Seasonal Job Security

Ahhh, Christmastime at the underwear store...

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There's nothing quite like driving along the sea on a nice, warm day, windows down, smelling the salt and letting the sandy sun soak into the car, driving out the smells of stale coffee and old fast-food wrappers. Today was a delight, one of what had to be the last truly warm days before the winter came. It was weird to see bikinis on the sand despite the tinsel hanging from the bathhouse: Thanksgiving had been two weeks before and so there'd been Christmas decorations out for about thirteen days now.

Runners were loping along the boardwalk, and I let my eyes linger as the traffic lurched past them. The Shore Road was predictably clogged; of course, I hadn't been the only one with the idea of enjoying the scenery.

Bodies. Everywhere, bodies. Every shape and size, every color, all of them free and easy and largely naked. I love the beach. It feels like a cafeteria, especially when I'm horny. Especially today, when I expected to hear Jenn tell us that everything had gone perfecto with Eric, that we were in the money. She'd better have closed the deal, too; the value of our stolen panties was decreasing by the day. The bodies cavorted on the sand, and I watched happily as the crowds drifted by.

Like the guy walking toward me, owning the sidewalk, striding tall and proud with his chin up and his eyes hidden behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses like Goose's replacement wore in Top Gun. Good God, but he was fine: a big guy with skin the color of milk chocolate, his pecs sprinkled with dark tattoos, about thirty or thirty-five maybe: it's hard to tell sometimes with black guys. I felt my mouth open slightly as I took in a sublime six-pack, defined like an artist's chisel marks on onyx, the muscles descending in a tasty V-shaped march down into a pair of shorts cut high enough to show the whole long, tempting expanse of his thighs.

There had to be a big, sturdy pair of balls in there. Had to be, the way he was walking, disdainful of everyone else in sight.

The sudden rush of lust surprised me a little. I'm dating a woman right now, a delicious morsel named Fathia, who can do really amazing things to my pussy, but every now and then I just crave the harsh, hot bluntness of a thick cock twisting in my body. The kind of cock that black guy had to have. Just had to. He moved with the kind of confidence that told the whole world he knew exactly what to do with a woman.

For a blinked instant, I thought about pulling over... well, double parking at least, then leaning out the window of my shitty Rav4 and soaking up the stares from the rest of the passersby; the women would hate me for daring to chat up such a fine specimen, the men? Well, they'd just be looking at my tits, shelved on my car door, meant for just one pair of eyes behind some mirrored shades. I'd let him see me check him out, my eyes drifting down his body behind my own Wayfarers, and then I'd lick my lips.

He'd saunter over, leaning down, a drop of sweat rolling over the taut skin of his abs, and I'd reach out a lazy hand to collect it, giving him a smile around my finger after I sucked it clean. He'd taste like the ocean. I'd drawl confidently when I introduced myself, then he'd climb shrugging into my passenger seat; I'd take him to the bathhouse, lock the two of us in one of the dirty stalls, and then I'd shriek as I let him breed me over the toilet.

But no. No way. A man like that? I sighed and drove away, knowing the sad truth: alas, I had insufficient booty for the likes of him. He was a cocky, strapping man who'd want something to grab onto while he took his woman, and me? I had ass enough to be a really, really good underwear saleswoman, but I just didn't have what it took to become this man's bitch.

A big part of success in the sexual sweepstakes is knowing your place.

But he saw me stare at him as I drove by, and he rewarded me with a quick curl of that gorgeous wide mouth of his. That one curl had me damp immediately, and I figured that by the time I got to work I'd need to change. I was pulling a double today, and Secret Whispers didn't need me smelling like I was in heat.

Down along the beach, then, and into the dingy employee area of the parking garage. They kept us in the back corner, as if we smelled or something, the mall management mortified lest the well-heeled Gallery shoppers stain their eyes by looking at the likes of the mere Nametag-Wearing Classes. Ever since The Gallery had opened, following all the cost overruns and the materials shortages and that one big Teamsters strike back when they'd been just about ready for the Grand Opening, we'd been shunted back here among the rats and the sex offenders.

Ah well, I reflected, checking my lipstick in the rearview mirror once my engine had shuddered to a halt. Could be worse. Last Christmas the store had been in temporary quarters in the older part of the mall, the shittier part, and it came to me that it was a lot better to be working in the glitz and parking in the shit, than both working and parking in the shit.

The grittiness under my shoes reminded me I needed to be careful: I'd worn the long slacks today, the ones that made my legs look five miles long, but there were puddles down here. I thought a moment about reaching down and actually hiking up my pants, but no: I'd worked hard on the creases this morning, struggling with the linen-blend fabric at my half-size ironing board while my sister brayed in my ear on the speakerphone.

"It was so fucking crazy!" she'd announced in that spazzed-out Sunday voice. "I'm telling you, I'd never seen anything like that."

"Seen what?" I snarked back, not in the mood to be nice. She was a lawyer, and I didn't need her tossing it into my face that she could still go out and get wasted on Saturday nights. "A penis?"

Her silvery giggle came floating out of the speaker and I bit my lip, the crease disintegrating in my hand again. Fuck. "Oh, honey," she sighed, "no. Just no. Penises, I've seen. This?" I heard her pause as her lips ruffled the surface of her coffee. When she went on, I heard reflection. Thoughtfulness. Awe, even. "This was an orgy, Chels."

"An orgy." I found that hard to fathom. I knew the bride, and doubted she'd have let her bachelorette party go that way.

Eve laughed at the disbelief in my voice. "I'm telling you. It was the maid of honor setting everything up. Kathleen D'Arrico?" I vaguely knew the name. Beth didn't do any of the planning. You'd have been blown away." She paused. "Literally, maybe. The strippers were fucking hung, and they weren't shy about going down."

Wait. "On the guests?" I bit back a cry of exultation as I nailed my crease, finally getting the iron to get it all started. "They didn't just, you know, dance?" She chuckled, a very grown-up sound, like a grandma who's just successfully hooked her granddaughter up with a doctor.

Another slurp of her coffee. "Beth sucked one of the strippers' dicks," she announced loftily, as if she was reminding me she'd just won a case. "Seriously. It was really hot. And, uhh..." She dragged the pause playfully out, my iron ascending the pants leg quickly now, the clock by the stove reminding me I'd need to get a move on if I was going to drive along the Shore. "Well, Beth wasn't the only one."

I hesitated, the iron pausing, and I'm sure Eve could see my eye-roll through the phone. "Jesus, Evie."

"I know." She did not sound contrite.

"Fuck. I mean, did you even know his name?" The silence was all the answer I needed. "Tell me you didn't swallow, Evie."

"What was I, raised in a barn?" she scoffed. "I've got manners. I'm hardly going to take a load all over my boobs with all my friends watching." Her voice trailed off in the face of my obvious disapproval, and when she spoke she sounded just a bit uncertain. Finally. "I brushed my teeth, Chels."

"Oh, well then." I started in on the second leg with a vengeance, but I had the rhythm now and I tamed that crease with much less trouble. "Thank God. Because, you know, fluoridated toothpaste is known to prevent transmission of oral herpes from, say, giving blowjobs to anonymous male strippers." I frowned, the pants no longer at the front of my mind, and then decided I could ask the obvious question without seeming to approve of Eve's conduct. "So. How big was he?"

"Fucking massive," she giggled. "Huge balls. Like, really huge." She hesitated. "You're still a lesbian this month, right?"

Fuck her. "Bye," I hissed, hanging up, the double-entendre only hitting me later. I was still muttering to myself as I strode toward the elevator bank at the bottom of the parking garage, now at last in the well-lit areas where the shoppers parked. The perfect sign-off. Bye, bi; I was sure Evie had missed the joke, but then so had I. So I couldn't even mock her with it.

I was convinced, as I got onto the 'vator, that everyone else in the whooshing, closetlike space could catch the smell of pussy wafting up from under those laboriously-ironed pants, courtesy of that hot black dude by the beach, but I snarled to myself that I was being silly; it had just been a little squirt, just that slight thrilling little trickle, and since nobody was pivoting their bodies to look accusingly at me, I decided I was probably okay.

Good. Another selling point of the WhisperSoft Control-Waist Thong (model 4336), with its synthetic-chamois gusset. I'd have to tell my crew to start letting the customers know, with a whispery giggle, that this model did a good job controlling the rich stink of pussy.

Stepping from the 'vator into the shiny, tiled glitter of the mall was always a weird experience for me. Since the renovation, they had the elevators coming up in the old Marketplace, with the glitzy mirrored-neon entrance to the Gallery over next to the old food court, the shitty one with half its stalls vacant. Life was much better in the Gallery; it had given the whole mall a shot in the arm, but its many real restaurants had also shot the food court in the foot. People just didn't like eating dry General Tso's chicken with a side of corn dogs anymore.

I flickered my eyes left and right as I strode across the tiles, looking and feeling chic, scanning for people staring at me. I like it when I draw glances. I'm not hot, but I know how to look like I am, and I prefer a little bit of positive reinforcement before I show up for work. I like daydreaming, too; I liked thinking that maybe, just maybe, the black guy from the beach might have jumped in his car and followed me, maybe slid into a nicely cut suit, and that he was now waiting by the door of Secret Whispers to pick me up and whisk me away, just like the end of An Officer and a Gentleman, complete with my coworkers looking enviously on.

And then he'd take me home and fold me like a taco shell, ramming me over the back of my couch until he left me stretched and sore. Then I'd call Fathia, maybe while he had a snack, and once she arrived he'd rut powerfully into her sweetly rounded Lebanese ass while she slurped his cum from my pussy. She, too, liked the occasional dick, but I wasn't sure whether she'd be into a black one.

Only one way to find out.

But it wasn't my black prince that waited at the wide, trellised entrance to Secret Whispers, its doors done up all faux-country, covered now with old-fashioned stockings and the occasional poinsettia, so weird on such a warm day. I frowned as I drew near, searching the people around me, studying their reaction to what I was seeing.

The man gave off shame and frustration like a cropduster over a field, infecting everyone in sight with a frown. I thought I'd never seen a man so unhappy. He was... well, taller than me, which isn't saying much. Old? Older than me, and by quite a bit, though I'm not good at such things. But the operative thing about him was that he was wearing the proud uniform of Criterium Security, the company that had been supplying us with our rent-a-cops since Black Friday.

He moped at the entrance to the store, just barely inside, his feet past the threshold just enough that he could claim, on a technicality, with a really good lawyer, that he was actually present on the premises of Secret Whispers Store #255. But he didn't look happy about it; on the contrary, he looked like a man on his way to the gas chamber. Where was Eric, the usual guy?

Troubled, I neared the entrance and gave the guy a tentative smile. "Hiya!" I called brightly, or at least with as much brightness as I could find. Where the fucking hell was Eric? "Are you subbing for Eric today?"

He glared at me as if he wanted to kick my ass. "Are you an employee?" he asked gruffly, not even bothering to give me the usual male once-over.

"I'm an assistant lead," I nodded, still pleasant, but I could feel my smile getting stale. "Is Eric sick, or something?"

"Who?"

"Eric." I could feel the distant, pounding thud of panic rising down behind my belly button, because if Eric was out of the picture then the whole thing was fucked. Like, really fucked. "The usual security guy."

"Look," he began, looking carefully away from me, "I just show up where I'm told. Apparently, that's here."

"Yeah," I went on, knowing I was talking too fast but unable to stop myself, "but, like, are you here permanently? I mean, going forward? Or are you just subbing today?" I felt like hyperventilating. "For Eric?"

He sighed, then turned to walk to the other end of the entrance. "Have a nice day, miss," he coughed sourly. "I'm sure we'll be seeing each other."

Where in the sweet, everloving fuck was Eric? Had something happened last night with him and Jenn? Had he turned her in or something? I passed into the store in a daze, my mind swirling with very unpleasant thoughts, before I whipped around to face the guard again. "Like, what's your name?" And what have you done with Eric, I bit back.

"I'm Dave," he snapped, and that was that. He was once more scanning the mall, enduring the passersby, all the people pointing and laughing at this surly fireplug of a man guarding the sexiest lingerie this side of a Vegas whorehouse. He paid no further attention to me, so after a few moments gnawing my lip I scrambled back toward the break room.

My eye catalogued everything as I chopped quickly through the store: the bra whisperers had allowed their display to fall apart. Kasey was in charge over on Cosmetics, meaning Leah had to have called in sick. Again. Trash in the corner over by the bathrooms, meaning whoever was sweeping had gone to find a dustpan and then never returned: Linda or Abigail or, God forbid, Sophia would have somebody's ass over that. The camisole bar was a chaotic mess.

Fuck. Where was Eric?

I nodded tensely to Caitlin, my seasonal employee, holding down the panty fort until Jenn and I came on; Jenn would be here soon, I was sure, but I stopped short as soon as I got a closer look at Cait's butt. "Hey," I said quietly, my eyes roving around to make sure there were no customers around. "You're on til five, right?"

"Yup." Caitlin was very cute in that nineteen-year-old anime-looking way a lot of Asian girls have, but she was a little bit full of herself with almost no reason. She could sell, yes, but not enough to justify her sass, and certainly not enough to justify today's ass. "Two more hours."

I nodded. "Come on back with me," I said, and she could tell by the tone of my voice that I was pissed. My mind was racing; she'd been working for three hours and had another two to go. With more visible pantyline than an army of middle-aged bitches in control-top underwear! "Good god, girl," I muttered as we burst into the little closet Sophia called a break room. "Did anyone look at your ass before you came to work today?"

"Just your girlfriend, when she licked it," she giggled, putting a hand back there. "Why?"

"Christ. Look at yourself." She tried, twisting her head comically to frown at herself as she backed up to the long mirror on the door. Both lean cheeks of her tiny ass were bisected neatly by what looked like a mis-sized pair of Whispers Actives Full-Coverage Briefs, retailing at $19.99. "The fuck, Cait? You gave yourself four buttcheeks!" She knew it, too, frowning back at herself. Full coverage? Her? "Are you on your period or something?"

"No." She was tugging at herself, her cute lips stretched into a pucker of distaste. "Shit."

"Change. Now."

"Aw fuck, Chels! I didn't bring any extra!"

I cocked my hands on my hips. I had no time for this bullshit. Jenn would be in any minute. "You work at fucking Secret Whispers, Cait. This place has like forty thousand panties in stock. Go get a pair."

"Goddamn it." She was plucking at her ass. "It's not that bad."

"Get those off or I'll send you home. You sell panties. You can't look like that."

"You want me to strip? What, right here?" Her lips twisted into a cruel grin. "Want to stand there and watch, you dykey fucking perv?"

"I'm not telling you again. If you're still showing VPL when Jenn gets here, she and I will both kick your ass." I stalked toward the door and wrenched it open, scowling over my shoulder. "Fix it. Now. How? I couldn't give a shit less."

"Bitch!" she hissed, but I didn't care; the door cut her off as it snicked closed, and I was straight back out to the floor to grab the nearest newbie, Megan T, one of the seasonal bra whisperers. I slipped my nametag over my tit as I walked, the silver one that had come with my promotion.

"Meg, find a dustpan and clean up that shit near the bathrooms." I said it very quietly; I was on the floor now, my posture automatically straightening, for there were customers here now for the holiday sales. Her hand flew to her pretty mouth.

"I was supposed to hang up the rest of the camis, Chelsea, and then -- "

"Fuck that shit," I told her flatly, my lips in that sweet smile I put on when I was out here. "Clean up the trash first, then hang the camis. It's all got to get done, Meg." I left her, probably, to flip the bird at the back of my head, and my feet slapped the tiles as I went to my station at the front of the panty department. I had my periscope up and swinging, looking for Jenn out the front of the store and Cait from the break room, and all the while I brooded over the strange Dave at the door.

Where. The fuck. Was. Eric?

I was listlessly folding and refolding the g-strings, my fingers soothed by all the silk and lace, when Jenn finally came in about three minutes late. I saw her look hard at Dave when he challenged her, and although I didn't hear her retort I assumed it wasn't the sort of thing she'd repeat to the customers. Jenn had a mouth on her. Dave just nodded stiffly and migrated back to the edge of the property, storm-faced, and I put the last Whispers Confectionery Freestyle Panty down on the top of the pile and glided over to meet her. "Hi."

She flickered her eyes over my displays, then nodded. "Caitlin is on, right?"

"Sort of." I licked my lips.

"Again, with the VPL?" Jenn scowled. "Or is it her tits today?"

"She better be out soon." I grinned brightly at a passing customer, a woman old enough never to be caught dead in a thong. I thought about directing her toward something more appropriate, but then decided I was too pissed off to coddle an aging customer right now. "As soon as she is, let's talk."

"Let's." Jenn sighed, then gave me a worn smile. "Fucked up," she explained, and then she plucked up her professionalism and went off to help out the old lady, after all, leaving me to glare toward the break room.

Fucked up? Not good. Last night was supposed to have been a big one, with Jenn sealing the deal with Eric so that he'd look the other way during our department's... activities. The after-hours ones. The petty-thefty ones. The ones that earned us Panty Whisperers our extra Christmas cash. We needed Eric to play ball, but Steph and I had been leery about cashing him in. So Jenn had volunteered to take one for the team, figuring she could kill three birds with one stone: get him into the picture, keep from having to offer him a cut, and get herself some firm young cock in the process.