‘They’re definitely on my list for trying on.’
The assistant cleared her throat.
‘Can I help you at all?’ she said.
‘We want to try some of these on,’ said Jason. ‘But first I want a scout round the back room. What’s in there?’
‘That’s where we display some of our more intimate items,’ said the woman.
More intimate? Jenna looked in puzzlement at the array of frankly obscene underwear around her and wondered how on earth that was possible.
‘Pleasure enhancers,’ the woman added, seeming to note Jenna’s bemusement.
‘Ah,’ said Jenna, cottoning on.
‘Oh, I’m always in the market for pleasure enhancement,’ said Jason, winking.
Jenna cringed but followed Jason into the back room without catching the assistant’s eye.
‘Wow,’ she said, once through what she thought of as a kind of magic portal. ‘This is so unlike that other sex shop I went to that time.’
And it was. That other sex shop had been a glaring assault on her ocular faculties: shelf after shelf of brightly coloured plastic and garish packaging.
Here, everything was muted and tasteful. The materials were polished metals or smooth minerals. Marble, crystal, aluminium. It looked almost more like a showroom for executive gadgets or the gift shop on a fossil-rich section of the coast than a place where sex toys were on sale.
‘No way is this a butt plug,’ said Jason, picking up a beautiful decorated china implement that wouldn’t be out of place on some mantelpiece in a stately home.
‘I hope it’s sturdier than it looks,’ she commented, trying not to think about the thing shattering into fragments during use. ‘What on earth . . .?’
She picked up a flogger with a comfortably ergonomic rubberised handle and ran her fingers through the strands.
‘It actually feels like hair,’ she said. ‘Like human hair. My hair.’
Jason tried it out himself.
‘Couldn’t hurt much,’ he commented. ‘Nice idea though. This is more like it.’
He handled a paddle of such high quality leather that Jenna felt intoxicated just breathing in its scent. The surface was tooled with a cut-out pattern of flowers that would, she imagined, make a very pretty transfer on to the skin.
‘I could tattoo you,’ he said. ‘Paint you. I’d like to make my own version of one of these, to my own design.’
‘Perhaps you could do that,’ said Jenna. ‘Get in touch with whoever makes these and see if they’d let you.’
‘I fucking would, you know. You think I’m joking, don’t you?’
‘I’d never dare think that,’ said Jenna.
‘I’m going to ask that woman out front.’
Before she could stop him, he was heading purposefully back to the front of the shop, leather paddle in hand.
‘Excuse me,’ he sang out, coming to a halt by the desk.
Jenna stopped abruptly, a foot or so behind him, trying to look as unobtrusive as possible.
‘Yes, sir?’
There was a tell-tale little pause during which Jenna surmised that being addressed so respectfully in a shop had flummoxed Jason.