Rose looked up at Mama who was standing over her with a wicked looking razor in her hand. Of all she had undergone so far, why should this be the most shameful? Why should this be the act she most feared? Was it the sharpness of the blade? The fact that the slightest slip might scar her for life? She did fear that but it was not what made her feel so ashamed.

During the walk from Mama’s bedroom to the bathroom, her mind had seemed to slow down as her thought process sped up until she felt as if she had examined her entire life in the time it took to walk the few short yards along the corridor and round the corner to where Mama was waiting.

Had she been waiting to meet a man like Titus for longer than she was aware? It had not taken long for her to fall under his spell after all. From the minute he had allowed her to play in his office, her mind had begun to shift, though she had not realised it at the time. Even when he had spanked her and she had hated him with every fibre of her being, something inside her had awoken, something that had been hidden for a very long time. She thought she knew what it was, it was a voice that told her it was fine to be little, to let someone else make the decisions. It went against everything her parents wanted, of course, but with Titus telling her to lie down, putting a nappy on her, making her drink from a bottle, it felt as if maybe it was all right to be little, maybe it wasn’t as shameful as she had convinced herself.

Why else would she have agreed to it? What other reason could there be for her to accept wearing a nappy and nothing else, walking down the hallway of her home with her thumb in her mouth, Titus by her side, leading her to the bathroom? Why not tell him to leave in the foulest and bluntest of language? Why not just walk away from him and go and get dressed, make everything normal, do as her parents wanted? Why not just grow up?

As she walked into the bathroom, the thick towelling cloth of the nappy rubbed in the most intimate place between her legs and in that moment she had her answer. If growing up meant he would no longer be around to touch her in the way he just had, she never wanted to grow up. The sensation of his fingers inside her, stretching her, filling her, she could still feel it even as she lay down on the towel on the bathroom floor, looking up at Mama and Papa who smiled back down at her. She was bubbling over with nervous joy at the love that seemed to exude from them, waves of caring adoration washing over her, making her feel completely and totally safe and content. Until she saw the razor.

Papa was at the far side of the room when Mama brandished the blade. “What is that for?” Rose asked, fear evident in her voice.

“Little girls do not have hair between their legs,” Papa answered, returning with a bowl of steaming hot water in his arms. “Only big girls. Which do you want to be, Rose? A little girl or a big girl?”

This is it, Rose thought. This was her chance to end the madness. All she had to do was say big girl, get up and leave, walk away. Somehow, she knew if she said little girl, she would be stepping through a doorway which would lead to a world she might never return from. This was her last chance to stop before this went too far, to grow up, to put away childish things, to let go of that time when fun was all that mattered, when no decisions had to be made, to be looked after, to be punished, to be spanked. One word and she would never be spanked again. All she had to say was “big.”

“Well?” Mama asked. “Which is it?”

“I’m a little girl,” Rose said, realising as she did so that she was already calling them Mama and Papa in her mind. When had that happened? “I want to be a little girl.”

“Then be a good little girl and keep still,” Mama said, kneeling down between her legs and undoing the knots of her nappy. With the bowl beside her, she worked up a lather of soap bubbles on the end of a bristly brush. The lather was applied to the hair above Rose’s core a moment later, the sensation making her breathe in sharply. “It tickles,” she said, giggling at the feel of the brush scratching over her skin. “What is that for?”

“To soften the skin and the hair,” Mama said. “There is a special ingredient in the soap that does it. Now you must hold very still, understand?”

“There will be a reward if you are good,” Papa said.

Rose felt her heart soar and her core tingle at the sound of those words. She hoped it would involve his fingers again, the kind of reward she would fight tooth and nail to receive.

She was thinking so hard about him that she didn’t notice the razor until it began to slide down through her hair, scraping a layer away from her skin. She looked at Mama in time to see her dipping the razor into the water, returning to her body a moment later.

Rose held her breath, doing her best to keep still even as her core began to throb at the thought of Papa between her legs again, his fingers sliding into her in that delicious yet so naughty a manner.

Mama moved downwards slowly, using her free hand to move Rose’s soft folds around. “You must keep perfectly still,” she said as Rose let out an uncontrollable sigh, her hips shifting slightly at the sensation of fingers against her core. “This is the most difficult part.”