“You little liar.” Lenny tossed her head back and laughed heartily, and Cami couldn’t help but smile at the sound. “Fine, keep your secrets. But your employee discount doesn’t apply to condoms.”
She rolled her eyes, but, remembering last night’s dilemma, she did cast an evaluating glance at the tiered display of prophylactics a few steps away. It might not even happen again, but it never hurt to be prepared...
“I can see you eyeing my merchandise, you little hooker.”
“One: rude,” Cami chided. “Two: the appropriate term is sex worker, you fossil.”
Lenny scoffed, then made a show of mimicking Cami like a five-year-old trying to irritate their sibling.
Cami ignored her and changed the subject: “When’s Tristan in?”
“An hour. He’s only scheduled for the mid-shift, but he wants the hours, so he’ll stay until closing.” With her attention redirected to store-related topics, Lenny’s tone had taken on a thoughtful air, and when Cami glanced over, she was studying a makeshift column of books they’d set up after the shipping delivery last week. “See if you can get him to take a crack at that display. Make it look like we put it there on purpose.” She nodded at the books. “He’s got an eye for that sort of thing.”
“Sure.”
Lenny gave Holmes a shove, heaving the giant dog off her lap, then stood. “Now that you’re down here, I’m going to head to the back and look at the paperwork.” She sounded about as thrilled at the prospect of administrative duties as Cami felt about trying to explain Des’s hasty exit this morning.
Lenny headed into the back. Cami busied herself dusting displays and righting boxes that didn’t need to be straightened. The chemical dampened dust-wipe she used made her fingers feel pruny after a few minutes, but the sense of accomplishing a mindless task was comforting. Until she found herself dusting a familiar box containing a now-experienced object. The Lulu stared at her twenty times over as she wiped down the display, taunting her with memories of Des’s breathing, the texture of histhigh against the inside of her knee as he pressed the toy against her.
He’d given her orgasm after orgasm, both with and without toys, and proven that she wasn’t broken—at least, not in that way. That was worth celebrating, regardless of what his early morning departure might have meant. She hadn’t had a chance to overanalyze what her initial problem was, between work and class and their not-dates, but she wasn’t a doctor anyway. How could she figure out why she had struggled so hard to orgasm? She’d thought maybe she just needed toys to push her over the edge, but Des had disproved that multiple times last night. He hadn’t seemed to do anything unusual when he’d used his fingers on her than when she’d tried on her own, but somehow, it had felt all too different, and the results had been...well, earth-shattering. Had he unlocked something within her? Opened the cage that housed all her orgasms, and now they flowed freely within her? Was that even a thing?
She supposed she could ask him. He had gone to med school for a while. But bringing that up with him would be mortifying. She was sure he didn’t care about her previous sexual partners, but meeting his gaze and telling him, “I thought I was incapable of coming,” made her want to die. Even with an actual doctor paid to examine her, it would be horrifying to explain all the ways she’d attempted to orgasm.
It didn’t matter now anyway. Des had proved her wrong, heartily and repeatedly, and with no difficulty. She and her previous partners had all just been slamming the wrong button and wondering why the rocket wasn’t going off.
Or,a voice in the back of her head whispered,it’s just Des. Only he can get you off.
That would be an entirely different problem to handle, and wasn’t one she wanted to contemplate while she was working. She set the dusting aside for Tristan to finish and slipped behindthe counter. She made a pit stop in the office to steal a bottle of water from the staff mini fridge, then settled on Lenny’s stool near the register. She helped two customers—one young man, who bought a cock ring, and a woman in her forties who needed new lingerie to impress her husband on their anniversary—before Tristan’s shift started. He swept in carrying a cardboard drinks tray in one hand and a bag of donut holes in the other.
“Bless you,” Cami exhaled, and abandoned her water bottle in favor of the iced coffee Tristan set in front of her.
“I aim to please.” He scooted around the counter to the staff side, and poked his head into the office to peek in on Lenny. “I brought garbage.”
“Is it the kind you can eat?” Lenny’s voice spiked. At his affirmation, she appeared, grabbing a handful of donut holes and shoving one into her mouth. “I made up the schedule for next week and submitted the next stock order. Now I’m getting the hell outta here. The Great British Baking Show ain’t gonna watch itself. Try not to burn the store down while I’m gone.”
“No promises,” Tristan quipped.
Cami grinned.
Lenny rolled her eyes, murmuring under her breath. “Hooligans.” Then she snapped her retractable leash on Holmes and headed for the door. It was only when they were walking past the windows that Cami noticed Holmes was carrying a Kong dog toy in his mouth. Or was that a butt plug?
“Has he been eating the merchandise?” she gasped.
“Don’t be stupid, Cami. Of course he has.”
She busied herself with donut holes and iced coffee for the next hour, while Tristan got himself settled in. She spent twenty minutes or so skimming through the news on her phone, then detoured into a clickbait website full of amusing animal gifs. When she tired of that, she decided the most productive course of action would be to sort the lingerie rack by color. As she wasworking on that, moving pieces around and bringing out extra stock from the back room, a customer entered.
She and Tristan called a greeting to the woman and asked if she needed help, but she waved them off with a polite, “Just browsing, thank you,” in a measured tone, lightly accented in an unidentifiable way.
Her voice was distinctive enough that she drew Cami’s attention from the task at hand long enough for Cami to take in her appearance.
She was beautiful—tall and lithe, with pale skin and glossy, thick auburn hair that was pulled into a tight French roll. Cami hadn’t even known it was possible to do a French roll without going to the stylist, but after taking this woman in, she decided the woman had to have a stylist on staff, along with a butler, chauffeur, and personal masseuse. She wore tall heels that had to be designer, dark hose, and a pencil skirt underneath a thin trench coat, cinched in at her waist and tied with an artful knot. She looked shockingly like Audrey Hepburn. Her lipstick was dark red, bold and eye-catching against her skin tone, and Cami found herself rolling her own lips between her teeth, rubbing at the remains of the nude gloss she usually wore.
‘Dress for the job you want’ had never been a notion she found helpful. If she had dressed as exquisitely as this woman, she would have been awkward and overdressed amongst the nipple clamps and leather. But even so, this woman made her feel curiously inadequate. Schlubby, even. Her T-shirt and jeans were juvenile and unattractive. There was no reason to respect someone who dressed like a high schooler, and this customer, who’d uttered only a single sentence in Cami’s presence, oozed authority in a way that she never could.
Out of nowhere, the thought occurred to her: This was the kind of woman Des would date. Gorgeous, rich, stylish, just like him. No wonder he hadn’t stayed.
The whole thing had been a fluke, anyway. He’d never meant to sleep with her in the first place, and he wasn’t her boyfriend.
