Imogen shivered as she watched Gunter leave the bar, and then, tugging on her jacket, she slithered off the stool and picked her purse up off the counter. When she stood up, she was of average height but her legs were spectacular and disproportionately longer than her body. She was all leg and silk stockings and nothing much else. She was an erotic fantasy.
‘Thank you,’ Imogen said. ‘I could have handled it, though. I have to handle it, since my little whore world is full of nothing but pervy arseholes like him. It’s the nature of what I do. I’m a dancer and by now you’d think I’d have learnt a lesson or two about the kind of company I keep, wouldn’t you? But that’s just it, I don’t learn and I can’t be fussy.’ Raising her skirt she caressed her thigh before letting the fabric drop. ‘Silk stockings cost big bucks and what are you staring at?’ She placed her hands on her hips and waved her hand dismissively. ‘Yeah, yeah. I know what you’re going to say. I asked for it, I shouldn’t have lowered myself to dance for a slimeball like Gunter. But I’m nothing special and I have to put bread on the table.’ And then she stretched out one of her gorgeous legs and moved it this way and that. ‘Since I have this, it makes sense to sell it.’
‘It strikes me,’ Michael commented. ‘A woman with your class ought to watch who she’s associating with. So, you’re not a whore. But you prostitute your art, which is the art of wearing fine silk stockings. I don’t know which is worse. A straightforward whore plying her body, or a whore of the silk stocking.’
‘But you can afford to be fussy, Mr Michael Levenstein.’ She leaned so close to Michael her breath stroked his cheek. ‘I know who you are, you big shot. Only last month I saw your big shot attorney papa, in a fancy magazine, hey he’s standing for senator isn’t he? So, I wonder, do you have a secret too? Why do you work for a cosmetics company when you could be rolling in dough?’
Michael laughed. ‘Sure, you got me there.’ He was straightening his tie. ‘But, it’s like this. ‘I’ve got reasons to be doing what I’m doing and I hazard a guess you’ve got reasons to be doing what you’re doing. I’m also not my father.’
‘You!’ She poked Michael in the breastbone. ‘You’re an argumentative pig and you think you have a clever way with words. But I like you. So, what the hell, I was lucky to be born with a gift, I have terrific legs and I’m a good dancer. Well.’ She drew herself up to her full height placing her hands on her hips. ‘In this world it’s often not enough just to have a gift. Now, if I was only a little more beautiful or a bit taller. Or, for instance, I’d been born into social advantage, things wouldn’t be this way. I’d be touring the world dancing like all the famous dancers or maybe like my mama, I’d be a fashion model and I’d model good hose.’ She fluttered her eyelashes as once again she saucily extended a splendid leg. ‘But that’s another story. Instead, I prostitute the legs as you say and I do it with class and I know how to wear a pair of good silk stockings. Men can’t take their eyes off my stockings.’ She drew her skirt up higher still, revealing the gorgeous hand made lace seams of her silk hose and a pair of dainty black satin suspenders and with a flick of her fingers she slid a card out of the top of one of her stockings and presented it to Michael with a flourish. ‘You see, I really am a dancer. I work for a decent burlesque club in one of the better parts of town.’ She did a toe tap on the floor, the silk stockings rippling like the surface of a glassy lake. Before moving her skirt this way and that she performed a number of sexy balletic movements with her leg. ‘But, it’s no ordinary show.’
Hooking her heel behind Michael’s pants leg she ran her foot up the inside of his thigh before rocking back on her heels and laughing. ‘I’ve scandalised you, haven’t I? You don’t know what to make of me? Now, here’s what I think you should do. I think you should come and see me dance. All you have to do is show the card and say you’re a friend of Imogen’s and they’ll sit you in the front row. Then you’ll see what a prostitution of the leg’s truly about.’
Leaning forward, she brushed his lips with a butterfly kiss, she couldn’t resist it. He looked so naïve, so fabulously sexy standing there with his tie askew and his messy blond hair flopping over his eyes. ‘Although you don’t think I do, I actually appreciate your kindness, Mr Levenstein.’
Imogen’s heart had slowed down to a tick tock and she felt pleasantly warm and giddy as she looked into his face. She wanted to touch him and she did. She wanted to feel that warm male flesh and she wanted to fondle his tight nipples. She’d always liked a man’s nipples. Her hands slid under his jacket and caressed his hips. Michael was spellbound.
‘I’ll see you there, won’t I, Mr Levenstein?’ And she flashed him a smile. ‘You’ll come and watch me, won’t you?’ Then brushing his cheek with her lips, Imogen vanished between the tables.
Chapter Three
WHEN HE GOT BACK to his hotel room Michael would be alarmed to find one of Imogen’s silk stockings hanging from the inside pocket of his jacket. He’d take it out and sit and stare at it for a moment, unsure exactly what kind of message the gesture was meant to convey. She’d hidden it when she kissed him, since there was no other way the limp piece of silk could have come to be there. Earlier Imogen had taken off an old laddered hose and taking a new one, which she carried in her purse, she’d changed it. Because she liked Michael and she wanted him to think about her, she’d then cleverly placed the old hose in his pocket. That was one of the things about working in the kind of club she worked in, she rubbed shoulders with a lot of different people and one of them was a two-bit magician who had taught her a useful trick or two about hands in pockets.
Michael would rub the stocking and stretch it across his fingers. Only hours before, the stocking had been fondling and kissing her skin like a glove, massaging her moist intimate places and held in suspense above the throbbing woman part of her. When he held it to his nose it was laced with the odour of sweet cologne and an even sweeter musky feminine scent. The unique sex scent of Imogen. She had done it to deliberately provoke him and she’d succeeded, because she knew what he’d do with the silk stocking. Filled with a wild fetishistic urge, Michael would wrap it around his hand and, stripping out of his clothes, massage his entire naked body and then his dick with it, before folding the silk stocking over his cock and ejaculating into it.
The next day he’d discover he was noticing women and the hose they wore as if it had become an addiction with him. Most women didn’t wear their hose in the way Imogen did, though. It was as if Imogen had honed his perception for silk stocking prostitution to perfection and spoilt the seduction possibilities of hose for the majority of the rest of the world’s female population.
Chapter Four
THE CLUB WAS DARK and intimate, but unlike many Berlin strip clubs it possessed an element of class and sophistication. On a darkened stage, a procession of burlesque dancers appeared and disappeared from behind a heavy red brocade curtain, each dancer seeming to have a unique themed routine to do with her body or an item of clothing because that was what the Blue Palm Club did, it specialised in unique beauties.
Michael was thrilled by the performances and found he was clapping each girl with evident enjoyment. One girl prostituted her breasts in a number of scintillating costumes and fringed sparkling tassels, while another prostituted her exceptional butt.
When Imogen eventually appeared as the star turn, she was wearing a black tie and tails and she did a routine, which involved the use of a long silver topped cane, a top hat and a straight backed, elegant chair. The tails had been specially tailored to ride up her thighs and a longer than normal vent opened and closed to provide tantalising glances of her miniscule black panties, suspenders and her seamed black silk stockings. Her complicated dance routine was a symphony of erotic improvisation, involving a number of sexy dances around the carefully positioned chair on which Imogen posed to great effect and to much adulation and hand clapping.
She was amazingly dextrous and erotic and as usual she oozed sex. Her legs possessed such elast
icity it was impossible not to be mesmerised by her intricate acrobatics, the bending this way and that and the contortion into all sorts of complicated poses. Michael was not to know she despised prostituting her legs and every moment she was on stage she had carefully trained her mind to think of other things. She couldn’t see the audience, and good thing too, because the floodlights were angled in such a way all Imogen saw was vacant smoky darkness and that made it easier in a way. Tonight, she strolled around in a haze of hopeful expectation. She didn’t know if Michael was there, but she hoped he was.
Positioning her chair, she leant her chin on it and blinked into the lights. One moment her feet were up on the chair and her knees were opening and closing like a pair of scissors, the next they were over the back of the chair and Imogen was leaning backwards with her face turned to Michael and her hand on the floor. Her luscious blonde hair fell in a cascade around her face and the coat fell over her cheeks to reveal the glorious forward thrust of her legs, the sexy suspenders and the panties with just the barest hint of pubic hair.
For the grand finale, she leapt to her feet and paraded around with the silver topped cane, stroking the silk stockings with it and running it up her thighs, and then she did a saucy turn with the cane between her legs while she pouted and sang and fluttered her eyelashes.
After the show, she came down from the stage and finding Michael at the small table she sat on his knee and gently palpated his erection. ‘How did you find the show?’ she asked boldly.
Grinning, Michael moved his hand over her buttocks and lifting the coat he smoothed his hands along the insides of her silk stockings. Imogen enjoyed the feel of his hands, it was a long time since a man had touched her carefully and she placed her hand on his cheek. When he looked at her she realised it wasn’t simply an addiction for the silk stockings. He had that far away look which told her he was a guy falling in love with the silk stocking whore.
‘I swear I never met a girl like you, Imogen. You’re crazy.’
She clasped her hands around his neck. ‘Do you think so? OK, I’m crazy and a whore of the silk stockings?’ Instantly, her gaze froze and she began nibbling at her bottom lip. ‘There’s so much you don’t know about me, Michael – like Gunter, for instance. He followed me for a while when I left the bar last night and it freaked me out. He was hanging about here all day too, wearing his thunderous expression. He’s a bad man, Michael. I seem to have this penchant for attracting rotten men into my life. Do you think it’d be a bad thing if I asked you to walk me home tonight, since I feel …?’ She wriggled her buttocks against Michael’s erection. ‘I feel a teensy bit scared for some reason.’
‘No, of course not,’ Michael said, caressing the silk stockings with small palm movements of his hand. ‘I’d be delighted to.’
‘Thank you, it’s very kind of you, it’s quite a way.’
She was scared, that much was true, but not for the reasons she’d given. It was not Gunter who scared her half to death – he was all bluster but harmless – no, it was someone else. For three nights now when Imogen put on her coat and came out of the club, she was sure she’d seen a shadow clinging to the buildings and that shadow made her skin crawl. She could be imagining it, of course. If you lived with fear for a great many years you could imagine all sorts of things.
In order to get to her apartment, she had to walk to the tram stop and take the tram quite a distance before getting off. Then, it was a walk along a few dark and not very well lit streets into a shabby part of Berlin, peppered with community housing. She shivered when she thought of it, however, it was necessary because a better apartment would cost a great deal of money and the very intricacy of the streets gave her anonymity.
She sucked her lip, she had an awfully bad feeling. It had crept up on her like a dark cloud and had started two months ago with the call from her old friend, Martha Braun. Imogen had told Martha never to call her on the phone in the lobby because she felt too vulnerable standing there, but Martha said she’d had to break the golden rule because there was something she ought to know. Imogen had become frozen, her hands and feet like blocks of ice. Louis was out of prison.
Imogen always slid in and out of the apartment like a wraith, she was so paranoid about it, now she was more scared than ever. When you had something valuable in your life and you wanted to protect it, that was how you became. She preferred to go out after dark, but when she was forced to leave during the day she pulled the collar of her coat up, scraped her hair back into a coil down her back and she wore no make-up.
She sat back coquettishly, swinging her legs back and forth and drawing little spirals on the back of his hand. ‘Did you find my little present, Michael? It was a bad thing for me to do, but I can be impetuous. I try to be good, I really do, but there’s a part of me which is very bad indeed.’
‘And what present would that be?’ Michael replied. He seemed determined to play her at her own game.
‘Naughty. You know exactly what present.’ Her gaze travelled over his face. His eyes were wide and glistening and there was a hungry look about them. Imogen couldn’t tell him, she’d thought about him last night. For the first time it wasn’t Anni who’d claimed her thoughts, but Michael. She could almost feel the curve of his body, the way he held her and she pushed back against him and felt his erection pushing between her legs. Imogen took his earlobe between her neat square teeth and bit it gently. ‘Don’t fool with me, Michael. You found the silk stocking, didn’t you? I knew you were craving one. I could tell by the hungry look in your eyes. Every man wants to touch and play with my silk stockings and they all want to have one. For a moment there I became silly and a bit childish and I thought, I like Mr Michael Levenstein immensely and I want to thank him. What can I give him as a thank you present? So I made you a gift of the silk stocking. And after I did it, I lay in bed all night imagining what you were doing and if you were titillating your dick with it. Did you do that? You see I have fantasies too.’
Michael took Imogen’s hand and then he turned it over and kissed her palm, circling it with his tongue as Imogen’s eyes glowed with pleasure.
‘I might have thought about it a little bit, but it would have been bad of me having thoughts of that nature about a nice girl like you.’
‘Nice girl! Oh, I wish you knew about me and then you’d change your mind.’
‘I want to find out about you, if you’d let me.’ He jiggled her on his lap. ‘I’d like to take you out to this fabulous little café where they have the best hot chocolate in Berlin.’
Imogen licked her lips, she loved chocolate and she felt an orgasmic frisson at the thought of it. She was on a very strict budget and she rarely stopped at cafés since she was carefully saving every penny for Anni and putting it into a savings account. It meant there was nothing left over for any treats.
‘I don’t know.’
Michael was frowning. ‘I asked Larry about you. I didn’t want to tread on any guy’s toes if you were dating. He said you didn’t seem to have a guy, so, I got to thinking.’
‘What, you thought I was maybe a lesbian?’
‘No, I didn’t think that, not in the least.’ Michael slipped his arm around her waist and caressed her gently with his thumb. ‘I thought perhaps here’s a woman who’s been stung by love. A beautiful single woman with haunted eyes.’
Imogen was afraid because Michael was staring at her with the same intensity Louis had stared at her, except it lacked the fierceness. Louis had been frightening in his obsessive love for her.
‘Is it possible you’re falling a little bit in love with me, Michael? You are, aren’t you? But, you don’t have to admit it if you don’t want to. After all you are the great Michael Levenstein and I guess you can have any woman in the world you want.’ She paused. ‘I’d have to say to you if you were considering falling in love with me, it’s a very bad idea.’
‘Why?’ Michael asked.
Imogen shrugged. ‘No man would want to become involved with me, bec
ause I’m complicated and I attract trouble.’
Michael shrugged. ‘I can take a bit of trouble and you’re right, women throw themselves at me all the time.’
Imogen stared at him, she didn’t know if he was kidding or not.
‘However, maybe I don’t want any woman in the world.’ Michael stroked a loose tendril of hair out of her eye. ‘Perhaps I want a silk stocking whore.’
‘You’re not lying, are you?’
‘Sadly no,’ Michael replied.
‘We’re playing a little game aren’t we, Michael, and it feels nice but it’s such a long time ago that I was in love? I don’t know if it would be such a good thing to have a romance with an American.’
Michael took her hand, turning it over and then he kissed it and ripples of pleasure welled up in Imogen and the place between her legs opened and became wet and she moved her legs. He pressed his mouth to her palm and she felt his tongue lapping; it was perversely erotic.
‘Can’t you just take this interlude?’ he said. ‘And not make a big thing of it. We like each other, don’t we? There was some sort of mutual attraction when we met. Shouldn’t we get to know one another because if we didn’t, possibly we’d regret it?
Imogen looked at him sadly. She was suffering a battle inside, yet her one overriding desire in that moment was love and how it felt to be loved and absorbed and lose herself in passion. She threaded her fingers through his soft corn coloured hair and planted a kiss on top of his head. The heat which had started in her cheeks seemed to be slowly dribbling in a warm river down her body, ebbing and flowing into her cracks and curves and setting her alight with delicious anticipation.
‘Don’t you think such legs and such silk stockings need to be worshipped, Michael. Tell me how you’d do that?’ Imogen felt very naughty indeed. She knew it was dangerous to tempt and lure, but she couldn’t help it. Her eyes were shining and her cheeks were flushed. ‘Come along, if you whisper it, no one will hear. Whisper it here in my ear.’
A Seduction in Silk (Xcite Romance) Page 3