[Episode 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/j2bszr/pretentious_fianc%C3%A9e_blackmailed_coerced_to_strip/)
Setup level: long af.
—
## The Text Message, Sunday
Ten hours remained until Eileen and Mark’s evening plans which were to begin at 7. She sat at the kitchen table in his house alone because he had become impatient about the laundry and went to the laundromat. A boquet of flowers set in the center which Mark had given Eileen the week before cast a shadow on the table. Regions of the marigold she had not noticed, seeing it only in the evenings at dinner, had browned and contracted into wrinkles.
Eileen thought for the fifteenth time about where she might have placed the lingerie after returning home. She tried to comfort herself with imagined memories of having rooted through her bag on the way home, so that it might have fallen out in the car. Horrifyingly, the bag had no holes in it and it sealed well. In truth she did not open the bag on the way home. She set it down in the entry way when she got in and spent the rest of the night in pajamas. For the fifteenth time the conclusion was unavoidable: Eileen had left the lingerie in Angela’s bedroom.
That morning when she unpacked the bag to put it in the laundry for Mark and did not find it, reality rushed in on all sides as if she were pulling her head out of a hole. She was taken by the depth of the calculations which had been made around her. Angela had only sent her upstairs for the opportunity to tell Mark she was there with Taft. But Eileen had given her much more than that.
More was called into question. Disparate memories surfaced and begged to be connected by narrative. The day Eileen first noticed that her ring was missing was one day after Angela had been over for dinner and two days before she noticed the similar ring on Taft’s finger. It occurred to her briefly that it was possible that this timing was just a coincidence, that Taft was dating a woman who purchased him gifts from the same jeweler in Westlake that Mark visited, and that without Eileen noticing Taft had also climbed the stairs in Angela’s house when she went to change and Angela innocently assumed that they were going upstairs together and relayed this information without considering the implications it would have to Mark. Eileen dismissed this explanation before she had fully verbalized it to herself.
Just as these coincidences were too many, so too was the set of coincidences that Angela had prepared for Mark, and that left her very little time. Angela’s writing was expert craftsmanship, a story without an author. Mark believed he had discovered each clue himself, and of course the connections were his own. If it came to the night and Eileen did not have the lingerie an explanation would be due. And because Angela was in possession of the lingerie all explanations would lead back to her, back to the party which Mark wanted to leave early, back to the moments that Mark spent unable to find his fiancée after hearing from who he presumed was a reliable source that she had gone upstairs with Taft. And it would be the end.
Half an hour had passed with her sitting and thinking at the table but no plan had come to mind. She had one tool available and did not know how to use it. It was a kind of gun with 24 megapixels of ammunition, but because it could only be fired all at once its only application was as a threat of mutual destruction. She examined it again on her phone and counted shadows from at least three light sources on the contours of Angela’s body. Solid white filled the frame excepting her and her shadows, a large roll of solid portrait backdrop paper. In the production value and premeditation of this self worship and vanity Eileen realized that Angela did not want Mark, a man incapable of dressing himself, a man indifferent to the perception of his class, a man unwilling to assert himself. Angela, who as far as Eileen knew may not even exist beneath her appearance, would never claim such a man as a partner. Somehow the fact that Mark had fallen in love with someone else, even though Angela would never consider that with him, was an indignity to her. Angela needed someone around her to want her not have her, and Eileen had trespassed on this sacred relationship. This was just a narcissistic exercise to prove to Eileen and by extension to Angela herself that to Mark, not having Angela was worth more than having Eileen.
A text message appeared over Angela’s head in the photo and it said “are these yours? I will be home until five you can come get them.” Eileen expanded the message to see a photograph of her lingerie on the floor where she left them in Angela’s bedroom.
## The Spliff
Taft said hello but did not look up when Eileen descended the stairs into Angela’s square inset couch in her living room floor. He worked on his laptop on the opposite side of the coffee table and did not seem to mind the cold November air coming in through the open wall to the patio. Angela had asked her to wait downstairs for just a moment as she went to her bedroom to retrieve the lingerie.
There was a discomfort. It was the kind of discomfort that made thinking about two things at once painful. When she tried to sleep the night before she kept remembering that she still needed to purchase a washer and dryer, and rehearsing what she might say if Mark brought up going upstairs with Taft. Usually a shower helped wake her up, but today it was ineffective because she felt dirty again after putting on unwashed clothes. Though she knew it made no difference she chose her pair of matte black bra and underwear because the color betrayed fewer signs of wear. She put on a modest black dress with sleeves because excepting her waist under the belt, it was flowy and loose and she would not have to feel the unclean fabric against her skin. Mercifully she did have clean black ankle socks to wear her sneakers with.
Eileen could see the walkway upstairs from where she sat on the couch and she kept her eyes focused on the hallway leading to Angela’s bedroom, trying her best to hear. Angela’s offer to turn over what would be her greatest weapon set Eileen not at ease but at focus. Something remained to be understood and Eileen must pay attention to discover it. As she stared at the hallway without blinking, her peripheral vision faded until her visual field featured only the hallway suspended in a blackness with colored static.
“I hear you and Mark have plans tonight,” Taft said, looking at her now.
Eileen blinked and shook her head to readjust her eyes. “What? How would you know about that?”
“Angela just got off the phone with him before you got here. She just told me that you two had something planned is all.”
Eileen became aware of her heart beating. Angela had discovered the value of her position. “Taft, why is it that you are at Angela’s house on a Sunday morning?”
“Oh. We’ve been spending time together.”
“Does she buy you gifts?”
Taft laughed modestly, and began to say “she does actually. Last week she…” but he stopped when Angela, who Eileen had failed to notice descending the stairs, dug her bare foot into his shoulder.
“He begs me to massage him like this after he works on that laptop all day,” she said, and tossed Eileen a brown paper bag with the top rolled down. “Smoke a spliff with us before you go!”
Angela descended into the inset couch and took a seat on the third side, between Taft and Eileen. On the table in front of her she set out a jar of tobacco, a jar of bud, a grinder, a plate, rolling paper, a set of filters, and a knife.
“No, I have some errands to run,” Eileen said as she stood up to leave.
“I don’t think you do.”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t think you have any errands to run.”
“I’m going to leave.”
“Stay for a spliff.”
“I don’t smoke.”
Eileen reached the patio before thinking to check inside of the bag. Because it had occurred to her to check, she was prepared to be angry about what she found inside before she opened it. After unrolling the crumpled top and separating the sides of the paper with her fingers, she found still more anger inside. A righteous anger. Angela had filled the bag with just some cloth and string, about the right weight and about the right firmness.
She set her eyes on Angela, who was still focused on the task of rolling a spliff. She charged toward her through the surreal fog of in-progress revelation. Because Angela was growing larger Eileen figured she was moving toward her. In some steps Eileen was aware of lifting her leg like she was wading through water. Some steps her vision skipped entirely.
“Fuck you. I want my shit back.”
“Relax Eileen. It’s morning and you don’t need it until this evening. Just smoke a spliff with us.”
“No. Get my stuff right now.”
“Eileen, you are trying my patience,” Angela said, leaning back on the couch. “You don’t seem to understand your position. If you get it back in time, it is by my grace and mercy. I’m Mark’s best friend. We talk about things. We talk about you. I know exactly how much you need it and why, so if you want me to decide to give it back to you, you should try showing a little respect. Right now I’ll tell you I am not feeling respected.
“You’re going to sit down on this couch and smoke this spliff with us. That’s the least amount of respect I need, for you to accept the offer of your gracious host. But after the way you’ve been acting I can’t accept just that, so I want you to take off that dress and leave it on the patio while we smoke.”
Taft was on edge and shifting his eyes between Eileen and Angela, unsure what to make of the confrontation.
Eileen’s phone began to burn in her pocket, more than the rest of her body now burned. All of her ruminations and suspicions had been true. What came out of Angela’s mouth had for the first time been the truth, what she really felt. And now Eileen had her in a cage, trapped like a dumb growling animal.
She looked down to see her own arm had extended itself. “I’ll post it,” Eileen said, holding up the photograph on her phone for Angela to see. “I’ve got it backed up. I’ll post it if you don’t give me what I came here for.”
“What the hell?,” Taft asked. “Is this blackmail? Is she blackmailing you Angela?”
Angela smiled at Eileen and leaned in to whisper into Taft’s ear.
“What did she tell you?” Eileen asked forcefully.
“The safe word.”
“What?”
“Sorry about breaking the fourth wall I’m just — I haven’t been briefed. I’ll pick it up quick though.”
Eileen grabbed Angela’s wrist. “What are you telling him Angela?”
“I caught him up to what you already understand. You will have to do as I say, or Mark will leave you for cheating on him with Taft.”
“I’m not fucking joking. I will post this picture.”
Angela slid the ridge of the rolling paper across her tongue. The paper wet and lost its shape, and she moulded it around itself, sealing the spliff. “It’s already online Eileen. One of my friends is a photographer and that photo is on his portfolio website. I posed as a favor. Did you really think I hired a studio to send some boy a hot one?”
A warmth and a muscle ache expanded out from Eileen’s heart like a drop of ink in water. Eileen found herself in a corner with no way out. She would surrender to Angela here for now, or surrender Mark and the story of her own life to Angela forever.
Her mind became silent. Without a conscious thought she walked out to Angela’s patio. When she pulled the dress over her head the Fall breeze hit her thighs first and she shiverred. She had the feeling of having jumped into a cold pool, like something had made contact with all of her skin, and she did not know if it was Angela’s eyes or the air which created this feeling. Angela only glanced at her and held up the spliff to invite her back, but the casual nature of her glance, as if Eileen standing vulnerable and naked in the cold while Angela indulged herself in comfort and control was a natural state, made Eileen feel exposed twice.
The first hit was a train that did not stop at her lungs and charged straight on to her ears. She could hear the light keypresses Taft made on his laptop as he worked. She could hear the hum of Angela’s sound system. Wherever she looked subtle sounds came to her attention.
Angela’s eyes roamed her body. Eileen felt a kind of heat in her toes, moving slowly up through her calves and then knees as Angela steadily raised her stare. Her internal monologue threatened to return, and Eileen felt hints of what would have been a consuming anger had it been entertained. This was wrong. Angela should be the one suffering, immersed in shame. Angela should be in pain. Eileen’s jaw tensed, then her shoulders and arms, which she used to choke Angela in her mind’s eye. She let the desire pass but not because she thought better of it. She thought it would be less painful to simply not think until it she was home.
But then it came back, the anger. She imagined taking Angela by the neck and smashing her head repeatedly into the coffee table. Her teeth clenched with every imagined impact.
Someone grabbed her tight fist and where was Taft? Angela leaned back and took a long hit of the spliff. Eileen’s right arm came back behind her head and there was a click. Then someone grabbed her other fist, and she tried to turn but her bound right arm thwarted her.
“Relax, Eileen. It’s Taft.”
With a second click both of her arms defied her. Taft had cuffed them to the low railing around the back of the inset couch, spread just short of her wingspan.
Eileen yanked on the cuffs. They clinked against the metal railing loudly and pinched her skin against bone when she tried to pull her wrists through them. She leaned as far as she could toward Angela and said “You can’t” and then took another short breath and finished “do this. This is too much.”
Something failed in Eileen’s mind when Angela took a seat in front of her on the coffee table and stared into her eyes without expression. A part of Eileen’s resolve became dissent, and for a brief moment she was not unanimous in herself in her resistance. As she was, bound and naked and helpless in front of Angela, a part of her felt almost an affection for the woman who had demeaned her, a craving for her approval.
Taft grabbed her left foot but she could not look away from Angela to see why. Unsettled and outnumbered, Eileen threw her strength into her arms and pulled on the cuffs in futility. “Angela you have to”, she said and took another short breath, “let me out.”
The soft touch of Angela’s cold hands on her knees made Eileen flinch. Eileen was high and lost in the sensations, unable to focus on the feeling of Angela’s breath hitting her waist as she leaned in too close, or the feeling of Taft pulling on her right leg now, or the tension in her thighs as she tried to keep them together against the force of Angela spreading them apart. She closed her eyes when Angela’s face got so close to hers she could see nothing else. It was too much input.
Angela was too close to her. There was an urgent frustration, an urgent, primal need to bring her arms together, and her legs together, which did not subside. Her hands were tied, but why did her legs no longer answer to her? From the heat going away she could tell that Taft had moved back, but her legs were still not free.
Cold metal touched her left shoulder and she had to open her eyes. The knife rose up and passed through the strap of Eileen’s bra easily, under Angela’s careful guidance. Eileen violently twisted her body to try and protect her left side from the same violation. “Angela you have to stop this is crazy. This is crazy. You’re crazy.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to cut the left side,” Angela smiled. “I’m just going to cut here.” She cut the right strap on Eileen’s side, and lifted her bra away along her left arm, hanging it on the railing just beyond her cuffed hand. “Wow, Eileen. I knew you were proud of these but I’m still impressed even with the high expectations,” she said, tracing her finger delicately along the underside of Eileen’s left breast.
Eileen wrestled with her restraints, turning her torso back and forth rabidly, but the course of Angela’s finger continued undeterred across her skin. A feeling of panic which should have been readily available and in abundance was fading. Was it just exhaustion? Or was it that Eileen noticed how gentle the contact with Angela’s skin had been, that it threatened to create the same feeling of surrender she felt when Mark tickled her under her chin?
Despite Eileen’s erratic movement, Angela’s finger tracked her body perfectly, sliding up now, closer and slower toward her nipple. The urge to surrender became a louder sound in her mind than her own thoughts, and she said “Fuck you, Angela”, and spit at her.
—
Follow my profile to see the next installment when I post it.
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/j2bt8z/pretentious_fiancée_blackmailed_coerced_to_strip