Turnons - A Game of Dares Ch. 16

- Everything's alright Marshall?

- Yeah, yes.

- You seem a bit tense.

Alex's breathing was actually troubled. The whole conversation with Susie had a weird effect on her, and that terrifying minute when she had lost control over her phone was taking its toll. And her exposure under the desk... She moved her chair closer to the desk but to her horror Alex had to admit she wasn't just scared of being exposed. Her nipples were hard and, Jesus stop, you have a task to complete, let's hope you haven't failed already. She glanced at her Fitbit. Annie interpreted as a cue they were on the same page.

- Yes, we are a few minutes late on schedule, so it's better if you resume the lesson. I wanted to tell you though that I have to go in a little while, but I must say: hell you're good. Keep up the good work Alex, and don't let them scare you.

Annie motioned her head towards the class and Alex had the feeling she was referring to Susie in particular.

- I'll see you next week. Hopefully not in a rush and in your beach volley outfit uh?

Maybe it was just an innocent remark, a little bit teasing maybe, but those words hit Alex as a reprimand. She felt humiliated and stupid. Were they all playing her? Making her go round on this infinite emotional rollercoaster, bringing her up with one hand and smashing her down with the other? Or was it all her fault? She had put herself in a no way out situation that was prancing on her insecurities and self-doubt, and now every word and every action from people around her was stripped of its original meaning and only looked like a threat or a shelter.

Alex raised her hand to greet Annie as she was leaving. Her breathing was short. Why was her breathing short? Why did she always look like a damsel in distress wearing one of those 17th century corsets that would keep them constantly out of breath?

With her eyes down on the desk to calm down and regain her professional composure, Alex noticed her phone screen turning back to black. Only then she realised her phone had been there all the time, from the moment Susie left it until then, with the screen facing up and showing her hold screen wallpaper: a naked picture of her. What... What if Annie noticed it? What if Susie noticed it while she was using the phone? What if they could tell it was her? Infinite other what ifs formed in her mind in a split second, so many she couldn't fit them all in the flow of her thoughts. That's when her Fitbit lit up with a yellow light, just as a student in the front row asked:

- Should we resume, professor?

Yes.

*

While one of the students was reading an essay on the tension between Thanatos and Eros in Freud, Alex was quickly tapping on her FitBit, it took her a minute to figure out where to find the information she needed but once there she took a big breath: she was safe. For now.

Her arousal tracker indicated her current level was 27%. Bullshit she thought, she wasn't aroused at all. She was upset, scared, angry, she felt a mixture of rush, unease and loss of control, she wasn't aroused. How did that thing measure her arousal anyway? Blood pressure and oxygen flow? Heartbeat frequency? It couldn't be accurate, it couldn't tell... how the fuck could it fucking know she was aroused? Because she was, there was no denying it. Even if it was something subtle, maybe more than a tingle, or let's be honest a bit more than that, a moisture and an electric feeling in the back of her mind, deep in her chest and on the point of her clit. Alex could feel her arousal, the seed of a denied exploding orgasm, constantly renewed by her actions during the day, her exposure, her interactions.

Those last two conversations with Annie and Susie had something to do with it, did they not? They brought her excitement back to a baseline it had hardly left in those last few days, except for that first hour of seminar maybe, except for the brief moments when she felt in control. Why? There was no sexual tension there, not in a traditional sense at least, but the power dynamics, bloody hell Alex, is that what you're doing to yourself? Getting off on the idea of being thrown off balance by a teenager? How does she do that? How does Susie make you think less of yourself? How does she diminish you, make you feel small and insecure, unable to state your mind or say no? Is that just situational? And Annie, God you feel her judgement on you the whole time, don't you? But is it there? Or is it just in your mind? And why on the whole bloody earth are you sexualising all of it? Is it because of the fucking app? It can't just be the app, right? It's you, it's your mind, it's your perverted broken mind that is creating all of it and where will that lead you, how far will you let this insanity go, how long before you screw up and lose control? Or maybe you already have?

The second part of the seminar was a struggle for Alex. Near the end of that second hour though she felt like she made it: she prevented those and other thoughts from slipping out of the recesses of her mind and surfacing in her speech about sexual impulses, societal paradigms, primitive forces residing in the human body hardly harnessed by thousands of years of civilization.

The moment the lesson finished though, all those intrusive thoughts were back. They were there as she was telling the class she would have sent the schedule for the next 2 lessons later that day. They were there as the students were leaving the class and she was getting her things without daring standing up from her seat. They were back in full force when Susie approached her once almost everybody else left.

- Great lesson.

- Thank you Susie.

Alex was trying to keep her tone neutral, but she actually had to force the words out of her mouth and control them not to sound shaky. By now her chair was as close to the desk as it could, there was no way Susie could see her state of undress, and yet she felt completely exposed to her.

- So, 3 PM sharp.

- Yes.

- Oh and Alex, try to wear a bra and underwear tomorrow. You know, my uncle is pretty old school on that kind of thing.

Oh my god, she knows. Susie had seen the picture... fuck, god, who knows what else and can she tell she's not wearing a bra right now? Her nipples could be so easily spotted under her dress? Is that why everybody seemed so focused on her while she was speaking?

- Good Lord, you should see your face right now! Relax, I'm kidding. You know? Teasing about your outfit from the other night? And you making sure I wouldn't go share details about your afterhours clothing style to uncle Grant?

Still Alex couldn't get her mouth to move and push any kind of sound out. Her face had probably turned to a bright shade of red.

- By the way I guess you were wearing panties that night, right?

Another awkward silence.

- Oh come on, you're too much of a prude, you shouldn't allow my jokes to get to you like that! Get a hold of yourself, I'll see you tomorrow.

- Yes. Tomorrow. See you then, Susie.

*

A little breathing space at last.

After the seminar Alex managed to sneak out back to her office. With some time to spare she could find a better way to fix her dress, stapling the two sides of the slit down to where the buttons once held them.

The day so far had left her distraught. She thought about going home, but Laura would've been there by now, and the only thing she really needed was some alone time, some quiet. Hardly anyone would've shown up on a Friday afternoon, so she decided to stay in her office, getting some work done. That was enough to keep her mind off Turnons for a while. Fortunately that also meant she was on route to complete the last dare of the day.

Her window was probably the only one with a light still on in the entire building. Some old professor walking by will think there's still somebody who works late around there. Some others, more disillusioned, will scoff at maintenance, always leaving the damn lights on.

Inside, Alex was now scrolling down neverending pages of narrowly written policies. With time and without the constant hassle of dares to complete, she hoped she could find a solution reviewing Turnons' Terms and Conditions.

Carefully avoiding to access the app on her phone to avoid failing the DarkPassenger's dare, she browsed Turnons website anonymously for nearly two hours and... It looked airtight, damn it! It also included countless references to national and international legislations she didn't have the time or skill set to scrutinise properly.

The more she read the more it looked like a labyrinth of words, with a lot of traps and apparently no clear exit. Every time she thought there could be an opening, in a couple of lines it turned out to be a dead end.

Involving someone else seemed like the only viable option if she wanted out. A lawyer? The police? Either would have taken a lot of time. And in the meanwhile what was she supposed to do? Leave Turnons handle all her content?

Godsake! She better called it for what it was instead of using that digital era corporate jargon, all her porn, her home-made amateur porn... Let them make it public? More public than it was already? And no matter what she chose, even if she went through with a lawsuit or obtained an investigation, wouldn't that make it public eventually?

It didn't take much, even a hint of what she had been up to in the last few days would have been enough: in no time it could all go from semi-private erotic escapade to full fledged scandal in the academic milieu. And it would have lasted weeks, months maybe. But even if it somehow got wrapped up in just one day, her career would have been over in a snap.

And that would've been just the start.

She couldn't even begin to picture every possible ramification, but something inside her had already processed all the scenarios and was now using them against her, fogging her judgement, feeding her fears, and most of all, hard as it was to admit it, fomenting her arousal. It was a dark force pushing her down more than any intricate mechanism of that devilish app ever could.

Despite how pessimistic her predictions about the future were getting as she kept reading, Alex couldn't honestly imagine right now anyone she knew finding her stuff on Turnons. The number of downloads of the app made it still a niche social network. A large part of her friends and followers seemed to be from abroad, from what she could gather. And even in the remote case someone she knew came across her single naked image shared outside Turnons, there was no way they could tell it was her for sure, come on. Only Laura maybe could have easily connected the dots. But still that would have been a naughty selfie getting out there. Somewhere there was a fucking idiot to blame, a misogynist fuckhead sharing around some pics he got when he got lucky, and she was just a victim of sexting gone bad. Embarrassing, but inconsequential.

But wasn't she forgetting something? The writing, the fucking writing on the mirror.

SluttyAlex.

Follow me on Turnons.

The give away everyone needed to make sure it was all her own doing. Even Laura, had she found by chance her selfie and then checked out her Turnons profile, even for her it would've been hard to get on board with the "innocent girl gets coerced into porn" angle, if that was where she was going with the whole lawyer/police perspective. And then it would've been out there, and it would've been under anyone's eyes, and still there would be no grant she was going to get what she wanted, all her smut taken down, forgotten, obliviated. Eventually.

Yet a part of her brain fiddled on the one unasked question: was that what she really wanted?

What if the answer to that question, the real answer, wasn't the one her conscious mind expected?

These thoughts floated in the back of her brain, unable to take active part in Alex's reasoning over her current predicament, and the reason she couldn't even fully acknowledge them was how terrified she was of herself, how far these ideas made her feel from the image of herself she had thoroughly built over the years. The Alex everybody knew could have never accepted but one possible outcome of the situation: a clean slate. But the Alex everybody knew would have never indulged in those shenanigans; she wouldn't spend hours at night getting off on the filthiest filth she could find; she wouldn't debase herself to the point of thinking: this, right here right now, everything coming your way is what you deserve, what you want, what you hope, what you yearn for.

She had almost reached the bottom of that spiral of self-deprecation, despair, and erotic humiliation when her phone screen lighted up. Unsurprisingly it was another notification from Turnons: she had received dozens of them, but decided not to read them to avoid getting trapped in DarkPassenger's net. This one was different though.

There was a thumbnail of what looked like one of her pictures with a little star on it. Alex took a closer look. It read: Congratulations! Your post is now featured in TTT, Today's trending turn-ons!

What the fuck was that? Was she... no, she couldn't. She would've found out eventually, just had to wait a few hours.