The damp heat oozed around my body, wrapping itself around me like an oven’s embrace. That clunky fan seemed to whirr in the distance somewhere across the dormitory, but the old relic had evidently lost the fight against nature. I was only one-quarter conscious, but I could tell that the tropical sun had come up and begun baking the city into yet another fiery day. Not one breath of air brushed my skin.

My navy blue dress clung to me as I lay there, face down on the bottom bunk, hands tucked beneath the cheap, worn pillow that was mine for the week. I’d crept into my hostel bed late the night before. I’d been too lazy, too tipsy and far too careless to change into something more comfortable. Perhaps something a little less tight.

I was tossing and turning my way through that untamed land between sleep and wakefulness. Immersed in a dreamy denial that daylight was now flooding through the windows. But still, some part of me knew that my hem had slid up. Right now I had my right knee bent and my left leg stretched out straight. Like some spiderly superhero scaling a wall, only horizontal. The tropical heat had made me do it.

Of course I shouldn’t have gone to bed in a dress like that. It wasn’t slutty, but it wasn’t exactly knee-length either. That thing is not designed for lying down in public, my sleepy brain protested. But I could hardly hear its voice. Not through that soupy semi-consciousness.

The way I was positioned, the bottom of the fabric wasn’t far south of where my butt turned to thigh. I could feel it stretching taut there, especially on the right side. Where I’d pulled up my knee. That was the side of the bed that opened out to the room.

Usually I strung up my beloved green and orange sarong at the end of the bed for a modicum of privacy. You never knew who might be coming or going in a backpacker place. But did I remember to do it last night? Something told me I hadn’t. It had probably been a dark fumble. I wouldn’t have wanted to wake the others. Even after a few beers, dormitory etiquette was second nature to me.     

Whatever. My head swirled. We were eight degrees south of the equator. Thirty degrees celsius. It felt like it was very early. Too early to reconstruct my evening. My tired body insisted it was the middle of the night, even as the brightness of a new day probed at my eyelids. I was still a sleepy mush.

I groaned and turned my head to face the wall, splaying my fingers wider under the pillow. The mattress was thin and lumpy. I turned on my side for a few minutes. Hotter. Sweatier. My thighs stuck together. My upper arms and my torso and my breasts broiled against each other.

Too much tacky skin on tacky skin: I couldn’t hold the position. I rolled back onto my stomach once more, spread my limbs out again. The Spiderman pose once more. That faint voice whispered something about my modesty, but lying this way was the only thing that worked right now.  

Sleep. Comfort. Cool. Air between my limbs. Nothing else mattered.

I drifted through the hazy syrup of hot morning slumber once more. That hem-line was still tight on my thighs.

I dozed dreamily on. Five minutes, ten minutes, an hour? Then came the draft.

A cool and gentle breeze from somewhere behind me. Refreshing as a forest brook, it gurgled up from beyond my bare toes, gliding over my heavy heels and tired calf muscles. It came and went, regular as the breath of a sleeping child. Had someone moved the fan?

I felt my legs open wider, urging the refreshment deep inside my sticky garment.

Deeper than...oh, my...I could really feel that. Like a touch, present and immediate, as if...Shit! I’d clearly found time to remove my underwear before collapsing into a coma last night.

Uh-oh. I was definitely more awake now.   

But fuck that felt good!  

I splayed my left knee a little more. And was that a soft sigh I just let out?

Where was my shame? Had this city and this country and this climate taken it prisoner? Shouldn’t I do something? Roll over at the very least? Oh, but that cool breath…

It was getting more intense. Or at least, more vivid to me. Now each waft was touching me intimately. The first few had stopped at my knees. The next wave had only run out of steam halfway along the soft, hungry skin of my inner thighs. Now the tiny gusts were hitting my pussy.

Each one still took its sweet, slow time to get there. It coursed a slow passage along my legs, like a lover’s soft hands. Then, it unfurled through the taut navy archway my dress had drawn. And finally it fell onto my inflamed vagina. It landed like the kiss of a feather.

I was instantly wet. I could feel the elemental clash of air and liquid meeting. Down there at my centre, it was simultaneously cool and warm. I shuddered in my torpor, and my fingers clawed at the clammy sheet.  

A soft whimper escaped my lungs. I didn’t know how this was happening, but it was okay if I was half-asleep, right? What happens in the tropics, stays in the tropics. Right? I hooked my right ankle over the edge of the bed. My legs couldn’t go much further apart than this.   

And then I froze awake. A new touch. Not just air, this time. The lightest of tugs at my hem. A finger — or a thumb, maybe — sliding beneath its strained fabric. What the…?

I tensed as I realized that the breeze up my skirt hadn’t come from the window or a fan. It was human breath. That of someone who’d been watching me. Somebody who must have been aroused by that indecent hemline, and perhaps by a glimpse of my red pussy in the shadow of my wicked, creeping dress. Someone who was caressing my right buttock with a single digit now.

I had no idea if anybody else was in the room right now. If there was, there was a good chance they were all still asleep. Was there an audience? Did my unknown morning visitor really think I was still asleep?

What would happen if I moved or cried out? Will this be taken from me?

I tried to stifle a moan as best I could. I hoped I was asleep. If that was the case, then I wasn’t responsible. Nobody could say I had been...well, nobody could judge me. Only the waking can be judged.  

Don’t say a word, Laura. Stay quiet as a mouse.

The beautiful, gentle breaths kept drizzling up my dress like honey falling onto strawberries. Yes, it was definitely a thumb hooked in there; I could feel the fingers splaying gently across the other side of the material. Another thumb joined it, gripping the left hem just like I gripped the head of the mattress underneath the pillow. Where nobody could see my white knuckles.

Fuck, who could it be? The hipster, chain-smoking Japanese guy in the top bunk opposite? The Australian with the magnificent stubble who’d smiled at me yesterday evening before losing himself in his phone instead of heading out with the rest of us? Someone I hadn’t crossed paths with yet?

Or what about the German artist with the short-cropped hair, the loose-fitting dress and those gorgeous tattoos all over her brown-tanned back and calves? We’d barely spoken thus far, but I was sure I hadn’t mistaken that fire in her eyes.

Maybe I didn’t want to know. Maybe I just wanted to wonder.

The hands were becoming forceful now. They were shoving my dress up to my waist. The pressure of the fabric was suddenly gone from where it had been. Now the tightness lay on my hips, while below that it was deliciously free. My entire bottom half was now naked, open for anybody in the room to ogle.

But I was asleep still. That’s what I would tell them.

The breathing between my legs suddenly stopped.

I stopped breathing, and waited.

The fingers of the hands on my behind curled into claws, the nails sinking calmly into the creamy flesh there. Gently they scratched their way down the backs of my thighs.

Not painful. But not to be argued with either.

They traced their way down my calves. I wondered if one of the hands would seek to straighten my left leg into a more natural position. But the right hand gripped my right ankle instead, pushing my right leg up to mirror my left. Now both legs were bent sideways at the knee, just like the elbow of both arms were. I was poised to swim like a frog.

And I could feel my pussy and my anus spread open like some perverted buffet on the bed.    

Don’t moan out loud, Laura. Hold yourself.

A weight and a creaking at the foot of the mattress.

Skin brushed the flesh of my inner thighs, pushing my frog’s legs uncomfortably far apart. Solid skin, with a slight rasp to the touch. In that moment I knew these were the fingers of a man.

Then my pussy felt his touch. Decisive and bold this time, two fingers nuzzling my wet, sticky opening. I could hear the squelch as they explored me. It sounded unnaturally loud in my head, that noise. So did the guttural cry that followed. It echoed around the room like I was standing at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. My entire body began to shudder in response. And the spasms got wilder, harder, more violent. The tired old bed squawked in protest, like a chicken being strangled. And on it went, until the entire scene began to shake and I could take it no more.

So much for the prologue! The rest of Out of Office is available free on multiple platforms via jamesgreyauthor.com