panes flanking the door.
Not any more, as Carrie discovered – after finding that the door was unlocked. Some work had been done in the offices. The walls were now eggshell and, with the exception of a small, dusty pile of debris, the office appeared ready to be leased.
For now, anyway, it was Carrie’s studio.
She chose the corner office, locked the door behind her, just in case, and placed her purse on the floor. She remembered the husband-and-wife team who had owned Yellow Gate and probably shared this office. They were an older couple who only ever spoke business when they rode the elevator with Carrie. The woman, middle-aged and impeccably dressed, was always fiddling with her earrings while her husband toyed with his Blackberry. They hadn’t looked happy, and yet they had worked together day in and day out in that office for over twenty years and always seemed to be a united front. The business had folded when they ultimately divorced. Rumours in the building whispered of a fling with the secretary, though no one was ever really clear whether it had been the husband or wife doing the flinging.
No one is ever what they seem, Carrie thought as she plucked the buttons of her blouse. A neighbour likes it rough, your boss likes to watch his wife getting fucked by another man, the janitor is into pegging, and the courier who needs a signature for those fun little accessories you ordered goes back to his truck and jerks off to streaming porn.
Once she was down to her bra and panties, she returned to her purse and collected her phone and the thick paperback she now carried with her everywhere. She hadn’t read a word. Reading wasn’t what she had bought it for. It was a makeshift tripod, and with it she could tilt the phone high enough to capture her entire body but omit her face.
She rested it on the floor and, having opened the application with a self-timer, pressed the button, then stood facing the trio of large windows, her back to the camera.
Three seconds.
As she ran her hand along the curve of her ass, she turned.
One second.
Growing hornier by the second, Carrie dug her fingers into the plump flesh.
Click.
She started the timer again. This time she stood in profile as she unhooked her bra.
Three seconds.
The garment buckled, and a shudder went through her as the cool air puckered her nipples.
One second.
The garment fell, and she cupped her breasts.
Click.
Once more, one last time. Only now she laid the camera flat on the floor and knelt. She set the timer and watched the woman pull aside her panties.
Three seconds.
With her free hand, she stroked one finger along her sex. On-screen, her bare pussy shone with the arousal she’d built up just in the last few moments.
One second.
She slipped one finger inside herself.
Click.
For a few seconds after the last shot, Carrie remained in her pose, watching the display that went on. Taking pictures at work had always proved problematic. By the time she had finished, she was always so horny she couldn’t wait to get home and finish off. Today at least she had a little bit of privacy.
Her eyes on the camera, she moved her fingers between her thighs. It was a ritual that had preceded technology: when she was younger, she used to prop a mirror between her legs and pretend it was someone else’s finger playing with her. Years later she’d tried a finger vibe, but in the end it was the fantasy of being toyed with by some unseen figure that made her come.
Behind two closed doors, she didn’t worry that anyone might hear the breathy little sounds she made. Each gasp of pleasure that followed the trail of her finger around her clit burst from the back of her throat.
The last thing she saw before the screen went to sleep was bare pink flesh shiny from contact with her sex.
She closed her eyes and sank on one hand. In her mind, a faceless stranger knelt behind her. She imagined his breadth and his strength eclipsing her. Her clit throbbed as she envisioned him mounting her. She pushed against her knees, rocking forward and backward to the motion of her hand, rubbing herself to match his unrelenting pace.
Unable to stay upright any longer, she bowed to the floor and pressed her face against the carpet. Her fantasy man grasped her hips and held her in place as he pumped her.
Her climax surged up and she squeezed her lips together to keep from screaming. The man of her imagination thrust hard one more time and vanished like dust. Everything vanished, everything but that throbbing burst of euphoria that held her in its grasp.
She rolled onto her side and sucked in a deep breath. Her fingers stilled around throbbing flesh. She threw her arm over her eyes, barring the light pouring in from outside. Blindly she felt around for her phone, then she peered at it from beneath her forearm.
Eighty-seven messages.
She posted her latest gallery and stretched out on the floor, too lethargic to get up. She knew that number would be more than doubled by the time she got home. It always did when she was feeling naughty at work.
I’ll have to rein it in before I get caught stripping and rubbing out at work, she thought as she headed home for the day.
The very thought of stopping bothered her. She liked the way she felt when she took her pictures. She liked the person she was in the pictures.
She had been nineteen when she’d first shared a grainy picture taken with an external webcam. She’d taken shots for boyfriends, and in her last relationship she had let Frank film her as she went down on him.
This was different. Taking them, sharing them was as exciting as foreplay. How could she get so turned on by the thought of someone out there, perhaps in some faraway country, getting off as he scrolled through a series of pictures of her stroking her wet pussy? How was it possible that posing alone in her living room, sunk into a chair with one leg slung over the arm and a camera between her thighs, made her so horny?
It had started when she stumbled across a blog linked by one of her favourite erotic writers. From there, she found blogs of women just like her, regular women and couples, who just liked sharing. She had been inspired by others who did it not for money but for the thrill of it.
The married couple who kept a sex diary of their swapping lifestyle, or the bisexual student who was cataloguing his post-small-town sexual experiences one Polaroid-style snapshot at a time. So many videos, photos and stories from ordinary people like her who were just eager to show off.
And so she’d started her blog, which she simply titled Dirty Pictures. She created a persona, Maggie, who liked to dress up in the most sinful lingerie and play with a collection of toys, who liked to show off for a faceless and adoring audience.
Dirty
