by Wright,Lulu
I snap his waistband against the small of his back and he turns around. He narrows his eyes, but his mouth twitches fighting a grin. No curve to his lips, but his dimples show up. “So what?”
As I arch my eyebrow at him, I take my bejeweled measuring tape out of my fanny pack and pull out several inches. “I need to measure you. Raise your hands.” He flashes an arrogant smile, but lifts his hands and clip board over his head. “Of course, you are a 32,” I say. “But let’s just double check.”
I wrap the tape measure around his waist. The heat coming off his body could keep Buffalo warm for winter. I pull the tape taut, my hands inches away from his dick.
“Do I measure up, Miss Brook?”
I look up into his green eyes for a long, breathless beat. Fuck. I want to pounce on him right here. “I was right.” Is all I say. I retract the tape measure and step away from him. “Thirty-two on the dot.”
“Oh, no.” Mona looks like she’s going to faint. “Do I gotta measure men like that?”
Jack hands Mona his clipboard and tucks his shirt back in. “Not quite like that.” He gives her a reassuring smile and she relaxes.
That was fun. I feel elated. Like I just climbed a mountain. Except, what I really want to do is climb up Jack’s nimble body. Wrap my legs around that 32” waist of his and dig my nails into that firm, tight ass as I ride him …
“I’m going to bring you in some Flash Fit. Guarantee you won’t bother with the Euro brands after you try it.”
“Right.” He smirks. He turns his back to me and gives Mona her sales goal sheet for the night.
She looks terrified. He might as well have shown her a tarantula. “That’s a lot!”
“You didn’t make your sales goal this afternoon,” Jack replies. “You need to make that up tonight.”
“I don’t know.” She stares at the paper. “I mean, how much underwear do I have to sell to make this number?”
“Several,” Jack says. He’s back on his clipboard writing something.
I take the goal sheet from her. “This is totally doable.” I smile at her. “I can stay a little and help you. All we have to do is a little upselling and before you know it you’ll get there.”
“Upselling?”
“I’ll teach you. We’ll have fun.”
“Cool,” Mona says. “Thanks.”
“The Queen of Underwear,” Jack repeats, before wandering off to torture some other staff member.
The evening brings in a fab mixed bag of the types of people Mona’s going to be dealing with at Hamilton’s. The hurried office guys who shop after work. The penny pinching bargain hunters. The tourists from all over the world.
I love the tourists. People on vacation are happy to spend money.
Mona and I sell a bunch of Pump briefs to two cute Dutch guys, Jan and Theo, who are blond, blue eyed and flirtatious. I do flirt with customers, but I keep it more friendly than sexy.
But Jack is nearby, doing second markdowns on out of season bathrobes right next to my fixture. So when Theo lingers after Mona rings him up, I oblige Theo and lean in to feel his bicep, so he can prove why he has such trouble finding tee shirts to fit his guns. I want to laugh in his face, but instead I squeeze his arm and go “Ooh!” for Jack’s benefit.
Jack knits his eyebrows and clears his throat. He tosses his roll of markdown stickers on top of the fixture next to Theo. “Let me show you some tee shirts,” Jack says. “I’m a big guy too, so I know what fits.”
Theo responds to Jack’s alpha male display by putting his head down and following him to the other end of the department. I watch from afar as Jack dominates the poor guy, not even letting him speak. After Theo’s been rung up with a pack of tees from a competing brand, Jack returns to basics like he’s the conquering hero. Glowering at me over the bridge of his nose, he snatches his roll of markdown stickers. “Don’t feel up the customers,” he snaps before walking off to his stockroom.
I won that one. I know I did and it pisses me off that Jack thinks he came out on top. I want to follow him and declare my victory somehow, but I see trouble clicking her heels our way. I can’t leave poor Mona alone with this. She’s too new.
Trouble has a fur coat on even though it’s just early October and it’s sweater weather, not Eskimo weather. She has a little toy poodle in a Hermes center cut alligator bag. Yeah, a $10k purse for a dog. The rat dog has a sparkly collar. I’m sure it’s real diamonds.
She’s about 60 with helmet hair. A can of aqua net went down to get that hurricane-proof look. She is dripping with jewels and snottiness and I just know this is going to be bad. It’s always bad with ladies who lunch because to her I look like the second wife. The young tramp her husband will leave her for. She starts right in before she even makes it all the way to my fixtures.
“You! Girl!” She snaps her fingers at me like I am her little dog. “I require assistance.”
And we’re off to the races.
I show her every piece of underwear on the fixture and she poo-poos all of them. “Wrong color.” “Too gauche.” “That’s cheap.” Eventually, of course, we end up settling on the first thing I showed her, the tighty-whities. The most basic of the basics on the floor with the most moderate price point.
“How many packs?”
She waves her hand over the fixture. “All of them.”
Of course, we aren’t done. There is no way she’s walking out of here without something she can whine about because that’s what people like her do.
“Sure, no problem.” I grab all the size 40’s I can find and stack them on top of my fixture. 20 packs. “This is all of them.”
She looks at me like someone is holding a small turd under her nose. “Surely you have more in the stockroom.”
I want her to go away. “Nope. I just restocked this afternoon.”
“You are wrong. There are always more.” She sniffs in my general direction. “You’re just too lazy to go and look.”
Ugh. Bitch. I want to explode but then I remember the old retail wordplay my coworkers trained me on from day one. Ma’am = Bitch. Thank you = Fuck you. Enjoy = die.
“No, ma’am,” I say. “But thank you, and I hope you enjoy these.”
She looks me up and down like she is staring at the worst thing in the world. “I demand to speak to the manager.”
Shit. “I promise you. There is nothing in the stockroom.”
“Manager,” she huffs. “Now.”
Fuckballs.
I nod at Mona who already has her hand on the phone. “Call Jack,” I say. I sound like I just said “shoot me.” I walk away and busy myself pretending to rifle through the XL drawer in the meantime. My hands are shaking as I hear them talk. The woman starts her monologue to poor Mona with “Why, I never …”
Jack is there in a second, flashing a big smile at the lady, before narrowing his eyes at me. “Mrs. Johnson,” he says. “What can I help you with today?”
“That girl,” she says pointing to me, “is very rude.”
He keeps the smile on his face, but I am getting a death ray later, I just know it. “I am so sorry about that, Mrs. Johnson,” he sighs. “What can I do to fix this?”
She tosses me a smug look. “That girl refuses to check to see if there are any more of these underwear in the back.”
Jack shakes his head at me as the woman baby talks to her dog. He turns his palms up and mouths “What the hell?”
I throw my hands back at him in response. We literally don’t have any more of these in the store. What am I supposed to do?
“Mrs. Johnson.” His pleasing tone makes her smile. “Please just wait right here and I will check personally. All right?” He smiles at her until he gets an affirmative shake of her head and hustles off toward the stockroom. As her little dog yaps at me, Mrs. Johnson mumbles. “Back in my day …”
Sweating from anger, I toss around my underwear boxes until Jack returns, empty-handed, of course. “I am sorry ma’am, but we are indeed sold out.”
He says this to me, not the woman. There is a note of mock surprise in his voice. We lock eyes.
I take a deep breath. “I said there was no more in the …”
“I can give you a special discount for your trouble, Mrs. Johnson.” He looks at her and smiles. They walk off toward the register. Jack looks over his shoulder at me. “I will give you 50% off,” he says. “It’s the least I can do.”
Asshole. This sale would have set me well over my target without a needless discount tacked on.
I stomp off the floor in disgust because I need to cool off. I head to the dressing room and sit on a bench in one of the back rooms. I can’t believe he gave that woman a discount when he knows I’m trying to dig Flash Fit out of a hole. What is it about having a dick that makes guys act like one?
4
Jack
I have had it.
The playful slap of the belt I can write off as horseplay. The invasive measuring I can chalk up to store hijinx and nothing more. Revenge for the spanking, maybe I can ignore her standing so close to me. Putting her arms around me. Tugging at my shorts. And that X-Rated look she gave me.
But this impertinence I can’t ignore. She can’t treat our customers this way.
Miss Brook is a loud-mouthed, salty little … what was it that poor Mrs. Edward Johnson called her? I pull up a web site dictionary on my phone and type in “Slattern.”
An untidy or slovenly woman.
Yes. That’s Miss Brook to a tee.
“Mona, where did Miss Brook go?”
Mona nods toward the dressing room. At least the slattern had the sense to remove her temper from the floor.
After ducking my head into several empty dressing rooms, I find Miss Brook in the back stall sitting Indian style on a bench. The second she sees me she explodes. “I told the woman there was nothing in the stockroom. I was right. Why would you side with her?”
“The customer is always right.”
“Except when they’re wrong. Plus, she treated me like tiny purse dog shit that she just stepped in.”
I toss my clipboard on the bench, causing her to jump a little. I lean against the mirror and fold my arms across my chest. “Actually,” I say. “I believe her exact words were that you are a tramp and a peasant.”
She groans. “And you gave her a discount for that.”
“Exactly.”
She plays with the lace of her Nike. “You’re such an asshole.”
“Do you know who she is?”
“A mean old bag of bones wrapped in fur.”
“Yes. And also one of our best customers.”
Her wide eyes peer up at me from under those dark lashes, all innocence and wounded pride. It kills me a little, looking at her this way. “Does that give her the right to mistreat your employees whenever she wants?”
I clamp my lips together to keep from smiling. “You just called yourself my employee, you know.”
She leaps off the table to jam her finger into my chest. “That’s not the point. The point is, we’re supposed to be your staff. We should get some backup when a customer acts like a complete piece of shit.”
I grab her hand, reflexively. Her fingers are cooler and softer than I expected, and they curl around mine. For a second, our eyes lock, and both of us seem to stop breathing. We’re so close. I could lean in a few inches, close the gap between us …
But this is supposed to be a reprimand. I need to keep my head in the game. “You know that’s not how it works. We work for the customer first, ourselves second. Even when the customer is wrong, you pretend to believe them—you walk back to the stockroom and check, even though you know the shelf is empty.”
“But …”
I squeeze her hand. It takes everything I have to ignore the fire building in my veins. “It doesn’t matter if she’s literally Hitler. Make them happy and make them buy.” She looks down and says nothing. I still have her hand. “You know I’m right, Miss Brook.”
She pulls her hand back and fixes her eyes on me. Deep brown swirls of rage penetrate my soul and I can’t look away. Jesus, she is so fucking beautiful.
“I hate you.” Her face has gone almost as red as her lips. But that statement doesn’t hold the vehemence it normally does. Almost as if our touching affected her too.
I raise an eyebrow, challenging. “And I hate you.”
She’s standing too close to me. Her pert little mouth is too close. Her sexy, curvy body too close. “You lack professionalism. You lack discipline, basic respect for the other people in this store, not to mention—”
She grabs my tie and yanks me toward her. She fills my mouth with her tongue and I crush her soft body against me. My hands are everywhere at once. Her breasts. Her ass. Her face. Her hair. I can’t decide where to touch.
Then her fingers are in my hair, pulling it. Her hips rotate against me, and my cock hardens between us. “You want me,” I practically growl. I lift her leg and press her back against the wall as I grind against her. Right there. I can see on her face I have found a magic spot. I kiss her again, harder this time, and she melts in a tremble. “Say you want me.”
She pushes me away so hard I bounce off the flimsy dressing room wall.
“No!” She puts her hands over her eyes and shakes her head. “No way.”
My legs are shaking like I just ran ten miles. I reach out to touch her, but stop myself. I straighten my tie instead and turn to the mirror to fix my hair, but I can’t think. “That was inappropriate.”
I am still trying to catch my breath.
“Damn straight it was. You shouldn’t have kissed me.”
“What?” I spin around to glare at her. “You kissed me.”
“Mr. Stewart?” Mona pokes her head around the entrance to the dressing room. “The register’s down.”
“Coming, Mona.” I glower at Miss Brook but she’s back on the bench playing with her shoe string like nothing happened, like the earth didn’t just shift beneath our feet.
I have to get the control back. “And another thing.” I rake my eyes up and down her body once more for good measure. “You must follow dress code.”
“I’m dressed head to toe in black,” she mutters.
“For ladies, it’s skirt or pant suit only. Heels, hose and a blazer.”
She stares at me and I can’t tell if she’s worried or pissed or exasperated or all three. “I can’t climb ladders in a skirt and heels. Not to mention bending over my fixtures. Half my job is visual and stock. You know that. It’s physical work.”
I grab my clipboard and make a note beside my latest Bart Simpson masterpiece: Miss Brook skirt/heels/ladder. I put a star next to the note. “I’ll email you the dress code policy.”
She rolls her eyes. “I don’t work for you.”
“Not what you said earlier.” I smirk at the fire in her eyes, then follow Mona off to the register, relieved to have a problem to distract me from Miss Brook.
From those lush, kissable lips. That hungry little body of hers.
“Mr. Stewart,” Mona whispers. “You got red lipstick all over your face.”
5
Lily
Salt and pepper hair. Check.
Expensive suit. Check.
Designer briefcase. Check.
Resembling a corporate raider type from Central Casting, our latest customer pokes around the clearance fixture. No way. He can definitely afford more. Mona looks a little nervous as she approaches him, but I give her a quick wink to encourage her to go in for the hard sell.
“Pima cotton is so much nicer,” she tells him. Before he can respond, she places boxer shorts in his hands that have the texture of a fluffy kitten. He turns the product over in his hands and starts to smile. “This makes this other brand feel like sandpaper.”
Boom.
“They come in a wider variety of colors, too.” Mona lets her eyes rake the man’s body for a second. “Black would suit you, don’t you think?”
He’s practically drooling already.
I watch with pride as Mona rings up a $800 sale. The customer leaves with a Hamilton’s bag full of not just Pima boxer shorts, but tank tops and crew neck tee shirts. He’s a Flash Fit man now.
That’s my girl.
By the time the store is close to closing, Mona is no longer the bumbling, flinching wide-eyed baby deer she was when she hit the floor a week ago.
She’s not exactly a fierce fashion diva yet, but I’ll get her there.
I wish Jack had been around to witness Mona’s metamorphosis, but he has slinked off to parts unknown. In fact, I haven’t seen him around in days, beyond just poking his head into the stock room once a shift.
Maybe he’s avoiding me?
No way. I’m adorable.
Besides. If I can’t stop thinking about that kiss—the hard crush of his body against mine, the way I could feel every inch of his muscular, sculpted chest as it dug into my breasts, not to mention the press of his cock right on my sweet spot, his hips grinding just hard enough to make me wet—there’s no way he isn’t thinking about it too.
I know I gave as good as I got.
So, an hour later, when I spot him in men’s shoes—his telltale slim black suit and tangle of blond hair giving him away—I can’t resist sliding up to him to comment. “Are you shopping on the clock? Don’t you have markdowns to finish?”
He blatantly turns his shoulder on me, and continues rifling through the shoes.
Rude.
“Still got the grandpa undies on?” I brush my hand up the side of his leg.
He jumps and whips around. His mouth hangs open, then presses into a grin. “My, you are handsy, aren’t you?”
I want to crawl into a hole and die.
It’s not Jack. It’s some other dude. And I just groped him. Ugh.
Dude’s smiling at me now as he does a slow up and down scan of my body. “Why do you want to know about my underwear?” His eyebrow inches up his face, and his sculpted jaw angles toward me. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
He’s handsome, but not Jack handsome. He’s arrogant, but not Jack arrogant.
“I am so sorry,” I stammer. I am so red faced right now I must look like a hydrant. “Thought you were someone else!” I shout over my shoulder as I flee toward the safety of the Flash Fit section.