The Unprotected Trance Series

by Nadia Nightside

  “And why is there a new shelf in front? What’s this ‘Staff Favorites’ bullshit?”

  I shrugged. “Lots of stores do it. I thought we could try.”

  “And you’re making those decisions now? That’s your job? Is that why you get money?”

  “You’ve got a lot on your plate. I thought I could help.” I walked toward it. “I can take it down in ten minutes. It'll be no problem.”

  “No, no.” She shook her head. Her eyes were blue. They scanned the store, looking for some semblance of hope. “The Ice Festival is next weekend. If you foul up like this again, and we miss all that revenue...”

  “We won’t. I promise.”

  She sighed. “You can’t promise not to have an accident, Victor.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  Putting a hand to her face, she shook her head. “You’re right. I don’t know. I’m very tired. Just...just fucking try not to be such a goof, all right? I’m relying on you,” she said again. “Whether I like it or not.”

  Mallory showed shortly after I did, and I gave her the good news—it was to be an eggshell day so long as Dawn was around.

  * * * * *

  Around eight-thirty, Lori finally arrived. I was busy cleaning still, and had made a lot of headway with the dust and plaster in the far corner of the store.

  Lori was younger than Mallory and me, a stereotypical stoner chick who had just barely graduated high school and had no interest in going to college. Dawn hired her, I think, because she graciously thought Lori was “artsy.” She did have a few tattoos along her shoulders and back—strange symbols that she said were taken from some book on Nubian hieroglyphics, because of course they were. But calling her “artsy” was like calling me a novelist because I had scribbled down, from time to time, a few fevered notes about my possible Great American Novel.

  Okay, so, sure, sometimes I called myself a novelist, but I didn’t know how to get laid and I was trying stuff out. I hadn’t written anything substantial, though, and at least I owned up to it. I had been to Lori’s house for a few parties, and stumbled upon some of her work. She worked in pastels and oils on thick canvasses, and none of it was finished. She seemed to dance from one project to the next, never quite fixating on anything long enough to finish it.

  My own problem, conversely, was that I never quite got started.

  Lori, despite any artistic deficiencies, and despite her crippling addiction to pot, was thoroughly fun to work with. She was always happy to listen to others, and had no problem filling in shifts—so long as she was sober enough to walk into work. I had no idea how she stayed so slender despite all the munchies she must have suffered from. Her hair was short and dark, and a nose-stud sparkled in one nostril, highlighting the cute shape of her nose beneath sea-green eyes.

  That morning, she had on a two-sizes too-small East Side Pages t-shirt, making her petite braless tits appear more supple than ever. After the mind-blowing experience I'd had with Mallory the night before, I'd sort of been hoping she would wear one of her ridiculous hemp sweaters, but no such luck. Cut-off jean shorts so tiny that the pockets stuck out, calf-high brown leather boots, and a t-shirt that didn't even slide over her navel. I struggled not to drool.

  Right away, as she entered, Dawn pulled her aside and spoke with her in serious tones. Their conversation lasted less than two minutes; no doubt Dawn informed Lori that she was on thin ice, et cetera, and that if she continued to do what she was doing, her future at the bookstore was in peril. Lori had heard it all before, and gassed out such worries beneath artillery shells full of potent weed smoke.

  Her coffee stand was on the far end of the register, posted near the window so that passers-by could see customers hanging out inside and drinking coffee. If nothing else, Lori did make a good cup of coffee.

  I made my way over to her after a moment, making a mental note not to slobber all over her young, tight body.

  She started a few pots brewing. Little signs were posted around her booth, advertising 2 for 1 deals on special flavored coffees and the like. I leaned over the counter, trying very hard not to glue my eyes on her complete lack of panties in her skimpy shorts.

  “Boss lady is pissed with you.”

  “Yup.”

  “Wanna get high?”

  Her answer to everything. I laughed.

  “No thanks. I got in trouble enough sober as a bird yesterday.”

  “She said she caught you and Mallory drinking.”

  “She didn’t catch us drinking. We just...we had a few drinks after work, that’s all.”

  “That's not really sober.”

  She had me there. “I guess not.”

  “You drank in the store?”

  “We had to stay late to fix everything up.”

  Taking a look around, she clearly wasn't impressed.

  “You didn’t do that great of a job.”

  “I guess you should have seen it yesterday.”

  Lori shrugged. “If you say so.”

  God, I wanted to fuck her. Her ass was practically popping out of her jeans, and every piece of her clothing was so barely-there that I knew I could rip every last part of it away in less than a minute.

  I knew she would never go for it, though. I was too plain for her. Lori wanted alternative dudes, guys with fifteen piercings on their eyelids and seventy more everywhere else. She wanted tattoos, with an equal number of skulls to gummi bears and childhood cartoon stars. That just wasn't me. I was a reader. I spent my nights at home poring over books and wishing that someday I could have something decent to write about.

  As was her routine, the first cup of coffee went to me. She said it was because usually the first cup always sucked, and she wanted to know how to gauge the rest. This was, I hoped, her way of showing some affection for me.

  The bell at the front rang. A customer. I was impressed. We almost never got customers this early. A young woman walked in, clearly a student at the university. The private university, Hamilton. There was the Alder City City University and Hamilton, and though they weren’t at odds academically or in sports, there was a clear divide between their student bodies.

  Alder City usually pulled from the town’s hopefuls, providing degrees at a discount for everyone who had good enough grades. There were steep discounts for natives of the state, and even bigger discounts for those who could keep their grades up. I probably would have been able to go there for free, myself, but my ego got in the way. I thought that by going to Hamilton, I would line up better jobs, or else sell my novel right away. Well, the jobs don’t exist and neither does the novel, so none of that panned out and I saddled myself with a ego-crippling amount of student loan debt.

  Nothing like more than half a hundred grand of debt to give you a firm understanding of your place in the world.

  After a moment, I realized I recognized the girl. Minjee Park. She had been in the same program as me. She was Korean-American and posh gorgeous, the sort of girl that a guy like me knew would never get more than a casual “hello” from even in the best of times. Probably I could save her life from a fire-breathing dragon, and she would toss back her flawless black hair, mew out a small, “Oh, thanks,” and I would think she had done me a favor by noticing I was around.

  Women have a strange effect on me, you may have noticed. Perhaps that’s why, now, I started to have a strange effect on them. All those years of unspent, unrequited desire building up my seed to be the most potent of its possible kind.

  Maybe I was bitten by some radioactive sperm. Who knows.

  She wore tight leather pants and a tiny red jacket over a black tee-shirt. Her heels were tall and worn without the slightest effort. From all appearances, she had been poured into the outfit, every line enhancing her attractiveness.

  I approached her with a friendly, knowing smile. The kind you use for people you recognize. She didn't catch on, or didn't care. She also didn't seem to notice the mess, or again, was above expressing notice at such things.

&n
bsp; “Welcome to East Side,” I said. “How can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for books on Marxist analysis of late nineteenth century poets. Whitman, I'm hoping. Miller. Maybe some pastorals, too?” She paused, her lovely face twisting in thought. “Anyone before nineteen hundred, really.”

  “Right. Who isn’t?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing, sorry.” I smiled. “We might have something downstairs. I’ll show you.”

  I led her downstairs to the basement, which was thankfully untouched by the chaos from the day before. The light was dimmer down there, being without windows, but there was more room for books. It's where we kept all our used stock. Gerald hopped up as we descended, quickly scampering past us to take up a seat in one of the chairs downstairs. No doubt his little feline brain was encouraging me to follow through with snuggle plan.

  Minjee walked close to me, and this closeness was somewhat overwhelming. She smelled like money. I don’t know how else to put it. There’s a certain type of person that seems to soften the air around them, like they were created in a computer and then dumped out into the world, all the processing power pulling in the threads of reality to make their every edge more beautiful and pleasing to the eye. She was that type of girl.

  All I could think of, as I watched her, was doing the same thing to her that I had done to Mallory. Was it possible? Could I make this regal beauty get down on her knees after taking in heaps of my hot load, repeating worshipfully everything I told her?

  The temptation was palpable. But how could I do it? I couldn’t just force myself on her and hope for the best. Even outside the morality of such a thing (and I don’t know if there is an outside to the morality of such a thing), I had no practical evidence that what happened with Mallory was anything but a random occurrence. Experiments and theories were tested on repeatability, after all.

  I pointed Minjee in the direction of a few books that might help her, and pretended to be interested in re-organizing some nearby. Mostly, I just wanted the excuse to look at her a little more. Her ass and leather tights were a match made in heaven.

  I know I'm going on a lot about asses. But I can't help it if Lori and Minjee both have terrific ones, in their own way. Minjee's was full, the kind you can grab and lead around. Lori's was tiny but perfectly shaped, making you want to spank her just so you could watch your own hand slap down on two cheeks at once.

  “I recognize you, you know.”

  Her comment broke me from my ass-thought reverie. I was a bit surprised.

  “Really?”

  “Sure. You used to work at Hamilton, right? The library?”

  I had been in at least four different graduate classes with this girl. These aren’t the type of classes that are very large. Fifteen people were an understood maximum. You get very close attention from the professor, and concentrated feedback from most everyone in the class on your ideas and papers.

  “Uh,” I laughed softly, not sure how to answer. There was a time when I would have let something like that go. But the events of the night before, and my rampant desire to fuck her rotten, were screwing a little bit with my common sense. “No, actually. I’m a graduate of the same program you’re in. We were in a lot of classes together.”

  “Really?” Now it was her turn to be surprised. Even, dare I say it, a little embarrassed. Though it was sort of hard to tell. It’s like trying to draw the shape of one particular flare in the sun—all of it is overshadowed by the incredible beauty of the main body.

  “Yeah. We had Deconstruction of the Arts with Rickman.”

  She pushed her shiny, thick hair back now, her tongue sliding up over her lips as she thought. It was dead sexy. I could not stop imagining her tongue sliding over my rod like Mallory’s had. Or even the two of them together, each begging me to be the one to take my cum, to be tranced first...

  “And then,” I coughed a little, trying to focus, “we had Jewish Folklore and also Marxist Cinema with Goldberg. Plus—”

  “Hanna’s class! Oh yeah!” she took a step back, eyeing me up and down. Her eyes were brilliantly dark. “Have you lost weight since then? It was like a year ago, right?”

  “Yes. To both.”

  Biking around tends to drop off a lot of weight, I found out.

  “Well, good memory. I don’t know if we ever really talked.” She saw the look on my face. “Oh my god, we talked? Oh god.”

  Now her face was in her palms, her petite body trembling with laughter. “Shit, I’m so embarrassed. I must seem like the biggest diva to you.”

  The normal answer, of course, would be to say, “no, no!”

  “I’ve known bigger,” I said, “but they were all actual royalty.”

  She snorted with laughter. It seemed a distinctly un-Minjee thing to do. “Oh, so you’re a dick. I get it. Maybe that’s why I don’t remember you.”

  “You’ve phased out all memories of dicks in your life? That must get lonesome.”

  Again, she was laughing. “Maybe not every dick. But you know. A girl’s got to have some standards.”

  “Sure. Too many dick memories and then it’s just dicks dicks dicks all the time, and no work gets done at all.”

  “Right! And you know, graduate degree in fucking Victorian literature.” She held up the book she had picked out. “It’s all about dicks one way or the other. Some get put to the side.”

  “So it’s only the cute ones at bookstores that you’ll remember from now on, right?”

  “Maybe. Who knows.” She smiled and pushed her hair back again. “Are you here all the time?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “Well...” she twirled her hair. She smiled shyly. She even goddamn twisted at the useless sparkly chain belt around her waist. Was it really this easy to flirt with girls? What the fuck had I been doing being quiet all the time? Where the fuck had I been? “I’m going to have to keep coming back here. Studying and all, you know. The library is just useless for this sort of material, unfortunately. I’ll see you around?”

  “Not if I see you first.”

  She snorted again. “Oh god, and you were doing so well...”

  I watched her walk up the stairs, her ass just a complete vision in that tiny, skimpy little outfit. If only I could give her one taste of my cum, just to find out what might happen...

  She sneaked a look back down at me and giggled just slightly, walking out the door with a slight bounce in her step.

  * * * * *

  “Hey, could you help me with something in the back?”

  It was well after noon, and I was reading a new science fiction novel about seven men trying to fight their way off a mutant cruise ship. It was shlock, but it was fun schlock. Mallory leaned right over the counter, pushing the book out of my vision, and placing herself firmly in the middle of it.

  We hadn't hung out much all day, but Dawn had finally left for her new batch of meetings, and we had finished all the cleaning from the day before. The shop was finally back in working shape.

  Mallory, meanwhile, was in gorgeous shape, but that was nothing new. Her outfit had taken a cue from Lori's with the too-tight tee shirt, though with her more substantial breasts and the long cut-open v neckline, there was a lot more to appreciate. Her high-heeled sandals had clopped along the wooden floors all day, calling my eyes to watch her tiny denim skirt as she bent over. As she bent over the counter, her fingers slid up my arm and gently squeezed my bicep.

  Of course, as usual, even with as obvious as she was being, I wasn't catching up.

  “Oh, did the new shipment get here?” I looked down at the calendar. “I didn’t think it was supposed to get here until next Tuesday.”

  “Yeah, it’s something like that.” Her hand clasped around mine. “Lori, could you take over the register for like ten minutes?”

  Lori nodded at her booth, smiling slyly at Mallory. “Sure thing.”

  I still faltered. “But, what is it that’s back there? Is there a customer? Because if it’s
a customer—”

  “God, you’re dense,” said Lori, laughing. “Look at how she looks at you. What do you think she wants?”

  I looked again at Mallory. She was tugging at the tiny bra strap beneath her shirt, giving me a completely unrestricted view of the tight top beneath and the shiny, buoyant globes of flesh that were waiting just underneath. Her dark eyes burned with desire, one lip tugged underneath her perfectly white teeth. Her hips wiggled slowly in those tight, sculpted skirt, thighs mincing together down to her knees.

  “Oh,” I said, feeling myself pulled along by Mallory.

  Soon, just as she wanted, we were in the back room. It was a storage space, basically. Shelves surrounded us, some of the only ones in the entire store not buried under the weight of books. Instead, it was office supplies and stands for ads, that sort of thing.

  “I don’t know what’s come over me,” she said, clearly looking a little confused. “I just...I find you very attractive.”

  “Oh.”

  She pushed me against the wall, sliding one leg up mine. Her lips came up to my neck and then my chin, kissing softly. “I know we said we’d see each other tonight, but I couldn’t wait. I find you very attractive,” she said again.

  Her voice, I noticed, took on just the slightest little monotone as she said that. I kissed her deep, loving the feel of her lips on mine. Her tongue pressed into my mouth, and I gripped her body hard. Her spine thrummed with need, and my cock was quickly getting hard.

  “I think you’re absolutely beautiful, Mallory.”

  She smiled, rolling her eyes. “Whatever. You’re just lucky I’m absolutely desperate to suck your cock.”

  Okay. There that was again. The same slight monotone. And the same words I had said to her the night before. Was this really happening? Was I really able to hold that kind of power over her?

  There was only one way to find out...and I was eager to know for sure.

  “Yeah, do it,” I said, urging her on. “Suck me off.”

  She didn't need to be told twice. Soon, she was on her knees and my pants were down around my ankles. She slipped her lips over the head of my turgid cock and moaned with excitement.