Mara held the micro thong up closer to the camera.
Calling it a thong was generous. The front was a triangle of black mesh smaller than her palm, connected to strings so narrow they looked less sewn than drawn. She turned it over. The back amounted to one strand and a knot.
She stared at it.
“Somebody designed this.”
Chat immediately began moving too quickly to follow.
“Somebody had a meeting about this. There was a prototype. There is probably a factory somewhere producing these with quality-control standards.”
She flattened the mesh against her thigh for scale.
It covered almost nothing there.
Against what she’d spent the last hour doing to herself, it was going to cover considerably less.
Mara looked down at herself, then at the thong again.
“No. Absolutely not.”
Chat celebrated as though she’d agreed.
She laughed.
“I didn’t say yes.”
PUT IT ON
PUMP AGAIN FIRST
MAKE IT WORSE
That last one got her.
Mara looked into the camera.
“You’re bad people.”
She reached for the laptop anyway.
The screen rotated until the webcam faced the beige wall.
Chat erupted.
“Oh, calm down. You’ve seen drywall before.”
The little red recording light remained on. So did the microphone.
Mara moved away from the laptop.
She liked this part more than she’d expected.
Not pumping itself, exactly. She liked knowing they knew what she was probably doing without being allowed to watch it happen. Fabric moved somewhere beyond the camera’s narrow field. The chair creaked. Something plastic clicked once.
Chat filled the empty picture with theories.
Mara read several from where she sat outside the frame.
One made her laugh.
Another earned an incredulous, “Absolutely not.”
Mostly she let them wait.
The pump had already left her sensitive from the earlier rounds. She didn’t need much now. Every cycle made the same body increasingly exaggerated, and she wanted the next reveal to make the garment look as ridiculous as it deserved.
She took her time.
Longer than necessary.
Partly because chat hated waiting.
Partly because she didn’t.
The repeated pressure had left her warm and heavy between her thighs, and she let herself hover at that bright edge where pleasure stopped feeling recreational and started demanding an ending.
Not yet.
Mara pulled back.
Breathed.
Waited for the urgency to soften.
Then did it once more.
By the time she stood, her legs felt faintly unreliable.
“Okay,” she murmured to nobody.
The micro thong was worse than she’d imagined.
Getting it on required several attempts to figure out which string belonged where. The front triangle resisted sitting flat against her pumped body. Each time she arranged one edge, the other surrendered.
Eventually Mara stopped trying to make it respectable.
She rotated the laptop back.
The response was immediate.
Mara hadn’t even completely sat down before chat became unreadable.
She knew what they were seeing.
Her face was warmer than before. Her breathing hadn’t entirely returned to normal. The little triangle of mesh stretched across temporary fullness it had plainly never been designed to accommodate, dark fabric becoming almost translucent where it pulled tight. One edge had already slipped inward.
Mara looked down.
Then back up.
“This is a scam.”
Chat disagreed enthusiastically.
“No. Objectively. Eight dollars.”
She pinched the front between two fingers and tried to reposition it.
The mesh moved.
She released it.
It returned almost exactly where it had been.
“Eight dollars for something that can’t perform its only assigned task.”
She stood and turned.
The string at the back had disappeared almost completely between her cheeks.
Mara glanced over one shoulder toward the mirror.
“Oh, that’s useless.”
The fact that she sounded genuinely offended by the garment made chat worse.
She sat again, crossed one leg and adopted the serious expression of a woman evaluating sensible consumer goods.
“All right. Proper review. Waistband: too low. Construction: largely theoretical. Comfort—”
She shifted.
The front moved again.
Mara paused.
“—developing concerns.”
Chat flew past.
She continued anyway.
“Practicality: none. You cannot wear this to work. You cannot wear it to the grocery store. I don’t think you can walk quickly in it.”
THATS NOT WHAT ITS FOR
“Then we’ve discovered false advertising, because the website absolutely called it underwear.”
She adjusted the front once.
Then again.
The third time it slipped, she simply looked down at it.
The mesh had worked partly aside.
Mara could fix it.
Everyone watching knew she could fix it.
She didn’t.
That was becoming one of her favorite little distinctions.
An accident happened.
Then there was a moment in which Mara could undo it.
Then there was the decision not to.
She settled farther into the chair.
Heat had collected everywhere now. Beneath her breasts. Behind her knees. Along the crease where her thighs met her body. Yesterday’s musk had never completely disappeared, and tonight’s sweat had awakened it rather than replacing it.
When she shifted, a small pocket of trapped air escaped from beneath the little scraps of fabric.
Mara smelled herself.
She stopped.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
The scent was warmer than it had been when the stream began. Old sweat layered with fresh sweat, skin that hadn’t seen soap since before yesterday’s errands, the intimate sweetness and tang she’d learned to recognize in the thrift-store fitting room.
Her body smelled increasingly lived in.
Mara inhaled again before remembering the camera.
Chat noticed.
Of course it did.
THAT FACE
Mara’s mouth twitched.
“What face?”
YOU SMELLED YOURSELF
“I moved.”
YOU DID IT AGAIN
Someone else:
do you actually LIKE being unwashed
That one stayed visible long enough for her to read it twice.
Mara leaned back.
The easy answer was a joke.
The easier answer was no.
She could explain the whole thing away as laziness.
Instead she looked down at herself.
Sweaty skin.
Tangled hair.
Ridiculous underwear.
A body she’d deliberately brought onto camera without first erasing the previous day from it.
“Yes.”
Chat slowed for perhaps half a second.
Mara surprised herself with how little difficulty the word caused.
“Yeah. Apparently I do.”
The messages began pouring in again.
She talked over them.
“Not because I want to smell terrible.”
She lifted one shoulder.
“I just like smelling like me.”
Saying it aloud was different.
In the fitting room, she’d only had to admit it to a mirror.
Here, hundreds of adults heard it at once.
Mara felt heat rise through her chest that had nothing to do with pumping.
She smiled despite herself.
“It gets stronger. Different. I don’t know. It’s interesting.”
That sounded hopelessly inadequate.
Chat didn’t seem to mind.
Mara shifted again, deliberately this time, catching another trace of herself.
Her eyes closed for barely a second.
A tip notification sounded.
Green dot.
A significant amount.
Still no message.
Mara opened her eyes and looked at the username.
The timing registered.
Not while she stood and showed them the micro thong.
Not while everybody begged her to bend.
Now.
After she’d admitted something that still felt strangely private.
She stared at the green dot for a second.
“Thank you.”
Nothing.
Mara smiled faintly.
Weird.
She didn’t give it more than that.
Her fingers returned to the displaced edge of the micro thong.
When she pulled the mesh aside to straighten it, she felt just how damp the fabric had become.
She rubbed thumb and finger together once.
Then realized exactly what she’d done.
Chat was already reacting.
Mara glanced toward the camera.
“No.”
The answer came before anyone had finished asking.
She stood.
“Absolutely not. You don’t get everything.”
That produced outrage.
Good.
She stepped just outside the webcam’s field.
The audience could still hear her.
Mara looked at the moisture shining faintly across her fingertips.
Her first instinct wasn’t embarrassment anymore.
It was curiosity.
She brought her fingers beneath her nose.
Warm, intimate musk.
Sweat.
A sweet-tangy edge that had become unmistakably hers.
Her pulse jumped.
She smelled them again.
Slower.
“Jesus,” she whispered.
Chat immediately demanded to know what she was doing.
Mara ignored it.
She touched the tip of one finger to her tongue.
Just enough to taste.
Salt first.
Then the more complicated tang of her own body.
She dragged the finger farther across her tongue, then the next, cleaning the dampness from them slowly because nobody could see her and because she suddenly didn’t want to rush.
The taste was neither shocking nor exotic.
That was part of what made it erotic.
It was simply her.
Warm, salty, musky evidence that she was living inside an actual body instead of the sanitized version she usually presented online.
Mara sucked the last trace from one fingertip and let it slip from her lips.
Her eyes closed.
Not long.
Enough.
The chat was losing its mind at the empty chair.
Mara laughed softly.
They had no idea.
That was better.
She wiped nothing.
Simply stepped back into frame and sat down as though she’d gone to adjust something off-camera.
Chat attacked immediately.
WHAT DID YOU DO
“What?”
WE HEARD YOU
“You heard absolutely nothing useful.”
WHY ARE YOU BLUSHING
“Poor lighting.”
The ring light was directly in front of her.
Nobody accepted that answer.
Mara reached for the fifth garment.
“Moving on.”
The pearl-string thong emerged from its little tissue sleeve with almost ceremonial absurdity.
Mara held it up.
A line of faux pearls hung between an elastic waistband, graduated slightly toward the center. No fabric panel. No gusset. No attempt whatsoever to pretend it belonged in the same category as the cotton thong from earlier.
Mara turned it in front of the light.
“This is a sex toy with a clothing tax.”
Chat approved.
She found a cardboard tag still hanging from one side and squinted at it.
“Wait.”
Mara leaned closer to the laptop.
“This shipped internationally.”
She held the tag toward the camera.
“Somewhere there is a customs declaration for this.”
The realization delighted her.
“What do you even write? Novelty undergarment? Decorative beads? Poor decisions?”
Chat offered worse possibilities.
Mara laughed and turned it over.
The green dot remained silent.
She glanced at it once.
Then away.
“Camera’s going.”
The outrage began before she even touched the laptop.
“Yes. Again.”
Mara rotated the view toward the wall.
“You know the system.”
They did.
That was precisely why the waiting had become more charged each time.
She disappeared.
The pumping cycle was stronger now mostly because everything was already sensitized. Mara didn’t need or want the same procedural repetition. She let the equipment do its work while she concentrated on sensation, then backed off before pleasure could resolve itself.
The important part was what happened when she came back.
She knew it.
Chat knew it.
Mara let them wait an extra thirty seconds anyway.
When the camera returned, she was standing.
The pearl string was already on.
For once, Mara didn’t immediately joke.
The result was strange enough to silence even her for a moment.
The waistband sat low across her hips. The strand of pearls descended over her visibly pumped body, offering almost no coverage at all. The smooth beads looked decorative against the flushed fullness beneath them, less like underwear than jewelry placed somewhere jewelry had no practical reason to be.
Mara stared at herself in the mirror.
Chat moved furiously beside her.
She didn’t read it.
She shifted her hips slightly.
The pearls moved.
Cool beads dragged across overheated skin before warming almost immediately.
Mara’s breathing changed.
She adjusted the strand.
Not for the audience.
For herself.
One bead settled somewhere especially sensitive and stayed there.
Mara froze.
Her lips parted.
The room seemed abruptly much quieter despite chat continuing to move on-screen.
She shifted a fraction of an inch.
The bead moved with her.
“Okay.”
Her voice came out lower than expected.
Mara looked at herself again.
Messy hair.
Sweaty chest.
No makeup worth mentioning.
A body exaggerated by repeated pumping.
An absurd pearl string doing absolutely nothing to hide it.
She wasn’t posing anymore.
That was why the next tip startled her.
Green dot.
Large.
No message.
Mara looked toward the screen.
Then back at the mirror.
A thought occurred.
She smiled.
“You only spend money when I’m ignoring you.”
Nothing.
Mara waited.
Still nothing.
“Fine.”
She laughed softly and returned her attention to the mirror.
That was enough.
She turned once for the camera eventually, because this was still technically a try-on stream. The strand disappeared between her cheeks, reappeared at the waistband, and otherwise accomplished very little.
Mara bent to retrieve the abandoned micro thong from the floor.
The pearls shifted forward.
One smooth bead pressed more firmly against her.
She stayed bent longer than necessary.
Not for chat.
At least not entirely.
When she straightened, one hand rested briefly against her lower stomach while she regained her composure.
“Three out of ten.”
Chat objected.
Mara shook her head.
“As underwear? Three.”
She considered.
“As an object with unrelated ambitions?”
Her mouth curled.
“Higher.”
That was all they got.
She sat and let the pearl strand remain in place another minute, enjoying the subtle pressure more than she intended to admit.
Then she reached for the final package.
“Last one.”
Chat immediately accelerated.
Mara opened it.
The crotchless thong looked almost respectable after the pearls. Black lace waistband. Narrow back. Deliberately open center.
She held it up.
“This has more fabric than the last one and somehow less underwear.”
She examined the construction.
“At least this one is honest.”
Someone asked what she meant.
Mara stretched the opening between two fingers.
“It knows why it’s here.”
The room reacted accordingly.
Mara laughed.
She turned the camera away one final time.
This change didn’t require another pump.
She was already as full as she intended to become tonight.
Instead she took her time removing the pearls.
One bead dragged across her as the strand came away, making her inhale sharply.
Then the crotchless thong went on.
When she rotated the camera back, Mara was sitting sideways on the chair.
The garment framed rather than covered.
The lace hugged her hips and disappeared between her cheeks, but the center was deliberately absent.
For the first time all evening, the thong didn’t have to fail.
It had been designed that way.
Mara looked down.
“So technically this is the best-engineered one.”
Chat disagreed for reasons having nothing to do with engineering.
She tried to continue.
“Waistband is better. Lace is actually softer than the second pair. No gusset, obviously, which I feel is an important thing to mention in a review—”
Mara stopped.
Her hand had moved behind her.
Almost absentmindedly.
Her fingertips found the base of the plug.
The audience couldn’t see exactly what she had touched.
But they saw her face change.
Mara went still.
The plug had been inside her through the entire stream.
With everything else happening, she’d largely stopped thinking about it.
Now the open construction of the thong meant there was nothing between her fingers and its base.
She touched it again.
Chat noticed the silence.
what
Mara read the message.
“Nothing.”
Nobody believed that.
She leaned back.
Her fingers remained behind her.
The fitting room returned to her in a rush of sensory memory: damp leggings on the bench, her own lower-body musk trapped in the little room, realizing she’d wanted to investigate rather than escape it.
Mara swallowed.
Then looked directly at the camera.
“This may stop being an underwear review.”
Chat exploded.
Mara laughed once.
“Nobody look surprised.”
She hooked her fingers around the plug’s base.
This time the camera stayed exactly where it was.
Mara didn’t need to give them a perfect view.
Her reaction mattered more.
She removed it slowly enough that her concentration became visible. When it came free, she held it in one hand and looked down at it.
Warm from her body.
Faint sheen across the surface.
More lived-in than yesterday’s fitting-room version because Mara herself was more lived-in tonight.
She stared.
Then brought it closer.
Chat realized what she was doing about half a second before she did it.
Mara smelled the plug.
Her eyes closed.
The scent was stronger.
Sweat.
Warm skin.
Ass musk.
The faint dirty undertone she’d learned yesterday didn’t frighten her nearly as much as she’d always assumed it should.
If anything, the fact that it was stronger tonight made her pulse accelerate.
She smelled it again.
The chat was almost impossible to read.
Mara opened her eyes.
“Yeah.”
She sounded slightly surprised by herself.
“Still like it.”
Someone asked the inevitable question.
did you prep first
Mara saw it.
Ignored it.
Another person asked.
Then another.
DID YOU DOUCHE
She looked at the screen.
The room became strangely intimate again.
Mara could lie.
Instead she said:
“No.”
For perhaps a second, chat stopped.
Then everything accelerated at once.
Mara held up one hand.
“I didn’t forget.”
That changed the reaction further.
She looked at the plug in her other hand.
“I usually do.”
Her voice had lost most of its joking tone now.
“Every time. Because it makes everything predictable.”
She rolled the plug slowly between her fingers.
“But yesterday I realized I’d spent a lot of time treating anything my body does naturally like something I have to remove before I’m allowed to enjoy it.”
She glanced toward the camera.
“So tonight I wanted to know what happens if I don’t.”
A pause.
Mara gave the smallest shrug.
“I wanted to let my body be a body.”
The words hung there.
A notification sounded.
Green dot.
One of the largest tips of the night.
No message.
Mara looked at it.
Then smiled.
Not seductively.
Almost helplessly.
“You’re weird.”
The green dot remained silent.
Mara smelled the plug one final time.
Set it carefully on a towel beside the chair.
Chat immediately began demanding suggestions for what came next.
Mara read several.
“No.”
More suggestions.
“No.”
She reached out of frame.
When her hand returned, it held a bottle of lubricant.
Chat exploded.
Mara looked at the bottle as though she’d never seen it before.
“Huh.”
Someone typed:
WHY WAS THAT ALREADY THERE
Mara ignored them.
She reached out again.
A toy appeared.
Not enormous.
But very obviously unrelated to evaluating underwear.
The messages became unreadable.
Mara placed it beside the lubricant.
Another comment:
YOU PLANNED THIS
“I planned a thong review.”
She reached down beside the chair.
Something heavier shifted out of frame.
Chat became even louder.
Mara looked directly into the camera.
“I contain multitudes.”
Then she stood, disappeared partly out of view, and grabbed something large enough that the microphone picked up its legs scraping across the floor.
The sex chair entered the frame.
For a moment nobody typed anything coherent.
Mara dragged it into position beside her regular chair, hair falling over her face, the crotchless thong still on, her body flushed from pumping and her apartment already looking considerably less organized than it had when the stream began.
She straightened.
Looked at the chair.
Looked at the toys.
Looked toward the laptop.
The original underwear haul had finally lost whatever remained of its alibi.
Mara smiled.
“Okay.”
She put one hand on the back of the sex chair.
“Now we have a problem.”