Andre sat in the love seat of a well-furnished apartment, looking down at an advertisement that had his picture on it. THE advertisement for him, the one that got his career off the ground. As happy as he was to see it, something seemed off to him when he looked at it. He couldn't tell what exactly. Thinking about it made his mind go back to the day he got the job.

The ad said simply, "male model needed." Nothing more than that. The vagueness of such a job ad had a few dozen guys show up for auditions. Andre showed up in a back-door of a studio, finding someone standing there, and in-front of him a line of men waiting. It looked more like a line of fans trying to get football tickets. The small comments overheard from others agreed with his assessment that the audition seemed very mismanaged. But he didn't complain - he needed the work.

Parsing through the line of guys was a girl walking around with a tablet in her hands, assigned to take everyone's name and keep track of things in that area. Seems like everyone but him brought something to read, to listen to, something to prevent boredom. He felt stupid for not thinking ahead with that in-mind. Instead of looking at the same apps on his phone or looking over his resume again, he found himself staring at the girl passing by everyone lined up.

She was strangely easy to follow. She paid the men no attention most of the time, something that was probably practiced as cute as she looked. A pretty heart-shaped face behind thin glasses, a white blouse, black skirt, and an interesting pair of socks. It was interesting because Andre was used to seeing girls like these, but more than often they wore stockings or were bare-legged. Andre guessed the socks could pass for tights or were tolerated here, but he found it easy to follow her strolling down the hall as she walked. There was some kind of vine design on them, and he found himself looking at all the shapes he could pick out, and how they moved against her shapely legs. Normally, he'd be staring at her cleavage if it were visible, but the tablet she held diligently blocked the view of it. Watching her legs at least helped the time pass enough to where Andre's name was called.

Surprised, he made his way to the front, wondering how he got picked ahead of so many men. The other men wondered too, with all the looks he got on the way. He walked to the front, and stepped through the audition doors to find one woman seated at a table, the tablet girl standing nearby, and a man with a small photo studio set up behind them. The seated woman, probably the interviewer, looked at least a decade older than he was. She stretched her hand out, wordlessly asking for Andre's resume and paperwork. She looked it over, nodding and making sounds that seemed positive, or so he hoped.

She was done reading his qualifications in less than a minute, and set his paperwork down to see about the man based on the files she read.

"Take off your shirt," she said plainly, consideration in her tone.

Andre hesitated, as this interviewer moved more forward than he was used to. Her expression remained even, patiently waiting for him to comply. He looked at the girl who'd looked up from her tablet finally, wearing the same expression. He decided not to keep them waiting long, and took off his shirt and undershirt in one smooth motion, revealing a healthy, toned body that got him further than he expected once he started interviewing. He wasn't the biggest, or the prettiest guy, but the positive responses he got kept him plugging away at the opportunities.

The seated woman regarded the topless body with a smirk, the assistant with a subtle, appreciative smile. He looked between them, wondering how long it'd be before someone would say something, and who would say something first. Strangely, the younger woman tapped at the tablet with the stylus a few times, and revealed the screen's contents to her superior. It got an approving nod out of both women, but Andre couldn't see what it was.

"Come here for a second," Andre heard as both women stepped toward the photo shoot area behind them. Andre moved to pick up his removed clothing, but heard the younger woman's voice saying "those won't be necessary." He relented, but did as he was asked, walking to stand next to the younger woman. The studio setup looked strange; a small, tan wall reminding Andre of old couch cushions, and a pink mirror lodged in the middle. The floor looked like soft, flat carpeting.

"Lie flat on your back," the younger woman told him. He finally got the courage to ask for an explanation.

"What's all this about?"

"This is a test shoot, Andre," the older woman replied, looking at the camera man below her rather than the model. He noticed that the equipment was being set up very low, obviously meant to capture the point of view asked of him. Despite still feeling unsure, he complied and laid himself down, waiting for direction from the camera man, looking up to see the assistant above him smile down at him.

"Comfy?"

"I'm ok." The surface was actually really comfortable against his back, but it was the only comfort he felt thus far.

"We're going for a scene of comfort here Andre. You honestly look worried, as if you're expecting something bad to happen."

In his vulnerable state, he couldn't doubt that possibility, but he wasn't going to blurt out that fact.

"It does all seem....mysterious, I guess. I have been told I look worried when I'm curious, if that's any comfort," he tried adding a pun at the end for some levity, mostly for himself.

"Curiosity is good, but so is mystery. You won't be kept totally in the dark about everything; your questions will be answered over time. I'm Cassie, by the way."

"Nice to meet you Cassie," he smiled.

"Likewise, Andre," she smiled back.

"We're very aware of how vague things are here, from the ad you saw in the classifieds to where you stand now, or lay, to be accurate. There is a purpose behind it - we want a subject's honest appraisal and reaction."

"Ok...but to what?"

"You won't know right away. We'd ask you to just go with how you feel about things as they happen. You shouldn't expect anything dangerous or abusive, if that's what you're thinking; that's why we have chaperones," she gestured at the camera man and interviewer, "who certainly will taddle if anything goes awry."

Andre knew from experience that chaperones being present added to an air of professionalism and safety at any photo shoot, especially where female subjects were concerned. Other male models he knew were less concerned with having one at a shoot, but it still gave Andre less of a reason to worry. But he still couldn't figure out who was supposed to be filling what role here besides himself.

"I hope some of what I'm telling you is adding to the comfort, besides that soft, expensive rug under you?"

"How expensive is it?"

"Its softness has been known to put some to sleep. With the cleaning bill that comes attached, we'd ask you not to drool on it in your sleep."

That got a chuckle out of him.

"Careful Andre, a smile might be what we're looking for," Cassie spoke as she stepped out of her heels and in-front of the camera's view of his face. The photographer quickly got a shot of her socks blocking part of his face as he looked up.

"What shot was he trying to get there?"

"You're not supposed to know yet, remember?"

"Yeah, but..." Andre felt silenced as Cassie put her feet on either side of his head, making him look directly up at her. The sides of his face felt the softness of the socks, their fine texture reminding him of thin tights or stockings. His temples brushed the sides of her leg, just above her ankles, anytime he tried to move his head. His view was torn between looking up at her face while trying to not peek up her skirt, and getting quick glimpses of under her skirt. She didn't really rob him of speech, but he had no response he could verbalize to her brazen motion.

"Kathy, my boss over there, asked me to participate in this. To see what I could bring to the shoot. I honestly think they want a kind of boyfriend and girlfriend-type pairing to see what comes of it."

"Ok, but what is 'this'?" he asked in his head. Their idea of boyfriend and girlfriend pairing seemed a lot different from the kind of shoots he auditioned for, something with a couple laughing together, sitting together, having fun; some depiction of happy times. He could only guess that 'this' implied some bedroom kind of fun, but it still didn't make sense to him. All the while in his thinking the photographer and interviewer moved around, looking for a shot that interested them.

Despite how soft the carpet was, Andre began to feel an itch on the back of his shoulder. With his head still trapped between Cassie's feet, he tried to shift his torso to make a scratching friction against the carpet. It didn't really work. He thought about where his hands were, not realizing they'd been resting at his sides for a while, feeling coming back into them. Pushing off the other shoulder, he tried to elevate the itching one, to see if his hand could reach while he stayed down there. He didn't get to raise it very far as Cassie's closest foot pressed him back fully to the floor.

"I have an itch," he claimed.

"No you don't," Cassie replied with a strange assurance, as if completely sure of what he was feeling.

"Yes, I do," he stated firmly, wanting to yell it and get up out of his confines to relieve himself, not appreciating being called any sort of liar. "How the hell would you know how I'm feeling?" he yelled in this mind. The strangest answer came from the balls of her foot. It still pressed against his shoulder, but it found the exact front-opposite of where Andre's itch remained, and stroked it with a mixture of soothing and teasing caresses.

"No." she stated as softly as the fine material of her socks were. "You don't." Somehow even that wasn't as soft as what she was doing to his shoulder. With one of her feet gone, he could finally turn his head, now to see what he was feeling. Just as quickly as he decided to turn, her foot stroked his cheek teasingly and pushed it back to where it was, to lay against her other static foot. Andre just looked up past her skirt at her hands-on-her-hips posture, honestly loving how it and the lighting made her look statuesque, towering, and marvelous. The softness of her foot eventually, completely overtook what his nerves registered, and the itching was forgotten.

"See? You don't have an itch."

A part of Andre still knew it was there, but was amazed that he just couldn't feel it anymore, like her socks were working through him instead of just on the surface. It helped that the balls of Cassie's foot and her toes were not just pressing flat against him, but making soft motions, scrunching up and releasing over Andre's skin, stretching her toes, pushing against some sensitive points with her big toe.

"An itch is nothing but a sensation your body feels, irritation, perhaps something like a tickle, that your brain interprets as eager yearning, a desire for stimulation. Depending on the type of itch, it could be something you can easily ignore."

"Like your complaint of your shoulder; really low on the totem pole of your list of concerns, because you're working now, and you can bear a little anxiousness at an audition. People do it all the time for work or to look good in nice clothes. And of course, it's really easy to ignore it by replacing it with a more powerful sensation."

Cassie's foot slid across from him, and into him also. The best he could deduct was that he was getting massaged by her feet. He wasn't going to complain about the treatment as it seemed she expertly knew where and how to touch to make it feel good.

"Something good on your body can help you block out itches, or even pain. It steals you away for brief moments of feeling good, and won't let you go for a while. The material of that carpet is quite thin, the threads of it like velvet when you run your hand across it. Human skin has a unique ability to be very tough yet so soft to the touch in a variety of ways. And these socks surpass both of the things I just mentioned. Their ultra-fine, nearly my latest fashion obsession. Ultra-fine meaning it's the softest of the soft, meaning it has a softness that anything not as soft would be drawn to, meaning how in awe you should be of them; all your attention right here."

"Maybe you've heard about someone, probably a woman, debating on whether to buy something based on its thread-count. Those arbitrary numbers all seem like nonsense when you hear someone talk about them as serious reasons to buy something or not. 'What's the difference?' you guy-mind might ask. 'Soft is soft.' Imagine if I was that woman who you heard, maybe we're dating. I ask you about thread-counts, you have no clue, and don't care. Then I guide you to the floor for a little sweet, convincing demo of how soft can you get. As I said, human skin can be pretty soft, yours, mine, many people's. Then you have that carpet under you, instant comfort the moment you skin comes into contact with it. And then I place my socks on you, and your brain freezes, like almost shuts down in disbelief. This softness, this distinctive feeling, it just undoes you. Undoing every notion of how 'soft is just soft.' It's not. There IS a difference."

Andre believed her in the incomparable softness and smoothness of her socks. The movements she was making with her feet was lost to him though. His curiosity tried to keep up with whatever skill she was using, but he lost track of it at some point, and slowly forgot the fact that he lost something along the line.

"Do you know what's interesting? The people who recommended these kind of socks to me, who've been wearing them much longer than me, they all say they cause a special kind of itch. But it's not the kind of same kind of irritation or crawling that you'd expect. The itch from these socks is caused from exposure, and the effect, the itch happens when they're gone."

He watched her foot rise up just a bit, some of her muscles showing through in an effort to keep it just out of reach of physical contact. Only a few inches of air separated Andre from the softness he was used to, and it became filled with, like Cassie said, a strange crawling feeling, the sensation of where her feet had been touching before.

"You're so close, but not close enough."

The ghost of where Cassie feet were filled his mind, setting aside the notion that he could rise himself up to feel it again. He stayed flat on the floor, feeling what Cassie told him to, his body at least remembering where she wanted him to be.

"Strangely, it can even feel so close even though they're really not."

Slowly, gracefully, the assistant took deliberate steps back away from Andre's head and torso. All he did was lean his head back to keep sight of them.

"You feel that itch so deeply now, maybe past the surface of your skin. Seconds ago, just a second's walk way, but you're already missing my socks, and the feet encased inside. The absence of my ultra fine socks, and what my feet can do you when you're under them. You can't remember anything else you've wanted so badly."

Andre's face was a look similar to what Cassie was used to, multiplied. Her talented, ballet feet have always worked wonders on men, whether they were standing, kneeling, or lying down, no matter which position they started in. If she was just a bit lighter, she could probably dance Swan Lake atop his head, and with her feet and the ultra-fine-ness of the purple socks, Andre would only be cognizant of deep touches of silk on his skin. That's probably where his mind was already, Cassie the spinning ballet toy on the music box, and his mind was the music box, allowing her to spin, her words like the tune of a twinkling lullaby. 

"You can feel them again, you know; all you have to do is acknowledge how much you want them again, and allow them to do anything they wish of you. Whatever happens, you'll get to feel the socks again. It's all you want now."

To see this new man below Cassie nod and utter a whispered "please" pleased the assistant to no end. Andre found himself trapped between her feet again, closing his eyes, wanting to wrap himself in her.

"See, Andre? There is no itch when I'm here to scratch."

Through the sock's material, he could feel her toenails run over his chest, and across his clavicle.

"Just so many reasons to love these socks. How cute they look, how good they feel. You'd think they were some kind of witchcraft in making them."

The balls of her foot made it to the base of his neck, a place normally ticklish for Andre, but he leaned into her touch, loving the silk pressing into his skin like a masseuse.

"Cute, viney heart shapes your eyes get lost following, how soft they make my legs feel, how they draw attention to my legs. Now I know how soft the outside of them feel too."

She stroked the side of his neck, a place where he was somewhat ticklish, but Andre leaned into the feel of her socks. Cassie wasn't lying when she said she loved the feel of her socks. Their feel and fabric could fabricate anything she desired in any man who happened to come across them or touch them, eventually.

"I'd wear these everyday if I could. They even feel so soft against someone else's skin. But you could've already been this soft; that would make you a perfect match for my socks."

At Kathy's silent insistence, Cassie moved the foot Andre leaned against out of the shot, revealing his face. A small smile grew across eased muscles, the only straining for him now was to look up from his turned face to his side. The strain was worth it as the balls of Cassie's socked feet stroked his cheek and played with his ear.

"Just perfect," Cassie whispered down to him.

Several shots were taken of that exact scene from the photographer.

"Good boy," Kathy whispered to the man below her, taking pictures of an expression not to dissimilar from his own.

Andre looked at himself in that photo for a long time, happily remembering; it took him minutes to realize he was handed that picture of himself, handed to him by the owner of the purple socks. He looked up, and finally realized his error, slipping to the floor, flat on his back, feeling a familiar soft carpet below, and an unforgettable caressing foot above him.

Cassie's sat above her live-in slave, enjoying the advertisement she showed on her tablet. His conditioning to remember the day he was taken and programmed grew stronger every time he saw it. Stylus in her hand, she flipped to a different pic, a collage of all his old fetishes. The day of the shooting, she hacked the files of every model that applied, and Andre was exactly what she was looking for. Most of the sites he visited and comments he made suggested he was more of a breast man, but Cassie really wanted a leg man, and had no problem making one out of him. No one stared more brazenly at her socks as she walked that day than Andre anyway.

Cassie McGregor, and her older sister Kathy, were doing well in the advertising business, managing multiple accounts, and submissives. They'd come along way from Kathy using her "sales savvy" door-to-door, and then getting her baby sister involved and going into business for themselves with the notion that they could sell anything to anyone, literally. The pictures they took of male subjugation seemed to be catching, and no one captured those scenes better than them. The socks ad also turned out to be Andre's big break; he found out later that all the men he bypassed all interviewed with Kathy after he was done, but never got beyond taking their shirts off for the pair. After the success of that audition, he always had steady work with the McGregors, and many considerable opportunities for how often he was seen in their ads. Cassie was always very helpful in steering him toward the jobs that suit him best, and he always trusted her judgment. He knew his place well.

Cassie had suggested a caption for the sock ad - "Turn your feet on. Turn his mind off." It was a little too blunt for the older sister's tastes, and lacked the subtlety they usually went for. Kathy almost considered it the way Cassie played with Andre in her presence, but still erred on the side of caution, and only proposed the first half. "It's written all over his face. Why bother overstating it?" she reasoned. Cassie harrumphed, but understood what it meant. Their next client was looking for kitchen appliance account, and the wheels already started turning for how to creatively turn that femdom.

"So easy to use, it's like he's always belonged there," Cassie first suggested, and Kathy liked it from the beginning. It could be played off as comedy, with a subtle, subconscious nod to any woman who saw it, saying "this is possible, if you want it." The 'how,' the sisters didn't worry about. All women have their ways.

Andre's wordless smile below Cassie agreed.