Amanda's Young Men (5 page)

And then he stiffened.

Amanda waited for what seemed an eternity before the delicious hot flood filled her mouth.

When he recovered, he said, ‘You did good. I hate it when my women choke.’

Amanda probably should have been shocked, but she wasn’t. The comment amused her and, God help her, made her preen. She giggled.

A crooked smile crossed his lips. ‘We haven’t introduced ourselves properly, have we? My name’s Trevor. I work for the building – security.’

‘I’m Amanda, Amanda Garland. I own Forsythe Footwear.’

‘You kidding me?’

‘No.’

He grimaced. ‘You had me fooled, huh? I’m not complaining, though. Er – are you? Complaining?’

Amanda swiped the back of her hand across her mouth. She shook her head.

The big man zipped up. He mock-saluted. ‘Ms Garland, anything I can do for you, any time, you just whistle.’

‘I don’t think I could manage to pucker up right now, but I’ll be sure to remember your kind offer, Trevor.’

5

THE NEXT DAY
, Amanda didn’t get to the office until after lunch. She’d worked late the day before, after all. She managed to smile and say good afternoon to Nola, although it hurt her face. Amanda ordered, ‘Black coffee and a mineral water with a lemon wedge, please.’

The girl was small, like Amanda, but much less shapely. What on earth had possessed Roger to make love to the little bitch? Was it her age? Was that how it was with men, to prefer a young chit to a mature woman?

Amanda grinned to herself. Perhaps that was it – a preference for ‘young stuff’. That’s what
she
had a fancy for, after all. The security guard, Trevor, was younger than she was, but not by much. He was close enough to her own age that she’d been able to accept a submissive role, just as if he’d been older than she was. The uniform had likely helped.

He’d been fun, but the next man she made it with was going to be much younger, she promised herself. Any age over ‘legal’ would do. But she wasn’t going to find a boy-toy in Forsythe Footwear’s offices. She had to get out and about.

It was then that she realised she was approaching the company’s problems from entirely the wrong end. Everything, the overstaffing, overstocking and the low sales, all originated in one place, or rather, in 31 places – the cash registers of the shops. That’s where she should be looking for answers.

Nola breezed in with a tray.

‘You can take that back to the cafeteria,’ Amanda told her. ‘I’m going out.’

The sour look on Nola’s face was a joy to behold.

Amanda knew, from her explorations on Roger’s PC, that the shop that was losing the least was the one in the heart of the business district, so she decided to start there. Unfortunately, she had no sense of direction and the city’s core seemed to be all one-way streets that headed the wrong way. It was getting near to closing time by the time she found it, and then she had to park on the top level of a concrete honeycomb, which made her even later.

This branch of Forsythe Footwear was sandwiched between a trendy young women’s clothing store and an internet café. It only had about fifteen feet of frontage, two five-foot windows flanking a five-foot-wide, twenty-foot-deep entranceway. To Amanda’s mind, the window displays were far too cluttered and the cartoonish beach scene backdrops were clunky and old fashioned. And this was the shop with the best performance?

Surreptitiously checking her reflection in the window, Amanda parted the slit in her skirt to just above the lacy top of her gunmetal stocking. If she was going to subtly probe the shop’s staff for information, it’d be as well to offer them some distraction.

Inside, the shop went straight back for about forty feet before opening up into a circular space with a circular outward-facing bench seat wrapped around a truncated leather cone in the centre. A rather attractive tall thin girl with wavy blond hair and wide-set soft-grey eyes was at the cash register, putting a smart thirty-ish woman’s purchase into a plastic bag. Further back, a slender young man with a floppy cowlick of pale-brown hair was fitting a pump on to the foot of a woman who looked to be a well-preserved
fifty
, but was still dressed as she likely had as a teen, in a very short pleated skirt and a fuzzy angora sweater.

The young blonde asked Amanda, ‘May I help you?’

‘Is that the manager down there?’

‘Yes, madam, he is. I’m the assistant manager, if I can help?’

‘No offence, but I’d like the manager to take care of me.’

The look that crossed the blonde’s face told Amanda that she was used to older women preferring to have a young man kneel at their feet. ‘No problem, madam. He’ll be right with you.’ Calling down the shop, she asked, ‘Rupert, it’s five after six. Should I lock up?’

Rupert glanced back. His eyes were the very pale-blue of Alpine lake water. Amanda almost shivered. She had a weakness for pale-blue peepers – the same colour as hers but an entirely different hue.

He said, ‘Go ahead, Meg, and then go on home. I can manage.’

‘Thanks.’ The blonde granted Amanda a smile that was just this side of a smirk.

Instead of dropping her eyes, Amanda gave it right back to her, along with a nonchalant little shrug. If the blonde was saying, ‘He gets this all the time,’ then Amanda was saying, ‘So do I, honey. So do I.’

As she took her purse from behind the counter, the blonde started singing ‘Lady Marmalade’. Neither woman actually giggled but Amanda had to press her lips together to keep hers to herself. It seemed she’d just experienced a sort of sisterhood, some kind of liberated or at least liberating moment unlike any she’d ever experienced before.

The front door locked behind the departing blonde. Amanda tossed her mane and turned her attention to the business at hand. ‘Am I keeping you late?’

Rupert’s face lifted. For a moment Amanda’s newfound
resolve
wavered; he still had baby fat in his cheeks, giving him a moon face that melted her heart. He looked at Amanda’s Manolo Blahnik knock-offs first and then his pale-blue gaze travelled slowly up the long gleaming metallic sliver of nylon-sheathed leg that showed through the slit in her skirt, over her svelte hips, slender waist and plump breasts, to her face. The tip of his tongue slipped from between his lush red lips, as if he meant to lick them, then darted back out of sight. His eyes widened with the effort of recapturing a businesslike expression, but when he spoke the delivery was smooth. ‘I’ll be delighted to take care of you, madam, if you don’t mind waiting a few moments.’

‘I’ll browse until you’re free.’

Amanda put a little swing into her hips as she strolled past Rupert and his customer. The older woman twitched the foot that was cradled in his hands. Amanda supposed it was to draw Rupert’s attention back to her.

While pretending to look at the displays, Amanda checked out the young shoe-man. His shirt had narrow vertical red and white stripes, with a pure-white collar. His tie matched the red in his shirt. He was quite the dandy! Rupert was remarkably young to be a manager. She thought he might be about twenty – a very good age for a boy-toy. What a wicked woman she’d become! Still, didn’t most young men fantasise about being taught how to make love by mature experienced women? He looked very innocent – the kind of boy who hadn’t been pleasured by very many girls’ mouths, if any. A boy who’d probably really appreciate the oral skills she’d honed on her damned cheating husband over the years of their marriage. And she’d teach him how to please girls. His lips were so red she would have sworn he was wearing lipstick even though her practised eye told her he wasn’t. He had a milky-white complexion.

She frowned down at the ankle boot she held in her hand. What was it she’d been considering when his gorgeousness had distracted her? Yes. It was clear that seducing the lad would be nothing but an act of the purest altruism.

Amanda moved on to the holiday footwear. While she inspected the fake rope sole of a rather ugly casual flat (what had happened to the real thing? Espadrilles?), she mapped out her final moves in her mind. Her plan – for the debauching of Rupert – was perfectly formed by the time his customer was back in her own shoes.

Amanda dropped her jacket and bag on the circular bench and sat down beside her things. She pressed her knees together and turned her ankles to her right, in the classic pose of the lady. Plucking daintily at her skirt, she arranged it so that it covered her legs but so that the slightest movement would uncover her right one. Then she sat very still.

Moments later, Rupert’s customer left without buying anything. When he’d locked the door behind her, Amanda said, ‘I hope I didn’t cost you a sale.’ She crossed her ankles where they were pressed together above her pumps. The slight movement made the slit of her skirt part to her knees.

‘No problem. She’s in once a week, regularly. She only buys anything about every other month.’

‘Perhaps she just likes the attention.’

He grinned. ‘Could be.’

‘Or just to show off her legs.’

‘We get that, sometimes,’ he admitted.

‘Older women?’

‘All ages. You’d be surprised.’

‘No, I wouldn’t – a good-looking young man like you.’

He grinned broadly. ‘Gee, thanks!’

Amanda felt another twinge of conscience. Gee? Surely, if he was managing a shoe store, the lad must at least be legal?
Amanda
twitched her right knee. Her skirt parted as far as the top of her stocking. Rupert’s eyes followed it.

‘Er – how may I help you?’ he asked.

‘Shoes. Something pretty – something very sexy.’

‘Pumps? Sandals? Any particular colour? What sort of heels do you like?’

‘Anything nice. It’s not that I
need
new shoes, but a woman can’t have too many pairs, can she?’

Rupert pulled a stool over and picked up a measuring stick. ‘I’ll just check your size.’

Amanda lifted her right foot to let him remove her open-toed black and white hound’s tooth check pump. He eased her foot from her shoe reverently, his fingers curled into her arch, his thumb gentle on her instep.

After he’d measured, he looked up and asked her, ‘Did you know that you are a perfect “sample” size?’

‘Am I? Is that good?’

‘It’s the size that looks best in a shoe. Plus, since we often get one-off samples shipped in, it means I have more stylish, um, styles to offer you. You’re in luck!’

‘That sounds like fun, but aren’t I keeping you? Don’t you have a date or something you’d rather be doing?’

‘Rather than fitting shoes on to the elegant feet of a beautiful woman? I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing.’

‘Your parents aren’t expecting you home?’

He laughed. ‘I live alone,’ he said. ‘All alone.’

Amanda batted her eyelashes at him. ‘Why, I do believe you’re flirting with me, young man.’

He turned crimson. ‘I didn’t mean any offence.’

‘None taken.’ She paused. ‘Shoes?’

He stood and turned away quickly, but not so quickly that she couldn’t see the erection bulging in his pants. Rupert was gone through a bead-curtained doorway for a few minutes
before
returning with three shoeboxes. He tried a kitten-heeled halter sandal on her. It suited her. Amanda lifted up her left foot to try the other shoe on. There was no doubt about it, he was subtly caressing her feet as he worked. She stood and tried a few steps.

‘I’ll take these.’

‘Thank you, madam. Will there be anything else?’

‘I never buy just one pair of shoes at a time. What else have you got to show me?’

‘Oh – lots. As I said, we get a lot of samples and they are almost always in your size.’

Amanda rejected the other two styles he’d brought. Rupert gathered their boxes and stood up. ‘I’ll be right back, with more.’

‘Wouldn’t it save time if I came with you and picked out the ones I want to try on?’

‘Sorry, madam, but it’s company policy. Customers aren’t allowed in the stacks.’

Amanda pouted. ‘That’s a shame. I love the smell of leather and I bet the back room is redolent with it. The scent of leather … affects me. Smells can, you know – pheromones.’

‘A-affects you?’

Good boy! He was reading between the lines.

Amanda said, ‘No one need know. We’re all alone. No one can see us. It’s very private, isn’t it? I won’t tell anyone what we get up to if you won’t.’

Rupert glanced around nervously, as if he expected his district supervisor to pop out of a shoebox. ‘It can’t hurt, can it?’

‘Might be fun,’ she encouraged.

In the stacks, the aisles between the shelves were no more than three feet wide. They could hardly help bumping hips from time to time. Amanda had had no idea, up till that very moment, that the thrills and chills of her youth were still
accessible
, but every time their bodies connected she shivered inwardly. ‘So, where do you keep all these samples?’

‘Different shelves, in with other similar styles.’

‘Makes sense. What that up there?’ She pointed to the larger slightly battered boxes that were crammed into the space between the tops of the shelves and the ceiling.

Rupert pulled a sour face. ‘Winter boots.’

‘Already?’

‘Last year’s, and some from the year before.’

‘Didn’t you have a sale at the end of the season?’

‘Too little, too late. Company rules. I’m allowed to reduce them by ten per cent, but not till March. By then, no one wants them at any price.’

‘What would you do with them, if you were allowed?’ Amanda leant back against one wall of shelves and lifted her right foot to set its toe on the lowest shelf opposite. Her skirt parted like curtains.

‘Seasonal merchandise?’ Rupert asked. ‘Once it’s obvious that a style isn’t going to sell, I’d slash the price in half. Two or three weeks before each season ended, I’d do the same with everything that’s seasonal, regardless of how well it was selling. That way, I’d free up shelf space and budget ready for the new styles.’

‘Interesting.’

Amanda lifted her right foot two shelves higher. Her skirt parted further, enough to show a provocative triangle of alabaster thigh above the lacy top of her stocking. She looked Rupert full in his face, then pointedly down to the leg display she was giving him, telling him without words that the show was deliberate.