“Wait,” Ben said suddenly as he gripped the length of Mariah’s discarded panties. “Show me you have the mo-”

            “Easy. The money’s right here,” Mariah taunted. She plucked a crisp one hundred dollar bill from her purse and waved it high above Ben’s head. “What, you thought I wouldn’t have it on me already? Have you seen the way I’m dressed now? The kind of car I drive? I guess you couldn’t have seen my house since you’re Ms. Hoshoku’s little lap bitch now, but believe me, my house is fucking huge now.”

            “I… I b-believe you…” Ben blubbered.

            “Seriously, Benny. This is nothing. One hundred? It’s like a penny to me now. Less than that. Watch,” she scowled, smiling ever-wider. She pinched the bill between two fingers and ripped it up into tiny shreds, small as it already was in her massive hands, then let it scatter in the breeze to the ground below.

            Ben winced again as though she’d torn him up instead. He could’ve used that little boost, what she called less than a penny. Maybe he could tape the pieces back together, if she forgot they were on the floor?

            “Don’t look so scared. I have another fresh one for you, assuming you don’t stall any longer and I’m forced to only pay you five bucks instead. Which, fair enough, I’ll have to go to the ATM to get that for you then, because obviously I have no reason to carry around so little money in a bill now,” Mariah explained. She slipped a second just-as-crisp hundred from her purse. “It’s just not convenient for me.”

            “I get it,” he sighed.

            “Now quit being a bitch and stick your little tongue on my worn-out panties. And take your time,” she commanded, her booming voice filling the office. Surely some other coworkers down the line had heard, though no one came to Ben’s recue. A couple poked their heads out into the hall with curiosity.

            Ben studied the tainted fabric. Though it was black, he could make out the distinct signs of crusted, dried ejaculate where Mariah’s pussy had no-doubt emitted its juices in the night. There was also a noticeable, rank odor reeking from the opposite end of the cloth partition, where her enormous ass had probably been clenching the panties up into her puckered anus for the better part of a day.

            Looking up again for support, Ben was still unable to see the faces of the two women who stood silently as sentinels behind Mariah. Clearly, they had no intention of intervening into this continued transaction. The choice really was up to him. Though, as far as he saw it, the choice wasn’t really about whether he chose to lick Mariah’s panties for some money; the choice was whether he licked them for money, or he licked them sixty seconds later because she’d planted her spike heel into his back and threatened to impale him on the floor if he didn’t do it for free.

            Where the hell was Kendra when he really needed her again?

            “Do it now,” Mariah slurred. “Three. Two. One…”

            Ben pressed his jaws into the panties and raked his tongue from one end to the other. As he was instructed, he took his time, really allowing the shivers of disgust to ripple up through his frame for his audience to enjoy. As he’d predicted, he could taste the two very distinct ends of the panties. Hoping to end on the front for dessert, Ben forced himself to begin with the darker, sweat-stained half. The flavors of Mariah’s ass entered his cheeks and throat like a horrid disease. He could taste her cheeks, the zesty salt of her sweat, the hollowing filth of her rectum. It instantly filled him with nausea, and while he wanted to throw up almost immediately, part of him hoped that if he did indeed vomit, it would please Mariah enough to see that she’d throw in an extra twenty dollars or more to the trade.

            “Good,” Mariah chuckled. “That’s a good boy. Lick it more. Other side now.”

            Only too glad to oblige, Ben gagged and slid his tongue across the divide in the panty cloth. As he’d hoped, the flavors of Mariah’s leftover cum were a little more inviting, if not a bit like sour milk to his lips, after the stuff had had time to settle into the fabric. He choked back a minor gurgle in his stomach cloying for him to stop. That hundred bucks was about to be his.

            “All right, that’s enough,” Mariah said. “We don’t want you to enjoy this too much or I’ll have to deduct money again.”

            Again? Had she deducted some to begin with? Ben looked up as the green bill was crumpled in Mariah’s powerful fist and tossed at his head. It plunked into the scoop of the panty thong.

            $10. Only $10. Was this a joke?

            “You said one hundred,” Ben defended. Even so, he picked up the bill and unfolded it. It was something, after all, and he was in no position to snub his nose at any offering no matter the size.

            “What would you actually even do with one hundred, Benny? No clothes beside doll outfits will fit you. You could eat a peanut, maybe, and not need anything else for the day. Think of it like I’m saving you from the sinful excesses of greater wealth.”

            Smacking his lips, Ben spat into a dirty coffee cup beside his pile of loose belongings. The taste of Mariah’s ass, and her triumph, was still fresh in his throat. It would take some serious scrubbing to get it all out. Maybe some bleach.

            “But wait, there’s more!” Mariah announced like an infomercial presenter. “Okay, for one hundred bucks this time… for real, no more fooling around. Honest-to-God hundred bucks. You have to lick the source of items such as those lovely garments you’re holding now. You can do that, right?”

            Belly wrenching, Ben shook his head. There was no way he was licking Mariah’s ass. Not for one hundred. Not for one thousand. Well, probably for one thousand. That was a hell of a lot of money, after all. But one hundred was simply out of the question.

            “One hundred, for real this time. And these two ladies will make sure I stay honest,” Mariah said. She waved the bill about. “Real simple. You don’t have to take your time like on my panties. Just stick your tongue inside and do one swipe. One itty, bitty, little lick, like you’re tasting a lollipop. It might even taste better than that. So what do you say?”

            “No,” Ben growled.

            “Ninety dollars,” Mariah threatened.

            “NO.”

            “Eighty dollars?”

            What kind of bidding was this? You weren’t supposed to go down when the customer had already said no! Did she still expect him to jump onboard when she got down to twenty dollars?

            “I don’t think he’s got the balls to do it,” said Shauna Brown from behind Mariah; Ben now realized Ms. Hoshoku’s middle-aged yet beautifully amazonian secretary was one of the anonymous spectators.

            “You should do it, Ben,” the second voice said softly from behind, a demonstratively taller source. A caramel-hued hand waved as Kendra stepped fully into the room, out of the shadows from where she’d previously been silently standing. Her hair hung in gleaming black braided ropes that the man would’ve once longed, maybe even loved, to caress in a meaningful indication of his true feelings.

            Ben’s heart sunk to see her now.

            Kendra? His one ally? Here, now, encouraging him to lick an asshole for increasingly few dollars? It seemed to Ben now he’d truly lost everything. Sure, he’d lost his modest house, his few belongings, and his small retirement savings already. But at least he had a friend still, somewhere. Or he’d thought.

            That, apparently, had been a major miscalculation as well.

            “K-Kendra?” he warbled with despair and disgust. He retreated backward a few steps as his eight-foot-eight coworker, once-intern and now-superior, crossed further into the room on her soft flats.

            “Don’t look so upset, Ben. It’s not a big deal, really, if you think about it,” she explained.

            “Why?”

            “Well, we… most of the women at this company, I mean… now have got all these assets to use, and nobody to share it with. Seriously, I’ve… well, I don’t mean to brag, but I’ve made so much money in the last month, I could spend it all in designer stores every day for the rest of my life and I’d still have leftover. Think of it as a way to give back.”

            “You… you’re gonna… you’re gonna let Mariah make me lick her butt, for… eighty dollars?”

            “Twenty, now, since you took so long to decide,” Mariah giggled. “And you’re wrong about one thing, Benny. It wasn’t my asshole you were going to lick. God knows I don’t need to feel your perverted little tongue on me.”

            Ben raised an eyebrow, trembling at the knees now as he stood at Kendra’s feet. If not Mariah, who was she talking about?

            Kendra gave a half-hearted smirk, anxiously twiddling her thumbs, then descended the long journey downward to be nearer to Ben. She crouched on the ground, her rotund, brown ass hovering over the cold ground. And then he understood whose ass he was meant to taste.

            “I’ll give you some extra cash, honest,” Kendra whispered to him. Her fingers were already teasing her own panties down far enough over the globes of her rump that she was exposed from behind. “All you have to do is lick inside my crack for three seconds and I’ll give you some extra… two hundred, maybe… plus whatever Mariah gives you.”

            Ben shuddered to his haunches, crumbling fast in his resolve. At this point, he’d have preferred to lick Mariah’s asshole, if it meant she was the only one here to witness his fall. God knew he couldn’t be broken too much more in the department of bodily humiliation. He longed for that alternative future, if it meant he still had a friend somewhere in the building. He understood now, for real, why Mariah didn’t want his tongue between her butt cheeks: because it would take so much more from him to do the same to his former friend and last remaining ally, Kendra.

            Tears descended Ben’s cheeks. It was the first time he’d cried since all of this madness begun in Ms. Hoshoku’s office with that first damning bottle of cherry elixir.

            He already knew he was going to do it. There was no way he couldn’t. Two hundred, plus twenty, plus the ten from licking Mariah’s panties? That was more than he could ever hope to own again simply by acting as Ms. Hoshoku’s cushion. The hard part was simply accepting the end. The severance of his last remaining true personable connection: the final woman who, at least the week before, saw him as a man worthy of value aside from where he could stick his tongue.

            “Don’t cry, Ben,” Kendra begged gingerly, an encouraging smile on her lips. “It’ll be quick. Like it never happened. Then you can have the money, and seriously, a guy as little as you could eat like a king on two hundred and thirty dollars. Don’t let Mariah try to tell you you can’t have nice things.”

            The woman’s slender index finger stroked up and down Ben’s cheek, collecting his tears on her skin. That finger went between her lips, where she sucked his miniature tears into her mouth. She tucked the rim of her palm under his chin, gently demanding his attention upward.

            “Now c’mon, don’t be shy. Just get it over with,” she instructed softly. “I cleaned back there extra-well this morning. It shouldn’t even taste bad. It might be like just putting your tongue on my hand. Nothing to it.”

            Sniffling, Ben realized the sooner he tore the metaphorical band-aid off, the sooner he could begin wallowing in this pit of human breakage. What, truly, did he have to lose now? His body? His pathetic, frail, papery, two-foot-tall body? If his empty bank accounts were to be believed, that was hardly a major loss, financially speaking.

            “Just stay there. I’ll do the rest. All you have to do is… well, open your cute little mouth,” Kendra said with genuine kindness as she adjusted her footing, careful not to kick her shrimpy coworker, and turned around. The caramel-colored, unblemished pair of cheek masses which constituted the woman’s youthful, wonderful, jiggling derriere loomed before Ben’s face. If anything, he’d have to stand up on his tiptoes to actually reach into Kendra’s squatting ass.

            He just hoped nature didn’t call for her while he was doing so.