*
The Gallery in Woodbury was a new mall about thirty minutes outside of town. During the drive, Billie did most of the talking, while Leigh gave distracted answers and sank a little further into her guilt.
The mall was a new, upscale one, and Leigh had wanted to visit for a while. She had wondered how they managed to have an open-air mall in this climate, but Billie seemed to read her mind by explaining, unsolicited, that the walkways were all heated.
She insisted on starting the day by getting a latte at a pleasant cafe, which took almost an hour. Billie was not the kind of woman that Leigh would call “hurried.”
Craig had some kind of charity event coming up through Woods-Gunthry and Billie needed a new dress. Leigh decided not to spend any more money on dresses with Billie, after really splurging the last time they went shopping. She sat outside the dressing rooms and vaguely approved of whatever Billie came out wearing, her thoughts miles away, with Craig and his fingers stroking her breasts. Or even more sordid scenes, with Jeremy watching.
She liked Julia’s Big Boss. She had read the entire story – a sordid and utterly implausible story about a man who owed gambling debt to his boss. The wife, Julia, was taken as payment, but the husband and boss tricked the wife into thinking he was just into some kind of BDSM thing. They blindfolded her and the husband read off a script to her while the boss did what he wanted to do.
Julia didn’t like admitting that she liked the story. Especially the part where the wife realized that the boss was fucking her because his cock was so big… probably like Craig’s… but by then it was too late.
Ugh. It was so… base. Fantasizing about the size of a man’s cock and his hard muscles, as if that’s all there were to attraction and pleasure in bed.
Sometimes she couldn’t believe herself.
There was so much more to it. So much more to seduction.
Like slowly teasing a woman by staring into her eyes and glancing over her breasts with your fingertips.
What was she even thinking about?! This was Billie’s husband.
Leigh stared at the floor, her chest flashing hot and cold with guilt.
Billie’s voice broke through her reverie. “What’s up with you?” She put her hand on her hip and lifted the handwritten price tag of her dress. “I tell you I’m going to spend $2,000 on a dress and you say nothing.”
She collapsed in the couch, up against a wall in a hallway of dressing rooms closed off by heavy curtains, next to Leigh. “What’s on your mind?”
Leigh bit her lip. It was pointless saying it was nothing… but she didn’t really have the guts to tell Billie the truth.
Or you don’t want to, she thought.
But Billie didn’t have to know what she thought. Billie only had to know what was happening.
“Spill it,” Billie said. She stood up and gave herself a twirl in the mirror. “Oh, now, I don’t know. You know, this would look better on you.”
“I’m worried about a friend of mine,” Leigh blurted. “I think, um… her husband is up to something with another woman. And I don’t know how to tell her.”
Billie seemed to not even hear at first. She was looking at herself in the mirror, turning and posing, trying to see how her butt looked.
“Is this about Craig hitting on you?” she said, almost with disinterest, as she craned her neck behind her. Then she looked back toward the astonished Leigh. “Because you don’t need to worry about it then.”
Leigh found her mouth hanging open for what seemed like the gazzilionth time in the past month.
“No?” Billie said. “It’s someone else?”
Leigh closed her mouth. She shook her head. “No… I…”
Billie unzipped the dress. “You really need to try this on,” she said. “It’s better with your figure.”
Leigh stared at her as she dropped the dress to the floor.
Billie’s body was lean and flawless – not an ounce of fat on her anywhere. Her hips and breasts were small, but shapely. Leigh looked away quickly, but not before she saw that her friend was brazenly not wearing any underwear, and that she was fully waxed. “Um,” Leigh gulped. “I think I need a bigger size.”
Billie went back into the changing room at a leisurely pace, given that she was standing around buck-naked, and closed the curtain behind her.
“Also,” Leigh babbled, not knowing what to do in the face of so much… skin. “I can’t… this is too expensive.”
Billie poked her head out of the curtain. “You must have known that me and Craig are in an open relationship?” she said, looking at Leigh. She abruptly changed the subject, as though she hadn’t dropped a bombshell. “Ask the clerk, just try it on. We can take a selfie and put it on Facebook or something.” She raised her eyebrows. “Or something more racy.”
She disappeared again. Leigh picked the dress up and held it in her hand.
She wasn’t sure what to feel. Relief was one emotion coursing through her.
Confusion.
Curiosity.
And… there was no doubt:
Arousal.
She folded the dress in half and lay it across the couch. She could see Billie’s little feet stepping into a red dress.
“Oh, this one is more like Billie,” Billie breathed. The curtain slid open with flourish. “Ta-da!” she said.
It did look good. With her extra-lean figure and naturally tan-colored skin, her light brown eyes and her petite features, Billie looked a lot like models who were so popular in fashion magazines now. The spaghetti straps of the dress held the bodice (just barely) over her handful of firm breasts, and from there the dress turned into a slinky, silky fabric that clung to her as she moved and then let go of her body, teasing with every motion she made. It was short, and her slender thighs hung enticing out at the bottom.
Leigh’s head was still spinning from what Billie had said about her open relationship. While her eyes were taking in the dress and she tried to concentrate on paying her friend a proper compliment, she couldn’t stop turning Billie’s proclamation over and over in her mind:
we’re in an open relationship
we’re in an open relationship
Billie held her hands out impatiently. “Well?” she demanded, but her mouth was smiling. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
Leigh stuttered. “It looks… it looks… good.”
“Good,” Billie repeated. Then she turned with a huff and pulled on the curtain.
“I mean, it looks great… it looks great, Billie. It’s a very hot dress,” Leigh stammered. “I’m sorry,” she said, putting her hand to her forehead. “I just… um, I can’t...”
“Oh,” Billie said, stepping back out. She propped herself up against a wall and put her hand on her hip. “This is still about the relationship.” She furrowed her brow. “I thought you knew.”
Leigh looked at her, her eyes wide.
Billie shook a finger at her. “That’s a very bad thing you did, then.”
For a moment Leigh’s heart plummeted with fear.
She was surprised to find, though, that it was also racing. She was experiencing a kind of excitement she hadn’t ever really come into contact with. It was perhaps the first time she had been so close to something so forbidden. But between the conversation with her husband, and now with Billie, and Craig’s obvious advances… it almost seemed like everyone was conspiring to make her do this very bad thing. Like she barely had any choice. Like it would all be okay if she just followed her desires...
Billie quickly smiled. “Hey, I’m joking, okay? It’s not a big deal. Anyway… it seems like you had a good time, right?”
Leigh started to shake her head, trying to move her mouth to find the appropriate thing to say to the wife of the man who had been stroking her breast so inappropriately in hallway just a few days before.
Whatever the appropriate thing to say was.
Billie mimicked the motions of Leigh’s head, and then she plopped down next to her
on the couch. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I really thought you knew this about us. But still… you have to admit you liked it, just a little.”
Leigh knew that the expression on her face looked like alarm.
Billie leaned her head back. “Craig is really into you,” she said.
Leigh was startled by the way Billie made this declaration. It was so matter-of-fact. She didn’t seem to care at all that she was informing another woman that her own husband was “into” her.
Billie turned her head to the side and grinned. “It’s the pictures. Especially the one on that hotwife book -”
Billie cut herself off with a gasp. She grabbed Leigh's forearm and squeezed, biting her lower lip. “I’ve got such a great idea!” she said, jumping up.
And then she disappeared, practically speedwalking in the little red dress she was wearing, out of the dressing rooms and out to the store.
Leigh stared at her retreating.
Was this really happening?
Inside her mind though, a damn seemed to be breaking. She couldn’t stop the trickle of thoughts in her mind from turning into a gushing river, no matter how much she wanted to put it all out of her mind.
She had liked Craig’s fingers on her chest. She had liked imagining the bulge in his jeans pressing into her, feeling it against her thigh, feeling his fingers moving between their bodies as he freed his cock. She could almost feel the hot weight of his dick in her hand.
She fanned herself with a brochure for an art festival that had been abandoned on the couch.
She was turned on, all the way to the center of her legs, where she was getting wet.
Jesus. What was wrong with her?
A swishing sound and a flurry of activity in the direction of the store announced the return of Billie, who was holding a hanger and a mass of black, velvet fabric in her hands. “Look at this,” she said. “I saw it and that hot cover for that hotwife book was the first thing that came to mind.”
She halted and released the fabric she was carrying in one hand.
A very short, very skimpy, strapless dress swung seductively beneath the hanger, suspended by clear plastic straps.
It was a lot like that dress. It might have even been the exact same one.
Leigh’s hand went involuntarily to cover her mouth, though she wasn’t sure which expression she was trying to hide.
Billie shook the dress. “Oh, come on,” she said. “Just try it. This is the dress that Craig can’t get out of his mind. Just try it on, maybe you’ll need it for something in the future.”
Leigh continued staring, feeling almost paralyzed.
“Jeremy will like it. I know he will.”
Leigh could feel herself wanting it. She wanted to try it on, she wanted to grab it and wear it and then prance around somewhere where Craig could see her in it, and Jeremy could see Craig seeing her in it. She could feel a very unfamiliar feeling inside of her – she wanted to drive men wild. It felt good.
But she had a hard time just jumping into that the way Billie did.
Leigh found herself shaking her head. “It’s too… it’s…”
Billie reached for Leigh’s arm and pulled her from the couch. “I can see from your face that you want to put it on. Just put it on. What’s the harm in putting on a dress?”
She practically shoved Leigh into the dressing room. Her lean arm shot up and jerked the curtain closed. “Come on, just for fun.”
Only because of the way she said it, she made it sound like if Leigh didn’t do it, she might slit her throat.
Leigh looked at herself in the mirror.
What was she doing?
But her body was way ahead of her, already peeling off her clothes.
Before she knew it, she was stepping into the dress, which did look remarkably like the one she had used in the photo shoot. She could feel a flush spreading over her face and her body, with the memory of that particular photo shoot creeping into her mind.
In particular, there had been the illicit excitement when Dmitry had asked her to move the photo shoot to the room adjacent to the studio – his room, presumably where he slept. Leigh had never asked but the evidence was there: the slightly rumpled bed sheet, a towel over a chair, the scent of his aftershave hanging in the slightly damp air. The shoot had a peculiar feel to it: it was noon, but Dmitry had just gotten up, answering the door in nothing but his boxers. He had asked her to get changed into the black dress, and she had changed into it as reluctantly as she was doing now. But, just like now, she had been pleased with the feel of the fabric, the way she looked, the shortness of the dress even if it made her uncomfortable.
While she was changing and getting ready – she put her hair down at his request, and a make-up artist who spoke no English materialized, apparently from next door, to put on the finishing touches – Dmitry had evidently taken a shower and shaved.
When they began the photo shoot, it was in the studio, against a white background, then a black one.
“You know,” he said, dropping the camera from his face to stare at her intensely. “This would be more realistic on a bed.”
And before she had known what was happening, she had been following him to the open door to his bedroom.
Sure, she knew it was inappropriate. It was just the sort of thing a guy would say before putting the moves on her. It was something she wouldn’t have done in the presence of her husband; it was something she knew she wasn’t going to tell her husband about. It was the kind of thin, gray line that she shouldn’t be crossing, and she had known it.
But she had kept walking forward, right into the faintly humid bedroom, the scent of Dmitry's shower still hanging in the air. Her heart had been beating wildly, an ache twisting painfully between her legs, her conscience on fire, as she sat down on the bed.
The photo on the cover of Julia’s Big Boss, Leigh knew, was the first one he had taken, after she had sat nervously on the edge of the bed.
“Try to relax,” Dmitry had purred.
And that was why she looked the way she did, like a woman on the verge of doing something very, very bad, who was not too sure she really wanted to do it.
Or better stated, that she really should be doing it.
She looked like that in the photo because that was how she had felt. And if Dmitry had gotten too close, or set his camera down on the long table behind him, very deliberately, and waked toward her to push her hair behind her shoulder? What would she have done?
Back in the changing room, Leigh could feel the excitement of that memory (and the truthful answer to that question) searing through her. She pointed her elbows up at the ceiling to tug the material into place, and wished she’d had the same push-up bra she had been wearing in the photo shoot.
But no matter, she still looked good.
This is the dress that Craig can’t get out of his mind.
Leigh tugged on her tidy ponytail and let her hair fall down around her shoulders.
“Are you done yet or what?” Billie said, and she pulled on the curtain without waiting for the answer.
She ran her eyes over Leigh’s figure.
“Oh God,” she said. “You have to buy it. It’s so hot.”
Leigh looked from Billie to the mirror again. “I don’t...”
Her voice trailed off, because she really did want to buy it. It was impractical and not her style, something she would probably never wear, but something inside of her really wanted to make the purchase.
Something inside of her really wanted Billie to go home and tell Craig she had made the purchase. She wanted him thinking about it.
She wanted Jeremy thinking about it.
Billie looked both ways and then stepped toward the compartment, pushing Leigh inside and closing the curtain.
Leigh felt her heart flutter and then mild panic rose up inside of her. Billie wasn’t going to try and hit on her or something, was she…?
But Billie took Leigh’s phone out of her purse instead. “I have an idea
,” she said. She was smiling, and swiping at the screen. “Why don’t you take a picture of this and send it to Craig?” Her eyes lifted and she looked at Leigh. “Or better yet,” she mused, “why not send the picture to both of them?”
Leigh grabbed for the phone, but Billie was too quick and snapped a picture, pulling her hand away.
“Don’t!” Leigh hissed.
She had to admit that her heart was not entirely in her refusal.
“Listen,” Billie said calmly. “I happen to know that Jeremy is into watching you with another man. And. I happen to know that you at least like the idea of it.”
Leigh tried very, very hard to keep her face from going red.
Billie smiled graciously and shrugged. “Don’t be embarrassed. Who cares? I don’t care, Craig… I know he doesn’t care, and Jeremy doesn’t care. So what’s the problem?”
Leigh put her hands on either side of her nose. “I don’t know… I just…” she shook her head.
Billie nodded. “You’re not really into it. I get it. It’s not something for everyone. Although...” she dropped her voice to a purr, “Craig has a really thick cock, he’s very good in be-”
“That’s not a consideration… I… this is...” Leigh shook her head again. “Oh, I can’t believe I’m having this conversation.”
Billie smiled. “Okay what about this?” She waved the phone carelessly in her hand. “We take the picture and we send it, and you send it ‘accidentally’ to Craig?”
Leigh paused.
Billie pointed at her. “See? You want to do it. Come on, it will be fun. It’s not anything all that bad.”
Leigh’s mouth opened slightly.
It was bad.
It was a bad thing to do.
Just like sitting on the edge of Dmitry’s bed was a bed thing to do. It was a line, and she was crossing it.
“You want to do it,” Billie sang. “And so does everyone else.” She smiled. “Want you to do it, that is.”
Leigh looked at her uncertainly.
Why on earth was she even giving this a thought?
Leigh Uncovered: A Wife Sharing Novel Page 10
