Page 5 of Her Shameful Wedding Night (Corporate Correction)

The nurse’s tone seemed to shift from light banter to censorious judgment and back, in the blink of an eye. The first part of her little speech had made the entire top half of Zoe’s body go hot—even as, again, the feeling below her waist continued to trouble her. Then that tone seemed to give way in the older woman’s voice to mere idle advice of the kind a saleswoman at a department store might give. The smile on her really very pleasant round face seemed to tell Zoe that she only meant it as a helpful hint for a young bride whose mother apparently, if she were around, didn’t feel comfortable talking about the subject with her daughter.

Which is the case, certainly, Zoe thought as she turned back toward the exam chair and finished taking off her top to lay it on the seat, then put her hands to the waistband of her jeans. Mary Ralston hadn’t seemed interesting in educating her daughter on anything to do with the nebulous realm ofbecoming a woman. Zoe hadn’t minded: it had all seemed fairly straightforward, in sex ed, and not getting anything from her mother except the occasional spare pad, given and received without any communication more explicit than a raised eyebrow and a nod, had seemed to Zoe to furnish a blessed lack of embarrassment between them.

Now, though, she couldn’t help wondering if a little more information concerning lingerie choices might have helped, though really how could even that have averted the terrible dilemma Zoe faced now? Nor was it even a dilemma, really, as much as the knowledge that she had no choice but to suffer much, much more embarrassment in a moment than she had suffered hitherto.Dilemmameant you could decide which of two options would have the worse consequences, but Zoe’s only choices besides unbuttoning her jeans and taking them down and showing Nurse Carter that she had a thong on seemed to be running out of the room bare-chested or trying to start a fire behind the nurse’s back.

Again the rational part of her wondered why it seemed like such a big deal. She had panties on, at least; sometimes with jeans she didn’t, if the laundry hadn’t gotten done in a while. She should feel grateful, she told herself, that even though she hadn’t known about this stupid exam and she hadn’t thought she would have to take off her clothes, she still happened to be wearing a perfectly clean pair of panties—at least, she remembered with a deep frown, perfectly clean until she had paused at the kitchen counter, and until her visit to the clinic had exerted such a strange effect.

She fumbled a little at the button, and then, trying hard to feel normal and casual, she got it open, unzipped the fly, and started to skin down the jeans.

Nurse Carter didn’tsayanything. From behind Zoe came a single sound, though, that sent a tremor straight to the place where she least wanted to feel a tremor now. A cluck of the nurse’s tongue against her palate, the sound of matronly disapproval of a young bride’s scandalous panties. Then, so much worse that it made Zoe feel lightheaded, the nurse sniffed the air.

Zoe had to push down a whimper that had almost come from her throat, because she could smell it too. Her pussy, from which she now had to pull down the gray thong panties. When Zoe had pulled down her jeans, the rich, warm scent of a young bride’s need for her husband’s traditional attention had filled the air of the exam room.

Nurse Carter made no other sounds. Trembling, Zoe put her jeans on the table, wishing now that she had just taken off her panties inside them. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband, realizing suddenly that Bradley had never seen her naked and wondering if that were weird—for a bride to have to undress for a nurse before she had ever undressed for her fiancé.

Then even the wordforbegan to seem strange to her, as with her shaking hands she finally started to draw down the cotton panties that left her butt-cheeks so sexily bare.I’m undressingforthis nurse, the same way I’ll have to undressforBradley... when he tells me to, on our wedding night. The way a traditional husband does, when the time comes.

The time. The time for... for sex. The bride’s first time.

The panties whispered against her thighs, her calves, and Zoe had to step out of them awkwardly with the feeling of Nurse Carter’s eyes on her bottom and maybe even between her thighs. She couldn’t keep from bending, and moving so that if the nurse chose, she could see down there, where maybe it even... glistened a little bit.

Biting her lip, she put the panties atop her jeans on the exam chair. She prepared herself to turn around and face Nurse Carter again, but the woman said, in a tone that betrayed a little exasperation, as if for a little girl who should have known better, “Go ahead and put your clothes on the chair in the corner, Zoe. Then you can hop up on the exam chair for me.”

Zoe could hardly feel the additional blush these words caused, on top of all the other humiliation. A moment before she had felt ready to face the older woman, but now as she obeyed the nurse’s instruction and picked up the pile of her top, jeans, and panties, a fresh whiff of the fragrance she had imparted to the cotton of her underwear came to her nose, and another flush of heat in her face with it.

“Wait a moment,” Nurse Carter said. “You can give me your panties, actually. I need to have a look at them.”

Zoe managed only with the greatest difficulty to turn the little sob that rose in her throat into a puff of air from her nostrils. Her whole body froze for a moment as she tried to get the rest of it under control. Then, finding the resolve to keep herself calm, she turned, with her clothes in her arms, and said in what she hoped would sound like a casual voice, “Why?”

The monosyllable did have a noticeable quaver in it, but Zoe met Nurse Carter’s eyes and, finding sympathy in them, felt momentarily better. The nurse stepped forward from the little desk where she had laid Zoe’s chart, and put her hand out to take the thong by the waistband.

“I know it’s embarrassing, honey, but I need to make sure you’re healthy for your fiancé, and ready for this program.”

Zoe watched in horror—feeling dizzy, even, as if she might actually faint with shame—as the nurse plucked the panties from the heap of clothes in her arms and took them over to the desk. She put the tiny garment on top of the folder and, to Zoe’s even greater dismay, spread the gusset out with fingertips that seemed to try hard not to touch the very worst part of all—the undeniable, quarter-sized wet spot.

Now Zoe did make a tiny sound in her throat, a little whimpering noise that made Nurse Carter turn around even as she picked up the little handheld device she had laid next to the chart and began to bring it up toward her face.

“Don’t worry, honey,” the older woman said, just as Zoe understood that the handheld had a camera in it, and Nurse Carter was about to take a picture of her panties. “A wet spot like that means that you’re very healthy, and you’ll do just fine in the program.”

Zoe felt her face crumple as she watched in mute humiliation, naked and holding her clothes in front of her. Nurse Carter took a picture, and then from her pocket she fished a plastic bag with a strip of paper inside. She took the paper out and wiped it on the wet spot, as Zoe felt she might actually sink into the earth—wished she would disappear that way, if not just evaporate into steam or burst into flames of mortification. The paper strip went back into the bag, which the nurse sealed and placed on the desk next to the chart.

“All done,” Nurse Carter said, picking up the panties by the waistband in an obvious effort not to bring her skin into contact with the evidence of Zoe’s shame. “You can put them over with your other clothes.” The nurse put the thong atop the jeans, and Zoe turned away, more conscious than ever that the older woman could see her bottom, and between her thighs, too, as Zoe bent to put her clothes on the low chair in the corner.

---