smell herself, but focusing on her breath, she felt the tendril settling, dulling to a grey green. She turned her attention back to the work, starting with trying to find a key for all of the symbols and abbreviations.
Her stomach growled. It was later than she had thought. She hadn't found the key, but she had begun to notice patterns in the symbols. At some point she had gotten up and retrieved the encyclopedia from the room, the sounds of construction made her self-conscious for some reason, Abby's fragrance lifting her up, making her run back. The encyclopedia wasn't enough. She turned to the box of books and pulled out other references. Those helped, and not only with the Latin names. Many of the pages were dog-eared, and the books naturally opened to pages Abby had frequented.
In spite of the slog, she felt like she was making progress. She'd already learned that Abby's focus was entirely on women's health: menstrual cycles, fertility and, she started to sense sexual arousal and performance. That last one wasn't as clear; Abby never used those words, instead referencing love, passion, devotion and other words Emily was less certain about: service, duty, ministrate, obey.
Obey!???
Cos's instructions suddenly blanking everything else.
Emily remembered Ms. Fromier's interest in Abby's life and how complicated it must have been. Society's expectations for women in general, her mother's expectations for her in particular, were difficult to get out from under. She imagined that Abby's friends, clients?
The pamphlets sure sound like she was running counseling sessions
must have come to her with all sorts of troubles.
But obey?
Cos's words when he left her, open and exposed and humiliated
'Yeah, more like that,'
made her clench again for the millionth time that day.
Some of the symbols were obvious. She recognized the symbol for woman ♀, but there were variations ☥, ∇, ϒ,that Emily suspected Abby used for different reasons. But even then, she wasn't sure she'd understood the women's symbol correctly. One reference mentioned Venus, and that could just as easily mean "love." And then there were other symbols that seemed obvious, like a heart ❤. There were different versions, Emily noted, ❣ ❦, figuring they also had something to do with love, but again, she found a reference to Aphrodite. What they meant to Abby, specifically, she couldn't decipher just from her recipes. And there were plenty of others, what Emily thought of as an asterisk, ❃, peppered throughout. She'd already figured out from reading Abby's pamphlets, that all of these had deeper meanings to Abby than whatever Emily thought they meant.
She set the book down, and stretched, feeling her traps uncramping, releasing the knots in her neck. Hunger pangs distracted her from going any further. Relaxed, in spite of her arousal, she untwisted herself from the floor, threw on a shirt and jeans and went to scavenge something for lunch.
"How are you doing?" The rest of the crew had already gone to their trucks, waiting for him to join them.
She inhaled and looked at him, trying to muster the self-confidence she used to feel. "I'm good," she said. Keeping her eyes on him was a struggle, thinking what he had done, what she wanted him to do. "I...uhh...I'll finish the sanding and we'll get to the sealant?"
He nodded. "Yeah. That has to be outside." He looked her up and down. "You got a swim suit you don't care about?"
She raised her eyebrows, wondering what the fuck he was getting at. She mentally scanned her drawers and remembered the thong she never wore, never would wear. She nodded, cautiously. "Yeah?"
"The sealant. It'll ruin your clothes, but I don't think you want to be naked. You can set the sawhorses up in the yard. On the grass. K?" He waited until she nodded. "Later."
She wriggled as he left, the friction against her cheeks pulsing into her.
Ohgodohgodohgod.
She had to go into the room; she was already on fire. She breathed. Breathe. Breathe. She delayed going upstairs, washing the dishes, wiping the counters, running a mop on the floor. The guys had come back and she was still avoiding it. It wasn't that she didn't want to go into the room, to inhale Abby's fragrance, to feel herself enveloped by the orange-red fog. It was that she
wanted to so badly,
the fear she would lose the competition and give in. She saw herself stripped naked, spreading her legs on the floor, lying on the inlay, exposed and fingering herself until she came, a liquid puddle melting into the room.
But, it occurred to her suddenly, she already had lost the competition, and she moaned at what he might do once he found out.
She breathed again. 10 seconds in. Hold. 10 seconds out. Again. And again. She felt herself calming, her buns a constant reminder, but dulled now. The tendril was coiled around her brain, but lying still.
She finally braved going upstairs, grabbed the sanding block and worked on the last of the molding. Her phone kept pinging, her friends posting, emails and then a couple of texts.
Hey
It was Caroline. Another from Steph. Her worry leapt up.
