Even at the time, Karen had known she would regret it. But she was young and she was broke. And even though she hates clichés and knows that they all say "I did it for the money," this was the case. At the time she was eighteen years old, straight off the farm, desperate to study in a big city with a big school with an even bigger tuition. Karen was smart – smarter than this particular decision would make her appear – but she was also driven to succeed, struggling to know when to turn back, and when the offer to make a couple of girl-on-girl videos was presented, she was too far gone to say no. A couple videos a semester would pay for not only all her classes – and she had a full course load – but her apartment, her groceries, and what she considered a big city wardrobe. Plus she had grown up on a farm and had very little experience with or interest in technology – would could have possibly known that a small stack of video tapes would later be available to millions at the click of a button? Not Karen.
Which is why she finds herself in the rather uncomfortable situation she is presently in. The man she vaguely remembers from all those years ago – the man who tells her his name is William, but who she doesn't completely believe – is sitting across from her now in a popular coffee shop drinking an espresso at ten in the morning and looking for all the world as though he is not proposing to ruin her life.
"I don't understand," Karen says, not for the first time.
"What's not to understand?" William asks, his voice casual, like he's done this before. And, in fact, he has. Because William made a small fortune living off innocent young girls like Karen back in the eighties, making cheap porn videos that he would copy and sell to a small group of buyers. And now that William has burned through most of that money – but been smart enough to recognize the explicit value of the internet – he has found himself a new career blackmailing the former starlets (most of whom have gone on to respectable lives) by threatening to post their past escapades online. And while most have simply offered him whatever money they had, Karen is different. Karen was different then, and Karen is different now. Because in college Karen had only agreed to the girl-on-girl videos, and though his cock ached each time he saw her – hell, each time he merely thought of her – William had never touched her. And nearly twenty years and thousands of hours spent watching her videos, freeze framing on his favourite scenes, has brought William to the frustrated boiling point more times than he could possibly count.
William is not an unappealing guy. He has a tidy apartment in a nice part of town and clean clothes and straight teeth and all of his hair. And while he has tried to replace Karen – even going to so far as to hire escorts to re-enact some of her finest moments – nothing sated his unhealthy desire for her, and, until, though a broad stroke of luck, he had spotted her realtor's photo on the back of a city bus, it had seemed nothing would. Until he made the call. Until she answered. And until she sat across from him in the busy coffee shop with an untouched bottle of water and a slack-jawed horror at his proposition.
"How can you—How can they—? I mean, it was so long ago, I don't do that..."
"Relax, Karen," William says with not-entirely-sincere empathy. "Nobody's asking you for a repeat performance."
"Then what exactly are you asking?" Karen hisses, somewhat emboldened now that she knows he is not asking her to kiss another girl. It was bad enough – if necessary – at the time; she is certainly no longer the sexually adventurous type she convinced herself she had to be in college. Those days are over. A phrase she had told her ex-husband time and again when he continually tried "spicing up" their completely satisfactory sex life, and again when she signed the divorce papers. Karen Roberts is a respectable realtor with a successful firm and a terrific reputation. Her non-existent sex life suits her just fine. Truth is, she prefers it this way. Those things in college... With the blurry stills William just showed her, there is no denying that something about the experience had turned her on. Karen knows that she is not interested in women; she is also not interested in exploring the kind of fantasies that sometimes keep her awake at night. No respectable woman would. And Karen is nothing if not respectable, a fact she reminds William of.
"I believe you, Karen," William says with a smile. "And I'm not asking you to ruin your reputation. In fact, I've even brought one of your films with me, as a token of faith."
"What are you talking about?" Karen snaps, impatient, nervous. She remembers William now that she looks at him closely. Remembers him filming her so many years ago, remembers the lust in his gaze. Remembers performing for him. Closing her eyes and imaging his tongue in her pussy, and not that of the girl rented for the day.
"What I'm talking about is a week of obedience," William says carefully, and indeed he has thought this through. "For seven days you do everything I ask, and each day I'll give you back a tape. At the end of the seven days I'll give you all the remaining tapes for you to do with what you wish."
"And if I don't—" Karen starts, but there's no need to finish the sentence.
"Then I'll clean them up and post them online," William says, omitting the fact that he has already transferred them to DVD and refined the images as best he could for his own enjoyment. "And send links to everyone you know and everyone you want to know and they'll all know how Karen Roberts paid for college. Licking other cunts. Sticking her finger in their assholes. Bending over for them."
Karen looks around the coffee shop frantically, but nobody seems to be listening.
"Why?" she asks finally.
"Because I want you," William says softly. "And I have for twenty years. And every time I watch your tapes I know that you wanted me too. And I've spoken to your ex-husband and I know that your sex life wasn't good, and I want to give you what you need."
"You have no idea what I need!" Karen hisses, jumping up from her seat, surprising even herself at her vehemence.
Quick as lightning William's hand snaps out, grips Karen's wrist, and yanks her back down into her chair.
"You have no idea what you need," he tells her in a low voice. "And if you don't want to take what I have to give you, you can take it from the hundreds – thousands - of guys – not to mention some women – who are going to watch these videos. Again and again and again."
Karen swallows thickly.
"So that's your choice: seven days under my control, or a lifetime under theirs."
A million protests die on her tongue. She wants to say no. Wants to throw his coffee in his face and storm out of the coffee shop with her head held high. But feeling the strength of his fingers on her wrist as he pulled her back into her chair, recognizing the long-dormant dampness in her pussy, and realizing that this could be the excuse she has long needed, Karen says yes.
The next morning Karen drives anxiously across town, her knees pressed tightly together beneath the matching skirt of her prim two-piece business suit. As ordered by William, a DVD transfer of one of her films is playing on the laptop beside her, and though Karen doesn't want to watch, she can't seem to keep her eyes from drifting down to the flickering screen where she sees her nineteen year-old self sucking ravenously on the swollen clitoris of a girl whose name she has long since forgotten. She also pretends that her cunt is not equally swollen, that her panties are not wet, that her heart is not pounding.
It is not quite seven o'clock and the underground parking garage he has directed her to is empty. She scans the yellow numbers in the parking spaces and drives to the dark, far end without passing another vehicle. And then she sees it: the large white pick-up parked in the corner, its lights off. She knows it is too much of a coincidence to be anyone but him, and as instructed parks the car and steps out, leaving the DVD playing in her computer.
