Chapter One

 

Graduating had been a great celebration for Taylor. Then came the day after. Almost like a hangover in that her head hurt. But the pain came from all the thinking, and the distress from not being able to arrive at a solution to the problems that plagued her. Most of them could best be summed up by the question, "Now what?"

College? She'd just had a dozen years of education and didn't really feel like starting in on four more, or six, or whoever knew how many. It wasn't like she felt any sort of calling, or had any idea of what she wanted to do or be. Was she to choose something at random and spend years learning a particular skill, all before understanding whether she really liked it?

But she suddenly had all this time on her hands, and nothing to fill it with. And now there was the parental expectation that she would do something useful with herself. That meant either college or a job of some kind.

"You could try modeling again," her mother said.

"Ugggh!" Taylor said, laying her head back across the backrest of the sofa.

"Well, you were doing well for a while."

"I was thirteen. And it bored me silly. Hours of having my hair and makeup done, then posing exactly the way some hyperactive gay photographer wanted with tiny shifts in the position of this finger or that foot. Spare me. Besides, they don't like boobs. Or would you like me to look for jobs modeling lingerie and bikinis?"

The last was said challengingly, of course. She had no such interest. Though she was proud of her body (while striving to hide it), Taylor had spent much of her life since puberty trying to not be judged on it or gawked at because of it. Even laying her head back the way she had just done inadvertently pointed out, so to speak, the issue.

She was tall, slender, athletic, and beautiful. But her breasts were full and... obvious in almost anything she wore. They weren't horrible, the way Carline Murray's were, those great fat things that gave her a bad back, or even huge like Sara Miller, whose 38F chest on her five-foot-four frame was just incredibly defining to anyone who saw her.

It was the first thing you noticed about Sara and the first thing you'd say if you were describing her. They drew men like flies, and generally the wrong kind of man.

Thirty-eight-D was not even odd to someone like Taylor who was five feet ten and a half inches tall. They, more or less, though slightly more, suited her body. In a bikini, they were jaw-droppingly great. Men had literally tripped over their feet gawking at her in a bikini and fallen on their faces. Women glared at her and men leered.

Taylor rarely wore anything tight or revealing. She wanted to go about her day without any more hassles than she had to deal with. And she had to deal with enough as it was.

"Of course not," her mother said. "But you are a beautiful girl. You should take advantage of your looks."

"Use my body to get ahead?" she asked sarcastically.

"Well, no. That's not what I meant. Let me put it this way. If you apply for a job and other girls apply for the job, chances are you'll get it."

"If the person hiring is a guy, you mean. I don't want to get harassed by the boss at work."

"Maybe it'll be a rich, handsome billionaire," her mother said in amusement.

"Yeah, more likely he'll be a bald, dumpy middle-aged guy with a wife and four kids."

"So go work for a big company. Walmart is always hiring."

"Ugh. Yuck."

"You like Walmart."

"I like to shop. I don't want to stand in a tiny space behind a cash counter all day while people complain about prices. And have you seen some of the people who shop there? Nu-uh."

"You could go into sales somewhere. Men like to impress pretty girls by spending a lot of money on things."

"What should I sell? Cars? No one is going to buy a car from me. I'm too young, and let's face it, not exactly hyper-sexy."

"You are too!" her mother said indignantly.

"I'm cute and have a great body. But I suck at makeup and hair and I have very little interest in perfume."

"That's because you've never needed any of those things to attract boys," her mother sniffed.

Which was true enough.

"Well, you're not going to sit around on your butt reading your silly books forever. So maybe you should start looking at the college calendar and see if you can find something there that inspires you."

Taylor loved to read. She loved to have her imagination roused by new ideas, new places, and people that skilled writers had created. She liked fantasy because those writers created entirely new worlds and species with new realities like magic or religions with gods that actually interacted with people.

"If I get a job, I'll have to go on the subway every morning and afternoon," she grumbled.

"It's not a fate worse than death."

The subway was jammed at rush hour. Maybe a lot of those who worked on computers could work from home but not all the lesser mortals. The restaurant workers, the retail workers, the people who worked in hospitals and factories, in the distribution centers, and for cleaning companies.

Which meant the subways were very crowded at rush hour, and she was very likely to find some drooling pervert jamming himself up against her from behind.

"Maybe I'll take martial arts," she said, almost out of the blue.

"Well, that's nice, dear but you aren't going to make money off that."

Which was unfortunately true. So, Taylor set about finding a job that wouldn't expose her to the grubbier elements of society, and two weeks later found one at the DeAngelo Hotel. It was a sophisticated, five-star hotel that catered to people with a decent amount of money - and thus with a certain sophistication.

She was hired to work as a front desk clerk. As her mother had suggested, places liked to hire pretty girls, especially if those places could put them right out front. The DeAngelo spent a lot of money to make itself look sleek, rich, and sophisticated. It didn't want dumpy-looking staff to greet visitors when they arrived from the airport.

The uniform was uncomfortably form-fitting, but at least it came with a vest and blazer, both in pale blue, which worked wonderfully with her golden blonde hair. She had to master the computer there, which wasn't difficult, and her perky, happy, smile whenever anyone came to the desk, which was rather more difficult. But she succeeded.

She hated the subway, though. She wished she could wear a suit of armor before getting on. Let someone rub her ass through steel or something.

What was perhaps worse than the crowds when she went to work at Four were the emptier subway cars when she got out at midnight. That was kind of scary, and there was a much higher likelihood the men she'd encounter were crazy or drunk or drugged or all three.

So, Taylor decided to take martial arts. That decision was partly inspired by the martial arts academy across the street from work. Not only did they hold classes at various times, including midnight (there being a lot of evening and midnight workers around) but it was run by two sisters. And it had a female-only class.

On her first nervous night there, standing in her white outfit called a gi, she learned the two sisters weren't actually sisters at all. They were just two Chinese women who had the same very common last name (Chen), somewhat resembled each other given they were both around thirtyish (who could tell?), and had the same long black hair.

She was heartened to find that though both were inches shorter than her they had no problems flinging her around in the air to land solidly on the thick blue mats. It was a little bruising, though. But if these smaller women could toss her around that suggested she'd someday be able to do the same to men.

Ming tended to be sterner and spoke firmly and commandingly. While Lien smiled more and spoke in a softer, more persuasive type voice.

Taylor was both the youngest and tallest girl there, and perhaps for that reason the 'sisters' tended to use her as their demonstration model somewhat more often than she would have preferred. She certainly got to learn how to fall, though!

The term she was to use when addressing them was always 'sensei' which meant 'master'. That struck her as odd since there ought to be a female form of that word. Still, 'mistress' didn't carry quite the same meaning.

"Sensei mean teacher," Lien said, smiling as usual. "It also mean master, yes. But master in martial arts is teacher too."

"And in many other things," Ming said more firmly.

"Aren't there female teachers?"

"Names come from tradition," Ming said. "Tradition says no female teacher. We pay no attention to that particular tradition, of course."

It was easy to understand them both but they still had strong accents and, and Lien's was particularly strong. Ming tended to sound British because she had come from Hong Kong as a girl.

"The name doesn't matter. All that matters is you do as you're told," Ming said.

She had been taking classes there for several weeks when she fell wrong in one of Ming's demonstrations. Or rather, when she fell back wrong and twisted her leg awkwardly. She had pulled a muscle of some sort in her thigh. It made her limp and wince when she put weight on that leg so the lessons were over for her for the night.

Lien helped her back to the rear where the change room and showers were but then took her aside into what turned out to be a small sauna.

"It not on, but we use," she said. "Sit, sit. Lay out leg."

"But I should shower and get the train home," Taylor protested.

"You wish to practice tomorrow? This week? Must massage muscle, foolish girl."

She left and Taylor stretched the sore leg out and then tried to rub it through the pants of her gi, wincing a bit as her thumbs dug in. Two minutes or so later Lien returned, smiling as always and carrying a plastic bottle of some clear liquid.

She put it down on the bench above the one Taylor sat, then gripped the legs of her gi and tugged sharply.

"Off, off," she said.

The way Taylor was laying back and the looseness of the trousers allowed the thin cotton to be tugged down off her hips and out from under her buttocks. She yelped and grabbed at them, but then flushed and released them. This was a women-only class, after all, and even the showers were fairly open affairs. That had taken some getting used to and she wasn't quite there yet.

Lien had heated the oil, probably in a microwave, and it and her hands were soft and warm as they gently caressed, then began to knead Taylor's thigh muscles.

The blonde girl was uncomfortably aware of how near to her small, high-cut thong the woman's fingers were working, but Lien showed little interest in anything beyond her dutiful work on her thigh muscles.

Taylor's imagination being what it was, however, she wondered what it would be like to have some kind of dark, carnal affair with Lien. She'd only lightly experimented with girls before, mostly out of fear of getting a reputation or harming friendships, but it wasn't like she wasn't curious.

And Lien was both pretty and older and presumably more sophisticated, not to mention knowing not a single soul Taylor knew. But the Chinese woman had never given the slightest hint of being interested in that sort of thing with her or anyone else in class.

Taylor wasn't even sure what their culture had to say about such things, since as far as she knew China was pretty prudish about almost everything.

"Your leg good," Lien said. "Good exercise. Strong."

"I try to exercise properly," Taylor said.

"Too many American girls lazy, fat." She shook her head. "Stupid. Not healthy. No get man that way. Unhappy too."

"I suppose that's mostly true," she replied.

"You have man to help massage leg?" Lien asked, looking up with a grin.

"I'm afraid not at the moment," she replied.

"Ha. Men not much interested in down here anyway, when up here is so close," Lien said, letting her fingers slide further up along Taylor's inner thigh so the blade of her hand pressed briefly against her thong.

Taylor gulped but laughed.

"That's mostly true," she said.

"Men impatient. Always impatient."

Her hands moved slowly up and down along Taylor's upper thigh, the fingers probing into her soft flesh as they moved. The oil, whatever it was, made her skin feel hot.

"You try acupuncture?" she asked.

"No," Taylor said. "Never really needed it."

"Ah, many things American girls not know they need."

She looked up and grinned "Including here!"

Her fingers slid up again, the blade of her hand pressing more firmly into the crotch of her thong for a moment before drawing back.

"I-I suppose so!" Taylor gulped.

She reminded herself that Lien was from China and their culture around things, including touching other people was not necessarily the same as modern American girls. She'd seen videos from Asia of people crammed together into buses, trains, and subways and couldn't imagine how they put up with it.

She wondered if it was her imagination that the damp spot Lien's oiled hand had left on her thong had soaked through and was making her feel... warm down there.

"You undo top, move back so oil not get on," Lien said.

Taylor licked her lips and undid the belt, then pulled the top of her gi open and back. She was wearing a t-shirt and athletic bra under anyway, after all.

It did expose her legs and thong better, though.

"I... I think it does feel better," she said uncertainly.

Lien blew a raspberry to show what she thought of that.

"American girls so shy," she said. "I have six sister. Five share same room when girls."

"Really?! Six sisters!? I thought you guys weren't allowed to have big families."

"China girls not allowed. Only allowed one."

"I thought you were Chinese," Taylor said in confusion.

"I Chinese girl but live in Vietnam. We leave many years ago, go to Malaysia. Leave there, come here. Chinese people lots of places."

Her fingers were digging into Taylor's thigh very high up now, both hands gripping her legs and the fingers on her right hand pressing in some odd, alternating pattern into her inner thigh. There was only an inch or so of space between the edge of her hand and Taylor's thong now, and it was both making her nervous and giving her ideas.

"Wh-what's in that oil anyway?" she gulped. "It's very fragrant."

"Many herbs to help warm and soothe muscles, some flowers and spices. Want to taste?"

"Uh, no thanks," Taylor said.

Lien laughed. "Not taste bad!"

And then she leaned in, her eyes looking playfully up at the blonde girl, and let her tongue lick a slow lick across her inner thigh before pulling her head back.

Taylor felt a strange, swirling sense of uncertainty and breathiness.

"Too many American girls have no sister. So sad," Lien said.

"My brother is annoying enough," Taylor said, though she privately agreed.

It would be nice to have a sister. Though, she couldn't imagine having six!

Now Lien began rubbing her right hand sideways, pressing it into her flesh more as if kneading dough. But she was so high up now that two of her knuckles were rubbing directly into the crotch of Taylor's thong. And the flesh underneath!

She felt that strange, swirling breathiness grow, her pulse increasing as her suspicion that Lien might actually be intending something sexual starting to rise from mere fantasy to an actual possibility!

She was almost sure she was wrong, though! Or almost sure! Just her overactive imagination, she thought even as Lien's knuckles rubbed directly into her.

Her nipples began to harden inside her bra and her mind fluttered wildly.

The woman stopped abruptly, drawing her hands back and sitting back on her heels.

"Try stand," she said.

Taylor felt an odd rush of disappointment mixed with relief. She sat up and then gingerly rose to her feet. She winced as her thigh muscle ached.

"Still pain? Here. Take off," Lien said.

And suddenly she gripped the thin string across Taylor's hip and yanked her thong down!

Taylor squeaked in alarm, instinctively grabbing at it even as the Chinese woman laughed and pushed her back. Since the back of her knees was already pressed into the edge of the bench she lost her balance and had to abruptly sit down, and Lien tugged the thin piece of fabric down her legs and off.

"You so shy!" she teased. "No be shy around Lien! No want to stain!"

She grabbed her thigh again, lifting her leg up and spreading it to the side so it lay along the bench while Taylor coped with sudden embarrassment, alarm, and more uncertainty. She'd dropped her hands down over her sex but as Lien resumed rubbing and stroking she looked up and frowned.

"Move hand, silly girl."

Fighting to control her breathing, Taylor reluctantly obeyed, and soon Lien's oiled knuckles were rubbing, accidentally or not, directly against her pussy! That was making her heart beat faster and faster and the oil was, she thought, definitely making her feel quite... warm down there!

"Western girls so shy about bodies," Lien complained.

Then, as if suddenly noticing it, she turned her eyes toward the blonde's naked sex.

"You shave? You shave close, but not so good as me," Lien said.

Her oiled hand almost casually rubbed up along Taylor's pussy, her fingers stroking up across her clitoris and onto the soft skin immediately around it.

"I pluck hair out when younger, one by one."

That sounded horrifyingly painful to Taylor, and she couldn't imagine why anyone would do it.

"Sister's help."

Oh yuck, she thought.

But her thoughts were almost in the background. Most of her attention was on the way her body felt after that light rub. Even though Lien had returned her fingers to her thigh, she felt the echo of that touch. Her pussy felt as though it was throbbing! And she realized, her face hot, that her clitoris had swelled and pushed forward from under its hood.

"I-I think that's enough!" she gulped, striving to sound firm.

She had to stop Lien before she noticed!

Lien looked up at her and beamed happily. "Silly girl. We just start," she said.

She reached up and pushed back on Taylor's arms.

"Sit back. Spread other leg."

"But... but..."

"Work on both legs. Good conditioning."

"But... I... it's not - !"

Lien gripped her left leg and lifted it up and back. With her right already along the bench Taylor had little choice but to lean back across the next tier of benches. But more than that it spread her legs uncomfortably wide!

"Not just muscle, tendons too," Lien said.

She poured a little more oil onto her hand and then gripped Taylor's left leg, high up again, just below her pussy, and as her fingers rubbed into the inner thigh her knuckles once again rubbed against Taylor's pussy. This time the throbbing produced something even more intense, a dark heat that swept up through her lower belly and into her chest.

"Attend to whole body," Lien said, looking up with a different kind of smile this time. "Whole body work together. Feel together. Strong together. Weak together."

She pressed her right fingers against Taylor's left thigh and her left fingers into her right thigh, then rubbed firmly upward.

With her thumbs in the middle!

Taylor gasped aloud this time as those thumbs slid up along either side of the narrow line of her sex. As they reached the top they didn't so much rub across her clitoris but bracket it between them and gently massage it from either side. That produced an even more intense wave of sensation that literally took Taylor's breath away momentarily.

Lien giggled again and winked up at her.

"I make feel better!"

She leaned in as her thumbs slid down and her tongue moved up between them, up along the center of her pussy, pushing in between the lips of her sex and sliding up across her clitoris!