Are You Tiffani Caine? Ch. 04

Author's Introduction: This work in its entirety is dedicated to KF, whose life was brutally unfair and far too short. I will always remember you, always love you, and always miss you. Rest now, my brother. You've earned your peace.

This is the fourth chapter in an ongoing series. I expect each chapter to vary in themes, fetishes, and even category, and for that reason I intend to state at the beginning of each chapter what readers can expect to see. So, here goes:

Are You Tiffani Caine? Chapter 4 deals with non-consensual elements (blackmail, non-violent coercion), female-male sex, female-female sex, interracial, D/S, female masturbation, drug and alcohol use, (Christian) faith being tested, explicit description of meals, and severe emotional trauma around relationships.

I welcome feedback, positive or negative. If you want a response, either leave a comment at the end of this story or email me at the address on my profile page.

All fictional characters that I made up in my head as fiction who engage in fictional sex are over 18 fictional years of fictional age fiction fiction fiction.

Up next: That Damned Blessing, Chapter 4.

Are You Tiffani Caine? Chapter 4

By Senor Smut

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end

- Semisonic

Sunday, April 25

It was an emotionally exhausted Sara who dragged herself into her apartment when her date was done. Marku had been nice - wonderful - but she had still been forced to be a whore. Worse still, she had risked her life by planting a bug in the home of a man who, she was assured, would inflict terrible things on her if she was caught.

Bath. She needed a bath. As she ran the water and watched the suds grow from her bath bomb, she texted the Muskatrixes that she was home safe. Of course they peppered her with questions about how it had gone; Sara wished she could tell them that it had been horrifying, but she wasn't a liar when she could help it, so she could only reply that it had gone surprisingly well and she would give them more info the next time they got together.

Samantha, the woman who ran her escort agency, called too. She wanted Sara to know that Marku had given her another rave review and to ask how she was doing. Sara was too numb for the moment to get into it with her pimp, so she she told her she was good and glad to be home, and then settled into her tub with closed eyes for a long soak.

It was over twenty minutes later when the phone rang with an unidentified number. She let it ring once, twice, three times, and finally answered. "Hello."

"Are you Tiffani Caine?" came the disguised voice.

She surprised herself by feeling absolutely nothing when she said, "Yeah."

"I take it you survived the night. Were you successful?"

"Yeah," she repeated. "It's under a plant stand a few feet away from the desk."

"Wonderful. Were you spotted?"

"Not as far as I know. I was careful."

"Excellent, we knew you could do it. Dahlia tells me that you did very well with the other part of your assignment."

"I did as well as I could. If it wasn't good enough there's nothing I can do about it now." She paused, then added, "Marku seemed pleased. He gave me gifts and another huge bonus."

"And he indicated he'd like to see you again?"

"Yeah."

"Very well. If we need you again, we'll be in touch. Thank you Tiffani."

"If you need me again..."

The line was dead.

If they need me again? What the heck does that mean? Always before calls had ended with taunting threats of future contact, not some conditional maybe. Was she just told this ordeal was over? It seemed impossible, but what else could it mean? "If they need me again..."

Was she free?

She almost vaulted from the tub, her heart surging. She wrapped a towel around herself and moved with nervous aimlessness from room to room in her small place, trying to make sense of it. The Caller had no reason to let her go, unless...unless maybe this date with Marku was the reason she had been blackmailed in the first place? If they knew Marku was coming, knew his desires for a born-again virgin, and knew they wanted a bug placed, then maybe - maybe - this was really it!

Her wandering turned to dancing. There was no other way to express her joy. She spun and jumped, her old ballerina training coming to the surface. Along the way her towel hit the floor and she pirouetted naked in her living room, giggling and smiling so big it hurt. Before she knew it her giggles had turned to laughter, and she spent the next half an hour giddy to the point of silliness.

At last, though, she calmed down enough that reality started to penetrate her gleeful fog; the Caller really hadn't said that things would be different, or even implied as much. In fact, he might call back in two minutes and bring her crashing down again with new orders. But he had given her hope that her nightmare might be over, and that was more than she'd had since it started. She talked herself down from her irrational summit but she couldn't wipe the smile off her face. Maybe...

But she couldn't spend the whole day bouncing around her apartment nude, she had things to do. Groceries, a Walmart run...and preparing for the meeting with Samantha. That one was puzzling. She had no intention of ever taking another job from an escort agency, but she'd been told she had to obey the agency's orders, and the chief of the agency wanted to meet her. No choice. But how does one dress to meet a madame of high-class whores?

She would be going to the Dahlia office after work on Tuesday, so maybe she should just wear a work dress? But all of her work dresses were frumpy Christianwear (Frumpy? Why did I think that?) and she didn't think those were appropriate to the occasion. Not that she ought to care what Samantha thought of her, but...well, she kind of did. Nobody wanted to make a bad impression, and who knew what the Caller really had planned for her? It could be that a good relationship with Samantha might end up being important to her well-being at some point, and there was no point in burning bridges...right?

Maybe she could wear the dress that Marku bought her? No, that was ridiculous - she would be walking from her work several blocks to the escort agency and there was no way she could keep her butt covered in that dress over that distance. And besides, just because she was interviewing with an escort agency didn't mean she had to look like a hooker. No, she'd pick up a new outfit, something classy but not overly concealing. And hey, if she bought a good one, maybe she would even be willing to wear it to work sometimes...

She wound up at Ridgedale Mall again - there was a Nordstrom for her work clothes and two sporting goods stores to buy something to climb in for her Saturday date with Méabh, which she found herself looking forward to. Climbing was one of those things she wanted to share with Isaac, but he wasn't interested; besides, he was a strong believer that Christian woman should never wear pants, and you couldn't exactly scale a rock face in an ankle-length dress. Getting out there with a girl would be fun. Then too, Méabh was fun and hot. Hot? Get a grip, girl!

Normally she would never have considered shopping at Nordstrom because it was too expensive, but now she was up $8,000 even after paying off her lingerie and evening dress debts. She could afford it. And it was even fun to look through high-quality clothes that had more variety than the normal dresses she wore everywhere. She wound up with a medium gray suit with white pinstripes, including a high-waisted belted skirt that came to just above the knee and a cream-colored blouse with a narrow plunge neckline. It would be shocking to anyone at church, but it would be considered conservative at her workplace - and besides, she liked it a lot. On the spur of the moment she grabbed another outfit consisting of a knee-length navy blue pencil skirt and a sleeveless white blouse - maybe she'd have the courage to wear that one too; after all, she worked hard at keeping her arms strong and toned.

She also had fun buying the clothes for climbing. Once more the people at church would be scandalized, but it was just loose, rugged, almost shapeless pants and an equally baggy tee shirt, both in muted browns. Sure they would reveal that she had a woman's body, but what was wrong with that? There was nothing sexy about them, and in fact they were utilitarian and anti-erotic. She finished the outfit with a pair of bright red barefoot climbing shoes that added a dash of color to the ensemble. On the way to the cash register she spotted a cute pink hoodie and added that to the pile - it was still April in Minnesota after all.

She dropped the businesswear off at the 24-hour dry cleaner near her house and did the rest of her shopping. On the way home she swung by the Middle Eastern place and bought a large kebob plate and the inevitable baba gannuj appetizer. She normally tried not to eat out alone because she wanted to save money, but what did that matter now? She had more money than she knew what to do with.

She had just finished putting groceries away when Isaac texted to ask if it was OK to call, and a minute later she was settling into her sofa, putting her feet up on her coffee table, and saying hello to her fiance.

"How are you feeling, babe?" he asked, concern obvious in his voice.

"I'm better, a lot better. I probably could have come to church today but I didn't want to risk throwing up." In fact she had been frolicking with Marku during church, but that was another damning secret she needed to keep and another dirty little lie she needed to tell.

"With you in the front row, it would have been hard to hide a big ol' upchuck," he admitted. "I missed you though. It's not the same, being behind the pulpit and not seeing you there."

"I know. I'm sorry. I'll be front and center next week. How did it go?"

He told her in some detail about his preaching, the effect that it had, and how it was received. She was proud of him for doing so well, but the knowledge that while he was preaching she was bending over in front of Marku and showing her ass in that ridiculous dress was biting.

When he had finished his story, she said, "I love you, Isaac. I miss you. Can we get together tomorrow evening?"

"Dinner?"

"Sure. You pick the place."

"I'm kind of hungry for a steak. How does that sound?"

It sounded good to her, and they spent the next hour on the phone talking about all sorts of things, most of which wound up circling around to their wedding and their life together afterward. It was a nice conversation, but it would have been nicer if they could have talked about her needing sex that he refused to give. Sara didn't really feel like she had the moral standing to raise the topic at the moment, and Isaac seemed keen to avoid it. It would have to be resolved sooner rather than later - maybe as soon as tomorrow - but not right now. Finally they had to say goodnight because Sara needed to prepare for work the next day, but even their goodbyes were lingered over.

When she had finally hung up Sara went about all her Sunday night chores, but her mind was preoccupied with a single question: where was all the guilt? She had done terrible things and reveled in them, looked forward to them, instigated them. She had whored, she had cheated on her fiance, and she had assumed that the regret would be crushing today - but it simply wasn't.

It wasn't that she was proud of what she had done. She knew she had done wrong and she wished she hadn't. She knew she would have to pray for forgiveness and make it up to Isaac, even if he wasn't aware of her transgressions. But she didn't really feel bad about anything that had happened, and that was disconcerting. She needed guilt and it wasn't coming.

Of course the Lord had told her to go through with all this rather than face the alternative, but that didn't mean she had to like it. She was sure it was a test, and to pass the test she needed to hate it. But she had asked the Lord for that, hadn't she? She had prayed to detest what Marku was doing to her and instead she had orgasmed. Was that her own failing? Was it Satan's influence? Or was it another test to see if she would embrace the pleasure or return to her upright ways when it was done? She needed clarity, and that could only come through prayer.

Her Bible time that night was taken up with James, with Romans, and especially with First Corinthians, which addressed sexual temptation specifically. At any other time, she would have felt these books speak directly and clearly to her, but now for some reason they felt confusing and muddled. Everything she read demanded that she feel remorse for her deeds - or at least for enjoying them - but her heart couldn't hear them.

Prayer. She needed prayer and not reading. Her pleas were fervent and self-abasing, begging the Lord to tell her heart what do feel, what to do, how to proceed. After almost thirty minutes no clarity had come. She tried again, tried to be humbler, tried to be more focused in her prayer, but all she heard was the echoes of her own thoughts. There was no guilt and no shame.

But maybe that was the answer after all? She had prayed for guidance at every step of the way, and the Lord had told her to carry on each time. She was sure she had done His will, no matter how counter-intuitive it seemed at the time, and still seemed even now. She was demanding to regret being an instrument of the one who had made her soul. What pride! What arrogance! To question what she received from Him was the worst thing she could do.

She prayed again, buy this time her prayers were for forgiveness for her doubt and her hubris in presuming to question His plan for her. When she turned out the light and put her head on her pillow, her hear was at peace and her mind was untroubled.

That night she dreamed of a man who might have been Isaac or might have been Marku or might have been no one in particular, ravishing her and making her love every second of it.

Monday, April 26 - Friday, April 30

Monday was another crap day at work. In the morning Ken raked her over the coals for having the temerity to actually use her paid time off the week before. Then the CEO of one of her clients (a small technical services company in Colorado Springs that was way more trouble than it was worth) raked her over the coals for not responding to an email that it turned out he never sent. In the afternoon Josh came back from a meeting with Ingers-Stevens in a tizzy because his presentation had contained erroneous data and outdated information, and he tried to blame Sara until she convinced Natalie that she hadn't even worked on it; still Ken was furious and forced Sara to spend most of her afternoon cleaning up Josh's mess - again.

Sara was so irritated that she caught herself contemplating how she had made four months worth of her Danforth wages in two evenings and a morning, and all she had to do was eat good food, go to a party, and fuck a guy she ended up liking. She was appalled when she realized what she was thinking. What she had done was horrible and wicked, and Danforth was honest work, even if she was miserable doing it. She couldn't let herself start positively comparing escorting to anything.

She met Isaac for steak at a nice steakhouse just three blocks down the street from the hotel where she'd had sex with Marku. It was disconcerting, but she felt like she needed some disconcertion on the topic. The place had a Cajun theme and was far more expensive than the places they usually went, but Isaac was in the mood to splurge; and besides, Sara wasn't worried about money at the moment. They got an order of Cajun chicken wings as an appetizer; Isaac ordered the strip with mushroom sauce, while she got the filet cooked rare.

As they waited for their food, they quickly addressed the topic that had been vexing them - his unwillingness to make love to her - found that neither had changed their position, and decided not to get into it. On the one hand it was a relief to avoid it because she really didn't want to have the same fight again for the same result, but on the other it was just getting her more and more irritated. It felt like he wasn't hearing her, or if he was hearing her, he wasn't putting any effort into understanding. It felt belittling, and she got enough belittlement at work. Still, the meal was entirely pleasant, comradely and enjoyable - but that was all it was. They weren't connecting the way they used to and the way they needed to if their marriage was going to work, and it left her with a sour feeling that she carried even after they had chastely kissed each other good night.

One thing she didn't address was breaking up with him like she had talked to Kait about. She would have to do that if the Caller kept whoring her out, but for the moment the possibility - maybe even the probability - existed that she was done with that. At the very least she was optimistic enough that the thought didn't even occur to her until after the meal was done and she realized she had to pick up her dry cleaning for the meeting with Samantha the next day.

Tuesday was a bright day forecast to be unseasonably warm. She felt extremely odd as she dressed in her new gray suit - instead of being concealed to her ankles by a shapeless dress, her legs were bared above the knee so that everyone could see she was wearing black stockings, and instead of being hidden her female shape was plainly on display. She spent the ride in worried about what her coworkers would say, but when she arrived the reaction was uniformly positive. People seemed to welcome her not dressing like a church lady and everyone was very complimentary; most people were polite and proper about it, but Josh just leered and smirked because he was a cretin. The day was again miserable, and she would have been glad when it was done but for the meeting that would come after.

She ate her dinner alone at a quiet restaurant where she thought she could avoid the attentions of men looking to score, but she still had to turn down five drinks purchased for her by businessmen as well as two determined pickup attempts by men way too confident of their dubious charms. It was nothing more than many women had to put up with when they went out alone, but she wasn't used to it because she seldom ate in restaurants by herself, and because her normal dresses afforded her something like invisibility to men like that. She really didn't know how to feel about it: on one hand it was annoying because all she wanted to do was eat in peace and get her head together for what was sure to be a challenging meeting, but on the other hand it was flattering to be the object of such attention from men who knew nothing about her other than her looks. She knew she shouldn't feel flattered about any male other than Isaac paying her such mind, but she couldn't help it. It was nice.

She arrived at Dahlia's offices five minutes before her 6:30 appointment. In fact she almost missed the office because there was no announcement of it besides a small brass plaque inscribed Dahlia Agency next to a nondescript door. She took a deep breath, made sure she was braced for something awful, and went inside.

As had happened with her dates with Marku, she wasn't sure what she'd expected, but what she got wasn't it. The waiting room she saw would have been perfectly suited to the office of an upscale psychologist: muted tones, a couple of high-quality loveseats, pleasant abstract art, and a sleek receptionist's desk that flanked a hallway heading deeper into the suite. Behind the desk was a pretty woman around Sara's age who looked like she might have had some Hispanic or American Indian heritage. She greeted Sara with a welcoming smile and said, "Hello. How can I help you?"