I stare at my reflection in the mirror, and see the wear and tear of a life spiralling out of control.

Long working days are the norm, when you’re a chef. The steely, determined expression I’m currently wearing like a mask is one I’ve practiced for a long time, practically a requirement when you’re a woman trying to carve a path in such a male-dominated industry.

But some of the lines on my face are new. Stress is getting to me. As is the sorrow, awkwardness, and heartbreak that comes with the slow end of a relationship.

With a sigh, I lift my hands to undo my bun, letting my long, brown, wavy hair fall loosely down to my shoulders. This is one side at work that no one ever gets to see. My bun is always up, much like my defenses. Letting go of it is the non-verbal cue to my psyche that the work day is over, that I’m home.

It’s like a transformation happens before my eyes. Gone are the harsh features of the “kitchen lesbian”, as my colleagues like to call me. I instantly look more feminine, softer, and more vulnerable. For the rest of the evening, I’ll simply be Nicole, the girl who’s nursing a terrible heartbreak, and leaning hard on the totalising work schedule to get a measure of distraction from the smoldering wreck that is my personal life.

Normally, I’d slip into my PJs, get comfortable, and wait for sleep to claim me. But not this time.

When I leave the bathroom, I can hear blood pumping into my ears.

Chris is on the sofa, and doesn’t even deign to look at me, lost as she is in some conversation or other on her phone.

Even now, this late into a relationship that’s clearly going nowhere, I find myself checking her out. Her boyish, short and stylish haircut, the way her lithe legs sprawl on the sofa – I think of all the times her petite body has been under mine, and I bite my lip to suppress a little shudder.

How can a flame that once burned so bright just… flicker and die?

Chris makes room for me on the sofa, without looking up from her phone.

I gulp, nervous. Back when we were shouting at one another, when she was calling me out on the fact that I started spending the evenings with colleagues more and more in order to avoid her, I would have done anything for the arguments to stop.

Now, I almost want them back. Even the dramatic arguments and ultimatums about what’s not working are better than this… resignation. At least when you’re angry at someone, you’re paying attention to them. But this emptiness truly does feel like death.

The death of a relationship.

With a defeated sigh, I sit next to Chris, and brace myself for yet another evening of utter nothingness as we pretend to watch Netflix. In truth, it is just background noise, static. Something, anything to fill the awkward void where our conversations used to be.

We’ve become better at avoiding each other, so in truth, even these occurrences have become rarer. Even when Chris snuggles close to me, it’s an empty gesture, and we both know it. It’s familiar, and the warmth of another person next to you is always nice, but the awkwardness is there, and the old feelings are not.

Chris begins to fidget, looking for a comfortable position on the sofa. Eventually, she changes angle completely, placing her back against the armrest, and her feet land in my lap.

There are three parts to this dreadful evening routine, and they are the same every time we have a free evening. Glance at the TV. Look at my phone. Peek at Chris from the corner of my eye. Repeat, over and over and over, until it’s time to go to bed.

Always the same, always unchanged, always a slow and silent agony, the shell of what a relationship is supposed to be like.

But not now. Because now there is a fourth stopping point for my eyes to land on, as part of their circuit.

Chris’ feet are in my lap.

And they’re… cute?

I narrow my eyes in puzzlement. I’ve never, like, noticed feet before. Feet are just something people have, nothing really worth commenting about, unless they stink. If they don’t – and Chris’ feet definitely don’t – then, what’s there to comment about? Would you say that someone has pretty shoulders? Haha, no way.

And yet… they kinda are pretty. Very petite, with a slender ankle, a cute round heel, sinuous lines for the arch and the ball. Even the toes look cute, all perfectly proportioned with one another and neatly aligned.

Have I just… licked my lips? Weird. I have this unfathomable impulse to reach out with my hand, to touch them, maybe rub them. The skin looks silky smooth, a bit like her legs, but not entirely in the same way. Damn, am I fantasizing about the texture of her feet?

Maybe I am. Particularly between the ankle and the arch, the skin looks so downright kissable…

Ok, Nicole, that’s enough for now. I resume my routine. Netflix. Phone. Chris. Feet. Netflix again, and so on… except that each pause on the feet in my lap lasts a little longer.

Chris fidgets in my peripheral vision. Has she noticed me noticing?

Her toes begin to wiggle, and that instantly draws my eyes like a magnet. Chris lets out an incredulous snort that makes me blush deeply – I’ve been caught, and I feel so dumb for it. I pry my gaze away, pretending to focus on the TV.

But that doesn’t cut it with Chris. She must be as taken aback by this from me as I am. There’s been nothing between us for so long, and now, all of a sudden, there’s this electricity, this… tension… she has my undivided attention, and confirms it by wiggling her toes again, and once more drawing my gaze to them.

“Like what you see, Nicky?”

Damn, I haven’t heard that tone of voice in a long time. She sounds baffled, confused, but also excited, pleased with herself, and ultimately… amused.

Noticing my conspicuous silence, Chris lifts her right foot, before lowering it again.

“Why don’t you give it a little rub?”

I don’t want to. I mean… Of course I want to. But all of a sudden, this feels almost like… an admission of weakness. We haven’t been this intimate for a long time, we both know the clock is running out on this relationship, and yet, I’m the one to show interest? And in her feet, no less?

“Nicky,” Chris says, in a bratty tone that completely fails at sounding serious, “rub it, now.”

The sudden and unexpected assertiveness in Chris’ words hits me like whiplash. I’ve always been the top in this relationship, back when we were still intimate with one another. I’d press her petite body to the wall and take what’s mine. I’d luxuriate in having her squirm under me, reminding her who’s in charge.

Well, I definitely don’t feel in charge right now. As if of their own volition, my fingers moved to her foot, and clumsily began to rub back and forth, brush this way and that, move in small circles.
It feels divine.

The skin under my fingertips feels incredible, smooth and taut on the ankle and arch, slightly rougher and thicker by the heel, so soft by the ball. I marvel as I slightly pull at her toes, trying to work the tension out of the joints.

“Mmm, just what I need after a long day,” Chris says, in a sultry tone. “Good girl.”

The words go straight to my pussy. I have to struggle to keep myself from moaning.

What is happening to me? Why does her foot feel so good in my hands, why do her words have this effect on me? The situation spiralling out of control so rapidly that I’m starting to feel dizzy.

It’s clear that my newfound… attraction to Chris’ feet is putting me into a submissive headspace. This would have been baffling when we still had a sex life, but now, it’s downright absurd.

But Chris immediately notices my discomfort, and pounces on it.

“My, my,” Chris says, lifting her left foot towards my face. “What an interesting discovery.”

I wiggle my head this way and that, only pretending – and not very successfully at that – that I don’t want anything to do with her foot.

“Get that stinky thing away from me!” I say. It’s a lie, of course. Her feet are immaculately clean, and even as we play this impromptu game of cat and mouse, my hands don’t stop rubbing all tension out of her right foot.

“What did you just call it?” Chris says, and at last, she decides to cut through my charade, and her foot charges towards me. The sole adheres against my cheek as Chris extends her leg, pushing my head to the side, and keeping it there.

A shiver of arousal goes through me. It’s the foot-version of being pinned to the wall and groped, or that’s what it feels like to me anyway. Electricity tingles between my thighs at the skin-on-skin contact, at the way her wiggling toes seem to be toying with my hair.

“Don’t stop rubbing,” Chris says in a tone that brooks no argument, and of course I don’t stop. It’s… incredible how fast this is progressing, how much this is lubricating me. I thank my lucky stars she can’t tell how wet I am, or they’d probably go even faster.

I feel like I’m on a rollercoaster where the only way is down.

Chris moves the foot away from my cheek, her toes extending to explore my face until they, eventually, reach my nose.

And then, they pinch it.

With my head forcibly turned, I can now stare at Chris again, and I know my expression must be quite the sight – I’m in shock at how brazen she’s being.

“Do my feet really stink?” Chris asks, making an exaggerated show of supporting her chin with her hand. Then, guiding me by the nose, she moves my head sideways, shaking it in a no that answers her own question.

Her expression is hopelessly and cruelly amused with this display. On my part, I just feel mortified, belittled… and aroused. She’s literally leading me with a foot, manipulating my head like I’m on a leash or something.

This is more skin-on-skin contact than we’ve had in forever… and it’s between my face and hands, and her feet.

Like I’m some kind of supplicant, begging for her touch.

“You should apologise,” Chris says, her eyes boring into mine.

“I’m s-sorry I called your feet stinky,” I say, my voice coming off as ridiculously high-pitched due to my pinched nose. That just sends Chris into a shake of hysterical laughter, but then, she turns serious all of a sudden.

“Oh, you have a lot to apologise for,” Chris says, and the way she says it sends a shiver down my spine. “But I suppose this is a start.”

“Chris, I-” but I don’t get to finish whatever it is that I want to say. Her toes release my poor nose, and immediately travel downward, towards my lips. Her big toe slips into my open mouth.

I stare at her in confusion, but do nothing to withdraw myself. It’s like I’m paralysed, a deer in headlights. Or a convict, waiting for judgement.

“Suck.”

It’s a simple enough word, but a very meaningful one.

I’m not stupid. I know I’ve done more than my fair share to turn this relationship into this dysfunctional mess. I know Chris has enough resentment towards me to last a lifetime – she’s just good at bottling it.

And I know how great it must be for her, to see her tough, bullish, domineering tomboy girlfriend, reduced to a whimpering mouth-holster for her toes in the space of a few minutes.

I can see it in her eyes. I can feel it in the air. Things have shifted. Showing attraction first was the early chink in my armor, the fact that her feet are the apparent and absurd object of my desire is even more damning, but this…

This is a reduction in status. It suddenly feels like Chris has the whip hand. And if I yield to it, I fear there will be a price to pay, later on.

But Chris has thought ahead. Her other foot forcibly removes itself from my servicing fingers, pressing against my stomach, and then travelling downward…

I give a soft whimper from around her big toe as her foot snakes into my pants.

Chris’ eyes light up at what she finds there.

“God,” she says, “it’s even worse than I thought. What a filthy pig. Think how much trouble we would have saved ourselves if I’d just stuck my feet in your face years ago.”

It hurts, the way she says it. It lashes at something deeply nested within my emotional self. The idea itself is so hurtful, that if only I resigned myself to being her foot bitch, let her call the shots, let her turn the tables on me, then that would have been fine.

I want to protest against that, say it’s unfair… but the hurt feels strangely good. As does her toe in my mouth, clean and smooth and tiny and yet so masterful as it rests against the tip of my tongue.

And her other foot… God, it’s all I can do not to hump it.

I plead for mercy with my eyes, but Chris is having none of it. As her toes rub against my crotch, making me quiver with anticipation and desire, she stabs her toe further into my mouth.

“I said, suck. Don’t make me repeat myself.”

And this time, I obey. I seal my lips around her toe and begin to gently fellate it, while her other toe rubs frantically against my sex, finding my clit – the clit she used to worship with her fingers and her tongue, and that is now being literally placed underfoot beneath her.

Just like me.

I buck to meet her rubbing, I bob my head up and down on her toe, I give the best slutty, moaning display that I can, and all the while, my mind is racing with the possibilities the future holds.

She’s going to make me pay for every transgression I’ve ever made.

She’s going to use and abuse her new power over me, she’s going to lord it over me, she’s going to rewrite the rules of this relationship and impose them on me, or maybe she’s gonna break up with me anyway and just keep me as a foot attendant, and I don’t even know where these thoughts are coming from, what kind of dark deep recess in my mind associates feet with subjugation and both things with arousal, but I know I’m getting close…

I know I won’t say no. I need this. Her feet are beautiful, silky smooth, regal, elegant, worthy of worship. I love the taste, the deftness of her toes as they manipulate me ever closer to the brink of a devastating orgasm.

I need to cum. My undersexed brain will not let up. I will pay any price just to get this one release, and she knows it, she’s dangling the carrot before me, egging me on towards the cage she’s preparing for me, like I’m a wild animal about to be domesticated.

I take ages to cum, always.

But not this time.

When the climax comes, it’s so sudden and unexpected that it catches me by surprise, but I love every second of it, it’s everything I’ve imagined it to be, and more. It hits me like an earthquake, radiating in shockwaves from my clit, making me moan desperately around the toe firmly lodged into my mouth.

It’s like months of tension built up in every muscle release outward at once. Even when the peak is past, subsequent ripples of my climax ripple outward from my sex, driving out all thoughts, all worries, all responsibilities.

For a blessed moment, the rest of the world disappears, and there is only feeling, only pleasure.

But then, the moment is gone. The pleasure subsides, my breathing around Chris’ toe slows down, my heartbeat returns to normal.

The climbdown is slow, and painful, and… embarassing. Part of me thinks the pleasure was worth it.

The other part?

The other part looks at Chris, her self-satisfied smile at having put her obnoxious quasi-ex girlfriend in her place, and shivers in fear.

“Well, well, well,” Chris says, and it’s like she has to physically stop herself from cackling. “That surely makes things very interesting. I think we have a few things we need to talk about.”

As she says this, her other foot withdraws from my pants, lifts in the air… and joins the other foot, the toes pushing past my lips and into my mouth. I don’t dare remove my mouth from it, cringing as I taste myself – my arousal, and my defeat – on my girlfriend’s own toes.

“Don’t you agree?” She asks, in mock gentleness, as she pins me against the sofa and begins to facefuck me with her toes. “Nicky?”

I shiver, close my eyes, and throw myself into this worshipful act, this harbinger of my downfall, this beautiful discovery…

The discovery of feet.