by Inamorotica
(12/20/06)

She lay nude on the sheets, unmoving, staring up at her reflection in the skylight above. The sun had set, and despite the light from the bedside candle, she could see stars through her reflection. She lay in leaden, unfamiliar comfort -- the kind of heavy satisfaction that comes after a massage and before the demands of a morning. She visually traced the outline of her body, her hair, her breasts, the curve of her hips, and wondered when she'd utterly lost her femininity.

"Let's just cut them off," the manicurist had said earlier that day.

Clarissa had lain in a reclining chair, fingers and toes wrapped in balls of cotton, a white robe covering the rest of her.

"I can't make these work," said the woman, holding up Clarissa's hand. "All your nails are like this. They're too thin and brittle to shape. Do you bite them?"

Clarissa shook her head, shrugging and trying to smile. "I don't know. Maybe."

"We'll just cut them off and start over. I can do wonders with artificials," said the woman, a short, rounded lady in her fifties who seemed to fit into the décor of the spa so well that Clarissa supposed she'd been a fixture of it for decades. She watched as the woman pulled out a rather Draconian pair of nail scissors and pared back each uneven nail to her fingertips.

She lay back and looked at the ceiling. The overnight spa had been her husband's idea, by which she meant Kimberly from work had told him to sign her up for it for her birthday. It's not that he wasn't thoughtful, but with the overload of both their jobs he probably wouldn't have thought of anything until the last minute and then bought her some token jewelry.

The manicurist had given her nails; long nails that would make typing at work nearly impossible. She fanned out her fingers before her as the woman began on the other hand. They weren't her nails. They weren't even her. Years ago, she'd grown real nails like these, but there must have been a day when she stopped the French tips. A day when she stopped shaping them. A day when snipping them out of the way made more sense. She stared at their overly perfect shapes. She'd have to cut them back in the morning anyhow.

When the manicure was complete, she'd gone for her facial. And then been wheeled to her haircut, and then to the waxing. She slipped under the sheet on the table as the waxing woman came in.

"Whoa," said the waxing woman as she pulled up the sheet. She was chocolate-skinned with tight neck sinews and arms that rippled muscles when she moved. "You haven't been paying much attention down here have you?"

Clarissa snorted a nervous laugh, "I guess not."

"Good thing you came to me. Too much later and you'd never find your way around in there."

Clarissa managed a small, unsteady smile.

"What kind do you want? Landing strip? Soul patch? Superman?"

"I just...I didn't really sign up for this. It's a birthday present, so I haven't really thought about it."

The woman nodded with a jerk of her chin. "I'll take care of you. Don't you worry."

Clarissa yelled at the first tear of the wax, but was able to keep her jaw locked after that. Her eyes welled.

"There, see?" said the woman, throwing a hairy strip into the garbage. "Hurts a bit at first, but it's fast, right? One sting and it's over."

Warm goo spread over Clarissa's pubis. The woman pressed over it with a paper strip. "Ready?" Another swipe. Clarissa's teeth ground tight.

"Aw see?" said the woman. "You got a pretty pussy. Don't go hiding it under all that jungle."

"I didn't used to."

"I know. None of us used to. Women come in here all the time forgetting they ever had one. Lift your leg here and hold it to your chest."

"What?"

"The jungle doesn't stop when it gets to your tush, girl."

She lifted her leg, closing her eyes to the humiliation of the sticky spatula. Four rips and a hot towel later, the woman told her sit up and have a look. Nothing but labia looked back.

"You took it all off!"

"Yep. And you'll thank me for it, too. I'm serious you've got a pretty pussy. Trust me, I see a lot of 'em. That one's gold, honey."

It was like her nails. Not her. Something radically feminine, not realistically feminine. She stared at it, wanting to touch it, but not wanting to seem overly interested.

"Will it grow back?"

"Eventually. But hon, I don't think you'll want it to."

"Sure. Thanks." She pulled the sheet down past her knees. "Thank you."

"Are you overnighting?" the woman asked, wiping at her hands with a towel. Clarissa nodded. "Then let me give you a piece of advice, girl. Call the front desk and ask for Elana, okay? Just call and ask. She'll come to your room."

"What does she..." Clarissa began, but stopped when the woman flashed her a wink. Clarissa's eyes widened. "I'm not...um," she whispered, eyebrows fumbling on her forehead. "I'm not gay."

"It's got nothing to do with that, honey." She finished wiping her hands and nodded toward where Clarisse's sex still tingled under the blanket. "It's got to do with that."

Then, Clarissa was taken to the masseuse. For over an hour, he kneaded her muscles on her front and back, but she passed out near the end of it, face down in the face-rest. No doubt drooling.

When he woke her, she had already been wheeled to a bubbling hot tub set amid greenery and candles. He helped her down, bowed, and wheeled out the table.

She was in her room. Her small suitcase lay astride an antique, tropical-looking bed. A rattan chair and dresser nestled comfortably within ferns and flowers. Large skylights let in the cool glow of the sunset. A ceiling fan turned silently. She dropped her robe and sank into the water.

She didn't know how long she lay in the tub. The sunlight ebbed and the skylights turned dark blue. She hardly moved in the water, but did find herself feeling the fresh skin between her thighs. It wasn't masturbation -- she'd all but forgotten how -- but the smooth skin felt pleasant to her fingertips. She soaked until her eyelids drooped, then she stepped up out of the water, wrapped a towel around herself, and glided in slow steps to the bed.

Clarissa dropped the towel on the suitcase and climbed onto the high tester. The blanket was folded down, and the linen sheets were soft and smelled of fresh air. She dropped her head onto the pillow and caught sight of her reflection in the skylight above.

She lay with arms outstretched, one leg straight and the other bent with her heel touching her knee. Her hair splayed out around her head.

Her reflection was clear enough that she could see her eyes staring down at her, her mouth slightly open. The image had little contrast, making her body seem as if it were all a single color of warm peach. Her nipples blended in with the color. She could make out her breasts by the curve they exerted against the outline just under her arms. They were not large, but she'd always been proud of their resilience against gravity. She hadn't thought about them in a long time. Her waist eased inward, a shape kept more by the malnutrition of Starbucks than youth or exercise, but it still evoked an hourglass. "I have a woman's hips," she thought, and liked how that sentence sounded.

The most obvious feature in the muted reflection was that her sex looked non-existent. Where she had always been used to a wide triangle of hair, now there was nothing but a place where her legs split apart. She stared, limbs too sated to move, until she could make out the split of her vulva. She stared at it, and her whole shape, of the angles of her pelvis diving in toward her sex, of her thighs rising up into the hidden curves of her buttocks below, of her ribs lifting up in ripples between her breasts, of her dark hair radiating out across the pillows. She looked at her eyes for a long, long moment. The sky beyond blackened. She reached for the phone.

"Front desk," said a voice.

She saw herself holding the small white phone to ear, still staring at her own eyes. "Elana, please."

There was a pause. Impossibly, the sky seemed to deepen. Another moment passed before: "She is on her way, miss."

Without moving her eyes from her reflection, she reached out and eased the phone back onto its cradle.

The candlelight wavered, and stars began to come out.

The soft knock seemed to come only moments later, but Clarissa did not move. It seemed more as if she remembered hearing the knock than actually heard it. She didn't speak. The door opened and clicked lightly closed.

The shadows from the candles undulated across her features as the air in the room moved. Small sounds, the hiss of clothing moving off skin, reached her. She didn't take her gaze away from her eyes even when the reflection of a woman appeared at the foot of her bed. Dark hair and nude skin, the woman moved smoothly and quietly, bending gracefully between Clarissa's legs. A single kiss there ran slow waves of warmth through Clarissa's calm, leadened limbs.

Slowly, the woman opened her mouth and with small movements of her tongue and lips, made her way into Clarissa.

Clarissa watched the scene above her, growing more detached by the moment. The woman's lovely hair fell across her hips, brushing slightly as her head moved. In the dim reflection, their skin seemed just the same color. The woman was young, thin, but with the same gracious curves of Clarissa. Her smooth backbone raised and lowered between shoulder blades, and her waist narrowed into her hips. Kneeling on the bed, her buttocks were split wide, ending her form in rounded curves.

Clarissa took all this in without glancing away from her own face. She still hadn't moved. The woman's mouth gently parted her, brushing lips beneath the folds of her vulva, but she could not feel the sexuality of it. It was warm and good; not a fight to an orgasm.

She looked away from her face for the first time, looking at the scene above her as a whole. Two shapes there. The classic female forms of the violin. She was a woman. No matter what the thousand things the world demanded her to be, beneath it all she was, at her heart, female. She looked at the woman between her legs and the muscles moving in her back and felt a kindred, a belonging. A sisterhood.

She curled her palm and felt the long fingernails, rubbing a thumb along them. They were impractical, and yet just the feel of them spoke of something feminine and graceful. She smiled at herself, and gently lifted her leg up and rested her heel on the woman's back.

Her navel twitched as her muscles began to respond to the attention in her sex. She watched in disconnected wonder as parts of her came alive. One hip and then the other would rise and fall, twisting. Stomach muscles tightened, throwing lines across her belly, then relaxing and appearing smooth again. Her foot seemed to pull at the woman's spine. Her ribs were lifting higher for each breath, shifting her breasts. Candlelight gleamed off her sweating curvatures. She curled her hands into fists and widened her knees. Her nipples rose and her mouth pulled open.

When she came, it was as if the orgasm rushed into her and some weight, some tension deeper than any masseuse's reach, had flooded out. She stiffened, arching her back off the sheets. The woman kept with her, working her through it until with a few shaky breaths Clarissa sunk back, knees falling to the bed. She lay, breathing irregularly, while the woman patted her bare sex with a towel. She disappeared from the reflection, and Clarissa heard the clicking and buttoning of clothes. Still staring at the ceiling, she whispered, "Thank you."

Elana left with a quiet tick of the door.

In the candlelight, her body glowed beneath the sheen of sweat. Her nipples were now dark and obvious. Her labia swollen and shining. Her chest still rose and fell heavily as she smiled. She was every part a woman, a creature with the gift of femininity, and she would not lose that again. Around her head, her dark hair gave no reflection at all. The sky had gone black, and now her hair was full of stars.

Our permanent collection of erotic stories