‘I think I ought to walk you home right now, before I do something I shouldn’t,’ Michael said. ‘Hop up.’
Giggling, Imogen jumped off his lap and ran to the dressing room, returning a while later dressed in a neat wool suit and carrying the hat and tails over her arm. Michael was waiting for her by the door. He took her hand and held it tightly. As they walked, Imogen’s thighs in the silk stockings brushed together with a sound like static and she could see him smiling as he listened to the crackle, crackle of the silk stocking friction. After a while he pulled her closer and whispered in her ear. ‘Imogen, what is that way you have of walking with the friction of the stockings rubbing together. Such a thing could ignite a man in flames?’
Imogen gripped his hand and she held it to her thigh and as they strolled along she pressed his fingers to the edge of her lacy seams and he moved his finger beneath her suspenders. ‘Either one of us could be set on fire.’ She laughed. ‘But, perhaps it’ll be me and not you.’
On the tram he kept watching her and it made her tingle all over. Somehow he had found a way to slip beneath her defences. Sometimes she caught him watching her out of the corner of his eye and at other times he watched her reflection in the glass. Michael, she deduced, was like a watery sun popping out from behind a cloud and gently warming her frozen body.
A cold wind blew down the strasse and Imogen buttoned her coat as they walked together in silence. She was afraid. Her number one rule when she’d moved here was never to bring men back to the apartment. She had to avoid the possibility of Louis finding out where she lived and worked and to do that she had to learn to keep secrets and lead a solitary life. She’d even made sure she didn’t shop at the same shops, just in case she was followed, and her dentist and doctor were right the other side of town.
Her apartment was situated up a narrow side street and reached through a curved archway which led into a courtyard. Searching in her pocket for her key, Imogen unlocked a door into a small shabby halfway and Michael, consumed with excitement, pressed his hands to her thighs and forced her up against the wall. Imogen sighed and shivered as his hands felt under her skirt and stroked between her thighs, then giggling she took his hand and pulled him over to a small elevator. ‘It’s a curious old building, isn’t it? They tell me this section was once part of the old hospital.’ She punched a button and the door opened and then slammed with a clang, the two of them ascending in the dark cage which creaked and groaned and occasionally shuddered, like a woman approaching orgasm. Michael held her tightly, with his arm around her waist and his mouth buried in her perfumed hair, and Imogen wondered how it would feel to have his hand right down against her flesh, inside the silk stockings.
The door clattered open and, laughing, Imogen lifted her skirt coquettishly and sashayed along the corridor doing a little dance and walking on the tips of her toes.
‘Well this is my little boudoir, Michael,’ she said as she leant seductively against the door. ‘You must promise you won’t be alarmed when you come inside, but I’m rather an untidy girl, I’m afraid. And, since I hardly ever ask men back to my room I don’t bother tidying up much. Actually, I can’t remember when I last had a real boyfriend, although naturally many men hang around the stage door.’
‘Yes I imagine they would,’ Michael said huskily.
The apartment was little more than a room situated high up in the attic. However, it had a startling panoramic view of Berlin and, far away, the roof of the cathedral. Through the draughty old window, around which she had stuck pieces of newspaper, the wind whistled with a strange high musical cadence. Imogen watched Michael carefully. She supposed Mr Levenstein lived in a chic loft apartment in the city and was used to opulent surroundings. After all, the Levensteins apparently owned a huge house in the Hamptons, with tennis courts and swimming pools. She’d read about Mr Levenstein senior, he had defended politicians and actors. His wife, Norma, had apparently alienated her children with her overbearing manner but she recalled her own mother had admired the woman – her dresses and shoes, beautiful grooming and impeccable style. Imogen twisted a strand of her hair around her finger. She found it odd and unsettling and like a mysterious twist of destiny, that the Michael Levenstein was standing in her little room and that he had a connection, however loosely, with her past and her mother.
‘It’s not much. But, it’s convenient for work. Plus there’s the added advantage of Herr Eichel, who owns the bakers and who saves me the leftovers. Herr Eichel makes the most wonderful butterkuchen. I have a small piece left if you’d like it?’
‘I can think of another butterkuchen I’d rather have,’ Michael murmured.
Imogen flicked on a lamp. ‘You can see I’m telling the truth and I don’t have many visitors, can’t you? It’s simply a place to sleep, that’s all. Make yourself at home, Michael.’
Imogen began clearing a chair. Taking the strewn clothing she dumped it onto the floor in an untidy pile before carefully placing her top hat and coat onto an old dressmaker’s mannequin in the corner of the room.
The room was very shabby indeed with faded flock wallpaper. It was dominated by a Chinese screen in one corner, a huge ornate wardrobe and a French cheval mirror. Nearly every piece of furniture was covered in items of clothing and in particular loose silk stockings, which hung here and there like discarded condoms.
Michael sat down cautiously on the bed, which was covered in a blood red quilt and various items of alluring underwear: real French lace panties and a thin silk chemise. She could tell he was suffering from compelling sexual urges as he kept crossing his legs and tugging his jacked down over his erection, men were so bad at hiding these things.
Imogen was feeling relaxed. She shook a cigarette out of a box on her dressing table and striking a match and cupping the flame, her face was briefly illuminated. Then, smiling, she stubbed it out. She must be excited to so quickly forget one of her promises. Boldly unbuttoning her overcoat, she shrugged it from her shoulders before unfastening her blouse and unzipping her skirt and kicking it away with her foot.
Imogen was now completely naked except for her suspender belt and stockings and her impossibly tall high heels. Next, hooking her leg around the chair she drew it out and sat down at the dressing table. What was it her mother had said? “It was better to be hung as a sheep than a lamb.” Michael watched her apply make-up remover to some cotton wool and remove her make-up. Then she pushed open the door of a tiny closet and drawing some water she washed her face and hands and between her legs with a washcloth.
‘You don’t know what to make of me, do you, Michael?’ she said as she strolled back into the room. ‘And, it’s probably just as well because you’d hate me.’
Michael was staring at Imogen’s legs. In the glow from the lamp her stockings shone. She saw him staring, sat down and pushing the chair away a little from the dressing table and knowing she was being deliberately provocative, she crossed her legs extremely slowly, compelling the black suspenders to tighten and pull on the fine inflexible silk. A darkness seemed to be trickling out of her, a desire to be very bad. Louis had made her behave badly, she thought ruefully, but those times had gone. However, sex was such a compulsive human drive, once you had a taste for it, it kept coming back and you couldn’t push the itch to be naughty away.
She sat back in the chair, parting her legs and running her hands up the insides of her thighs in a gesture of downright sexual decadence, before trailing her fingers over the curve of her belly and thrusting her hips forward so Michael could see the plush mound of pubic hair between her legs.
‘Is that what you mean by butterkuchen? Well, I think you’re playing around,’ he said. He got to his feet and taking a robe off the back of a mirror he threw it into her lap. ‘Cover yourself up or I’ll leave this instant.’
Imogen giggled nervously. Frankly, she didn’t know what she wanted. She felt scared and confused. She wanted love so desperately she’d do anything for it and yet she was so petrified she dare not ri
sk it, and then there was the other aspect of it. The fact she genuinely liked Michael but she knew if she got to know him in anything but a superficial sense, she’d have to start explaining, and explaining could be so difficult when she didn’t know where to start.
‘The last time I saw such erotic behaviour was with this broad called Rocella. She was my girlfriend for a while when I was in Brazil and she liked to pose whenever she could in the nude.’ Michael strolled back to the bed with his hands in his pockets. ‘She oozed sex. She’d pose on chairs and on the edge of her bathtub where she’d sit combing her long wet hair and smoothing it between her breasts. She even stripped off and posed nude on the back seat of my Sedan. Until you, I thought she was the sexiest woman I’d ever encountered. However, to my mind there’s nothing more erotic than a woman semi-clad in silk stockings.’
‘And what happened to this whore?’ Imogen asked, leaning forward and sliding her arms into the sleeves of the robe.
‘She wasn’t marriage material and she didn’t tell me she had a boyfriend who was a drug baron.’
‘Ah, I see.’ Imogen got up and plucked a photograph from out of a crack in the dressing table mirror. She held it out. ‘This is my mother, Michael. Everyone thought she was exceedingly beautiful and very sexy. My mother was German but she went to live in Paris just before the war. She worked for Cervin. You must have heard of Cervin? They make the finest silk stockings in the world. It was heaven for mother, a dream come true. You see, she had incredible legs and she also had this great love of silk stockings. It’s a curse this thing the Heinemann women have with the legs and the stockings. Anyway, she’d do anything for a pair of fine silk stockings and didn’t consider herself dressed without them.’
Imogen held out the photograph. ‘Here take it and have a good look. Doesn’t she look lovely? Very sophisticated and quite the lady. Mother was so poor, you know, but she always made the best of herself and wore the best hose money could buy. She said it was essential a woman complete her dress with a pair of fine silk stockings as that was the only way she would seduce and marry a rich man. Mother was of the philosophy that stockings made a woman a true lady but at the same time a whore … and men love a lady with such a dual personality. It’s a man’s wet dream to have a lady on his arm to show to his friends and a whore in the bedroom. Well, one day she was coming out of the factory and she caught the eye of this man. A rich industrialist. The man fell in love with the whore of stockings and he used to follow her. At first it scared Mother a little bit so she tried to confound him. She’d walk much further than she needed to. Taking circuitous routes and staying on the metro and going to stops she didn’t really want, to try and give him the slip. But he loved her and I’m led to believe it’s impossible to shake off a man once he loves you.’ Imogen glanced at Michael and saw he was in raptures over the story. ‘The trouble is, having never been in love like that, how would I know whether that’s true or not? The man pushed her into a doorway and tried to seduce her. His hands were all over her fine silk stockings and he kept saying. I’m in love with you, Marianne. Give me a stocking as a memento and I’ll leave my wife.’
Imogen took a loose stocking off her dressing table and holding it like a scarf she used it as a screen, stretching it tightly across her mouth. ‘I think all the Heinemann women from the dawn of time must have been silk stocking coquettes, because my mother unclipped and unrolled her stocking right there in the street and rubbing it in her cunt and pushing it inside her vagina which was so wet for this man who she fancied like hell … she held it out and she said, “Here’s a gift for you.” The man laughed and he said, “You’re adorable, you whore. I love you.” Then he smelt the stocking and he said, “There’s no smell like your cunt. I could find your cunt in the whole of Paris from this stocking.” He got mother a job modelling for a fashion house and she was good at it, she was taller than me, she was made to wear good clothes not just Cervin.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Michael said.
‘You can believe what you choose, Michael. Well it was inevitable she’d fall in love since my mother was such a romantic woman. All the Heinemanns are senseless in love. But it was complicated you know, love’s always so complicated.’
Imogen retrieved the picture and, kissing her finger and placing it on her mother’s face, she placed the photograph back in the frame of the mirror. ‘Mother had an affair with the man, it lasted nearly ten years. She was very much in love and as a result here I am. Yes, Michael, I’m a chip off the old block since I’m the bastard daughter of – how should we say? – the prostitute of the leg or the woman in the silk stockings. That’s why I’m a crazy broad.’
‘What happened?’ Michael asked.
‘He left her stranded when she got pregnant, as most married men do. Mama had a great deal of money by then but she was so sad, she just spent it, spent it on good things to make her forget. You know – nice clothes for me, tea at the Ritz. Money is like water through a bucket though, and soon spilt.’
‘What a sad story,’ Michael said.
‘It wasn’t easy for my mother.’ She smiled at him in the mirror. ‘I hate sad stories don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I only deal in happy endings and what about you, have you ever been in love?’
Imogen’s heart was fluttering. ‘Good question. Frankly, I don’t know. Once I thought I was, but now I’m not so sure. Love is so many things.’
‘I only deal in true love, passionate one and only love. Like I only deal in those happy endings.’ Michael grinned.
Imogen bit her lip because she was inclined to believe him, there was something about the great Michael Levenstein.
‘You see.’ She held up the silk stocking, waving it back and forth like a used condom. ‘These are the only kind I wear. The first time I wore silk stockings was when I was six. I looked funny. I stole mother’s stockings and I pulled them on. They were much too long for me, though, and kept falling off. I must have made such a comical picture. And, they’ll also be the last thing I wear, Michael. Because I want to be buried in a casket wearing the most expensive silk stockings money can buy. Don’t you think I’m a bit of a caution? Aren’t I a little bit too hot to handle?’
Imogen couldn’t tear her gaze away as she stared at him in the mirror and then she began to unpin her long blonde hair shaking it out and brushing it with long strokes of her hairbrush. A disturbing idea had come into her head, a “what if?” idea. What if I fucked Michael? Who would know and it’s cold and coming winter and I need the warmth and it could feel so good to fuck and then have a man, a nice man like Michael to twist and curl around – and if I asked him to leave before it got light so no one saw, I’m sure it would be all right. Taking a deep breath, she said, ‘I’m giving you one last chance to go before, well … you know.’
‘What kind of an opt out clause?’ Michael enquired, staring at her breasts which gave her a weird shiver.
‘Yes, in legal terms I guess that’s it. Do you always think in legal terms?’
She came and sat beside him and he took her hand and twining his fingers through hers he held them to her mouth in an oddly old-fashioned gesture. ‘Sure.’ He was thoughtful. ‘But, when I came up here I knew I wouldn’t leave.’
‘This is a fuck, right?’ Imogen said quietly, as she studied the sensitive bow of his mouth and leaning forward kissed him lightly. ‘And that’s all it is? It’d be stupid in view of all the dark things in my life, to think that it could go further. And, what are you – a travelling salesman? And isn’t that what travelling salesmen do? Fuck and move on?’
Michael shrugged as she undid one of his buttons and touched the throbbing pulse at his throat.
‘Perhaps, I have secrets of my own and my life isn’t what you think.’
‘What, you’re a communist spy or something? Come on,’ Imogen coaxed.
‘I might be.’ He paused and his breath was warm and sweet on her hand. ‘Would it excite you if you thought I was a spy?’
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‘No, I don’t think it would, I’ve had enough intrigue in my life.’
Michael kissed her and each of her fingers.
‘So,’ she said eventually. ‘What kind of a fantasy do you have? Is it of the general kind? For instance, how would you like it if I took a pair of my fine silk stockings and I tied you hand and foot to the bed?’ Strolling to her chest of drawers she tugged it open and out spilled a profusion of stockings. ‘Once I saw a woman struggling into a pair of cheap stockings in a public toilet. She took them out of her shopping bag. They were so vulgar it made me feel sick. I could never wear those ghastly things. No, for me it must be the best and as a result, I’ll always be poor. Here, handle these and you’ll see what I mean.’
Imogen took a packet and slowly she began extracting the silk stockings, rubbing them across her nose and mouth before handing one to Michael. ‘These are the finest stockings money can buy. They’re the Cervin. You see, they’re so fine. Only one denier and so incredibly thin they’re like a second skin. A pair of these stockings is really expensive and you can only buy them in the most exclusive boutiques. When I go into a shop and I buy a pair of these, it’s such a treat I feel like a queen. You see why I have to do stupid things such as private shows for perverts like Gunter, and the dance classes at the seedy little club. It’s so I can have life’s simple silk pleasures. I can tell you Cervin gives me a better orgasm than any man.’
She sat back down on the bed beside Michael. ‘You can move my stuff, you know. You’re still sitting on my panties and you’re wriggling like a worm. Poor Michael!’ Taking the silk stocking from his fingers and smiling she stretched it across his mouth. ‘So you have a little thing for the silk stockings.’
A Seduction in Silk (Xcite Romance) Page 4
