Soma Ch. 02

The girl looked confused. It was evident that she wanted to go, but also evident that she felt guilty about leaving. While Lauren was disappointed that things had been weird between the two the past few days, and missed spending time with someone she'd been nearly as close with as Rachel, she didn't want to be the source of Amy's discomfort.

"You know what?" Rachel piped up in an annoyed tone. "Go home, Amy."

Amy shot a hurt look at the redhead.

"Go home," Rachel repeated. "You've been a lousy friend to Lauren so far, so you might as well just go."

"Rachel!" Lauren protested. To Amy, "It's fine. I'm fine. We're fine. You can go if you want -- it's fine. It's not a big deal."

"No, it's not fine," the redhead interrupted. "It's not. You can't come to hospital, Amy, when Lauren's stuck in the emergency room and not breathing? You can't stop by her office and see how she's doing? You can't show any sympathy for her, given everything she's been through the past couple of days?"

"I'm here now," Amy squeaked. "I've been working on the contract, same as everyone else. I'm here, right? I wanted to stay!"

"Yeah, you're a real hero," Rachel said, her voice dripping with disgust. "Just go."

"For Christ's sake, Rachel. Lay off!" Lauren interjected. The blonde turned to the other girl, and said, "Seriously, Amy, it's fine. Stay. Stay in your clothes. But, you can go, too, if you want. I understand if your uncomfortable...this whole thing with me has just been so awkward."

"If I've been weird, I'm sorry," Amy apologized, her eyes beginning to well up with tears. "I didn't mean to be. I'm just, I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to do. Or say. Or how I'm supposed to act around you like that."

"It's fine," the blonde repeated. "Rachel's making a bigger deal out of this than it is."

"No, I'm not," Rachel said, slamming her hands down on the table. "If you want to go, Amy, go. If you want to stay, go get something out of that box."

Amy was flustered. "I don't understand how walking around here in my underwear makes me a better friend..."

"Rachel, it's one thing if you want to do it, but Amy doesn't have to."

"She's been walking around her naked for the past couple of days," Rachel barked at Amy. "In front of Bramley. In front of Danny. In front of Dmitri. In front of everyone. She had to sign a contract with Charlie Peasgood. Charlie Peasgood, Amy, who you don't even like riding the elevator with. And you can't even get down to your bra in front of four other women, when no one else is here? You don't even know the half of what she's been going through!"

"Rachel!" Lauren yelled, exasperated by what she being said in her name.

Amy sniffled, thinking about what Rachel had said. "No, she's right."

"Damn right, I'm right!"

The brunette looked forlornly at the blonde, offering, "I'm sorry, Lauren. I know I've been weird. I know I've been awkward. And, whatever, if this is what makes it right, I'll do it."

"No, Jesus, Amy," Lauren answered. "I forgive you. I certainly understand that this whole thing is weird, that it's been weird from the get go. What sort of sick and twisted individual would be capable of even thinking up something this degrading? I want you here, but you can go if you want. And you certainly don't have to get down to your underwear if you stay."

Amy sniffled again, and glanced in Rachel's direction. She nodded, and replied, "No, I think I do." She shrugged. "Plus, I think it'd be weird if I was the only one here still in my work clothes."

"Hug her," Rachel prodded the senior legal counsel.

"Seriously! Rachel!" Lauren rolled her eyes. "Wasn't the hug we had in the bathroom weird enough?"

But Amy wasn't listening to the nude girl. She stood, crossed the room, and wrapped her arms Lauren's naked shoulders, the blonde never even rising from her chair. "I'm sorry," she whispered to Lauren, and kissed her on the top of the head.

Issues out in the open, and apologies offered and accepted, all three girls walked down to Lauren's office together to pick something out for Amy. Jessica was there, alone, sifting through the box of clothes and underthings. Lauren wasn't quite sure what she was looking for, given that the twenty-year-old had already changed into the set she'd scouted out earlier in the day -- a flirty little pair of green boy-short panties and a matching, green lace camisole. The outfit clung to the dirty-blonde's long and slender body, and fit surprisingly well around the chest, despite the fact that Jessica was no where near as busty as some of the other girls in the room.

"We should hang these up," Jessica announced, pulling two of the cocktail dresses from the bottom of the box. One was a low-cut black dress, the other a coquettish little midnight-blue tube dress. "For drinks tomorrow night."

"Are you even twenty-one?" Rachel razzed the girl playfully.

Jessica faked a pout, but answered, "I've got a fake ID..."

"Where's Ginger?" Lauren asked.

"Changing in her cubicle," the intern replied.

"Here, I'll take those," Rachel offered, reaching for the cocktail dresses. "Hand me the others, will you?"

As Rachel hung the dresses -- there were seven in all, each more immodest than the last -- Amy began to explore the contents of Julie Lambourne's box. Unfortunately, nothing seemed to strike her, and Lauren could see that she was beginning to have second thoughts about the whole thing. Everything in there was inherently sexual, as Eve Intimates didn't exactly pump out granny panties or full-length nightgowns. Amy was still trying to find something that wasn't a thong or wouldn't require a garter belt when Ginger showed back up in Lauren's office.

"You like?" she asked the room. Rachel had chosen a solid, if risqué, slip, and Jessica had donned camisole and panty set that still covered quite a bit of skin. Ginger, on the other hand, had gone the other way. She wore a purple, floral lace, flyaway babydoll that was almost entirely made from see-through mesh, aside from maybe the cups themselves. Further south, she'd put on a pair of matching purple mesh bikini-cut panties. This may have been Rachel's game, but Ginger had always been a bit more bold than anyone else Lauren knew, and tonight would be no exception.

Jessica smiled her approval and Rachel let out a wolf whistle. Lauren, taking another look at the babydoll, realized that the cups weren't quite as opaque as she first thought. She said, without thinking, "I think I can see your nipples."

The secretary raised an eyebrow at her boss.

"Okay, okay," Lauren agreed as the room broke into laughter around her. "I know how that sounds, coming from me..."

Ginger glanced down at her breasts, before nodding and agreeing. "I guess you can." Sticking her tongue out a Lauren, though, she grasped each nipple between her thumb and forefinger, tweaking them to get them hard. In a low, mock sexual voice, she asked, "How about now?"

Ginger's nipples were now sticking straight out through the mesh, as hard as Lauren's own. The girls, though, all seemed to think it was good natured and funny, and everyone had a good laugh.

Everyone but Amy, however, who'd grown more and more frustrated at what she was finding the box. Thongs, hip-huggers, and g-string galores, teddies and bustiers and babydolls by the dozen, with garter belts and stockings thrown in for good measure. Amy was having a hard time finding something she'd be even remotely comfortable wearing.

"Just pick something," Rachel chided her.

"It's easy for you to say," Amy growled. "You picked the picked the most conservative thing in here."

Rachel had been called out. This had been her idea in the first place, and she'd already been upstaged by Ginger. And so, rolling her eyes, Rachel found the hem of her slip and offered, "You know what? You're right? You can have it." And, without hesitation, the redhead pulled the fabric up over her hips, up over her stomach, and over her head while everyone watched. Lauren saw that she'd kept on the canary-yellow panties she'd been wearing earlier in the day, but if she'd been wearing a bra earlier, she certainly wasn't wearing one now. As topless as Lauren herself, a bare-breasted Rachel handed the slip to Amy.

"It's still warm," Amy complained as she turned towards the door, but no one seemed to pay her much mind.

"Wait," Rachel called out, crouching over the box to extract a pair of white satin and black lace panties.

Lauren could tell that Amy, like Rachel before her, might have preferred to stay in her own underwear, thank you very much. But she'd already been called out by Rachel once that evening, and so she accepted the panties in the hopes of sparing herself the redhead's wrath once more. She excused herself to go change in her own office, a luxury that Rachel didn't seem to think she needed.

Rachel, meanwhile, was still crouching on the floor in nothing more than her yellow panties, with Jessica seated in Lauren's swivel chair beside her. She rooted through the box for a few seconds longer, before finally pulling out what Lauren could only describe as a black-and-white eye patch. No, strike that. It was, apparently, a zebra print thong -- not that there was all that much material in the front for the pattern to really take shape. "Ooh, how about this?"

It turned out to be a rhetorical question, as Rachel had shimmied out of her yellow briefs in the middle of the room before anyone even had a chance to offer a response. For a brief moment, Lauren was not the only naked woman in the room, an honor she shared with her redheaded friend. Rachel was a natural redhead, as it turned out, if there had been any questions. Her pubic hair was trimmed back into the same vertical strip that adorned Lauren's own nether regions. Lauren's fellow Assistant General Counsel wasn't naked for long, slithering into the animal print thong before anyone had had much of a chance to further examine her pubic area.

"I think there's a matching bra in here," Jessica offered, and began poking through the cardboard box once more.

"You know what?" Rachel asked, meeting Lauren's eyes. "Don't worry about it."

"Rachel," Lauren scolded, "put on a top."

"Afraid of a little competition from the girls?" Rachel teased, cupping her breasts with her hands.

"Fine, fine, whatever."

Jutting her chin towards the door in an obvious reference to Amy, Rachel muttered, "I'll show her conservative."

Amy rejoined the group a few minutes later, wearing the same slip that Rachel had been wearing only a few minutes earlier. She appeared unnerved by the redhead's toplessness, but she offered not a word. Just as Lauren thought they were all heading back to the conference room, Rachel caught her attention. "You're not going anywhere."

"What?"

"You're not getting away without playing dress-up," Rachel warned the naked blonde.

"She can't wear clothes," Amy interjected, as if Rachel had suddenly somehow forgotten why Lauren was naked in the first place.

"That's not entirely true," Ginger chuckled.

The brunette was clearly confused, and so Rachel was forced to explain that there was a bit of a loophole.

"A psychological thing," Lauren said. "So long as my brain doesn't happen to categorize something as a piece of 'clothing.'"

"Belts, shoes..." Ginger offered.

"That garter over there..." Lauren continued.

"This pair of stockings," Rachel finished, pulling a set of nylon/spandex, fishnet thigh highs from the box.

"No," the blonde shook her head. "Nope."

"So the rest of us place dress-up and you get off scot-free?" Ginger asked.

"You do realize I'm in the nude, right?" Lauren glanced at her friends. "And all of this, I remind you, was your choice."

"Not for all of us," Amy grumbled behind her.

Lauren looked to the brunette, and knew the battle was lost. Reluctantly, she took the stockings from Rachel, slipped out of her heels, and leaned up against her desk.

"I can't believe we're doing this," she moaned, sliding one of the fishnets up her right calf.

"Look at it this way," Ginger smiled. "This is the most clothing you've worn since Tuesday."

Lauren conceded the point. The stockings were tight around her thigh, but she supposed that was how they were going to stay put without a garter belt. She hesitated a moment before putting her heels back on. Rachel was still in her sandals, and Amy had found a pair of flip-flops she must have had stashed back in her office. Ginger and Jessica were both barefoot, and Lauren felt she could go either way. In the end, though she doubted she'd ever wear the stockings again, the blonde put her shoes back on to protect the feet.

She looked at her reflection in the darkened window behind her desk. She looked like a porn star. They all, in fact, looked like porn stars, from topless Rachel to babydoll-clad Ginger to green-laced Jessica to the flirty little slip on Amy. It was at that point that Lauren knew, for sure, that she'd left reality behind and become a character in somebody somewhere's idea of an erotic story. It simply wasn't believable that five grown women could possibly be standing around in an office building at eight o'clock at night in Midtown Manhattan in nothing more than lingerie. But then, given the bizarre condition that Lauren had come down with earlier in the week, she supposed she wasn't one to question what was realistic and what was not. She didn't dwell on the idea for much longer, however, fearing what might happen if she broke the Fourth Wall. Instead, she felt the overwhelming urge to masturbate -- of course she did -- and knew she'd be trudging off to somewhere private in order to get herself off amid questionable grammar, poor spelling, and run-on sentences. She couldn't risk the chance of spontaneously cumming in front of her fellow characters.

Unfortunately, Lauren didn't know how she was going to get her vibrator out of her desk without everyone seeing. Oh well, she thought to herself, she'd just have to do it the old fashioned, manual way

"I'm just going to the bathroom," Lauren explained. "I'll meet you guys back in the conference room."

Knowing exactly what she was heading off to do, and still feeling the need to serve as a lookout, Rachel offered to come with her.

To their dismay, however, Ginger said, "I'll come, too."

Lauren and Rachel exchanged worried glances. There were caught in a lie, and had little choice but to head out of the suite with Ginger tailing behind them. Leaving through the side door, Lauren saw one last opportunity to shake her secretary.

"You know what?" the blonde said, slowing her pace. "I'm just going to run in the men's room." She shrugged. "It's closer, you know?"

"Yeah?" Ginger asked.

Unfortunately, even this didn't seem to scare the Jewish girl away. In fact, if anything, it only piqued her curiosity. All three girls were well aware of the fact that the toilets had been overflowing for the better part of the week, and the questionable convenience of a moderately shorter walk didn't seem to outweigh the inconvenience of trying to use one of the men's urinals. Which, of course, was a question that Lauren asked herself as she was followed into the blue-tiled, waterlogged restroom. Should she, in an attempt to save face after such an admittedly bizarre decision, try to use one of the urinals? She'd squatted earlier, in front of Rachel. But then, she had just cum in front of her friend, and had felt that she couldn't possibly degrade herself any further.

"This is clean water, right?" Ginger asked, her bare feet splashing in the puddles on the floor.

"One would hope so," Lauren replied. Rather than engage in an experiment with modern bathroom fixtures, the blonde decided to just squat over the drain in the center of the room, as she had done throughout the day. "Most of it, anyways."

Ginger, to her credit, didn't bat an eye. She took a few steps past her boss, and without even bothering to close the handicapped stall's door, squatted right down over the far drain. Rachel, so as to not appear as if she was watching either girl pee, turned her back to them both and checked out her own topless reflection in the mirror. She took her turn when Lauren was done, and splish-splashed behind the other two girls out of the men's room.

Lauren could feel pressure building deep inside her pussy, and knew that it was only a matter of time before she was going to climax, intentionally or otherwise. But she was also at a loss in coming up with another excuse to lose her assistant, and so she found herself back in the conference room with her legs crossed, doing her best to focus on liability clauses and indemnification agreements.

It was difficulty to concentrate, however, when Rachel's breasts were hanging free a few feet to Lauren's right. Her own nudity was inescapable, but it wasn't as if she were constantly seeing her own reflection, constantly being presented with visual stimulation. It wasn't exactly Rachel's exposed breasts that were turning her on -- whatever her condition was, it hadn't yet caused any sort of lapse in her heterosexuality. But Rachel's topless body, alongside the satin-and-lace-clad other girls, was a constant reminder of the pornographic nature of Lauren's situation. Rather than having improved Lauren's state by sharing in her misery, the girls' undress only seemed to have made things worse.

A few minutes after they'd returned to the table, though, Rachel faked a yawn, and announced that she was going to get herself a cup of coffee. She asked if anyone wanted anything from the kitchen, and was noticeably relieved when no one but Lauren offered to come with her.

Not that the kitchen was too far of a walk. In fact, it sat directly across the hall from the conference room. Half the kitchen could be seen from conference table, from where Jessica was seated at that very moment. But the important part was that half of the kitchen couldn't be seen, and it was to this shielded side that Lauren B-lined once rounding the corner.

"Is it happening already?" Rachel asked, concern in her voice. She was worried that the spontaneous orgasms had taken hold once more.

"Not yet," Lauren replied. She pushed the recycling bin aside, and slouched to the floor beside the water cooler, her back against the wall. "I think I'm out in front of this one."

Rachel reached for the coffee grinds and a filter, dedicated to maintaining the illusion of her task. She set about making herself a half pot of coffee, even as her friend began to touch herself only a few feet away. She asked, "Do you want me to leave?"

"No," Lauren said, sighing as she responded. "Just let me know if any of them are coming."

Just as Jessica could keep an eye on Rachel's half of the kitchen, Rachel could watch all three girls from her post by the coffee maker. Even with advance warning, though, Lauren was skeptical that she'd be capable of stopping if any of the other girls decided to join them.

"Do you want...," Rachel stammered, "Do you want me to do anything?" She had watched as Lauren had cum the first time, in her office, and she'd been just outside the door when Lauren had cum again in the storage closet. She'd been entertaining Danny while the blonde got herself off in the men's room only a short while ago. But this was the first time she was in the room as her friend fucked herself, and she wasn't quite sure how to act or what to say.

Rachel hadn't meant for the offer to come out with any sort of gay undertones, and Lauren didn't take it as such. Still, the proposal hung in the air uncomfortably, neither girl quite sure how far to push the other, or even how sure they were willing to go themselves.

"No, nothing," Lauren answered, finally. But it was a pregnant "no," a hesitant "no."