Enchanted Lounge
Copyright© 2026 by Danielle Stories
Chapter 2: The Hour of Skin
The click of the back room door was the loudest thing I’d ever heard.
I stood in the silence, a held-breath silence, the magnitude of what I was about to do pressing down on my shoulders like a physical weight. The dust motes hung motionless in the dim light filtering through the grimy front window. The figurines along the shelves, ceramic shepherds, porcelain dancers, glass animals, seemed to watch, their painted eyes following my every move.
The blouse fabric was heavy in my hands, damp and sour-smelling from the milkshake. I let it fall.
The soft whump it made against the wooden floor was obscenely loud, like my heartbeat made audible.
The air was cool against my exposed arms, raising goosebumps. I crossed them over my chest, a useless, instinctive gesture.
“It gets easier after the first layer.” Lila-Beth’s voice came from the velvet cushion, trying for reassurance. It only made the heat in my face burn hotter, a flush that crawled down my neck and chest.
“Have you done this before?” I snapped, not looking at the chair at those watching eyes.
“God, no. I’ve just ... had a lot of time to think about it. Bound to this damn thing. To imagine how this might go.” A pause. “In my head, people were braver.”
A choked sound that was almost a laugh escaped me. Almost.
My bra followed the blouse, familiar cotton, a shield, a declaration. Taking it off here felt like surrendering the last piece of me. I pulled it away in one swift, brutal motion and tossed it onto the pile.
Now it was just my jeans and a mile of naked, prickling skin.
The reality of it crashed into me with a physical wave of nausea and adrenaline. This wasn’t a bad dream. This was my body, in this dusty room, about to be offered up to something I couldn’t understand.
“You’re stalling,” Lila-Beth observed.
“I’m conducting a full existential review.” I kicked off my boots. They thudded dully. My socks came next, peeled off to reveal chipped black nail polish. My feet looked pale and alien on the dark floorboards.
Then the denim.
My thumbs hooked into the waistband of my jeans and the panties beneath. My throat was so tight I could barely swallow. I could feel the impression of the face in the cushion watching me, a silent, velvet witness to my unraveling.
“For the love of corn, Dawson, just do it!” Lila-Beth’s voice cracked with impatience, shredding the last of her calm. “It’s not like I haven’t seen a naked girl before! We went to the same gym! The communal shower trauma bond is real!”
Her exasperation, so normal, so gratingly human, was the final push.
I shoved denim and cotton down in one graceless, furious movement and stepped out of the tangled pile.
I stood there. Completely exposed.
The cool air touched places that had never felt so vulnerable, so seen. My skin felt like it was screaming. I’d never been so aware of the architecture of my own body, the jut of my hips, the curve of my spine, the sheer, undeniable there-ness of it all. I wanted to fold in on myself, to disappear into the cracks between the floorboards.
The baroque armchair waited for me, a throne of burgundy velvet and terrible promise.
Lila-Beth was silent. The hazel eyes on the armrest were closed.
I exhaled, a sharp, ragged sound. “Okay. Let’s just ... get this over with.”
The same inexplicable sensation swept over me again, in a current that sent shivers through my body. I felt a subtle, insistent pull as I turned toward the chair. The wooden floor felt unnervingly warm beneath my bare feet. Through the velvet, I could see the deeper, human depression of her mouth, an impression that seemed to hold a silent, waiting gravity.
My mind went blank, seized by complete and paralyzing panic.
If I let myself think any further about what I was doing, I would dash from the room and leave her trapped forever. So I forced my thoughts clear and lowered myself onto the cushion.
In that moment, my whole world changed.
I cannot explain what happened next. Words falter.
It was as if I entered some out-of-body state, rising above the chair, watching my own form being slowly, inexorably sucked into its embrace. Brief, fractured visions flashed before me: Lila-Beth on the chair beside me, her presence vivid and immediate. Then she vanished, and the clothes I had just taken off vanished with her.
They did not simply fade. They ceased dissolving into tiny particles of dust that settled silently on the floor. One moment, I was hyper-aware of their absence; the next, the very memory of wearing them seemed erased from the air. The pile was simply gone. A clean, absolute deletion that stole my breath more completely than the nudity had.
Then the velvet.
It wasn’t cold. It was warm. Almost body-warm.
And it moved.
A gentle, yielding ripple molded itself to the contours of my thighs, my backside, the curve of my spine. This was not like sitting on a chair. It was like being cradled by something alive and deeply, disturbingly attentive.
Then Lila-Beth moaned.
A low, shuddering, utterly involuntary sound that vibrated up through the velvet and into the very marrow of my bones.
“Ohm ... shit,” she gasped, her voice trembling, breathless. “That’s ... hah ... that’s way more intense than I thought it’d be.”
I went rigid, every muscle locking. “What does that mean?” My voice was strangled and high.
“The spell.” She panted. I could feel her not with my hands, but with my nerves struggling, rearranging. “It’s a circuit. It closed. I can feel you. Everywhere. Your heartbeat is so loud, your breathing, oh, God, are you blushing? I can feel the heat in your cheeks, it’s spreading down your neck.k”
Pure, animal panic shot through me. This wasn’t just contact. This was a violation of intimacy forced at the synaptic level.
“Nope. No. We are not doing this.” I planted my hands on the carved arms, preparing to launch myself off the warm, clinging velvet.
“WAIT!” Her voice was a whip-crack of desperation. “If you get up now, the spell resets! The whole hour starts over!”
I froze, half-crouched, my body arched in a ridiculous, vulnerable pose over the chair. The warmth beneath me was a seductive trap.
“You’re lying.”
“Do I sound like I’m lying?” She cried. I could feel her desperation, a cold, sharp splash in the pit of my stomach that wasn’t my own. It was her terror, mirrored and amplified in my gut, the thought of being left alone in the dark again.
With a groan that came from the depths of my soul, I sank back down. The velvet welcomed me, shaping itself to me once more. The warmth was undeniable. And God help me, not entirely uncomfortable.
A heavy, charged silence descended.
I was naked. Fused to a sentient chair that was a girl I barely knew. And I could feel the ghost of her awareness brushing against mine, a second shadow in my own skin.
Minute 7.
A sound. A low, rhythmic hum vibrated through the chair’s frame, a deep, resonant purr that buzzed against my bare skin.
I stiffened. “Did you just ... purr?”
The hum cut off abruptly. “No!”
“You did. I felt it. The chair purred.”
“It is a vibration spell.” Lila-Beth’s voice dripped with affronted dignity. “For comfort! It’s supposed to relax the sitter so they don’t bolt in the first thirty seconds! It’s not a purr.”
I shifted my weight deliberately. The vibration spell kicked back in a little louder this time.
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