Five
Shelly got home from work and threw her winter coat towards the hook in the corner. She gave a half sigh as she heard it crumpling into a pile on the floor, but didn’t turn around. In three years that she’d lived in this house, she’d managed to hit the target twice, which she still thought was a pretty good score. It just seemed that she wasn’t getting any better, something which could apply to most of her life right now.
At least she didn’t need to worry so much about the day job now. She popped her collar up and carefully unknotted the green uniform tie, before pulling a pink-and-navy one from the end of the bookshelf. She’d already unclipped her employee badge, and it was now in her coat pocket on the floor, so she picked up another one – with a mark obscuring her name – and clipped it on the top of her blouse pocket. Just a couple of little accents, and her everyday office uniform looked like the corporate colours of a completely different company. Of course, the company logo on the fake ID was illegible, but the style was well known enough that someone zooming in on it would think they could hazard a reasonable guess who she worked for.
She didn’t really need to change the uniform, and she would have been happier just to take it off. But the tie, blazer, and a navy skirt tight around her hips helped her to remember who she was supposed to be, and keep in character while she answered her messages.
Shelly sat down in front of the computer, and glanced at her badge in the monitor. “Hello, my name is Cerise B,” she read a few times under her breath before she turned the machine on. The badge would usually be obscured by glare from the lights, and the name she actually gave her followers was ‘Cherry’, but some time in the last few years she’d come to realise that there were men out there who took a strange pleasure in thinking they knew more about her than she voluntarily revealed. If she just introduced herself as Cherry, somebody would keep on searching in an attempt to discover her real name. So much easier to give them the clues they wanted, and make sure nobody even suspected there might be a deeper layer of truth.
There were about twenty emails, most from dedicated fans praising her latest photo sets. She gave all of them a polite response, saying she was already working on another. She wasn’t doing a video chat today, at least not one open to anyone who could pay. She did those sometimes; talking to the guys about what a long day she’d had in the office, and how she couldn’t wait to get out of this heavy blazer, and the restrictive tie, and the too-tight shirt that the office demanded on. She’d tease them, slowly starting to strip as they encouraged her to get comfortable. She wouldn’t take her heels off on video, but she might go as far as loosening her belt, or unfastening the top three buttons of her shirt so it looked like it was about to burst. She would almost always let deep mahogany hair down from its bun, and stand so they could see it hanging straight down to her ass. Then, of course, they would have to wait an hour or two – and make sure their subscriptions were up to date – before they could look through a carefully crafted series of photos that culminated in a half-dozen tasteful, artistic nudes.
Cherry was always careful with naked photos, and even more so when she felt like making a video. She liked to tease, with provocative poses and careful camerawork. But she wouldn’t share anything particularly lewd, anything that might make her seem uncouth. She would always look over the pictures carefully before she sent them, making sure they all gave the right impression of her as a playful young woman who was proud of her body. She wasn’t a slut, no matter what some of her detractors liked to say. And, of course, some of them had to be run through an image macro to paint out her tattoo. Once upon a time that would have taken her close to an hour, and she’d felt it easier to just skip the photos where it was visible except for a few that were otherwise outstanding; and she would have to put off sharing a whole set until the weekend. But now she could afford it, she had a custom-written AI filter that could find and paint out the distinctive image in just a few seconds, requiring only minimal fine-tuning to help it find the edges.
She was starting to get a little excited now, and eager to start her show. But there would be no playful talking to fans today. No chat about work, no expressions of sympathy typed one-handed from the far corners of the globe. Just a few selfies on social media to let people know she was home, a chat with another hard-working and misunderstood professional, and then a tasteful and artistic photo shoot that just happened to start with a restrictive business suit and end with the liberation of bare, evenly-tanned skin illuminated by sunset colours.
And maybe a little something extra today, but she didn’t know what that might be yet. She would have to finish answering her emails first. There were the usual handful of men making degrading comments or talking about what they wanted to do to her. She blocked those; if they were paid subscribers they would still have access to her photos, but she wouldn’t have to see their comments unless they reconfirmed that they had read her politeness policy and paid a hundred-dollar unlocking fee. At least one of them would be back with the same kind of message tomorrow, so she didn’t even read past the first line. And then there were the requests; people who had ideas she could try. A few wanted to see holiday photos. Swimsuits, gorgeous beaches for a gorgeous lady. A skiing outfit, maybe, being slowly removed. She smiled at that; some of them had nice ideas, and she told them all that she was still deciding where to go. Another wanted to see her in nothing but thigh-high boots, which she considered but politely declined. It might be tasteful, but she’d seen how expensive those could be, and they wouldn’t go with most of her other outfits. A few wanted her to do fetish shoots; most of which got thirty seconds of consideration before rejecting them.
One guy made her laugh, so she responded with a photograph of herself deep in thought, lips pursed with a single finger tapping the side of her face, as she politely explained that it wasn’t her thing. The others, she might consider if they weren’t explicit and wouldn’t seem too strange to her regular fans, but they wouldn’t be a top priority. She let them all know, in any case. But there was one of them…
