Monday 10th February

When she saw the pastel-pink envelope in the mailbox, stiff and crisp enough to boast a card inside, Christy’s heart sank. Her first thought was Oh no, not here.

She collected the assorted mail around it, nearly leaving the card behind, but she took it in with her. Whoever sent it had stamped the fold with a crimson kiss stamp; the ink and the shape were too uniform to be a real lipstick mark.

The whole thing was far too ‘girly’ to put a smile on Christy’s face, even after years of learning to fake a smile when they were delivered to her lecture theatre by the campus volunteers. This was mildly annoying on campus, but one showing up at her home was a different proposition.

Tall, leggy, her dark skin flawless and her long hair carefully straightened and styled, Christy had often received Valentines cards from her college students; while they went unsigned, she could usually predict which students would send her one each year.

They were a nearly-even mix of those who thought it was somehow funny to send their professor an anonymous lovenote and those who really meant it. Typically this second set hadn’t noticed her wedding band, usually because their attention was on her ass whenever she stood facing the whiteboard to make notes, or on the white blouse that only partially concealed her bounty.

As she had done now for nearly six months she paused in the doorway to the kitchen. “Evening hon,” she called out. “You’re not going to believe this. One of them sent their damn card to my home address.”

She waited for a few moments while her husband’s rich chuckle played out in her head. “I know,” she said. “It’s one of the jokers, I’d bet my ass on it. Probably Dale.”

Her husband Jacob had passed away just before Labor Day the past year, but she wasn’t quite ready to let go yet. “I told you he’d be trouble, remember?” she said. “You mark my words.” She dropped the rest of the mail onto the counter and smiled, imagining her husband’s comment. “Alright, alright, I’ll get it over with,” she called. It was still easy to imagine him, at a time like this, sprawled on the sofa, taking up a little too much of the space, calling his answers through.

Enough conversation and Jacob would always have got up and come through occasionally, good-naturedly chuckling at her laments about the world, which never felt so bad once she’d told them to him. They would come together in the kitchen, and kiss, and one of them would fix them both drinks, and then they would fix dinner together.

He was the only man Christy had been able to cook alongside without it ending in tears, recriminations, or a sullen culinary disaster. They were simply comfortable around each other, and while both of them worked jobs that needed a certain amount of ego to do well, they had no ego with one another. Instead they’d been able to work as one, almost without communication.

She opened the envelope and took out the card, which was surprisingly low-key, a white card with VALENTINE picked out diagonally across it in metallic red with nothing else. “Well, it’s not tasteless,” she called.

She opened the card and read the inscription.

Strip down to your bra and panties and stand by your front window for five minutes.

Signed,

A secret admirer

Christy stood the card next to the rest of the mail and transferred her purse strap from her shoulder to the back of one of the kitchen chairs, then shrugged out of her coat and hung it in the same place, stepping out of her shoes as she did so. She placed her jacket on the work surface next to the card, then began to unbutton her blouse.

Her actions were brisk and efficient, without a hint of excitement or sensuality to them; the blouse was allowed to fall to the kitchen floor, and her pants followed shortly after, stepping out of them before reaching down and removing her socks one by one, balling them into a pair and setting them on the counter.

Having done so she made her way through to the living room, up to the big picture window beside the TV. The curtains were open, and while the lights in the room weren’t on, the window was close enough to a streetlamp for her to be fully illuminated to anyone looking in.

Christy glanced incuriously at her watch, noting the time without really thinking about it, then looked out of the window.

The neighbourhood was always busy, that time of day; Jacob, working an early shift, was home hours before the rest of them, but while she was usually the first to pull back into her driveway, others weren’t far behind. She watched for five minutes as a number of her neighbours drove home.

Some of them looked over, and she was conscious of their eyes on her body, her black skin set off by the white underwear. One of the men of the neighbourhood, a little older and enjoying early retirement, paused walking his dog to fully drink in the sight of her. Christy found a little amusement in the sight of the dog struggling against the leash while he stood still.

And there was another car, too, parked on the road rather than in a drive, opposite her address. Someone was in it, but without a light on in the interior they were only a shadow she couldn’t make out.

She looked at her watch again, and was surprised to realise she’d been standing there, effectively on display to the neighbourhood. Blinking several times, she went back to the kitchen, where she made herself a drink.

She hesitated over the clothes, but didn’t dress again. Instead she started making dinner, which she ate on the sofa in front of the TV in her underwear. By that time the car opposite had gone.

*

Tuesday 11th February

It occurred to Christy suddenly, standing in front of her sophomore class, that there was a good chance that whoever had found her address and sent a card to her home rather than the office was one of the people in front of her. One by one, as she continued to talk, she made eye contact with several of them, looking for a smirk or any other tiny reaction. A handful of them looked away or down at their notes almost immediately, but there was nothing else that stood out.

She set the thought forcibly aside and got back to the lecture. By the time she’d finished she was back in the swing of her academic life to the point she didn’t think about the card again until, back home, she saw another pastel pink stiff envelop nestled against a catalogue she couldn’t remember signing up for full of products she couldn’t imagine wanting.

She gave a tut that was half a snarl. This hadn’t been cute to start with, but it was far less cute now there was more than one.

That night her opening gambit for Jacob was “Someone’s asking to get their ass whupped.”

A pause just long enough to imagine his response. “I got another of those cards,” she said. “Here, again.”

Jacob would have been amused by the whole thing, she knew, and he would have made a joke of it to help her defuse. Without him there, the effect wasn’t as good, but it was close.

She opened the rest of the mail first this time, taking her time over it, but she was conscious the whole time of the card resting there, in its envelope, waiting for her.

When she took it out from the envelope this time it was almost identical to the first, except that it read MY VALENTINE.

That was stranger than two identical cards. She turned it over without opening it, saw no printers’ mark. She turned it back. This didn’t look home printed. Someone had put effort into this.

“It’s that Dale,” she told the air, her suspicions confirmed. “You mark my words.”

She opened the card and read the inscription.

Strip topless and stand in your front window for six minutes.

Don’t forget to turn the light on and smile.

Signed,

A Studious Admirer

Christy stood the card next to the first one. Her coat and purse already disposed of, she briskly unbuttoned her blouse, smiling broadly as she did so, and draped it over a kitchen chair before unhooking her bra, which she left on the kitchen counter.

She walked into the living room, turning the light on as she did, and went to stand in front of the window with a smile. That car was parked up there again, the one from outside the neighbourhood. She glanced absently at her watch, barely even registering the time.

Mrs O’Donnell went by, glancing up at Christy; her eyes widened in surprise and her lips set in a thin line. She wasn’t the only one to notice Christy, standing by the window in the full light of her room, her tits bare and visible for the world to see.

Christy was quietly very happy with her tits, not that she would have admitted this to anyone. Still, she was feeling a tingling embarrassment grow as she stood there. It wasn’t just Mrs O’Donnell. It was Luca, who was a student at her college staying with his parents (thankfully not in any of her classes) who stopped for a moment and grinned. It was Nathan Kendall, who everyone was sure was on the outs with his wife, who took the time, walking back from the corner store with his milk, to look her up and down thoroughly. If he looked at his wife that way, Christy thought, he wouldn’t have his current problems.

She wondered if it could be Luca delivering the cards, but it didn’t seem likely. Deep down she really did believe it was Dale.

The front window of the mystery car rolled down, she could see the glint as it changed position. A small red pinpoint of light appeared, framed in the window, and then was instead briefly a quick flash of light. Whoever was in the car had taken a photo, probably of her.

Christy did not frown warningly, because she hadn’t forgotten to smile.

An idle glance at her wrist showed her that she’d been standing at the window for nearly seven minutes. She turned and left, walking back into the kitchen where she fixed dinner for herself. She had to move blouse and bra from the countertop before she could chop her garlic and onion, but in spite of her earlier embarrassment it didn’t occur to her to put them on again.

That evening she dined in the kitchen rather than eat with her tits on show to the street. By the time she looked out of her bedroom window, the mystery car was gone.

*

Wednesday 12th February

The university made a big deal about how much information they’d centralised, but Christy was no longer impressed. Whatever parking permit records might exist, she couldn’t access them, couldn’t find out what Dale drove and compare it mentally to the mystery car.

She was sure of only a few things. First, the cards were connected to the car somehow. Second, the cards had made her… something. She wasn’t sure what - her behaviour had been perfectly normal both previous nights - but she had still in some way been affected by them.

In seminar that day, when she met Dale’s eye, he smirked, and she was more certain than ever that he was involved. The problem was, involved in what?

It was nothing illegal, nor in breach of college bylaws, to send a professor a Valentines’ card; it was therefore not going to be illegal to send her two. It was not illegal, either, to find out her address and send them to her at home; it was just somewhat… skeevy. If that was still the right word; it had been while she was a student.

“Dale,” she said as the seminar was wrapping up, “hold back a few moments, please.”

He did so, and while he was clearly aiming for a look of all innocent curiosity, he was not yet good at that kind of subtlety; the slight I-know-something-you-don’t-know smirk shone through.

She decided to try and knock him off balance from the start. “How did you find my home address?”

His eyes widened for a moment. She could see quick recalculation going on; how was he going to answer this?

He shrugged after a moment. “No harm in it, is there, Miss?”

She frowned at him and was rewarded by seeing uncertainty in his expression for the first time. “I don’t know if this is your idea or not,” she said, because how would he possibly know how to make the cards affect someone? “But this is the last of it. Right? We draw a line under it.”

He held up his hand. “I won’t do anything,” he said. “Promise.”

“Good.”

Dale went on his way and Christy did her best to put the whole thing out of her mind. Arriving home, however, she found not just a pastel pink envelope but also a small pastel pink package to which the envelope had been tacked.

It did have a postmark, she reflected. He must have sent it before their conversation. So that didn’t necessarily mean he’d broken his promise.

She was stewing on the fact he should really have warned her more was on the way as she entered her home.

“It’s Dale,” she called out. “Arrogant, isn’t he?”

There hadn’t been much other mail that day; one of Jacob’s old subscriptions, stubbornly refusing to cancel. Another reminder of all that she’d lost. The rest of her ritual conversation collapsed with the reminder.

She tried to avoid the sour taste that thought left in her mouth by deciding what to open first, before deciding she wouldn’t open the package at all. Returning it, seal unbroken, would demonstrate to Dale that whatever the big idea was, he had the wrong end of the stick.

Her thoughts had adopted a pleasant air of defiance as she opened the envelope. This time the card within read BE MY VALENTINE, still imprinted in metallic red on plain white.

Inside, the inscription read:

Open the door through into your yard and leave it unlocked until you go to bed. Change into the enclosed and model in front of the window in your back room, with the light on, for thirty minutes.

Don’t forget to smile.

Signed,

A Satisfied Admirer

Christy set the card next to the first two and walked out of the house’s side door and unbolted her yard door before going back inside. Pausing only to lock the side door again, she opened up the pastel pink box and dug through the layers of rustling pink tissue paper to draw out a beautiful confection of white leather and golden chains and hoops, none of the leather much more than a strip as wide as her thumb. She had to turn it around in her hands, holding it up, twice before she worked out which way the outfit faced.

Then she laid it down on top of the box, very carefully, and begun unbuttoning her blouse.

Her pants, bra, panties, shoes, and socks all followed, stripped away efficiently. Out of the corner of her eye, through the kitchen window, she caught a flicker of movement. Someone had gone through the unlocked yard door.

She stepped gingerly into the costume with which she’d been supplied. It kept her modesty - just - once properly adjusted, but her tits felt as if they were straining against the leather with every breath, her every motion jingled slightly. Straps ran from her crotch up over her hips, and these connected to other straps to a taut band around her chest below her tits. From there chains and straps ran over her nipples and up to a collar that fastened around her throat.

She caught a glimpse of the way the white spotlighted her figure in the reflection of herself in the dark window as she entered the back room, before she turned it on, and modelling it became easier. All she had to do was strut, fall into pose, hold pose, and release; the outfit itself took care of the rest.

Thirty minutes was longer than she had expected, but it seemed to pass in no time, too, even in front of the red LED telltale in the yard that suggested someone was filming.

Afterward she was tired, more tired than usual at the end of the day, and ordered takeout rather than cook.

She accepted the Chinese cartons from the delivery guy still in the same white straps, still smiling.

That night, when she went to bed, she cupped her breast in one hand, teasing and toying with her nipple, while two fingers of the other crept between her legs. It had been so long since she’d enjoyed her own body like that; in fact, she realised suddenly, the last time she’d done so she’d been showing off for Jacob to watch.

*

Thursday 13th February

In the shower that morning, Christy had been doing some thinking. It was certainly true that Dale was involved, was probably the one who’d filmed her modelling session earlier. It seemed almost as certain to her that Dale couldn’t have created cards that affected people’s behaviour. (If hers had been affected, that is - she wasn’t convinced that it could have been, but she was all the same convinced that it must have been, somehow, in some way).

It was all speculation, then, but if she went with those assumptions it seemed likely to her that she would not be the only one affected on campus. At least a few other professors, she thought, and quite likely some students. She gave it even money whether or not the recipients of the cards would all be femme.

All speculation. Any actions she took as a result of her speculation were built on quicksand, the results of the purest guesswork. She knew that.

She asked Josie Wilson if she’d received a Valentines card at home, maybe more than one, when they met in passing at one of the cafes on campus, and the way Josie’s spine immediately stiffened she knew she’d struck gold.

“What’s going on with them?” Josie asked, her voice very quiet. “The head of my HOA has been looking strangely at me since Monday night.”

“Strangely how?”

“Well, normally it’d be easy to say what was on her mind,” Josie said. She taught Engineering, and the two of them occasionally joked about the wildly different ways they both thought. She would never have staked embarrassment by asking a question off a guess; everything about her was precision. “She usually makes her complaints very clear. She seems unsure about even speaking to me.”

“Any idea why?”

“No,” Josie confessed. “I can’t think of any anomalous behaviour I’ve exhibited.”

“Me either!” Christy exclaimed. “I just stood in my living room window in my underwear for five minutes, then the next night topless and smiling in the same place, and-”

She broke off. The expression Josie wore suggested she’d said something out of the ordinary. “What?”

“Do you usually stand topless in full view of your neighbourhood?” Josie asked.

Christy blinked rapidly. That wasn’t what she’d - that was another way to describe what she’d done on Tuesday night, wasn’t it. “Uhm-”

“Had you ever done that before?” Josie continued.

“I… no.” That version of the question was much easier to answer, for some reason.

“Then I would describe both of those incidents as anomalous behaviour.” Which sounded wrong to Christy, on an instinctive level, but she grudgingly conceded the point. “Does that take us up to date?” Josie asked.

Naturally, Christy described the leatherwear she’d been sent, the time spent modelling it, and the fact she believed Dale had filmed her. She was surprised when Josie claimed that this, too, was not typical behaviour for a woman employed as a college professor. Surprised and, as so often when someone is called out on their idiosyncrasies, she wanted to sting.

“So what did you do after getting your cards?” she retorted.

Josie blinked in surprise. “Nothing out of the ordinary,” she said. “On Monday I went through to my kitchen window, took my shirt off, and did star jumps for ten minutes, clapping my hands above my head each time.

“Tuesday I stripped nude, climbed up on my kitchen table and did yoga for a half-hour.” She paused, looking at Christy with a skeptical expression. “I hope you don’t have any comment to pass on that?”

“What happened last night?” Christy asked rather than respond to that.

“Well, I stripped nude so I could put on the little waist apron that I’d been sent, then I sat in a kitchen chair facing the window, spread my legs, and masturbated with my rolling pin until I came.”

“And that’s a frequent hobby, is it?”

“Certainly not!” Josie retorted. Her eyelids fluttered several times. Christy watched as her colleague and friend processed the idea that what she was doing wasn’t actually typical, though her own shocked awareness that her own behaviour had been out of the ordinary was, while not fading, becoming vague in the details.

“How about topless star jumps?” she continued.

“I…” Josie faltered.

“Naked yoga I actually think sounds fun,” Christy said, “so I wouldn’t criticise you for that. But you don’t normally do it on the table, do you?”

“Heavens, no. I wouldn’t be confident it could take my weight.” She paused. “Well, I wouldn’t have been before I put it to the test.”

The two women sat in silence for a while, studying each other thoughtfully. “Where does this leave us?” Josie asked eventually, ever the more practical.

“I’m afraid I have no idea,” Christy admitted softly.

She was not surprised, on returning home, to find another envelope waiting for her. Taking it and the rest of the mail into the house, she had half-opened it before she realised what her hands were doing automatically and forced herself to stop.

“Something very strange is happening here,” she called through. Jacob would always have had something comforting to say at a moment like this. Would have found the way to break her tension and made her see something better.

She could imagine his chuckle clearly. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s that Dale. And he’s not the only one. There’s at least one more of them, horndogging after staff. Making us do things.”

After a moment’s wait, she said “I can’t just brush this off as students being hot for teacher.” But she was smiling. It was exactly the joke Jacob might have made before walking back through to join her, kiss her, embrace her.

To claim her.

Losing him, she suddenly realised, had thrown herself out of sync with her own sensuality. She’d overheard students like Dale call her a milf, in the past, but that wasn’t about her, she knew; that was them being young, not her being old. You learned the distinction only through time.

Whatever else had happened under the effects of the card, she had been aware of herself sexually again.

“It don’t make sense for me to live life as a nun,” she said softly, not sure if she was saying it to Jacob or herself but sure there was a difference, “Does it?”

She waited, but there was no answer.

Her gaze was back on the half-open envelope. Staring at it, she took a deep breath. It would, she understood, get opened eventually, when she wasn’t paying attention. She could do it now, and get it over with, or she’d find herself doing it later.

She bit her lower lip as she opened the card.

This time the red metallic letters spelled out WILL YOU BE MY VALENTINE. She looked at it for a long time, wondering what the answer was.

Wondering which one Jacob would recommend.

Inside, the inscription read:

Change into your new outfit and put on some bright lipstick, then go through to the back room. Turn on the light and make sure you are visible to anyone looking out from your yard, then finger yourself to orgasm, smiling the whole time.

Leave a key to the front door under your doormat before you go to bed tonight. Do not activate the alarm system if you have one.

Signed,

A Salacious Admirer

Christy hurried upstairs to fetch the outfit, shrugging her blazer off as she went. The card was set on one side of her dressing table, beside the mirror. She chose one of her favourite lipsticks, a soft pink that had always made her lips catch the eye of others. It had been untouched since Jacob’s passing.

Too many things, she decided, had been untouched since Jacob’s passing. Until the night before she had been one of them.

She climbed back into the white straps and gold chains, voluntarily chaining herself again. As she fastened the collar strap at the back of her neck she thought again as she had done earlier of Jacob’s embrace as his way of claiming her.

She hadn’t thought about the implications of a word like that before. Not until she had the cards to contrast it against.

She walked back downstairs at a more sedate pace. Her shoulders had gone back, her spine had straightened. She only realised how much she’d given into slumping now she was standing tall again.

Walking into her back room she turned on the lights and selected a chair. While perched on the chair she spread her legs, smiling, and looked out of the window into late dusk as she began to finger herself.

Dale, she was sure, was out there somewhere. She was thinking about him, in part, less the fact he was watching her and more his cheerful impudence - something she could quite enjoy if the circumstances were flirtatious enough. She was thinking, too, about Jacob, about the way he’d known just what she liked, about how he would go out of his way to push her buttons in bed, but also about how sometimes he surprised her with an action she hadn’t even known she would want until he was doing it.

There was nothing like the white straps in her closet upstairs, but there were garments in there she was sure would stun Dale, were he ever to see her in them, and she had bought those to see that same stunned expression on Jacob. To claim him in her turn.

It came to her, as her growing pleasure and urgency overwhelmed her suppression of certain thoughts, that Jacob would be horrified if those clothes never saw the light of day again simply because he wasn’t the man she wanted to catch with them.

She cried out as she came, in triumph and ecstasy and loss and celebration.

Before she left the back room she licked her fingers clean, then went on through to the kitchen to cook dinner.

*

Friday 14 February

He must have got in while she was in the shower.

Emerging from the bathroom wrapped in a towel, Christy jumped a little when she saw Dale loitering at the top of her stairs, but perhaps not as much as she would have jumped if she hadn’t noticed the mystery car parked on the road outside.

Still, she frowned at him. “This is definitely not doing nothing, Dale. And it’s also definitely grounds for expulsion.”

For all that he was in her house, she didn’t feel scared, she realised; she might be riding a swell of adrenaline, but she wasn’t dealing with fear. No - with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach she realised this was, instead, a thrill.

“But you’re not going to complain, are you, Miss?”

“In this house, it’s not Miss,” Christy told him. Her voice shook a little. “This isn’t my office. This is where I live my life. And that life was made so much better by my husband.”

She saw the expression shift in Dale’s eyes. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said. There was another moment of awkward silence.

“Yes, well.” She cleared her throat. “If that’s all, I would be more comfortable if you left.” Which was true, however much she was riding the feeling of thrill at that moment. More comfortable. But comfort could become a rut. And it might very easily be less enjoyable than if Dale stayed.

He didn’t answer with words. Instead he produced, from behind his back, another pastel pink envelope and held it out toward her.

The two of them looked down at it together. It would have felt perfectly natural, Christy thought, to take it and open it without thinking.

But she couldn’t. And whoever Josie was confronting - as Christy had no doubt she was dealing with the same thing, if her mysterious admirer hadn’t moved onto this the night before (since he seemed to have pushed Josie harder) - she hoped Josie wouldn’t just let it happen either. Even inevitabilities should be acknowledged and assessed.

“What does this say, Dale?” she asked.

“I think it’d be better as a surprise, Professor,” he said.

Christy tutted to herself. “You know,” she said, “That’s not better than Miss.” A decision was made in an instant. “Try Christy.”

She saw him swallow. No way this had been his idea. “Alright… Christy,” he said. “First names, is it?”

“If this is a Valentine,” she said, “it should be between two people who like each other, shouldn’t it?”

“Yes, Mis - sorry. Yes, Christy.”

“If I open this,” she began.

“When you open this,” he corrected.

Christy decided just not to acknowledge he’d even said that. It was probably smarter. “Here’s what I need to know, Dale,” he said. “And I need you to know, too, that you’re not as good a liar as you think.”

He nodded, and there was something in the earnestness of his expression, the out-of-his-depth look in his eyes, that made her take that seriously. “Is there an after to this?” she asked. “Because I will have a lot of questions. Whether or not there are any complaints.”

She’d thrown that last in because she was sure this stunt would somehow keep her and the other recipients from complaining. Dale had been too confident about complaints at the start of this conversation.

“There’s… a decision,” he said. “About whether or not there’s an after.”

“And if there isn’t, what does that look like?”

He blew out his breath in a long sigh, then gathered in another. “I hope it looks like us talking about it,” he said. “I was, uh, I was just looking in your closet-” He had gone suddenly beet red. Christy could hear Jacob laughing. Could hear the approval in his laughter. “I think maybe if I didn’t let you help plan things, I’d miss out.”

“It’s not polite to snoop in a lady’s closet, Dale,” she said primly.

“I know.” He gave her that roguish grin he had.

Christy took the envelope and opened it.

On the outside the card read YOU WILL BE MY VALENTINE.

The inscription read:

Call in sick from college. Obey any instruction your Admirer gives you until Sunday evening. Smile and present yourself as attractively as possible throughout. Make your Valentines weekend into the hottest, sexiest, most perfect date possible.

On Sunday evening you will be offered another card in a white envelope. Open it if you want this to continue.

Signed,

Your Admirer, Dale

Christy put the card on the opposite side of her dressing table mirror to the other and picked up her phone to call in sick.

“Just before the call connects,” Dale said, grinning, “drop the towel.”

Christy obeyed.