Joyce Julep
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Melissa's Breakthrough, Chapter 8
🕑 Added 2022-12-25 04:57:21 +0000 UTCChapter 8
The next few days passed by in a kind of flashing, phantasmagoric reverie for Steve, and the reason why was very simple – Melissa kept shrinking him smaller and smaller. The external world around him seemed to be constantly changing, becoming huger and huger with each little tincture dose of the specialized ion liquid that Melissa had manufactured in her lab. Steve knew, however, that everything around him – the floor, the ceiling, the walls, the furniture – wasn’t actually getting bigger. HE was getting SMALLER, but the actual effect of shrinking was so disorienting and crazy that each time it happened, Steve had to remind himself that everything else was actually the same size, but that it all just looked larger.
There was, though, one slight caveat to this rule: Melissa. As she shrunk Steve smaller, she was getting taller, bigger, and curvier. Her growth was less dramatic than Steve’s shrinking, but it was certainly still happening, to the point where Steve found himself questioning how much he had actually shrunk.
“Heheh, you’re giving me that look again, Steve,” Melissa chuckled one day, right after she had shrunk him down to 12 inches tall. She put her hands on her thick hips and bent down at the waist, eying him curiously. “It’s like you’re still wondering if this is real or not.”
Steve felt her shadow completely cover his little body. He couldn’t wear clothes anymore, since he was far too small, and in any case, Melissa had said that she preferred him without clothes – with him tottering around naked now, she said that she could always get a nice little view of his perpetually-hard cock, just to remind herself how much he actually enjoyed being small, whatever his apparent protests to the contrary.
“I…I know this is real, Melissa,” Steve replied, trying to sound as casual as possible. But at 1’0, naked and hard, standing in front of this bombshell, who was now 6’8, oozing with curves, and eying his cock, Steve was finding it difficult to pull off the “casual” tone.
“Well what about THIS, Steve?” Melissa asked suddenly, turning around and treating him to a view of her enormous, hulking ass. “Do you know that THIS is real?” She had recently taken to wearing that same gossamer see-through gown around all the time, even when she was busy working, just to entice and titillate Steve with her burgeoning body, and to soak up his reaction. She especially loved it when she was flashing her big butt down at him – she knew that he wouldn’t be able to help gawking up at her mammoth ass, which to him seemed like it was emanating down from the sky itself.
“I uhhm…I–I c…I d…” stammered Steve. What else could he possibly say? There was an enormous, sexy ass twerking down at him from the sky, barely contained in the nightgown that just seemed to be getting smaller and smaller on Melissa’s body every day.
With her back still turned to him, as she continued to shake her big ass down at him, Melissa turned her head, peeking at him over her shoulder. Steve couldn’t even see her mouth because of how far down he was, but by the crinkling of the corners of her eyes, he could tell that she was smiling.
“Ohoho, you can’t even talk!” she teased, now throwing her huge ass into an even more exaggerated series of bounces, twerks, and undulations. “My fat ass has such an effect on you that you’ve lost the ability to speak, hahaha!”
Steve just gaped and tried to form words, mouthing silently like a fish out of water. It was the strangest sensation, being so overwhelmed like this, and yet, Steve had actually started becoming accustomed to it. Each day, Melissa grew more and he shrank more, leaving him speechless as he contemplated the absurd size comparisons between them now. It was perfectly clear now that one of Melissa’s ass cheeks outweighed his entire body four or five times at least.
“I…I l-like it!” Steve managed to burst out. He realized that he had been moving backwards, and that Melissa had been following him with her ass, until *thunk* he backed straight into the living room wall.
“Mmmm, I know you like it,” Melissa purred, now swerving with sexy fluidity down into a crouching position, so that she “only” rose up above him by a foot-and-a-half. And then, backing into him gently, she lusciously rode his body into the wall with her fat cheeks, bouncing them up and down, up and down, forcing Steve’s body this way and that with each lubricious twerk of her cheeks. He had been hard before, but now he was full-mast engorged. However, he was being so thoroughly dominated that he couldn’t even see his cock; it was hidden somewhere in between Melissa’s giant ass cheeks.
“Haha, you know, I bet I could just do this to you for hours and hours everyday,” Melissa happily mused aloud, as she brought an inquiring finger up to her full lips, “And you’d just keep on having orgasms. Generally there’s a refractory period in adult males that lasts anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes, sometimes longer, but hahaha I’ve been observing, Steve, that YOUR refractory period has shortened considerably, the smaller I’ve made you.”
“Melissa…” Steve croaked. He wasn’t able to say anything more. His face had gone beet-red, and he was already approaching his third orgasm of the day – and it wasn’t even noon yet.
“Oh yeah, I think it’s a curious little discovery we’ve made,” Melissa continued, still thinking out loud as she continued to absentmindedly grind her big ass into Steve’s hapless little body. “The smaller the boy, the shorter the refractory period.” She cast a dirty glance over her shoulder down at him, her eyes sparkling mischievously. “Maybe the logical extension of that is…that if I shrink you down to an inch…or to the size of a microbe, then you just won’t be able to stop cumming. Hahaha, your refractory period will be so short that there literally won’t be any time in between your orgasms. You’ll just be so overwhelmed by how huge and dominant I am, and how tiny you are compared to me, that you’ll just cum and cum and CUM, without stopping, over and over, forever. Haha, can you imagine that, Steve? Never-ending orgasmic bliss. Heh, you’d basically just be living in my ass at that point, going insane from the mindbreak of endless orgasms. Hahaha what a fun little idea!”
“Gggyyyyuuuuhhh!” whined Steve, his head lolling back and then forward in helpless searing pleasure as he came hard in between Melissa’s huge ass cheeks. He fell forward against the soft, firm flesh, feeling it give way slightly as it accepted his body like a king-size mattress. Melissa turned her head back around, arching her eyebrow in wry amusement.
“Oh and look! Speak of the devil, you just came again!” she teased. “God, you are so…umm…gee, what’s that term? That term that the young people use, when they, uh…gosh, I knew this at one point! When someone is a sexual pushover, you know? Haha, come on Steve, help me out here…”
“Easy,” he murmured into her ass, barely able to muster up the energy to get the word out.
“Huh?” asked Melissa, wiggling herself forward a little so that Steve collapsed down against the wall into something of a sitting position. “What did you say?”
“It’s…it’s called “easy,”” breathed Steve. “Someone’s “easy” when they…when they…”
“Ohhh yeah that’s it!” laughed Melissa, nodding. “When they behave like you do whenever you’re around me and my fat ass, hahaha!”
“Y-yeah,” admitted Steve, utterly exhausted.
“Ok well, anyway, I was only kidding about shrinking you to the size of a microbe,” Melissa said, standing up. Steve had cum so often in between her ass cheeks now that she barely even noticed it. “Although…”
“Although…what?” Steve asked a few moments later, feeling uneasy. He wasn’t entirely reassured by Melissa’s grin as she stared down at him. The next thing he knew, she was brandishing the vial of clear liquid again, sticking her tongue into the inside of her cheek playfully as she spoke:
“You might look even cuter…if you were only half a foot tall…”
Melissa ended up shrinking Steve to exactly that height later on that day, and as the days went by, she didn’t stop there. She always teased Steve, but she also always made sure that she was administering the shrinking serum carefully – she may have enjoyed taunting him with the prospect of shrinking down to the size of a bacteria, but of course she was never going to do such a thing. But 2 inches? Melissa could still see him, hear him, and gauge his reactions, and that’s all the information she needed.
Two days later, Melissa was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, her gorgeous, curvy 6’9 body in all of its naked glory, as she ran a warm bath for the two of them. Next to her huge thigh, barely noticeable, was Steve, shrunken down to a miniscule 2 inches tall.
“Hmmm, gotta make sure it’s not too hot,” Melissa murmured, adjusting the faucet carefully. She angled a glance down at Steve, and a smile inexorably crept across her face. At this point, it was impossible for her to look at Steve and not smile. He was just so tiny now…and utterly precious.
“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” she continued, taking a large swig of a clear glass bottle of sugar-free lemonade that she liked to drink, “I love my baths hot…even maybe a little too hot, like over 104 degrees…heheh, at that point a mid-range fever gets induced, which can actually be quite beneficial for the circulatory system at short intervals, especially when combined with the dilating effect on the capillaries and…uh, you don’t really care about any of this, do you?”
Steve felt beyond childish, standing there next to Melissa’s huge thigh with that sour expression on his face. But even though he had tried to take all of his shrinking in stride, he still sometimes resented the fact that she had basically used his own weakness (aka his sexual attraction to her) against him to force him to shrink this small. He folded his tiny arms across his chest and huffed out, not even bothering to answer.
“Aww you’re being a little poota-bear,” Melissa teased gently, testing the water again as she took another swig. “You do realize, Steve, that when you pout like this, it just makes you, like…ten times as adorable, right?”
Steve sighed and huffed again, his face reddening slightly at her little tease. He would have been lying to himself if he had said that he didn’t enjoy the gentle barbs she directed at him. They made him feel even smaller and punier than he already was, and, despite his brain still not wrapping around the implications of his submissive desires, he wasn’t able to avoid feeling aroused whenever she talked down to him like this. The tenderness with which she spoke to him had the paradoxical effect of making her seem even huger and more monumental – she didn’t even have to speak in anything other than a murmuring timbre, and her voice still felt like it was clattering and rattling through every atom in his body. And all of this, even with the bathwater roaring down beneath him. From Steve’s perspective, it was like he was standing next to a large waterfall.
Melissa paused and carefully poured some of her lemonade into the metal cap that she had kept after opening the bottle.
“Here,” she said kindly, bringing the cap down until it was right in front of Steve’s face, “Drink some of this.”
Steve stared at the cap-full of lemonade, which was wider than his entire body. He looked back up at her, blinking, momentarily confused.
“Go on, drink some!” Melissa persisted, “It’s important to stay hydrated, before, during, and after a hot bath, and to keep adequate glucose levels!” She cocked a wry smile down at him. “You don’t want me to get into the particulars of the body’s glucose processing, do you?”
A minute later, Steve had finished drinking up as much of the liquid as he could. Even still, he hadn’t appeared to make much of a dent in the amount that was still left in the bottle cap.
“That all?” Melissa asked, “You already done?”
“Yeah, that’s…uh…that’s all I can drink,” nodded Steve.
“Awww,” she cooed, her face scrunching up in affection at the sound of his voice, “I get goosebumps just hearing that adorable little voice of yours!” She raised the cap up to her mouth and immediately slurped out all the liquid like it was nothing. And then she raised the bottle to her lips and gulped the rest down, taking a few long seconds to do so. Steve watched, temporarily mesmerized. She had probably just drunk down the equivalent of 10 or 20 times his body weight, and there she sat, just smacking her lips down at him, grinning. She was so huge compared to him, so effortlessly titanic and powerful, that it really was impossible to comprehend. His little cock rose to attention even more than it had already been before.
“Well all right!” Melissa exclaimed just a few moments later, “The bath’s all ready! Mmmmm, I can see that YOU are already all stripped-down and ready to go…haha, in more ways than one, apparently!”
Steve blushed even more and hid his erection behind his hands. His involuntary motion caused Melissa to chuckle even more:
“Oh please, Steve…we both know I’ve been seeing plenty of your cute little appendage these past few days. Mmmm, seeing…touching…tasting…”
She extended her tongue out of her mouth and flicked at the air, grinning down at him as her eyes went wide with excitement. Steve had to take a series of deep breaths just to keep himself under control. Over the past few days, Melissa had grown more and more sexually forward with him, to the point where she was doing things like flicking her tongue at him like this without even a second thought. She had filled out gloriously into her new and dominant sexual role, and from Steve’s perspecitve, it made her seem all the more gorgeous and alluring.
“Heheh ok so…guess all that’s left is for me to just…strip down too,” Melissa continued, doing her best impression of a sexy drawl as she cocked her eyebrow down at him. “And then it’s bath time!”
Placing the empty lemonade bottle on the side of the tub, Melissa rose regally up from her sitting position. The only clothing she was currently wearing was a red velvet bathrobe, and after rising up, she turned away, quite deliberately, from Steve, showing him the large rounded bulge of her ass. He swallowed and stared. At this point, he knew what was coming, but even his foreknowledge did not prepare him for the strip-tease he was about to witness.
“Duh…duhduhduh…Duh…duhduhduh…” Melissa hummed, doing her best impression of whatever she thought “sexy music” was, and as she hummed, she wiggled and gyrated her huge ass back and forth, back and forth, as she slowly, tantalizingly, let her robe down. She made sure it was a gradual process, so as not to rush the “big reveal,” but after thirty seconds of sexy dancing, she apparently got impatient and finally let her robe drop completely down to the ground, revealing her enormous bare ass in all its glory. Steve’s breath caught in his chest, so much so that he had to actually remind himself to keep breathing. Those twin cheeks were so massive now compared to him that he couldn’t even believe it. The mere thought of an entity being strong and powerful enough to move such mountainous megaliths…well, it completely boggled Steve’s mind. And there Melissa was, crouched down low, grinning at him over her shoulder, as she effortlessly threw her ass cheeks up and down and back and forth in a crazy, jiggling series of wild twerks. The comparison made him feel weak in the knees – she was almost like some kind of a goddess compared to him now.
Melissa was enjoying herself so much that she accidentally twerked her huge ass into the bathroom sink, knocking over the hand soap bottle, which spilled out onto the tiled floor.
“Oops!” she giggled, bending down to clean up the mess. In doing so, she gave Steve an even closer view of her cavernous cheeks, and even with her bending over like this, he still couldn’t see too far into her ass – her cheeks were simply too big.
“Ok, ok, enough of all that,” Melissa chuckled, after she was all done cleaning up. “Let’s take a bath!”
Steve made a motion to jump in, but Melissa held up her hand.
“Wait!” she exclaimed.
“What?” asked Steve, confused.
“I think…I think I’d better get in first,” Melissa replied. When Steve looked at her confusedly, she explained. “Heheh, I mean…think about it, Steve – that water looks pretty calm now, but do you think it’s gonna look like that when this big ass gets in?”
She smacked her cheeks loudly with both hands, and Steve saw them shake and ripple crazily in response, making his cock twitch.
“Mmmmm, yesssss,” moaned Melissa, over-doing the sexiness as she slid onto the side of the bathtub and began to get in. “I'll get in first.” But even though she was obviously overplaying the “sexy” aspect to the whole encounter, she was just so huge and hot that it didn’t even matter. From Steve’s perspective, it was just another little quirky aspect of her personality that made her seem even hotter.
As her huge body entered the water, Steve felt the heat from the steam go up all around him. The water in the tub looked like the ocean in the midst of a violent storm, and he realized that Melissa’s idea had been a good one. He certainly did not want to be in the water when it was that rough and choppy. He felt an immense shadow pass over him, and he looked up. Melissa’s ass was in the sky overhead, slowly passing over him as she carefully, deliberately, slid herself into the water. Steve had his hands on his cock again, but this time, it was to keep from losing his load. A sky-full of Melissa’s ass was enough to push him to the brink with very little lead-up.
After Melissa had settled into the water, with her knees raised up like twin towering islands, the water calmed rather quickly.
“Alright Steve,” she chuckled, “Hurricane Melissa has passed – I think it’s safe to get in now.”
Steve carefully walked to the edge of the tub, standing next to the empty glass bottle (which dwarfed him, standing 6 times his height). Then he sat down and gingerly began to feed his legs off the edge. The water seemed a lot farther down than he had anticipated, the equivalent of 10 feet.
“Haha come on Steve!” Melissa teased, “Don’t be scared – come on, get in!”
She reached over and tapped him on the back with her finger. This simple motion sent Steve hurtling headfirst down into the bath, and seconds later he was bobbing up, sputtering and blinking the warm water out of his eyes as he struggled to get his bearings.
“There we go!” Melissa’s voice came to him across the water, joining the water in his ears, “Not so bad, is it, Steve?”
Instinctively, Steve doggy-paddled his way over to the closest “island” of one of Melissa’s knees, which he reached in about ten seconds, and then held on to, in order to catch his breath.
“Need a breather, huh?” Melissa teased. “Oh well, no worries there…unless there’s another storm brewing in the north…uh-ohhhhh!”
She had pursed her lips and was now blowing down on the steaming bathwater, causing a series of ripples to form and travel towards Steve. Watching helplessly as they approached, he cried out in a panic as the ripples, which to him were big waves, crashed into him, knocking him off the secure holding spot of her knee and sending him spinning and swirling around the bath water. His cries quickly became panicked, choking gurgles as he went down under the water. Almost immediately, though, he felt a gigantic appendage rise up underneath him, coming up from the depths, and the next thing he knew he was sputtering and spitting out in the open air again, all to the sound of Melissa’s delighted laughter.
“Hahahaha oh Steve!” she exclaimed, “You should’ve seen your face just then! You really thought I was gonna let you drown?! Come on…don’t you trust me?”
Steve coughed out some more water as he got his bearings, and shot an irritated glance up at her. His response only made Melissa laugh harder, since he was now sitting on the “island” of her palm in the middle of the tub. Her increased laughter made her sexy flesh jiggle and quiver, which made still more waves and sent them lapping up against her hand, splashing Steve in the face once again.
“Hahaha ok, ok, here, let’s grant you a little bit more independence, shall we?” Melissa chuckled. She reached over to the side of the tub and picked up the metal bottle cap to the lemonade bottle. Plopping it upside down in the water, she plucked Steve out of her palm and placed him carefully inside of it.
“There you go!” she laughed, “Your own makeshift little boat! All aboard the SS Diminution!”
“Ha ha, very funny, Melissa,” Steve replied sarcastically, rolling his eyes. But he had to admit, the bottle cap really did make for a perfect little boat for him. For a few minutes or so he languidly floated around the tub as Melissa washed herself, and he was just beginning to get comfortable when, all of a sudden, a fat drop of water splashed over his head, making his knees buckle, and nearly causing him to fall down. His head jerked up, and he saw, with considerable alarm, that Melissa had her hand held high above his “boat.” Her hand was wet, and she was letting water drip from her fingers, right on top of him. He felt the bottle cap beginning to sink – the extra water was weighing it down.
“M-Melissa!” he cried, “Stop! Stop it! You’re gonna sink me!”
“Better do something about it then, little guy,” she grinned, dripping more water down on top of him. Panicking, Steve cupped his hands and desperately tried to bail the water out. Melissa just responded by laughing some more, and again, her jiggling flesh rippled the water, and caused Steve and his “boat” to rock back and forth, complicating his task. Just as soon as he thought he had scooped out enough water, Melissa let more drip down from her fingers. It was a hopeless task, and within a minute, his exertions had tired him out almost completely.
“Ohhh, all worn out already, huh?” she teased, “Too bad.”
She rubbed her fingers together, sending a flurry of droplets down. This proved way too much for the little bottle cap to handle, and it promptly sunk, sending Steve down with it. He was able to stay afloat by kicking his legs, but now he was at the mercy of the rippling waves all around him.
“Better hold your breath, Steve!” Melissa laughed. She had reached over and had fetched the empty lemonade bottle. Steve only had a couple seconds before he realized what she was about to do.
“N-no…no, wait, Melissa!” was all he could say before she had quickly submerged the empty bottle, right underneath him. He felt a powerful suctioning force, and even though he kicked his legs and pulled with his arms as hard as he could, there was nothing he could do. He was sucked into the bottle, along with a rushing deluge of water. He was lost in the violent, bubbly current for a few dizzying moments, but he finally rose up to the surface of the water inside the bottle. Melissa had brought it up out of the water; the bottle was almost full, except for a 1-inch portion at the very top of the neck, where Steve was floating now. She was obviously enjoying herself, and Steve was still trying to catch his breath. He could tell that she had that mischievous look in her eye, and he knew that another stunt was coming any second now. And right before he had caught his breath enough to beg her to let him rest, it happened.
“Think fast!” she giggled, and all of a sudden, she turned the bottle upside down, flipping it so that the neck was touching the water, forming an airtight seal. Steve panicked all over again, finding himself submerged and trapped in the glass bottle, but he was not about to give himself up for lost yet. His instincts took over, and he swam up through the water, finally coming out gasping at the “top” of the bottle (which, of course, was actually the bottom of the bottle inverted), breathing in the hot, humid steam of the air pocket. For a few moments he just floated there, bewildered, unable to grasp that he had literally been imprisoned inside a lemonade bottle, 8 inches above the bath water. But then, he saw something huge darken the glass around him, until finally, a giant eye came into view, peering at him through the glass.
In that moment, an epiphany hit Steve – never had it been more obvious that he had become a mere plaything to Melissa. Her giant eye blinked at him, and she tapped the glass playfully with her fingernail.
“Hello in there, little guy!” he heard her muffled voice say. She was so big that he could easily understand her, but he knew that she wouldn’t be able to hear anything he said in reply. For the next few minutes, Melissa just held him there in the bottle, peering at him closely like a specimen, tapping on the glass and teasing him. She even yawned her mouth open and swallowed half of the bottle in her huge mouth, thrusting Steve’s world into total darkness. Eventually, she laughed and brought the bottle up, breaking the seal and causing the water to come sucking back out into the bathtub, dragging Steve along with it.
For the next half-hour, Melissa continued in her relentless games, which culminated in her trapping Steve in an air pocket in the bottle, turning it upside down, and pinning it to the bottom of the tub with her big thighs. This proved too much for Steve – her power over him was so overwhelming that he couldn’t hold back anymore. Trapped in the air pocket underwater, held there by her mighty thighs, his body spasmed, and he came over and over again, unable to resist giving in to her domination.
Several days later, the morning sunlight was streaming in through the curtains of Melissa’s home office. As usual, she was sitting at her desk, an untidy mess of papers surrounding her, all of them covered with complex formulas. She was chewing on her bottom lip, deep in thought as she peered down closely at the sheet of paper in front of her, upon which she had been writing down a series of formulas, only to cross them all out.
“No, no…” she muttered to herself, crossing out the latest formula she had written. “Protein synthesis notwithstanding, the copper ions just make that one impossible…but it has to be some kind of a metal conductor, though…it has to be…and copper conducts electricity so well…but maybe if we can create a nano-lithium battery to store up some, uhm…lemme think…”
Something moved underneath one of the papers on her desk, and, extending the eraser end of her pencil, she absentmindedly prodded it, and Steve struggled out from underneath the paper. He was totally naked, and even smaller than he had been a few days before. Melissa had shrunk him down even more, to the point where he was now only a third of an inch tall. She could barely even hear his tiny voice anymore, which was just as well, because she had to concentrate now on finding out the bio-mechanism by which she could grow him back again.
Steve had fallen on his back when Melissa poked him in the chest with her eraser, but he was trying to get back up again. It was hard for him to remain still for so long, even when he knew that Melissa was trying to concentrate on making him bigger again. His movements caught her eye, and she poked him with her eraser again, forcing him back down.
“Hey, quit distracting me!” she exclaimed. “Do you want me to find a way to grow you back or not?”
“Y-Yes!” called Steve up to her. His little voice sounded so puny these days, but he still tried his best.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe I didn’t think about it before!” Melissa burst out suddenly, running her finger over the shiny metal underneath the eraser. “Silver! It conducts electricity even better than copper! Duh! Haha, ok so…let’s see…gotta think, gotta think…”
Sensing some kind of breakthrough, Steve tried to stand up again, but ended up stumbling and falling down into a stack of papers next to him. Even though he was tiny, his little body was enough to disorganize the stack. Melissa glanced down at him and frowned, making a show of displeasure, even though she was not actually displeased. She just liked playing around with him when he made a mess of things.
“Oh my god,” she declared, “You just can’t help yourself, can you?” She suddenly rose up out of her desk chair and turned around, exposing Steve to the gigantic shadow of her massive ass. Melissa was a full 6’10 now, and her ass had never been bigger. She shook it down at him, slowly making it descend upon him with slow, terrifying force.
“N-no…noooo!” cried Steve. His instincts took over, and he tried to escape the monumental, descending ass. But in his fear, his body felt paralyzed, and he could do nothing but lie there among the papers, a helpless captive to his fate.
“Ohhh yessss!” laughed Melissa, “If my little man can’t behave himself, then I’m just gonna have to smush him with my biiiiiig ass, once and for all! Say goodbye, Steve, hahahaha – it’s been a pleasure.”
Steve’s vision darkened, and a moment later all he could see was Melissa’s titanic, descending ass. It was his sky, his world…his everything. Within it she held the power of life and death, and right now, it just about looked like she had finally decided to perform the supreme act of domination and snuff him out for good. Clenching his teeth, he abandoned himself to his submissive destiny, as he felt the soft, yet firm weight of her ass cheek beginning to press into his tiny body…
Comments
Joyce Julep
Haha well, it definitely pays to have creative and imaginative commissioners <3
stevebasic
The bottle-play in the bath was a stroke of genius. Loved it, and the imagery of her eye peering in. How do you come up with these things, you devious minx? :)
