‘What do I think, Mr Jay? About the fitting?’
‘No. About her figure. What’s your expert opinion?’
Evil man!
‘I suppose you want a ringing endorsement of your taste, Mr Jay, or you wouldn’t be asking. Well, who am I to deny you? The customer, after all, is always right.’
Eviller woman!
‘That’s a very ambivalent reply,’ said Jasper. ‘I might think you had criticisms to make.’
‘No, I have none whatsoever.’ She pressed the tape into my nipples with her thumb, giving them a tiny rub. An electrical pulse of lust travelled down into my belly. ‘She will fill one of my corsets admirably.’ She bent forward and I could smell her breath as she spoke into my ear. Coffee. ‘Is it a little cold for you in here, my dear?’
‘No, no,’ I stammered. ‘No.’ I knew why she was saying it and it was nothing to do with polite solicitude. My nipples seemed to throb under the glare of her scrutiny.
‘There must be another explanation, then,’ she said. ‘What do you think, Mr Jay?’
‘Another explanation for what?’ He played along, smirking at my discomfort.
She tightened the tape again in reply.
‘Oh, I see,’ he said. ‘Yes. What do you think, Sarah?’
‘I think you must have the measurement by now,’ I said desperately, and they both chuckled, Miss Frost winding the tape back in and scribbling some figures on her notepad.
I tried to work out exactly what it was about this situation that made it so embarrassing and horribly arousing. It wasn’t the sheer fact of nakedness, nor the measuring, nor the witnessing of it.
No, it was the sense of Miss Frost knowing exactly what went on between Jasper and me. It was just clear, a given, that she was somehow party to every dirty thing we had ever done. I couldn’t have told you how. But she was.
She turned her attention to my waist then, and talked to Jasper about some mutual friend or other, as if I weren’t there. This was almost as exquisitely humiliating as her chatting about the state of my nipples. I was a mere shop doll, Jasper’s toy, as far as she was concerned.
Lowering the tape to my hips, she frowned and tweaked my knicker elastic.
‘We must have these off,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ I said, unconsciously moving my hands to my crotch. ‘Can’t I just lower them a little?’
‘Do as Miss Frost tells you,’ said Jasper.
I paused for a delicious moment of squirminess and then obeyed. When Jasper told me I had to do it, it was easy. It had to be done.
I bent my knees a little and shut my eyes as the underwear fell to my ankles. I put my hands back over my shaved triangle, knowing that she would ask me to move them.
‘I can’t measure with your arms in the way like that,’ she said.
I covered my breasts instead, the nipples still betraying me as merrily as before.
There – now Miss Frost could see everything. Too late I remembered the healing yellow bruises from the crop on my bottom. I had completely forgotten about them, until she prodded at one and inhaled sympathetically.
‘How did you get these bruises?’ she asked, but from her sly tone it was obvious that she knew.
‘Oh, you know …’ I said vaguely, looking all around the room for escape but finding none, especially when my glance rested on Jasper.
‘Tell her,’ he said, steepling his fingers.
‘It was … a riding crop,’ I admitted in the tiniest of voices.
‘A riding crop, eh?’ Miss Frost sounded thrilled to bits. ‘Somebody’s been a bad girl, is that it?’