Tuesday. 5:52am. The fourteenth floor was silent.

She stood in front of his office door in her dress and heels and listened to the building breathe. The hum of ventilation. The far-off groan of the elevator shaft, idle, somewhere below. Fluorescent panels above her buzzed at a frequency she could feel in her teeth.

The door was locked. She'd known it would be.

She set her handbag on the floor.

Undressed. Outfit folded neatly. Standing and waiting.

She reached back and found the zipper at the base of her spine. Drew it down. The dress loosened, the fabric going slack around her shoulders, and she caught it before it fell. She held it against her chest and looked both ways down the hallway.

Empty. Grey carpet. Closed doors, all dark behind frosted glass. The elevator bank at the far end, two brushed-steel doors sealed shut.

She stepped out of the dress. Folded it. Placed it on the pile.

The hallway air hit her skin.

She was standing in the cupless bra, the mesh thong, stockings, garter belt, and heels. The bra lifted her breasts and offered them. The underwire pushed each one up and together, the cups ending below the nipple, so both sat exposed above the lace edge. Her left nipple was still bruised. The dark pink had deepened to a mottled purple-yellow at the edges, swollen to twice its normal size. The right one was hard from the cold. The mesh thong covered nothing. The fabric was translucent, pulled tight between her legs, the shadow of her sex visible through it: the crease of her lips, the darker triangle of hair on her mound pressed flat beneath the mesh.

She clasped her hands in front of her. Then behind her. Then in front again.

· · ·

It's in the contract. He said it was in the trainee contract. Other trainees do this, they must. It's like a uniform inspection. The military does uniform inspections.

Anyone could come up. The cleaners. A courier. Someone pressing the wrong button in the elevator.

The thought sat in her chest. She couldn't breathe around it, so she breathed shallowly, and she stood still, and she waited.

* * *

6:30. Nothing.

She shifted her weight from one heel to the other. The stockings whispered against each other where her thighs touched. The garter clips dug into the soft flesh at the top of her legs; four points of pressure, two on each side, pulling the stockings taut.

The bruised nipple throbbed. A low pulse that synced with her heartbeat. She could feel the swelling. Heavier than the other side, more prominent, impossible to hide. Not that there was anything to hide behind.

He said undressed. He said standing. He didn't say where to put my hands.

She settled on clasping them at her waist. It was the only position that didn't make her feel like she was trying to cover herself.

6:45.

The elevator made a sound. A mechanical click, deep in the shaft, like something engaging. She stopped breathing. The sound travelled upward: gears turning, cables moving, the faint whine of machinery pulling the car toward her floor.

Her heart slammed against her ribs. She took a step backward, then forward, then pressed herself flat against the wall beside the office door as though that would make her invisible. Cupless bra. Bare nipples. Mesh thong. Stockings and heels and nothing else, standing in a hallway that belonged to a building full of people, at a time when cleaners worked and deliveries arrived and anyone, anyone, could step off.

The elevator settled. A pause. The doors didn't open.

Going down. Someone on a lower floor.

She exhaled. Her hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against her bare thighs.

It's fine. It's early. No one comes to fourteen.

She told herself that four more times in the next hour. Somewhere around 6:50, the pain in her feet won. She stepped out of the heels and set them beside her bag. The carpet was cold through the thin nylon of her stockings. Her calves unlocked. The ache in her arches released all at once. She lost two inches. The hallway felt bigger without them.

* * *

7:22. The elevator chimed.

She straightened. Smoothed the stockings with her palms. Pressed her thighs together. Her hands went to her waist, clasped, still, the way she'd decided was correct.

The doors opened. Williams came through in charcoal grey, briefcase in one hand, phone in the other. He walked the length of the hallway without looking up. His shoes on the carpet were the only sound.

He reached the door. Shifted the briefcase. Glanced at her, one sweep, top to bottom, the way you'd check that a delivery had arrived. His gaze stopped at her feet.

"Heels on."

Not a question. She dropped to a crouch, too fast, her balance wrong, one hand slapping the carpet while the other fumbled for the nearest shoe. She jammed her foot in. The ankle strap caught on her stocking and she tugged at it with shaking fingers, the heel skidding on the carpet. She got the second one on while still half-crouching, rose too quickly, and wobbled one ungainly step sideways.

He was already unlocking the door. He hadn't waited.

She gathered her folded clothes and bag and followed on unsteady heels. The carpet changed from hallway grey to office plush, softer, darker, the expensive kind that swallowed sound. The door swung shut behind her and the click of the latch was the best thing she'd heard all morning.

* * *

He set his briefcase on the desk. Hung his jacket on the stand behind the door. Poured himself a glass of water from the credenza. Sipped.

She stood in the centre of the room. Hands at her waist. Eyes forward. Waiting.

He came around the desk. Stopped in front of her. Close enough that she could smell his cologne, the wool of his suit, the faint warm scent beneath it that was only him. His grey eyes moved over her without expression.

"Arms at your sides."

She dropped her hands.

He started at her shoulders. His fingers found the bra strap on her left side, traced it from the shoulder down to where the lace met the underwire, testing the tension. She felt each fingertip as a point of heat against her cool skin. He moved to the front. The underwire sat beneath her breasts, pushing them up, and he traced it with his index finger, left to right, following the curve of metal beneath fabric. When his finger passed beneath her left breast, the bruised nipple was inches from his knuckle. The swollen flesh pulsed.

He paused.

His thumb came up. Pressed lightly against the bruise.

She flinched. The pain flared through the breast and landed somewhere behind her sternum. She clamped her jaw shut. Her eyes watered.

"Still swollen." His voice was clinical. Observational. The voice of a man checking on damage he hadn't caused. "This is what happens when you can't keep yourself decent. A professional woman doesn't have bruised nipples, Chloe."

He pressed harder. Rotated his thumb in a slow circle around the swollen nipple, the pad of his finger dragging across damaged skin. She felt every ridge of his thumbprint. The bruise complained in a dull, sick way; and beneath the pain, a different heat, nerve endings firing that had nothing to do with healing.

He's checking it's healing. Making sure I haven't made it worse. It's my fault it's there in the first place.

He let go. Moved to the right side. Traced the underwire there, the matching curve, his finger dipping into the space between fabric and skin. He lifted the breast slightly, testing the weight of it in the cup, the way the bra held it, whether the positioning was correct. Let it settle.

The garter clips. He crouched. She felt his breath on her thigh, warm against the band of bare skin between stocking top and thong. His fingers found the first clip on her right side. He pulled it away from her skin, two inches, the elastic stretching, and released it.

It snapped back. The metal teeth bit into the soft flesh at the top of her thigh and she gasped, a sharp intake that she swallowed before it became anything louder. A pink mark rose beneath the clip.

He did the next one. Same side, lower, where the garter met the stocking. Pull. Release. Snap. She bit the inside of her cheek.

Left side. Pull. Snap. Her thigh jerked. She caught it and forced her leg still.

The last clip was front left, high on her thigh, close to the crease where her leg met her pelvis. He pulled it further than the others. Held it. Three seconds. She could see the elastic stretched taut in his fingers, the metal teeth hovering an inch from her skin. Then he let go.

The snap was louder than the others. She heard herself make a sound, a strained note from the back of her throat. The welt would be there all day.

He stayed crouched. His gaze was level with her hips. The mesh thong.

She felt his attention arrive at the place she'd been dreading since she got dressed that morning.

The mesh was thin. Transparent when stretched. It pulled tight across her mound, the fabric clinging to every contour: the rise of her pubic bone, the soft split where her lips began, the crease at the top of each thigh. And beneath the mesh, visible through it, dark against the pale backdrop of her skin: hair.

Not much. That was the thing. There had never been much. She'd been sixteen before anything grew in at all, bare and smooth while the other girls in the changing room had bodies that looked like women's bodies, dark and full. She'd changed in the corner stall. Angled away from the mirrors. Hated the way she looked like a child next to them, too young, too bare, her body two years behind everyone else's.

And now, finally, the sparse covering that had arrived late and never thickened, just enough to feel normal, just enough to stop hating the sight of herself, was pressed against transparent mesh under the gaze of a man crouching six inches from her crotch, and it was the wrong thing. Again. Still not right. Still not what a woman was supposed to look like.

She'd never had reason to remove it, never thought about it. But through the transparent mesh it was unmistakable.

· · ·

He didn't say anything. Not at first.

His hand came up. His fingers pressed against the mesh, against the hair beneath it, and she felt the contact: his fingertips on her mound through the thin layer of fabric, the warmth of his hand, the slight rasp of hair moving beneath his touch.

Then his hand slid under the waistband.

She sucked in a breath. His fingers pushed beneath the mesh and found hair; real, coarse hair on her mound, curling against his knuckles. He pressed his palm flat. She could feel every line of his hand. His skin was warmer than hers. The heat radiated into her mound. The hair sat trapped between his palm and her skin.

His fingers closed.

He grabbed a fistful.

The yank was sudden. Upward, hard, his fist clenching around the hair at the base and pulling. She rose onto her toes, hauled up by the mound, her whole body drawn taut beneath his grip. The pain was new. Not sharp like the nipple twist. Not blunt like the garter snap. This was rooted. She felt each individual hair straining at the follicle, the skin of her mound pulled taut in his fist, the stretch and burn of flesh that had never been handled this way.

Her eyes flooded. She grabbed his wrist, both hands, automatic, trying to ease the pressure, and he yanked higher. Her calves screamed. A strangled sound escaped her.

"Hands. Down."

She let go. Dropped her arms to her sides. Stood on her toes with her mound pulled tight in his fist and tears running down her face and didn't touch him.

He held. Five seconds. She counted them one by one.

He released. The hair sprang back. Her mound ached, a hot sting that pulsed in time with her breathing. She dropped off her toes. Her legs were shaking.

He withdrew his hand from the thong. Stood. His expression was the same expression he'd worn walking in: flat, unimpressed, checking a delivery.

"Section four of your trainee contract." His voice was even. "Personal grooming. Body hair below the eyelashes is to be maintained at the firm's standard." He wiped his hand on her shoulder, a slow drag of his fingers across her bare skin. "The firm's standard is bare. Completely. Everywhere."

Of course. Of course she should have known. The contract said bare below eyelashes. She'd signed it and she hadn't even read it properly. Who does that? Who signs something and doesn't read it? A girl from Ohio who doesn't know how offices work, that's who.

She was still crying. Quietly, without sobbing, the tears running freely, her breath hitching. "I didn't - I didn't know-"

"You signed it." He wasn't angry. He was informing her. The distinction was worse. "Two more things while we're here. Section six: you don't speak during inspections unless I ask you a direct question. You answer, and you stop. Section nine: no eye contact during inspections. Eyes forward. Not at me."

She fixed her gaze on the bookcase behind him. Blinked the tears clear. Swallowed.

"Now."

He stepped behind her. His hand found the back of her neck, the base of her ponytail, where the elastic held the bundle of brown hair tight. He gripped it. Not gently. She felt the pull at her scalp, the roots straining, and then he was walking.

She stumbled forward. The hand in her ponytail guided her across the office: three steps, five, past the leather chairs, past the credenza. He pressed her toward the desk. She caught herself with her hands flat on the surface. He pushed between her shoulder blades. She bent.

· · ·

The oak was cold against her forearms. She felt it on her bare stomach, her exposed breasts pressing against the hard surface, the bruised nipple screaming at the contact. She arched to lift it off the wood and he pushed her down again.

His other hand went to her thong. Hooked it. Pulled it down. The mesh peeled away from between her cheeks, dragged down her thighs, caught on the garter clips, and he yanked it past them and left it stretched between her knees.

She was bent over his desk, legs slightly apart, her bare ass presented behind her. Her cheeks were full and round enough that the bend barely parted them. The soft flesh pressed together, closing around everything, hiding it. She could feel how little it hid. The cool air found the crease where her thighs met her cheeks, the underside of each curve, and at the very bottom, where the bend opened her just enough, the faintest brush of air against the edge of her slit. Not exposed. Almost. The almost was the worst part. The edge of the desk pressed into her hipbones. His hand still in her hair. The wood grain under her fingertips.

"Spread your cheeks."

Her hands didn't move. The words registered. She heard them, understood them. A long stilled moment. Her arms wouldn't work.

"I won't repeat myself."

She reached back. Her fingers found the full curves of her own ass, each cheek warm in her palm, the flesh generous under her grip. She pulled. Outward. The skin resisted, then gave, and she spread herself open.

It's an inspection. He's checking compliance. Like a doctor would. He's not looking at me like, he's not. He's checking whether I followed the rules. And I didn't. So this is what happens.

He can see everything.

· · ·

She pressed her forehead against the desk. The oak was cool on her flushed skin. Her face was hot. The shame was physical. A heat that crawled from her chest up her neck into her cheeks and ears and didn't stop.

He let go of her ponytail.

She heard him crouch.

* * *

The girl's big pale cheeks were spread wide in her own hands, the flesh pulled apart, her knuckles white from the grip. Her tight little asshole stared back at him. The rim pink. A delicate pucker that clenched and relaxed and clenched again as she fought the spasm of being seen there for the first time. Below it, her slit. The bottom of it peeked out, the inner lips just visible, a glistening pink, the folds parted slightly from the bend, the skin dewy. Untouched. A faint sheen of moisture caught the office light.

The hair was here too. Sparse wisps trailing along the outer edges of her lips, a few stray strands between her cheeks. Finer than the coarse patch on her mound. Visible only from this distance, this angle. The angle she was going to hold for as long as he wanted.

He exhaled. His breath landed on her exposed skin and he watched the goosebumps erupt, spreading outward from the point of contact, prickling across her inner cheeks, down the backs of her thighs. Her asshole clenched tight. The rim went from relaxed to puckered in a single contraction. The slit glistened brighter.

· · ·

He reached forward.

* * *

She felt his breath first. Warm, close, landing on skin that had never felt another person's breath. Then his fingers.

He plucked a hair.

A precise sting. One follicle, the hair gripped between his thumbnail and forefinger and pulled free. She jerked. The sensation was nothing like the fistful. This was small. Located on the outer edge of her right lip, where the skin was softest.

He plucked another. Left side. Closer to the crease of her thigh. The sting bloomed and faded.

Another. Between her cheeks, high, near the top of her cleft. She felt his fingers brush her spread skin as he found it: the pad of his thumb resting against the inside of her cheek while his other fingers worked. The contact was warm. Steady. His hand didn't shake.

He worked methodically. One hair at a time. Each tiny pull sent a flare through the nerve endings of the thinnest skin she had; skin that had never been touched, never been seen, now being groomed by his fingers at a distance she could feel his breathing.

She counted. Not deliberately. Her mind fastened onto numbers because numbers were easier than the rest. Seven. Eight. Nine. Each one a pinpoint of sting followed by a breath of warm air as he exhaled, his focus on the task, his face inches from her spread sex.

He's fixing what I didn't do. He shouldn't have to do this. He should be able to trust that his trainee can follow a basic grooming standard and he can't, because of me, and now he's down there doing it himself instead of just firing me.

Her thighs were trembling. The effort of staying bent over, staying spread, staying still: the muscles in her legs burned. Her forearms ached against the desk. Her grip on her own cheeks was failing, the flesh slippery with sweat, and her right hand slipped, not much, half an inch, the cheek sliding back together before she caught it and pulled again.

"Hold still."

The next pluck wasn't a pluck. His fingers closed directly on her rim; the puckered skin of her asshole pinched between his thumb and forefinger; and he pulled. This was a pinch. A mean compression of the most sensitive skin on her body, held for a full second before he released.

She choked. Her hips bucked forward into the desk. Her eyes streamed.

"See what happens when you squirm?" His voice was conversational. "Makes them harder to grab properly."

She dug her fingers into her cheeks, nails biting into the soft flesh, hard enough to leave crescents, hard enough that the pain in her hands competed with the burning on her rim. She didn't adjust her grip again.

Twelve. Thirteen. He was near her slit now. She felt his fingers brush the outer lip; not plucking, just touching, finding the next hair. The contact sent a shiver through her that she couldn't control. Her hips rocked forward by a fraction. She flinched away from him before she could catch it.

He placed his free hand on the small of her back. Firm. Holding her in place. She stilled.

Fourteen. The hair was fine, almost invisible, and the pluck was sharper for it; a sting that made her clench, everything clenching, her anus tightening, her thighs pressing together by a centimeter before she caught herself and spread them again.

Fifteen. Sixteen. The last two came from high on her mound, where the mesh had hidden the densest growth. He pulled them with a clinical grip. No urgency. No impatience. A man clearing a surface.

He stood. She heard him rise behind her, the shift of weight, the creak of his knees after crouching that long.

"Tongue out."

She opened her mouth. Extended her tongue. She didn't know why. She didn't ask.

His hand came up and gripped it, thumb on top, two fingers beneath, firm. He pulled it further out, stretching it level, and her jaw ached at the extension. She could taste the salt of his fingers.

His other hand appeared in her peripheral vision. Index finger and thumb pressed together, holding something. He brought them into her mouth, past her teeth, past the middle of her tongue, all the way to the back where the muscle was soft and the gag reflex lived, and opened his fingers.

Sixteen hairs settled at the base of her tongue.

She felt them immediately. Fine, scattered across the wet surface, some sticking, some drifting toward the back of her throat. A tickle that wasn't quite a tickle. Her throat contracted. She gagged, caught it, gagged again.

He released her tongue. Withdrew his hand. Wiped his fingers on her bare shoulder.

"A woman who can't groom herself properly can carry the evidence. So she remembers next time."

She stood with her mouth half-open, the hairs clinging to the back of her tongue, her throat working around the urge to retch. She swallowed, and felt them move, some sliding down, some sticking, the rest settling into the soft tissue where she'd feel them for hours.

She heard the chair behind the desk roll back. Heard him sit. The creak of leather.

"Stand up. Pull the thong up. Face the window."

She pushed herself off the desk. Her arms were shaking. She reached down and pulled the mesh thong up her legs, settling it into place, the fabric sitting against freshly stung skin, each plucked follicle announcing itself as the mesh dragged over it. She turned to the window.

"Tomorrow you'll be bare. Completely. Legs, underarms, everything below the eyelashes. I will check. Every morning, I will check. If I find hair where there shouldn't be hair, yesterday will seem gentle."

"Yes, Sir." The words came out thick. She could feel the hairs; a few still clinging to the back of her tongue, one caught in her throat that no amount of swallowing would dislodge. She swallowed again. Her mouth wanted to gag, to cough, to spit, and she held all of it behind her teeth.

The words had left her mouth before she remembered the rule, the hairs too distracting. No speaking unless asked. But he'd asked her, hadn't he? A direct statement expecting a response. She couldn't tell. The rules were new and the edges were already blurring.

He opened a file. Picked up his pen.

"Coffee."

* * *

She bought the coffee. Came back. Set it on his desk. Filed for two hours in silence while the plucked skin between her legs stung every time she shifted in her chair. The mesh thong pressed against the raw follicles and each movement was a tiny reminder of where his fingers had been.

At noon, he told her to eat. She ate a granola bar from her bag, standing in the break room, looking at the blank wall.

At five, he told her she could go. She gathered her things.

"Goodnight, Sir."

He didn't respond.

* * *

The bus. The back row. The city sliding past in the dark.

She sat with her knees together and her hands in her lap and felt every plucked follicle individually. The bus seat vibrated and the mesh thong shifted against her skin and each tiny sting was a memory; his breath, his fingers, the angle he'd crouched at, how close his face had been.

Section four. Body hair below the eyelashes.

She'd signed it. She couldn't remember what was in it, but she'd signed it, and that meant she'd agreed. The logic was circular and she followed it around and around until the bus reached her stop.

She stood in her bathroom that night with a cheap razor and shaving cream from the corner store and stripped off everything: the dress, the bra, the thong, the stockings. She stood in the tub and looked down at herself. The sparse hair on her mound. The fine growth along her outer lips that she'd never paid attention to, never imagined anyone else would see.

She lathered. She shaved. She went slowly. She was afraid of nicking herself, of missing a spot, of what he'd do if she got it wrong. The razor dragged across skin that had never been shaved, the blade finding each hair, the foam washing away to reveal bare flesh beneath. The skin underneath looked the way she remembered from only two years ago, before anything grew in at all, before her body finally caught up. She'd spent so long wanting the hair to arrive, and now she was scraping it off for a man who'd called it disgusting.

She checked. Ran her fingers over every surface. Mound. Lips. Between her cheeks. The tops of her thighs. Under her arms. Her legs, already shaved but she went over them again.

Bare below the eyelashes. She touched her smooth mound and felt the difference immediately; her own fingers on skin where there had always been a soft buffer. She looked new. Younger. More exposed than the mesh thong had ever made her.

She dried off and stood in front of the mirror and saw herself: the cupless bra marks still faintly visible on her skin, the bruise on her left nipple going green at the edges, the bare mound smooth and pale.

He told me to. It was in the contract. Every assistant has to do this. He didn't even enjoy having to check. He looked bored. Annoyed, if anything. A man like him, having to get down on his knees because his trainee can't manage basic hygiene.

She went to bed. The sheets found her bare skin and she lay still and felt every thread against the place where hair used to be, and she stared at the ceiling, and she didn't sleep for a long time.

Because that's what she did now.