The State - Chapter 2

The room was warm and plush, with a deep pile rug her bare feet immediately sank into. The robe Mara had been provided with at the front desk was made of an incredibly thick soft fleece material, and she luxuriated in the feel of it against her skin.

Mara had been looking forward to this for so long, it was hard to believe it was finally here. She hopped up on the massage table in the middle of the room, feeling its padded surface flex underneath her rump. She swung her legs happily.

Mara was startled as she caught movement in the room out of the corner of her eye. She jumped off the table to investigate, only to find herself face to face with herself. In a mirror. She exhaled shakily. Maybe she was a little more on edge than she thought.

It was weird to see her whole body in a mirror - all alone, with no one around. Without thinking, her hands moved to caress the soft fleece. She admired how it hung on her frame. The thick belt, knotted tightly, emphasised the curve of her waist, and the fabric flared over her hips. It looked good. She looked good. Her training kicked in and she turned from the mirror, cleansing the images from her brain.

Mara returned to the massage table. She could see a padded face-sized hole at one end, presumably for someone to rest comfortably face down. Where she would rest face down, she corrected herself, and allowed herself a little shiver of anticipation.

Peering through the hole, much to her surprise, she saw a mouthse. An odd location for one. Mara had only ever seen them connected to computers or on desks in school before. There was no keyboard in sight, and she definitely wasn't at school.

The State's Designers official name for the upgraded mouse was a stick, but it quickly became known as a mouthse in common parlance.

In the school computer room, the girls learned that the traditional mouse was an inefficient instrument. It occupied a hand that could otherwise be typing, and its replacement - a mouth-operated controller - had doubled typing speeds in pilot schools.

The operation was straightforward, though some of the girls found it a little tricky at the start. It was long, cylindrical, about an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, with a pliable rounded head.

Of course, as the tongue and lips have so many muscles, much better precision was possible with skilled manipulation of the mouthse than ever was available with the standard handheld mouse.

It was also considered that, with practice, movements would become intuitive. The girls were encouraged to explore the mouthse with their lips, teeth and tongues, to control on screen prompts, and specialist apps were developed to help gamify muscle strength & dexterity to improve control of this new hardware.

The hardware was such a success that the same interface was installed on every desk. The girls used it to select answers, navigate lessons, and submit their assignments. Its shape was so ordinary that, after a few weeks, nobody thought about it at all.

As a result, when Mara spotted the mouthse, her only thought was to wonder what it was to control in this particular context.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the soft click of the door latch. Marcus stepped into the room, with a self assuredness that made her heart jump against her ribcage. She felt a moment of unreality - the man - the boy?! - she'd looked at in the catalogue every night for months was actually here, in the same room as her.

Mara had committed each of his features to memory, but she was unprepared for seeing those features in motion, as he flashed her the same cheeky grin from his headshot. In that moment, everything felt very immediate. Colours seemed brighter and more intense. Suddenly she felt this was happening faster than she was prepared for. She became aware of a faint scent of of freshly washed laundry, layered over a deeper, harder scent, difficult to quantify.

"Happy Birthday," he said with another grin, walking towards her.

He stopped about 6 inches away from her knees. With a wave of heat, she realised this was the closest she had ever been to a man; other than her immediate family. At the same time, her brain registered the deep tonal nature of his voice, at odds with his rangy appearance.

"Lie down," he continued.

"What?," she stuttered, broken from her reverie.

"Lie down," he repeated, and flashed that grin again, making her knees feel slightly weak.

"Um. Face up or face down?," she asked.

"Down," he said simply, looking straight into her eyes. When she had settled in place she realised the knot on her robe was digging in to her belly.

"Um... Can I untie my robe?," she asked, a little unsure of what was allowed.

"Of course, that's up to you," he replied, and she thought she detected a note of amusement in his voice. She arched her butt into the air to make space for her hands, which fumbled at the knot.

"Here. Let me help." She felt his warm hands - with their long, strong fingers - slide over hers. He tugged the knot to the side, allowing her to lie back down while he worked on opening it. As his fingers deftly pried the knot apart he started to quietly explain what she could expect over the next while.

"Don't worry, you get to just lie there." The words fell sonorously from his lips, and she felt slightly dizzy.

"I will be giving you a massage, starting gentle at first. You will have full control - there is a mouthse installed in the underside of the table," as he gestured to the mouthse she had spotted earlier.

"This is how you will let me know if you would like deeper or more intense pressure. Much like the mouthse you are used to, different movements with your tongue, teeth & lips will create different responses. It is designed to be intuitive," he said languidly, "I expect you will be controlling it to your satisfaction in no time."

"It has been designed in this way to allow you full control without needing to find the words to express yourself - after a lifetime of being discouraged to express anything to do with your body, it is unlikely you would have the vocabulary to direct me. This will assist."

Mara nodded, as much as she could with her head snugly in the headrest. She admired the mouthse right in front of her - it was clearly a premium model, an upgrade from their basic classroom tech, and she looked forward to exploring this new interface.

The shape was generally familiar - an elongated, cylindrical shaft, slightly wider at the base, but it also had irregular lines running along the shaft, slightly raised. They reminded her almost of... veins was the closest approximation... but obviously they had a very specific control purpose. She looked forward to manipulating them to find out more.

The mouthse was much more finely detailed than the models she was used to, particularly around the rounded, cone-shaped head, which was slightly wider than the shaft, with a smoother surface and a small indent near the centre of the tip. The colour was also much more attractive than the standard issue plain pinky-peach. This model was a rich warm skin colour, slightly darker at the base, with a deeper hued head. She marvelled at the design; the mouthse truly was, as the Designers boasted, like an extension of your own body.

Her Teacher - Marcus - continued lazily, oblivious to her admiration.

"This is your time. Your gift. What you want in here is what happens. There is no right. Or wrong. There is no shame. We will enter into..." He paused, as if the words he had weren't quite right, "A dance, where you will be leading."

She interrupted him, mortified, but she just couldn't stand the heat any longer. The room was warm, but lying down in this fleece robe made it stifling.

"Um. I'm too hot. Could we - I don't know. Turn down the heating or something?." Her voice sounded squeaky in her own ears.

"The room temperature is set centrally." She could almost hear the frown of dissatisfaction in his voice.

"I've been assured it is optimal for your comfort level, but perhaps the designers weren't expecting so much..." He paused again. "Clothing."

Oh. Oh, she felt so foolish. How was he supposed to massage her when she was wearing a robe. No wonder he was amused when she said the knot was digging into her.

"Of course," she flushed, not that he could see her face, and started to attempt to pull her arms from the sleeves of the robe while still lying down. After a few seconds of flustered scrabbling, she heard Marcus's voice, quieter, close to her ear this time, mumuring.

"Can I help." It didn't sound like a question.

"Yes, please," she said a little breathlessly, cringing internally at how ridiculous she must look, prone, half tangled in the sleeves.

"Relax," she felt his warm breath on her ear. She took a deep breath & endeavoured to comply, resting her mouth on the mouthse, with its very comfortable indent for the tip of her tongue. It was warm, she noticed, probably due to the temperature of the room, and softer and more pliable than her school mouthse. She gave it an experimental lick. She heard a small intake of breath from behind her.

"Um. Is everything ok?," she asked, now fully naked on the massage table.

"Yes, very much so," said the Teacher. He paused again, "You have a beautiful round bottom."

She blushed at the compliment.

"Thank you." It was a recognition of all the hard work she'd put into her physicals in school, even though she knew she had been scoring well, it was different to hear it from an actual Teacher.

"I will start there," he murmured, almost to himself.

"The oil will be warm. Remember you have nothing to do but relax and enjoy. You also control the mouthse... But I think this will come naturally to you, it likely won't even require any active thought."

That was a funny thing to say, Mara thought, though she supposed it was true. Once the initial mouthse training was complete, using her school mouthse had become second nature to her.

Mara rested her mouth around the head of the mouthse again, as she felt Marcus's strong oiled hands run gently but firmly up her thighs and over her bum. Mmm. She sucked gently. The massage continued. Each time he ran his hands along her body, she sucked a little, and found that, unlike her school mouthse, this one wasn't rigidly affixed, it came into her mouth further as she sucked and pulled.

It only made sense, she surmised - at school they could simply lean further onto the mouthse to activate the controls towards the base of the shaft. Here her head was fixed in place, so she had to bring the mouthse to her.