audition

[mjeevas]

The scene was dressed up like something out of a domestic advertisement. It was fake and showed a glimpse of something he wasn't actually offering, but there were enough snatches of reality in between to leave the future uncompromised. It wouldn't be anything this clean, this hopeful. The rooms were flooded with light and whatever warmth the

Comments

[keyflower]

It wasn't a kind place to be, beneath the lights. They were harsh and they were hot on her skin, making her sweat, showing her as something pale and washed-out and she looked down briefly at herself and couldn't imagine anyone wanting to marry her. It meant her life to do it, though, and that wasn't something she could run away from; she had been running this long and there was no going any farther, there was nowhere else to flee to where she wouldn't be found. Not on her own. There was a power in her and it was called by different names, but mostly it was just called light, and if she let herself be captured and used there would be nothing left of it soon enough, or of her. She blinked and tried to look past the shadows to see him after he'd directed her here. There had only been that one glimpse of him when she entered the room, his face lit by the glow of a cigarette.

She hesitated to answer, trying to see him again, his expression or the way he looked at her. "Someone said you were good at hiding. You could protect me. I need to hide." She didn't say from what, didn't know how to explain it. "You don't need to fight for me or anything," she added, though she wasn't sure it wouldn't come to that. "Just take me away. Keep me hidden."

It was hard for her to lie. She could have tried to tell him that she loved him or wanted him, wanted marriage, but none of that would really be true. But if marriage was a cage at least it was one that might keep her safe, relatively speaking; it was hard to know what he might want from her if he chose her.

[mjeevas]

She surprised him. If the light hadn't been shining into her eyes she might have seen it too, the way he looked up from his cigarette at her answer and started paying attention.

The way Kairi was caught in the lights seemed to make her look younger, fragile. But it could have been her explanation still laid bare between them too. It filled his mind with a preconceived view of her that was different from what he would have formed otherwise. None of the other girls had asked anything from him. Companionship was implied but in essence it was them who put themselves up on a platter. The easy way she'd answered the question made him wonder why she thought he'd help her. He didn't have a reputation as someone who helped people. Not really. And the fact that she had baggage made her worthless as an actual option, even if it made the audition itself more interesting.

"We're not going to be hiding," he told her. "I'm getting married to use my wife to get close to people. I'm not sociable," he shrugged, "and I'd be using you to make up for it." She looked too sweet to be running away from anyone, too pretty, getting caught in his teeth like sticky candy the longer he stared at her. "But we'll be going far from here so maybe it'd be far enough to lose whoever's chasing you." He hesitated and then pointed his cigarette toward the hall. "There's wedding lingerie in the bedroom. Leave your clothes where you're standing and go put some on. Don't take very long, I'm going to introduce you to my neighbors as if you were my wife and I want to see how you do with them."

[keyflower]

Being sociable didn't sound so terrible, really. She was good with other people, most of the time. And if they ran far enough maybe that distance would be enough, for a while anyway, that she wouldn't be found. There weren't so very many options to pick and choose from, after all. She would take what was offered.

Even when it came in the form of requests like that. She looked at him in surprise for a moment before she remembered herself and tried to erase the expression from her face, quietly bringing her hands up to the zipper of her dress with her skin prickling at every motion. It was only that she hadn't known what sort of things he would ask of her. But she had known this was an audition, and that other people had stood here where she was before her; that didn't make it easier, though. She was supposed to be besting those other people somehow, finding some way to convince him that she was the best candidate for marriage. She pulled down the zipper and let the dress fall to the floor around her feet and pulled her white camisole up over her head. She tried to do it without thinking but when there was only panties left she couldn't help but hesitate, a flush creeping into her skin. Her eyes didn't meet his as she pushed them down. Her breath drew in shakily and she turned away towards the bedroom, trying not to hurry.

He would see her naked again if he married her. She could try to reason it but it didn't change the way these strange rooms felt as though their cheery facade was hiding some secret, some shadow lurking behind the sweet, clean furnishings and the bright curtains on the windows. The weight of that shadow was like a hand on the nape of her neck and she felt it as she was putting on the lingerie she found, a corset to push her breasts up high, stockings and garters and panties, all lacy fragile things, white as a wedding dress. Nothing else about them bore any resemblance to chastity or purity, though, and with them on she felt nearly more naked than she had without them. She went back out to the main room regardless, her skin now thoroughly pink, wondering who he could possibly want to introduce her to wearing this.

[mjeevas]

He was working his way through another cigarette when she came back, having already taken her clothes away. The lights had been shut off and the room managed to gain back some of its humanity without them, even with the cameras looming visibly around them. His pulse seemed to skip at the sight of her, fire climbing into his veins, and the way her bright hair looked over her pale shoulders and the white corset only managed to draw more of a reaction. She looked like a girl he could imagine undressing on his wedding night and he wanted to run his hands all over her to feel the corset and the lace against the palm of his hands.

"You're blushing," he noted, wishing he could defile her first. He was counting on taking her downstairs to stain her cheeks permanently red though. "They might think the blushing bride look is cute though. Go open the door, I'll be right there."

He disappeared into the bathroom, flushing his cigarette away and coming back to where she was waiting. He went to his knees in front of her, unhooking the garter and reaching beneath it to pull the lace panties down her thighs to her ankles. The garter was easy to fix and he stood up with a hand on her hip, propelling her toward the hall. There were a couple of women loitering, the girl who'd auditioned before this and a girl from yesterday. She looked intent on making sure her virginity hadn't been wasted but it had been. This entire debacle was meant to be depraved.

His hand moved down Kairi's spine and he nudged her toward the stairs, ignoring her reaction to being bared like this. "Knock on the door and tell them who you are. I'll be there in a moment."

[keyflower]

His hands undid her panties and felt like they were undoing her, sliding them down her legs to expose her all the more and she couldn't erase her awareness of him kneeling before her, looking at her. Her lips were parted and her breath was dragging in with the sound of panting and she looked blindly somewhere over his head, resisting the urge to step back. Only when he was done did she moved, stepping carefully out of the discarded panties. Her eyes went briefly to his face, and then she looked away because nothing she saw there had pity for her. She was a blushing bride, she thought, the words echoing themselves in her mind until the sweet innocent words took on a different cast, felt like something sly and lustful with promises of defilement. Insinuations were creeping their way down her spine along with Matt's hand and she took a step instinctively forward when he nudged her.

Then she stopped and looked back at him. "You're going to come?" There was a shameful note of pleading in the words and she didn't want to face this alone, but his eyes were on her and when she looked at him she couldn't tell if it would be any better to have him with her, really. He wasn't safety. He was lust lurking in the corners of her mind and in the unfamiliar ways her body throbbed and she couldn't believe what she was doing, putting herself into his hands, trying to convince him to marry her because in that moment marriage to him seemed far more terrifying than being caught. But she wouldn't step away, she wouldn't back down from the reason she'd come here and she straightened up and turned her back on him and walked into the hall, doing her best to ignore the two women near the stairs who stared at her as she came out with sullen, hostile eyes.

She went up the stairs, to the first apartment. On that lacy white garter there was a pink bowed tied and centered just above her ass and she wished she wasn't aware of it because it was all she could think of when there were eyes on her from behind. Her knuckles rapped the door so lightly she was sure it wouldn't be heard but a moment later it opened and there was a middle-aged man standing there in dress shirt and pants and socks and he was looking at her the way the others had looked at her, as though obscenity was something to be expected. This was a filthy place and it crawled all over her skin with the blatant lust and appraisal in the man's face. "I'm Kairi," she said and the sound of her own voice, high and thin, was startling to her. It felt so absurd, the words of an introduction so utterly degrading when she stood here dressed like this. "I'm auditioning. To be married."

[mjeevas]

"I'll be right there," he agreed, his pulse racing with the pleading note in her voice.

The door closed behind him while he watched her walk to the stairs, ignoring the two other women, and he couldn't help but devour the way her blush looked too conspicuous against the white of her skin and clothes. Following her, he stopped to turn the two waiting women away, still listening while Kairi introduced herself and was let inside. Moving abruptly away from the other two, he climbed quickly up the stairs, letting himself into the apartment.

There was a mixture of men and women inside. They were watching Kairi openly, a man circling around her and looking at Matt while he stepped further inside. "She looks like she'd break if you fucked her too hard," he noted, his eyes drawn to her cunt and then moving greedily up the corset to her eyes. "Not a very good choice to take along."

"She's very pretty though," a tall, dark haired woman said, coming up from behind Kairi to stroke her hair and then her shoulder. "I'm surprised by how many pretty girls have come. It makes you wonder what's wrong with them." The woman's hand smoothed over the bow briefly, stroking Kairi's ass and nudging between her legs to tease her opening with intrusive fingers. "The food is ready for you to serve," she told her. "We'll be eating out here."

Matt didn't step in, watching from a few feet away instead. The way Kairi was picked apart by hands and eyes didn't seem to matter, perhaps it was even his intention, to see her squirm while the object of interest to people he was leaving her to entertain. He didn't think she would understand what the woman meant but he didn't make an attempt to explain either. Instead he leaned back against a couch and let his attention wander over the way Kairi was touched and how badly he wanted to be the one pressing close.

[keyflower]

Inside the other apartment she felt surrounded on all sides and she found herself holding as still as a rabbit under the eyes of a predator, trying to hide the way her breathing came thin and tight and how her heart struggling in her chest in a panicked way. She hadn't expected there to be so many people after the man who'd answered the door had drawn her inside. She was aware when the door opened again and Matt followed her in, the way he stood nearby to watch her, though she didn't turn her head to look at him. Her gaze was occupied with a point a few feet in front of her and downward, some object shaped like a vase on the coffee table that she'd chosen to focus on while men and women circled around her and spoke of her in obscene ways.

The woman's intrusive fingers between her legs made her start, her teeth digging into her lower lip as she went still again. She was shamed by the wetness that touch teased from her and the knowing tone to the woman's voice. She was trying not to listen to what was said and she didn't understand at first about the food, glancing quickly up at her before looking down again. "Is it in the kitchen?" she managed and she hated how her own uncertainty sounded. If they wanted her to serve them she was willing to do that, especially if it got her away from the touches and the remarks for even a few moments, gave her something to think of other than how exposed she was in the midst of them, how vulnerable.

Her gaze stole to Matt and she looked at him for a moment as though asking for direction, but she didn't have the courage to say the words aloud. Instead she eased away from the woman's hand and slipped out from between the group and tried to ignore the way they didn't part for her, made her brush skin to skin in order to pass. Her legs were shaky as she went to look for the kitchen and she didn't know if she was doing anything right but no doubt one of them would follow and correct her.

[mjeevas]

He didn't go after her at first. The way Kairi met his eyes left him wondering why he'd brought her here instead of using her first upstairs first. The desire to fuck was there, emphasized in the way the lingerie bared more than covered her skin and left him itching to hold her to him and slip his dick into her without warning. Moving after her, he waited until Kairi had reached the kitchen before stepping in. There was another man inside, the person who'd prepared the food and was supposed to help her, but it wasn't as satisfying to leave her in someone's hands. He wanted to watch her struggling through every second of this.

Coming up behind Kairi, Matt caught her attention by gripping the bow on the corset, undoing it while he closed the space between them. "You need to take this off first," he told her, his fingers moving over the fastenings without paying attention to the man watching them. He wondered if it made it worse for her to lose the scant clothes he'd given her like this. Loosening the corset, he pulled it off her. "Now you're going to go stretch out on the table."

There was a long, low table in the center of the room but he didn't really let her go yet, his hand moving over the curve of her ass and then stroking over her lower back. "Make sure you twist your hair out of the way when you do because he's going to cover you with sushi. When you're ready to be served, we'll take you outside so that everyone can eat it off you." The stockings and garters weren't very practical for this but he liked the sight of her like this, and he would be stripping them off sooner or later. "Any move you make will ruin the platter so hold still." His voice dropped slightly, closer to her ear. "If we marry, I'll make you serve me this way all the time, no matter what it is. I'll lick it your skin clean every day and then fuck you where you lay."