“Does that feel okay, Jack?” Ashley asked of her Beta companion as she finished lacing the final strap of her sandal back up, enclosing her tanned foot into the leathery wear with her significant other pinned beneath the warm flesh of her toes.

            “Uh…” he mumbled, unsure if “okay” was an adequate descriptor for his current state of mind as he settled under the plush heft of the towering girl’s lovely digits, feeling a sense of security not unlike collapsing into an inviting hug from the most benevolent protector on earth: a universal oath that everything would be all right. Perhaps “enchanting” would’ve been a better term.

            “Jack?” she repeated after he took a moment to speak up.

            “Yeah. Yeah, I think I’m good.”

            It was ironic, really. He and Ashley had experimented with one another behind closed doors, of course, but he hadn’t been here - really here - for almost two years. On that occasion, things hadn’t exactly been as blissful as they were now. After Ashley, then a stranger, had first plopped the boy into the moist darkness of her shoe before following him in with her lithe bare foot, his baser instincts couldn’t help but kick into overdrive as he was mashed beneath the object of his kinky desires. He’d gawked many a time at the monumental girl’s sandaled peds as she passed him on the road, and his imagination certainly had been creative about the seeming impossibility of being near them. However, as the pressure mounted and time wore humidly on as she’d given him exactly what he wished for, embarrassed arousal quickly turned to rigid fear, leading the Beta to report her to Aegis and start off a chain reaction that eventually led to their highly unlikely relationship.

            And here they were again. Just as intimate as they’d been the day of that first unfortunate interaction in more ways than one, and now, Jack hoped, they’d only grow closer.

            Ashley was careful not to lower much more than a few ounces of pressure onto her charge until receiving confirmation of his contentment, but once she had it, she could concentrate all of her focus into cuddling him into the undersides of her toes, just as Claire had demonstrated. The five appendages descended at a considerably slower pace, applying weight little by little until she had a mellow grip on him. What had once filled her with delight to feel her little secret admirer squirming around below her foot now only made her apprehensive, but she was determined to make this work for the both of them.

            “That’s it, Ash. You’re doing well,” Claire commented sweetly as she hunched over the experimenting pair, her hands on her knees. “Just be gentle at first and communicate.”

            “Still okay?” Ashley questioned, biting her lip as she fully enveloped Jack into the silky embrace of her toes. She gave the tiniest squeeze, her heart fluttering momentarily to wonder if it had been too much.

            “Y-Yeah. This is… nice,” Jack answered. He steadied his breathing, hoping he didn’t just humiliate himself with how dreamily he’d uttered that last word, but he supposed if they were already this far into the lesson, it wasn’t worth being concerned. Privacy was kind of out at this point.

            “Good,” the young Alpha replied happily.

            She couldn’t help but feel a coating of goose bumps at the subdued elation in his tone. In a way, this act, a taking on of complete responsibility for Jack’s entire being as well as a fulfillment of his most bashful fantasy, was her redemption for that awful choice she’d made as an immature sixteen-year-old. Though she’d apologized with a myriad of weepy methods to a chorus of desperate forgiveness from Jack, she still clung to a shred of that culpability. Now, in the most roundabout of ways, she thought she might be able to make it right, if not for him than for herself. Determined, the girl flexed her toes back out and releasing the Beta from the fleshy folds.

            Jack’s shoulders touched back down into the damp insole, blackened in the worn-out shadow of the girl’s digits. He watched Ashley’s toes rise back up, splaying out above him and providing an awkward view through the glowing crevices and between the straps of her shoe. Through the keyhole of those layers he could make out the misgiving etched into the girl’s magnanimous face as she leaned down as close as she could to the glass surface of the Lindons’ coffee table. Her amber eyes were almost comically widened with worry and her honey-blonde locks cascaded in a mess past her flushed cheeks.

            He couldn’t help but smile, perfectly understanding her uneasiness given the similarity of the situation to their first meeting but nonetheless wanting to ease her tension. Delicately he brushed a hand along the underside of her toe, from the meatier segment of her foot up to the grooved pad of her print. Lingering there for a moment, then, he stroked her skin back and forth, hoping she’d get his meaning. Despite the difficulty of reading her expression past her toes, sandal straps, and gold locks, he could still make out a relieved beam spread over her lips.

            The boy grinned to himself, increasingly thrilled at how smoothly this was all progressing after his initial doubts, and felt an impulse suddenly overtake him. Though the Beta had spent most of his life learning it was generally best to aim for the conservative route and ignore the silly suggestions of risk from his self-conscious, Jack decided enough strides were being made today, small as it may have seemed to an outsider, to make a move. He leaned up, caressing his cheeks against the doughy underside of Ashley’s big toe, and buried his face into the hypnotic center of her swirling toeprint. Without any further hesitation he planted a kiss into the cushy skin, not merely a peck but a wet smack strong enough to be felt by his nervous girlfriend and, more importantly, make his message clear.

            The Alpha’s cheeks blushed deeper with surprise, and though Claire was too high above to make out the intricate details of the events inside Ashley’s shoe, judging by the pleasurable flinch she noticed in her best friend’s little sister, she had an accurate guess. The Omega grinned and held back a chuckle, feeling as though she was witnessing a miniaturized re-enactment of her own first time with Sean.

            Emboldened now, Ashley braced herself to go for another round. Scooping Jack back up into her toes and clasping him into the top of her foot, she placed every iota of focus into studying the Beta’s reactions to her movements. Most important, she thought, were the feelings of his limbs pressing into her skin so she’d know where to let up to avoid aggravating his joints and the ticklish telltale of his hands caressing against her skin as he, too, steadily got into the act. His warm breath puffing against her the wrinkles of her flesh let her know she wasn’t exerting too much force to prevent him from getting regular oxygen. Even, when Ashley held still and concentrated, his tiny heartbeat, pounding aggressively in his chest but relaxing more with each minute.

            Meanwhile, Jack was almost able to forget the fact that a skyscraper-sized girl was just outside the sandal and supervising his every move, and planted more kisses upon Ashley’s toe. It might’ve been a little forward considering how timid the pair been in all their previous acts of intimacy, but he didn’t care now, and even if he did, he doubted he could’ve helped himself.

            Her skin was so irresistibly sweet with the lathery aroma of her soap and candied summer sweat glazed across the contours of her toes. Every time his mouth met her flesh, he could feel the raw muscle beneath the pillowy pad, imparting her bodily moisture to his face like an ointment, which he licked away without even thinking. He savored her lukewarm liquid collected on the back of his throat. There was a tingle in his cheeks as the salt of her sweat soaked in. Anyone outside of this room might’ve viewed it as unusual to draw comfort from this lowly gesture, but then again, there was something wonderfully unusual about the way they had all come together. He soon realized he wanted to do more for her, miniscule a token though it was.

            Following Claire’s advice to time his adjustments in accordance with each release, he waited for the Alpha’s digits to lower him back into the base and then wriggled himself into a new position, managing to wedge his head comfortably between Ashley’s big and second toes.

            Surprised, the girl was still putting enough attention into her every move to immediately notice the change and adapt the positioning of her toes around Jack. They hugged just as tightly, molding his rolled form into the pink plain of her skin, but it was easy enough to allow him more space.

            She almost winced again, then, to feel his tiny lips working systematically over the tender flesh of her toe crevice, leaving adoring smooches on every square inch of surface area he could reach. More passionate even than before, his mouth move efficiently while his hands massaged her smaller digits, and she even thought she felt his little tongue flicking sensitively at her balmy flesh.

            Happily, she obliged him as much as possible, gripping the Beta for a more extended period into the curved tomb of toes and allowing him to pay his loving tribute just as she, too, tried to repay him for everything she felt she owed.

            Ashley had to admit how different all of this was turning out for her than she’d been expecting, even though she’d been the one to contact Claire and at last take her up on the offer for guidance. This act, in particular, was one the youthful King had harbored jitters over, not especially comfortable entrapping this boy she cared so much for not only beneath her foot but back inside the muggy confines of her shoe. Nevertheless, she’d resolved to chew through the agitation and indulge Jack, as she knew full-well after some embarrassed coaxing that this activity was one he desired perhaps above all else.

            However, now that they were actually here, building on a system of already considerable trust with a show of love that was turning Ashley’s cheeks rosier by the second, she was beginning to see the appeal. Even, when she stripped away all the small-scale qualms, one she found she enjoyed too. Of course the girl had always been lucky enough to be surrounded by affection from her family and friends all her life, but she’d never experienced devotion quite like this, nor felt the throbbing need to return it in equal measure. It was all so new and exciting to have it realized physically, and she already knew she wanted to see where it led next.

            Pressing the tip of her pinky into her lips, she lowered her hand with her finger extended and inserted it between the straps of her sandals until she found Jack’s face squeezed into the soft valley. She stroked it along his cheek as her toes at last lowered him back into the insole and flattened themselves comfortably onto his body, squashing him gently into the firm base. He responded in kind with a kiss of his own onto the end of her smallest digit, sending another rush of warm sparks through her bloodstream.

            The practice session continued on for a while longer as Ashley and Jack gradually developed a comfortable rhythm, testing out varying speeds for playing together. At Claire’s urging, Ashley straightened herself back up, staring ahead and becoming better accustomed to recognizing Jack’s geometry just by touch. Considering how lovingly the Beta was grappling with the massive foot, rubbing every surface and losing himself in the tangle, it wasn’t very difficult. It delighted Ashley to feel her three-inch sweetheart coming out of his shell like this, even if it was under the cover of her toes.

            “I think you guys are really getting the hang of it,” Claire congratulated, clasping her hands together again and stretching back to her full leviathan stature atop the coffee table. “Now. The next most important part of this is having an out. Specifically, a safe word Jack can use to let Ashley know there’s a problem.”

            “Safe word?” the honey-haired Alpha repeated back. Jack similarly wrinkled his nose at the phrasing as he continued obsessively kneading his girlfriend’s toe flesh against his palms. “But… how can he talk to me from down there?”

            “It’s not so much a word as a pattern,” Claire said. “He needs to have a way of touching you that you can instantly recognize and let up on whatever you’re doing.”

            “Oh. Okay. Um, do you-”

            “-have any suggestions?”

            “Yes,” Ashley sighed with another reprieved smirk.

            “Of course,” the Omega responded. She arched her foot slightly in the sandal, forcing a semi-disgruntled Sean to behave himself with a little more public decorum than he had moments before, when he’d been engaging in some horny snuggling within the cocoon of toes. “We’ve tried out a lot of sequences, and we’ve had enough practice that we actually have a few signals for… different messages. That part’s up to you two, though. If you want to try walking around together, all you have to worry about now is a warning signal. It could mean anything, like if Jack isn’t getting enough air, or you’re squeezing too tight. The idea is just for him to get your attention, immediately.”

            “Right.”

            “So what Sean will do is get his hand into a space between my toes, whichever one is closest. I’m sure you noticed you’re most… sensitive there, so it shouldn’t be too hard to notice. To help separate it from, say, just playing around together, though, he’ll hit the spot three times as hard as he can. It won’t be much, but you’ll be able to notice the difference in strength. And then, just to make sure, he’ll dig his fingers in as deep as he can get them and hang on. By then, you should be already aware and correcting the issue,” Claire explained.

            “That sounds good,” Ashley said, stooping closer to the ground and resting on the knee of her leg not currently compressing Jack. “Did you get all of that?”

            “I think so,” the Beta breathed. “Punch, punch, punch, scratch. Errr… are you sure I won’t, uh-”

            “You won’t hurt me,” Ashley said, reading him immediately. “You can’t.”

            “Are you su-”

            “Yes,” she reassured, almost harshly. She was flooded with guilt that he would consider such a thing when she already had her comparatively bus-sized foot clamping him down into her sandal-imprisoned sole.

            “This is about your safety, Jack,” the Omega boomed from above. “So don’t hold back. Trust me. Ashley’s a big girl. She’ll handle it.”

            “All right,” Jack answered, manuevering the nearest thing he could to a shrug with so many pounds of marshmallowy toes cresting over his torso.

            “So try the curling exercise again. You probably won’t be standing still if Jack ever needs help, after all,” Claire pointed out. “Then whenever you’re ready, Jack, test out the safe word.”

            Nodding, Ashley set back into alternately clutching the Beta into her supple toes and pinning him back down into the sticky fabric of her sandal. She opted for a more rapid set of motions, in order to make it more difficult for herself to detect Jack’s distress call. It seemed wisest to train herself early on to notice him in less stable conditions, with Claire’s watchful eye making the environment even safer.

            And sure enough, after just over a minute of Jack’s mindful massaging of her toes and nailbeds, she noticed the faint sensation of his little fist punching the more receptive pad of pale flesh in the slit between her two largest digits. She’d already ceased squeezing him before he could even attempt to claw his fingers into the skin.           

            “You two are fast learners,” Claire chirped. “Obviously, though, the only real way to know if that message is getting across is if you actually try it while walking around.”

            “Okay,” Ashley said, tingling with anxiety that was more than overshadowed by another swell of eager anticipation for the last step of this arguably highest priority on their list. She leaned back over, sliding her hands down the sculpted pillars of her calves, and arrived back at her sandals. Her fingertips fished back between the leather straps to make contact with Jack, who wrapped his hands around the girl’s thumb as it brushed along his head again.

            “That is, as long as Jack’s ready to go?” Claire posed nonchalantly.

            “Are you?” the Alpha whispered to her shoe passenger.

            “Yes!” Jack blurted before the second syllable was even out of the girl’s lips.