‘She was obnoxious.’
‘What?’
‘Sit down. I want to talk to you.’
‘But – Pat …’
‘We can discuss her later … if it’s still relevant.’
The tone of her voice deflated him, and he sank into a visitors’ chair. ‘What is it?’
‘Style number F 102340.’
He frowned. ‘Women’s black oxford with a good solid built-in arch support. From Ogilvy & Fitch. Excellent shoe.’
‘How many pairs have we bought so far this year?’ Amanda asked the question in a silky voice.
‘I’m not sure. I’d have to check.’
‘I already did. Just short of two thousand pairs.’
‘Oh?’
‘And how many pairs have we sold?’
‘That’s not my department.’
‘Purchasing isn’t concerned about sales? Interesting. Very well, I’ll tell you. One hundred and eighty-three pairs, as of close of business last week.’
‘As I said, it’s a good shoe. We must be stockpiling. It’s the sort of shoe that’s never out of style.’
‘Or in it,’ Amanda purred. ‘And last year, we – you – bought just over three thousand pairs. We sold fewer than four hundred. At this rate, in ten more years it’ll be the only shoe we stock.’
Dumphries crossed his arms. ‘I don’t make purchasing decisions. Ms Sharpe decides what we buy.’
‘I’m glad you brought that up, Mr Dumphries. What is it, exactly, that you do do, apart from come in late, take long lunches and leave early?’
He sat up sharply and wagged his finger at her. ‘I’ll have you know –’
‘What? Tell me what the process is – the ordering.’
‘Well, Ms Sharpe tells me what shoes to buy and in what quantity. I pass her instructions on to my assistant – Pat. She makes up the order forms and brings them to me for signature.’
‘So all you do is pass instructions on and sign order forms? And without looking at what you sign, I hear.’
‘Now see here!’
‘No, Mr Dumphries, I’ve wasted quite enough time on you. You’re fifty-eight, almost fifty-nine, right? You can retire at sixty. I’ve checked with Human Resources. The cheapest way to get rid of you is to continue to pay you for the next fourteen months, but please don’t bother to come in. You won’t be welcomed.’
He stood up, spluttering. ‘I’ll be talking to Ms Sharpe about this!’
‘And so will I. You have twenty-five minutes to clear your desk, or Security will escort you from the premises. Goodbye, Mr Dumphries!’
7
SPIKES WAS A much larger shop than any of Forsythe Footwear’s. It had about sixty feet of frontage and rose for three tall floors. Its façade was pale-pink reflective glass, trimmed with heavy black chains. The motif was continued inside, with pink mirrors, pink faux-suede seating and displays that were made from black chains that had had their links welded together to make sinuous shapes. Handbags hung from thin black chains, twirling decoratively at eye-level.
Amanda tottered in like a geisha in a black slub-silk jersey skirt that hobbled her ankles and clung to her thighs, a ruffled white chiffon blouse and a short boxy jacket that was fastened by three frogs, leaving a two-inch gap that offered a tantalising hint of her thinly veiled cleavage.
The staff wore uniforms, black skirts with pink blouses or black pants with pink shirts. Happily for Amanda’s purposes, they also wore name tags – pink writing on black. When the only male server on that floor asked if he could help Amanda, and she’d checked his tag, she asked him where the higher-heeled shoes were displayed.
He looked down at Amanda’s restricted legs, then at the staircase that rose from the middle of the floor, and grinned. ‘Upstairs, madam. Shall I have someone bring a selection down for you?’
‘No thanks.’ Amanda stooped and teased the Velcro fastening on her skirt apart high enough to display four inches of her naked thigh above the top of her stocking. The salesman was still gawking when Amanda was halfway up the flight.
The stairway had been designed for exhibitionists and voyeurs. It was open on both sides and had treads but no risers. It was impossible for anyone in a skirt to climb them without offering an ‘upskirt’ show to those below. Amanda supposed that the assumption was that women who wore heels higher than the relatively conservative three- and four-inch ones displayed on the lower level had to have exhibitionistic streaks. Clever.
The downside of having a husband in the shoe business, she now realised, was never visiting shoe stores. Amanda’s life with Roger had been incredibly isolated and she’d been oblivious to it. It had happened gently, over time, like a light snowfall, one flake following another. Without noticing, she’d been buried. And Amanda had a pretty good idea why. Roger had made damn sure she wasn’t tempted, as he’d been, fearing that she’d succumb, as he damn well had!
Amanda paused before she reached the top, turned and gave the young man who’d directed her a big slow smile. He was tempting, no doubt about it, and just the right age – which was to say, young. Amanda flounced up the remaining three steps. But he wasn’t the one she was after, not today.
There was only one person serving up there, so he had to be Paul Carter. Once more, Amanda pretended to browse as she watched a shoe salesman, who she planned to seduce, at his work. She was becoming quite the Mata Hari!
In contrast to baby-faced Rupert, Paul had a gaunt look, almost lupine, with prominent cheekbones and large wild eyes. His lips, though not as generous or raspberry red as Rupert’s, were just as alluring. His dark spiky hair looked as if he’d just got out of bed – a look that he most likely spent an hour achieving each morning.
Paul went down on one knee to fit shoes to his customer’s feet. When he pushed a shoe on, he did so by pressing up on the tip of its heel with the palm of his hand. Perhaps the girl he was serving didn’t interpret that idiosyncrasy, but Amanda did. Now she knew exactly how she was going to enslave him.
When the girl left and Paul turned to Amanda, she told him, ‘I want to try on the highest-heeled pump you have.’
He looked at her feet and raised an eyebrow. ‘You have a very small foot, madam. Our highest heels are six inches tall. You’d be balancing on the tips of your toes in them. Are you sure …?’
‘Try me.’
He measured her foot with the delicate touch of a spider. ‘One moment, madam.’
The shoe he brought to her was a plain classic pump in metallic bronze, with six-inch steel-tipped heels that were as slender and vicious as nails. He knelt and used his palm to push up on the blunted spike to press the shoe’s heel on to Amanda’s foot. Amanda bore down, forcing his right hand lower and lower, until its back was flat on the floor, and trapped. Then she put just a little weight on it, indenting the flesh of his palm.
Paul looked up at her face with both pain and lust in his eyes.
‘Now the other shoe,’ she said.
‘I …’
‘You’ll manage.’
‘Yes, madam.’ Awkwardly, he worked her foot into the second shoe, one-handed, until a third of her heel was in it. He set his palm beneath its spike and looked up again, his deep-brown eyes silently pleading.
Amanda knew exactly what he wanted. She forced his left hand down and trapped it beside its mate.
‘Madam?’
‘Paul Carter, right?’
‘Er – yes. That’s me.’
‘You left your research behind at Forsythe Footwear.’
Puzzled, he said, ‘They wouldn’t let me back in to collect it.’
‘I have it. I’ll return it to you tonight.’ She dug into her purse. ‘Here’s my business card. My home address is written on the back. Be there, tonight, eight o’clock, for dinner.’ She slipped her card into the breast pocket of his pink shirt and pressed her heels down harder, for emphasis.
‘Yes, madam.’
‘You may call me Ms Amanda.’
‘Yes, Ms Aman
da.’
‘Don’t be late. Oh – and I’ll take these shoes.’
On her way home, Amanda remembered that she had nothing to go with bronze, so she made a detour to Coquette. There she found an ankle-length stretch liquid-metal gown in bronze with a halter top. The salesgirl warned Amanda that it would be impossible to wear anything under it – which suited her purposes just fine.
8
AMANDA’S NEW DRESS, or, rather, the body it clung to, seemed to render Paul speechless. It lived up to the name of its fabric – liquid metal. She looked as if she’d been dipped into molten bronze. It peaked where her nipples jutted, dimpled into her navel and flowed faithfully across the subtle swell of her mound. If she had pubic hair, it would have shown through.
She’d planned everything. Her dress was stunningly sexy and chic enough to intimidate a callow youth. The menu would appeal to a young man’s taste buds but was still more sophisticated than she imagined he’d be used to. Everything she thought she might need at any point in the evening was in place.
Paul had arrived in a charcoal-grey two-piece suit, smelling of a decent cologne and bearing pink roses. Obviously, he was hoping to ‘get lucky’ but uncertain that he would. After the little scene at Spikes, he had to be horny but nervous. He was on Amanda’s hook, ready to be reeled in.
She served cream of carrot soup with coriander. At her prompting, Paul explained his system for forecasting fashion trends. It was remarkably simple. He kept track of new styles as they emerged and charted their progress. If a trend started one year in Paris, and reappeared there the following year but also showed in Milan and New York, for instance, Paul was pretty sure it would explode across the fashion capitals of the world in the third year before beginning to peter out. He claimed that his system worked seven times out of eight. The eighth time, he recommended slashing the price and clearing the style out at cost, echoing Rupert’s opinion.
Amanda poured them a glass of Bull’s Blood each and dished up sirloin tips in a burgundy sauce, with Pommes Duchess and white asparagus tips. ‘That shoe that got you fired,’ she said, ‘weren’t you taking quite a risk?’
‘I was so frustrated, Ms Amanda. It wasn’t the first time Dumphries had underordered a sure winner.’
‘Tell me.’
‘There were many, but for instance, last summer, there was a Q-number, a flat canvas slip-on that came in five colours, cute and inexpensive. I wanted to order two hundred and fifty cases. It was made in China, so we only had one shot at it.’
‘How many did Dumphries buy?’
‘Thirty-one cases, one for each shop. Worse, when the shop managers saw it in the catalogue, they all wanted multiple cases, from five, I believe, to thirty.’ His face writhed in disgust. ‘One store sold out in two days. The last pair in the whole chain went within a month.’
‘What was his reasoning?’
‘Company policy. Stock up on “standards” and then buy the minimum numbers of each of a wide range of styles. Take no chances.’
‘Standards like?’ she asked.
‘All that Ogilvy & Fitch crap. Old lady shoes. Nurses’ shoes. House slippers, for Christ’s sake!’
‘You really love elegant shoes, don’t you, Paul?’
He looked at his plate. ‘I don’t know about “love”, Ms Amanda.’
‘Oh? I thought you shared my passion.’
‘Well …’
‘You like the shoes you sold me today, don’t you, Paul?’
He blushed and nodded.
‘I’m wearing them now.’
He whispered, ‘I know.’
‘Is it that you love both shoes and women, especially together?’
Paul nodded again.
‘And here I am, a desirable woman who is wearing sexy shoes.’
Yet another nod.
‘Do you want me, Paul?’
‘Want you?’
‘Do you want to fuck me?’
His confusion was delicious. Paul stammered and stuttered, nodded and shook his head, turned deep pink and just about managed to get out a sound that had to be a ‘Yes’.
‘Then follow me, and do exactly as I tell you. If you obey my every word, I promise you a sexual experience far beyond anything you’ve ever dreamt of.’
He made a strangled sound in his throat.
Amanda continued, ‘Absolute obedience, right, Paul?’
‘Yes, Ms Amanda.’
‘Good boy. You’re learning.’
She led him into the living room and sat herself down on the wide deep black leather couch. Paul went to sit beside her.
Sternly, she told him, ‘I didn’t say you could sit.’
He jerked upright. ‘Sorry, Ms Amanda.’
Amanda pulled her dress up above her knees and arranged its hem across the tops of her thighs. ‘Get undressed.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me – strip off. I want to see you naked.’
‘I …’
‘Do it.’
Clumsily but swiftly, Paul stripped down to his bikini underwear – very skimpy with a leopard print. It barely contained his growing erection. A wet patch betrayed the extent of his arousal. Amanda concealed a grin. Yes, Paul had been hoping to get lucky. Well, he was going to, but far beyond anything such an innocent lad could possibly expect.
‘Lose the briefs.’
He paused for a second, took a deep breath and skinned his underwear down. When he straightened, it was instantly obvious that, while parts of him were still those of a youth, other parts were all man. His impressive manhood bobbed before him, rising from a thin patch of straight black hair. Paul’s hands moved as if he wanted to shield himself but he fought the impulse. He had a runner’s body, with long lean muscles, not bulky ones like Roger had had. Lower on his chest, she could see his ribs, but his hairless pectorals were hard shelves. His belly was slightly hollowed but nicely ridged. No hair there, either.
Amanda licked her lips. ‘Kneel at my feet. Take my shoes off.’
Reverently, he obeyed. If he feared having his hand pinned down by her heel again, he didn’t show it. But they’d already played that game and Amanda had no desire to repeat herself.
‘Now, take my right stocking off – just the right one, and be careful not to put a run in it.’
His fingers trembled. He bit his lower lip in concentration. The ‘cling’ at the top of her stocking seemed to confuse him at first but, once he got the hang of it, he folded the lacy band over, then over again, slowly working his way down Amanda’s long leg, over her trim ankle and off her delicate little foot.
‘You may kiss my toes.’
His lips pursed and touched the little toe of her left foot.
‘You may suck and lick.’ She lay back and luxuriated in the warm slithery wet sensations. As she’d suspected, he was good at it, either by experience or imagination she couldn’t say, although if pressed to guess she’d pick the latter. God bless these inexperienced boys with their pockets of untapped talent. They were gold.
Amanda was tingling all over when she’d had enough. ‘Stand up,’ she commanded. ‘Hands out, wrists together.’
Without standing, Amanda wrapped her stocking in a figure eight around his wrists and tied a firm knot. ‘Put the head of your cock here.’ She drew her left foot up on to the couch and pointed to her nylon-sheathed right knee.
It was difficult for the poor lad, but Amanda’s emerging philosophy decreed that it was good for a boy to work for his treats. He had to cling to the back of the couch with both bound hands, kneel on one knee on the couch and splay his other leg wide, foot to the floor, and arch his back. Amanda didn’t help him.
When his dark-pink glistening knob was in position, Amanda crossed her left leg over it, trapping it in the soft naked hollow behind her knee. ‘Fuck me there,’ she ordered.
After a dozen or so swivelling thrusts, he seemed to get the hang of it and began to speed up.
Amanda reached behind her neck and undid the tie of he
r halter. The dress slithered down to her waist.
Paul stared at her naked breasts. He missed a beat. She cupped her right breast, compressed it to extrude her nipple a little and pulled his head down. ‘Suck on my nipple. Suck it hard and deep. Make me feel it.’
He obeyed but his position, bent over, working his hips at an awkward angle and clinging desperately to the back of the couch, led to the inevitable. He tumbled to the floor.
‘You aren’t very good at that, are you?’ Amanda allowed a trace of displeasure to show in her voice.
He looked up at her, his expression heartbreakingly contrite. ‘Sorry, Ms Amanda.’
‘We’ll try something easier.’
‘Thank you, Ms Amanda.’
Inspired by the instructions Trevor had given her, Amanda said, ‘Kneel on the floor facing the couch, hands on it but knees back a bit and spread wide.’
Amanda stood, sucked her tummy in and wriggled her hips. Her dress hissed to the floor.
Paul knee-walked himself into position
Amanda pulled a tube of ‘tingling personal lubricant’ and a package of latex surgical gloves from under a cushion. Behind Paul’s back, where he couldn’t see her, Amanda pushed the six-inch heel of one of her shoes into a latex glove and into its index finger, before putting a pair of the stretchy gloves on to her hands.
‘Here,’ she said, ‘suck on this.’ She set the other shoe on the cushion in front of his face, its heel towards his mouth.
Obediently, Paul took the metal spike between his lips and began to suck.
‘And maintain the position,’ she instructed.
He jerked when she squeezed cold lube along the full hot quivering length of his shaft. Amanda felt as if she was radiating. It was – and wasn’t – the familiar glow of lust. It was all that, and more. It was the power. It elevated her. She had a toy, a living breathing toy, totally in her command. She was a puppeteer, with a human puppet. Whatever she wanted to do to it, she could. Whatever she fancied it doing to her, it would.
With absolutely no consideration for Paul’s pleasure, though he doubtless enjoyed her touch, she explored his length with her oily latex-covered fingertips. Its shape wasn’t round in cross-section, but more like a slightly squished circle, with a thick ridge running up its underside. Its head was bulbous and hard, even harder than its shaft. With it resting gently on her palm, she could feel its pulse.
Amanda's Young Men Page 6
