What We Show in the Shadows

While I had been happy to fit in with Alice's plans to help me feel safe and comfortable, I soon realised that she hadn't shared all her plans with me. As soon as she saw me put on the bathrobe, she turned to Joshua and said "Joshua, can you please help me get something from the house?"

They departed with Joshua looking puzzled, and I was left to wait for maybe ten minutes. When they returned, they were also wearing bathrobes. Alice was wearing a large blue terry bathrobe while Joshua was wearing a pink satin bathrobe. They looked a bizarre sight. "What's going on?" I asked.

"His mother's robe was too small for me," said Alice. I'm often impressed that she doesn't pretend that she's not a large woman. Her answer, however, didn't really answer my question.

"No, I mean what's going on in general? Why did you guys get changed?"

"I thought that would be obvious," said Alice. "It's National Nude Day. When I said I would be here to support you, I meant that we would be doing it too. We're going match you through the day."

I looked at Joshua. His face was turning red, but he didn't say anything to contradict Alice. This was a welcome development for me. If I was going to be getting naked, I had no objection to seeing Joshua's body as well. The only downside was keeping my own arousal under control. This didn't just mean keeping my expectations in check, knowing that this wasn't going to lead to anything, but I was also worried that my arousal would become embarrassingly visible.

Joshua and Alice started working on my feet, followed by my hands. Joshua's werewolf concept was a mix of human and wolf characteristics, so it involved patches of hair rather than a full covering like a lot of cinematic werewolves. Therefore, Joshua was applying just small patches of strawberry blonde hair while Alice helped by gluing claw-like extensions to my nails. At this stage of the day the mood was upbeat. Joshua had created a Spotify playlist that was all about werewolves. It started with An American Werewolf in London, then Bad Moon Rising by CCR, followed by an eclectic mix of sometimes bizarre music. I loved that he had put a lot of effort into it, and I also loved how frequently he thought to offer me food and drink. He was very attentive.

It was still the middle of the morning when I was ready to climb onto the massage table. As I took off the bathroom, Alice immediately followed suit while prompting Joshua to do the same, leaving them both wearing just their underwear. Alice was wearing sensible black satin underwear while Joshua was wearing a pair of dark green briefs. I could see Alice looking at him openly before giving me a wink and a smile. I also checked out Joshua's body as his attention was focussed on getting the tail ready for me to put on. His body wasn't muscly, but he wasn't overly skinny either. I could see why Raymond had been keen to have him around.

Once the waistband of the tail was in position, I lay face-down on the table. Joshua positioned the tail to the right place and started gluing it down. As before, he pulled my briefs down a couple of inches to glue part of the fabric anchor inside the top of my butt crack. I could hear Alice catch her breath at the casual intimacy of this action. Although Joshua hadn't bothered to get my permission, he didn't take any unnecessary liberties, and he quickly covered my bum with a towel once he was done.

Alice hung around while Joshua glued the shoulder prosthetic in place, but then I heard her stand up when Joshua untied the back strap of my bikini top. "Josh, do you think you could give me a few seconds alone with Frankie?"

"Sure," he said. "I'll wait outside."

Once he had left, Alice said "I really need to go now if I'm going to get to work on time. Are you going to be okay? I'm happy to call dad and tell him I'm sick if you need me here."

"I'll be fine," I said. "I feel safe with Joshua. Off you go."

Once she got Joshua back in the room, she said "As much as I would like to stay and take off my bra in solidarity with Frankie here, work beckons. Do you guys want me to bring back some beers or something when I come back to collect Frankie?"

"That shouldn't be necessary," said Joshua. "If everything goes to plan, we should be all done before then, including the photo shoot."

"I know," said Alice, "but did you guys see the full moon last night? It should be just as good again tonight. I think it would be a crime to waste the opportunity to do a night time photo shoot as well once the moon is up. What do you think?"

"Bring beer!" I said. "I'm happy to stay late."

+++

We stopped for a lunch break just before midday. I now had hairy patches all down my back to my tail. I needed to use the toilet, so I brushed off Joshua's kind attempt to carefully put my bathrobe on me. Wearing only my bikini bottoms, I made the quick dash from the garage studio to the house and headed for the bathroom. Everything was slightly more challenging with the claws on my hand, and I sat backwards on the toilet so that the end of the tail wouldn't fall in.

Joshua had organised some hot pastries for lunch, knowing that simple finger food would be best. In keeping with Alice's rules for the day, he remained in just his briefs since I wasn't wearing anything more. I could sense that Joshua was looking at me, but he did his best not to be caught staring openly at me. I could understand his eagerness to see how everything looked so far, and I appreciated his attempts to be subtle about it. I had met a few fashion models at work, and some of them often complained how some fashion designers seemed to think that, just because they were gay, their models shouldn't expect any modesty.

+++

After lunch, I was again face down on the massage table for Joshua to transform my haunches: my hips, outer thighs and edges of my buttocks. He covered my bottom with a towel, and then he folded back one side and untied the hip knot on my bikini briefs. I had been expecting this, and again I actually felt pleased that Joshua just took charge rather than apologising all the time. I could feel myself relax completely, basking in the warm sun coming through the window, and I think I drifted off every now and then. However, I was awake enough to notice when Joshua carefully covered my hip again with the towel and walked around to the other side. Although I couldn't see much while my face was in the hole in the massage table, I could see enough of a glimpse to know that something was different.

"Joshua, are you naked?"

"Yes," came his embarrassed reply. "Alice told me that I had to get naked as soon as your bikini briefs became untied. Are you okay? I'll cover up again if it offends you."

"No, that's fine," I replied. In reality I was dying to raise my head and check him out. I could imagine how much fun it would have been for Alice to extract that promise from him. However, I figured I would be patient and mature about it. I knew there would be plenty of opportunity to look at him before the day ended.

After a while, Joshua said "It's time to change your position." I knew this meant that I would soon be rolling over. He left the room, and when he came back, I could hear him struggling with something. I propped myself up on my elbows, not caring that this exposed my boobs. He was carrying two large sofa cushions which he held in front of his groin. He got me to lift myself up on my hands and knees so that he could slide one under my torso, then I had to also raise my knees so that the other could go under my legs. I was then able to lie back down. He had deliberately left a gap between the two cushions which left my hips unsupported. I knew this was so that my tail wouldn't be crushed when I rolled over.

"Are you ready?" Joshua asked. He held the towel in place as I carefully rolled over. I was now lying on my back, staring at the ceiling. The table was high enough that I would have to turn my head quite significantly to look at Joshua's groin, so I resolved myself to remaining patient. I hadn't seen his penis properly yet, but he was now able to openly look at my breasts again. I didn't say so, but I had actually been looking forward to this next bit. My self-consciousness at allowing my small breasts to be seen and possibly judged by a boy was deeply ingrained, but this boy had seen them with different eyes. He had taken a mould of them, and now it was time to see the results.

As Joshua went to get the chest piece of the costume, I fished around underneath the towel. The bikini bottoms had become dislodged, and there seemed no point in trying to get them back in place. I pulled them out and threw them onto my pile of clothes. Joshua couldn't help but notice them as they flew through the air. He looked at me with a concerned expression. "Would you like me to give you a moment alone to cover yourself more securely?"

I smiled. "What's the point? Sometimes I think you don't understand that I'm planning to let you see everything. So stop acting like you're afraid of my body and let me see these extra tits you've made for me."

My words sounded more confident than I was actually feeling, but the act of saying them increased my confidence. They certainly prompted Joshua into action. He produced two pairs of breasts modelled on my own. He put the first pair down on my lower ribs, and then the second pair ended up across my stomach. He wasn't happy with how spaced out they were, and he started to trim around the edges of them to get each pair sitting closer together. The lower pair still weren't on my rib cage, but they no longer hid my belly button. Once he was happy with them, Joshua started to glue them in place. During this whole process, his fingers were all over my stomach and chest, although I could tell he was taking great care not to touch any more than necessary. He was biting his lower lip as he concentrated on what he was doing, which made him look cute rather than sleazy.

Once everything was glued in place, he looked at them with a frown on his face. I couldn't prevent my insecurities from getting in the way. "Don't you like them?" I asked.

"No, they don't look good," he replied. He must have seen my expression as he immediately corrected himself. "I'm talking about the ones I made, not your ones. Yours look great. No, I made a mistake with the colours. I've made them too dark. I matched them to your skin colour, but of course your breasts are paler than the rest of you. I've made the nipples too dark as well. I should have measured your skin colour properly when I made the mould, but I was too nervous to ask."

"Can't you fix it?" I asked.

"I can, but it will take time. The quickest way of getting them to match is if you will let me apply some makeup to darken your breasts."

Joshua looked very pleased when I agreed to his idea, and he quickly produced some foundation and a brush. For him, this seemed like just another makeup job, only with a more unusual part of the body. For me, however, this was the thing that opened the literal floodgates. I had been aroused at some level all day, which had been simmering for hours. My nipples had often been erect, which had subconsciously prompted Joshua to ask me several times if I was finding the room too cold. But once he started brushing foundation onto my breasts, I almost moaned out loud, and I could feel my pussy leaking its fluids which started running down my butt crack. Thankfully I couldn't smell my arousal over the smell of the glue Joshua had used, but I was worried that it would become noticeable over time, particularly when he started using a smaller brush to concentrate on darkening my nipples.

There was no let-up in my arousal once Joshua finished with my boobs, as his next task was to apply the additional hair to my lower stomach, spreading it outwards to meet up with the hair on my hips. Just as he had done when he had created the prosthetics, he pushed the towel lower until the top of my pubic hair was visible before he started gluing things in place. That's when he encountered the next problem.

"Um, Frankie, now that you've grown out your pubic hair, there's a little bit of an overlap here. I'm going to have to trim things back just a little so that this last bit can be glued to your skin." Before I knew it, he had pulled out a small battery hair trimmer. It only took a few seconds for him to trim a small area of my bush, and again his actions intensified my arousal as the vibrations seemed to reverberate through my pussy.

A short time later, Joshua had glued the final piece in place on my body. The only thing left to do was my head. It was now the middle of the afternoon, so it made sense for us to take a break and have something to eat and drink. Joshua said "I'll go into the house and make us some coffee and give you a bit of privacy. You will be fine to put on one of the bathrobes as long as you don't tie it too tightly at the front." As he was talking, Joshua had been putting on the larger bathrobe belonging to his father, and then, just like that, he slipped out the door.

I stood up. There was a small wet patch where I had been lying on the bed, and I instinctively put the towel on it to hide it. I ran a finger along my slit to feel how wet I was, and my knees buckled. Somewhere deep in the primitive part of my brain wanted to masturbate, to relieve some of the overwhelming tension, but the tension was no longer just sexual. I know that Joshua was only trying to be respectful, but he had just ruined my buzz. I had psyched myself up for this daring nude day adventure, but it wasn't happening. What would Alice say if I had to tell her that I hadn't even seen Joshua's dick yet? And he hadn't shown even the smallest bit of interest in seeing my pussy. Wasn't he even a little curious?

I was tempted to put on the smaller satin bathrobe, but I was worried it was too small and would damage the prosthetics, so I put on my normal terry bathrobe instead. I stalked through the house to use the bathroom, then I returned to the kitchen where Joshua had prepared coffee and cake. By this time, I had decided what to do.

"Take off your robe!" I demanded.

"What?" Joshua responded with a shocked look.

"Come on, it's meant to be National Nude Day. I want to see you naked." I could see him hesitating, like a small animal caught in a car's headlights. "What's wrong?" I asked.

"I don't know. I'm worried that you will think I'm a pervert."

"Why would I think that? It's not like you're some sort of flasher taking advantage of me. Look, what are the rules here anyway? Did you promise Alice that you would be naked whenever I was naked?"

"Yes."

"Okay then, here we go." With that, I opened my bathrobe and let it fall to the floor behind me. In reality, Joshua wasn't seeing much more than what he had already seen since my untrimmed pubic hair was effectively hiding my vulva. I gave him a bit more to see when I gave a quick twirl. I figure that, no matter what anyone's preferences are, most people appreciate a nice ass, and I know I've got a cute one.

As I turned to face Joshua, he could see that he didn't have a choice. If it was good manners that stopped him from parading his body around before, good manners now demanded the opposite. He looked incredibly nervous as he untied the belt of his bathrobe and allowed it to fall open. He turned to put the robe on a chair behind him, so my first view was of his back and bum. When he turned around, I could see he had a nice body. I had already seen his shoulders and chest, of course, but he also had nice legs. The part that really caught my attention, however, was his penis. It wasn't porn star size, but it was larger than average -- certainly larger than any I had seen in real life. The reason I knew this for sure was that it was erect.

I could see that Joshua looked embarrassed. Alice had told me that Joshua hadn't become erect on Nude Day last year with her and the bridal party, so I had assumed without really thinking about it that this would be no different. However, I quickly remembered that guys often have little control over when they got erections. I decided it would be best just to treat it as normal as possible. "See, that wasn't so difficult, was it? Could you pass me another slice of cake?" Somehow Joshua and I ended up standing on opposite sides of the kitchen island as he cut another piece of cake, but it didn't worry me. He would have nowhere to hide once we got back to work.

+++

I purposefully left my bathrobe in the kitchen when we returned to Joshua's studio, and I was pleased that he did the same. The plan was that I would be sitting on a stool for this last part of the process so that the tail didn't get damaged. He pulled out a stool with a padded vinyl top, and I deftly grabbed the towel off the massage table to cover it before I sat down.

Unfortunately, our normally easy-going chat seemed to desert us, and everything just became awkward between us. All my attempts to lighten the mood fell flat. Still, I was determined that we should be able to get past this, so I decided to try the direct route.

"You must REALLY like werewolves," I said.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean this," I said. I reached out a hand in his direction. He was standing to my right, gluing my ear in place. My intention was to point at his erection, but because I could only use my peripheral vision because I was keeping my head still, I misjudged and ended up touching it, eliciting a gasp. I felt I should apologise, but I decided instead to be brazened about it. "I'm talking about how your erection hasn't gone away. I figured that werewolves must really get you going."

The silence that followed was so long and awkward that I started to worry that he might not ever talk again. He shifted around to the other side of me, walking behind me instead of in front of me, before he found any words to say.

"Frankie, you have to know that it's you that gets me going, not some outfit." He sounded annoyed, like I had been making fun of him. "I'm turned on because your tits are right there in front of me. Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that I only lust after you," he added in a horrified voice, as though he had grievously insulted me by saying that I turned him on. "I mean that I do really like you. I like talking with you, spending time with you. But, yeah, I can't deny that I find you sexy. That can't be a surprise to you. It must have seemed pretty obvious."

I was flabbergasted. "What do you mean obvious? You've never said anything."

"I know. I'm pathetic. I wanted to ask you out, but you were so focussed on the whole head shaving thing, and then I was worried that you would think I was asking out of pity, and after that it was pretty clear that you had friend-zoned me. I once asked Raymond about you, and he told me that you have never dated any of the guys that you've worked with."

"But that's because they've all been gay!" I said. I almost followed that up with 'and I thought you were gay as well,' but I stopped myself just in time. I know that I wasn't the only one who had assumed that. It was clear from conversations with Alice that she thought so too. But, when I looked for any other evidence, I couldn't think of anything.

Joshua seemed to know exactly what I was thinking. "Did you think that I was gay?"

"Maybe," I said unconvincingly. "Raymond never employs straight guys, or at least, that's what we thought. Also, Alice said that, on Nude Day last year, you didn't get turned on by all the naked women."

"That was stage-fright," said Joshua defensively. "You have to admit that Alice can be scary. I'm still terrified of her."

I laughed. Although my head was swimming, it was a happy laugh. My feelings were telling my something that my head was still trying to grapple with. I knew from experience that it wasn't always a happy experience when a guy says they like you. It's always a boost to your self-esteem, but if you know that the guy isn't right for you, it can be really stressful trying to find the words to deter him. I wasn't yet thinking about what this might mean for Joshua and me going forward, but it felt good that I wasn't anxious about it.