Behind His Back (9 page)

“Holt Renfrew?” I say. I try to mask my lack of interest. In case he can’t tell by my adorable fox-print shirt, I’m not in the market for a Prada gown.

“Not quite,” he says. “There’s something else inside that I think you’ll like.”

A woman in her fifties with the lizard-like face of a plastic-surgery aficionado churns out of the revolving door. She has three crisp white Holt Renfrew shopper bags in one hand and a Chanel handbag in the other. I was feeling underdressed before, but now I’m feeling borderline homeless—and my husband’s a handsomely paid tech lawyer.

But despite my hesitation, Hunter’s presence gives me a strange sort of courage that makes a high-end department store and its snooty sales staff seem conquerable. He pays the cabbie and exits the cab, and I take a deep breath as he walks around the car and opens my door, offering his hand to guide me.

As we enter the store, it occurs to me that the upscale area I live in means I’m liable to bump into my neighbors, so I’m relieved to see that it’s almost empty, save for a few young, unhappy sales associates.

Hunter whisks me past the intoxicating and confusing aromas of the perfume counters to the center of the store. In every direction are elaborate gowns that smack of wealth. Sections are cordoned off according to the European names they bear. I’m surrounded by Fendi, Prada, Chanel, and Hermès. I can’t remember the last time I felt so out of place, but I try to get into the spirit of our little adventure.

“Are you expecting me to model one of these for you?” I ask, brushing my fingertips along the wispy, delicate fabric of the dresses we pass. I wonder whether the dressing rooms will be private enough for him to sneak in with me. And whether I could keep the moaning to a minimum when his mouth is between my legs.

“Not yet,” he says, guiding me deeper into the store. “Everything on this floor has far too much fabric.” He smiles his perfect smile, and I smile back with relief. Less fabric is more my style these days.

At the back of the store is an elaborate, winding staircase that reminds me of the mansion in
The Sound of Music
, and Hunter gestures for me to ascend it. The stairs are wide, but instead of climbing beside me he follows from a few steps below. I know what he’s up to—my ass is right at the level of his face, and I take the opportunity to slow down and let him admire it. As I climb, I picture him slowly pulling off my jeans and peeling my thong down my hips to smooch my wet pussy from behind.

Knowing that he’s watching me makes me wish I were wearing something other than the jeans I haphazardly pulled on this morning. To be fair, they fit decently, but they’re my third-favorite out of the five pairs in my current rotation. My ass looks just fine in them, thank you very much, but I’d be happier in something a little more form-fitting and revealing. A pair of my coveted lululemon yoga shorts? Or maybe something from—

“Fräulein?” My jaw drops when I reach the top of the stairs. In the short time I’ve known him, Hunter’s done a lot to surprise me, but this takes the cake. Waiting in front of me like the pearly gates of the promised land is an invitingly dark and seductive store-within-a-store, and a fluorescent sign on the overhanging wall confirms that my most lascivious lingerie dreams are about to come true.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“They just opened this week,” he says. “It’s their second store in the country, after the one in Vegas.”

“I had no idea!” I say. Whatever attempts I’ve made to hide my excitement are suddenly futile. How could this have sneaked by me?

“
Now
you can model something for me,” he says with a wink.

“Deal,” I say as I glide toward the racks of skimpy silk and satin. The store is done up like a pre-war German cabaret, with dark touches of red and gold. Glass-cube display cases hold bejewelled riding crops and designer vibrators and other naughty things on black satin pillows. The snooty demeanor of the outer department store fades away as I delve deeper into my element. I could spend all day here.

I spot a piece that I’ve been drooling over online. It’s another black number, this time even more scandalous. The demi-cup bra barely covers the bottom of where the gold-colored headless and limbless mannequin’s nipples would be if mannequins had nipples, and extra flourishes of black piping arch upward from the tiny, sheer cups to frame a voyeuristic window around the mannequin’s tits. The use of extra fabric to accentuate the nakedness is dirty hot goodness, and the panties get in on the fun. They’re fuller—still skimpy and sheer, but they cover the bum and they’re wider in front. The crotch is another story, in that it’s not there at all. Subtle black piping forms an almond-shaped slit for the lucky woman who wears them, offering easy access to anyone who wants to make a meal of her.

“Isn’t that fucking hot?” a blonde sales girl asks.

I’m shocked, not just because Miss Sassy Pants said
fucking
while casually chatting with a customer, but also because
she’s
pretty fucking hot herself—and she’s about as scantily clad as the gold mannequin torso whose panties I’m ogling.

Her bleached hair, which is bobbed short and corralled into two stubby pigtails behind her ears, blends with her pale skin. Colorful Asian-inspired tattoos of fighting fish disappear behind the hems of her tiny black uniform. It’s a sexy cross between a dressing gown and a pornographic nurse’s outfit. She blinks her mascara-soaked green eyes at me while I nod and assess her.

I want her sexy little uniform. I want Hunter to see me in it—to rip it open and pop my tits out of it by yanking it down my back. More importantly, I want him
not
to see her in it. Being uncommonly fit has the welcome side effect of making you almost free of feeling female jealousy—at least when it comes to the constant urge to compare my body to that of every woman I see. But this nearly naked beauty can’t be much older than twenty. She’s still young enough that she doesn’t have to work for her body—it’s just there. Her arms and legs are too skinny, but she’s been blessed with a plump little ass that’s lifted by her high heels, and she’s expertly pressed her ample tits together in a too-tiny push-up bra, the hot pink edges of which are poking out over the top of her uniform. She’s probably never lifted a weight or sprinted on an indoor rower in her life. She’s the lucky inheritor of a limited-time allure that drips with sex, and she doesn’t even know it. Certainly she’s aware that she’s hot—no sane woman would go through the trouble, time, and expense of festooning her body with such lovely ink if they didn’t think it was worth showing off. But she has no idea how fleeting her attractiveness is—and how much she’ll miss it when she approaches thirty and starts to sag.

I’m on my way to a full-on pity party when Hunter steps in and rescues me.

“I want to see you in that,” he says.

“You think I could do it justice?” I ask.

“Are you kidding me?” the sales girl pipes in. “You’re a fucking rocket. Oh my God, I want your arms. They’re totally Jessica Biel arms.” She squeezes my upper arm with a freshly manicured hand, and she traces a white-tipped finger down my bicep. “It’s like your body’s a fucking Ferrari or something.”

I smile and thank her. I don’t know what she means by
rocket
, but I’ll take it.

“Oh my God. If you like that, I have something even better,” she says. She guides Hunter and me to the back of the store, where another mannequin is wearing the romp suit—the same one I saw on their website at work. It looks even more scandalous in real life, and my cheeks flush with blood—first from embarrassment at the thought of wearing it, and then from arousal when I picture Hunter fucking me in it.

“I was just checking this out online,” I say. “But there’s no way I could pull it off.”

“You’re fucking crazy,” she says. “Have you ever looked in a mirror? This bitch is custom-made for a body like yours.”

She spins me by my shoulders so that I’m facing Hunter, who’s been standing behind us and watching. “What do you think? Should she try it on?”

Hunter answers the sales girl without breaking eye contact with me. “Yes. I think she should.” He smiles mischievously. This man clearly revels in making me uncomfortable.

The sales girl removes a gold-colored box from the shelf below the mannequin.

“There’s not much to hang up with these, so we keep them in boxes,” she says.

I follow her into the back corner of the store, where a thick curtain of deep red velvet hides a dressing room that matches the store’s gaudy cabaret theme. There’s a velvet chaise against the back wall and a massive mirror in an ornate gold frame on the wall next to it. Across from it is a vanity table beneath another mirror that’s framed with a series of round light bulbs, and on the vanity are various antique hair brushes and a vintage perfume atomizer. It’s like a still from a nineteen-twenties-era German fashion magazine, and it’s the sexiest room I’ve ever set foot in. I take mental snapshots of the various details so I can redesign my walk-in closet to mimic it.

The sales girl sets the golden box on the vanity table and then walks back toward the curtain. But instead of exiting, she closes it from the inside and turns back to face me.

“Store policy,” she says. “It’s a little weird, right? But this stuff is crazy expensive.”

“That’s okay,” I say. But I’m not sure how I feel about this. Mostly, I’m just concerned about how turned on I am by the thought of this tattooed girl watching me undress.

“So I just have to get naked in front of you?” I ask. My lips quiver a little as they form the words.

This is not my unexpected lesbian fantasy.

“Technically, I’m supposed to turn around and cover my eyes like we’re playing hide and seek,” she says. “But to be honest, I’m just really curious about the rest of what you’ve got under all of that.” She traces a small circle in the air with her index finger, suggesting that
all of that
refers to my adorable fox-print shirt. Perhaps she thinks I should be wearing a sexy little uniform like hers all day every day. Not that I’d mind.

“I guess that’s cool with me,” I say. But
cool
doesn’t even come close. I’m wet just thinking about it.

“Hey, there have to be some perks to the job, right?” she says.

“You mean getting a discount on stuff like this isn’t enough?” I ask.

“You know, it’s a great discount, but I’ve never actually had to use it,” she says. “It seems like at least twice a week some random guy in a suit is in here buying me something in hopes that I’ll model it for him.”

“Do you?” I ask.

“Another one of the perks,” she says, and she smiles at me like I’m in on some sexy little secret. Suddenly my coveted magazine career seems like a terrible life choice. I wonder whether I should apply for a part-time job here so I can get free lingerie and fuck strange men in suits.

“So—I guess I’ll undress then,” I say. It’s a painfully awkward moment, like I’m an innocent teen about to fuck my letter-jacket-wearing boyfriend for the first time and I’m unsure how to proceed.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be gentle,” Miss Sassy Pants says.

“I’m Jessica, by the way,” she says. “I figure if you’re going to get naked in front of me, we should be on a first-name basis.”

“Faith,” I say with an uneasy smile.

I could ask her to turn around. I could tell her I’m uncomfortable and would prefer to have a little privacy. I could even ask to speak to her manager or see if she has a homelier, less forward coworker on break who can come in and make sure I don’t steal anything. But I don’t. I just look into her heavily made-up eyes and slowly unbutton my adorable fox-print shirt. I drape it over the back of the velvet-upholstered chair that’s tucked into the vanity table, and then I kick off my Top-Siders and shimmy out of my tight jeans so that I’m wearing only my white bra and black thong.

“God damn, girl, “Miss Sassy Pants says. “Is that a fucking six-pack? What the fuck do you do?”

“I mostly just lift weights,” I say.

“Can you lift me?” she says.

I squint and look her up and down. “Probably.” She giggles, letting me know that I’ve successfully flirted with a hot blonde sales girl in the dressing room of a high-end lingerie store. I mentally check off an imaginary line item that I never knew was on my list.

“So bra and panties too?”

“Just the bra,” she says. “You need to keep the thong on.”

Is she
pouting
? Good God, I need to figure out how to compliment people with a simple pout.

“Um … about the thong. Is that something that’s, you know, still in style?” I say.

Miss Sassy Pants has to be at least five years younger than me. Who knows what these depraved young beauties are wearing beneath their cutoffs these days? I’d be remiss if I passed up the chance to ask one of them. If I’m now a frat boy slut who fucks strange Australian photographers, I’ll be competing with them, so I should probably know what I’m up against.

“Thongs? Of course!” she says. And in case her expertise as a Fräulein representative wasn’t enough to convince me, she lifts the front flap of her microscopic skirt and hitches it to the side. Beneath the black fabric is a blazing pink thong, into which a large pair of six-shooter tattoos are holstered.

My pussy seeps at the sight, and I’m overcome with the urge to taste her.

Miss Sassy Pants walks to the vanity, and I watch with bated breath as she removes the lid from the box. Watching her open it is so exciting that there may as well be beams of heavenly light emanating from what’s inside. The smile on her face suggests she enjoys the process as much as I do—you could have a television channel of nothing but Fräulein boxes being opened, and legions of women would waste hours every day glued to it.

She pulls out the skimpy romp suit, and its unstructured strands look like black bandages draped over her hands. Putting this thing on will be an aptitude test, and I’m suddenly glad she’s here for practical rather than carnal reasons.

“We’ll put your legs through first,” she says, and she bends in front of me and spreads the thick strands like she’s playing cat’s cradle. I step through them, and she guides them, a little more slowly than necessary, up my legs. Having figured out where my legs go, I’m sure I could take over, but Miss Sassy Pants doesn’t offer. She continues up to my hips, and then stretches the strands up over my thong and tugs them into my ass.