Emily Rodgers was an unmarried woman of 27 who taught tenth-grade English at the local high school. She lived alone, with her two cats Jasper and Henrietta, in a small house that she owned, although there was quite a large mortgage on it.

She was brought up as a Catholic but would have to admit that she has lapsed.

She was probably quite attractive but it was hard to tell. She never wore any makeup and kept her mousy brown hair brushed back severely, either in a short ponytail or, more often, a bun.

Her figure was again hard to discern. She wore clothes that seemed designed to hide her body: blouses done up to the neck, baggy cardigans, below-the-knee straight skirts, and industrial strength brassieres that she wore to hide her embarrassingly large nipples which, in cold weather, protruded alarmingly. She was certainly neither fat nor thin, but there was no mistaking the fact that she had an ample bosom.

Her father died when she was very young from lung cancer and she was raised by her mother, a strict Catholic lady. She lived with her mother until she died three years ago, five years after being diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s.

She left Emily enough money in her will for a deposit on the small clapboard house where she now lived. She could only just afford the repayments but, fortunately, she lived very simply. Her only extravagance was to spoil her cats, who she doted on. She realized that they were substitutes for children and had come to terms with that.

In the three years since her mother’s death Emily had dated a total of three men, mostly set up by other members of the book club that she ran. All three relationships only lasted as long as it took the men to discover that Emily wouldn’t allow them to touch her in any sexual way, even over her clothes.

She was reasonably happy with her lot and had mostly accepted that, at the age of twenty-seven, she was unlikely to find love or marriage.

She would have been astounded to know that three of her regular pupils, two boys, and one girl, had sexual fantasies about her, all of which involved spanking.

There was one aspect of her life that worried her: Sometimes, at night, she had intensely erotic dreams and she woke from them with feelings in her breasts and ... lady parts. She was normally sweating, her heart pounding, and often she felt wet ‘down there’. The dreams involved unknown men doing unspeakable things to her and she had no idea where on earth the ideas came from.

Generally, she fought off the desire to touch herself, but occasionally she rubbed her ‘button’ tentatively. She knew that ‘self-abuse’ was morally wrong and her guilt stopped her from going further. Once, when she was younger, she tried putting her finger inside herself, lower down where the desire was strongest, but it hurt and bled a little. She knew exactly what that was, and that it wouldn’t happen again, but the experience put her off entirely.

The other aspect was the smell; it was not exactly unpleasant but it was overpowering. In the morning, after one of those episodes, she scrubbed herself harshly with a flannel.

This particular Saturday morning, she was running a bit late; she had to get some bits from the local store and then drive over to the bookstore to pick up some books for the meeting at ten thirty.

She went to her underwear drawer and sighed. She had left the clean laundry downstairs and the only ones left were a bulk pack from Walmart, which cut off the circulation to her legs, and a couple of really old pairs where the gusset had gone a bit crunchy. She shuddered and threw the old ones in the bin, then decided to put the rest of her clothes on and sort out her panties downstairs.

Halfway down the stairs, the phone rang. She rushed down and caught it just in time. It was Elaine saying she couldn’t make it after all.

While she was talking to Elaine, Jasper came up and wrapped himself around her legs, meowing for his breakfast. She made her excuses to Elaine and then went to the kitchen to sort the cats out. When she’d done that, she looked at the clock and realized she really was running out of time. She grabbed her keys and ran out of the front door, slamming it behind her.

She was halfway down the path before the cool breeze on her nether regions made her realize her mistake: she still had no underwear on! She was wearing one of her sensible, below-the-knee, pencil skirts so she knew there was no possibility of anyone seeing anything, and decided that all she could was just carry on.

The air on her bits actually felt quite nice, but she glared at each person she passed on her way to the store, looking for any sign that they might suspect.

At the store, she got what she needed and went to the checkout. There was a young man operating it and she suddenly thought about how close his head was to her naked pubis. Rationally she understood that she was always naked under her clothes but that didn’t stop the feelings, familiar from her dreams, from starting.

She’d never had those feelings during the day before and it threw her completely. She could hardly get a sentence out when the man asked if she wanted a bag and then dropped her change all over the conveyor belt.

She rushed home, picked up the laundry, and went to the bathroom, where she raised her skirt. She was wet, and there was that extraordinary smell. She scrubbed herself thoroughly with the flannel, before putting on a pair of panties and carrying on with her day.

From time to time over the next few weeks, she remembered that day and the feelings it had evoked.

This happened one morning when she was getting ready for school. She’d been standing in front of the mirror checking her appearance and had thought how nice the satin lining of the skirt she was wearing would feel against her bare lady parts. On impulse, she pulled the skirt up enough to reach her panties and pulled them off, then put them in her handbag, right at the bottom.

All the way to school she could feel the coolness of the air and the silkiness of the lining on her bare flesh and it felt lovely. She felt very naughty and also very guilty, but also very aroused.

It was only when she was standing in front of her first class that she realized that she hadn’t thought this through. With twenty pairs of eyes looking at her expectantly, she completely froze. She had a vision of being completely naked in front of them and the horror of that, combined with the feelings in her groin, threatened to overwhelm her. She muttered some excuses, grabbed her handbag, and rushed to the staff toilets.

Again she was very wet and the odor was, if anything, even more powerful. With shaking hands, she cleaned herself up with some wet wipes and put her underwear back on. When she got back to the classroom there was a minor riot going on and she felt a bit better after berating them soundly.

It was over a month before the urge to go pantyless in public started to appeal to Emily again, but not at school. Never again at school.

It was a beautiful Saturday: warm and sunny and with barely a breath of wind. She had to take some clothes to the welfare store and had packed them, in two paper grocery bags, the night before.

She dressed in a pretty A-Line dress, just below the knee, with a button-front top and a matching belt at the waist. With no panties. Emily had thought about this and rationalized that she didn’t touch herself, therefore it wasn’t masturbation. She let nobody see her, therefore it wasn’t indecent exposure. She simply liked the sensations and the thrill of it and it did no one any harm. She did, however, decide to go to the mall in the next town over, some fifteen miles away, just in case something awful should happen and she should be seen.

In a completely separate train of thought, during her ablutions in the shower that morning, she decided that her public hair was getting too long (it is unhygienic, she thought) and trimmed it with a pair of scissors. It ended up quite a bit shorter than she’d originally intended and she kept taking a bit more off, to get the length even, until it finished up about a quarter of an inch all over.

Emily parked on the top floor of the car park as she always did; she’s a dreadful parker and it’s always empty up there. As she walked to the lift the breeze under her skirt felt delightful, and she found herself shivering despite the heat.

She took the lift down to the concourse and looked up the location of the welfare store on the mall guide. She was just passing through the main entrance to the mall when a strong gust of wind blew her skirt up over her head. She panicked, but with the bags in her arms, all she could do was push the front down. The back remained over her head for several seconds and she was absolutely mortified.

When the wind finally died down she scanned around frantically, looking at the expression on each face to see if it was showing some reaction.

The only one she could see was a very young boy, some distance away, who was pointing at her and saying something to his mother, who had bent over to hear him. When the woman started to look up at her, Emily turned around and fled, back towards the lifts.