Leah awoke alone in a cold sweat with panic still fluttering in her chest. It had been another night of fitful fear-filled dreams in which she was helpless to save herself from some vaguely remembered threat.
"It must be the move." she whispered groggily.
She arched her arms over her head in a subconscious effort to loosen the knot in her chest. Her nightshirt, a threadbare giveaway from some long ago office party, stretched across her thin frame. The cloth was still damp with sweat from the fevered dream and it sent a chill through her body. Without a well padded bra her nipples were embarrassingly prominent. Contracted and puckered as they were from the chill or when engorged with arousal they couldn't be hidden and would jut lewdly atop her full upturned and teardrop shaped breasts. She was well into her thirties and though not as firm and pronounced as they once were, the sidelong glances and attention they drew made her uncomfortable. Were she in public now she would have been mortified by her state.
With a nearly audible snap she whipped her arms back to her sides. She used the momentum to sit up and shake the last of her dream away.
"Why are you so uptight!?" she said aloud in an artificially flippant tone hoping to dismiss the lingering worry.
She turned her head from side to side, stretching, and taking in the familiar sights of their dimly lit bedroom. Leah and her husband had shared the same 2 bedroom apartment for all five years of their marriage. She loved the it. The place brought her a sense of security and stability that she hadn't known in her single years. She had never built a home with the intention of staying indefinitely and the discovery of what she had been missing caused her to feel an irrationally powerful emotional attachment. She was never fully at ease anywhere but her home. This caused her to be aloof and most people thought her cool if not cold. She was not. The discreet but ever present anxiety caused her to withdraw in many social situations, particularly those of mixed company. She had married late in life in comparison to the rest of her social circle. Even so, she did not need all the fingers of one hand to count the number of men she had dated.
She threw the remaining covers off and and stood up determinedly. She needed to relax and concentrate on all she had left to do before they turned in their key today. The nightshirt, normally just enough to cover her full rounded cheeks, was bunched around her waist. Morning light through the slanted blinds illuminated and warmed her legs and behind. Standing as she was, flat footed with legs apart and her back to the blinds, the light even touched her smooth and hairless lips.
For a brief moment she smiled to herself thinking about how her husband described them as pink and puffy. He still stole peeks at her as she dressed in the mornings and loved the contrast of her pink lips and areole against marble white skin. Mostly for herself, but also for the way he professed to love the feel of it, she had gone to a clinic which used laser light to permanently removed all her pubic hair. They'd even managed to take care of those places deeper in the cleft past her delicate pointed "v" and around the parts that never saw light. The multiple visits had been painfully awkward but she did not miss shaving. Her sensitive skin responded poorly to a razor.
She smoothed the shirt down and stooped to pick up a pair of loose fitting boxer shorts. As she slipped the shorts up she became aware of scraping and grunting sounds downstairs. Had that noise been there all morning? She remembered surfacing from sleep a few times during the early morning and thought it had. Her husband was not normally an early riser and again the panic bubbled in her chest. She calmed herself realizing burglars and rapists didn't usually strike at 8 o'clock in the morning. This was moving day after all. Still, she took the stairs a little more timidly than usual padding soundlessly in her bare feet.
"LEAH! Help us out here. Jake is about to lose it!" her husband shouted as she stepped off the last stair.
"That's what she said" Jake mumbled and they both chuckled through gritted teeth.
She physically cringed at the nonsensical but crude remark and the unexpected interruption of her morning trek for tea. Jake was one of her husbands close friends and constantly vulgar. They were trying to squeeze the oversized leather couch down the hallway and she had nearly run into them in her pre-caffeine fog. They really were about to drop it. She didn't know what good her 110 pound frame could do but she grudgingly slid in next to Jake and the only available handhold. He was sweaty and smelled foul even this early but she gamely held on.
She was forced into a crouch and against him as they pushed the couch into the hallway leaving no room on either side. The awkward stooped gait was sliding her boxer shorts lower until they were teetering on her slender hips. She felt sure that Jake was seeing more than he should.
Before they were halfway down the hall she felt his cock thickening and beginning to pulse against her unavoidably upturned cheeks. Jake never missed an opportunity to make a crack about the size of his package and her first thought was, resignedly, that it may not be all talk. It felt long and thick as it bounced heavily against the inside of her thigh through his thin nylon soccer shorts. Who am I to judge size?, she thought. She'd had virtually zero sexual experience prior to marriage.
She began to feel trapped as the men muscled the couch slowly down the hall with it's padding scraping along the walls and sealing of her escape. She was between Jake and the couch holding to the bottom lip with his outstretched arms above and on either side as he pushed to overcome the friction of the walls. Her stomach was flipping over and she began to feel disgusted at putting herself in this situation. With each step the feeling against her leg was transforming from a rhythmic swinging thump to an insistent pressure sliding higher between her thighs in rhythm with their stride.
When they reached the foyer she felt as though the trip down the hall had taken hours. Separating herself from Jake, she stretched upright with her hands against the small of her back feigning a stretch as she tried to calm her nerves. From the corner of her eye she caught the men eyeing her as they lay down the couch. She straightened and brought her shoulders forward to hide her obvious bralesssness.
"Coffee time?" Jake exhaled as he unburdened himself but remained behind the high padded arm rest. "
Creep, she thought. Probably waiting for that thing to settle down.
"Absolutely! I bet you're ready for a milk tea babe." her husband replied smiling and facing her direction.
The three of them filed back down the hall and toward the kitchen. Placing the tea kettle on its electric base she could feel Jake's eyes on her and it made her skin crawl. The worst part was that her husband didn't seem to mind that his wife was standing in a nearly see through shirt while his friend looked on. In fact, she wasn't sure but he seemed to be enjoying it.
"Well I'm off to change, back in a minute" she said stepping toward the door as she poured the last of the hot water into her teacup.
"Why? you look fine" her husband said taking her by the elbow and leading her into the newly empty living room. Jake following behind sipping from his coffee mug.
"Besides, we're nearly finished and you slept through the hard part."
She knew he was mostly joking but she felt a pang of guilt as she looked around at the apartment now devoid of their larger furniture.
"I'm so sorry honey, why didn't you wake me!"
"Don't worry about it sweetie. Besides, you can make it up to us by staying just as you are. You look amazing! Right Jake?"
He mumbled his assent but her husband needn't have confirmed. Jake was staring a hole through her boxers. Her stomach began to roil again but she decided she could deal with it if it meant a clean conscience after missing out on the hard work. She must have been lost in thought longer than she realized because her husband nudged her arm. Her breasts swayed beneath their thin veil of cotton.
"You OK baby?"
"Yeah babe, sorry. Still waking up. I feel horrible about sleeping so late. Why didn't you wake me?"
"Well, you seemed so restless during the night. You had finally settled down when I got out of bed. I didn't have the heart. I'm happy you're up now though." His eyes looked her up and down in exaggerated appraisal.
"You guys are creeping me out. But OK. I feel so bad!" she forced a smile and a small nervous chuckle as she made a sweeping gesture to the empty room while looking down to avoid their eyes. To her horror she noticed the loosely fitting boxers shorts with little blue polo players were just barely clinging to the last precipitous curve of her hips. It would be obvious to Jake how she "maintained her flower garden" as her mom would say. The lack of a dark shadow so low in the front with half her mons exposed would be impossible for his roaming eyes and dirty mind to miss. God! she felt so shameful and guilty. This was not like her. Her husband was so open with nudity and sex that sometimes she didn't understand how the two of them had ended up together.
After they had all finished their cups, they separated and began to go about loading the remaining smaller items. It seemed there was an endless supply of small cabinets and bookshelves to clear and carpets to vacuum. Thirty minutes past with barely a dent and she realized there were still plenty of chores to be done.
Around mid morning, Jake brought a ladder in from his truck and set it up in the dining room. Her mother's antique chandelier hung there and they'd saved it for later when there would be more room to safely lower it.
"You mind holding' the ladder?" he called to her as she was vacuuming in the nearby guest room.
