As I told my story, my best friend Lynette's eyes grew wider with every passing moment. It was terrifying and humiliating, but at the same time I couldn't believe what a relief it was to finally talk about what Catherine had done to me. I had just admitted my most embarrassing personal secret to her, that when I was in college I had become the lesbian love slave of my then-roommate Catherine.

The moment that had propelled me to this wrenching of the biggest skeleton from my closet out onto the floor of Lynette's living room had happened the day before, when we and our husbands, Michael (mine) and Harry (hers) were all out on their boat. We had gone swimming off the boat at one point, and when I was climbing out of the water my bikini must have ridden up, because Lynette noticed my tattoo.

The tattoo is high up on my right buttock, in a spot the bikini had easily covered when I'd modeled it in the mirror before going out that day. Even with my bottoms out of place enough for her to see it, Lynette only saw that last word of what was written on me in red ink, the name Catherine in capital letters, and the lower edges of the smaller letters above it.

Of course, she was surprised to see another woman's name tattooed on my ass. She wanted to know what the other letters were. I broke into tears when she questioned me, and then she let it go. She apologized and didn't mention it again that day. She's my best friend in the world, and I loved her for dropping the subject the way she had, but after I got home that night I started to feel guilty. We were so close, I owed her an explanation.

That's how I ended up sitting in her living room the next day, telling her the gory details of the most humiliating episode of my life. I began by pulling down my shorts and panties enough to let her see the full text of the tattoo's horrible brand, "Property of" in tiny letters above the larger name she'd seen below: "Catherine".

I think it is fair to say that she was stupefied, and she didn't interrupt me as I told her the story of my college roommate Catherine. Lynette had stayed in our home town and attended the local community college after high school, but I had gone off to the biggest university in the state, five hours away. Just before the end of my first full year I had dropped out and moved home.

I'd never told anyone the truth about why I'd left school, and never imagined I ever would. I'd put the whole thing behind me, but somehow thinking about it after Lynette saw the tattoo I came to the realization that I needed to tell someone. I'd bottled up the truth for too long, and it wasn't something I could ever talk to Michael about, so I steeled myself and told her the whole sordid tale.

Catherine, the dormitory roommate the university assigned me, was a shy, attractive sophomore when I met her. She too had come from a smaller town hours away, but we never really hit it off. We had little in common, I'd come from a stable middle class family and she'd come from a rougher background altogether. I tried to connect with her, but I could never really get over her trashy appearance or style of speech.

That said, we had no problems co-existing as roommates. We didn't hang out with the same people, or really hang out together much at all, but it wasn't like we fought or anything. Sometime around the middle of my first semester, we even worked out an arrangement where we would take turns doing all of our laundry in the coin-op machines on the first floor.

You have to understand, I'd never even thought about another woman in a sexual way before then. But something happened to me when I started doing her laundry with mine, every other week. It was embarrassing to admit, but I became fascinated with Catherine's panties. Unlike mine, hers were a much racier style. Some of them were satiny, others were trimmed with lace. But there was more to it than that; I'd look at her underwear and find myself thinking about how she'd worn them, about how the piece of cloth in my hands had been nestled against her sex for a whole day.

Lynette's eyes bored into me with obvious curiosity then. My face was hot with my shame as I described to her how I'd first sniffed my roommate's worn panties. To my surprise I found myself getting aroused all over again as I told Lynette how I'd pressed my nose into Catherine's panties and stood there mesmerized. How I'd sniffed them until I had an orgasm on the spot, my fingers in my busy in my own underwear. How I'd gotten myself off sniffing my roommate's panties night after night for a week straight before Catherine had caught me.

She had left the room to go to her last class and I'd scooped up the pair she'd worn the day before. Clutching them to my face I'd masturbated to not just one orgasm, but a series, before falling asleep in my bed. When I woke up, Catherine had returned and was standing over my bed. She was staring at her panties, which I still held close to my face.

I was so humiliated. I was terrified at my perverse habit being discovered, at what Catherine's reaction would be, but she seemed to take it in stride. A strange determination came over her face. She reached down and lifted her underwear away from me, holding them between us as she locked her eyes on me.

"What were you doing, Allison?"

I remember wanting to just curl up and die. I could see in her face how much she looked down on me at that moment, and I couldn't blame her. Her eyes stayed on mine as she spoke, and I couldn't look away. "You've been getting yourself off with my dirty panties, haven't you?"

When I admitted it her jaw steeled, and I couldn't tell what she was thinking. I apologized, and then again. She just raised a finger and gestured for me to be quiet.

"I could tell the floor admin, you know? Imagine explaining to your parents how you got kicked out of the hall for sniffing your roommate's underwear. And you will, unless you do something for me. Do it right now," she told me.

I asked her what--no I begged to her to tell me what I could do to avoid being exposed. I'd do anything. Apologies and pleas for forgiveness tumbled from my mouth again, but she just ignored me. She demanded that I show her what I did, show her how I made myself cum with her panties. It was a humiliating idea, to be observed doing my perverse little ritual, but I would have done anything then if I thought I could save myself.

Catherine still held her panties and I waited for a moment for her to give them back to me, but she just shook her head and told me to get out of bed. I stood, wondering if she meant to watch me rummage through her hamper to find another pair, when she told me that she had a specific pair in mind. My heart had flip-flopped when she reached down and lifted the front of her skirt, exposing the satiny pair she had on.

Lynette stared as I explained how I'd found myself sinking to my knees in a daze in front of Catherine. How Catherine had smirked down at me the whole time, hands on her hips, as I pressed my face into her crotch. When I drew in that first deep breath through my nose, I was filled with her scent in a way sniffing her panties could never provide. Something happened to me then, something I'd never known to be part of my person took charge of me. I drew that fragrant female smell inside me and it made me feel like I never had before--not just aroused, but filled with fiery passion in an unthinking submissive way that felt automatic. My desire was undeniable, uncontrollable, irresistible.