Page 6 of Devil In A Suit, Vol. 1

At most stores, a salesperson practically leaps on you as soon as you walk in, offering assistant and guidance and potentially even best friendship. But here, in this gleaming white tomb-like shop full of underwear that makes me blush just looking at it on hangers, I feel like I should be greeting them.

Get it together, Carson, I tell myself, and then stroll as confidently as I can towards the nearest rack. I flip through the satin-covered hangers and, as discreetly as I can, flip over a price tag. $650. For a lace thong. I stifle a gasp, which would certainly echo across the bare marble floors.

I guess this is where billionaire money goes.

“Can I help you?” The salesgirl appears as if by apparition, sounding incredible skeptical that she has anything resembling assistance for me.

“Yes. I’m looking for, um, something?” I clear my throat and try it again, as a statement this time. “I’ve been sent here to pick out something for a date this evening at Renew.”

The name of the hottest reservation in Boston serves as a starter’s pistol, and before I can tell the girl I will not be going on the date, and that the something isn’t for me, she’s reached for something black and almost completely see-through.

Then she turns on her heel and crosses the store in loud click clacks and plucks what I think is underwear but bears a closer resemblance to a tangle of ribbons. She doesn’t ask my size or what colors I like, just begins shopping for me. And I follow her around the store like a lost kitten while she picks items and hangs them off her razor-thin arm until we stop in front of a velvet curtain. She sweeps it aside with a loud whoosh and gestures me inside. I step in, and the curtain shuts behind me.

Suddenly alone staring at the delicate, lacy, mostly black items hanging on a hook against the wall, I realize what I’m about to do. Try on six hundred dollar lingerie. For my boss.

Holy shit.

This is not how I expected today to go when I woke up this morning.

“Do you need help getting into anything?” comes the voice beyond the curtain.

“No!” I say. And then I hustle out of my oxford shirt before she can come in.

I start with what looks to be the tamest item, a black lace bra and panty set with mesh along the hips and bra cups, delicate lace flowers just barely hiding my nipples.

“You have something on?”

“Yes!” I say, hoping to keep her out, but either she doesn’t hear me or decides I need her assistance regardless, because the curtain flies open and she steps in. I take a step back, using my arms to cover myself, doing only slightly better than the black mesh lingerie. If she notices my shyness, she chooses to ignore it, stepping forward to adjust cups and straps, spinning me around and falling into an effortless squat to tug at the elastic around my thighs. When she’s satisfied with the fit, she stands up and steps back, appraising me up and down.

From the tiny scrunch of her perfect ski slope of a nose, I can tell it’s not right.

“Not that,” she says. She reaches for a pair of hangers hidden in the back of the pile, the items I’d been most frightened of and confused by. It’s black lace and mesh with delicate silver flowers sewn throughout. The bra is a simple bandeau, but it’s merely ornamentation.

The silver flowers will hide nothing, and there’s a wide swath of lace that I have no idea what to do with.

“This. I’ll help you,” she asserts.

As much as I do not want to get undressed in front of this woman, I also know that I will not survive an attempt to put that on my body without assistance, so I decide to acquiesce and accept her help.

It takes about ten seconds before I realize that I don’t need to cover my bare breasts or worry about keeping my knees closed in front of this woman, whose name I do not know. I’m nothing more than a mannequin to her. I lift my arm when she tells me, and otherwise give her hands free access to my body. I bend over and let her tuck my breasts into the bandeau and try not to flinch as her fingers brush my inner thighs.

I discover that the swath of lace is actually a corset, and I suck in as the salesgirl laces it up the back. I sit as she helps me roll on a pair of nylons, a delicate seam up the back, and I watch in wonder as she expertly snaps the garters. When she steps back, I see myself in the mirror for the first time.

“That is what you wear to Renew,” she says as she steps back, her arms crossed over her chest.

I know nothing about lingerie, or dates at hot restaurants, but when I look in the mirror I know for sure that she’s right. This is what’s under all those designer dresses in the society pages. This is what Jared King sees when he slowly lowers the zipper on a woman’s dress.

This is what makes him hard.

And that thought makes me very, very wet.

“Regina, you have a phone call,” says a bored-sounding voice from beyond the curtain.

“Be right back,” she says, and then she disappears, leaving me alone in the dressing room in sexy lingerie that I have absolutely no idea how to remove.

My phone vibrates in my purse, and I pull it out to see a text from a number I don’t recognize.

How does it look?