Rows of sleeves visible on racks, shirts and dresses lined up chest to back in a tightness that emphasized the cramped warren of the space. At the door, a display of corsets were rectangles without a body to fill them, showing a liquid warmth in satin, brocade and pleather. From time to time a pattern caught her eye, or the shape of a piece of trim and she would nudge the garment from the press of its neighbours to examine it more closely. It was its own kind of intimacy, accompanying the woman he wanted to possess him while she shopped.
When she brought something out for more scrutiny, the metal hooks scraped in protest against their poles, as if they didn’t want to be singled out. She was fussy and ruthless, checking size tags and materials, but also the attachment of trim and buttons, pulling on seams a bit. He stood a respectful pace away from her, even though she kept him magnetically focused, without much to say to interrupt. Behind him, he was intimately aware of the display of shoes and boots, shining on glass shelves. Most had their own platforms, some as tall as the width of his palm. One pair stood at an impossible angle, spike heels supporting it on its toes. She was wearing something that was a reminiscent echo, Doc Martens beat to hell and back, then polished to smooth the nicks and dimples of regular wear. She had told him, the first time he kissed the toes, they were plastic masquerading as virtuous leather, and the era of when they were good boots was long gone.
Mistress cared about things intensely, and noticed fabrics and stitches. When they were alone she treated his body with the same scrutiny and an attraction that stole the breath out of his chest. He was unsure he remembered being noticed that much, ever.
They were one of the few shoppers at 10 AM on a weekday, casually watched by a woman with a ring through each of her thin brows, her hair a fresh fire engine red/black combo that had the odd lengths of an undercut half way to grown out. A faded t-shirt for a band he only vaguely recognized was held together by safety pins, slit and ragged in an intentional fashion. It was clothing perfectly suited for the milieu, conveying a chic creativity, but also a louche lack of enthusiasm that carried in her slouch. This shop minder had been easy to shake off, not even insisting to run them through the sales litany, but letting them pace themselves.
There was another scrape as some possible treasure was lifted up. He nervously touched the collar she’d put around his neck, when they had met up earlier that morning. “I am not collaring you in the formal sense,” Mistress had said. “This is simply a reminder and decoration for me to admire.”
In this town, and particularly in this store, it didn’t look out of place. The mirror he helped Mistress locate, showed him a young man in a black t-shirt and college hoodie, wearing a slim, black band around his neck, decorated with a silver O ring. Whence Mistress had acquired it, before him, was a mystery, but perhaps this store had been the place? There was a glass cabinet like a jewellery store full of similar examples, as well as decorative goggles and cuffs. They had to be careful about the ring, as it wasn’t strongly anchored into the fake leather, the grommet threatening to pull out if he made the least resistance.
Over at the back of the store was another display he had spotted, in which a few items hung from jutting hooks on one of those retail pegboards. A long tassled flogger in purple and black, a battered box bearing the legend “Sports Sheets”, and a tall vase of flimsy riding crops and pieces of bamboo and cheap plastic rod.
Slowly, ever so slowly, they were inching towards this display. In his dorm room, there was a single thing he treasured, a neoprene and silicone ball gag, bought online, wrapped in a bag and then stuffed into the top drawer of his dresser under all his socks. Last night she had sat in his desk chair and he had knelt and worn it, feeling the straps bite into the corner of his mouth, and the ball tease drool free, helplessly. She had looked down at him with a look of such fixed attention he might as well have been naked, not, in fact, in his underwear and a t-shirt.
The dorm did not allow overnight guests, even if he had dared offer that opportunity to her, but rather than playing it cool, almost the moment she left he was already texting her thank yous, and somehow they had ended up in this meeting, again. It was her day off, a frazzling pile up of commitments, classes, labs, study groups and jobs. She said it was annoying to only have a Monday, most things tended to close then if they were open on the weekend.
She was frank and open about being broke, shocked when he bought her breakfast at the cafe down the street, and that he owned a car. He told her he’d had one since he was 16, but where he lived, rural, it was a requirement. Her mouth had pursed, taking in the excuse the way she attentively absorbed every other fact about him in the three weeks since they started this endeavor.
It was the two and a half year mark of his degree, and he had steeled himself to try “dating”, the first attempt after his humiliating memory of being gently turned down within the first six months of his freshman year. At home, his parents were incredibly encouraging, even as they policed his sisters. When they talked about finances, his dad had explicitly flagged some of the money he was getting to support himself through his education could, or in implication by his hopeful tone, should be spent on “dates or what not.” He wondered if this is what his father had meant, or if he imagined some sort of state fair and malt shop.
Tinder had almost terrified him off it by the time he’d swiped right on five people, trying to make attraction out of near bald profiles and a mixture of selfies and group photos, hoping to read personality purely out of face and makeup. She had the user name Deianira, a large amount of eyeliner and a long form text answer to all the prompts that was about 25% emoji by character count. He had not expected her to message him, not particularly about scifi and fantasy books.
He hadn’t heard of half the books she was talking about, not who Alana was, nor read the old Tarzan book series, but she had that sort of tidal force personality that didn’t seem to mind. And after only a bit more texting, she had dropped she was a dominant. As easy as she told him she was majoring in English Literature. He was smitten past his usual caution with other humans.
That was how he ended up in a cafe with her on campus, then her dorm room to play, and now the next morning, feeling her hold a rather poorly made polyester brocade vest up against his torso. The contact was electric, the pattern a purple that wasn’t unpleasant to look at, but felt more like plastic than satin. She seemed to agree, even if he barely stammered out not quite, banishing it back to the rack. He was then assaulted by two different fop shirts, whose lace she then castigated as trashy. At about then her attention was hooked onto something else and she pulled out slim black, mid length sleeve dress, high necked, with a long hem. He watched her twist it about with enthusiasm, looking at the simple black stretch pleather. Finding a mirror, she held it to her body, leaning to mimic its drape on her. She checked the size, and found it was her fit, seeming surprised by that.
Then she looked at the price tag. “Ha, that’s too expensive!” Her utterance was unsurprised. “Everything here except for the accessories is way out of my budget anyway.”
It was a hundred and twenty-nine dollars. He wasn’t sure how much dresses cost normally, not thinking too hard about that sort of thing. If pressed he only sort of knew how much his own clothing cost, in so much that there had never been an issue paying for them, but he didn’t think of himself as particularly spendy. He knew his sister’s prom dress had cost $900, but only because he had overheard her discussing with her friends how annoying it was to be on a budget.
He swallowed to stop his mouth from being too dry and said, “Try it on anyway?”
“No, then I might like it more and I definitely can’t afford it.” She didn’t look embarrassed. “Anyway, wasn’t expecting to buy anything today.”
“I could pay for it.”
She goggled, her constant stream of bossy chatter stopped for a good five seconds, then replaced with flustered denials that it was too much.
“N-no not really,” he admitted. He knew that he had several month’s allowance surplus just sitting there. “I mean, would you let me do that?”
Her nose wrinkled, and he could feel a start of distance form between them. “You don’t have to pay me, you know.”
“I just want you to have something nice.”
She looked at the dress again, clearly wrestling with temptation. He continued. “Look, whatever makes you happy makes me happy.”
“How can you afford it?” Now her full scrutiny was on him.
He tried to explain, tripping over not having the true understanding of his own wealth either, to quantify his family’s money. His mother always called them ‘comfortable’ and ‘upper middle class’, while his dad usually had some complaint about how broke they were. There had been a few kids he sincerely thought of as rich in his high school, but he had measured in obnoxious sports cars appearing on 16th birthdays and live in staff, not just inheriting his mother’s three year old BMW and having a weekly ‘helper’ come clean the main areas, and on two occasions, accidentally vacuum his mini figs. His sister didn’t keep her horse on their property like her best friend did, and the only thing he noticed his father buying a lot was bicycles, until his knees gave up on him, and he switched to golf for more than just work.
She hesitated another moment, as thoughts settled on her choice, then hoisted the dress with a determined abruptness and made for the curtain warded change booth. More scrapes of rings on the pole that suspended it, and she pulled the cover back aside to reveal the effect. She wasn’t just wearing the dress, she was sheathed in it. Every curve, parts of her that he hadn’t even realized were that contrasting, were highlighted in a matte glow of leather. The decorative zippers gave it a sharp structure of danger, the half sleeves emphasizing the shape of her wrists. When she moved, it was comfortable, the wasp effect and taper in the long skirt evidently not enough to hobble.
“Hmm, I would need to wear this with heels, she said, her height shifting as she raised and lowered herself to tiptoe to stop the long hem from dragging. She pulled the hem up a little, revealing threadbare halloween socks, the left one almost worn through at the toe.
He began to gesture at the display of shoes, “Maybe to…”
“Absolutely not!” She cut him off. “This is too much already.
But she didn’t sound displeased, just firm in that flirtatious authority.
The sales clerk had stopped paying attention to them, and, daringly, he stooped, kneeling on the carpet and placing a kiss on one jack o’lantern sock foot, then the other, “As you wish, Mistress.”
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