Chapter 16: Chapter Sixteen

 

I panted and squirmed in the top bunk of my room, my hand slipping and sliding between my legs, my thoughts hot and fuzzy. I just couldn’t...get enough...friction. My new puss was so soaking wet that the two fingers I was pumping in and out weren’t really...ugh...they just weren’t quite...getting…

Impulsively, I rolled over onto my stomach and wriggled my trousers down to my thighs, before stuffing my other hand back down to cup my dripping mound. I twitched and sighed into my pillow at the delicious feeling of holding myself this way. I hadn’t even inserted any fingers and this already felt so good.

The sensation of my tender, swelling breasts against the bed, the feeling of not having a stupid, lumpy, nauseating jumble in between my legs, of being able to actually feel my hips and crotch pressing against something without immediately checking out—it was utterly intoxicating, better than I could almost believe. It felt good and alive in a way that went far beyond just lust. Of course, I was still flushed with lust.

My free hand was soaking wet, and I couldn’t resist swiping my tongue over those fingers. Even the taste of my juices was different—milder, more placid, floral. My tongue was still mid-lap when there was a knock on the door. I was lucky that my squeak of surprise was muffled by the fingers in my mouth because Alexi was already strolling in, setting down his bag, and turning to look up at me. I froze, my reddening face barely peeking over the rim of the bunk.

“Hi, up there.”

“Oh, hi! Um.” I stayed as still as possible. I didn’t think he could see my bare hips, or my rucked up clothing. My heart was pounding so loudly, it seemed a miracle that he hadn’t heard it. I hoped he would turn his attention away from me soon, so I could surreptitiously tuck myself back into an approximation of modesty. What had I been thinking, diddling myself like that, so openly? This was so embarrassing...

“How did your exam go?” He was looking at me curiously. My breathing was still quite rapid—I tried to slow it down.

“I, um—it went alright,” I mumbled. I could feel the heat in my face radiating into the room like a furnace. My clit tingled. “What about yours?”

Alexi smiled winningly—what an amazing smile, I thought, like sunlight itself—and I absolutely missed the first part of what he was saying.

“...Don’t you?” he finished, and looked at me expectantly.

“Oh. Um, yes. All the time.” Damn, what had I just said? I blushed even hotter. I was still so turned on...

Alexi gave me a slightly concerned look--his eyebrows were gorgeous. “Are you...feeling well?”

“Yes!” I said, too quickly. “I just, um, had a bad dream.” I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. I was clearly on top of my blankets, still wearing my clothes—obviously I hadn’t been sleeping.

Alexi smirked at me, and said nothing. Suddenly I wondered if the whole room smelled of my juices, and the heat in my face escalated by several orders of magnitude.

Thankfully, Alexi started unpacking his books and I took the opportunity to quietly shimmy my pants back up. I squished down the ladder, muttering something about taking a shower, then took an self-consciously long time to fumble for a spare change of clothes and actually leave.

In the shower, I managed to quickly get myself off, but it felt like that hardly made a dent in my horniness. Even as I dried off and changed, the tide of lust was flooding back into my body, erasing any gains I’d just made against it. Typically, Alexi was nearly naked when I got back, and the few, stumbling words I exchanged with him seemed to come through a thick fog or haze. I crawled back into bed and fell asleep looking at Alexi’s back as he worked at his desk.

~ ~ ~

Enthralled by sensual, surging dreams, I overslept the next morning and was late to my lab assistant shift. It turned out to be a double shift, and by the end of it, my body felt like one large ache from standing for so many hours on hard stone floors. I was shuffling tiredly down the corridor towards the exit when I heard the sharp clicking of boots approaching from behind. I veered to one side without looking, used to people passing me as a matter of course. This, it turned out, was not one of those times.

I heard Aralia Cordivar clear her throat, and a shock went right through me, to the bottoms of my feet, as her fierce, hawk gaze met mine.

“You. Follow me. Now.”

My eyes widened even more. I scrambled to think of something, anything, that could serve as an excuse, but my mind was an absolute blank. I could only nod, my mouth dry. I found myself following a few steps behind her, automatically, as if I were a wind-and-release gear-mech. Tendrils of fear wormed around my heart and constricted my lungs. What was going on? Her manner was curt, altogether different than when she had asked me how my 'second term was coming along'. I had a sudden, cold sense of being near the edge of a terrible precipice that I could not see.

She led me up a flight of stairs and down a broad, well-appointed corridor, to a heavy, wooden door, which she unlocked. She gestured for me to enter, and I looked up at her, desperate for some sign of what was awaiting me.

She must have seen the apprehension in my eyes, because she sighed and then scanned the corridor behind me. She didn’t say anything however, just wordlessly motioned with her eyes for me to go in.

An odd feeling welled up inside me. That had been the same sigh—of resignation or acceptance, or both—that I was so used to hearing Kisma make at me. The same impatient eye motion, too. It flashed through me that Aralia and Kisma were about the same age, which meant that Aralia must be…only a handful of years older than I was?

I stepped hesitantly inside and saw that this must be her private office. Despite being spacious, it was quite neat and spare. The far wall was a single plate of thick, expensive-looking glass that showed only wind and rain and rooftops. There was a desk and chairs, some bookshelves. Aralia entered and closed the door behind herself with a heavy click. There was quite a nice scent in here, actually, and smelling it calmed me slightly. I stood, fidgeting and glancing around, until she told me to sit.

She did not sit. She went to a bookshelf and pulled out a thick ledger, which she deposited with a thud on the desk in front of me. I stared at it with increasing horror. It was the stockroom inventory ledger, the one I had altered to hide my withdrawals of certain reagents I’d needed for my project.

“You forged inventory numbers.” She said it plainly, as a statement of fact, without accusation.

I could only look back at her, stricken.

“Next time, don’t randomize the numbers you make up. Too random a distribution is an easy pattern to spot. Real numbers are rarely so behaved. It’s called Beckley’s Tendency.”

Blood was thundering in my ears. Her words seemed to be floating in across a great distance.

She raised her eyebrows, and gestured at me. “And I can see exactly what you’ve been doing with the reagents you hid from the ledger. Don’t worry, I’m not turning you in.”

The spike of panic that was currently lancing my heart abruptly stalled, but did not withdraw. “Y-you’re not?” My voice was a quavering whisper.

She gestured to the ledger. “I haven’t shown this to anyone and I don’t plan to. I doubt anyone else will think to analyze it, unprompted. At least in the way I did.”

“Then—then why?” I spluttered.

She leaned over the desk, towards me. “Because I want to make you an offer.” Her golden eyes searched my face, and for a split moment I thought I saw the flicker of something soft, but it was gone so quickly I couldn’t tell if I’d imagined it.

She sighed again, and it was the same sound she’d made at the door, as she motioned me inside. “You really have done it, haven’t you.”

It wasn’t a question. We stared at each other for a long moment, and my cheeks took full advantage of this opportunity to flare hotly under her gaze.

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Finally, I looked down at the desk between us, blushing furiously, and she cleared her throat.

“Well, sooner or later, someone else is going to notice you, and they might be one of the wrong sort of people. If, at any point before you are completely compromised, you wish to…disappear, you may come to me—discreetly—and I will hide you.”

“H-hide me?” I was feeling dizzy with emotional whiplash.

Aralia straightened. “I’ll give you a legend. A cover identity. As a girl, here, at Harmine. Not a student, mind. You’d be a domestic servant, a maid at one of the all-girl Houses. Your backstory would stand up to casual scrutiny, but nothing more than that. It would be on you to avoid drawing too much attention to yourself.”

I gaped at her. “A girl?” I knew I was beginning to sound like an echo, but I couldn’t help it. The idea was mind-boggling to me. “I could do that?”

Aralia shrugged. “I think so. You certainly won’t pass as a boy for much longer. If you even do now.” She pressed both palms flat into the desk and looked straight at me. “In exchange you would work for me, is that understood?”

“Work on what?” I no longer felt on the verge of an invisible precipice. Instead, I was walking on empty air, among the treetops, intoxicated with the sudden lucidity of everything, gasping the sharply cold, clear air. There was so much to take in...

Her hawk eyes narrowed. “On exactly whatever I tell you.”

Oh. I blushed hard at the implied rebuke, and my clit pulsed. Why, oh why was I turned on by that? I tried to push down my lust and think clearly.

‘Whatever I tell you’ could mean so many things. But certainly I would be compelled to do anything she asked of me. She was already holding so much over my head, no matter what she said about having no intention to turn me in. I’d be utterly beholden to her if I accepted her offer. And yet, I was sorely tempted to do just that.

There was so much that enticed me about getting to be a girl in the eyes of the world. The idea of getting to be seen that way filled me with streaming bubbles of light, floating relief. As a maid, I would certainly have to give up my studies—but I found that this prospect only filled me with relief.

There was also the undeniable draw that Aralia exerted on me. My face heated as I imagined placing myself willingly into this older girl’s power. The prospect definitely turned me on, I thought miserably. A lot. And I wasn’t at all sure if I could tell where my horniness ended and the streaming, floating bubbles of relief began.

“I—I...need time. To think,” I said weakly.

She nodded briskly, as if that was what she’d expected. “Remember, there is such a thing as too late. The legend won’t work if you rouse too much attention before you disappear.” She held up a finger. “Don’t come running to me with someone already on your heels, or I’ll be forced to let them have you.”

I nodded numbly, and stood. She seemed like she was done with me, for now. I was almost at the door, when—

“One more thing.”

I turned reluctantly.

“What’s your name?” There was an odd inflection in her voice.

It took me a second, but when I realized what she was asking, I gaped at her. Something caved inside of me, like the sudden slide of a heavy load of snow and ice off a steep slate roof.

“Um, it’s Ellie,” I choked.

She nodded and looked at me for a long moment, her face unreadable, before dismissing me with a gesture.

~ ~ ~

I stood just outside the building, still sheltered by the eaves. The cold rain had turned to a steady, frozen sleet. My mind struggled to make sense of what had just happened, to process the overwhelming flood of new meaning.

The thought of what it would mean to make this choice was still too big to think in its entirety—so big I could hardly make sense of it, and yet...deep inside me, I could already feel that dark, clear, quiet opening. That pre-verbal, leaping lift.

What if I…?

How would it be to…?

…for the old me to actually disappear. And for just Ellie to reappear. As a girl.

I shook my head. It seemed too incredible. To be someone who had essentially been conjured, as if from thin air. With no one else the wiser. It was utterly, magnetically, powerfully tempting. And yet, there was no question about it—no part of the old me would be able to come along. My entire life up to this point would be banished, secret, counterfeit.

What did that mean for my connection to Kisma? To Gresha and Heather? Would I never see them again? I bit my lip. If I disappeared as a student here, the news would eventually get back to them. And if my cover identity as a girl held up successfully, and there was no further news of the old me, they would eventually give up any hope, and grieve me as dead. I could never correspond with them or visit them again without the risk of my cover being blown. It hurt my heart to think about. It would be an insult to their loyalty and love for me.

Wouldn’t it? If my cover didn’t hold up, on the other hand, the news would also eventually get back to them, and they would probably grieve me as dead anyway, or…something.

I bowed my head and clenched my hands. I felt torn with anxiety and sudden loneliness. A gust of wind splattered me with sleet. I shivered and huddled deeper into my coat. My mind was still reeling with doubt and wonder, but nothing important would be decided by standing here any longer. I plunged into the pelting storm.

~ ~ ~

When I finally got back to Oakridge House, I was drenched, encrusted in a rime of ice, and shivering. I dripped my way up the stairs and down the corridor without seeing a soul. Everyone else seemed to be at dinner. The storm raging outside seemed to cast a muffled or muted energy over the empty halls. I creaked open the door to my room and was greeted by darkness. Alexi was clearly at dinner as well. I closed and locked the door—he could knock if he needed to.

I quickly activated a small alchemical wall lamp and started fumbling with buttons. I was desperate to shuck off my heavy, soaking clothes and to minimize the puddles that I would need to mop up later. I had lately gotten in the habit of changing my clothes only in the privacy of the washroom, but right now the last thing I wanted was to drip all over the room as I gathered a change of clothing.

I piled a wet heap in front of the door as I stripped down to just an undershirt. Alexi had installed a tall mirror here and I took the opportunity to stare at myself in it. My heart quickened with longing as I saw a young, wide-eyed girl staring back at me, her pale cheeks beginning to flush, her dark hair hanging in wet locks. I watched her (my!) hand go slowly up to her (my!) face and gently brush h-my...lips and trace...my jaw. I made a wordless sound of wonder.

The undershirt, at least, wasn’t completely soaked—only the shoulders and the front, where my breasts swelled out and lifted the material away from my body. I did a bit of twirl, admiring how the undershirt revealed just a bit more than it concealed. While the full, round globes of my buttocks dipped well below the hem, the front of it came down just far enough to barely cover my crotch. It felt actually kind of...sexy—which was definitely a new look for me.

Okay, I reminded myself, this was not the time for twirls. I needed to get changed. I had just turned to start gathering dry clothes when the alchemical lamp at the other end of the room clicked on, to show Alexi lounging there, looking on, and smirking.

 

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