“I wish I were going with you,” I complained, while I watched Dara put on her makeup for an afternoon shift at the Angel Room club.

I was lying on the couch of her apartment, wrapped in a knitted blanket, trying to preserve the warmth she had left behind in the cushions for a few minutes longer. The TV was dark, the obscure rom-com she’d shared with me this morning long finished.

“Can you imagine?” Dara giggled, pausing halfway through adhering a false eyelash. “We’d make all the customers so jealous, sneaking off to the Little Heavens together to give each other a million orgasms.”

It was nice to hear her joke that way about bringing me back to the club — sharing a fantasy, not making a sales pitch. When we’d first met, I would have taken it for a pitch anyway, no matter how clear she made herself, but I was learning to accept her affection for the genuine article. Dara was an excellent teacher, when it came to accepting what bits of niceness the world had to offer.

Not that I didn’t wish the world were nicer still.

“Stupid bank account, telling me I have to bring money in instead of out today,” I grumbled.

“Yeah, let me know if you ever figure out a fix for that,” said Dara, finishing her second eyelash.

“I just wish I could spend all day with you,” I said. “Or even that my job was a little more like yours.”

“More like mine how?” Dara asked, looking up from the self-lighting vanity in her living room.

I shrugged. “Glamorous. Creative. Edgy. Exciting?”

The last word became a question, as I tried to guess what her job must feel like to do every day. I was sure there’d been some point in my life when working in a mall food court must have seemed mysterious and exotic, before I’d known anything about what work was like.

Dara didn’t argue or laugh at me. She set down her lipstick and returned to the couch, perching on the arm in front of me.

“Sounds like you need a little bad girl assignment.”

I glanced down at Dara’s lacy purple thong and licked my lips. “I don’t know if we have time, but I can try.”

Dara put her palm to my forehead and turned my face upward.

“Not here,” she said indulgently. “At work. While we’re both at work today, I dare you…”

She examined my face for a long moment, summing up everything she knew of me, either from experience or from reading whatever telling creases she found there.

“I dare you to call one customer ‘babe,’” she finished.

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end at the thought, and my chest tightened.

“I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable,” I hesitated.

“Of course not,” said Dara. “That’s why you’re going to pick someone who won’t be uncomfortable. Someone who’ll get a kick out of it.”

“How would I know that about them?” I asked.

“By being the gorgeous, empathetic soul that you are,” Dara said with perfect confidence, brushing my cheek with her thumb. “And by getting out of your own head.”

She pulled a dress over her lingerie for the drive.

“Oh, and I don’t want any half-assed, mumbling ‘babes,’” she said. “No slipping it in casually, like you call everyone ‘babe’ instead of ‘dude.’ When you see that person standing in line, the one who’s day you’re about to make by calling them ‘babe,’ you’re going to lean across the counter like a luscious dance move,” she leaned down with one hand on the armrest, “show them those knockout tits,” she cupped one of my breasts and rubbed a finger over the nipple with effortless precision, “look them right in the eye,” her eyes hooked their way irresistibly into mine, “and say babe like you mean it.”

I laughed, because it was the only reasonable reaction to the image of myself doing that.

“Okay, suppose someone does happen to come in who’s just dying to have me flirt with them, and I do get some kind of psychic vision telling me so, and I do it,” I said. “What if they take me seriously? What if they want it to, you know, keep going? What then?”

“That’s up to you,” Dara winked.

The pressure in my chest spread down toward my stomach. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, if it feels fun, keep going. If not, stop,” said Dara. “It’s not like you’re married to someone just because you called them ‘babe’ when you brought them their iced tea.”

I doubted Dara intended for this to have any ominous double meanings, but my mind could instill enough possible meanings for the both of us.

“What about you?” I asked, kneeling up on the couch and gripping the backrest to face her, urgently preparing myself for a momentous conversation that probably shouldn’t be happening in the last few minutes before work.

“Me?” asked Dara.

I collected the words as fast as I could. “Look, I know we haven’t really put a label on this, but I’m taking it seriously. And I kind of thought you were too. I wouldn’t want to do anything that… someone who’s serious about someone shouldn’t be doing. I don’t want to do anything to mess up—”

Dara hurried across the room in her high heels and kissed me.

“I am serious,” she said, holding my head in both hands. “I want you to be my one.”

“I want you to be my one,” I sniffled back at her through sudden, relieved tears.

“But I’m going to keep doing my job,” said Dara.

“Of course!” I said. “I’m not asking you not to.”

“And you know the kinds of things I’m going to be doing with other people at the club.”

“That’s for work,” I said. “It’s different.”

“You’re sweet,” said Dara. “But the thing is, I like my job. And I’m not expecting you to avoid doing things that you might like too, just because of this.”

She clasped my hand as she said, this.

I squeezed her hand back, as tight as I dared.

“But then, what makes us each other’s ‘one’?” I asked. “What makes this different from anything we might do with anyone else?”

“Doesn’t it feel different to you?” asked Dara, squeezing even tighter.

A smile crept up on me. “Yeah. But how I feel….”

“…Hasn’t mattered much in the past?” Dara guessed.

I shrugged, since nodding at this felt a little too pathetic.

Dara released my hand and rubbed my shoulders patiently.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “I do have a few expectations for our relationship.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Like, whatever we do, we keep it safe and clean,” she said. “We don’t lie or keep secrets from each other, unless we’re planning a surprise. We make each other a priority, always. And when we see each other, we treat it like coming home. How does that sound to you?”

I traced these lines in my head, pleasantly surprised by how well they covered everything. “That… sounds like a plan.”

Dara kissed my lips. “Great. Then it’s a plan.”

“Okay, so, run me through it one more time,” I said. “While I’m at work today, I have to…”

“You don’t have to do anything,” said Dara, opening the door and peering back at me around the side of it. “But if adding a naughty little challenge to your day makes it more interesting, you have one.”

#

I clocked in, pulled on my first set of clingy little plastic gloves, and asked the couple at the front of the line what they wanted, with my senses feeling strangely sharper than usual, my heart pumping faster in my chest.

Normally, my strategy for surviving work was to block out all thought of everything else. I didn’t complain, or sneak glances at my phone, or think about what I was going to do when I got off. While I was behind that counter, I was a machine, an empty construct running on nothing but company policy programming.

It was joyless, but also as close to painless as any method I’d found. I rarely got in trouble, and I didn’t waste energy pining for all the other ways I could spend my time if I didn’t have to be here, because I did have to be here.

Even on my first shift after I’d met Dara and gone to class with her (and stayed after class with her), none of my coworkers had commented on any extra spring in my step, or sincerity in my smile. There was a new glow inside me, for sure, but I kept it carefully partitioned away from the working part of myself, so that it wouldn’t outshine and destroy what interest I could muster for scooping meat onto tortillas.

Today, my partitions were broken, but somehow, I still felt capable of work.

It was almost like Dara was here with me, behind the counter of Pepperland, holding my hand, egging me on. Instead of a distracting wish about somewhere else I could be, the thought of her had become a gentle anchor, rooting my interest right here, to where I was and what I was doing.

What about that one? I could almost hear her whispering to me as I greeted each new customer. How would that one feel about it?

For the first couple hours, there were really no good opportunities. The morning shift was still there, overlapping with the afternoon, all of us jostling shoulder-to-shoulder to cover the lunch rush. At any given moment, fulfilling Dara’s dare would have pissed off at least five people, even if no one took issue with the flirting itself, just because of the unnecessary extra seconds it would have taken me to lean across the counter and catch someone’s eye.

But even the game of asking myself about each customer as they passed, imagining what it would feel like to try to connect with them that way, created an environment where my habitual boredom couldn’t thrive.

One moment, I was savoring the thought of saying “babe” to a pretty woman with butterfly clips in her hair. The next, I was squirming with faint discomfort at the thought of saying it to a fatherly looking gentleman with a loosened tie.

This manner of working was not painless, exactly, but it sure did make the time zip by. In what felt like the blink of an eye, the rush was over, and the morning shift was departing.

With the line empty, Tyler, the shift supervisor on duty, sent Edith to take her break, and then stepped into the back to refill the cheese sauce dispenser himself. I was alone, minding both the burrito bar and the register.

Almost as if Dara had willed it into being, the next person to walk up to the empty counter was a young woman with asymmetrical bangs that highlighted one very cute cheekbone, and a T-shirt with a sly reference to one of my favorite TV shows.

“I’d like… hmm….”

She drummed her thumb ring thoughtfully against the counter. It was pearly white. A sapphic signal.

Or just something she thought looked cool.

“How’s the steak?” she asked.

“Tough,” I answered honestly.

“Chicken, then,” she said, with an appreciative smile.

I went down the usual list of questions, watching the pleasant curve of her lips as she gave each answer.

“I like your hair,” she said, as I rolled up and wrapped her order.

“Oh, thanks.” I felt myself redden a little. It was seeming more likely that she knew what her ring meant. And maybe, maybe, maybe, she thought I was just a little bit cute.

Or maybe liking my rainbow hair was just her way of acknowledging a fellow sapphic woman on sight, whether or not I was her personal type.

Either way, I doubted she’d be scarred or offended by a quick, simple “babe.” What was the worst that could happen? A moment’s awkwardness as she brushed me off and went on her way?

Fuck, that was still pretty bad, though.

I was ringing her up. I was getting her drink. This was the moment. I could feel Dara rooting for me from afar.

I leaned my elbows down on the counter as I handed her the bag and receipt, arching my back the way I’d practiced with Dara, pressing my cleavage up and forward.

“You have a good one, b… bye,” I stuttered out.

“You too, bye now!” The woman easily tossed back my odd choice of words with a wave and continued on her way. She was gone in time to avoid seeing me bury my now burning face between my forearms on the counter.

“Bri, you okay there?” Tyler asked behind me.

“Yeah.” I stood up straight, a perfect work automaton again. “Just stretching.”

“Well, stretch without sticking your nose where the food goes, okay?” he said.

“Of course. Sorry.” I kept my face turned out toward the food court, waiting for it to cool off.

“You can take your break as soon as Edith gets back,” said Tyler.

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Sure.”

He set down the cheese dispenser and turned to check the soda syrup, not sounding sure at all. He sounded unsure of me in particular, like seeing me make one mistake was a sign of the end times.

Tyler was only a couple years older than I was, but he had given himself over completely to Pepperland, and not just in the clock-in-clock-out automaton way that I had. He cared about serving Pepperland, and rising in its ranks. That passion had led him to perfect the voice of a superior, a voice that held your value in its inflections.

His possession of that voice had always made me a little afraid of him, but until today, he’d never directed its shame-inducing tone toward me.

I’d made my shift supervisor sound like that, and I hadn’t even managed to finish the dare.

No, I decided. That couldn’t be how this turned out. This wasn’t the story I was going to tell when I got back to Dara. The shift wasn’t over yet, and I was going to win this game yet.

I’d better get on with it, though, before the early dinner crowd started coming in.

The next straggler to approach the counter was, no joke, the single most conventionally gorgeous man I’d ever seen in person. Maybe my senses were a little overactive, but I could have sworn he’d walked right out of one of the posters in the windows of the trendy clothes shops down the hall. His hair was freshly cut, and he wore a clean tank top that showed off the razor-sharp definition of every muscle down to the waistband of his jeans. He took off a pair of sunglasses to look up at the menu, and smiled at me with an infinitely kissable mouth that brought a needed dose of softness to his otherwise chiseled face.

Everything in me said to keep my distance from this man, to fill his order and be as forgettable as possible.

This was someone who could have anyone he wanted. Who he wanted was almost certainly not me, and if it was me, that was arguably even worse, because we would never, ever exist on even footing. And when it came to men, uneven footing always meant danger. If I caught this man’s attention, embarrassment was a best-case scenario for me. And whatever happened, I would have asked for it.

Or so everyone who took part in raising me would have said, anyway.

On the other hand, I doubted I had to worry about making him uncomfortable. He probably knew how to handle attention like nobody’s business.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. It might not be Dara, but I pretended it was, and felt again as if she were holding my hand.

If it feels fun, keep going. If not, stop.

It all sounded so simple, the way she put it.

“Hey,” I said, leaning forward dramatically, chest first, to grab my next pair of gloves. Slowly, the way I imagined Dara would do it, I slid them on and fluttered my fingers, ready for the safe, oh-so-intimate contact of handling this customer’s choice of meat. I met his gaze and held it, feeling three separate waves of anxious paralysis come and go through my body. “What can I get for you today, babe?”

His face split instantly into a grin, and he leaned forward against the counter too, so that our noses were only a couple inches apart.

“I’d love one of those steak burritos.”

“The meat’s pretty tough today,” I warned him.

“That’s okay,” he said. “So am I.”

“Bet you are,” I said, eyeing his upper body a little more openly.

I put his meal together with lingering care, and even let out an ambiguous little moan when I drizzled the sour cream over the top, which he met with a gentle smirk.

“Practiced hands,” he said, as I rolled up the tortilla.

“It’s all about holding it at the perfect tightness,” I said, wrapping my hand as far as I could around the thick, warm cylinder as I wrapped the foil around it.

I didn’t think I’d ever made a customer smile quite this much.

He took his time signing the store copy of the receipt, glancing up at me from under his nicely long eyelashes, and my stomach flopped around like a beached fish, wondering if I was about to get another name and phone number slipped to me, and have to figure out what I wanted to do with it.

His fingers brushed deliberately against mine as he handed me the receipt, and I handed him the bag.

“Stay cool, sweetness,” he said, and left, as if he said that sort of thing every day.

There was no name or number on the receipt. There was a nice five-dollar tip, and a smiley face.

The clearing of a throat reminded me that I was not alone.

“Well, that explains it,” said Tyler.

I turned to find him watching me with crossed arms.

“Huh?”

“Why you’re acting so weird,” he said, nodding at the customer’s back. “New boyfriend?”

“Nope,” I answered, a bit smug in my honesty. “Never seen him before.”

“Sure, okay,” said Tyler. “Go on, break time. Get in your smooches or whatever.”

He sounded as disapproving as he did proud of his own permissiveness. That tone should have haunted my nightmares for weeks to come, and made it utterly impossible for me to feel good about “smooches” or anything else that might have made me happy.

But the smug thrill of what I’d just done was so tough and dense inside me, that Tyler’s voice just bounced off of it.

“Okay, thanks.”

I had my phone out as soon as I left the Pepperland kiosk, a text to Dara in progress under my thumbs.

Briony: I did it!

Dara: Congrats, babe <3 How do you feel?

Briony: Amazing.

Dara: Did it go any farther than ‘babe’?

Briony: No. I actually thought it might for a moment, though. The vibes got intense.

Dara: It’s a high, right? Flirting?

Briony: Big time. My skin feels like it’s vibrating.

Dara: Can you get somewhere private? It’s dead slow here.

Briony: Semi-private, maybe?

Dara: Even better ;)

I rushed down one of the long employee access corridors that ran behind the restaurant kiosks and wedged myself into a little alcove, next to a drinking fountain. Someone else could come down that stark white corridor at any moment, but I’d be able to hear them long before they’d be able to see me.

Sitting on the tile floor with my knees pulled close in front of me, I started a video call.

Dara answered immediately, appearing on my screen in her Violet bra and panties, surrounded by the dim mood lighting of a Little Heaven room at the club.

“Are you being a bad girl like I asked?” she murmured.

“So bad,” I answered.

“Good. Can you guess what your next bad girl assignment is?”

“Is it cybering with my girlfriend while I’m at work?” I asked. “Because I really want it to be.”

Dara touched her fingers to her lips, veiling a giggle.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I’ve just never heard anyone our age say ‘cybering’ before.”

I shrugged away an oncoming blush. “It’s what my parents used to call it when they told me why I couldn’t have a bedroom door.”

“Oh.” Dara reached toward the screen, as if to touch my face in sympathy. She laughed lightly again, before I could feel too pathetic. “So, you have practice at this, don’t you? Sneaking a little treat in plain sight?”

“You could say that,” I admitted, lowering my voice. “I can be very quiet.”

“Such a bad girl.”

“This’ll be the first time the woman I’m looking at on the screen is looking back at me, though,” I said.

Dara gazed right into the camera and lowered one of the straps of her bra, sharing one bare breast. “Go on, then. Give me something to look at.”

I angled the camera down, so she could watch me sweep my work apron aside, unfasten my black work jeans, and slide my hand inside.

“Tell me what happened,” Dara prompted. “Who was the lucky babe?”

“Oh my god, Dara, he was so pretty,” I said, and stopped to check her face for jealousy. I found only amusement with a hint of surprise.

“He,” Dara mused. “Not what I was expecting.”

“You and me both,” I said, swirling my fingers lightly around my clit, bouncing happily between looking at Dara’s breast and remembering the customer’s aesthetically pleasing biceps, inches away over the counter. “There was a woman first, and I wanted to, but I chickened out. And then he was there, and I don’t know how I did it. It was so, so scary, but I did it.”

“Did what, exactly?” Dara goaded me, toying with her nipple.

“Fucking flaunted myself,” I said, tossing my hair over my shoulder. “Acted like I was hot, and… and like I owned that.”

I rubbed my fingers around in a quicker circle.

“Acted like the truth, you mean,” said Dara.

“I didn’t think I had it in me.”

“I knew you did.”

“I mean, it’s one thing to do it in a room full of only women,” I said. “But now I feel like I could be that person anywhere, with anyone.”

“Because it’s what you are,” said Dara, indulgently. “You’re hot and you own yourself. Men existing doesn’t change that.”

“I was hot in public, and no one got hurt,” I said, still in awe, still pulsing with the adrenaline of it. “I was horny in public, and no one got hurt.”

“Fuck yeah,” said Dara. “Show me how horny. Show me more.”

Riding high, I set aside all worries of how quickly I could make myself decent, and pulled my jeans and panties down farther around my hips, so that Dara could watch my fingers work in detail.

“Better not slow down,” Dara teased.

“I know,” I whispered. “I have to be back behind the counter in eleven minutes!”

“How do you feel when you think about that?” asked Dara.

“Like I might not make it,” I said. “But that’s okay, because it’ll make it so much better if I can.”

“The clock’s not holding you back anymore?” Dara asked, smiling proudly.

I smiled back, remembering the ticking timer that had nearly paralyzed me during our first encounter together.

I shook my head. “No, because it’s win-win. Just like you taught me.”

“Oh, it is, is it?” said Dara, delighted. “So, you don’t care if you get to cum or not?”

“Of course I care,” I panted, fighting both my body and my limited vocabulary to explain this feeling. “But caring… caring has never felt this good before.”

“It would be almost as much fun, wouldn’t it?” said Dara, not sounding the slightest bit confused. “Maybe even more fun. If you ran out of time? If someone walked by? How intense would that be, if you had to zip up right now and go back to work like this? The best kind of disappointment in the world.”

A tingle of piqued bloodflow rushed to my already excited clit. My ears prickled at the sound of footsteps on a perpendicular hall, and I crested a wave of euphoria when they passed by without getting closer.

“Some of the people in that mall probably think that’s the punishment a bad girl like you deserves,” Dara cooed ever so gently. “Having to go without. Putting yourself on hold to serve them. Cutting off your real life on demand, even if you only needed another couple minutes to be satisfied. And they could make you do it.”

A more peculiar tingle ran through my whole body. In a different context, it might have been horror, but mixed into the rest of this, it served as excitement instead.

“They can make you go back to work like this, but they’ll never completely control you again,” Dara went on. “Because you’re a true bad girl, and no punishment can ‘fix’ you. If you can’t cum now, you’ll just get even hornier, and hotter, and badder, won’t you?”

“Christ, I can’t even imagine,” I sighed. “I’ll be out of my head. I’ll be humping the cabinet doors.”

“Careful,” said Dara. “Don’t give me too many ideas for your next assignment.”

“I’m going to use the phone,” I said, thumbing my way clumsily to the menu of ringtones and alerts. I picked the demo option for the most vigorous vibration effect and pressed the back of the phone flat to my pussy.

“Hey,” Dara’s voice giggled from between my legs. “I want to see!”

“Here.” I untied the upper straps of my work apron and lifted my shirt and bra up over my breasts.

The front-facing camera of the phone pointed upward, capturing an unsteady shot of my breasts and face from below, as I dragged the phone’s bottom edge up and down over my clit, concentrating all the vibration in one spot.

“Better?” I asked.

“Fuck, you look beautiful,” said Dara.

I didn’t stop to question her about how that could be true from this angle. I just enjoyed her voice, and kept on humping my vibrating connection to her, as if my life depended on it.

“I almost want the time to run out on you,” said Dara. “I’d love to get my hands on you while you’re like this. Even more desperate than this. When you’ve been waiting all d—”

I clamped down on my vocal cords as the pleasure spasms took over, keeping the hallway more silent than it had been at any other point during our call. It was a trick I’d practiced for such moments so many times that it was actually easier and more reflexive than the moans I’d later learned to share.

My whole body curled and folded inward, hiding and protecting the epicenter of those spasms, and the vibrating phone that had helped bring them on.

“…That works too,” Dara said fondly when the twitches ended, leaving my ordinary senses to function again.

“Don’t worry,” I said breathily, catching up on oxygen as my throat re-opened. “I’ve got plenty of time to work myself up again for you later.”

“Well, naturally,” said Dara, squeezing her breasts together. “It’s not hard to get worked up for this.”

Making noises of vehement agreement, I sat up and wriggled my clothes back into place. I had to smile when I checked the time. Eight minutes to go. Not even halfway through my break.

And here I was, looking respectable again, having gotten away with it.

“So, how’s your day going?” I asked.

Dara’s smile flickered.

“What’s wrong?” I adjusted the question, blinking at her through my post-orgasmic buzz.

“Nothing I’m not used to,” she said.

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“Sounds like you could use a good girl challenge,” I said.

“Ooh,” Dara’s smile took on more substance. “And what would that be?”

“Give me a sec, I’m still figuring that out.”

Dara laughed. “Well, when you do…”

“Wait, wait, I’ve got it,” I said. “Brag to me about what a good girl you’ve already been today.”

“You must be confusing me with someone else,” Dara joked, and I got a little thrill from catching the evasiveness in her breath. I wasn’t the only one with tells.

“Oh please,” I said. “Your job might brand you a ‘bad girl’ to people who don’t know better, but it takes a secret good girl to do it well. So, tell me about the people you pleased, and the rules you followed, and the shit you put up with without causing anyone any trouble at all. Tell me, so that I can tell you how to reward yourself. And then do as I say. Like a good girl.”

A faint blush, so much more dignified than mine, colored Dara’s cheeks.

“My new shoes are giving me blisters,” she said, sticking out her lower lip in a self-parody of a pout.

“Aww, sweetie, take them off while we’re talking,” I said.

Dara unfastened the skinny sandal straps of her current set of high heels and kicked them irritably to a corner of the room, stretching her toes out on the thin carpet.

“What else?” I asked.

Dara heaved a long sigh.

“Well, the owner of one of the clubs down the street has been trying to buy us out for a while,” she explained. “I really don’t want to work for that guy. And every time I hear our owner talk about it, she sounds… less opposed. He’s wearing her down.”

“That must be stressful,” I said.

Dara nodded. “And today, she asked me to give a VIP experience to a fire inspector. The same inspector one who suddenly decided our sprinklers were out of date after getting chummy with buyout guy.”

“I’m guessing you were supposed to convince him he was mistaken about the sprinklers?”

Dara nodded and rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Seemed to work, but we’ll see how long that lasts. I really don’t want to get dragged into some kind of special treatment arms race.”

“Was he, uh, difficult to service?” I asked, trying to sound as if I understood the nuances of how strippers would see and describe the gradations between customers.

Dara scoffed. “He wasn’t violent, if that’s what you mean. He just sat there like a mannequin, staring at me, while I gave him twenty minutes of boring work for no cut and no tip.”

“And no praise,” I guessed out loud.

“That’s what made it boring,” said Dara, as if this were self-evident.

“Sounds like you did a really nice thing for your coworkers,” I said. “Sacrificing your time to protect the club, so no one else had to.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not going to go around making them feel weird about it,” said Dara.

“Of course you’re not,” I said. “Because that’s how much of a good girl you are.”

Dara’s blush grew a little stronger.

“You’re not going to tell anyone else how hard you’ve been working for them, but I know. So, give yourself a little pat on the back for me, since I can’t reach you to do it myself right now.”

A little self-consciously, Dara reached up behind her own shoulder to give her back a perfunctory pat.

“Now your breasts,” I directed. “Can you kiss them for me?”

Dara shook her head, unfastening her bra and setting it aside. She leaned down toward them, sticking her tongue out to show how it wouldn’t reach.

“Blow them each a kiss, then.”

Still looking vaguely skeptical of my undeniable silliness, Dara kissed two fingertips and pressed them gently to her right nipple, transferring the gesture of affection. Then, she did the same on the left, lingering a little longer to rub herself. When the nipple began to perk up, she placed a thumb and finger on either side of it, bringing them steadily together.

“Uh-uh, no pinching,” I stopped her. “Not today. This is going to be strictly softness.”

“Roughness gets the job done faster,” said Dara.

“Then you’ll just have to be patient with yourself,” I said. “Like you deserve.”

Dara laughed but followed my instructions, propping her phone against the wall and using both hands to caress her hardening nipples with feather lightness.

“Give the rest of your body some attention now,” I said. “Because you’re not just your breasts, you know.”

Dara stroked her own face with a dancer’s grace and worked her way down her neck, her arms, her abs. Without being told, she skipped over her pussy, down to her thighs.

“Good girl,” I cooed to her. “You’re not just that, either, and you know it. You’re beautiful and soft and sweet and good all over.”

I let her keep trailing fingers over her thighs for several long seconds more, enjoying the almost shy glances she kept tossing at the camera.

“Only when you’re completely ready, when it feels right, give your pussy a nice, soft stroke.”

“You have to get back to work,” said Dara.

“You’re such a sweetheart for remembering,” I said, checking the clock and making my silent estimations. “Take your time.”

Dara gave her fingers one more tour of her own thighs, systematically covering every inch of skin, and then finally brought her right hand up to her pussy, stroking just the close-trimmed hair on the outer folds, like it was a fragile pet.

“That’s it,” I said. “Nothing rough, nothing rushed.”

She brushed her hand up and down, still only skimming the surface.

“Slower,” I reminded her, when she started to pick up speed.

Her hips squirmed a little as she forced herself to comply, and I snuck a quick smirk while she wasn’t looking, enjoying the confirmation of my intended effect.

“Poor good girl,” I said. “Entertaining all those people. Putting everyone else’s pleasure first. And even the ones who want nothing more than to please you, most of them don’t know how, do they?”

Dara shook her head, taking deep, heavy breaths in time with the slow strokes I’d prescribed for her.

“Blow that clit of yours a kiss,” I said. “Softly.”

Just like with her nipples, she placed a kiss on her fingertips, and then transferred its imaginary presence — and its very real moisture — to her clit with a touch.

She spread her legs a little farther apart, so that she could make more direct contact, but kept the touch silky soft.

“If I were there to do the kissing, this is when I’d slip you some tongue,” I said. “But you’re going to have to use your imagination today.”

Dara brought her fingers back to her mouth and licked them. It looked like she was trying to magically imbue them with the properties of a tongue, before returning them to her clit.

“I’m going to set a pace for you,” I said. “For your light, soft clit strokes. And I know I don’t have to worry about you cheating. Because you’re a good girl. Are you ready?”

“Mm-hmm,” Dara sighed, her self-consciousness almost entirely faded.

“Here goes,” I said, and clicked my tongue.

It was a wet sound, a reminder of the softness of my mouth, separated from her by miles of space, but also reminiscent of a clock, or a metronome. It echoed through the access hallway, probably audible around a few corners, but no one would jump to assuming that something salacious was happening from the sound alone.

After missing only the first one or two strokes, Dara caught on to what I was doing and synchronized her fingers to my tongue. She skimmed them back and forth over the slickened hood of her clit, not denting or moving her flesh with her touch, just barely making contact with those sweet, dense nerves.

I started extra slow, one click for every three seconds or so. Once that had become routine, I quickened to one every two seconds, and then every one second… and then every two seconds again.

Every three seconds.

Every four seconds.

Dara moaned, and her hips lifted involuntarily up from the couch, but she followed along.

“Very good,” I had time to whisper between clicks.

“You have… to go… to work…” she reminded me again, though it was clear her concern wasn’t primarily for me anymore. I’d succeeded in my self-appointed task of making her focus on herself.

I switched to snapping my fingers, so that I could talk at the same time.

“I bet you feel like we’ve been doing this all day. Like you’re being so, so indulgent. You’re not. This has been a tiny fragment of a day, and a scrap of pressure. And that’s all you need to make paradise. You’re resourceful. A classic good girl quality.”

“You’re the one… making it… paradise,” she panted, smiling at me.

Switching back to tongue-clicks, I methodically picked up the pace, meaning to bring it all the way up to the rapid flutter that Dara loved from my tongue in person.

I didn’t even get that far before she cried out and clutched her own wrist with her other hand, fighting herself to keep the touch soft as she came.

I click-click-clicked steadily for her, not wanting to risk switching methods, even to tell her how deeply she deserved to enjoy this.

After a few seconds, her body seemed to start to relax, but then another wave caught her by surprise, drawing out another moan. There was a second false ending, and then a third, but I kept on clicking, until I was sure she had dragged out every last pulse of the slow, lingering, softness-borne orgasm.

“Oh god,” she gasped. “Oh god, how late did I make you?”

“Less than two minutes,” I said, getting up and starting back down the hall toward the Pepperland kiosk at a brisk jog, guarding the screen close to my chest. Dara lounged there, nude and panting, not yet reaching to fit her lingerie back on.

My heart was pounding at the sight of those two tardy minutes on the clock, but whatever parts of my mind and body were built to handle excitement, they were still warmed up and humming, ready to siphon off my nervous energy before it could reach the place where it would become panic.

“I’m sorry,” said Dara.

“Don’t be.” I straightened up my apron. “It’s no big deal. I’m a bad girl, remember?”

Dara laughed blissfully.

“I do have to go now, though,” I said, when I reached the door that would lead me into plain view of the food court.

“Go,” said Dara. “I’ll see you tonight. I love you.”

She blinked a fraction of a second before I did, as we both heard what she’d said.

“I love you too.” I said, blew a kiss to the camera, and closed the call.

Tyler eyed me all the way from the door to the kiosk’s hand wash station. My hands shook as I shoved them under the water.

With panic.

With excitement.

***

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