"But Mommmmmmmm!" Kim Hawkins whined in her most annoying tone. The two-note rendition of the word 'Mom' was a clear indication that she no longer expected to win the argument and was just trying to be as irritating as possible.

"I said 'No' and I meant it, Kimberly," her mother replied in her own calm, measured, 'I'm the parent here and you'll do as I say' voice. Her use of the long form of her daughter's name reinforced the finality of the decision. "You may not wear a see-through blouse in public without a bra on underneath. Now, I've told you that I would help you dye a bra to match the blouse, but that's all. Maybe when you are older this would be appropriate for a party or a nightclub. You are too emotionally immature now and this is inappropriate school attire."

"But the Nudist Lobby and the ACLU got those old Indecent Exposure laws rescinded. They've been struck down." Kim recited, "I should be able to wear anything I want, no matter how much skin shows."

"I've told you, this is not about what's legal and it's not about skin. This is about you learning to make the right choices. And when did you become a lawyer?"

"Mr. Waters had us do papers on recent Supreme Court decisions in Civics."

"And you picked this case?"

"Well, Bobby Porter did that one. I did one on the mandatory gun-ownership law in that town in Georgia, but that doesn't matter. It was a Supreme Court decision and that's final!"

June Hawkins almost smiled at that. Bringing Supreme Court decisions into an argument was definitely a step up from the whining, but it was still beside the point.

"Kim, in this house I can overrule the Supreme Court. You are not wearing that blouse."

"But Mommmmmm!: Kim's lip started to quiver and she was seconds away from starting to bawl. "Other girls wear them!"

"This is about your level of maturity, dear. If you behave like a little girl, you get treated like a little girl. When you learn to behave in a mature manner, you will be treated accordingly. Until then, you will have to follow the rules that your Father and I lay down for you. Now take that blouse off and put on something appropriate for eating dinner with your family. Your Father and brother are waiting on us."

June was at the end of her rope with dealing with her willful daughter. Ever since Kim's teenage hormones started up and her body blossomed from a skinny pre-teen into a shapely young woman, Kim had been determined to display herself as blatantly as possible. This was understandable and even normal for a teen, but Kim's body had matured much faster than her mind. She still acted years younger than her calendar age. This might have only been a minor problem or even cute if Kim looked her age, but Kim's figure had developed well ahead of her actual age. Her slim waist, flat tummy, slim hips, and 36DD chest belonged more on an exotic dancer rather than a High School sophomore. For this reason, June and Walt Hawkins tried harder than they otherwise would have to restrain their daughter's wild impulses. It was very hard at times. Dealing with Kim was becoming a strain on the family. Kim's 15-year-old brother, Jeff, routinely displayed more maturity than she did. In fact, until only a few months ago, 'Jeff' had been 'Jeffy'. One day he had spoken up at dinner to solemnly ask everyone to please call him 'Jeff' from then on. June and Walt had been so proud, but Kim had done nothing but snipe at her brother. She did her best to taunt and belittle him for days afterward. June had had to bite her tongue to keep from pointing out to Kim that she was only embarrassing herself by proving to everyone that she was the less mature of the two. Walt had take Jeff aside to reassure the boy that eventually his sister would learn to act her age and they he should try not to let it affect him.

"You're becoming a man, Jeff." Walt had told him. "We're very proud of you. We need you to help us teach your sister. We need you to set an example."

Jeff had taken this to heart. He had staunchly ignored the taunts, the teasing and the tears. Instead of learning from him, Kim had taken his refusal to be baited as evidence that Jeff was trying to make her look bad in front of their parents. She had even resorted to entrapment in her efforts to bring him down to her level. The most outlandish example of this was when she accused him of breaking in on her while she was changing clothes.

Jeff had been delivering a load of clean towels to Kim's bathroom at his mother's request. When he walked through the open door into her room, Kim started screaming at the top of her lungs. Sure that her daughter had been seriously injured, June raced upstairs to find Kim kneeling on her bed, naked and shrieking at Jeff, who stood just inside the room, still holding the pile of folded towels.

"He did it on purpose! He barged in while I was changing. He's always peeking at me! He's a little pervert!"

June took one look at the situation and shook her head, sadly. She wanted to try to explain things to Kim. She wanted to tell her that if she were really embarrassed by her brother seeing her naked, that her hands would be somewhere other than clenched in fists on her hips. She wanted to tell her that since there were no clothes visible in the room that she could have been changing into or out of, she could hardly have been caught in the process of changing. She wanted to tell her that if she had believed this were actually a long-standing problem she could have taken the simple measure of locking her bedroom door if she were planning to lounge around in the nude. She wanted to tell her that an adolescent boy trying to peek at someone, even she was his sister, who looked like she belonged in a Miss Nude Universe contest, was as normal and inevitable as gravity. She wanted to tell Kim that she was only embarrassing herself with this pathetic display. Instead she just sighed and told Jeff, "I know you appreciate your sister's body. I hope you understand the lengths to which she has obviously gone to show it to you. When you've seen enough, go put the towels away."

Jeff had not responded to his sister's accusations, for which June had been grateful. As he left the room, she had noticed a bulge in his crotch that the baggy shorts he usually wore had failed to disguise, something that his sister had thankfully missed, or she would have pointed it out at the top of her lungs. From the look if it, the boy had inherited most of his father's genes. If anything, he was already better equipped than his old man, even at 15.

June reflected that the present argument over the girl's choice of clothes was much the same situation. She was being forced again to try to protect her daughter from her own poor choices, a role that was wearing very thin.

"Now, dear. Everyone is waiting. Get dressed and come on downstairs." Looking at her daughter, sitting on the bed with her lower lip quivering and her nipples poking defiantly against the sheer fabric of the blouse she had just bought that afternoon, June thought that perhaps a new approach was desperately needed. She just wished that she could think of one.

Tears streaking her lovely face, Kim practically tore off the flimsy blouse and threw it to the floor.

"If you won't let me wear what I want, then I'll wear nothing at all!" Kim screamed. She kicked off her sandals, pushed her skirt off her hips and let it fall to the floor and yanked her panties down and kicked the whole pile of clothes into the corner. She stamped her foot and stuck out her lower lip.

June stared at her naked daughter. Kim's large breasts were so firm and her skin so taut that they barely jiggled from her exertions. They sat high on her chest, blessed with whatever youthful power that allowed them to defy the pull of gravity and make brassieres a fashion accessory instead of a necessary support garment. They rose and fell on her chest with her breathing, their puffy pink areolas and perky nipples pointing slightly upward at their tips. Below them, her abdomen curved sensuously inward to create a concavity below her rib cage and then slightly outward again at her navel before flattening out where it met the small triangle of downy blonde hair nestled between her legs. Her firm, dimpled bottom and narrow hips blended into a pair of curvaceous legs of the sort that men dreamed of lying between. Kim's body was a solicitation for sex that would incite lust in every man who saw her. Until she learned to deal with this she would be a sexual loose cannon, a danger to herself and every man she met. Something drastic had to be done and soon.

"Maybe it's time to stop pushing the rope?" June thought, "Maybe it's time I pulled?" Taking a deep breath, she made up her mind.

"OK, fine. If that's your decision, so be it."

Kim looked at her mother as if she had not understood a word. "What do you mean?" she said, falteringly.

"I mean we'll do it your way, dear." June picked up her daughter's discarded clothes and quickly folded them and put them away in the drawer. "I mean you can wear nothing at all. Now dry your eyes, fix your face and come on downstairs. Dinner is about ready." June retreated downstairs before second thoughts could creep into her mind. She had made a drastic decision, but a drastic decision was called for. Now she would try to muster the courage to back it up. For her daughter's sake, she hoped that this worked. It would be hard for everyone, but she was sure she could get Walt to go along.

Once she had checked in the kitchen to make sure nothing had caught fire during her absence, June took her husband aside and told him what she had done.

"Don't ask me if I'm sure this is the right thing, because I'm not sure," she told him, "It's just that nothing else has worked!"

"Don't worry, hon." Walt reassured her, "I'll back you up 100%. She has to wake up and smell the coffee and it has to happen soon. If she is going to function as an adult, she is going to have to learn to act like one. It that takes some 'tough love' then that's what it takes. Have you thought about how far you are willing to go with this?"

"How far? Well, fortunately, this is Friday evening; so we have the weekend. If it goes past that, things could get, ah, oh. I see your point. We could be making things worse instead of better." June looked at her husband with worry in her eyes.

"Well, at the school board meeting yesterday, they voted to suspend enforcement of the dress code until the consequences of the Supreme Court decision shake out. There won't be any repercussions there. I can alert Principal Kershaw before Monday. There shouldn't be any legal problems, unless the legislature acts quicker than they ever have to slam the door on this. We will probably get some criticism from people, but I'm willing to risk it for Kim's sake."

"Thank you, dear. I knew I could count on you," she said, giving her husband a quick kiss.

"I'll brief Jeff. He won't be a problem. After all she's done to him, he will be happy to see her get her comeuppance. Now go get Kim and we'll eat."

As she expected, June had to climb back up the stairs to Kim's room. When she opened the door, Kim was sitting on the bed, drying her eyes.

"Come on dear, it's time to eat."

"But mother, you can't be serious. You don't really expect me to come down like this..." Kim looked down at her nakedness and back to her mother with a pleading look.

"Yes, dear. I do. And you will. You made this choice, now you will follow it through." "Like an adult." June wanted to say, but that was the objective, and she did not want to push her daughter into another crying jag just when she might have a chance to open her eyes. "Come along."

June took Kim by the hand and led her out of the bedroom. She felt some resistance, but the girl followed. When they reached the top of the stairs, she released Kim's hand. This would be the critical point. June mentally crossed her fingers behind her back.

"Go ahead, dear. Everyone is waiting."

Kim looked back at her mother. She could not believe that she was being forced to parade naked in front of her father. And her little brother! A look of terror flashed across her face. She stared down the stairs as if they led to the gallows.

June practically held her breath as she watched her daughter wrestle with her fear. Hope began to rise within her breast as she saw Kim stare down the stairs instead of up at her. She was being forced to choose between admitting to herself that she was just a little girl or accepting the consequences of her own decision like an adult. The outcome would affect her forever.

Kim suddenly wiped her eyes once more and pushed her hair back from her face. She reached for the railing and looked down at her nude body as she would have looked at her clothes to make sure they were presentable or if they needed adjustment. As her mother watched, she brushed her fingers through her pubic hair in an attempt to comb it out.

When Kim took her first step down the stairs, June almost applauded with delight. For the first time in her memory, Kim was accepting responsibility. It was a beginning. June suddenly had a flash of insight. This was a beginning, but it was only a beginning. She would have to push this as far and as hard as she could to make the most of this opportunity. Her daughter's whole future depended on the outcome. June steeled herself for what was to come.

When Kim reached the dining room, she paused in the doorway. Neither her father nor brother had looked up yet. She could still run back to her room.

Behind her, June saw Kim stop and her breath caught in her throat again. Surely she would not turn back now. She watched the muscles in her daughter's bottom tighten, a clear flight or fight reaction to the stress of the situation. She saw the muscles in her shoulders and back tense and she saw her daughter pull her shoulders back, pushing her breasts defiantly high on her chest before walking into the room.

"YES!" June thought to herself. This was working better than she had hoped.

Kim announced her presence herself.

"Hello Daddy," she said. She bent down and pecked her father on the cheek. The tension was almost enough to make her swoon. Time almost seemed to stand still. She stood with her toes clenched in the nap of the carpet, trying to keep her balance. She was hyperaware of her body and her nakedness. Her skin had broken out in goosebumps all over her body. As she looked at the goosebumps, she saw that her nipples were standing up, as hard as little rocks, and her areolas were crinkled. She could feel the tautness in them pulling on her breasts. In this incredible situation she wasn't sure how she should feel about that. She thought she could feel the air moving over every inch of her body. Her sense of touch seemed to have become incredibly acute.

Walt looked up at his daughter and smiled, "Hi, punkin." Better sit down and eat before it gets cold." He reached out and patted her on the fanny like he always did.

To Kim, the warmth of her father's hand on her naked bottom was like a branding iron. She flinched under his touch so violently that she thought she would jump onto the table and land in the mashed potatoes. Somehow, the laughable image of her lying on the dining table like a big stuffed turkey — a big naked turkey — broke her tension. She took a deep breath and shuddered with the release.

As Kim walked around the table to her place, she looked at her brother out of the corner of her eye to see if he was ogling her. He seemed to be more interested in what their mother was putting on the table than in her nakedness. "Good!" she thought, "the little creep better keep his eyes to himself." As she sat down, she looked across the table at him. He was looking at her, but his expression wasn't the drooling leer she expected. "He's going to make some comment! Something nasty! I know it!" she thought to herself, "It's what I would do in his place." Suddenly Kim felt all the air go out of her smugness about what she expected of her brother. "It is what I would do," she thought, "not what he would do." Staring down at her empty plate, she tried hard to think of a time when Jeff had said something hurtful to her. She failed. She looked up at her brother again. He was still looking at her, but he wasn't gloating or even smiling.

"How does it feel?" Jeff asked her.

Kim was taken aback by the question. "What? Oh..." she looked down at herself. She was sitting naked at the dining room table with her family, about to eat dinner. Her gooseflesh had subsided, but the tips of her breasts were drawn up so tight they almost hurt. She started to rub them to get them to ease up, but yanked her hands back into her lap before they could reach her breasts. Her mind was buzzing as she tried to decide how she felt. She raised her head and cocked it to one side. "Strange," she said, "just ... strange."

Walt Hawkins observed the exchange between his children with feigned disinterest. In fact, he was alert to every gesture, every word, every nuance of their conversation. He, like his wife, desperately wanted this to work. So far, all the signs were good. Kim had exhibited considerable self-control by coming downstairs without a fuss. Now she was having a normal conversation with her brother. "Well, 'normal' is a relative term," Walt reflected. Still, it seemed to be working. Walt mentally crossed his fingers, and made the same resolution as his wife had earlier — to take this as far as it needed to go.

"Aren't you cold?" Jeff asked.

Before Kim could answer, June said, "We can turn the thermostat up if you're uncomfortable, dear?" Walt looked at her and nodded, solicitously.

"No, I'm fine. Really," Kim responded. She raised her arm to show that her goosebumps had gone, but changed her mind about inviting everyone to look at her skin. There was just so much of it on display. It wasn't the temperature that was making her uncomfortable, anyway. Kim's feeling of heightened sensitivity was still with her. She could feel every current of air in the room, from the air blowing from the vent at the end of the room, to the sudden gust every time her mother opened the kitchen door to bring in another serving dish. She could feel the carpet under her bare feet, the upholstery of the chair under her bottom, and the cool, hard wood of the back of the chair. If she concentrated very hard on something on the table, she could push her awareness that she was completely naked toward the back of her mind, but she could not block the sensations on her skin, so awareness kept jumping back. She had never felt so connected to her environment before. It was as if everything and everyone in the room were touching her somewhere on her body. She rubbed her hands on her thighs under the table, trying to cancel the sensations. She pushed her hands down to her knees and then rubbed back along the sides of her legs to her bare hips, but this only made her more acutely aware of her nudity. Again, she yanked her hands back into her lap. Then she became aware that she could feel her pubic hair on the insides of her wrists, so she put them on the table on either side of her place-setting. After a few second she realized that the moisture from her palms was making her hands stick to the varnished surface of the table, so she put them back in her lap. By the time everyone had been served and they had begun to eat, Kim felt like crawling under the table to hide.

Her parents both had noticed her growing unease, but neither was prepared to give an inch. They were committed to seeing this through.

The act of eating helped to calm Kim somewhat. However, she found that having her breasts in her field of view every time she looked down at her plate to be distracting. "I don't remember them being this big!" she thought. They seemed to be in her way all the time. Every forkful of food had to be guided past her twin peaks on the way to her mouth. She was very careful to chew with her mouth closed, so that crumbs would not fall onto her breasts where she would have to deal with them in front of everyone.

Inevitably, she had a mishap. As she reached out for her glass of water, she felt her right breast dip into the gravy on her mashed potatoes. She pulled her arm back quickly and sat bolt upright. No one seemed to have noticed, but the warm gravy felt like it was scorching her skin. She felt like screaming. She began to blush, and she was aware that she was blushing and that everyone could see the red in her face and see it spread down her neck and down her breasts. Slowly, she picked her napkin up from her lap and tried as inconspicuously as possible to wipe the dollop of gravy from below her right nipple. She wanted to pick up her breast and do a thorough job, to make sure she had got all the gravy. She wanted to dip her napkin in her water glass and rub it, as she would have without a thought if the gravy had go onto her blouse, but she could not stand the thought of sitting here at the dinner table and having everyone watch her bathe her naked breast. All this was making them tighten up again, too. She could feel her nipples standing up and waving to everyone, shouting, "Hey, look at us! Here we are! Everybody look!" She allowed her shoulders to slump forward and she leaned forward toward her plate so her traitorous nipples were below the edge of the table.

"Sit up straight, dear. Mind your posture," her mother admonished her.

Startled, Kim sat up straight instantly, raking her distended nipples on the edge of the table in the process. The pain of whacking them on the wood made her eyes cross. She closed them and bit her lip to keep from crying out. When she opened her eyes again, she saw Jeff looking at her from across the table. He must have looked up just as she had reacted to her mother. He must have seen her accident. He couldn't miss her engorged, throbbing nipples as they stood out even further from her breasts, but he only looked at her with a concerned expression for a second, and then resumed eating without making any comment. "Thank you, Jeff," Kim thought. Then, as if she could broadcast it across the table, she thought loudly, "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"

The rest of the meal passed without incident, for which Kim was also grateful. Just as she prepared to slip out of the room and dash back upstairs, her mother said, "Kim, why don't you help me clear the table?"

"Noooooo!" she thought, but she kept the thought to herself. "Sure, Mom," she said, allowing only a trace of disappointment into her voice. She had gotten used to the cover of the table, where only her breasts could be seen. Now she would have to get up a parade around where everyone could see all of her. She was sure that this was just what her mother had in mind when she asked for her assistance. Kim steeled herself and then stood up from the table and began to collect the dishes. As she worked around to her brother's chair, he handed his empty plate up to her. As she took it from him, he looked in her eyes and smiled reassuringly.

"Thank you, Jeff," she said without taking her eyes from his. She hoisted the pile of plates in front of her face and sidled around behind her brother's chair. As she passed she felt her breast brush against the back of his head. She was so startled that she almost dropped the dishes. Her own brother had just touched her breast! She was just becoming furious when she thought, "No. Actually, I did that. I did that accidentally. I think I did that accidentally? How could I have meant to do that?" It was so confusing, thinking of her brother as something other than an object to be despised and ridiculed. The meal they had just shared was the longest time she could remember that there had been peace between them. Jeff had done nothing to exploit her situation, made no comment, done no leering. Had her nakedness changed him somehow? How could he ... when she was the one ... It was too confusing. Kim carried off the first load of dishes to the kitchen.

"Just put them in the sink, dear," her mother told her as she padded across the linoleum floor.

"Mom?" Kim said, wanting to ask something, but not sure what it was.

"Yes, dear?"

"I, ah, can I..." Kim wanted desperately to ask if she could go back up to her room, so she could hide her naked body, but she knew the answer to that question before she asked it. The answer was written in her mother's eyes and her posture.

"Can I stay and watch TV tonight?" Kim tried to sound cheerful, but to her ears it came out like a slave asking for another stroke of the lash. Kim reflected that that was hard to say, but then, she had done a lot of hard things tonight.

"Of course, dear. You can stay until your bedtime. But at 10:00 you must promise to go to bed, no matter what is on TV."

"OK. I promise."

After the dishes were done, they all adjourned to the den, where Walt had the TV on. He was already in his easy chair with his feet up, watching a sit-com's opening credits. Kim was happy to see that it was one of the few shows that she liked, so she started over to sit on the loveseat next to Jeff. Her stride faltered and she almost came to a stop in the middle of the room. She realized that she was going to have to sit next to Jeff all evening on a loveseat where they would be only inches away from each other. Jeff was already sitting on the end closest to the TV, looking like he was taking up more than half the small couch. He might be two years her junior, but he was already two inches taller than she was and out-weighed her by 20 pounds. His size had earned him a spot on the Jr. High football team, but now it was earning him a nasty look for taking up all the space on the couch. Kim swallowed hard and kept walking. It would be more embarrassing to stop in the middle of the room, backlit by the glow of the TV screen, than to go sit down and suffer in silence.

She sat down on the couch with her back pressed firmly against the armrest, trying very hard to stay as far from Jeff as the piece of furniture would allow. As she sat, he glanced back at her and then turned back to watch the program. Her mother sat down in her own wingback chair and with a quick glance at her children, she also started to enjoy the program.

It was only during the commercial break at the bottom of the hour that Kim noticed that she was sitting in a draft. The air-conditioning vent behind the couch was blowing right up her bare back. She stood it for another few minutes, but then she started to shiver. The motion distracted her brother from the program and he turned back to her and whispered, "S'matter, sis?"

"Cold," she whispered back, "Swap places?"

"OK."

Jeff stood and stepped over her feet, careful not to stomp on her toes, as she slid up to the other end of the loveseat. This put her profile between him and the TV at the end of the room, a situation that she realized meant he could stare at her as much as he wanted without being obvious about it. She clenched her fists in her lap and hunched her shoulders. She shivered again.

Jeff apparently interpreted her shiver to mean she was still cold, because he leaned forward and put his arm behind her on the back of the couch. Kim instantly tensed and pulled back her elbow to smack her brother for daring to take advantage of the situation. She had just grit her teeth in anticipation of the impact when she felt the warmth of his body soaking into her. The feeling distracted her from the violence she had intended to commit on him. She froze in her coiled position, savoring the sensation. She had been much colder than she thought. His body heat was delicious and soothing. Her most primitive instincts asserted themselves and she felt herself relax and lean back against her brother, surrendering to the sensuality of his warmth.

As the evening wore on, Kim became more accustomed to physical contact with Jeff. Without intending to, she slid back against him so that they were pressed together from knee to shoulder. With his arm around her, she was almost sitting in his lap. The urge to cuddle is deeply ingrained into the human brain. Kim's body remembered doing it with her father when she was little and it had no trouble adapting to her brother now. When he gently rolled his arm and laid his hand on her forearm, she did not even flinch, but only smiled at the additional contact and leaned against him more heavily, allowing him to draw her closer. Absorbed in the TV program, she hardly noticed that she had pulled Jeff's arm around her so that his palm was hovering just over her breast. She had simply allowed her body to overrule her brain.

Her father noticed their closeness and sighed to himself. Stripping their daughter naked was forcing her to regress to a primitive level and allowing her to relate to her brother in a different way. Hopefully, the same process could be applied to other relationships with equal success. Anything that stopped the endless whining accusations and verbal attacks would be an immense improvement as far as he was concerned. This was the most peace and quiet there had been in the Hawkins house for a long time.

Walt reached across and lightly touched his wife on the arm. She looked over at him, glanced at their kids cuddled together on the couch and smiled. She looked at the wall clock. It was only a few minutes before their bedtime. June wished she could make the clock stand still. This was the happiest she had been in a long time.